Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily reporting from the magazine
Speaker 2: that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies,
Speaker 2: and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business finance
Speaker 2: and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Weekdaily
Speaker 2: Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Hi everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast.
Speaker 3: It was a week defined by cross currents that included
Speaker 3: a closely watched US jobs report that came not on
Speaker 3: a Friday but on a Wednesday, and it did come
Speaker 3: in stronger than expected and it sent US treasure yields higher.
Speaker 3: We also had the AI scare trade rotating through and
Speaker 3: taking down sectors throughout the week.
Speaker 1: Also always in the backdrop global alliances evolving and causing
Speaker 1: some unease for investors. You can check out all of
Speaker 1: this on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg dot com. As
Speaker 1: for US, this week, we focus on the demand for
Speaker 1: power and critical minerals, yes because of the AI data
Speaker 1: center boom, and also as the US looks to shore
Speaker 1: up at stockpiles on everything on that do you mining
Speaker 1: leaders partner up. We'll hear from the CEOs of United
Speaker 1: States Antimony Corporation, in America's Gold and Silver Corporation.
Speaker 3: And on that surge and energy demand for AI and
Speaker 3: more might geothermal be part of the solution? More on
Speaker 3: the race to unlock reliable, carbon free power from beneath
Speaker 3: our feet with the CEO of SAGE Geosystems.
Speaker 4: We're tapping into hot, dry rock. This is what that
Speaker 4: next generation geothermal is. So it's rock that has the heat,
Speaker 4: but it doesn't have that large body of water. And
Speaker 4: what that allows you to do is increase the geology
Speaker 4: that you can find that heat. So instead of the
Speaker 4: two percent, you're talking about fifty or sixty percent of
Speaker 4: the geothermal around the world.
Speaker 3: And later on in our second hour, the CEO of
Speaker 3: ANGI on earnings and what it says about American spending
Speaker 3: or not spending on their homes.
Speaker 5: We can tell you that last year, we've talked about
Speaker 5: this before, we saw a big disruption in April May.
Speaker 5: We saw things sort of get back to normal in
Speaker 5: the second half of the year, and I think in
Speaker 5: December there was some compression. And if you go out
Speaker 5: and you look at consumer confidence statistics like consumer confidence
Speaker 5: was down almost thirty percent year over year November December,
Speaker 5: and I think the early read was down twenty in January.
Speaker 5: So we do see some signs that there's some shifts,
Speaker 5: nothing major, nothing scary, but we do see some shifts
Speaker 5: in homeowner behavior.
Speaker 1: Also in our second hour, he was there at the
Speaker 1: dawn of cable. He led Viacom and co created MTV.
Speaker 1: Media industry veteran Tom Freston stops by to talk Unplugged,
Speaker 1: his new book on his adventures from MTV to Timbuk too.
Speaker 1: The idea that.
Speaker 6: You know, you could compete with something like Vivo and
Speaker 6: YouTube where people could get any video they wanted on
Speaker 6: demand on the internet once the Internet was capable of
Speaker 6: really streaming video in full fours was you know, it
Speaker 6: was unattractive proposition. So you ended up with what you
Speaker 6: have today, which is a network Beriff of music whose
Speaker 6: name used to be Music Television.
Speaker 1: Plus longevity tourism, social saunas and the boom and wearables.
Speaker 1: Our Bloomberg Pursuits team on the quest to live longer
Speaker 1: and what we give up along the way.
Speaker 3: All of that to come. We begin with a company
Speaker 3: whose stock is one of the best performing in the
Speaker 3: S and P five hundred this year. Generak, the maker
Speaker 3: of home and industrial power systems, you know, things like generators,
Speaker 3: missed fourth quarter Wall Street estimates when it reported this
Speaker 3: past week, with both revenue and earnings per share lower.
Speaker 1: Despite the soft numbers, it's stock actually rallied after the
Speaker 1: company forecast a twenty twenty six EPADU margin range with
Speaker 1: a midpoint above analyst consensus, driven by stronger demand from
Speaker 1: data centers and commercial customers breaking all down for us.
Speaker 1: The chairman, president and CEO of Generak, Aaron Yogfeld.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so the back half of the year, we actually
Speaker 7: had a lot less outerge activity. So our residential business
Speaker 7: for portable generators, homestand by generators really depends heavily on
Speaker 7: mother nature, honestly to help us drive demand for those products.
Speaker 7: And so it was a very quiet back half of
Speaker 7: the year. The fourth quarter in particular, back half of
Speaker 7: the year was ninety percent lower in outage hours versus
Speaker 7: the year before. So sometimes that happens, and you know,
Speaker 7: we guide based on kind of average outage activity, and
Speaker 7: we got a lot of blow active below outage activity
Speaker 7: in the quarter.
Speaker 3: Well it's interesting, you know, So what gives you confidence
Speaker 3: around mid teen's growth when the weather has been the
Speaker 3: primary culprit for weak residential sales in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so on the residential side, you know, obviously we
Speaker 7: think a return to normal outage environment that will happen.
Speaker 7: I mean, we will get ice storms again. We had
Speaker 7: one in January right with with the winter storm Fern.
Speaker 7: So we're off to a good start here this year,
Speaker 7: and so we feel like, you know, we're going to
Speaker 7: return to more normal kind of the outages and more
Speaker 7: normal patterns, if you will. We've got some pricing in
Speaker 7: there as well. You know, the consumer for our products
Speaker 7: is pretty healthy still. You know, I think there's concerns
Speaker 7: about the consumer across the broader economy, but when your
Speaker 7: power goes out, you know, these are products that tend
Speaker 7: to become a priority for households. So you know, we're
Speaker 7: not very worried about about the consumer's health for at
Speaker 7: least for our category.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Aaron, explain the consumer behavior here? Is it that
Speaker 1: a consumer without a generator goes through a power outage
Speaker 1: in the middle of winter or the middle of the
Speaker 1: summer and says I never want to experience this again.
Speaker 1: And you know, when they get power back, they call
Speaker 1: somebody to install a generator. Is that how it works?
Speaker 8: You've got it right. And in fact, I would just
Speaker 8: point this out.
Speaker 7: You know, winter outages tend to drive people to that
Speaker 7: point a lot faster than summer outages.
Speaker 8: And when you have an outage in.
Speaker 7: The summer, you know, maybe it's nice enough and temperate
Speaker 7: enough outside and open the windows and you can kind
Speaker 7: of push through and survive in the dark if you
Speaker 7: had to. Winter is a whole different ballgame if you
Speaker 7: lose your power in the winter time, especially if you
Speaker 7: live in the Northern States, or or in the case
Speaker 7: with Winterstorm Fern, even in the Southern States where you
Speaker 7: had you know, just tremendously cold weather. You get pipes
Speaker 7: that freeze, you get a lot of damage in your
Speaker 7: home and a lot of things just you know, your
Speaker 7: home becomes unlivable.
Speaker 3: There's kind of an SS moment there for Tim. It
Speaker 3: happened in no power during the conbot. Hey, what I
Speaker 3: want to ask you is investors are really noticing the forecast.
Speaker 3: You're twenty twenty six ebit a margin range. How much
Speaker 3: of what's going on the growth the magnitude is it
Speaker 3: all because of data centers.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, obviously largely. The headline here is our
Speaker 8: entry into the data center market.
Speaker 7: We started shipping products, our first products in the fourth quarter,
Speaker 7: and we're ramping. We're going to scale this year. We're
Speaker 7: having some very meaningful conversations as we work towards a
Speaker 7: final contract negotiations with a number of hyperscale customers. And
Speaker 7: you know this is going to be for us. It's
Speaker 7: a generational opportunity. You know, the backup power that is
Speaker 7: required by each data center site. I mean you can
Speaker 7: literally have hundreds of large gen sets sitting there waiting
Speaker 7: for outages to happen, and the project size that they're enormous,
Speaker 7: and the opportunity is equal to that.
Speaker 3: Is this all about the large megawatt generators? Is it
Speaker 3: all about out that that's what the demand is for
Speaker 3: I want you to get into.
Speaker 9: What is the AI play for you guys?
Speaker 7: Yeah, for the most part, So there's for us, there's
Speaker 7: a direct day I play, which is, you know, you
Speaker 7: build a data center, you need to have backup power
Speaker 7: because even a second of downtime, there are you know,
Speaker 7: there are requirements there, commitments that they've made to their
Speaker 7: customers and their penalties and things that kick in if
Speaker 7: they can't supply information or the you know, the AI
Speaker 7: models different, you know, depending on what they've contracted that
Speaker 7: data center out to do. Basically, they've got to have
Speaker 7: a continuous source of power, so they invest in backup
Speaker 7: generators for those facilities, and that's a product that we're
Speaker 7: new into and that's a huge opportunity. The indirect side
Speaker 7: of data centers is pretty interesting though, and as more
Speaker 7: data centers come online, you're going to see a lot
Speaker 7: more requirements for power. Right, demand is going to grow
Speaker 7: for electricity. We have supply constraints in particular. You know,
Speaker 7: there are parts of the grid around the US like
Speaker 7: PJAM as an example up in the northeast. Yeah, now
Speaker 7: this is a major concern on very hot days, very
Speaker 7: cold days. Going forward, you're going to see more brownouts,
Speaker 7: more blackouts, and that's going to lead obviously to more
Speaker 7: opportunities for us in some of our core products like
Speaker 7: homestand by generators for homeowners and other generators for businesses
Speaker 7: and things like that.
Speaker 1: So, okay, so we each have a million questions that
Speaker 1: we want to do.
Speaker 3: You want to go back to resident Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: So the might be shopping for a generator.
Speaker 1: But there's there's an interesting thing happening in some parts
Speaker 1: of the country. And you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: get in the details of new laws in New York City,
Speaker 1: for example, but some places are you know years ago
Speaker 1: a few years ago argued that we want to just
Speaker 1: get rid of gas lines in general and don't want
Speaker 1: fossil fuel hookups within new buildings. So new construction in
Speaker 1: some parts of the country doesn't have any gas How
Speaker 1: do you account for that with a product that you
Speaker 1: know you want to have connected to a continuous gas line.
Speaker 7: Right, I mean, obviously you can use LP, right, so
Speaker 7: if you have an LP tank or a propane tank,
Speaker 7: that works just as fine. In fact, a lot of
Speaker 7: our installations in parts of the country like Florida, you know,
Speaker 7: homes down there don't have connections to, you know, a
Speaker 7: gas line because it's just it's untenable for them to
Speaker 7: be able to put that infrastructure in. So you know
Speaker 7: what's interesting, like in policy driven areas like New York,
Speaker 7: when it comes to let's not have new net gas hookups,
Speaker 7: oddly enough, you can still have a propane gas hookup,
Speaker 7: So you know, those are the ways to kind.
Speaker 8: Of navigate around some of those challenges.
Speaker 7: And again, you're using it for an emergency, right, this
Speaker 7: is not a continuous used product, So you know, I
Speaker 7: think really cooler heads should prevail when it comes to
Speaker 7: certain policies like that. I mean, you want to make
Speaker 7: sure that homeowners, businesses have access to emergency backups solutions,
Speaker 7: right backup, power, backup, you know, batteries, things of that nature,
Speaker 7: and those are the things that I think we've got
Speaker 7: to be careful of when we do policy related things
Speaker 7: like like you know, no net gas, new hookups. You
Speaker 7: sometimes there's unintended consequences of that and we've got to
Speaker 7: be careful about that.
Speaker 3: Hey, Aaron, you guys have been expanding and earlier this
Speaker 3: year you talked about the acquisition of a new facility
Speaker 3: in Sussex, Wisconsin, and you are quoted in that release
Speaker 3: saying our commitment to aggressively invest in serving this booming
Speaker 3: segment off a generational, generational opportunity.
Speaker 9: You've used that word.
Speaker 3: Before, for generations with the potential of doubling our sales
Speaker 3: of C and I products in the next three to
Speaker 3: five years.
Speaker 9: How confident are you on this?
Speaker 3: Is it likely more on the conservative side or more
Speaker 3: on the optimistic side.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's interesting when we so we've been having these
Speaker 7: high quality conversations with data center co locators and hyper
Speaker 7: scale operators, and you know, there's obviously a massive.
Speaker 8: Deficit of supply for backup power generation.
Speaker 7: Today based on all of the things that are on
Speaker 7: the drawing board to go in the ground for new
Speaker 7: data center construction in the years ahead. So our entry
Speaker 7: into this market, you know, we came into the market,
Speaker 7: we thought there'd be some interest in the product, but
Speaker 7: we maybe undersize that and to be to be blunt,
Speaker 7: you know, we went ahead and we acquired a new
Speaker 7: facility and with an eye towards doubling our capacity. We
Speaker 7: said on our third quarter call, we thought we had
Speaker 7: about five hundred million dollars of global capacity to serve.
Speaker 8: The data center market.
Speaker 7: We now have doubled that to over a billion dollars
Speaker 7: with the acquisition of that plant and some of the
Speaker 7: other investments we're making. This is a again we keep
Speaker 7: using that word generational, but it's true. You know sometimes
Speaker 7: in business, you know, you can be with a company
Speaker 7: like I have for over thirty years and maybe never
Speaker 7: see something as interesting as this in terms of opportunity,
Speaker 7: and I just it feels like one of those moments
Speaker 7: that we have got to go after this and you
Speaker 7: see it. I mean, look, you see what other industries
Speaker 7: are dealing with HVAC. You're seeing other power companies and
Speaker 7: things that you know, the infrastructure needed to handle the
Speaker 7: data center boom that's on six hundred and fifty billion
Speaker 7: dollars right of hyper scale dollars that are going to
Speaker 7: go to work here on cap out capital expenditures in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty six.
Speaker 8: They're going to go into things.
Speaker 7: Like generators in HVAC equipment and cabling and all the
Speaker 7: things that make these centers real.
Speaker 1: Aaron, we only have about thirty seconds left, but a
Speaker 1: lot to hit just in the last bit of time
Speaker 1: that we have with you. All the challenges of doing
Speaker 1: this in the United States, doing this domestically, finding labor
Speaker 1: for this the biggest challenge for you as you're running
Speaker 1: this business right now.
Speaker 7: Absolutely the biggest challenge for us is, you know, the
Speaker 7: continuing shortage of labor. There's no question that you know,
Speaker 7: in terms of the number of people that are going
Speaker 7: into manufacturing from a career standpoint, that continues to be
Speaker 7: a real challenge. And of course now with trade policy
Speaker 7: being what it is, you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 7: things that are coming back on shore, which is great,
Speaker 7: but it just puts a lot more that much more
Speaker 7: pressure on, you know, the labor force.
Speaker 9: It's the shame you're not optimistic.
Speaker 1: Eron.
Speaker 8: I try not to be. I try to be conservative.
Speaker 9: Listen, we so appreciate it all the time. You always
Speaker 9: give us. Be well. Aaron Yetbel, He's Chairman Presidency of GENERAK.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast. Catch us
Speaker 2: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen
Speaker 2: on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app,
Speaker 2: or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Hey, I want to talk a little bit about energy.
Speaker 1: So in October Bloomberg reported on how for the first
Speaker 1: time in the years the US futtle government at least
Speaker 1: every parcel of public land it's open for geothermal development
Speaker 1: and at record prices. On that. Just last month, Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: Michelle ma reporting that Ormont Technology is one of the
Speaker 1: world's biggest geothermal energy developers. Co led a ninety seven
Speaker 1: million dollars series we funding around for a company that's
Speaker 1: tapping hot rocks to generate electricity.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that startup, Sage Geosystems.
Speaker 3: It is one of the companies leading the post to
Speaker 3: utilize innovative technology to really harness energy from the ground
Speaker 3: and meet surging power demand from artificial intelligence. You know
Speaker 3: from everything that we've talked about that this demand to
Speaker 3: build out AI data centers means a lot of powers needed,
Speaker 3: and whether it's going to be solar or nuclear or
Speaker 3: carbon based, we needed all geothermal as well. So let's
Speaker 3: get more on the company for that, we do head
Speaker 3: to Houston, Texas and to Cindy Taff She's CEO of
Speaker 3: Sage Geosystems. She spent more than three decades in the
Speaker 3: oil and gas industry, including most recently as VP of
Speaker 3: Unconventional Wells and Logistics over at Shell. She's had teams
Speaker 3: around the globe. We are so delighted to have you here.
Speaker 3: We've been looking forward to having you on. Tell us
Speaker 3: a little bit about your company.
Speaker 4: You no, thanks for having me on love talking about
Speaker 4: next generation geothermal. So, yeah, we founded Stage about five
Speaker 4: years ago. So, as you described, my background is oil
Speaker 4: and gas. My co founders, Levering and Lance Cook, their
Speaker 4: background is oil and gas. However, they spent their careers
Speaker 4: doing something a little bit different than I did. They
Speaker 4: are the scientists, the innovators, so they created a lot
Speaker 4: of very challenging technologies for the oil and gas industry.
Speaker 4: And so we're using that knowledge of the subsurface and
Speaker 4: of our oil and gas background to advance what we're
Speaker 4: calling next generation geothermal, what the industry calls next generation geothermal.
Speaker 1: Okay, so people think of geothermal, they think of the
Speaker 1: uh okay, I'm sorry to Bruce, my freshman year geology teacher,
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna butcher this a little bit. But they
Speaker 1: think of the h don't do it, don't do it,
Speaker 1: you know, the warm temperatures of the as you go
Speaker 1: further down when you drill, and using that heat water
Speaker 1: to generate steam.
Speaker 10: Correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Tim, So maybe just a brief overview.
Speaker 1: She's like, yeah, I'll give you like a C minus,
Speaker 1: but I'll just take it from here. Then go ahead.
Speaker 4: When most people think about geothermal, even myself when I'm
Speaker 4: still at Shell, you think about Iceland or the guys
Speaker 4: are in California, and so that's conventional geothermal. That's where
Speaker 4: you're drilling into a hot pocket or pool of water
Speaker 4: that's just below the surface. It's it's very convenient if
Speaker 4: you have a volcano or the ring of fire in
Speaker 4: your backyard, because that is the circumstances that you need
Speaker 4: for that very unicorn geology to find the conventional geothermal.
Speaker 4: So the challenge is that it represents only about two
Speaker 4: percent of the geothermal around the world. What Sage is doing,
Speaker 4: and there's other companies of course in the industry, is
Speaker 4: we're tapping into hot, dry rock. This is what that
Speaker 4: next generation geothermal is. So it's rock that has the heat,
Speaker 4: but it doesn't have that large body of water. And
Speaker 4: what that allows you to do is increase the geology
Speaker 4: that you can find that heat. So instead of the
Speaker 4: two percent, you're talking about fifty or sixty percent of
Speaker 4: the geothermal around the world. And the only reason why
Speaker 4: it's not one hundred percent is because in some areas
Speaker 4: like eastern US, the heat is there, but it's very
Speaker 4: deep and just not economic to drill for.
Speaker 3: Hey, my understanding is we've seen Alphabet's Google Meta platforms
Speaker 3: among the data center operators who have actually ink deals
Speaker 3: with geothermal companies to provide the power. Meta is a
Speaker 3: partner with you guys tell us about that partnership and
Speaker 3: what does inking a deal mean, like, are they pooning
Speaker 3: up money? Are they helping you in development? And I'm
Speaker 3: also curious how much power can geothermal ultimately provide and
Speaker 3: how long does it take to kind of ramp up?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so no great questions. So, yes, we have a
Speaker 4: term sheet with Meta, so we are going to be
Speaker 4: that will become a virtual PPA. So we'll be building
Speaker 4: geothermal into the vicinity of one of their data centers,
Speaker 4: but we'll be putting it on the same grid that
Speaker 4: they're taking power off of, so that gives us flexibility
Speaker 4: on location and it's but it's still a virtual PPA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, power purchase agreement.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sorry, virtual power purchase agreement. That's exactly right. So
Speaker 4: we like the flexibility of not having to necessarily put
Speaker 4: the power in the backyard of the data centers, although
Speaker 4: into the future that seems to be probably the solution
Speaker 4: that we're all headed for, so that you don't congest
Speaker 4: the grid. And so that's what our agreement with Meta is.
Speaker 4: Now to your other question, what is the resource? What's
Speaker 4: the size of the resource. So when we talk about
Speaker 4: conventional geothermal, again, those large pools of hot water just
Speaker 4: below the surface, you're talking about forty gigawatts, but if
Speaker 4: you can expand it to this, you know, hot dry rock,
Speaker 4: you're talking about between five and seven terrawas and this
Speaker 4: isn't the lower forty eight US only. So if you
Speaker 4: do that around the world, you know that the resource
Speaker 4: potential is huge.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious about sort of these these PPAs that
Speaker 1: you have and why we're not necessarily hearing as much
Speaker 1: from the government about this type of energy development versus
Speaker 1: natural gas. And of course nuclear geothermal doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: get a lot of.
Speaker 4: Love, a lot more love as of late. So well,
Speaker 4: one thing I will say is geothermal has always been
Speaker 4: supported by both sides of the aisle. The current administration,
Speaker 4: especially with Chris Wright as the Energy Secretary. He is
Speaker 4: very familiar not only with conventional geothermal, but with next
Speaker 4: generation geothermal and the resource growth that you can have
Speaker 4: in that area. And you've seen geothermal in a couple
Speaker 4: of the Executive orders. It's actually very well supported in
Speaker 4: the One Big Beautiful Bill. So you know, I think
Speaker 4: geothermal is coming into a huge momentum, supported you know,
Speaker 4: supported by not only the last administration, but also very
Speaker 4: much by this administration.
Speaker 3: We're talking tout Cindy Taffski's chief executive officer of SAGE Geosystems.
Speaker 3: Joining us from Houston, Texas are Bloomberg ne Ef folks
Speaker 3: who track all things energy, have noted that the primary
Speaker 3: downside of geothermal energy include high upfront capital costs, long
Speaker 3: project development timelines, and potential seismic risks. So earthquakes from drilling,
Speaker 3: can you address those?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So it is an infrastructure, you know projects, So yes,
Speaker 4: upfront capital costs are are large. Just like a lot
Speaker 4: of infrastructure projects. Timelines can be longer. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: if you want to invest, say in a software, you
Speaker 4: know you're going to know in six months whether that
Speaker 4: software is going to be successful. In an infrastructure project,
Speaker 4: it's going to be two or three years until you
Speaker 4: know that that is successful. As far as earthquakes, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'd actually like to talk about that, And so it
Speaker 4: really depends on how you're operating in the subsurface. So
Speaker 4: the earthquake and tremors that you have seen from say
Speaker 4: the oil and gas industry or other industries, is when
Speaker 4: they're pumping water continuously or any type of fluid into
Speaker 4: the subsurface and it will find its way to natural
Speaker 4: faults and fractures that are connected to what they call
Speaker 4: the basement rock. It'll lubricate those fractures and make those
Speaker 4: fractures slide or slip, and that's what results in the earthquake.
Speaker 4: What we're doing with we are using fractures to harvest
Speaker 4: the heat because in a matter of a week you
Speaker 4: can create very large surface contact areas with those fractures.
Speaker 4: But the way we're operating our is we're putting water
Speaker 4: into that fracture, but then we're taking it out. We're
Speaker 4: putting it in and we're taking it out, and so
Speaker 4: we're not pumping volume upon volume into that that subsurface,
Speaker 4: meaning that we're not going to we have we have
Speaker 4: a less less likelihood of connecting to these natural faults
Speaker 4: which would result in the earthquake. So I think the
Speaker 4: the risk at least for the way we operate our
Speaker 4: fractures at SAGE is a lot lower than what you're
Speaker 4: seeing in the oil and gas industry, in particular in
Speaker 4: the disposal of water, which is a waste product for
Speaker 4: the oil and gas.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so that's what I want to talk about.
Speaker 1: As Carol always says, there's there's no such thing as
Speaker 1: a free lunch. And you know, coming from the American
Speaker 1: West and growing up in drought stricken California, I'm curious
Speaker 1: about where you can do this where there is an
Speaker 1: abundance of water, so you're you're not actually using that
Speaker 1: natural resource.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Tam, it's a great question. We do need water.
Speaker 4: We I will say that the water needed for our
Speaker 4: operations less than a coal plant. It's less than a
Speaker 4: combined cycle natural gas. And that's because we are reusing
Speaker 4: the water. We're putting it into the subsurface to harvest
Speaker 4: the heat or absorb the heat, and then we're using
Speaker 4: it as a carrier to bring that heat to surface,
Speaker 4: and then we turn around and we pump it back
Speaker 4: into the subsurface. And so in our geothermal applications, that
Speaker 4: water stays in a pressurized system. So the losses are
Speaker 4: what we've measured is less than two percent. So you
Speaker 4: don't have to use a lot of makeup water because
Speaker 4: you're not losing a lot of water to the production
Speaker 4: of the energy. So we do need upfront water volumes,
Speaker 4: but again those losses being less than two percent, the
Speaker 4: makeup water is very immaterial.
Speaker 3: Hey, Sinny just got about thirty seconds I mean, ultimately
Speaker 3: it comes down to we saw this with solar and wind,
Speaker 3: cost comparisons between that alternative energy and existing forms of energy,
Speaker 3: and also the financial viability. So where does geothermal fit in?
Speaker 3: Does it have a way to go before it can
Speaker 3: be like, oh, well this makes sense financially.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Carol, I think we are. We're when the solar
Speaker 4: we're fifteen years ago right now, ten to twelve cents
Speaker 4: a kill a wa hour if you're above scale, that
Speaker 4: can be driven down to six to seven cents of
Speaker 4: kill a ona hour at scale.
Speaker 9: Cool stuff, Stay in touch. Love this, Love this.
Speaker 3: Cindy Taft, chief executive Officer of Stage Geosystems, joining us
Speaker 3: from Houston, Texas.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live
Speaker 2: each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Speaker 2: Play and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App.
Speaker 2: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
Speaker 2: flagship New York station Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: You might recall earlier this month Bloomberg exclusively reporting out
Speaker 3: that President Trump was set to launch a strategic critical
Speaker 3: mineral stockpile with twelve billion dollars in seed money, all
Speaker 3: in a bid to insulate manufacturers from supply shocks as
Speaker 3: the US works to slash its reliance on Chinese rare
Speaker 3: earths and other metals. Meantime, you see a lot of
Speaker 3: companies doing deal in the space time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm at the shares of America's Gold and Silver
Speaker 1: Corporation rally it as much as eight percent this after
Speaker 1: the miners said it would partner with United States Antimony
Speaker 1: to construct and operate an antimony processing plan and IDAH
Speaker 1: host some details here and then we're going to get
Speaker 1: to the conversation. Facility will be fifty one percent owned
Speaker 1: by America's Golden Silver and forty nine percent owned by
Speaker 1: US Antimony. It'll be located in the Silver Valley in Idaho.
Speaker 9: All right, So let's get to it. Great to have
Speaker 9: with US.
Speaker 3: Gary Evans, chairman and CEO of United States Antimony Corporation.
Speaker 3: It's a one point one billion dollar market cap minor,
Speaker 3: producer and seller of antimony products. It's based in Montana.
Speaker 3: Stock is up sixty six percent year to date, about
Speaker 3: twenty one percent of the float.
Speaker 9: Short also with US as Paul.
Speaker 3: Andre Hewitt, he is chairman and CEO of the two
Speaker 3: point six billion dollar market cap precious metal miner based
Speaker 3: in Ontario, Canada. It is America's gold and silver corporation.
Speaker 3: That company shares are up about sixty one percent year
Speaker 3: to date. Gary and Paul both joining out us here
Speaker 3: in studio.
Speaker 9: Welcome, Welcome, welcome.
Speaker 3: Tell us about this joint venture, the financial aspects, how
Speaker 3: it actually logistically works down, and what it means in
Speaker 3: terms of critical minerals in the US and just kind
Speaker 3: of elsewhere.
Speaker 9: So whoever wants to pick it up.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I'll just start. So, look, this joint venture. We've
Speaker 11: been working on it actually not that long, to be
Speaker 11: very honest. Actually Gary and I were talking about it.
Speaker 11: We met about a month ago. We one month ago
Speaker 11: we met, both teams assembled at the Mind Sight in Idaho.
Speaker 11: His executive team, my executive team. We were signing documents
Speaker 11: late last night with our legal teams, both of us,
Speaker 11: at ten thirty at night, finalizing this and this is
Speaker 11: a transformational deal. Actually, this allows us to supply a
Speaker 11: product antimony to the US from the beginning right to
Speaker 11: the end. So us Gary's the expert in the antimony world,
Speaker 11: we're the experts in the mining world. And what we
Speaker 11: have is a mine, the Galanina Mine in Idaho. Right now,
Speaker 11: we've got about three hundred and thirty employees. Just bought
Speaker 11: a second mine in Idaho. We closed it in December,
Speaker 11: so we bought the original one, transferred the whole management team,
Speaker 11: and made some big upgrades in capital. What we're doing
Speaker 11: is revolutionizing this mine. This mine's been around for a
Speaker 11: long time and it's it produces five critical minerals, So
Speaker 11: we produce silver, copper, antimony, lead, and then a small
Speaker 11: amount of gold, but they're all five critical minerals, which
Speaker 11: is very very important. This deal is very important to
Speaker 11: US and US miners and to the US as a
Speaker 11: whole because we need fifty million pounds of antimony per
Speaker 11: annum and we're not even close to producing it, not yet.
Speaker 11: So this will allow us to start chewing away and
Speaker 11: getting some of that antimony produced domestically.
Speaker 1: So Paul andre Hugh had given us the America's Gold
Speaker 1: and Silver Corporation view. Gary Evans, come on back in
Speaker 1: here and talk about why this deal made sense for you.
Speaker 1: At US antimony.
Speaker 12: As you know, we're the only two we have the
Speaker 12: only two smelters for antimony in North America, So Montana
Speaker 12: and Mexico. And currently we're getting most of our supply
Speaker 12: from foreign sources and get it from the country of Chad, Peru, Bolivia, Australia, Chile, Mexico,
Speaker 12: and we are looking for homegrown antimony. We are already
Speaker 12: processing Paul's antimony through another facility up in Canada. We
Speaker 12: receive that and we can make antimony trisul fight out
Speaker 12: of it. So the idea of when we met a
Speaker 12: month ago, met our two management teams got together. We
Speaker 12: immediately said, look, this is an easy answer. We'll put
Speaker 12: our new technology we developed in Bolivia. Last year we
Speaker 12: made the first commercial grade antimony hydromet facility and now
Speaker 12: we receive one hundred and fifty tons a month of
Speaker 12: antimony from that facility.
Speaker 10: We can duplicate that in the United States.
Speaker 12: So we have the technology, we have the patents, we
Speaker 12: have the license for North America and Australia. He has
Speaker 12: a land, he has a supply. So it was a
Speaker 12: marriage made in heaven.
Speaker 9: So why weren't you processing here in the US.
Speaker 12: Well, we are processing, but it's using foreign supplies. So
Speaker 12: he has domestic supplies which the country doesn't have.
Speaker 3: This new so the processing facility that you're going to
Speaker 3: be building. Yes, give us timeline. When is it going
Speaker 3: to be running up at commercials?
Speaker 10: Great question.
Speaker 12: He fortunately has all the permanent so we needed right. Okay,
Speaker 12: so we were in the construction engineering phase. Now we
Speaker 12: should start within ninety days. It be done in a year.
Speaker 9: Wow, So in a year. Yeah, it's up in functioning.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 11: If you think about the last one, sorry to interrupt,
Speaker 11: the last one that was built in the US was
Speaker 11: built in nineteen forty two at that same area in
Speaker 11: Silver Valley, and it took six months to build it
Speaker 11: during World War Two that was actually built. Gary's team
Speaker 11: just built one in six months in Bolivia. So these
Speaker 11: are not massive facilities, but they're very important. So we
Speaker 11: will once we get the Once we get the engineering
Speaker 11: stages and everything done and we start construction, it'll go
Speaker 11: pretty quick from that time.
Speaker 1: Carol mentioned Project Vault earlier this month, Bloomberg exclusively reporting
Speaker 1: out that President Trump set to launch a strategic critical
Speaker 1: mineral stockpile with twelve billion dollars in seed money. Gary,
Speaker 1: have you been in touch with the White House the
Speaker 1: administration at all about this? How much antimony do you
Speaker 1: expect the stockpile will hold well.
Speaker 12: We currently have a contract with a DLA, which is
Speaker 12: an Apartment of War, for two hundred and forty five
Speaker 12: million dollars to deliver antimony.
Speaker 10: Ingots, which is like a goal bar.
Speaker 12: There's an antimony bar's cereal stamp to put it on
Speaker 12: a pallette. We shrink, rep it and we send it
Speaker 12: to the government. It's strictly for inventory for all the
Speaker 12: subcontractors of the government. Could be Boying Northland, could be
Speaker 12: General Motors. They need antimony to make their products. So
Speaker 12: we are the stockpiler for the government, and we're the
Speaker 12: only approved company. In fact, when it went out to
Speaker 12: gub dot com, it said the United States Antimony Corporation
Speaker 12: is the only company capable of bidding on this contract.
Speaker 12: And so the fact that we've been around fifty something
Speaker 12: years we can do this. And so now we can
Speaker 12: take America's gold Silver's antimony through our new hydromet process
Speaker 12: and do the same thing.
Speaker 1: Have you talked to the White House just in the
Speaker 1: last few months about.
Speaker 12: This, Well, General Jack Kean, I don't know if you
Speaker 12: know who he is. He's on our board of directors
Speaker 12: and so he's been very helpful. We've already won the
Speaker 12: DLA contract. We have a Department of War grant coming
Speaker 12: with our now new joint venture, we'll find a new
Speaker 12: white paper with an Apartment of War.
Speaker 10: We filed a.
Speaker 12: Grant requested Apartment of Energy for forty five million dollars
Speaker 12: January fifteenth. So we are constantly in the mixed seeking
Speaker 12: capital to help grow the center price.
Speaker 3: We're talking with Gary Evans, chairman and CEO of US Antimony,
Speaker 3: and Paul Andrehwitt at CEO at America's Gold and Silver Corporation.
Speaker 9: Without the US support and backing, would this be happening.
Speaker 11: Yeah, Look, there's no doubt what's happening now is changing
Speaker 11: things for us, and it's opening guards this.
Speaker 9: Project, financially changing it, making it well.
Speaker 11: We're going to be one of the first group, Carol
Speaker 11: actually putting in submitting this white paper for capital.
Speaker 10: Okay, and nobody's done that yet.
Speaker 11: Okay, we're the first, so which is really important. And
Speaker 11: I was just at the White House. In fact, I've
Speaker 11: met with a couple of Senators, governor, congressman, and it's
Speaker 11: very clear that this this project vault this it creates
Speaker 11: a floor. It allows us to not have that volatility
Speaker 11: that we're up against. You know, we've got to prepare
Speaker 11: ourselves for if China is going to dump a whole
Speaker 11: bunch of antimony on the market, We've got to be
Speaker 11: able to protect that pricing for us, like people like
Speaker 11: us who are producing it domestically.
Speaker 3: Well, let's go there, because you know, you also have
Speaker 3: the US reaching agreements with the European Union to PanAm
Speaker 3: Mexico to cooperate on securing critical minerals used in various industries.
Speaker 3: So they have committed to creating price floors. What kind
Speaker 3: of price floor is needed for antimony? What would be
Speaker 3: the ballpark the price that kind of would shield you
Speaker 3: from China oversaturating the market.
Speaker 12: I think something in the twenty dollars per pound range
Speaker 12: would be a great price floor. Different Texas. You got
Speaker 12: to understand, China has one hundred year plant. We've been
Speaker 12: sitting behind the eight ball for twenty five years watching
Speaker 12: China go all over the world, take over countries, take
Speaker 12: over minds, and they drove the antimony price down to
Speaker 12: such a level it drove everybody out of business. And
Speaker 12: fortunately our company stayed alive, only one that did stay alive. Yeah,
Speaker 12: and now we're reaping the benefit of having these refineries
Speaker 12: up and running.
Speaker 1: Hey, Paul, you have lived all over the world. You've
Speaker 1: done this all over the world. We're a big part
Speaker 1: of the conversation is the US reliance on China. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm just curious what you're seeing because the US
Speaker 1: and China still haven't reached an agreement when it comes
Speaker 1: to export control licenses for rare earths and permanent magnets
Speaker 1: are are is any export any antimony being exported from
Speaker 1: China to US consumers that's not military related and carry
Speaker 1: Feel free to jump in here too.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 12: I mean I could probably answer this pretty well because
Speaker 12: we monitored daily. China cut off all antimony exports in
Speaker 12: every country in the world, including the United States in
Speaker 12: September twenty four. People think, oh, it's got to do
Speaker 12: with Trump's tariffs. This was during the Biden administration. This happened, Well,
Speaker 12: guess what China's biggest mind called the tweakle star of
Speaker 12: mind in China depleted last June of twenty four. So September,
Speaker 12: three months later, they stopped all exports. Now are we
Speaker 12: seeing antimony dripping into the market in the black market?
Speaker 12: Probably some coming from Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, but China has
Speaker 12: actually arrested twenty some odd people. They don't want antimony
Speaker 12: going to the free world. Why we all needed in military,
Speaker 12: you can't fire a bullet without antimony, Laser guided missiles,
Speaker 12: night vision cameras, not vision, binoculars. I mean, it's in
Speaker 12: everything you can imagine in the military. And so our
Speaker 12: administration fortunately has taken the lead and saying we've got
Speaker 12: to fix the critical mental problem.
Speaker 10: And it is fixable, but it's gonna take some time,
Speaker 10: and it's going to take a lot of money.
Speaker 11: And the one thing that I heard coming out of
Speaker 11: the White House, Tim was very clear one of the
Speaker 11: messages I was talking about as well, we need fifty
Speaker 11: million pounds and we're going to be able to help
Speaker 11: make that solution. But it was very clear to me
Speaker 11: leaving the White House that we have to also think
Speaker 11: about our allies. And honestly, I never thought about as
Speaker 11: the CEO of America's Golden Silver.
Speaker 1: I thought, but go.
Speaker 9: There because there's so much conflict.
Speaker 3: It feels like even with the US and it's traditional
Speaker 3: allies that have been there for a long time, you're
Speaker 3: saying we can't do that. We've got to be cooperating.
Speaker 11: You're absolutely right, Carol. Look it was very crystal clear,
Speaker 11: and it was made very clear to me. Change your pitch,
Speaker 11: even as the CEO of America's gold and Silver. Change
Speaker 11: your story, because you don't just need fifty million pounds
Speaker 11: for the US, you need another eighty percent on top
Speaker 11: of that for our allies who we have to make
Speaker 11: sure in NATO that we protect along the way, which honestly,
Speaker 11: for me, I didn't understand that completely, and don't I
Speaker 11: think a lot of people don't understand it. Never mind,
Speaker 11: the fifty million pounds we consume per year, our allies
Speaker 11: is another forty million pounds, so we've got a deficit here.
Speaker 11: China's been so far ahead, Like Gary says, we're starting
Speaker 11: to help this situation significantly by this JV.
Speaker 9: Which goes back to national security.
Speaker 3: Can't just think about your own backyard, You've got to
Speaker 3: think about your allies as well. Gentlemen, Please stay in touch,
Speaker 3: let us know how things are going. Gary Evans, CEO
Speaker 3: of US Antimony Corporation. Paul Andre Hewitt, he is CEO
Speaker 3: of America's Golden Silver Corporation. You are listening and watching
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Business Week Daily.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch
Speaker 2: us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern.
Speaker 2: Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app,
Speaker 2: or watch us live on YouTube plenty.
Speaker 3: Heay in our second hour of the weekend edition of
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Business Week, including the media mogul who oversaw MTV
Speaker 3: at its peak. Now reflecting on his life of adventures,
Speaker 3: from bartending his way across the Americas to building a
Speaker 3: TV network in Afghanistan. Tom Freston joins us in Just a.
Speaker 1: Bit plus a wellness treet in Sardinia, Italy, the hot
Speaker 1: truth about saunas and getting buzzed with less alcohol. It's
Speaker 1: all in the Wellness section of Bloomberg Pursuits. We ask
Speaker 1: is it all worth it?
Speaker 9: Hey?
Speaker 3: First up this hour, homeowners are feeling the squeeze, and
Speaker 3: so is the platform that connects them with home improvement contractors.
Speaker 1: Angie, the online portal for home improvement, reported fourth quarter
Speaker 1: earnings this past week that missed analyst expectations. Revenue fell
Speaker 1: ten percent to roughly two hundred and forty one million dollars.
Speaker 1: The company expects another decline during the current quarter. That
Speaker 1: also sent shares plunging over twenty percent on Wednesday following
Speaker 1: that report.
Speaker 3: Even so, Angie CEO Jeff Kip expects positive revenue growth
Speaker 3: this year, especially as he sees millennial spending an average
Speaker 3: of fourteen thousand dollars per household on home improvement projects.
Speaker 1: Jeff joined us to talk about the quarter, the outlook,
Speaker 1: and how his company is using AI.
Speaker 5: Our numbers were actually in line with our guidance in
Speaker 5: revenue and above our guidance, and EBITDA the analysts set
Speaker 5: their own numbers, and so that's I think where the disconnects.
Speaker 13: Our stock's very sensitive to that small cap and I
Speaker 13: think that's what's striving.
Speaker 5: And I think they're also looking at our forward outlook
Speaker 5: and seeing it's not as strong as maybe they'd hoped
Speaker 5: given our riff. The EBITDAH estimates moved up post riff
Speaker 5: without any new guidance, and we previously had a number
Speaker 5: of around one hundred and fifty. I think the thing
Speaker 5: that's important to note is that our cappax estimate is
Speaker 5: lower than what we gave on the last call, so
Speaker 5: we're actually a little bit improved overall. But I think
Speaker 5: that's the kind of sum on why people are looking
Speaker 5: at it unhappily.
Speaker 1: Jeff. Service request decreasing four percent, leads decreasing nine percent
Speaker 1: year over year in the fourth quarter of the year.
Speaker 1: Proprietary service requests, though increasing fifteen percent year over year.
Speaker 1: Proprietary leads increase twenty five percent year over year. Explain
Speaker 1: the difference between those two metrics and why you saw
Speaker 1: service requests and leads decreasing.
Speaker 5: So fundamentally, our network business is third party affiliates who
Speaker 5: bring homeowners through a not our experience and match to
Speaker 5: our pros at the end of their experience. The proprietary
Speaker 5: experience means that homeowners come through an experience we can control.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I just want to do Yeah, sorry, I
Speaker 1: just want to jump in. So that basically would be
Speaker 1: like googling a home services provider and getting to Angie
Speaker 1: through through that, or getting to a home services professional
Speaker 1: through that, versus going to Angie's website and booking through that.
Speaker 1: Is that the difference is that the distinction It.
Speaker 5: Would mean either going to a affiliate who's site who
Speaker 5: tells homeowners they can find pros for them, either through
Speaker 5: Google or direct and the homeowner getting connected to our
Speaker 5: pros because the affiliate does not have pros.
Speaker 1: Okay okay, is this typically search based.
Speaker 5: Typically they get to both of us through search more
Speaker 5: than through other kitles, although Angie has a stronger brand,
Speaker 5: so we have a lot more direct traffic. The fundamental
Speaker 5: change is that we used to have a much higher proportion.
Speaker 5: If you look at this, we're going to have given
Speaker 5: up over two hundred and fifty million of revenue from
Speaker 5: these network partners year over year. We made a switch
Speaker 5: at the beginning of the year, which is we no
Speaker 5: longer auto match homeowners to pros. Their only match when
Speaker 5: the homeowner affirmatively chooses the pro. So that's the experience
Speaker 5: we believe is right. When we did this, it xed
Speaker 5: out a lot of those network partners as traffic. So
Speaker 5: we made a conscious decision to bring down the network
Speaker 5: channel and invest in what we believe is a much
Speaker 5: better experience through our proprietary channels. So what you're looking
Speaker 5: at is really strong growth in our proprietary business and
Speaker 5: expected coming down in the network business. And our whole
Speaker 5: discussion was at the very beginning of the year, we
Speaker 5: guided to minus twelve to minus sixteen. We came in
Speaker 5: at minus thirteen. We said we were going to grow
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty six. We still believe we're going to
Speaker 5: grow in twenty twenty six as we inflect off of
Speaker 5: this big cut we took in the network traffic. We're
Speaker 5: actually feeling pretty positive about it because if you look
Speaker 5: at our homeowner NPS, it's up over thirty percent over
Speaker 5: the last couple of years. Our pro churn is down
Speaker 5: thirty percent over the last couple of years, and we
Speaker 5: see real success within the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: We're speaking with Jeff kip CEO of Angie, joining us
Speaker 1: from Indianapolis this afternoon. So a AI, if people are
Speaker 1: getting to you know, for years it's all been all
Speaker 1: about search engine optimization and connecting people who are, you know,
Speaker 1: googling or searching for something. What if you're using like,
Speaker 1: you know, our colleague Matt Miller's boiler is on the fritz,
Speaker 1: his wife is like using chat GPT to try to
Speaker 1: to try to fix it and then ultimately in some
Speaker 1: era that could connect her to some sort of home services.
Speaker 5: Pro right, So we are actively working with multiple LLM providers.
Speaker 5: We just announced a deal with Amazon's Alexa several weeks ago.
Speaker 13: We have an app submitted to another major player.
Speaker 5: We're working with a third major player to integrate, and
Speaker 5: we have other talks going on. So we're actually excited
Speaker 5: about the presence of llms who haven't fully developed their
Speaker 5: ad product or their ecosystem because they will actually diversify
Speaker 5: our channels. We're heavily dependent on Google right now, so
Speaker 5: having more players where homeowners.
Speaker 13: Go to do search and discovery is good for us.
Speaker 5: And we've built the technology to offer our pros on
Speaker 5: those sites or pick up the conversation from the LLM
Speaker 5: if that seems better. So we like this and we
Speaker 5: think this will help us.
Speaker 3: You know, I want to go back to what you
Speaker 3: said in terms of I guess, you know, trying to
Speaker 3: improve the customer experience, and I'm just looking at some
Speaker 3: other metrics here that you guys said. I think in
Speaker 3: your release that you acquired professionals. You acquired professionals FEIL
Speaker 3: twenty seven percent to twenty thousand in the quarter, while
Speaker 3: average monthly active pros fell twenty three percent to one
Speaker 3: hundred and eleven thousand. It sounds to me just like
Speaker 3: in terms of the matching, you're letting the customer decide
Speaker 3: that this is about maybe weeding out, reading out some
Speaker 3: professionals that maybe weren't up to snuff. Is that what's
Speaker 3: going on? Like you're trying to I'm trying to understand
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 13: So there's two factors involved.
Speaker 5: One is we did actually go through and remove all
Speaker 5: of the pros below three and a half stars, okay
Speaker 5: last year.
Speaker 10: I think.
Speaker 5: Secondly, we were actually highly scaled in our salesforce and
Speaker 5: acquiring somewhat unprofitability, unprofitably for multiple years, and so we're
Speaker 5: comparing to a base of pros that was acquired somewhat unprofitably,
Speaker 5: and we've really reduced If you looked across our releases,
Speaker 5: what you'd see is we've almost doubled the value creation
Speaker 5: through our salesforce while reducing the number. And so what
Speaker 5: you're seeing is basically comparisons to classes who probably shouldn't
Speaker 5: have been acquired. And then we have trimmed it some
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 9: All right, makes sense? Makes sense? All right?
Speaker 3: So the outlook, how do you describe it? My understanding is,
Speaker 3: you know, you guys are looking to return to growth
Speaker 3: I think in terms of revenue correct, yes, going forward?
Speaker 3: So do you get that based on everything that you've
Speaker 3: done so far. There are other initiatives that you want
Speaker 3: to put into place.
Speaker 5: So I think there's two or three things. One is
Speaker 5: you'll note in the release said January stabilized. Yeah, so
Speaker 5: we're stable in January. We're being a little more conservative
Speaker 5: and saying minus one to three, minus one to minus
Speaker 5: three in the first quarter, and then we think we
Speaker 5: will be flatish in the second quarter and grow in
Speaker 5: the second half of the year. The biggest thing that
Speaker 5: needs to happen is we need to finish getting through
Speaker 5: this network traffic coming down so that we actually have
Speaker 5: a compare where we no longer have that in there,
Speaker 5: and we get to the second half of the year
Speaker 5: where that's flattened out and we're growing. So it's a
Speaker 5: little bit optical and it's a little bit strategic what
Speaker 5: we did with our traffic, and I think people had
Speaker 5: hoped we talked about growing in the first quarter, we're
Speaker 5: now not going to do it. Yeah, our product roadmap
Speaker 5: got a little disrupted by the reduction in force, but
Speaker 5: we're still on track with where we were planning to be.
Speaker 1: Jeff, I just want to as Carol mentioned, we're gonna
Speaker 1: you know, we're looking at the economy from a lot
Speaker 1: of different angles right now. And one way we can
Speaker 1: do that is by understanding what people are spending on
Speaker 1: in terms of their homes. Is it discretionary or is
Speaker 1: it like a leaky roof and they got to get
Speaker 1: it fixed. So what can you tell us about what
Speaker 1: you're seeing across the Engie network?
Speaker 13: So two or three things.
Speaker 5: I'll just start by saying, we don't see much of
Speaker 5: a shift between discretionary and nondiscretionary. We're more two thirds
Speaker 5: more than two thirds non discretionary, and we don't really
Speaker 5: see that move a lot, even at different times where
Speaker 5: there's higher economic inflection like April SA this year. What
Speaker 5: we have seen over the last couple of months is
Speaker 5: a bit of a mixed down in job size and
Speaker 5: so then revenue per job for us.
Speaker 13: So we do see that.
Speaker 5: We can tell you that last year, we've talked about
Speaker 5: this before, we saw a big disruption in April May.
Speaker 5: We saw things sort of get back to normal in
Speaker 5: the second half of the year, and I think in
Speaker 5: December there was some compression. And if you go out
Speaker 5: and you look at consumer confidence statistics, like the University
Speaker 5: Michigan which does it monthly, consumer confidence was down almost
Speaker 5: thirty percent year over year in November December, and I
Speaker 5: think the earlier read was down twenty in January. So
Speaker 5: we do see some signs that there's some shifts. Nothing major,
Speaker 5: nothing scary, but we do see some shifts in homeowner behavior.
Speaker 1: That's interesting.
Speaker 3: I have a crazy question, Oh, are these folks who
Speaker 3: do work thinking about like buy now, pay later?
Speaker 9: I mean, can they do they do things on installments?
Speaker 9: Is that part of the process.
Speaker 13: Definitely?
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely, particularly our larger, more sophisticated pros really think
Speaker 5: about their financing packages and how they sell them.
Speaker 13: So that's definitely an element for a lot of pros.
Speaker 3: Is there an uptick in that in terms of people
Speaker 3: like accessing that and able to do to get projects done?
Speaker 5: Talking when I talk to our pros, I think they
Speaker 5: find that they can close the job and get the
Speaker 5: job done easier with it.
Speaker 13: I don't know about volume.
Speaker 10: We don't.
Speaker 13: We don't sell that or offer that on our platform directly.
Speaker 3: Jeff just got about thirty seconds left here. Are there
Speaker 3: enough professionals of this kind to do projects? Because we
Speaker 3: constantly talk about shortages when it's contractors, electricians and the like.
Speaker 5: So it's been a long term secular trend of pressure
Speaker 5: on particularly the skilled trades, we continue to see it.
Speaker 5: We talk to and partner with major distributors who talk
Speaker 5: about the central fact in their businesses. You're losing more
Speaker 5: businesses and more skilled professionals than you're adding every year.
Speaker 5: So I think the long term trend is still against it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, some people are starting to go into it. My
Speaker 5: son got out of college and went into construction. So
Speaker 5: here we go, kids, Let's go.
Speaker 3: Hey, listen, Always appreciate you stopping by Jeff Bewill, Jeff Kip,
Speaker 3: CEO of Angie, joining us.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live
Speaker 2: each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Speaker 2: Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You
Speaker 2: can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship
Speaker 2: New York station, Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 3: It is the media story that keeps on giving, and
Speaker 3: this past week, activist investor and Cora Holdings revealed a
Speaker 3: two hundred million dollar steak in Warner Brothers Discovery and
Speaker 3: urged the board of the company to reject Netflix's offer
Speaker 3: and reconsider paramount Sky Dance's competing bid, adding a new
Speaker 3: plot twist to one of Hollywood's biggest takeover battles. That
Speaker 3: story still developing as we put our show to bed.
Speaker 1: The latest on the pursuit of Warner Brothers coming out
Speaker 1: after We caught up with someone who really knows the industry,
Speaker 1: having served as CEO of Viacom and head of Paramount
Speaker 1: Pictures through its heyday in the nineties. He's got to
Speaker 1: tell all the book all about his adventures, from hitchhiking
Speaker 1: through a pre Taliban Afghanistan, using a drug smuggler to
Speaker 1: get closed from Asia to New York City tariff free,
Speaker 1: to almost getting kidnapped in the Sahara desert with Jimmy Buffett,
Speaker 1: to getting unceremoniously canned by Sumner Redstone, Tom Frest and Carol.
Speaker 1: He has seen a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he certainly ass He's co founder of MTV, a
Speaker 3: co founder and the former CEO of Viacom. He's also
Speaker 3: principal of the consulting and investment firm Firefly three, and
Speaker 3: the author of a new book which we want to
Speaker 3: talk to him about. It is entitled Unplugged Adventures from
Speaker 3: MTV to Tim Buckt. It came out back in November.
Speaker 3: He joins us from California. Tom's so great to have
Speaker 3: you here with us.
Speaker 9: How are you.
Speaker 6: I'm good, Carol, Hello to you and I Tim.
Speaker 10: I have to be here.
Speaker 9: It's great to have you here. And there's so much
Speaker 9: we want to talk about.
Speaker 3: We do want to just start off with the media
Speaker 3: industry because it just feels like it's at a moment
Speaker 3: in time.
Speaker 1: So I thought you were going to start with Beavis
Speaker 1: in No, I'm not.
Speaker 9: But we'll get there. We'll get there into so much more.
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking about what you witnessed, you know, at
Speaker 3: the beginning, the dawn of really the cable industry and
Speaker 3: the build out of it. It's now being very much dismantled,
Speaker 3: dismantled for our host of reasons, some networks being sold
Speaker 3: for scraps, you know, the headlines. How do you see
Speaker 3: this dismantling, Tom continue to play out?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean we had during my era, the eighties
Speaker 6: and the nineties, so the early two thousands, sort of
Speaker 6: the cable TV revolution, which morphed into the digital revolution
Speaker 6: and streaming and all that, where people really got to
Speaker 6: watch whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted on whatever device,
Speaker 6: and now we're moving into the AI revolution. So the
Speaker 6: media industry is in a constant state of flux, always
Speaker 6: sort of you know, you know, influenced greatly by technology,
Speaker 6: and you know, it's hard to say where it's going
Speaker 6: to go, but we're gonna see more consolidation amongst the
Speaker 6: legacy media companies, that's for sure. There's a few deals
Speaker 6: in place right now, as you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, speaking of those deals, the fate of Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers Discovery David Zaslov mentioned in your book a few times.
Speaker 1: Do you have a view on whether that company should
Speaker 1: go to Netflix or Paramounts Guidance.
Speaker 6: I think it's a better fit, and you know, you
Speaker 6: hate to see another movie studios sort of disappear in
Speaker 6: a form of consolidation, and Warner Brothers is like the
Speaker 6: king of you know, the most treasured studio of all.
Speaker 6: But of the two alternatives, I think the Netflix one
Speaker 6: is more interesting and Bod's better for people in the
Speaker 6: business and boats better for consumers. In the case of
Speaker 6: a Paramount you really have two legacy companies merging together.
Speaker 6: They talk about nine billion dollars worth of cost savings,
Speaker 6: and that means more people on the Street. It's not
Speaker 6: that interesting of a combination as taking someone like Netflix,
Speaker 6: which is a sort of a quasi digital company, and
Speaker 6: marrying that with Warner Brothers seems to be seems to
Speaker 6: be a better fit if you were to ask me,
Speaker 6: which you just did, what.
Speaker 1: About you know, and a lot of your book goes
Speaker 1: into your relationship with some of the Redstone. We're going
Speaker 1: to get to some of that in a minute. What
Speaker 1: do you think he would think about today with what's
Speaker 1: going on at Paramounts guide Ence. You describe him as
Speaker 1: being just so obsessed with the company stock price and
Speaker 1: always trying to buy more shares. You describe him as
Speaker 1: always being on the phone with his stockbrooker at the time,
Speaker 1: because that's how it worked at the time. What do
Speaker 1: you think he would think of of what's happening at
Speaker 1: Paramounts Guidance.
Speaker 6: Well, I think he'd be sad. He'd be sad to
Speaker 6: see what became of his the empire that he, you know,
Speaker 6: was a major force in creating, and how the values deteriorated,
Speaker 6: and how how Viacom sort of missed the moment, if
Speaker 6: you will, they missed a moment in the digital transition.
Speaker 6: You just compare it to Disney, which spent say they
Speaker 6: doubled down on their content creative abilities. They spent sixteen
Speaker 6: billion dollars buying Pixar and Lucasfilm and Marble, which made
Speaker 6: them a little more invincible. On the other hand, Viacom
Speaker 6: spent sixteen billion dollars on stock buybacks, which you know
Speaker 6: was great if you were casting in stock options, but
Speaker 6: not so good for the long term viability of the company.
Speaker 3: Hey, you know on that, you know, I think about MTV.
Speaker 3: You know, you were one of the people who got this,
Speaker 3: you know, up and running and for such a long
Speaker 3: time it was just so much a part of our
Speaker 3: kind of cultural fabric, and then went from music to
Speaker 3: you know, dealing with political issues and really the issues
Speaker 3: of our time, if you will, and became an important
Speaker 3: place for even politicians to show up at during campaigns.
Speaker 3: Having said that, you know, it is you know, reduced
Speaker 3: drastically and dramatically. I don't know what is it like
Speaker 3: to see that, And I wonder, if you know today,
Speaker 3: could it be created today or could it be in
Speaker 3: some other form?
Speaker 6: Well, you know, it's sort of like looking back and
Speaker 6: seeing your old high school on fire. Yeah, it's they
Speaker 6: haven't really put any money or effort into MTV for
Speaker 6: I don't know, fifteen years or so. I think all
Speaker 6: the music people who were there left. They even saw
Speaker 6: the music television off the bottom of the logo, and
Speaker 6: it became sort of a repository for grade B reality shows,
Speaker 6: well off its original mission. I do think that MTV
Speaker 6: could be reinvented in a digital format to be a
Speaker 6: more interesting curator of music. These days, music is still
Speaker 6: a huge category and there's a huge amount of listening
Speaker 6: going on, so it's crazy not to think that MTV
Speaker 6: couldn't recapture some corner of the music business. I mean,
Speaker 6: on one hand, you have a lot of consumers. You're
Speaker 6: sort of tired of the algorithmally programmed streaming services and
Speaker 6: so forth. So I mean, I don't think it's a layup,
Speaker 6: but it's certainly worth it. It's a brand with worldwide recognition,
Speaker 6: and I do know that they're working on that at
Speaker 6: Paramount with Jeff Shell and David Ellison.
Speaker 3: Well, well, you know, Tom, I think about you know
Speaker 3: your book in this journey, right, and then you know
Speaker 3: the create so many journeys if you will, which is
Speaker 3: really fun to go through. But I'm wondering a thirty
Speaker 3: five year old Tom Freston today, would you create MTV
Speaker 3: or something against the platforms that we have, or would
Speaker 3: you do something different when it comes to media and content.
Speaker 6: That's a good question. You know, the media world is
Speaker 6: so different right now. I mean my default is sort
Speaker 6: of media and entertainment, so I'd be interested. It's harder
Speaker 6: to carve out of harder to carve out a place
Speaker 6: right now. I mean, I think the closer you get
Speaker 6: the talent and content creation, the better off you would be.
Speaker 6: The days of the mono culture where you had. The
Speaker 6: rise of MTV is a really important gatekeeper. Those are gone,
Speaker 6: So I'm in the lucky position. I'm not having to
Speaker 6: worry about working in the business right now. In that
Speaker 6: particular business, I find it more interesting, sort of on
Speaker 6: the fringes for myself.
Speaker 1: We're speaking with Tom Freston. He's the author of Unplugged
Speaker 1: Adventures from MTV to Tim Buck two. He's a co
Speaker 1: founder of MTV. Tom on that I was surprised when
Speaker 1: I was reading the books, as like an elder millennial,
Speaker 1: I grew up with MTV, so it totally everything you
Speaker 1: wrote about made a lot of sense I remember all
Speaker 1: the shows that launched on MTV and on Comedy Central two.
Speaker 1: You mentioned, though a few minutes ago, this kind of
Speaker 1: common refrain that we had about MTV even in the nineties,
Speaker 1: which is it doesn't show music videos anymore. What I
Speaker 1: was surprised to find was how strategic of a decision
Speaker 1: and how important of a decision that was, and what
Speaker 1: she found sort of early on in showing music one
Speaker 1: music video after another, and why that didn't necessarily keep
Speaker 1: viewers for extended periods of time. Explain how that transformation
Speaker 1: started and why it did become a place that wasn't
Speaker 1: just music videos.
Speaker 6: Well, when music videos sort of hit, I mean they
Speaker 6: were really kind of revolutionary. People hadn't really seen anything
Speaker 6: like that six or seven years in. I mean, a
Speaker 6: bloom was a little off the rose. That's not to
Speaker 6: say that the music videos weren't good, but a new
Speaker 6: device had come along technology wise, called the remote control,
Speaker 6: which was maybe the biggest disruptor of all that little
Speaker 6: soap bar sized device, and people would check out after
Speaker 6: three minutes or so if they didn't like the next
Speaker 6: video that was coming on. We thought, though that we
Speaker 6: still we wanted to stay close to music. It brought
Speaker 6: us so much. But we thought maybe we could be
Speaker 6: a bigger place, in a more reliable place, and less
Speaker 6: reliant to the peaks and valleys of the music industry
Speaker 6: if we created our own programming that was about some
Speaker 6: of the things that the music was about about. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm talking about fashion and movies and you know, beef
Speaker 6: beefing up our news area. We thought we could take say,
Speaker 6: ten percent of our one hundred and sixty eight hours
Speaker 6: a week and devoted to non music programming or stuff
Speaker 6: that related to the popular culture, and we could have
Speaker 6: a sounder and a bigger business. And that turned out
Speaker 6: to be the case. Now, the problem was that these
Speaker 6: shows would get higher ratings than music hours. So gradually
Speaker 6: over time, and like I'm talking now the last ten
Speaker 6: or fifteen years, there was a decision to just get
Speaker 6: out of the music business entirely because the idea that
Speaker 6: you know, you could compete with something like Vivo and
Speaker 6: YouTube Tube where people could get any video they wanted
Speaker 6: on demand on the internet once the Internet was capable
Speaker 6: of really streaming video in full force, was you know,
Speaker 6: it was an unattractive proposition. So you ended up with
Speaker 6: what you have today, which is a network be rift
Speaker 6: of music whose name used to be music television. That's
Speaker 6: not to say that, as I said earlier, that it
Speaker 6: couldn't be reimagined for digital in a way that they
Speaker 6: could make a business out of it using a digital
Speaker 6: on demand technology. So it was a strategic move to
Speaker 6: get into non music programming. And I would also say
Speaker 6: that the creative cadre that we had at work always
Speaker 6: wanted to stretch out and do new things. So we
Speaker 6: came up with new formats like the Real World, or
Speaker 6: we would find young animators and bring them into the
Speaker 6: fold and do shows like Beavis and Butthead that we
Speaker 6: thought had their same attitude as MTV. But it wasn't
Speaker 6: necessarily music, you know, made of the bigger plays.
Speaker 3: We think about, I mean, how much of TV today
Speaker 3: is reality TV? And I put quotation marks around it,
Speaker 3: and you know Real World you write about it in
Speaker 3: the book. I mean, you guys were a pioneer when
Speaker 3: it comes to reality television, which so dominates the landscape.
Speaker 3: Tom and I think about The Apprentice, and we think
Speaker 3: about how many have said what it did for Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: who at the time was not actually doing well in business,
Speaker 3: and the image it actually projected, not my view, but
Speaker 3: what a lot of other people say. And I just think,
Speaker 3: how do you think about Real World, the beginning of
Speaker 3: reality TV?
Speaker 9: And do you feel in some way.
Speaker 3: Responsible for the creation of what that is today and
Speaker 3: helping create a path for Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Like, how do you think of it?
Speaker 6: I know the question. I know that question. Look, we started,
Speaker 6: you know, we started the Real World because we couldn't
Speaker 6: afford writers. We just wanted to do a soap opera.
Speaker 6: So in the end we said, forget writers. We were
Speaker 6: good at post production. Let's put seven or eight people
Speaker 6: in a law oft and tape them and then make
Speaker 6: it into episodes. That became this new low cost form
Speaker 6: of programming. And then we did Celebrity Reality Show with
Speaker 6: the Osborns. O were the first two real reality shows,
Speaker 6: and it was very attractive to the networks as their
Speaker 6: business model began to deteriorate. They could make shows that
Speaker 6: people wanted to see at a much lower price. And yes,
Speaker 6: it led to like Naked and Afraid, The Bachelor, and
Speaker 6: worst of all, or maybe best of all in some
Speaker 6: people's mind, The Apprentice. It brought us the new President
Speaker 6: of the United States. So I don't feel responsible necessarily
Speaker 6: for that. But there is a through line that when
Speaker 6: television programming became less scripted and more real.
Speaker 3: You know, And it's funny I think about. You know,
Speaker 3: we've got a world where everyone can be a content creator,
Speaker 3: and we have a man in the White House, our president,
Speaker 3: who's very good at creating content for better or worse,
Speaker 3: people can make the debate, is it free speech at
Speaker 3: its fullest when you think about the ability for anybody
Speaker 3: and everybody with their phone that can make content or
Speaker 3: is it kind of a reveal of mankind at its worst.
Speaker 9: I'm just curious how you think about this.
Speaker 6: Well, it's a reveal of mankind at it's best and
Speaker 6: its worst. I mean, it's true. Everybody is their own
Speaker 6: like individual broadcaster. They can create content, share it, comment
Speaker 6: on other people's content, people comment on yours. I mean,
Speaker 6: that's really been the social media revolution. It's really been
Speaker 6: a whole new paradigm for media. And yeah, it can
Speaker 6: be very disappointing at times to see what people do
Speaker 6: and come up with and what they say. And you know,
Speaker 6: that's a much larger issue owing to a larger discussion
Speaker 6: for which I don't know there's a solution but yes,
Speaker 6: all the guardrails and program standards and things that we
Speaker 6: used to enjoy and adhere to in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 6: they've all vanished.
Speaker 1: Tom. You know, you're known for a creator as at MTV,
Speaker 1: But I do want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: Comedy Central too. I was struck with sort of the
Speaker 1: creative process of coming up with this idea for Comedy Central,
Speaker 1: the potential competition that you were going to get from
Speaker 1: HBO at a certain point, and the staying power of
Speaker 1: some of the programs on there, including The Daily Show,
Speaker 1: the Colbert Rapport, and notably South Park. Today, I mean
Speaker 1: the idea that a South Park could be as relevant
Speaker 1: in some you know, in some cases in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six as it was in the mid nineties.
Speaker 1: I think could be surprising to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about how, you know, within ten
Speaker 1: minutes you guys came up with this idea for Comedy Central,
Speaker 1: and how you landed Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
Speaker 6: Well, I was having a staff meeting I was in
Speaker 6: the early nineties, and someone slipped me a piece of
Speaker 6: papers at HBO's announcing they're going to have a comedy channel,
Speaker 6: and they were at the time the big players. I
Speaker 6: mean they were on PayTV. They had Robin Williams and
Speaker 6: George Carlin, they did all these big common specialists. Oh,
Speaker 6: they're getting into our business, and that they're going to
Speaker 6: start with a comedy channel. They'll do a music channel
Speaker 6: and a kids channel, kind of eroding our Nickelodeon an
Speaker 6: MTV business. So we decided in that meeting, like, let's
Speaker 6: announce our own comedy channel. We didn't really have a
Speaker 6: comedy channel or even an idea for one, but we
Speaker 6: thought we announced we could be in every news article
Speaker 6: that was ever written about theirs, and you know, so
Speaker 6: we kind of announced that we were doing one. We
Speaker 6: came up with a format quickly, which was sort of
Speaker 6: TV comedy and extension what our Nicked Night brand was,
Speaker 6: and so that was how we got into the business.
Speaker 6: We had a war with HBO for a couple of
Speaker 6: years and then we ended up merging and forming Comedy Central.
Speaker 6: And the thing that really pushed Comedy Central into public
Speaker 6: consciousness was South Park. And south Park was a cartoon
Speaker 6: that started as a one of the guys at MTV
Speaker 6: found Matt and Trey and had him do a little
Speaker 6: six minute thing for as a Christmas card he sent
Speaker 6: out to his friends and it got wide acclaim and
Speaker 6: then we saw him. We said, well, let's make a
Speaker 6: TV series out of this, and we've done it and
Speaker 6: now it's like no Christmas card in history has ever
Speaker 6: paid off like South Park. I think they're in their
Speaker 6: twenty fifth or twenty sixth season and those guys are geniuses.
Speaker 6: The other thing I'd say about Comedy Central is it's
Speaker 6: interesting to me we always had a great eye for
Speaker 6: new and emerging talent. And if you look at the
Speaker 6: amount of people who started their television career on Comedy Central,
Speaker 6: Bill Mahrer, Jimmy Kimmel, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Samantha b
Speaker 6: Matt and Treye, Dave Chappelle, all of these people, most
Speaker 6: of whom have gone on to bigger lives outside of
Speaker 6: Comedy Central. There's sort of the front line of the
Speaker 6: Trump resistance today, a role that was filled, like in
Speaker 6: the Richard Nixon era, largely by musicians. And you know,
Speaker 6: you have to be really proud to see how you know,
Speaker 6: with our ear to the ground, we were able to
Speaker 6: give all these people their television stars very satisfying. Comedy
Speaker 6: Central had a more cultural cachet than I think any
Speaker 6: of our networks, and outside of Lauren Michaels and Saturday
Speaker 6: Night Live, I don't know of any other entity that's
Speaker 6: been able to discover and cultivate as much comedic talent.
Speaker 3: So we already know we want like another sixty minutes
Speaker 3: with you, and I know you've talked with our producer
Speaker 3: and I think you're going to come back and talk
Speaker 3: with us because we would like to continue this conversation.
Speaker 1: Can we barely scratch the surface?
Speaker 3: I mean, I have to say the way the book
Speaker 3: is written, and you talk about your travels all around
Speaker 3: the world, and we've been in the newsroom talking about
Speaker 3: like Afghanistan, which I think so many people have one
Speaker 3: view of what that is about. And you remind us,
Speaker 3: you know, an incredible land people, and we want to
Speaker 3: get into it because we want to talk soft power
Speaker 3: with you and so much more so I hope we
Speaker 3: can truly get you back here real soon and continue
Speaker 3: this conversation.
Speaker 10: Well I'd love to do that.
Speaker 6: We'll stay in radio contact, called to come in the studio.
Speaker 6: This has been fun week.
Speaker 9: We really enjoyed it. Tom By We'll have a great weekend.
Speaker 6: He is Tom, Carol.
Speaker 3: Thanks to yeah TH's uston the book is Unplugged Adventures
Speaker 3: from MTV to Tim buck to and we are going
Speaker 3: to continue that conversation. It's really been a great read
Speaker 3: for us, so we really appreciate Tom's time.
Speaker 2: Today you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch
Speaker 2: us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern.
Speaker 2: Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app,
Speaker 2: or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 3: It's time for Bloomberg Pursuits and this week deep dive
Speaker 3: into something we're all chasing, more years, better years. It's
Speaker 3: all about Tim the quest to live a longer life.
Speaker 9: But it's got to be kind of a.
Speaker 1: Good one too, and yet what if along the way
Speaker 1: we give up pieces of ourselves. It's the cover story
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Pursuits for the February issue of Bloomberg, a
Speaker 1: Business Week magazine, And this one it really spoke to me, Carol.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know it did, did I think to all
Speaker 3: of us? With us as deputy editor of Bloomberg Pursuits,
Speaker 3: he is just an ocean joining us here in studio
Speaker 3: Nicole Torres, Managing editor for Bloomberg Pursuits. She's out there
Speaker 3: in Wales, which I'm wondering if she's already like in
Speaker 3: the Pursuit of longevity. Guys, it's so great to have
Speaker 3: you here with us. Let me start off Pursuits. The
Speaker 3: Quest to Live Longer Pursuits is so well known for
Speaker 3: its wellness coverage. Justin kick it off with us, tell
Speaker 3: us about how you guys were thinking about it this
Speaker 3: time around.
Speaker 14: You know, it's no stranger to anyone. It's a booming industry.
Speaker 14: I mean, so many things can be considered well in
Speaker 14: this yet some estimates put it at over a trillion dollars.
Speaker 14: You know, that includes obviously vacations and but you know,
Speaker 14: other things down to what we would call self care,
Speaker 14: like you know, getting her nails done, things like that, massages.
Speaker 14: But we're more interested in the longevity aspects, so living
Speaker 14: longer currently in the US and around the world, the
Speaker 14: idea is to do like biohacking and hackier routines and
Speaker 14: focus on technology. And you know, one of the stories
Speaker 14: in this section is about health trackers and and but
Speaker 14: our main story, the one we talk about is blue
Speaker 14: zones and these are areas in the world where historically
Speaker 14: people have been living longer, you know, over one hundred years.
Speaker 14: There's a guy, Damn Mute, and her has popularized this.
Speaker 3: People have been talking about these blue zones for a
Speaker 3: long time and you know, it's how you eat, how
Speaker 3: you live, having a community like it's become a real thing.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and so, and there's that tourism around it. I mean,
Speaker 14: so we sent a writer, Alice rob to one in Sardinia.
Speaker 14: So she actually came to us with the idea because
Speaker 14: she was just on her computer doing the lonely freelance
Speaker 14: life and an ad popped up for one and she
Speaker 14: realized that, you know, when she looked out the window
Speaker 14: her neighbor, that's the first person she had seen kind
Speaker 14: of all day.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Well, that actually gets us to a
Speaker 1: really important part of what wellness is. And Nicole, I
Speaker 1: want to bring you in because here in the US,
Speaker 1: in recent years, so much of the idea of wellness
Speaker 1: has really focused and sort of emanated from this idea
Speaker 1: of the you know bro podcasters like the Andrew Huberman's,
Speaker 1: the Joe Rogans, And it's the idea of making sure
Speaker 1: you're getting the creatine and you're jumping into cold Plunge
Speaker 1: and you're talking, you're you know, going into saunas and stuff.
Speaker 1: But what my big takeaway Nicole from this was it
Speaker 1: has so much to do with who you're around and
Speaker 1: the relationships that you have.
Speaker 15: Yeah, completely, I think that was what I found so
Speaker 15: interesting in Alice's peace there. Like, I think that is
Speaker 15: true for wellness overall. But when it comes to something
Speaker 15: like longevity, it seems there are really two distinct ways
Speaker 15: to go about it. And the way we talk about
Speaker 15: in the US, the way that is kind of all
Speaker 15: over the airwaves when it comes to like broke culture,
Speaker 15: is to just double down on yourself and to go
Speaker 15: on these really expensive longevity retreats where you're sitting alone
Speaker 15: in a room getting all kinds of medical tests done
Speaker 15: on yourself. You know, you're like looking at the quality
Speaker 15: of various organs. You are just everything is very personalized
Speaker 15: to you, and you're thinking about what supplements to take,
Speaker 15: You're thinking about your exercise routine. Everything is super individualized.
Speaker 15: And Alice wanted to know if Blue Zones really held
Speaker 15: up as a place that can speak to and actually
Speaker 15: like improve longevity because so much of what we hear
Speaker 15: about longevity is this really high tech, very medicalized types
Speaker 15: of approaches. And what she found was in these blue zones,
Speaker 15: the focus is not really on living longer, it really
Speaker 15: is on living better. And I think what she discovers
Speaker 15: and what she hears from a lot of her sources,
Speaker 15: is living a good and high quality life where you're
Speaker 15: surrounded by a lot of people and you are social
Speaker 15: and you have connections that often leads to a longer
Speaker 15: life than being totally isolated on your own, even if
Speaker 15: you are focusing on you know how strong all of
Speaker 15: your individual cells are.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, Carol, the demographics here in the United States
Speaker 1: are just showing us that increasingly people are sort of
Speaker 1: moving inward, and especially elderly people are living alone.
Speaker 3: Listen, I hear about it all the time, having had
Speaker 3: one elderly like making sure that there was activity around him,
Speaker 3: and you know, because it gets much much harder, and
Speaker 3: it's I think what's really also said justin, you know
Speaker 3: and come on back in is this idea of it
Speaker 3: used to be families. I think about several generations in
Speaker 3: a household.
Speaker 9: Now it's almost like a feather in your cap if
Speaker 9: you get a degree and then you move to another
Speaker 9: country to work and you're far away from your your family.
Speaker 14: Yeah, no, that's very true. I mean in certain circles,
Speaker 14: especially among high earners like there, it is a point
Speaker 14: of pride to be mobile and to have a you know,
Speaker 14: quote unquote world citizenship versus you know, really setting down
Speaker 14: roots in one place. And it's a major problem. And
Speaker 14: you know, especially in the US with older Americans, you know,
Speaker 14: one and four adults older than sixty live on their own.
Speaker 14: About there's a pole from the National there's a national
Speaker 14: poll on healthy aging where more than one in three
Speaker 14: fell isolated. Half of Americans lack fewer than four close friends.
Speaker 9: So god, there was there was a statistic about.
Speaker 3: A twenty twenty three survey found that twenty six percent
Speaker 3: of Americans ate every meal alone the previous day, an
Speaker 3: increase of more than fifty percent from two decades ago.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty three, in the.
Speaker 9: UK, twenty percent of households don't even own a dining table.
Speaker 9: I have to like, I don't know how you are too,
Speaker 9: because you've got little.
Speaker 3: Kids and you guys, I don't know, but it was
Speaker 3: like I grew up like dinner time everybody got together
Speaker 3: like it didn't matter where you were, and we did that,
Speaker 3: I know with our daughter as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're trying to do that. Working until the evening
Speaker 1: is challenging when kids want to eat early. But maybe
Speaker 1: this is a good segue to meeting people in different environments,
Speaker 1: like at a sauna and the rise of sauna, which
Speaker 1: is a story in the Bloomberg Pursuit section. Nicole, come
Speaker 1: on back in here, because here in the US we're
Speaker 1: talking a lot about sauna's bathhouses. It's not just a
Speaker 1: US trend. This is happening in the UK as well,
Speaker 1: but there's like hundreds of years of history of this
Speaker 1: in the Nordic world too.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 15: Absolutely, So this piece that we did is all about
Speaker 15: how bath houses are booming primarily in the US and UK,
Speaker 15: and that's notable because in the US and in the
Speaker 15: UK there has not historically been like really strong bathing
Speaker 15: cultures like there have been in the rest of the world,
Speaker 15: and so people who are opening all of these saunas
Speaker 15: and bath houses now are really talking about how this
Speaker 15: is a new idea that's thousands of years old. And
Speaker 15: one line in the story that I really loved was
Speaker 15: how in the US and like, I'm America and even
Speaker 15: though I live in the UK now, the writer talks
Speaker 15: about how if they're the closest thing to a bathing
Speaker 15: culture that America Americans get is the shower. It's not
Speaker 15: like happening a long time in the bath like we
Speaker 15: might do in whales or something. So it was a
Speaker 15: really interesting like cultural comparison, and I think that speaks
Speaker 15: to a lot of readers who are discovering a boom
Speaker 15: in new saunas opening in cities like London and in
Speaker 15: New York. We talk about dozens that are opening in
Speaker 15: these cities and we kind of look into why, and
Speaker 15: the reasons are really there. There are so many reasons
Speaker 15: for why that we kind of spoke about earlier. But
Speaker 15: I guess the through line here that ties to this
Speaker 15: overall conversation on finding community and trying to tackle loneliness
Speaker 15: is it's really nice to just go to a space,
Speaker 15: a so called third space that's not home and it's
Speaker 15: not work, but it's somewhere where you can go and
Speaker 15: be around other people and you can connect with other people,
Speaker 15: and it's nice to be in one of these places
Speaker 15: where it's not actually that difficult. You don't need to
Speaker 15: worry about making small talk. You can just go into
Speaker 15: a sauna and say it's what I didn't realize.
Speaker 9: And it's become a thing.
Speaker 3: I've heard more people in New York talking about it.
Speaker 3: But the people who come in and they do the
Speaker 3: waving of the air, and I'm like, when someone told me,
Speaker 3: I'm like, that's not real, but apparently it is right there.
Speaker 3: It's like, I guess essential oils that are getting like.
Speaker 14: Spread called off us. And so you sit in a
Speaker 14: sauna for a determ amount of time. They'll play music
Speaker 14: and somebody waves using it tell the hot air at you,
Speaker 14: and it is actually like makes your head like get buzzy.
Speaker 1: It's kind of wild.
Speaker 8: Say you like it?
Speaker 6: You do?
Speaker 11: I get?
Speaker 14: And it adds what we talk about bathing cultures around
Speaker 14: the world. There's often like a spiritual angle that is missing,
Speaker 14: and so far, you know, bath houses in the US
Speaker 14: are really leaning into that bro culture about class and
Speaker 14: optimization and you've got to you know, sit in and
Speaker 14: do a cold plunge and it's going to raise your
Speaker 14: dopamine and all these various health benefits. Where at the
Speaker 14: end of the day, as Nicole said, it's about being
Speaker 14: around people. You know, when you think of traditional Sounic cultures,
Speaker 14: it really is about the intimacy of strangers. And often
Speaker 14: it's like it's not about wearing a swimsuit or optimizing.
Speaker 14: It's about just like being amongst fellow people.
Speaker 3: I have to say, one of the most fun things
Speaker 3: I've ever done was in tou loom. And it was
Speaker 3: a sweat lodge and you're in this thing and it's
Speaker 3: small and it's super hot, and they keep throwing things
Speaker 3: on the flame.
Speaker 1: Oh it's rough, it.
Speaker 9: Was, but it was incredible. It was it was really
Speaker 9: really cool.
Speaker 3: Hey, before we go, just real quickly, I'm Nicole, come
Speaker 3: on back in on the story about how or rings
Speaker 3: and apple watches affect our mental health.
Speaker 9: I've had both.
Speaker 3: Tim has his orr ring on as we speak. Just
Speaker 3: a quick quick thought on this one, because yeah, man,
Speaker 3: we're like obsessed with these wearables.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 15: So that story came about with the writer who just
Speaker 15: got aware it just got an orror ring, I think
Speaker 15: for her birthday, and she was just talking to me
Speaker 15: about it and she was like talking about how it
Speaker 15: was just stressing her out. She was starting to track
Speaker 15: her data in it on a daily basis. When she
Speaker 15: never used to. She was looking on her app in
Speaker 15: real time to see that her stress level was rising
Speaker 15: from that was like, you know, it was sensed in
Speaker 15: her or ring. And so I told her that she
Speaker 15: should write about that and also try to find other
Speaker 15: people who might be having similar experiences, because wearables have
Speaker 15: really surged over the last however many years. Like almost
Speaker 15: everyone I know has an Apple watch that tracks their
Speaker 15: data and tells them how many steps they need to take.
Speaker 15: We have ORR rings, We have all kinds of different
Speaker 15: things we wear that track our movements and our heart rates,
Speaker 15: all sorts of stuff. And while this has become so ubiquitous,
Speaker 15: I think it is really important for us to question,
Speaker 15: like what happens as a result. We're getting so much data, now,
Speaker 15: how are we using that data? How is it actually
Speaker 15: making us feel? Are these wearables that promise to make
Speaker 15: us well and more healthy are they actually working? There's
Speaker 15: a lot of evidence that they are, but I don't
Speaker 15: think we pay enough attention to how a lot of
Speaker 15: this data can needlessly stress us out. And that's what
Speaker 15: the piece really focuses on.
Speaker 3: Bottom line, The only thing I want to add is, like,
Speaker 3: you know, staying well, living longer, it costs money, so
Speaker 3: there is certainly a distinction of people tapping into all
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 9: Guys, this is so great.
Speaker 3: We could go on, but we've unfortunately got a wrap,
Speaker 3: but a really incredible section again from you guys, when
Speaker 3: it comes to wellness in this big quest that everybody's.
Speaker 9: On to live a lot longer.
Speaker 1: That was just an Ocean, deputy editor for Bloomberg Pursuits
Speaker 1: and Nicole Torres, Managing editor for Bloomberg Pursuits. It's the
Speaker 1: Pursuits cover story of the February issue of Bloomberg at
Speaker 1: BusinessWeek Magazine. It's out on newsstands now, online at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com and always on the Bloomberg terminal.
Speaker 3: And that wraps up our weekend edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Speaker 3: from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: I'm tim Stennebeck and I'm Carol Masser.
Speaker 3: Have a good and safe weekend. Everyone, check out a sauna,
Speaker 3: maybe a spot, or just go out for a long
Speaker 3: walk with people you love.
Speaker 9: That will probably feel really good.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
Speaker 2: and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday
Speaker 2: afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app.
Speaker 2: You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube
Speaker 2: and always on the Bloomberg terminal