Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am.
Speaker 1: He's done on Apple, Cocklay and Android Auto with the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get back to some of these tech
Speaker 2: earnings coming in here. Palanteer Uber. Yes, I arbitrage between
Speaker 2: Uber and Lyft and people who don't do that. I
Speaker 2: don't understand those people because I get huge discounts twenty
Speaker 2: thirty percent.
Speaker 3: Wait, so you whenever you need to go somewhere, you're
Speaker 3: going to check both apps and then figure out which one.
Speaker 2: It takes an incremental like eight seconds, and it saves
Speaker 2: me real money. And Matt Miller and I had this
Speaker 2: fight on the air. He doesn't do it. He's brand loyalty.
Speaker 4: I'm like, you're leaving money.
Speaker 3: No, No, there's no loyalty to this. This is all
Speaker 3: about how much it costs. Yeah, I don't know, it's
Speaker 3: just a commodity. How about the money?
Speaker 4: Exactly right?
Speaker 2: Man Deeps saying somehow he's built a career on doing
Speaker 2: this stuff and Deep seeing these are senior tech analysts
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Intelligence.
Speaker 4: Mandy, let's start with pat Palenteer. What you call on
Speaker 4: that and what do you make of the stock action today?
Speaker 2: What I'd love to just get your thought on the company,
Speaker 2: the stock and what do you think of the action today?
Speaker 5: The solo, I mean, Palenteer still is the most expensive
Speaker 5: enterprise software business. So at a five hundred billion dollar valuation,
Speaker 5: you have to ask yourself, you know, is this the
Speaker 5: best software company that I can own or is there
Speaker 5: something else out there in the world of AI, which,
Speaker 5: to my mind, open Ai and Entropic are also recurring
Speaker 5: revenue software businesses. Yes, open ai is much bigger in
Speaker 5: their ambitions with regards to a consumer business and an
Speaker 5: enterprise API business. But these companies Open Ai and Tropic
Speaker 5: are growing triple digits and open Ai, for example, is
Speaker 5: at a thirteen billion plus revenue run rate. So when
Speaker 5: I compare an open Ei and Tropic to Palenteer Talenteer,
Speaker 5: you're at four billion dollars rund rate, growing at a
Speaker 5: very healthy fifty percent, trading at one hundred times cv
Speaker 5: DO sales. That is where I think the valuation is
Speaker 5: what gives me a stop.
Speaker 2: Here, Okay, I was raised by gentlemen where you did
Speaker 2: pe ratio, and then I got converted to EV to ibata,
Speaker 2: and then you people in technology got me focusing on
Speaker 2: multiples of revenue.
Speaker 5: Where it comes to software companies not other businesses. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: And then I said, all right, I can kind of
Speaker 2: get used to five, six, seven, eight times revenue.
Speaker 4: Now you're telling me what one hundred times?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's It's like peg ratio and eyeballs back
Speaker 3: in the day. So mandeep when it comes to Pounder
Speaker 3: on what it does though there's no other company like it, right,
Speaker 3: that's the issue. It counts big governments as its customers
Speaker 3: and then now increasingly big companies. And as much as
Speaker 3: you can compare a Pounder as a stock to other
Speaker 3: AI plays, the actual responsibilities has the business that it
Speaker 3: conducts is irreplaceable, irreplicable.
Speaker 5: They clearly have a very strong mode in terms of
Speaker 5: you know, creating an ontology. That's what they call basically
Speaker 5: making sense of data that an enterprise may have. And
Speaker 5: think about you know, any enterprise, they'll have ten twenty systems,
Speaker 5: a lot of data replication, and Talenteer can give you
Speaker 5: like a master data where they can help you get
Speaker 5: rid of all their interundancies and give you data that
Speaker 5: really matters for your AI. And so think about an
Speaker 5: organization that has a billion dollar IT budget spending billions
Speaker 5: of dollars on AI. Why would you not spend fifty
Speaker 5: million dollars on Talenteers, especially if you are a government
Speaker 5: or bank or a manufacturing company and not a tech company.
Speaker 5: That's why Palenteer's customer base is not your sophisticated tech
Speaker 5: companies like Google, a Meta or you know, any of
Speaker 5: the tech players, because they do their own thing, but
Speaker 5: it's your bank. Not that they're not sophisticated, but they
Speaker 5: need more help with organizing their data and Talenteer gives
Speaker 5: you an out of the box solution. And in this
Speaker 5: age of AI men, things are really kind of getting
Speaker 5: bigger and bigger in terms of spend. The last thing
Speaker 5: you want to save on is spending on data because
Speaker 5: if your overall project fields since you didn't have good data,
Speaker 5: then it's bad ROI. And that's where Talenteer is really
Speaker 5: benefiting and making a case Guys, you're spending so much
Speaker 5: on infrastructure, why are you not spending on data? And
Speaker 5: I think that's a good pitch.
Speaker 4: Don't ship out on the data. Stay with us. More
Speaker 4: from Bloomberg Intelligence coming.
Speaker 1: Up there For this, you're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast.
Speaker 1: Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple,
Speaker 1: Cocklay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen
Speaker 1: on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us
Speaker 1: live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Looking at young brands today, that's a stock in the news.
Speaker 2: Uh sucks up five point six percent today, It's up
Speaker 2: about ten percent year to date. Launching a strategic review
Speaker 2: focusing on their Pizza Hut brand. There, let's break it
Speaker 2: down a little bit with Michael Halen. He's a senior
Speaker 2: restaurant analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Michael, when I was in
Speaker 2: college in Richmond, Virginia, Pizza Hut was the bomb. That's
Speaker 2: all we had down there for pizza. What's going on
Speaker 2: with the Pizza Hut and what's Yum's thinking about?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Uh, you know, I miss I missed Pizza Hut from
Speaker 6: back in the day.
Speaker 4: You know, I feel like the quality.
Speaker 6: Has slipped since then. Man, I lost those breadsticks especially Uh.
Speaker 6: You know, UH International has been okay, but US has
Speaker 6: been a big time drag on UFC. On a on
Speaker 6: young brand's results. So yeah, so I think this was
Speaker 6: kind of a long time coming. It's really been a
Speaker 6: drag on the top and bottom line growth. You know,
Speaker 6: Taco Bell is an absolute monster, is putting up unit
Speaker 6: growth as well as same store sales growth quarter after
Speaker 6: quarter after quarter. KFC has had some well documented same
Speaker 6: store sales issues in the US, but that seems to
Speaker 6: be turning. They had a solid little quarter here with
Speaker 6: flat same store sales versus six straight quarters of decline,
Speaker 6: so that business seems to be accelerating a little bit.
Speaker 6: And KFC unit growth overseas is phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 4: They crush it overseas.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so Pizza Hut has been this drag on this
Speaker 6: business for quite some time. I think the street is
Speaker 6: really excited about a potential divestiture here.
Speaker 2: Any potential buyers out there that you can identify, No.
Speaker 4: We don't have.
Speaker 6: We don't think any of the companies in the public
Speaker 6: market are going to be an acquirer of Pizza Hut. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, this thing is, like I said, has struggled mightily.
Speaker 6: I mean, we can see pete private equity. I think
Speaker 6: private equity would be a good fit right, because it's
Speaker 6: going to take you know, management set on the call.
Speaker 6: It might take some of their markets two three years
Speaker 6: to get them back to like their rightful position as
Speaker 6: market leader in those countries they which they see as
Speaker 6: their rightful, you know position. I think Dominos would have
Speaker 6: something to say about that. But you know, it's gonna
Speaker 6: take a few years to turn around some of these markets,
Speaker 6: and private equity obviously looking out a five to seven
Speaker 6: year time horizon would be a good fit.
Speaker 2: All right, Mike, Let's step back the restaurant space in general,
Speaker 2: getting through you know, earning season here. What are you
Speaker 2: learning about kind of the consumer out there from the
Speaker 2: restaurant perspective.
Speaker 6: Yeah, today we heard from Wingstop and another fast casual
Speaker 6: chain that's struggling also partly been a victim of its
Speaker 6: own success.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: It's absolutely crushed it over the last six years and
Speaker 6: is lapping very very strong results from last year. But
Speaker 6: they talked some more about lowing come consumers and Hispanic
Speaker 6: consumer weakness and it broadening here in the third quarter.
Speaker 6: The stock is up pretty significantly, though. We think there's
Speaker 6: some couple of things going on. Number one, is stock
Speaker 6: sold off big time off that Chipotle's poor third quarter print.
Speaker 6: And secondly, there's some optimism here, I think around the
Speaker 6: smart kitchens. So what's a smart kitchen they're so they're
Speaker 6: rolling out some kitchen technology that's boosting operations. It's speeding
Speaker 6: up service times. You know, they're they're putting out consistent
Speaker 6: ten minute service times, which is fifty percent better than
Speaker 6: they were doing prior. Accuracy is better, Food's getting to
Speaker 6: customers hotter and fresher, and people are going to have
Speaker 6: a better experience. And so stores that have had this
Speaker 6: technology right now, it's in about two thirds of the
Speaker 6: US stores, It's going to be in all three thousand
Speaker 6: by the end of the year. But stores that have
Speaker 6: this equipment and have had it the longest are outperforming
Speaker 6: on same source sales by five hundred basis points.
Speaker 4: So we think that's that's why the stock is up
Speaker 4: so much.
Speaker 6: People are now a little bit more confident in a
Speaker 6: positive twenty twenty six despite the decelerating trends here in
Speaker 6: the third quarter.
Speaker 2: Boy, big Big Pop today stocks up thirteen percent today,
Speaker 2: down fourteen percent year to date, but a good move today.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's wingstops in Jersey, Are there Mike,
Speaker 2: I haven't seen one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's there's some, but there's there's not you know,
Speaker 6: there's not a whole bunch. You know, Texas, it's strong
Speaker 6: in Texas.
Speaker 4: They're talking about the Southwest being strong.
Speaker 6: But now, man, we need some more new Jersey wing
Speaker 6: stuff franchisees.
Speaker 2: The product's pretty good, absolutely. So what's going on on
Speaker 2: the laborfront for restaurants? I'm thinking quick service restaurants. You know,
Speaker 2: with the southern border shut off, that was one of
Speaker 2: the industries that said we may have some labor problems
Speaker 2: associated with that.
Speaker 4: You heard from your companies about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, our companies just talk about the fact
Speaker 6: that they use Everify and there and they do everything
Speaker 6: by the book, which you know, I think is predominantly
Speaker 6: the case. The impact that you know you're seeing a
Speaker 6: is with more of the independent restaurants.
Speaker 5: OK.
Speaker 6: But then be also kind of causes labor costs to
Speaker 6: go higher here for the public chains, right, and they're
Speaker 6: seeing another four to five you know, wage rate inflation
Speaker 6: this year. That's been pretty common year in and year
Speaker 6: out since the pandemic.
Speaker 4: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on.
Speaker 2: YouTube, Ranganath and she covers all the media names, including Spotify,
Speaker 2: and she explained it to me very clearly early on in.
Speaker 4: Coverage of this company.
Speaker 2: I think of Spotify as kind of the Netflix for music,
Speaker 2: and it's like, okay, now I get it.
Speaker 4: Keitha, thanks so much for joining us here. What did
Speaker 4: you make of the Spotify numbers?
Speaker 7: I actually like the Spotify numbers, Paul. I mean, you know,
Speaker 7: the big numbers that we always look for are, of course,
Speaker 7: the user metrics. We want to see them kind of
Speaker 7: do well on both monthly active users, which are basically
Speaker 7: the free listeners, as well as the premium subscribers, which
Speaker 7: is basically, you know, everyone paying about twelve dollars a
Speaker 7: month for a Spotify subscription, and both those numbers came
Speaker 7: in well ahead of guidance. The other number that we
Speaker 7: look for in Spotify results is gross margin. This has
Speaker 7: been you know, a constant point of debate, but Spotify
Speaker 7: has done really well in terms of expanding their gross margin.
Speaker 7: They again delivered numbers ahead of guidance both for you know,
Speaker 7: third quarter as well as ahead of forecast for the
Speaker 7: fourth quarter in terms of guidance. So fundamentals seem to
Speaker 7: be really strong. I think the one concern, Paul, that
Speaker 7: has really kind of emerged with Spotify over the past
Speaker 7: few months is pricing power. You know, are they going
Speaker 7: to keep you know, being able to increase prices? And
Speaker 7: this is something that has dominated the conversation for not
Speaker 7: just Spotify, but of course for any streaming company. We've
Speaker 7: seen Netflix, as you just pointed out, demonstrate really good
Speaker 7: pricing power. I think Spotify has very good pricing power
Speaker 7: as well, but people are really waiting for the next
Speaker 7: big US price hike to really gain more confidence in
Speaker 7: the story.
Speaker 2: Keith, what's the competitive landscape for Spotify out there? Because
Speaker 2: as we think about the video business, it's Netflix and
Speaker 2: then a kind of a big drop down to Disney
Speaker 2: and then a bigger drop to kind of everybody else
Speaker 2: fighting it out.
Speaker 4: What's the landscape for in the audio business.
Speaker 7: It's actually very similar, Paul. In fact, you know, Spotify
Speaker 7: just leads by a wide, wide margin. So if you
Speaker 7: just look at both the global audio streaming market in
Speaker 7: terms of subscribers, they have about a thirty three percent
Speaker 7: share globally. They have close to almost forty percent share
Speaker 7: in the US market, so way ahead of their competitors.
Speaker 7: So obviously gives them a lot of I think, you know,
Speaker 7: again we come back to pricing power. Gives them definitely
Speaker 7: a lot of pricing power in the market.
Speaker 2: So what's the on the cost structure for them? What
Speaker 2: are the real levers for them? It seems like you know,
Speaker 2: the I know at Netflix and they got to write big,
Speaker 2: big checks to you know, either license content or you know,
Speaker 2: create their own content.
Speaker 4: What's it like on the Spotify side.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you bring up an excellent point, Paul, And this
Speaker 7: has kind of again been one of the pain points
Speaker 7: for Spotify because again, this is a music streaming service.
Speaker 7: They don't own any of you know, the music music itself.
Speaker 7: That's all kind of controlled by the labels, and as
Speaker 7: you well know, content is king.
Speaker 4: So this is really where.
Speaker 7: Spotify has a lot of trouble because for every dollar
Speaker 7: that they earned, about seventy cents goes back to the
Speaker 7: music label, so they have very little leverage. They've been
Speaker 7: trying to kind of change that whole dynamic, that whole
Speaker 7: EQUI come up with more of their content. So a
Speaker 7: big investment area for them has been you know, podcast
Speaker 7: has been audiobooks where they kind of get better you know,
Speaker 7: profit dynamics.
Speaker 4: It has worked well.
Speaker 7: But actually one of the things that we're kind of
Speaker 7: looking for next year is we're going to see a
Speaker 7: step up in all of the royalty costs. And that's
Speaker 7: again something that the street and investors are a little
Speaker 7: bit nervous about because we need to see how you know,
Speaker 7: Spotify kind of manages their whole margin expansion story as
Speaker 7: those royalty costs go up, So the amount that they're
Speaker 7: paying all of the music labels, the warners, and the
Speaker 7: universals of the world is going to go up slightly.
Speaker 7: But we still think that they're in good shape. They've
Speaker 7: been adding a ton of new features to all of
Speaker 7: their tiers. They're probably going to debut some new tiers again.
Speaker 7: All of that bills to that whole pricing, power and
Speaker 7: monetization story.
Speaker 2: And how is Apple as a competitor here, Because anytime
Speaker 2: I see a company that's even remotely in competition Apple,
Speaker 2: I get nervous.
Speaker 7: So Apple, you know, if you're just kind of looking
Speaker 7: at it. In terms of share, they are way below Spotify,
Speaker 7: both globally as well as in the US market, so
Speaker 7: not much of a competitor from from a share standpoint.
Speaker 7: In fact, they've even priced their products slightly lower. Some
Speaker 7: of the you know, some of the noise around Spotify
Speaker 7: and Apple has been you know, in terms of the
Speaker 7: iOS and whether you know, Spotify can kind of get
Speaker 7: better terms, and they managed to do that as well,
Speaker 7: So some of the changes on the iOS system have
Speaker 7: actually helped Spotify in terms of getting a better market
Speaker 7: share and getting better economics. Actually, so Apple Music not
Speaker 7: too much of a worry for Spotify.
Speaker 2: All right, let's switch gears to some of the big
Speaker 2: cat media names you cover. I need to get an update,
Speaker 2: Githa on Paramount, Warner Brothers, Discovery, Comcast, any movement forward
Speaker 2: there or have to wait to the Allen Company conference
Speaker 2: next summer to.
Speaker 4: Get something done.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we really don't know. We haven't heard anything. So
Speaker 7: just a few days back, I think it was just
Speaker 7: for last week and we heard that Netflix was kind
Speaker 7: of poking around. So Warner Brothers Discovery at this point
Speaker 7: has opened up their books to any of the interested parties.
Speaker 7: There were news reports and Netflix is looking at some
Speaker 7: of the financials of Warner Brothers Discovery. Again, this doesn't
Speaker 7: necessarily mean that a bit is coming, but of course
Speaker 7: anybody who you know has a chance, I'm sure, wants
Speaker 7: to take a look at the Warner Brothers Discovery, especially
Speaker 7: the studio and the streaming asset. So right now we
Speaker 7: know Comcast is interested, we know Netflix is definitely interested,
Speaker 7: and of course Paramount Skydance is interested. But again Paramoun
Speaker 7: skid as interested for the whole company, so streaming studio
Speaker 7: plus the TV networks.
Speaker 5: So this is.
Speaker 7: Again you know, I don't know it's how it's going
Speaker 7: to play out, but hopefully we should get to hear
Speaker 7: from you know, somebody pretty soon. Warner Brothers Discovery is
Speaker 7: reporting a little later this week.
Speaker 4: Boy. Yeah, you think about it, Gith.
Speaker 2: I mean, you've got a company whose board and whose
Speaker 2: CEO seems to be open to a deal. You would
Speaker 2: think that something get happened quickly, but it's not.
Speaker 7: How is it? Price has been a sticking point, Paul,
Speaker 7: So we know that. Yeah, so we know that you know,
Speaker 7: a paramount has come in with about twenty four dollars
Speaker 7: a share. It looks like David's also was looking for
Speaker 7: something north of thirty dollars, so again it's you know,
Speaker 7: it's all going to come down to those negotiations.
Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
Speaker 1: and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each weekday,
Speaker 1: ten am to noon Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You
Speaker 1: can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and
Speaker 1: always on the Bloomberg terminal