Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / BI Weekend: OpenAI, AMD Deal, New Verizon CEO
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- 0:00Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio, Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Intelligence
- 0:11Speaker 1: with Scarletfoo and Paul Sweeney.
- 0:13Speaker 2: How do you think the FED is looking at tariffs?
- 0:15Speaker 2: The uncertainty of terriffs.
- 0:17Speaker 3: Let's take a look at the sectors and how.
- 0:19Speaker 2: They performed a lot of investors getting whip saled every
- 0:21Speaker 2: day by news.
- 0:22Speaker 1: Events, breaking market headlines, and corporate news from across the globe.
- 0:26Speaker 3: Could we see a market disruption of market event?
- 0:28Speaker 2: So people just too exuberant out there?
- 0:31Speaker 3: You see some so called low quality stocks driving this
- 0:33Speaker 3: short term rally.
- 0:34Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence with Scarletfoo and Paul Sweeney on Bloomberg Radio,
- 0:39Speaker 1: YouTube and Bloomberg Originals.
- 0:42Speaker 2: On today's Bloomberg Intelligence Show, we dig inside the big
- 0:44Speaker 2: business stories impacting Wall Street and global markets.
- 0:47Speaker 3: Each and every week, we provide in depth research and
- 0:49Speaker 3: data on some of the two thousand companies and one
- 0:51Speaker 3: hundred and thirty industries are analysts cover worldwide.
- 0:54Speaker 2: Today, we'll look at how AMD landed a deal with
- 0:56Speaker 2: open Ai to build AI infrastructure.
- 0:59Speaker 3: Plus why Dell Technologies is roughly doubling its growth estimates
- 1:02Speaker 3: for sales and profit for the next two years.
- 1:04Speaker 2: First, we begin with a big deal in the banking sector.
- 1:07Speaker 3: This week, Fifth Third agreed to buy Coo America for
- 1:10Speaker 3: about ten point nine billion dollars in stock. It is
- 1:12Speaker 3: the largest US bank deal this year.
- 1:15Speaker 2: The deal will create the ninth largest bank in the
- 1:17Speaker 2: country with about two hundred and eighty eight billion dollars
- 1:19Speaker 2: in assets, according to the two companies.
- 1:21Speaker 3: So we called in Herman Chan Bloomberg Intelligence, senior analysts
- 1:24Speaker 3: for US regional banks, and we began by asking Herman
- 1:27Speaker 3: for his take on the deal.
- 1:28Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's a win win for both. Comerica
- 1:31Speaker 4: has been sort of in the doldrums over the past
- 1:33Speaker 4: couple of years after the SBB debacle. It's taken some
- 1:37Speaker 4: long time to get it under its own footing, and
- 1:41Speaker 4: they've gotten a lot of agitated investors and activists pushing
- 1:46Speaker 4: for a sale, and this was a great outcome. On
- 1:48Speaker 4: the other hand, for Fifth Third, it's a great deal.
- 1:51Speaker 4: It moves them into growth growth yer markets in Texas
- 1:54Speaker 4: and California, supplements their Michigan presence and really build out
- 2:00Speaker 4: there their branching presence across the southeast and southwest.
- 2:04Speaker 3: So within the regional banking space, what does this deal
- 2:07Speaker 3: put pressure on? Who does this deal put pressure on
- 2:10Speaker 3: to make a move of their own.
- 2:11Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's a question. The follow on question like
- 2:14Speaker 4: who's next. So there are other banks that are operating
- 2:18Speaker 4: within the size of a fifth third that have also
- 2:21Speaker 4: done deals like a PNC and Huntington, and the others
- 2:25Speaker 4: that are still on the sidelines are banks like Regions
- 2:28Speaker 4: in the southeast, Key Corp in Ohio as well, and
- 2:32Speaker 4: M and T and Citizens in the northeast. So those
- 2:35Speaker 4: are the ones that probably are going to get asked.
- 2:37Speaker 4: A lot of questions on the three two earnings go
- 2:39Speaker 4: about M and A.
- 2:40Speaker 2: So what do we know about the Trumpet administration and
- 2:42Speaker 2: its view towards bank consolidation. Are they a pined on
- 2:45Speaker 2: this at all?
- 2:46Speaker 5: Yeah?
- 2:46Speaker 4: So we can see that these bank deals are getting
- 2:49Speaker 4: approved at much faster clips. So I mentioned Huntington earlier.
- 2:53Speaker 4: They're buying a bank in Texas named Vera tex and
- 2:56Speaker 4: it's going to take them about ninety eight days from
- 3:00Speaker 4: deal closed for merger announcements. And that contrasts with under
- 3:04Speaker 4: Biden administration, it's taken four hundred to six hundred days
- 3:08Speaker 4: for a large bank made deals. So these deals under
- 3:11Speaker 4: Trump are being fast tracked and it's really encouraging the
- 3:14Speaker 4: management teams to really go out there and search for deals.
- 3:18Speaker 3: So for so long, a lot of people had commented
- 3:20Speaker 3: that the US is overbanked. By one count there's almost
- 3:24Speaker 3: forty five hundred FDI and C insured banking institutions here.
- 3:28Speaker 3: Are we still overbanked?
- 3:29Speaker 2: Herman I would.
- 3:30Speaker 4: Say, so, there's a lot of competition these and that's
- 3:34Speaker 4: the reason why COO America is looking to sell because
- 3:37Speaker 4: they were lacking in the retail branch presence. They mostly
- 3:42Speaker 4: bank middle market commercial customers that are grades, but it
- 3:48Speaker 4: doesn't create the diversity that they needed during times of
- 3:52Speaker 4: stress like the SVB environments. And so that was a
- 3:55Speaker 4: lesson learned for a lot of the banking industry that
- 3:58Speaker 4: you need to diversify your deposit base. And one way
- 4:02Speaker 4: to diversify the cell to a larger organization.
- 4:05Speaker 3: Which segment of the banking industry is bloated, needs to
- 4:09Speaker 3: streamline the most.
- 4:10Speaker 4: Yeah, so there you mentioned forty five hundred banks, Like
- 4:15Speaker 4: does there need to be that many banks within the
- 4:17Speaker 4: United States? Probably not. They don't have the scale to
- 4:20Speaker 4: operate a retail branch presidence. They don't have the capabilities
- 4:24Speaker 4: on the fee side and the advisory side to really
- 4:27Speaker 4: help their customers on the commercial side. And you see
- 4:31Speaker 4: so much competition from not only larger banks, but also
- 4:35Speaker 4: the FinTechs that are just you know, biding at the
- 4:38Speaker 4: heels on the consumer side. So it's a really tough
- 4:41Speaker 4: operating environment and we expect more consolidation over the next
- 4:45Speaker 4: several years.
- 4:46Speaker 2: All right, riod of me this year. Why do banks
- 4:49Speaker 2: even have branches? I hep adding branches. I've been into
- 4:52Speaker 2: a branch.
- 4:53Speaker 3: In years across the street from Bloomberg headquarters.
- 4:56Speaker 5: City Groups City branch right across.
- 4:59Speaker 4: A lot of it marketing because and a lot of
- 5:02Speaker 4: it is scale. So for a bank like Fifth Third,
- 5:06Speaker 4: they're growing organically in the Southeast and that's been a
- 5:10Speaker 4: major growth driver for them. If you need a branch,
- 5:13Speaker 4: you don't need a branch, but you need the branch
- 5:16Speaker 4: for a marketing aspect, so you need.
- 5:17Speaker 2: To do big ability, right.
- 5:19Speaker 3: It's a big billboard, expensive billboard in markets.
- 5:22Speaker 4: Where you have a lot of foot traffic and higher
- 5:25Speaker 4: growth markets. So it's a big billboard and it's been
- 5:28Speaker 4: a proven growth driver for banks. But on the other hand,
- 5:31Speaker 4: branches are declining. So if you have critical mass and
- 5:35Speaker 4: scale in your existing markets, you can trim your branch
- 5:38Speaker 4: presence and not affect your depositors. But if you're entering
- 5:43Speaker 4: new markets, then opening new branches.
- 5:45Speaker 1: Is the way.
- 5:45Speaker 2: Do you think I could find my checkbook?
- 5:48Speaker 3: That raises a question, does a fintech that wants to
- 5:50Speaker 3: be a bank need to therefore have a retail presence?
- 5:53Speaker 3: Do they need to open up a branch also across
- 5:55Speaker 3: the street from our office?
- 5:56Speaker 4: So that's that's the beauty of the fintech models that
- 5:59Speaker 4: they're issueing the branches. It's not a requirement. It's a
- 6:03Speaker 4: lower cost to serve because you don't have the physical
- 6:05Speaker 4: retail presence, and it's one way to really compete effectively
- 6:11Speaker 4: with these with these legacy banks where you have a
- 6:16Speaker 4: really easy to use app and you you aren't burden
- 6:21Speaker 4: by this cost basis of owning the physical presence.
- 6:24Speaker 2: All right, So when we had a couple of little
- 6:25Speaker 2: blow ups in your world a couple of years ago,
- 6:27Speaker 2: I did I found this k r E the spider
- 6:30Speaker 2: S and P Regional banking ETF.
- 6:32Speaker 6: That's right.
- 6:33Speaker 2: How are you? How are the regional banks trading these days? Yeah?
- 6:36Speaker 4: So they're really doing all right. We're talking about price
- 6:40Speaker 4: the tangibles around one point five to one points times.
- 6:44Speaker 4: Is during the height of the weakest point during the
- 6:48Speaker 4: SBB debacle, it was less than one time. So they've
- 6:51Speaker 4: rebounded really nicely despite some of the uncertainty on the
- 6:55Speaker 4: economy and with tariffs and and so we've seen some
- 6:58Speaker 4: growth from them, especially on the commercial lending side that's
- 7:01Speaker 4: really helped grow their top line.
- 7:04Speaker 2: Our thanks to Hermit Chan Bloomberg Intelligence senior analysts for
- 7:06Speaker 2: US regional banks.
- 7:08Speaker 3: We move next to some news in the telecom space.
- 7:10Speaker 2: This week, for Rizon Communications named Dan Schulman as chief
- 7:13Speaker 2: executive officer, replacing Hans Vesperg. The goal was to boost
- 7:17Speaker 2: mobile subscriber growth and shares.
- 7:18Speaker 3: Schulman is the previous CEO of PayPal and brings financial
- 7:21Speaker 3: and operational leadership experience, as well as expertise in telecoms,
- 7:25Speaker 3: technology and finance. Vessberg will stay on for a year
- 7:28Speaker 3: to help insure a smooth transition for more.
- 7:30Speaker 2: I was joined by John Butler, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior telecom analysts.
- 7:34Speaker 2: First asked John if this change was expected at Verizon.
- 7:37Speaker 7: Not at all, Paul, I mean, you know, when you
- 7:40Speaker 7: think merger Monday. I've had a lot of busy Mondays lately.
- 7:45Speaker 7: But the last piece of news I expected was this
- 7:48Speaker 7: change in leadership at Verizon. The company had really been
- 7:52Speaker 7: sort of I guess prepping the head of the consumer business,
- 7:57Speaker 7: or grooming is a better word, Orian Sampath, who is
- 8:02Speaker 7: just a phenomenal talent in my opinion, and he's been
- 8:06Speaker 7: sort of pushed out there doing a lot of investor
- 8:09Speaker 7: conferences and giving the investment community the impression that he
- 8:14Speaker 7: was the next in line. So when the news broke
- 8:16Speaker 7: that Dan is taking over as CEO, it really surprised
- 8:20Speaker 7: a lot of people, including me.
- 8:22Speaker 2: So what's the company saying here? Why do you think
- 8:25Speaker 2: they chose this outsider versus somebody that, again an insider
- 8:28Speaker 2: that maybe the street thought was going to be the
- 8:30Speaker 2: next in line?
- 8:32Speaker 7: You know, I think for telecoms, all three of the majors,
- 8:35Speaker 7: the wireless business is slowing very rapidly on them. We're
- 8:40Speaker 7: seeing subscriber growth down a lot this year. There's a
- 8:44Speaker 7: lot of pressure on pricing, and I think the thought
- 8:47Speaker 7: is Dan Shulman used to be CEO of PayPal. He's
- 8:51Speaker 7: got experience at Amex in the consumer finance business, so
- 8:56Speaker 7: they're thinking in terms of how to monetize the hundred
- 8:59Speaker 7: and fifty million consumer relationships they have to move into adjacencies.
- 9:05Speaker 7: The naming of Shulman in my mind tells me they're
- 9:08Speaker 7: looking to tap the consumer finance market. You know, they've
- 9:12Speaker 7: already got a credit card business. I think it's probably
- 9:16Speaker 7: doing pretty well, but they're not actually in the loan
- 9:19Speaker 7: business there, but they're doing a lot of device financing,
- 9:23Speaker 7: and so I think the hope, maybe this is my speculation,
- 9:27Speaker 7: maybe that they can take that perhaps a step deeper
- 9:31Speaker 7: into the consumer finance market and maybe other adjacencies to
- 9:35Speaker 7: be able to monetize that base a little bit more
- 9:39Speaker 7: and diversify away from the slowdown and wireless.
- 9:42Speaker 2: I know Verizon they've kind of dabbled over the years,
- 9:46Speaker 2: and other businesses, purchasing AOL and Yahoo. So what's the
- 9:52Speaker 2: focus going forward here? Is it to try to just
- 9:55Speaker 2: manage the wireless business as you know, the decline in
- 9:58Speaker 2: the wireless business as best they can.
- 10:01Speaker 7: So again it's the strategy here, Paul, I think, is
- 10:04Speaker 7: to sort of build off that base that they have.
- 10:07Speaker 7: The wireless business is stable, it's not going anywhere. It's
- 10:12Speaker 7: typically a GDP plus business. Again, we're seeing a slowdown now,
- 10:17Speaker 7: so it could move down to a GDP like growth rate.
- 10:22Speaker 7: But again it's all about extensions. So all three of
- 10:25Speaker 7: the majors here are pushing hard into consumer broadband. They're
- 10:30Speaker 7: doing very well there, both in the fiber and the
- 10:33Speaker 7: fixed wireless access business, but even that business is starting
- 10:37Speaker 7: to mature a bit as it saturates here in the US.
- 10:40Speaker 7: So the question becomes what's next, And maybe the what's
- 10:44Speaker 7: next could be consumer finance. If you look at T Mobile,
- 10:48Speaker 7: they've tapped the outdoor advertising market, which actually is growing
- 10:53Speaker 7: double digit. I never would have guessed, but the thought is, hey,
- 10:58Speaker 7: is people carry around these phones, we know where they are.
- 11:02Speaker 7: Perhaps we can leverage that and come up with very
- 11:06Speaker 7: innovative ways of increasing eyeballs on our outdoor advertising. So
- 11:12Speaker 7: I think they're looking for that type of creative thinking
- 11:16Speaker 7: to come up with new ways of generating growth. And
- 11:19Speaker 7: again you're trying to leverage that huge core base of
- 11:23Speaker 7: wireless subs that you have just.
- 11:25Speaker 2: Been at their balance sheet, John, this is a this
- 11:27Speaker 2: is company. Verizon's got one hundred and seventy billion dollars
- 11:31Speaker 2: of total debt there, how's the How does the market
- 11:34Speaker 2: feel about their balance sheet.
- 11:36Speaker 7: So I think of the Big three, Verizon is probably
- 11:41Speaker 7: at a point where they want to be in terms
- 11:44Speaker 7: of financing the business. Can they load on a bunch
- 11:48Speaker 7: more debt? It's it's hard to say. I'm going to
- 11:52Speaker 7: defer to our credit at les for that, Steve Flynn,
- 11:55Speaker 7: But I don't view their ability to finance new ventures
- 12:00Speaker 7: as an issue here at all. It's a very cash
- 12:04Speaker 7: rich business wireless that is, and you know, I think
- 12:07Speaker 7: that will allow Verizon to bankroll any of the new
- 12:12Speaker 7: ventures they plan to push into from here.
- 12:15Speaker 2: Certainly pro shareholders. Is six point six percent dividend yield?
- 12:17Speaker 2: Is that safe?
- 12:19Speaker 7: I think it is safe. That's a good question. I
- 12:22Speaker 7: think Verizon, of the Big three, really sort of gets
- 12:26Speaker 7: it when it comes to the importance of the dividend
- 12:29Speaker 7: to the investment community. There's a lot of telecoms out
- 12:33Speaker 7: there at and T included that have cut the dividend
- 12:36Speaker 7: in the past and learned the hard way that that
- 12:39Speaker 7: really I call it the third rail of telecom. I mean,
- 12:42Speaker 7: you do not want to cut the dividend yep. So
- 12:46Speaker 7: my call here is that I think the dividend is safe.
- 12:49Speaker 3: Yes, are Thanks to John Butler, Bloomberg Intelligence senior telecom
- 12:52Speaker 3: analyst coming up a look at how IBM is planning
- 12:55Speaker 3: to integrate AI tech.
- 12:57Speaker 2: Listening to Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio, providing in depth
- 13:00Speaker 2: research and data on two thousand companies and one hundred
- 13:02Speaker 2: and thirty industries.
- 13:03Speaker 3: You can access Bloomberg Intelligence via big on the terminal.
- 13:06Speaker 3: I'm Scarlet Foo.
- 13:07Speaker 2: And I'm Paul Sweeney. This is Bloomberg.
- 13:13Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Intelligence with Scarlet Foo and Paul Sweeney
- 13:18Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio.
- 13:20Speaker 2: We moved to some news in the tech space.
- 13:22Speaker 3: This week. Advanced micro Devices landed a deal with open
- 13:25Speaker 3: Ai to build AI infrastructure, and this gives the chip
- 13:28Speaker 3: maker AMD a chance to challenge in VideA in the
- 13:31Speaker 3: AI computing industry.
- 13:32Speaker 2: Open Ai will deploy AMD graphics processing units over multiple years.
- 13:36Speaker 2: The deal also sets the stage for open ai to
- 13:38Speaker 2: acquire a large steak in the chip maker, with the
- 13:40Speaker 2: ability to buy as many as one hundred and sixty
- 13:42Speaker 2: million shares of AMD.
- 13:44Speaker 3: So we asked for contacts from Ed Ludlow, b Tech
- 13:46Speaker 3: co anchor. We first asked ed what he makes of
- 13:48Speaker 3: this week's deal.
- 13:49Speaker 8: The specifics of the deal a really important. What is
- 13:53Speaker 8: open ai going to use AMD's technology for it's going
- 13:56Speaker 8: to use it for inference, in other words, running the
- 13:58Speaker 8: models that already exist, not training them. It is six
- 14:02Speaker 8: gigawatts of capacity. The reason that that figure is critical
- 14:07Speaker 8: is that it equates to the peak electricity demand of
- 14:10Speaker 8: most major US cities. Like these are huge numbers, as
- 14:13Speaker 8: you say, but it just speaks to what's happening to
- 14:18Speaker 8: the mind of the participants in the industry, which is
- 14:20Speaker 8: they will need this capacity. You guys are using words
- 14:26Speaker 8: like top and bubble, and I think that's completely fair.
- 14:29Speaker 8: Maybe you saw my column on the debt role that
- 14:32Speaker 8: in what's happening. But I would say that AMD has
- 14:36Speaker 8: done something interesting here which is different to what Nvidia did,
- 14:40Speaker 8: which is they will issue stock two open Ai AMD
- 14:45Speaker 8: shares going to open Ai, but only once open Ai
- 14:50Speaker 8: is spent some money and actually built some stuff. So
- 14:53Speaker 8: where's open Ai going to get the money?
- 14:56Speaker 3: Well, that's why Sam Allman has been traveling the world
- 14:59Speaker 3: meeting with all kinds of investors trying to get some funding.
- 15:02Speaker 3: You said the specifics matter, ed, but we don't know
- 15:06Speaker 3: how much this partnership, this deal is worth beyond the
- 15:10Speaker 3: very generic tens of billions of dollars, right, that could
- 15:12Speaker 3: be ten billion dollars, that could be ninety nine billion dollars.
- 15:15Speaker 8: Yes, that's correct. I mean AMDCFO framed it as being
- 15:18Speaker 8: tens of billion dollars of revenue opportunity. But that's why
- 15:22Speaker 8: I think the specifics of the terms I've made a
- 15:24Speaker 8: careful examination of them are really important understand versus what
- 15:29Speaker 8: Nvidia did with open Ai. So Nvidia said it was
- 15:32Speaker 8: going to invest one hundred billion dollars into open Ai.
- 15:36Speaker 8: We don't even know if that was cash or chips
- 15:39Speaker 8: in lieu of cash, but basically in Nvidia would get
- 15:43Speaker 8: some equity in open Ai in return. In this instance
- 15:46Speaker 8: AMD and open Ai. Open ai is getting AMD shares,
- 15:50Speaker 8: but they are deliverable in tranches against s milestones, which
- 15:54Speaker 8: relate to literally building the data centers. So for each
- 15:57Speaker 8: gig of wat of capacity that comes online, am you
- 16:00Speaker 8: would then say, here is this tranch of stock. And
- 16:02Speaker 8: that's why I'm saying focus on the open ai obligation here.
- 16:06Speaker 8: They need actual money to dig up the dirt, to
- 16:09Speaker 8: put the foundations in, get the data center up, and
- 16:12Speaker 8: put the servers in before any of this stock comes
- 16:15Speaker 8: into play.
- 16:16Speaker 2: Our thanks to ed Lovelow be Tech co anchor Staying
- 16:19Speaker 2: with tech.
- 16:19Speaker 3: This week, the tech company IBM announced a plan to
- 16:22Speaker 3: integrate anthropics AI technologies into its software solutions.
- 16:26Speaker 2: IBM said it will make the startups claud family of
- 16:28Speaker 2: large language models accessible for its clients. Shares the IBM
- 16:31Speaker 2: jump after the news.
- 16:32Speaker 3: So for more, we were joined by Ana ag Rana,
- 16:34Speaker 3: Bloomberg Intelligence technology analyst. We began by asking anag how
- 16:38Speaker 3: he evaluates this latest partnership.
- 16:40Speaker 9: See, when you come to a company like IBM, I
- 16:42Speaker 9: think they have done a very good job of being
- 16:44Speaker 9: open and partnering with other vendors. I think the acquisition
- 16:48Speaker 9: of red Hat was the first such example a few
- 16:50Speaker 9: years ago, and frankly speaking, the company has turned around
- 16:52Speaker 9: quite a bit. Now it's more of a software company
- 16:55Speaker 9: than it is a service order hardware company. IBM still
- 16:58Speaker 9: has a lot of footprint in legacy companies and their
- 17:02Speaker 9: internal infrastructure, whether that's a regulated entity, whether that's you know,
- 17:06Speaker 9: an on premise software. What they're basically saying is for
- 17:10Speaker 9: these companies who want to add more AI capabilities into
- 17:13Speaker 9: their infrastructure, we're going to use one of the best
- 17:16Speaker 9: models that's out there, and that's anthropic. They're not, you know,
- 17:19Speaker 9: just solely dependent on IBM's own internal models. But you know,
- 17:23Speaker 9: we see more and more of that happening that companies
- 17:26Speaker 9: like IBM and other services companies will go out and
- 17:29Speaker 9: partner with you know, anthropic with open ai which M
- 17:31Speaker 9: and I and give more enterprise capabilities to to vendors,
- 17:36Speaker 9: to companies.
- 17:37Speaker 2: Basically, how does anthropic differ from open ai if at all?
- 17:41Speaker 9: That's a very good question, Pauland right now what we're
- 17:43Speaker 9: seeing is entropy is pushing more and more stuff on
- 17:46Speaker 9: the corporate side or the enterprise side, on open Ai side.
- 17:50Speaker 9: You know, their core businesses still chat GPT, which is
- 17:53Speaker 9: the app, and that's more of a consumer app right now.
- 17:55Speaker 9: And the question is, you know which one of the
- 17:58Speaker 9: models will somebody use, Whether if you are let's say,
- 18:01Speaker 9: a JP Morgan or a City Corp, you know, would
- 18:03Speaker 9: you be going to be using one of their models
- 18:05Speaker 9: or an open source model. I think they're going to
- 18:07Speaker 9: be using all of the models. What anthropic relationship with
- 18:11Speaker 9: IBM does. It actually helps them to spread the word
- 18:14Speaker 9: out across their entire customer base. So if you are
- 18:17Speaker 9: trying to get more coding done, for example, in an
- 18:20Speaker 9: IT department and you have all the legacy products that
- 18:23Speaker 9: they're now you can use you know, an AI model
- 18:26Speaker 9: from Anthropic rather than using you know, whatever tools you
- 18:29Speaker 9: had before.
- 18:29Speaker 3: Okay, so it makes sense why Anthropic is a good
- 18:33Speaker 3: fit for IBM or how it's going to incorporate Anthropic
- 18:36Speaker 3: into IT software. But what does IBM specifically offer Anthropic?
- 18:40Speaker 3: What access does IBM have that Anthropic wants and needs.
- 18:45Speaker 9: That's another excellent question. And in this case you're looking
- 18:48Speaker 9: at IBM's entire customer base. IBM has a very large
- 18:51Speaker 9: services business or IBM consulting. These consultant will go out
- 18:55Speaker 9: and sell Anthropic software into the enterprises and say, hey, bank,
- 18:59Speaker 9: let me help you to you know, automate this particular
- 19:02Speaker 9: process and you can use it with this software. It
- 19:04Speaker 9: drives their consulting business and it also helps out their
- 19:07Speaker 9: software business, which is fairly popular.
- 19:10Speaker 2: Right now, IBM hitting all time high on a rug.
- 19:14Speaker 2: This stock has found that a new life has.
- 19:15Speaker 9: It absolutely and this is something that we've been saying
- 19:18Speaker 9: it for almost five years now that you know, the
- 19:21Speaker 9: acquisition of red Hat completely changed it. You know, if
- 19:25Speaker 9: you go back and look at some of the comments
- 19:27Speaker 9: we've made on TV about IBM. Prior to red Hat,
- 19:29Speaker 9: it was a very closed company. It only wanted to
- 19:32Speaker 9: sell their own products to people and was not very
- 19:34Speaker 9: keen on embracing you know, what I would say is
- 19:36Speaker 9: open source. With the acquisition of red Hat and the
- 19:40Speaker 9: company saying, you know what, red Hat can work with
- 19:42Speaker 9: any cloud provider, I think that was the biggest difference
- 19:44Speaker 9: to me was it allowed red Hat to work with
- 19:48Speaker 9: companies but based on Amazon Web Services or Microsoft, so
- 19:53Speaker 9: they were not just pushing their own cloud products, and
- 19:55Speaker 9: I think that really made a difference. Their software business
- 19:58Speaker 9: has been doing so well competitively to the rest of
- 20:01Speaker 9: the world, and I think that's where you see the
- 20:03Speaker 9: market validation that this is the right strategy for them.
- 20:06Speaker 2: Our thanks to Ana rog Rana Bloomberg Intelligence technology analysts.
- 20:10Speaker 3: We moved to some more news in the IT hardware
- 20:12Speaker 3: space this week and it's investor day.
- 20:13Speaker 2: Dell Technologies roughly doubled its growth estimates for sales and
- 20:17Speaker 2: profit for the next two years.
- 20:18Speaker 3: Dell also said demand for artificial intelligence products will extend
- 20:21Speaker 3: those higher projections at least through twenty thirty.
- 20:24Speaker 2: Separately, Cisco system says it is releasing a new chip
- 20:27Speaker 2: networking system to connect AIDATA centers across hundreds of miles.
- 20:31Speaker 3: So for more on both of these companies, we were
- 20:33Speaker 3: joined by Woujin Hoo Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analysts. We
- 20:36Speaker 3: began by asking Woods should break down what we heard
- 20:39Speaker 3: from Dell.
- 20:40Speaker 5: This is a very seasoned management team. They have a
- 20:42Speaker 5: tendency to give out three to four year guidance plans.
- 20:45Speaker 5: I think the surprise here is what's driving that seventy
- 20:50Speaker 5: nine percent growth outlook for from twenty twenty six to
- 20:54Speaker 5: twenty twenty of twenty thirty, and it's going to be
- 20:57Speaker 5: AI servers, right, And one of the things that they
- 20:59Speaker 5: said at the Animal day that AI servers are going
- 21:01Speaker 5: to grow at a twenty to twenty five percent compounded rate.
- 21:04Speaker 5: I think there was some skepticism there heading into the
- 21:07Speaker 5: print in terms of is there an AI bubble? And
- 21:11Speaker 5: by laying out a twenty to twenty five percent AI
- 21:14Speaker 5: server growth going through twenty thirty off of already high numbers,
- 21:18Speaker 5: shows that there is some durability the aiserver demand.
- 21:21Speaker 2: So when you get an analyst meaning together, it's a
- 21:24Speaker 2: big day for a company. They put a lot of
- 21:26Speaker 2: time and effort in putting getting their senior management together,
- 21:28Speaker 2: putting together presentations, presenting a vision here. What were some
- 21:32Speaker 2: of the two or three takeaways from you from this
- 21:34Speaker 2: investor date.
- 21:35Speaker 5: Yeah, so, so the one highlight here is the a
- 21:38Speaker 5: server demand, the durability of a server demand. But more importantly,
- 21:44Speaker 5: and we talk about this all the time, you know, Paul,
- 21:47Speaker 5: It's about earnings and cash flow, right And at the
- 21:50Speaker 5: end of the day, we're talking about EPs growth about
- 21:53Speaker 5: fifteen percent, and how do we get to that fifteen percent?
- 21:56Speaker 5: We're talking about eight percent of the sales growth dropping
- 22:00Speaker 5: down to the bottom line. But given all that cash generation,
- 22:03Speaker 5: there's going to be a fair amount of capital returns
- 22:05Speaker 5: through buybacks, so you're going to get a lift on
- 22:08Speaker 5: EPs there. So share holders are going to be happy
- 22:11Speaker 5: from an EPs standpoint. We're already seeing that from evaluation standpoint,
- 22:16Speaker 5: because it is lifting from an eight to ten times
- 22:20Speaker 5: PE to about fifteen times growth, which makes it into
- 22:23Speaker 5: a one times peg oo gien.
- 22:25Speaker 3: Another story that we're tracking here and that I've been
- 22:27Speaker 3: fascinated by, is this idea of legacy tech companies finding
- 22:32Speaker 3: their feed in this AI wave, whether it's Oracle, whether
- 22:35Speaker 3: it's Dell, and now Cisco as well. Cisco is releasing
- 22:39Speaker 3: a new chip and networking system to connect AI data centers,
- 22:43Speaker 3: and this is a move that pretty much puts it
- 22:45Speaker 3: in more direct competition with Broadcom. How big of an
- 22:49Speaker 3: opportunity is this for Cisco? And should Broadcome be worried?
- 22:53Speaker 5: Yeah, so we published and react, and essentially I don't
- 22:57Speaker 5: think Broadcom should be fully worried. There's a couple of
- 22:59Speaker 5: thing that I'll say, right, Cisco is actually one of
- 23:02Speaker 5: the biggest chip networking chip manufacturers globally, but more for
- 23:08Speaker 5: their legacy enterprise IT chips. Right, they produce their own
- 23:12Speaker 5: chips that powers their own networking gear. They're fairly newer
- 23:15Speaker 5: to the game in the networking chip side. From a
- 23:20Speaker 5: revenue standpoint, it's really not a big driver, but it
- 23:24Speaker 5: may be able to push more boxes. A couple of
- 23:27Speaker 5: things that I'll say, They did about one billion dollars
- 23:30Speaker 5: in AI back end revenue, but to put that into context,
- 23:35Speaker 5: you know they're doing about fifty five to fifty six
- 23:37Speaker 5: billion dollars in total sales. So you know, from an
- 23:41Speaker 5: overall percentage of AI as an overall percentage of sales,
- 23:44Speaker 5: it's still about two to three percent of total sales.
- 23:47Speaker 5: Are they going to challenge Broadcom? I doubt it, but
- 23:50Speaker 5: I do think there'll be a second source to the
- 23:53Speaker 5: cloud providers versus Broadcom.
- 23:57Speaker 2: Which in your coverage area? What's your best I play?
- 24:00Speaker 2: Because I'm sure you get that call from clients all
- 24:02Speaker 2: the time.
- 24:04Speaker 5: You know, I mean I have a handful. Dell was one.
- 24:10Speaker 5: You know. Hp is another one to take a look
- 24:13Speaker 5: out for. They have an analyst day next week. But
- 24:16Speaker 5: from from a networking standpoint, Arista has actually been one
- 24:19Speaker 5: of the high flyers from from the from from a
- 24:21Speaker 5: networking standpoint, so I will look at Arista and people
- 24:26Speaker 5: have been taking the AI networking angle and using Arista
- 24:32Speaker 5: as one of the tools.
- 24:33Speaker 3: I like that Arista. I haven't heard that one come
- 24:35Speaker 3: up yet. You know, HPE or HPQ Just to clarify.
- 24:38Speaker 5: Oh, HPE. So think think of it as a mini
- 24:42Speaker 5: Dell and a mini Cisco.
- 24:44Speaker 2: In one our thanks to Will Jino Bloomberg Intelligence senior
- 24:47Speaker 2: technology analysts.
- 24:48Speaker 3: Coming up, we'll look at why the owner of the
- 24:50Speaker 3: Corona and Wdella, especially ol brands reported positive quarrely results.
- 24:53Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio, but riding
- 24:56Speaker 2: in depth research and data on two thousand companies and
- 24:58Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty industries.
- 25:00Speaker 3: You can access Bloomberg Intelligence through Bigo on the terminal.
- 25:03Speaker 3: I'm Scarlettfoo and.
- 25:04Speaker 2: I'm Paul Sweeney. This is Bloomberg.
- 25:14Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Intelligence with Scarletfoo and Paul Sweeney on
- 25:19Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio.
- 25:21Speaker 2: Move next to some news in the consumer product space.
- 25:23Speaker 3: This week, Constellation Brands, which owns Corona and Wdella especial
- 25:26Speaker 3: brands in the US, reported better than expected results for
- 25:29Speaker 3: its fiscal second quarter. The company cited robust beer and
- 25:32Speaker 3: wine sales.
- 25:33Speaker 2: This comes despite the company stock falling more than thirty
- 25:36Speaker 2: percent this year. Beer an alcoholic beverages in general have
- 25:39Speaker 2: broadly struggled as younger consumers and women drink less.
- 25:42Speaker 3: So for more on this and other news in the
- 25:44Speaker 3: consumer space, we were joined by Ken Sha, Bloomberg Intelligence
- 25:47Speaker 3: senior consumer products analyst.
- 25:48Speaker 2: First, ask Ken more about why Constellation Brands had been
- 25:51Speaker 2: struggling this year.
- 25:52Speaker 10: It's definitely a slow beer market. Tariffs are playing a role,
- 25:59Speaker 10: and also some of the crackdown you know, the ice
- 26:03Speaker 10: has had in inner community is hurting the Hispanic community
- 26:07Speaker 10: and their socialization trends. All these things have been a
- 26:10Speaker 10: factor for the last couple of quarters. The company said
- 26:12Speaker 10: that their beer volumes were not quite as poor as
- 26:16Speaker 10: a lot of street analysts expected. But the pressures are
- 26:19Speaker 10: still on and they're very real for this company. And
- 26:23Speaker 10: that's because they're suite of products. As you mentioned Corona Medello,
- 26:27Speaker 10: these command high price points about twice the level of
- 26:30Speaker 10: a popular beer, so in times where consumers are pulling
- 26:34Speaker 10: back a little cautious about expenditures, got to remember, you know,
- 26:37Speaker 10: you've had high inflationary pricing in this category for the
- 26:40Speaker 10: last few years. These brands aren't doing so well right now,
- 26:44Speaker 10: and then compounding that with some of the factors that
- 26:47Speaker 10: I mentioned and some longer term issues like cannabis substitution
- 26:51Speaker 10: things we talked about GLP one user not drinking as much,
- 26:54Speaker 10: moderation among gen Z. All these things are weighing of
- 26:58Speaker 10: a company right now.
- 27:00Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm super interested in what you said about the
- 27:02Speaker 3: last part, Like the structural changes in consumer tastes, especially
- 27:05Speaker 3: from gen Z younger people overall, beers just not where
- 27:10Speaker 3: people want to be spending their money necessarily.
- 27:14Speaker 10: That seems to be the case. You know, it's it's
- 27:16Speaker 10: been around a long time. It's one hundred and fifteen
- 27:18Speaker 10: billion dollar market that is growing very slowly. It's especially flat.
- 27:23Speaker 10: In fact, volumes are expected to be down low single
- 27:26Speaker 10: digit this year. So clearly it's a very mature category.
- 27:29Speaker 10: And what we've seen in over the last few years
- 27:30Speaker 10: is consumers just want different tastes. You know, you have
- 27:33Speaker 10: a proliferation of the ray to drink cocktails, you know,
- 27:37Speaker 10: like truly and white clothes and more sophisticate you know,
- 27:41Speaker 10: Margarita's in a can and so on. That's where a
- 27:44Speaker 10: lot of the consumers who wants tastes experimentation are going.
- 27:47Speaker 10: And then you have other more mundane factors like just
- 27:50Speaker 10: you know, calorie more conscientious, calorie counts, and all these
- 27:54Speaker 10: things are just weighing on this very very mature industry.
- 27:58Speaker 2: So somebody like Constellation Brands, did they go out and
- 28:00Speaker 2: look to maybe buy some of these brands or verticals
- 28:04Speaker 2: that within the spirit's business may be growing.
- 28:08Speaker 10: Well, they've had kind of a mixed history of M
- 28:13Speaker 10: and A over the last few years. I'll put it
- 28:15Speaker 10: up me kind say that way, not really, you know,
- 28:19Speaker 10: they're downsizing their wine and spirit segment and try to
- 28:22Speaker 10: shift it to more of a high end mix, which
- 28:25Speaker 10: I think they're having success with. But what that does
- 28:27Speaker 10: is it makes their beer business even that much more important.
- 28:30Speaker 10: It's now about eighty five percent of their sales. So
- 28:33Speaker 10: as beer goes, I mean, the company has really good
- 28:36Speaker 10: brands and a lot of brand loyalty there. But again
- 28:41Speaker 10: there's not a lot of wiggle room.
- 28:42Speaker 3: So with beer becoming less popular, and you mentioned other
- 28:47Speaker 3: big trends like ozebic, weight loss, drugs and greater cannabis use,
- 28:52Speaker 3: what is Constlation doing about non alcoholic beverages.
- 28:57Speaker 10: So they've rolled out a non alcoholic Corona. They've come
- 29:01Speaker 10: out a couple of years ago. They came out with
- 29:03Speaker 10: a low calorie brand called Medello ro Corona no alcohol
- 29:10Speaker 10: I mentioned. So those two brands, while they're relatively small,
- 29:13Speaker 10: they see, you know, a lot of opportunity that's on
- 29:17Speaker 10: trend with what you said, so you know they're doing that.
- 29:21Speaker 10: They're also modifying some of their portfolio for more taste.
- 29:25Speaker 10: There's the consumers that want a lot of taste. They're
- 29:27Speaker 10: coming out with, you know, a fruity surveysa and so
- 29:33Speaker 10: they're doing as much as they can to stay on
- 29:35Speaker 10: trend with consumers.
- 29:37Speaker 3: I love myself a great fruit beer. Yeah, there's a
- 29:40Speaker 3: German great fruit beer that I really like. Yeah, tastes good.
- 29:43Speaker 2: Talk to us about this legal cannabis and obesity drugs
- 29:46Speaker 2: and the impact that's having on kind of the beer business,
- 29:49Speaker 2: the spirits business overall. Ken, is that something that a
- 29:52Speaker 2: lot of your companies are calling out.
- 29:54Speaker 10: Bi came out of their fourth annual consumer survey on
- 29:57Speaker 10: beverage preferences, and again we see that consumers are substituting
- 30:04Speaker 10: cannabis for alcohol. Of consumers that do partake in cannabis,
- 30:09Speaker 10: now more than half have substituted for alcohol at least
- 30:13Speaker 10: once a week, and that's up from forty six percent
- 30:16Speaker 10: last year. So that's a trend that just keeps moving.
- 30:19Speaker 10: Now you're seeing a lot of these cannabis companies coming
- 30:22Speaker 10: out with hemp THC products beverages that are sold in
- 30:26Speaker 10: mainstream liquor stores. You know, traditional cannabis, legal cannabis sold
- 30:30Speaker 10: in dispensaries. It was not really a big hit, but
- 30:33Speaker 10: now that some of these federally legal hemp based THC
- 30:38Speaker 10: products beverages are sold in liquor stores right next to
- 30:41Speaker 10: the beer rile. In about half the states of the country,
- 30:45Speaker 10: that's really chipping away also at beer consumption.
- 30:49Speaker 3: Final question to you, Ken, what about return of cash
- 30:51Speaker 3: to shareholders. I'm looking at the dividend yield about two
- 30:54Speaker 3: point nine percent if you're being generous. Is Constellation Brands
- 30:59Speaker 3: still able to make good on its dividends continue buying
- 31:01Speaker 3: back its shares?
- 31:03Speaker 10: Yeah, that's an important point, Scarlett. Yes, they can despite
- 31:07Speaker 10: the pressure on sales. Believe it or not, the operating
- 31:11Speaker 10: margins and Constellation generates are best in class. They're about
- 31:14Speaker 10: twice that of other alcoholic beverage companies in general, so
- 31:18Speaker 10: they have strong cash flows. As a matter of fact,
- 31:20Speaker 10: they're winding down construction of a brewery right now. Over
- 31:24Speaker 10: the next couple of years, you're going to see free
- 31:26Speaker 10: cash flow likely rising. So it's high in rising and
- 31:29Speaker 10: that's enabling them to continue to meet their commitments to
- 31:33Speaker 10: share buybacks and dividends.
- 31:35Speaker 3: Our thanks to Kenneth Shae Bloomberg Intelligence, a senior consumer
- 31:38Speaker 3: products analyst.
- 31:39Speaker 2: We move next to some news on Intercontinental Exchange or ICE.
- 31:42Speaker 3: This week we heard the company plans to invest as
- 31:44Speaker 3: much as two billion dollars in cash in polymarket, which
- 31:47Speaker 3: is a crypto based betting platform.
- 31:49Speaker 2: The transaction values poly market at roughly eight billion dollars,
- 31:53Speaker 2: and ICE will become a global distributor of poly markets
- 31:55Speaker 2: event driven data.
- 31:56Speaker 3: We are joined by Catherine Doherty, Bloomberg Finance Reporter. We
- 31:59Speaker 3: first Catherine for some more background on ICE.
- 32:02Speaker 6: It runs on the blockchain. So you have this storied institution,
- 32:06Speaker 6: ICE that owns the New York Stock Exchange, as you mentioned,
- 32:10Speaker 6: and they're putting their money where their mouth is. It
- 32:12Speaker 6: really is an indication of where the market is headed.
- 32:16Speaker 6: So you have these institutional players that are teaming up
- 32:19Speaker 6: with either crypto native firms or in this case it's
- 32:23Speaker 6: also the prediction market based players. And we have seen
- 32:28Speaker 6: this recently with also CME, the derivatives exchange based in Chicago.
- 32:32Speaker 6: They're partnering with FanDuel, and most people associate FanDuel with
- 32:36Speaker 6: sports betting, but they are big in prediction markets as well.
- 32:41Speaker 6: And with CME and FanDuel, they're doing a markets based
- 32:47Speaker 6: prediction of yes or no will for example, gold Bee
- 32:51Speaker 6: above a certain benchmark. And this announcement also shows a
- 32:57Speaker 6: storied institution kind of getting behind the newer incumbents and
- 33:02Speaker 6: showing where they see the next phase of the market headed.
- 33:07Speaker 2: What does polymarket really do? I see them quoted around
- 33:10Speaker 2: in the press and things like that.
- 33:11Speaker 6: So you've probably seen polymarket around the time of the election.
- 33:14Speaker 6: They were one of the platforms that users were placing
- 33:18Speaker 6: bets on who was going to win the presidential election.
- 33:22Speaker 6: They at a time were also in the news around
- 33:25Speaker 6: twenty twenty two because they were prohibited from actually operating
- 33:30Speaker 6: in the US, and more recently in the last few
- 33:34Speaker 6: months in twenty twenty five, they've re entered the US market,
- 33:38Speaker 6: and they've done so through two avenues. One, it's a
- 33:42Speaker 6: changing regulatory environment, it's a crypto friendly regulatory regime. And
- 33:49Speaker 6: number two, they bought their own regulated derivatives platform that
- 33:55Speaker 6: essentially allowed them it was a pathway back into the
- 33:59Speaker 6: United States market.
- 34:01Speaker 3: So with this deal, which values Polymarket at about eight
- 34:04Speaker 3: billion dollars, cee ICE becomes the global distributor of Polymarket's
- 34:09Speaker 3: event driven data. What does that mean to have that
- 34:12Speaker 3: data now in its hands? What can it do with
- 34:15Speaker 3: that information? Because exchanges don't just they're not just a
- 34:18Speaker 3: platform for collecting commissions on trades. They're also huge source
- 34:22Speaker 3: of information data that they then sell.
- 34:24Speaker 6: That's right, it's a huge part of their business, and
- 34:27Speaker 6: you have these big institutions that are paying millions of
- 34:31Speaker 6: dollars for access to this data. And as the market
- 34:36Speaker 6: becomes a mix of institutional client base and retail clients
- 34:42Speaker 6: that data these companies, you have ICE, you have polymarket.
- 34:47Speaker 6: This combination is giving ICE access to retail clients that
- 34:52Speaker 6: they otherwise wouldn't necessarily have access to, and vice versa.
- 34:56Speaker 6: Polymarket gets now all of their data displayed through ICE
- 35:00Speaker 6: channels that institutional clients have been set up and working
- 35:06Speaker 6: with ICE for years. So it's a fast entry way
- 35:11Speaker 6: for both companies to increase their user base, increase their access,
- 35:16Speaker 6: and how they market themselves to an entirely new client.
- 35:22Speaker 2: So it just feels like some of these traditional exchanges,
- 35:25Speaker 2: if you will, I think, are they saying, basically, if
- 35:29Speaker 2: we want to grow in the future, we have to
- 35:30Speaker 2: embrace some of these new asset classes, whether it's crypto
- 35:34Speaker 2: or whether it's predictive markets and things like. Is that
- 35:38Speaker 2: kind of what they're telling us.
- 35:39Speaker 6: I think that it's very much where they see their
- 35:42Speaker 6: clients headed. There's a blurring line between you have hedge
- 35:47Speaker 6: funds and traditional institutional firms, and then you have retail
- 35:51Speaker 6: investors that at a time, there was so much news
- 35:56Speaker 6: during the memestock era around who these users were that
- 36:02Speaker 6: were in their basements, But now these are really sophisticated
- 36:06Speaker 6: investors that are playing in the options market prediction markets.
- 36:12Speaker 6: Many of the leaders of these exchanges are saying there
- 36:17Speaker 6: is no difference between what we've been running and at
- 36:20Speaker 6: least a binary yes or no. Is this index going
- 36:25Speaker 6: to be above or below a certain threshold. They're combining
- 36:31Speaker 6: to what was presumably two different worlds into one now.
- 36:34Speaker 3: And competitors at polymarket include Calshi Andcrypto dot Com. Are
- 36:39Speaker 3: you anticipating, Catherine, There's going to be similar tie ups
- 36:42Speaker 3: for those companies as well.
- 36:43Speaker 6: There is a race too. I believe that this is
- 36:46Speaker 6: just the start, or really the CME partnership with FanDuel
- 36:50Speaker 6: was kind of the first indication. This is just another
- 36:53Speaker 6: and I think that it's going to be off to
- 36:55Speaker 6: the races in terms of who partners up next, because
- 36:58Speaker 6: you to build something for scratch is hard, and when
- 37:02Speaker 6: you partner with a existing client base too, it is
- 37:06Speaker 6: an easy way in to an entirely new market.
- 37:10Speaker 2: It wasn't cheap. I'm reading Bloomberg Intelligence research react from
- 37:14Speaker 2: Paul Goldberg. This acquisition applies fifty times revenue.
- 37:18Speaker 9: Is the purchase price there.
- 37:20Speaker 2: That's not cheap and it's an all cash deal.
- 37:21Speaker 3: They're just saying we're in our Thanks to Catherine Doherty,
- 37:25Speaker 3: Bloomberg News Finance Reporter.
- 37:26Speaker 2: It's this week's edition of Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio,
- 37:29Speaker 2: providing in depth research and data on two thousand companies
- 37:32Speaker 2: and one hundred and thirty industries.
- 37:33Speaker 3: And remember you can access Bloomberg Intelligence via bi Go
- 37:36Speaker 3: on the terminal. I'm Scarlet Foo.
- 37:38Speaker 2: And I'm Paul Sweeney. Stay with us. Today's top stories
- 37:41Speaker 2: and global business headlines are coming up right now