Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Earnings, Central Banks, Gary Gensler, and Meta (Podcast)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney, alongside
- 0:04Speaker 1: my co host Matt Miller.
- 0:05Speaker 2: Every business day, we bring you interviews from CEOs, market pros,
- 0:09Speaker 2: and Bloomberg experts, along with essential market moving news.
- 0:14Speaker 1: Find the Bloomberg Markets podcast called Apple Podcasts or wherever
- 0:17Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts, and at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast.
- 0:20Speaker 1: I want to talk some cars, Matt, some German cars.
- 0:23Speaker 2: I would love to, you know, not just German cars.
- 0:26Speaker 2: You're referring to the full shory story. They're made everywhere, right,
- 0:31Speaker 2: and China is I think the real problem here.
- 0:34Speaker 1: All right, let's go to Monica raymut Auto's industry disruption report.
- 0:39Speaker 1: I didn't know we had a disruption reporter from Bloomberg
- 0:41Speaker 1: News joins us here. So Monica, let's start with Volkswagen.
- 0:45Speaker 1: What's the news coming out of our good friends from Germany?
- 0:49Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, guys. I mean, the biggest news
- 0:53Speaker 3: of the week, I would have to say is the
- 0:55Speaker 3: deal with XPANG. Basically, Volkswagen came out yesterday and said
- 1:00Speaker 3: that they're investing around seven hundred million dollars in this
- 1:03Speaker 3: EV producer in China, and it's really at first for Volkswagen,
- 1:08Speaker 3: it's basically sort of them admitting, you know, we can't
- 1:11Speaker 3: we can't really keep up on the Chinese market, so
- 1:13Speaker 3: we need to partner with with somebody who really has
- 1:16Speaker 3: their finger on the pulse of what Chinese consumers want.
- 1:19Speaker 2: It's amazing because I mean Volkswagen is usually the biggest
- 1:23Speaker 2: or the second biggest car maker in the world. Right,
- 1:26Speaker 2: how key is the Chinese market Monica to Volkswagen and
- 1:31Speaker 2: is it that important to other manufacturers?
- 1:34Speaker 4: Oh?
- 1:34Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I mean China is absolutely huge. I
- 1:37Speaker 3: mean it's it's basically like thirty percent of their revenues
- 1:42Speaker 3: and has and has it has been. It has played
- 1:44Speaker 3: a key role for them over the past several decades.
- 1:46Speaker 3: And I mean Volkswagen was really a star there, the
- 1:49Speaker 3: market leader for the past decades because they were banking
- 1:52Speaker 3: on that German reputation of engineering ability and you know
- 1:57Speaker 3: that Cachet as a as a foreign autumn. But now
- 2:01Speaker 3: as the tide has turned and everyone's pivoting towards electric vehicles,
- 2:04Speaker 3: you know, the local automakers, the local startups in China
- 2:09Speaker 3: are able to leverage what they're able to do when
- 2:11Speaker 3: it comes to software and technology and the consumers are
- 2:15Speaker 3: are pivoting that way, and Volkswagen has been really slow
- 2:18Speaker 3: to sort of pivot in that direction. And they've they've
- 2:22Speaker 3: really struggled on software, you know, trying to.
- 2:25Speaker 2: Now, Herbert Deese was chased out as CEO, but he
- 2:28Speaker 2: was I kept seeing headlines like spending fifty billion dollars
- 2:32Speaker 2: to build evs and he had I think ralvald wrote
- 2:35Speaker 2: a story back in the day that Deese wanted to
- 2:38Speaker 2: start a huge software company within Folkswagen and he was
- 2:41Speaker 2: spending almost thirty billion dollars on that.
- 2:43Speaker 5: What happened to all those efforts?
- 2:45Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Oh, I mean those efforts are still underway.
- 2:48Speaker 3: The software unit carried is still alive and kicking a
- 2:53Speaker 3: bit barely, not barely, I shouldn't say that, But all
- 2:56Speaker 3: of those efforts, they haven't all been for nought.
- 2:59Speaker 6: You know.
- 3:00Speaker 3: Carriod, the software unit is still creating two of the
- 3:04Speaker 3: big coming platforms for Volkswagen, the two big EV platforms,
- 3:08Speaker 3: one for the premium brands Portion and Audi, and then
- 3:10Speaker 3: one sort of like a catch all platform that can
- 3:13Speaker 3: be tailored across all of the ten brands. The problem
- 3:17Speaker 3: was Carriod, the software unit just took on too many
- 3:21Speaker 3: tasks at the same time, and they were overloaded and
- 3:23Speaker 3: they weren't able to deliver non glitchy software, especially when
- 3:28Speaker 3: it came to the ID series for Volkswagen. So basically,
- 3:31Speaker 3: Luma came in and he said, okay, hold up, we
- 3:34Speaker 3: need to clean house a bit, we need to refocus
- 3:36Speaker 3: our energies. And he's he's put in a new CEO
- 3:39Speaker 3: at Carriod. He's you know, created this five point plan
- 3:43Speaker 3: of trying to get things in order. And he's also
- 3:46Speaker 3: taken a play a page from the playbook of Portia
- 3:49Speaker 3: and sort of saying, you know, listen, compared to my predecessor,
- 3:52Speaker 3: I'm not afraid to go into third party partnerships to
- 3:56Speaker 3: get the best technology here. And he's really saying, yes,
- 4:00Speaker 3: we will stick with our software strategy with carry It.
- 4:03Speaker 3: Yes we will continue to deliver the platforms, the EV
- 4:08Speaker 3: platforms for Audi, for the for their q Q six,
- 4:12Speaker 3: for the Pasha Emacon, but also moving forward, we're not
- 4:16Speaker 3: going to be afraid to partner with other people who
- 4:18Speaker 3: who have been doing this a little bit longer or
- 4:20Speaker 3: have more expertise that we currently don't have.
- 4:23Speaker 1: So Monica, just give us the kind of a sense,
- 4:25Speaker 1: your sense of how the European automakers in general are
- 4:29Speaker 1: are pursuing this this transition to EV. Is there a
- 4:32Speaker 1: sense that they're on the cutting edge or they're lagging
- 4:34Speaker 1: kind of where are they?
- 4:37Speaker 3: Oh man, that's a that's a really tough question. I
- 4:39Speaker 3: mean Volkswagen was sort of the first European car maker
- 4:42Speaker 3: to you know, jump in feet first, uh, into the
- 4:45Speaker 3: into the EV uh you know push. I mean that
- 4:48Speaker 3: all came as a result of the diesel scandal and
- 4:50Speaker 3: they were sort of, you know, nudged a bit in
- 4:52Speaker 3: that direction, right, but they've really been you know, they
- 4:56Speaker 3: sort of started out, you know, they were the first
- 4:59Speaker 3: ones to move forward, and the you had Mercedes and
- 5:00Speaker 3: BMW sort of moving forward on that. The difference I
- 5:04Speaker 3: think there is you have Mercedes and BMW that are
- 5:07Speaker 3: more in the premium and luxury market, right, and so
- 5:10Speaker 3: they're able to It's the same thing with Portia. They're
- 5:13Speaker 3: still able to leverage their their IC sales, their combustion
- 5:16Speaker 3: engine sales as and use that to fund partially pushed
- 5:20Speaker 3: into evs.
- 5:22Speaker 7: Apparently, yess.
- 5:24Speaker 2: Indeed, Monica are the other car makers as active in China.
- 5:30Speaker 2: I remember seeing some stories about some of the Stilantis brands,
- 5:33Speaker 2: you know, pulling out. Now, maybe it just wasn't a
- 5:36Speaker 2: big enough market for those individual brands, but surely Tavares
- 5:39Speaker 2: has to be worried if it's this important to BLOOMA.
- 5:44Speaker 3: Yes, I mean some, I mean some car makers are
- 5:47Speaker 3: more active in China than other Stalantis. I think has
- 5:50Speaker 3: has your right, has moved away from China and is
- 5:53Speaker 3: focusing his efforts elsewhere. I think the concern for Tavares
- 6:00Speaker 3: more is what do the Chinese car makers mean for
- 6:02Speaker 3: Europe when they come over here? Because the Chinese makers
- 6:05Speaker 3: are focusing more on you know, sort of these small, smaller,
- 6:10Speaker 3: smaller vehicles that are maybe more affordable, and if the
- 6:13Speaker 3: European car makers can't focus on that segment, there's a
- 6:16Speaker 3: real fear among some analysts and automakers that the Chinese
- 6:21Speaker 3: makers could capture a segment of of the of the
- 6:24Speaker 3: market that the European makers are not focusing on. And
- 6:27Speaker 3: so that's why, you know, there's this drum beat, at
- 6:29Speaker 3: least from Tavares that we need to make these vehicles
- 6:32Speaker 3: more affordable. We need to get regulations, we need to
- 6:35Speaker 3: get you know, government policies on board in Europe to
- 6:38Speaker 3: make the you know, these cars more affordable in Europe.
- 6:43Speaker 3: But in terms of how other carmakers are doing in China,
- 6:46Speaker 3: I mean it's really Folks was at the top of
- 6:49Speaker 3: the list for for a long time. But you have
- 6:52Speaker 3: Uid that's, you know, really at the top now when
- 6:54Speaker 3: it comes to EV sales, and then you have Tesla
- 6:57Speaker 3: who can't certainly can't forgotten. And you know, those are
- 7:01Speaker 3: the two big players, at least to my mind.
- 7:04Speaker 1: All right, Monica, great stuff, great catching up with you,
- 7:06Speaker 1: Monica Raymuland, Auto's industry disruption reporter for Bloomberg News.
- 7:10Speaker 2: Joining us how to Berlin, joining us out of Berlin,
- 7:12Speaker 2: right in my old office, you're old.
- 7:14Speaker 5: Beat right, yeah, exactly right. Where where's your car these days?
- 7:17Speaker 1: Are your challenger?
- 7:17Speaker 8: Do we know where it is?
- 7:19Speaker 2: Well, supposedly it's scheduled for production in uh in Canada, Okay,
- 7:24Speaker 2: But they haven't sent me the actual production confirmation yet,
- 7:28Speaker 2: so I'm still waiting. And in the meantime, I'm looking
- 7:31Speaker 2: across like Auto Trader and maybe I'm thinking maybe I
- 7:34Speaker 2: should go for bright orange instead of dark green.
- 7:37Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
- 7:37Speaker 1: Yeah, so you haven't selected that even that yet?
- 7:39Speaker 6: All right?
- 7:40Speaker 1: It's just supply chain still an issue in the auto industry.
- 7:42Speaker 1: Matt's been waiting for this challenger with this scat pack
- 7:44Speaker 1: all year logic for like a year. I don't know
- 7:46Speaker 1: what's going on there.
- 7:49Speaker 6: You're listening to the team. Can's a live program Bloomberg
- 7:52Speaker 6: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
- 7:56Speaker 6: the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listening
- 7:59Speaker 6: on demand where however you get your podcast.
- 8:02Speaker 1: Matt Miller, Paul Sweeney here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio,
- 8:05Speaker 1: and I forgot to mention we are simulcasting on YouTube
- 8:09Speaker 1: so people see me, so people can see the MAT's
- 8:12Speaker 1: actually here. He's back after a little hiatus in the afternoon.
- 8:15Speaker 1: So you can check us out on YouTube, just search
- 8:17Speaker 1: Bloomberg Global News. All right, this has been in addition
- 8:21Speaker 1: to just a week of I think one hundred and
- 8:23Speaker 1: sixty five of the S and P five hundred companies
- 8:25Speaker 1: reporting earnings next week, and I think one hundred and
- 8:27Speaker 1: seventy two next week, So super busy in the earning season.
- 8:30Speaker 1: But we've had a lot of central bank movement over
- 8:32Speaker 1: the past couple of days, including the Fed yesterday and
- 8:35Speaker 1: the European Central Bank today. So let's kind of break
- 8:38Speaker 1: it all down and see where we are. Anika Gupta
- 8:41Speaker 1: joins us. She is the director of Macroeconomic Research, Equities
- 8:45Speaker 1: and Commodities for Wisdom treat She joins us via zoom. So, Anika, boy,
- 8:51Speaker 1: what do you make of kind of what we've seen
- 8:52Speaker 1: coming out of these central banks over the past twenty
- 8:54Speaker 1: four hours.
- 8:56Speaker 9: Yeah, it's been really interesting, Paul. You know, at one
- 8:59Speaker 9: hund we have both of these central banks, the FED
- 9:03Speaker 9: as well as the ECB. Uh, you know, keeping their
- 9:06Speaker 9: optionality open. I think they they they've they've tried to,
- 9:12Speaker 9: you know, indicate that they have they have covered quite
- 9:16Speaker 9: a bit of ground on the inflation front. The only
- 9:20Speaker 9: difference between the FED and the ECB is the FED
- 9:23Speaker 9: is facing an economy which is a lot more resilient
- 9:25Speaker 9: and stronger based on the consumer strength, whereas in the
- 9:30Speaker 9: Eurozone the ECB is faced with the situation where they
- 9:33Speaker 9: have made a lot of progress on inflation. Yet uh,
- 9:37Speaker 9: you know, the recent indicators are pointing to growth slowing down,
- 9:41Speaker 9: so we are headed for a period of stagnation before
- 9:44Speaker 9: we actually get that rebound back into a growth phase.
- 9:48Speaker 9: So I think the ECB gave out a lot today
- 9:51Speaker 9: at the at the at the meeting where you know,
- 9:54Speaker 9: some of the some of the statements that were made
- 9:56Speaker 9: when when President la guard was asked, is there still
- 10:00Speaker 9: more ground to cover? And you know, she clearly said
- 10:03Speaker 9: at this point she wouldn't say so. And I think
- 10:05Speaker 9: that that indicates this looks likely to be the last hike.
- 10:10Speaker 9: But clearly they've kept that optionality open where you know,
- 10:14Speaker 9: there's so much additional data to come out until the
- 10:19Speaker 9: September meeting that they you know, anything could influence their decision.
- 10:23Speaker 9: But as of now, I would say for both central banks,
- 10:26Speaker 9: it looks like this is the last one in their
- 10:28Speaker 9: tightening cycle.
- 10:29Speaker 2: Well, you know, Chair and Powell referenced the data points
- 10:33Speaker 2: that he was looking forward to between now and September meeting.
- 10:36Speaker 5: There are many.
- 10:38Speaker 2: We got some this morning though, that were pretty darn impressive.
- 10:41Speaker 2: GDP came out at two point four percent for the
- 10:44Speaker 2: second quarter. We were looking for one point eight percent
- 10:47Speaker 2: in our survey of economists. Personal consumption consumer spending also
- 10:51Speaker 2: higher than anticipated one point six percent, And you got
- 10:56Speaker 2: the core PCE, which is the Fed's preferred gauge of
- 10:59Speaker 2: inflation and not nearly as bad as we expected at
- 11:02Speaker 2: three point eight percent rather than four percent. So this
- 11:06Speaker 2: looks pretty darn goldilocks to me. How do you think
- 11:09Speaker 2: it looks to Chair Powell?
- 11:13Speaker 9: Well, you're absolutely right, Matt. You know, I think we've
- 11:16Speaker 9: even seen the IMF echo similar a similar viewpoint where
- 11:21Speaker 9: the US has been and is proving to be a
- 11:24Speaker 9: lot more resilient than investors expected at the at the
- 11:27Speaker 9: start of the year. And I think, you know, given
- 11:31Speaker 9: given the fact that the US economy has been that brasilient,
- 11:34Speaker 9: it does open a goldilocks environment because we have seen
- 11:37Speaker 9: progress made on inflation, and given the fact that the
- 11:42Speaker 9: growth has been quite resilient, it should put this fit
- 11:45Speaker 9: in a situation where they could hold rates at current levels,
- 11:50Speaker 9: and then that expectation of them, you know, beginning to
- 11:54Speaker 9: cut just gets postponed further down the line.
- 11:58Speaker 1: So Anka, you're based in life. And then I believe
- 12:00Speaker 1: right around one King William Street, which is just right
- 12:03Speaker 1: around the corner from Bloomberg's European headquarters at Queen Victoria Street,
- 12:07Speaker 1: talk to us about inflation, inflation in the UK, inflation
- 12:10Speaker 1: in across Europe. Christine Leguard called that out as still
- 12:14Speaker 1: higher than she would like to say. Why is inflation
- 12:18Speaker 1: across Europe maybe a little bit stickier than maybe what
- 12:20Speaker 1: we're seeing here in the US.
- 12:22Speaker 7: So I think what seems to.
- 12:24Speaker 9: Be quite different in the UK is largely due to
- 12:29Speaker 9: more structural factors. I think Brexit in a big way
- 12:32Speaker 9: has contributed to inflation being a lot stickier. That being said,
- 12:38Speaker 9: the most recent inflation report has shown you know, a
- 12:42Speaker 9: small sliver of cooling. But I think Gregsity has a
- 12:47Speaker 9: very important role to play as to why the UK
- 12:49Speaker 9: seems to be the laggard in actually bringing down that
- 12:52Speaker 9: inflation side. But for the EU Zone, you know, what
- 12:56Speaker 9: seems to be holding inflation up quite strong has been
- 13:00Speaker 9: the strength in the labor of MAK. Wages have been rising,
- 13:04Speaker 9: and I think that that has essentially, from an income standpoint,
- 13:08Speaker 9: helped your your your zone consumer you know, actually have
- 13:13Speaker 9: a better and a higher purchasing power. So you've got
- 13:15Speaker 9: wages rising, You've got inflation beginning to come down, be
- 13:19Speaker 9: it headline inflation feeding into lower core inflation, and that
- 13:24Speaker 9: is just you know, from an income standpoint, making the
- 13:26Speaker 9: uarsone consumer a lot, putting them in a much better position.
- 13:30Speaker 9: So I think those two factors really stand out, and
- 13:33Speaker 9: that's that's one of the reasons why our fight inflation
- 13:35Speaker 9: has been a bit of a laggart compared to the US.
- 13:39Speaker 2: So you were talking about how rate hikes are going
- 13:42Speaker 2: to get pushed back, but I noticed on the dot
- 13:44Speaker 2: plot that we're expecting, at least the FED itself is
- 13:48Speaker 2: forecasting a full percentage point of rate cuts over the
- 13:54Speaker 2: next year. Why do you think that the Fed's forecast
- 13:59Speaker 2: differ so much from what Jerome Powell, you know, we'll
- 14:02Speaker 2: say at any given press conference.
- 14:05Speaker 9: Well, I think it's it's, you know, purely based on
- 14:08Speaker 9: the fact that the economy has been fairly resilient. There
- 14:11Speaker 9: are also risks lurking around. You know, we've seen commodity
- 14:15Speaker 9: prices over the past few weeks actually rebound. We've seen uh,
- 14:19Speaker 9: you know, the escalation between Russia and Ukraine actually increase, uh,
- 14:26Speaker 9: you know, with Russia pulling out of the Black Sea
- 14:28Speaker 9: grain deal, and so as a consequence, we've seen agricultural
- 14:32Speaker 9: prices within the commodity spectrum also rise. U and I
- 14:36Speaker 9: think central bankers have taken note of that that these
- 14:39Speaker 9: these risks are there at the horizon and for the US,
- 14:42Speaker 9: it's quite important because you know, the we're seeing growth
- 14:45Speaker 9: quite resilient. For the Eurozone, we are seeing growth being
- 14:49Speaker 9: quite tepid. You know, forward looking indicators are saying there's
- 14:52Speaker 9: weakness ahead. So I think the ECB is right to
- 14:56Speaker 9: say that they you know, they they they've covered quite
- 14:59Speaker 9: a bit of ground. There isn't all that more left
- 15:02Speaker 9: to do so at this point in time. But for
- 15:04Speaker 9: the US, you know, as as growth seems to be
- 15:07Speaker 9: a lot stronger and the consumers appears to be a
- 15:11Speaker 9: lot more resilient, and you're also seeing a few inflationary
- 15:16Speaker 9: concerns rising on the horizon, there's always the risk that
- 15:19Speaker 9: you know, they've go on me just does better than expected,
- 15:22Speaker 9: and that gives less need for power to actually have
- 15:25Speaker 9: to invene intervene.
- 15:27Speaker 2: With k What does that mean for the FX picture?
- 15:31Speaker 2: I mean, we had seen the dollar hold strong for
- 15:35Speaker 2: so long this year against all you know, predictions, and
- 15:38Speaker 2: then it came kind of the Bloomberg Dollar Index came
- 15:41Speaker 2: tumbling down a couple of weeks ago. Now it's on
- 15:44Speaker 2: a steady climb higher. You know, in the euros trading
- 15:47Speaker 2: it less than a dollar ten right. The pound is
- 15:49Speaker 2: trading it less than a dollar thirty. What do you
- 15:51Speaker 2: think the growth differential means for the currencies?
- 15:55Speaker 9: It has, It has a very big impact. So what
- 15:58Speaker 9: we've seen is the dollar response to two important factors,
- 16:03Speaker 9: one being the growth of differential and the second being
- 16:06Speaker 9: relative interest Now. Clearly, until now, the dollar was weakening
- 16:11Speaker 9: because interest rates and the rest of the developed market
- 16:13Speaker 9: world was actually rising and interest rates expectations for the
- 16:19Speaker 9: FED were actually declining, so there were expectations for them
- 16:21Speaker 9: to pause or cut. But the way things are evolving
- 16:26Speaker 9: with the strength of the US economy, you know, we're
- 16:29Speaker 9: now seeing relative interest rates move in favor of can
- 16:33Speaker 9: continue to remove in favor of developed developed market economies
- 16:36Speaker 9: as opposed to the US. And at the same time,
- 16:40Speaker 9: we're also seeing growth prospects in UK and Eurozone actually
- 16:45Speaker 9: deteriorate compared to the US, and hence that seems to
- 16:49Speaker 9: be the dominant factor in play right now, which is
- 16:51Speaker 9: why the dollar has been strengthening.
- 16:54Speaker 1: All right, Anitka, thank you so much for joining us.
- 16:55Speaker 1: Really appreciate getting your perspective. Anika Gutta. She is the
- 16:59Speaker 1: director of me Acroeconomic Research for the Equities and Commodities
- 17:02Speaker 1: Business at Wisdom Treaty is based in London. Again, we
- 17:06Speaker 1: had the ECB this morning, fed yesterday. Rate increases. Yes,
- 17:10Speaker 1: the market's kind of reading into it that they may
- 17:13Speaker 1: be perhaps the last of the rate increases, at least
- 17:16Speaker 1: for now, when we're seeing some reaction in the market's
- 17:19Speaker 1: s and P five hundred up a half one percent.
- 17:21Speaker 6: You're listening to the tape cans our live program, Bloomberg
- 17:24Speaker 6: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 17:28Speaker 6: tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business App.
- 17:31Speaker 6: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 17:34Speaker 6: flagship New York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 17:40Speaker 10: I'd like to begin with your newest rules that you
- 17:43Speaker 10: just unveiled yesterday, putting restrictions on brokerages and money managers
- 17:47Speaker 10: and their use of AI to interact with clients. What
- 17:49Speaker 10: is your primary concern with the adoption of this technology
- 17:53Speaker 10: that you're trying to address?
- 17:54Speaker 11: First, Kaylee, it's good to be with you, But talking
- 17:57Speaker 11: about this, I think that predict data analytics, including artificial intelligence,
- 18:03Speaker 11: is the transformative technology of our times, and every bit
- 18:06Speaker 11: is transformatives to the Internet or mass production of the
- 18:09Speaker 11: automobile one hundred years ago.
- 18:11Speaker 4: Now, what are we trying to address?
- 18:14Speaker 11: When an investment advisor or a broker works with you
- 18:19Speaker 11: as an investor, they're not supposed to put their interest,
- 18:23Speaker 11: the advisor's interest ahead of yours, Kayley, as an investor.
- 18:27Speaker 11: And so what we're trying to do is make sure
- 18:30Speaker 11: that the technology aligns with that standard, that the technology
- 18:35Speaker 11: that can predict about each and every one of us
- 18:38Speaker 11: so much about how we might react to a little
- 18:42Speaker 11: behavioral prompt or a little knowledge how we might react.
- 18:46Speaker 11: That they're putting our interest as an investor in the
- 18:50Speaker 11: right place and not putting themselves ahead of it.
- 18:54Speaker 10: And of course the AI move wasn't the only one
- 18:55Speaker 10: you made yesterday. You also just approved a plan to
- 18:59Speaker 10: require companies to disclose cyber breaches within a four business
- 19:03Speaker 10: day timeline.
- 19:04Speaker 12: Why is that the appropriate time break?
- 19:06Speaker 11: Well, if I could just give a little bit more,
- 19:09Speaker 11: it's about material.
- 19:12Speaker 4: Incidents.
- 19:13Speaker 11: So if a company lost a factory and that factory
- 19:17Speaker 11: is wiped out, and that factory is material to its operations,
- 19:22Speaker 11: let's say because it's lost to a hurricane. Investors need
- 19:27Speaker 11: to know when they're buying and selling the stock. In
- 19:29Speaker 11: a similar way, if you had a cyber incident that
- 19:33Speaker 11: management determines as material you know, hundreds of millions of
- 19:36Speaker 11: files lost or something or compromised.
- 19:39Speaker 4: Investors benefit from that disclosure.
- 19:43Speaker 10: But giving business is just four days to disclose that.
- 19:46Speaker 11: That's what we have in our rules today currently four
- 19:52Speaker 11: business days if you have, like if that factory you know,
- 19:57Speaker 11: was wiped out by a hurricane, to put out the
- 20:01Speaker 11: material information.
- 20:04Speaker 4: And so that's consistent with rules on the books.
- 20:07Speaker 11: And by the way, many companies have been making such disclosures,
- 20:11Speaker 11: some haven't. It's been fragmented and we thought it was
- 20:14Speaker 11: important to bring some consistency to it around these material events.
- 20:23Speaker 13: Mister chaired, Danny Berger here in London, really wonderful to
- 20:25Speaker 13: speak with you today now on some of your proposals
- 20:28Speaker 13: when it comes to equity market structural reforms. You joined
- 20:32Speaker 13: Bloomberg TV back in March. You said, of market participants,
- 20:36Speaker 13: give us your best advice, tell us what you think.
- 20:39Speaker 7: What did you get.
- 20:40Speaker 13: What was the best advice you got?
- 20:43Speaker 11: Well, we got in terms of equity market structure, thousands
- 20:49Speaker 11: of comments. So I would say that what we're about
- 20:53Speaker 11: at the SEC is trying to drive greater efficiency and
- 20:57Speaker 11: competition in those markets, so when you send an order
- 21:01Speaker 11: into a broker, that you feel that you're getting best
- 21:06Speaker 11: execution in that order, and also that the markets themselves
- 21:12Speaker 11: are competitive. So one of our rules was about sort
- 21:16Speaker 11: of leveling the playing field between the lit markets, the
- 21:21Speaker 11: so called New York Stock Exchange and NASDAK and so forth,
- 21:25Speaker 11: and the wholesalers are dark market, which at times the
- 21:29Speaker 11: dark part of the markets are between a third and
- 21:32Speaker 11: a half of the market. So it's trying to bring
- 21:34Speaker 11: some level the playing field and ensure that investors are
- 21:39Speaker 11: getting best execution in these markets.
- 21:42Speaker 13: What about in terms of the feedback you got, are
- 21:45Speaker 13: you taking any of that on board? Would you change
- 21:47Speaker 13: anything considering what you've heard so far?
- 21:51Speaker 4: Well, we do that as a regular basis.
- 21:54Speaker 11: When we make a proposal, we put it out to
- 21:56Speaker 11: public comment and get feedback. And we put out four
- 22:00Speaker 11: separate proposals for different aspects in the markets, and I
- 22:06Speaker 11: think we've gotten four to six thousand comments on each
- 22:09Speaker 11: of them. So and we naturally consider it and the
- 22:15Speaker 11: staff makes recommendations about adjustments.
- 22:18Speaker 10: Okay, I'd like to discuss another proposed rulemaking that has
- 22:21Speaker 10: received a certain degree of feedback your climate risk disclosures,
- 22:24Speaker 10: specifically as it relates to Scope three emissions. What conversations
- 22:29Speaker 10: are you having around Scope three in particular.
- 22:32Speaker 11: Well, we've heard a lot from the public on this,
- 22:35Speaker 11: but to set the stage, companies today are making disclosures
- 22:39Speaker 11: around climate risk. In fact, well over half of the
- 22:42Speaker 11: top thousand or so companies currently make climate risk disclosures,
- 22:47Speaker 11: including greenhouse gas emission disclosure. So we're trying to bring
- 22:52Speaker 11: consistency to that and yes for investors that they can
- 22:56Speaker 11: compare comparability for that. You asked about one part of
- 23:00Speaker 11: greenhouse gas missions, so called Scope three, which is about
- 23:04Speaker 11: the supply chain and where a lot of the concern lines,
- 23:07Speaker 11: and so we've heard from a lot of commenters about that,
- 23:12Speaker 11: both from issuers and investors.
- 23:16Speaker 4: We understood when we made a proposal.
- 23:18Speaker 11: That this was not as well developed so called disclosures
- 23:22Speaker 11: around supply chain emissions, and so we're taking that into consideration.
- 23:28Speaker 11: And as I just chatted with your colleague, the staff
- 23:32Speaker 11: considers what to recommend upon adoption and whether to make adjustments.
- 23:38Speaker 10: So we could see you change there potentially.
- 23:40Speaker 11: Well, just as in the equity markets that I talked about,
- 23:43Speaker 11: we do take these comments seriously, Kayley. It's a really
- 23:48Speaker 11: rigorous exercise in climate. We got sixteen thousand comments.
- 23:52Speaker 4: So it's a lot to sort of sort through. But
- 23:55Speaker 4: the Scope three issue is one that we've heard significant comments.
- 24:00Speaker 11: Interestingly, we've heard from I think forty eight or forty
- 24:04Speaker 11: nine of the state farm.
- 24:06Speaker 4: Bureaus literally about well, what is this effect? And we
- 24:11Speaker 4: only oversee.
- 24:13Speaker 11: The public companies, the six or seven thousand public companies.
- 24:18Speaker 4: That's it.
- 24:19Speaker 11: We are a disclosure based agency. I often say we're
- 24:24Speaker 11: merit neutral.
- 24:25Speaker 4: We are not. You know, we're not.
- 24:28Speaker 11: This disclosure is about something already happening between investors and issuers,
- 24:34Speaker 11: and it's an important thing to bring consistency. It's not
- 24:38Speaker 11: about those, you know, those farmers and ranchers who thoughtfully
- 24:42Speaker 11: wrote us.
- 24:44Speaker 4: So we've heard.
- 24:45Speaker 10: Okay, I'd like to move to a different topic which
- 24:47Speaker 10: has gotten a lot of attention lately, Crypto, specifically a
- 24:51Speaker 10: ruling that was made in the Ripple case that XRP
- 24:54Speaker 10: is only a security when sold to institutional investors, not
- 24:57Speaker 10: so with retail investors. I know you've previously said you
- 25:01Speaker 10: were disappointed by that ruling. The SEC has also said
- 25:04Speaker 10: that it intends to seek further review. So does that
- 25:07Speaker 10: mean you are going to appeal it? Can you elaborate
- 25:09Speaker 10: on your thoughts around that ruling.
- 25:11Speaker 11: Kayleie, great question, But the Commission, I'm one of five commissioners.
- 25:17Speaker 4: The Commission has not acted on that, and.
- 25:22Speaker 11: If the staff makes a recommendation, we'll have a discussion
- 25:28Speaker 11: of it and we'll take it up then.
- 25:29Speaker 4: But I don't really have anything more on.
- 25:31Speaker 6: You for a you for that.
- 25:33Speaker 13: In the meantime, as we wait for this, what does
- 25:36Speaker 13: it mean for your efforts around crypto, for your efforts
- 25:40Speaker 13: to try to protect the consumer in these areas?
- 25:43Speaker 7: Does it complicate it?
- 25:46Speaker 11: Look this field of crypto investing, a lot of investors
- 25:56Speaker 11: should be aware it's not only a highly speculative asset class,
- 26:01Speaker 11: it's also one that they currently should not assume that
- 26:07Speaker 11: they're getting the protections of the securities laws, even though
- 26:11Speaker 11: the securities laws apply to many of those tokens without
- 26:14Speaker 11: prejudging anyone, but you as investors are not getting the.
- 26:20Speaker 4: Full, fair and truthful disclosure.
- 26:23Speaker 11: And the platforms the intermediaries are doing things that we
- 26:27Speaker 11: would never in a day allow or think the New
- 26:32Speaker 11: York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ would do. The platforms often
- 26:37Speaker 11: are co mingling and trading against you and have market
- 26:40Speaker 11: makers that are on the other side of your trades,
- 26:45Speaker 11: and we don't allow that in the rest of our
- 26:47Speaker 11: securities markets and the securities laws are there to protect you.
- 26:53Speaker 4: And that's right now.
- 26:56Speaker 11: This is a field rife with fraud, rife with huckster
- 27:01Speaker 11: and they're good faith actors as well, but there are
- 27:04Speaker 11: far too many that aren't.
- 27:06Speaker 13: And of course you've brought cases against crypto exchanges on
- 27:10Speaker 13: this point, But do you need to change tactic? Does
- 27:13Speaker 13: it change anything for those cases? Again this XRP ruling.
- 27:18Speaker 11: Again, I'm not going to go into any one ruling,
- 27:23Speaker 11: but I think that the securities laws are clear and
- 27:26Speaker 11: if you're if the public is investing in your project
- 27:31Speaker 11: because they're anticipating profits based upon the efforts of that project,
- 27:37Speaker 11: or there's entrepreneurs congress painted with a broad brush, and
- 27:43Speaker 11: I would ask you this, It's like, when you look
- 27:45Speaker 11: at a token, you can find a website, you can
- 27:48Speaker 11: find a CEO, you can find a Twitter or x feed,
- 27:52Speaker 11: whatever it's called these days. And there are entrepreneurs behind
- 27:58Speaker 11: many of these projects. Without again prejudging any one of
- 28:01Speaker 11: them Elsewhere in.
- 28:02Speaker 10: The crypto space. I'd like to discuss the spot ETF
- 28:05Speaker 10: because we have seen a wave of filings recently recently
- 28:09Speaker 10: from Blackrock and others trying to finally achieve this one
- 28:12Speaker 10: has never been approved in the US, just a futures ETF.
- 28:15Speaker 10: It seems like everyone thinks there has been a tone shift,
- 28:18Speaker 10: that something is different this time around. What do you
- 28:21Speaker 10: make of that wave of recent filings. Has anything actually
- 28:23Speaker 10: changed for the sec.
- 28:25Speaker 4: Kayleye, Probably won't surprise you.
- 28:27Speaker 11: Those filings do ultimately come up to a five member commission,
- 28:30Speaker 11: so I can't prejudge any filing. But back to your colleague,
- 28:34Speaker 11: as I said, this is a field that there's a
- 28:40Speaker 11: lot of non compliance in this field, and that the
- 28:46Speaker 11: platforms themselves where trading is occurring of various crypto tokens.
- 28:54Speaker 11: Though some of it comes under the securities laws, currently
- 28:59Speaker 11: they're not necessarily compliant with those time test of protections
- 29:03Speaker 11: against fraud and manipulation.
- 29:05Speaker 10: Okay, on the subject of securities laws, which obviously is
- 29:08Speaker 10: your purview at the SEC. Just yesterday House Financial Services
- 29:12Speaker 10: Committee passed through committee legislation on crypto market structure that
- 29:15Speaker 10: would actually give more authority in regulating this space. To
- 29:18Speaker 10: the CFTC still has a long way to go if
- 29:21Speaker 10: it were to become law.
- 29:22Speaker 12: But what is your thought on that legislation.
- 29:25Speaker 4: I sort of share my thoughts directly with members on
- 29:29Speaker 4: the way I told them.
- 29:30Speaker 11: I understand your question, Kayley, but I think that those
- 29:33Speaker 11: members on the hill would appreciate if I continue to
- 29:35Speaker 11: share my thoughts directly with them.
- 29:39Speaker 13: Not too dissimilar, mister Tara, I wonder if there's some
- 29:42Speaker 13: degree that you would want a wider scope when it
- 29:46Speaker 13: comes handing down fines to batter actors. Do you think
- 29:49Speaker 13: it would be helpful to have higher finds again in
- 29:52Speaker 13: order to discourage certain behaviors.
- 29:56Speaker 11: I would say this, we have good tools at the
- 29:59Speaker 11: SEC around not just penalties, but also what's called discoragement,
- 30:05Speaker 11: to give back ill gotten gains and so forth. But
- 30:09Speaker 11: if you're asking whether we could use more authorities, I
- 30:15Speaker 11: would say, we need more cops on the beat, We
- 30:18Speaker 11: need more resources. Our agency is just the size we
- 30:21Speaker 11: were in twenty sixteen. We actually shrank, We've kind of
- 30:25Speaker 11: come back, and yet the markets have grown so significantly
- 30:30Speaker 11: in those seven years.
- 30:32Speaker 10: And finally, as you say you need more resources, I
- 30:34Speaker 10: wonder how you feel about the ability of you to
- 30:36Speaker 10: get those things from this Congress, in particular, when you
- 30:39Speaker 10: have certain members of Congress who have said things like
- 30:41Speaker 10: introducing legislation to remove you as chair, referring to tyrannical chairmen,
- 30:47Speaker 10: including the current one, Does it mean it more difficult
- 30:50Speaker 10: to do your job when there's that kind of political
- 30:52Speaker 10: rhetoric out there in your efforts to protect investors.
- 30:56Speaker 11: We work closely with Congress and individual members, and I
- 31:01Speaker 11: look forward to those public debates. I think that we're
- 31:05Speaker 11: really an important agency. The capital markets really wouldn't work
- 31:10Speaker 11: without cops on the beat and rules of the road.
- 31:14Speaker 11: Just you know, think if you're watching soccer matches, if
- 31:19Speaker 11: there were no refs on the field, what would that
- 31:21Speaker 11: soccer match look like? It would look first more like rugby,
- 31:24Speaker 11: and then after a while it would really look worse
- 31:27Speaker 11: and fans wouldn't come to the field anymore or well
- 31:31Speaker 11: most so, I really do think that it's important to
- 31:37Speaker 11: have this agency, and we're part of these well regulated markets.
- 31:44Speaker 6: You're listening to the Team Ken's a live program Bloomberg
- 31:47Speaker 6: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot com,
- 31:51Speaker 6: the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app or listen
- 31:54Speaker 6: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
- 31:58Speaker 1: We're talking about A in the context of financial services,
- 32:02Speaker 1: businesses and markets. It's also a big deal basically for
- 32:05Speaker 1: every other industry out there. And what does it mean
- 32:08Speaker 1: for a lot of these industries and people that work
- 32:11Speaker 1: in the industries, think Hollywood writers. That's come up in
- 32:14Speaker 1: their discussion. Ronie A. Settholm joins us. She is a
- 32:17Speaker 1: managing partner of set Home Law Group. She joins US
- 32:19Speaker 1: life here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Thank you
- 32:22Speaker 1: so much for joining us. So what are some of
- 32:25Speaker 1: the early thoughts within the legal community about AI. I
- 32:29Speaker 1: don't know where this thing goes.
- 32:31Speaker 7: Thank you for having me well.
- 32:33Speaker 14: AI is definitely a hotbed topic and there are so
- 32:36Speaker 14: many issues to discuss.
- 32:37Speaker 7: We don't have time.
- 32:38Speaker 14: We can speak for days. But you know, one thing
- 32:41Speaker 14: that I'm concerned about as an attorney is the use
- 32:44Speaker 14: of AI. While I don't think there's going to be
- 32:47Speaker 14: a nefarious use in this labor dispute, as the technology
- 32:51Speaker 14: becomes more prevalent and accessible, who knows what anyone will
- 32:55Speaker 14: actually be saying. Because once I've captured you know your
- 32:59Speaker 14: image and your tone using AI, I can manipulate it
- 33:03Speaker 14: to say anything, and so this is going to raise
- 33:06Speaker 14: a lot of eyebrows.
- 33:07Speaker 5: And it's going to raise I guess a lot of.
- 33:11Speaker 2: Lawsuits, right, I mean yes, for the legal industry, this
- 33:15Speaker 2: is going to be a big money maker.
- 33:16Speaker 7: It very well can be.
- 33:19Speaker 14: You know, another legal issue that we're talking about is
- 33:23Speaker 14: what kind of intellectual property rights exist when you use AI?
- 33:27Speaker 7: Right now, the answer is.
- 33:28Speaker 14: None, because it only protects original works created by a
- 33:31Speaker 14: human being. And so there's a huge discussion now as
- 33:35Speaker 14: to what is the purpose beyond making money? Of course,
- 33:39Speaker 14: right you create a television show or something else using
- 33:42Speaker 14: AI quickly and you make money when people watch it.
- 33:45Speaker 7: Okay, fine, but do you actually own it?
- 33:48Speaker 6: Yep?
- 33:49Speaker 7: Likely not.
- 33:49Speaker 1: So what are the like for example, just in this
- 33:52Speaker 1: writer's strike. Forget the actors for the moment, but just
- 33:54Speaker 1: the writer's strike. I mean, that's intellectual property that they
- 33:58Speaker 1: have created.
- 33:59Speaker 7: I guess the question is.
- 34:01Speaker 5: There are two issues there.
- 34:02Speaker 2: Right on the one hand, they don't want anyone using
- 34:04Speaker 2: the IP that they've created, Right on the other hand,
- 34:07Speaker 2: they're worried that AI is going to come in and
- 34:09Speaker 2: write new material instead of thanks it.
- 34:13Speaker 14: Yes, exactly, and depending on what their current CBA collective
- 34:18Speaker 14: Bargaining agreement says, they may have already relinquished all rights
- 34:23Speaker 14: to use of those materials you.
- 34:25Speaker 5: Know, they've already written.
- 34:27Speaker 2: I mean, for example, Sarah Silberman wrote a book and
- 34:31Speaker 2: it's been I guess accessed by open ai.
- 34:37Speaker 5: In training. I would guess, yes, that's exactly right. And
- 34:40Speaker 5: so and now she's suing what open ai.
- 34:43Speaker 14: She's suing open ai and meta and it's for copyright
- 34:47Speaker 14: infringement because one of the ways you can infringe upon
- 34:49Speaker 14: copyright is to utilize someone else's work to create a
- 34:53Speaker 14: derivative work or maybe a sequel, you know, in more
- 34:56Speaker 14: common vernacular.
- 34:57Speaker 5: So, but Ronnia, this isn't a breaking new ground. This
- 35:00Speaker 5: isn't you know.
- 35:01Speaker 2: We don't have to create any kind of new framework
- 35:03Speaker 2: to address these issues.
- 35:04Speaker 5: The law is already there and it's clear, Yes, that
- 35:08Speaker 5: is true.
- 35:09Speaker 14: I think some of what is happening now is consumers
- 35:12Speaker 14: are talking about it. Are we as consumers going to
- 35:15Speaker 14: accept these AI generated copies or movies or television shows
- 35:21Speaker 14: or not? Are we as consumer is going to accept
- 35:25Speaker 14: AI generated anything? I mean, this is really a kind
- 35:29Speaker 14: of an existential threat. Almost any job if you think
- 35:32Speaker 14: about it.
- 35:33Speaker 2: But again, those are two issues right on the issues,
- 35:35Speaker 2: We're not going to accept theft if a company uses
- 35:39Speaker 2: copyrighted material and doesn't you know, follow proper procedures there,
- 35:44Speaker 2: i e. Paying some kind of royalties to Sarah Silverman
- 35:48Speaker 2: in this case, that's not okay. On the other hand,
- 35:51Speaker 2: if open ai writes a new comedy special with without
- 35:56Speaker 2: infringing on anyone's copyright, which I don't know how that
- 35:59Speaker 2: would happen because they have to train the model.
- 36:01Speaker 14: But exactly I don't know how that would happen either,
- 36:03Speaker 14: because AI is only as smart as the information you provide.
- 36:08Speaker 5: I so I'm not just talk to myself into understanding
- 36:10Speaker 5: what you were saying.
- 36:11Speaker 7: Glad to feel of help.
- 36:13Speaker 1: So is there sense Runnie that the legal industry. I mean,
- 36:18Speaker 1: hopefully they're going to do better than our regulars in Washington,
- 36:20Speaker 1: But is there any sense that there's Is there any
- 36:22Speaker 1: academic work being done in the legal industry about how
- 36:25Speaker 1: to look at this stuff from a legal perspective?
- 36:28Speaker 7: I think it's extremely exploratory.
- 36:30Speaker 14: So, just like any technology, some use of AI will
- 36:34Speaker 14: be beneficial to all and some of it won't. And
- 36:38Speaker 14: in fact, you're likely using AI now without even knowing right,
- 36:42Speaker 14: because it's part of a lot of systems that you're
- 36:44Speaker 14: currently utilizing. And so I think there has to be
- 36:47Speaker 14: some regulation around how to use it and when not
- 36:50Speaker 14: to use it, and there should be also some contractual
- 36:54Speaker 14: provisions that attorney's right. So I represent some celebrities and
- 36:59Speaker 14: some influencer and when we are working with production companies
- 37:05Speaker 14: or others, they'll ask us to release the likeness, the tone,
- 37:09Speaker 14: the image of the.
- 37:10Speaker 7: Celebrity in perpetuity, in perpetuity and in any medium known
- 37:16Speaker 7: or unknown or soon to be known.
- 37:17Speaker 5: That's a wide scope.
- 37:18Speaker 14: It's a very wide scope. So I think the attorneys
- 37:21Speaker 14: they have a power of a pen. And when the
- 37:23Speaker 14: other side says this is a deal breaker, you should
- 37:25Speaker 14: just take a step back and ask yourself.
- 37:27Speaker 7: Is it really a deal breaker?
- 37:29Speaker 14: Or can we carve out something to keep the integrity
- 37:33Speaker 14: of the image of the person.
- 37:35Speaker 1: Any idea how this act that the writer's strike will
- 37:38Speaker 1: play out, because I'm not sure the Well, if I
- 37:41Speaker 1: were a media company, I'd be saying, hey, guys, I'd
- 37:43Speaker 1: love to give you a cut of the streaming revenues
- 37:45Speaker 1: or whatever. But I don't know what they're going to be.
- 37:47Speaker 2: You know, I don't know how the economic side is unclear.
- 37:50Speaker 2: I heard your interview yesterday with I think she was
- 37:53Speaker 2: the head of a guilt Yeah, yeah, a writer's guild,
- 37:57Speaker 2: and she I mean, her insistence is that these streams
- 38:00Speaker 2: companies are just cashing in hand over fist and making
- 38:02Speaker 2: billions and billions and billions in profits. But as we
- 38:06Speaker 2: know from watching the market move every day, investors aren't
- 38:09Speaker 2: sure about that.
- 38:09Speaker 1: No exactly, so any sense of how this might play out?
- 38:12Speaker 1: It seems like it could go on for a long time.
- 38:14Speaker 14: It can go on for a long time, but I
- 38:16Speaker 14: think as more people feel the pain, they'll have to
- 38:19Speaker 14: be some compromises. Right now, it seems like everyone has
- 38:22Speaker 14: their dukes up yea, and nobody cares about the you know, fringes.
- 38:27Speaker 14: But this strike is not only affecting writers and actors.
- 38:31Speaker 14: It's affecting so many other people in the professional Tangentially.
- 38:35Speaker 2: It reminds me tangentially of the lawsuits we saw flare
- 38:39Speaker 2: up over NFTs. Yes, and I wonder did we ever
- 38:42Speaker 2: sort that out? For example, Quentin Tarantino wanted to make
- 38:46Speaker 2: an NFT.
- 38:47Speaker 5: I think of his script for.
- 38:51Speaker 2: Paul Fiction, right, but the Studio said no, no, no, no,
- 38:53Speaker 2: Hang on a second, we own that script, you know,
- 38:55Speaker 2: even though you have the physical paper copy in his hand.
- 38:58Speaker 2: So there were similar copyright issues coming up around Crypto.
- 39:02Speaker 7: Yes, well, the.
- 39:03Speaker 14: Copyright laws are the same, they're applied across the board.
- 39:07Speaker 14: But again a lot of this can be taken care
- 39:09Speaker 14: of contractually, hence this strike. But here neither side seems
- 39:14Speaker 14: to be communicating very well, and that always ends badly.
- 39:18Speaker 1: All right, Ronnie, thank you so much for joining us.
- 39:20Speaker 1: Lots of issues out there for you guys to figure out.
- 39:23Speaker 1: Ronnie is set Home Managing Partner, set Home Lawgroup.
- 39:26Speaker 6: You're listening to the tape Cat's are live program Bloomberg
- 39:29Speaker 6: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 39:33Speaker 6: tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business App.
- 39:36Speaker 6: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 39:39Speaker 6: flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 39:46Speaker 1: Cam Harvey, he's professor finance down there at the Duke University.
- 39:49Speaker 1: All right, let me explain to how this works at
- 39:50Speaker 1: FUCA when I was there. Here's the grading system pass,
- 39:54Speaker 1: high pass, Superior pass, anything below pass you don't want
- 39:57Speaker 1: to talk about now. On Cam Harvey's class Futures Options.
- 40:00Speaker 1: I think I don't know what it was. It was
- 40:01Speaker 1: something very hard. I didn't say with great comments. I
- 40:04Speaker 1: probably did not get a superior pass. There's chance I
- 40:08Speaker 1: got a high pass. But if I had to put
- 40:10Speaker 1: money on it, I put it pass. Yeah, but that's okay.
- 40:14Speaker 2: Well, and you're not an economist, and what we said,
- 40:16Speaker 2: we still have questions to ask.
- 40:17Speaker 1: You still have questions. What we said back in the
- 40:18Speaker 1: day is twenty p's twenty passes equals sixty g's, which
- 40:22Speaker 1: was the going right on Wall Street for You're in
- 40:23Speaker 1: the NBA, so all you had to do is pass.
- 40:26Speaker 5: That's a really materialistic way to look at in your generation.
- 40:28Speaker 1: That's why expiration because I played golf every day. Hey,
- 40:31Speaker 1: camp professor, thanks so much for joining us here. What
- 40:33Speaker 1: did you take away from boy? We had a lot
- 40:36Speaker 1: of central bank speak over the past couple of days,
- 40:38Speaker 1: with the ECB this morning and the FED yesterday. What
- 40:40Speaker 1: are you taking away from some of these central bankers.
- 40:44Speaker 8: That they fundamentally are misjudging the inflation threat? It is
- 40:51Speaker 8: It is shocking to me that you just need to
- 40:57Speaker 8: look at the data. Look at the most recent inflation release,
- 41:01Speaker 8: which was three percent, and actually the more precise number
- 41:07Speaker 8: was two point nine seven percent. And if you look
- 41:12Speaker 8: at the drivers of inflation, the main driver is shelter.
- 41:17Speaker 8: So shelter is a little over one third of the CPI,
- 41:22Speaker 8: and shelter is running at seven point eight percent. So
- 41:27Speaker 8: let's do some really simple math. The contribution of shelter
- 41:31Speaker 8: to that three percent print is about one third of
- 41:36Speaker 8: seven point eight percent, and that comes to about two
- 41:41Speaker 8: point six percent. So almost ninety percent of the inflation
- 41:46Speaker 8: print was shelter, and shelter is not running at seven
- 41:51Speaker 8: point eight percent. So you look at the data, you
- 41:54Speaker 8: look at rents year over year, you look at housing prices,
- 41:57Speaker 8: it's close to flat or one percent or two percent,
- 42:01Speaker 8: and it's because shelter lags. So that's seven point eight
- 42:05Speaker 8: percent is reflecting stuff from six to nine months ago.
- 42:09Speaker 8: If we use the real data, the inflation is not
- 42:12Speaker 8: three percent, is one point five percent, and it seems
- 42:17Speaker 8: to give the reason that, oh, well, inflation is still there.
- 42:22Speaker 8: It's three percent, that it's not two percent. It's a
- 42:26Speaker 8: false logic, a totally false logic. So this increase that
- 42:32Speaker 8: the FED just did was completely unnecessary. It increases the
- 42:36Speaker 8: risk in many different dimensions that we are pushed into
- 42:42Speaker 8: an unnecessary recession.
- 42:44Speaker 15: So, Professor Harvey, this is Barry Ridults. Let's pretend I'm
- 42:49Speaker 15: in your class at school, and I want to argue
- 42:52Speaker 15: this proposition that the not only have we seen homes
- 42:58Speaker 15: underbuilt since the ear and the financial crisis, but the
- 43:02Speaker 15: FED raising rates as aggressively as they have are actually
- 43:07Speaker 15: making owners' equivalent rent and apartment rentals more expensive. They're
- 43:13Speaker 15: forcing people who would otherwise be home buyers into the
- 43:18Speaker 15: rental market. What's the number, Something like sixty one percent
- 43:22Speaker 15: of homeowners with mortgages are at four percent or less
- 43:26Speaker 15: and they don't want to pay seven and a half
- 43:28Speaker 15: percent more for a mortgage. Should the is the FED
- 43:32Speaker 15: two title ready? Are they accidentally driving owners equivalent rent
- 43:37Speaker 15: and CPI higher?
- 43:41Speaker 16: Yeah?
- 43:41Speaker 8: So, very great points, And you just need to look
- 43:47Speaker 8: at the data. So if you go to Zillow or
- 43:52Speaker 8: red fan, you see that rents year every year are
- 43:56Speaker 8: running at one percent, zero percent been in a negative territory.
- 44:01Speaker 8: There's a big disconnect between what people are paying and
- 44:06Speaker 8: what is in the actual SPI. And we've seen this before.
- 44:10Speaker 8: This is not new. This is the mistake the FED
- 44:13Speaker 8: made initially in thinking that inflation was transitory, that the
- 44:19Speaker 8: numbers that were using for owner's equivalent rent were really
- 44:23Speaker 8: really low, when we could observe in the market that
- 44:27Speaker 8: it was much higher. And there's a reason for these legs.
- 44:32Speaker 8: So the lag makes sense. So if there's rental inflation,
- 44:36Speaker 8: for example, it goes up by ten percent, well that
- 44:40Speaker 8: only hits you if you have to have your lease renewed,
- 44:45Speaker 8: and many people have a longer lease, so that ten
- 44:47Speaker 8: percent inflation wouldn't be realized until you actually renew your lease.
- 44:53Speaker 8: So there's a natural leg. And my point is that
- 44:56Speaker 8: this component, which is driving ninety percent of the current inflation,
- 45:02Speaker 8: that is going to head down. It just takes a while.
- 45:07Speaker 8: And again this is very similar to what we saw
- 45:11Speaker 8: with the so called transitory inflation, that that inflation is
- 45:15Speaker 8: substantially mitigated. And the other point you're making about increasing
- 45:22Speaker 8: the rates causing problems, it's like two sided. So those
- 45:25Speaker 8: that have mortgages that are already attractive, you're correct, that
- 45:32Speaker 8: is the disincentive to move, and it does put pressure
- 45:37Speaker 8: on the rental market. But again looking at the data,
- 45:40Speaker 8: we don't see that rental inflation. We saw it go up,
- 45:45Speaker 8: but now it's down and that partends the future. And
- 45:49Speaker 8: again it undercuts very substantially the fed's logic.
- 45:53Speaker 2: And yes, so, professor, does does this mean that the
- 45:57Speaker 2: FED is going to push us into asion? And I
- 46:02Speaker 2: want to bring in also your yield curve inversion to
- 46:05Speaker 2: the discussion, because I have in front of me the
- 46:07Speaker 2: three month ten year yield curve. We're looking at an
- 46:11Speaker 2: inversion of one hundred and fifty basis points basically, And
- 46:15Speaker 2: I was talking about Jeff Sherman from Double Line earlier.
- 46:18Speaker 2: He thinks that that signal signals a deep recession and he's,
- 46:23Speaker 2: you know, very concerned about it over there.
- 46:25Speaker 5: Is that fair?
- 46:26Speaker 2: Do you think when you look at the history of
- 46:28Speaker 2: this yield curve inversion does it?
- 46:31Speaker 7: Does it?
- 46:32Speaker 5: Is it a good signal for a recession?
- 46:34Speaker 6: Yeah?
- 46:34Speaker 8: So, as you know, this is my dissertation at the
- 46:37Speaker 8: University of Chicago, and at the time pretty good. It
- 46:41Speaker 8: was like four out of four. Now it's eight out
- 46:43Speaker 8: of eight without a fault signal. And we've had this
- 46:46Speaker 8: inversion that is like ten months inversion.
- 46:52Speaker 5: And without a false signal.
- 46:53Speaker 2: Is an important clause because Rick Reader was on with
- 46:57Speaker 2: us the other day from black Rock, and he said,
- 46:58Speaker 2: the yield curve inversion is forecast nine out of the
- 47:01Speaker 2: last three recessions or something like that.
- 47:03Speaker 5: But I think people look at it two.
- 47:06Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, it's totally false, And of course you need
- 47:10Speaker 8: to There could be a part of the yell curve
- 47:14Speaker 8: that you choose that's got a lot of false signals.
- 47:17Speaker 8: I'm talking about what I chose, the ten year minus
- 47:20Speaker 8: three month, and that doesn't have any fault signals yet.
- 47:24Speaker 8: Of course it could be a false signal, but it's
- 47:27Speaker 8: too early to declare a false signal. The lead time varies,
- 47:34Speaker 8: so that's not consistent. So the lead time has been
- 47:38Speaker 8: as short as five months and as long as twenty
- 47:42Speaker 8: two months, so it's too early to tell. But again,
- 47:48Speaker 8: let's not just look at this signal, but look at
- 47:50Speaker 8: the economic logic as to what is happening when you
- 47:55Speaker 8: severely invert the ill curve, and when you averted in
- 48:00Speaker 8: a way where short rates and long rates go up,
- 48:04Speaker 8: then you were stressing the financial system. So an inverted
- 48:09Speaker 8: deal curve is bad for banks because it hits profitability
- 48:13Speaker 8: because they're paying a short term rate and kind of
- 48:16Speaker 8: receiving a long term rate. But when that longer term
- 48:20Speaker 8: rate also goes up, that hits the balance sheet also.
- 48:24Speaker 8: And we've already seen this play out in March in
- 48:28Speaker 8: terms of you know, some banks failing. So this puts
- 48:35Speaker 8: stress on the financial system and it creates other issues
- 48:40Speaker 8: in addition.
- 48:41Speaker 15: So, Professor, given how rapidly the FED has been raising rates,
- 48:46Speaker 15: and given that we've spent so much time at zero
- 48:50Speaker 15: in the last moments we have, how impactful has that
- 48:54Speaker 15: rapidity been to this inverted deal curve?
- 48:58Speaker 8: Yeah, so, the the scale of the inversion is unprecedented
- 49:05Speaker 8: in the data that I've looked at. So of all
- 49:08Speaker 8: of the inversions is number nine, this one is the
- 49:12Speaker 8: largest relative to the long term rate. So we're in
- 49:17Speaker 8: an area of the data that we've never seen before.
- 49:22Speaker 8: And on top of that, the FED is pushed very quickly.
- 49:27Speaker 8: And in January I said, given my look at the
- 49:31Speaker 8: shelter data in inflation, they should stop. They did not stop.
- 49:36Speaker 8: And what they're doing is just increasing the risk of
- 49:39Speaker 8: a hard landing. It seems there calculus is unemployment has
- 49:43Speaker 8: to increase, people have to be thrown out of their job.
- 49:46Speaker 8: That is not necessary. We don't need a reset, all.
- 49:50Speaker 1: Right, Caim, thank you so much for joining us, Campbell Harvey.
- 49:52Speaker 1: He's a professor of finance at the Fucal School of
- 49:54Speaker 1: Business at Duke University. I appreciate getting his thoughts here
- 49:57Speaker 1: on the Central Banks and on the Inverted Yield cover.
- 50:02Speaker 6: You're listening to the tape can Tour live program Bloomberg
- 50:05Speaker 6: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 50:08Speaker 6: tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business app.
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- 50:15Speaker 6: flagship New York station Just say Alexa, play Bloomberg eleven thirty,
- 50:21Speaker 6: What a Deed?
- 50:22Speaker 17: Even deeper into metas earnings reports CEO Mark Zuckerberg, saying,
- 50:26Speaker 17: look quote, we continue to see strong engagement across our
- 50:28Speaker 17: apps with the most exciting roadmap I've seen in a while.
- 50:31Speaker 17: Our investments in AI will continue. We remain fully committed
- 50:34Speaker 17: to the metaverse vision as well. Let's again further with
- 50:38Speaker 17: Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Lee joining us. And it's
- 50:41Speaker 17: not just Mark finding things, exciting investors, analysts, upgrading exciting
- 50:46Speaker 17: economy for the world at large. Today it feels here
- 50:49Speaker 17: in the United States, how excited Susan, are your clients
- 50:53Speaker 17: right now how resilient is this digital ad spending well?
- 50:57Speaker 18: First of all, thank you Ed Andternline for having me at.
- 51:00Speaker 18: It's a pleasure to be with you guys and with
- 51:02Speaker 18: your viewers this morning. You know you noted that we
- 51:04Speaker 18: reported really strong Q two results. We're really happy with
- 51:09Speaker 18: all of our execution efforts across our core user and
- 51:12Speaker 18: engagement metrics. Obviously, the reacceleration in our ad revenue which
- 51:16Speaker 18: we've been talking about and you know which we think
- 51:19Speaker 18: is the is the reflection both of an improvement in
- 51:22Speaker 18: the macroeconomic landscape which the digital ads market is so
- 51:25Speaker 18: closely tied to, along with our own efforts continuing to
- 51:30Speaker 18: invest in and execute on quarters and years of work
- 51:34Speaker 18: in making sure that our ad systems are performing well,
- 51:38Speaker 18: that we're delivering measurable results for our advertisers, and we
- 51:40Speaker 18: really have seen those results bear fruit.
- 51:44Speaker 12: So that's something we're really excited about.
- 51:45Speaker 18: In Q two, we also talked about how our year
- 51:49Speaker 18: of efficiency work is really setting us up for success
- 51:52Speaker 18: going forward.
- 51:53Speaker 12: I think it's put us into a place.
- 51:55Speaker 18: Where we have a leaner cost structure which will serve
- 51:57Speaker 18: us well as we plan for the future, and it's
- 52:00Speaker 18: also enabling us to move faster, to build more and
- 52:03Speaker 18: ship more quickly new products and experiences in service of
- 52:07Speaker 18: what of our customers, and so Mark talked about this
- 52:10Speaker 18: yesterday on the call. Threads is a really good example
- 52:13Speaker 18: of that. It's something that we built with a relatively
- 52:16Speaker 18: smaller team on a tighter timeline, and I think is
- 52:19Speaker 18: a good reflection of the year of efficiency paying off
- 52:23Speaker 18: for us. Finally, the last theme I'd highlight from our
- 52:26Speaker 18: earnings call is around twenty twenty four, we have I
- 52:30Speaker 18: think a lot of compelling opportunities to invest in. We
- 52:33Speaker 18: talked about our AI investments and how that will flow
- 52:36Speaker 18: through and too infrastructure costs. We talked about hiring top
- 52:40Speaker 18: tier technical talent as we evolve our workforce towards a
- 52:43Speaker 18: more technical mix, and then of course our longer term
- 52:46Speaker 18: ambitions and vision for reality labs and for the metaverse.
- 52:50Speaker 16: You know, AI also seen Susan two AI recommendations on
- 52:54Speaker 16: the timeline to have a real impact on engagement, particularly
- 52:59Speaker 16: on the core FACEOK platform. How much is that a
- 53:02Speaker 16: driver behind the forecast for the current period of thirty
- 53:05Speaker 16: four point five billion dollars in sales.
- 53:08Speaker 12: It's a great question.
- 53:10Speaker 18: First, I want to say we have been investing in
- 53:12Speaker 18: AI for a really long time. We often use the
- 53:15Speaker 18: phrase core AI to talk about the work that's been
- 53:18Speaker 18: powering our ranking and recommendations engines, which are really the
- 53:22Speaker 18: foundation of both our organic recommendations for the content that
- 53:26Speaker 18: you see.
- 53:26Speaker 12: Along with the ADS work.
- 53:28Speaker 18: And in particular, one of the big drivers of growth
- 53:32Speaker 18: that's been both strong on our platforms and increasingly incremental
- 53:37Speaker 18: is around recommending content from accounts that you don't already follow.
- 53:41Speaker 18: We often call this unconnected content, and that's been really
- 53:44Speaker 18: good for core engagement trends. And then of course the
- 53:47Speaker 18: AI investments, as we've put GPU capacity towards our ADS,
- 53:51Speaker 18: ranking and recommendation systems have really paid off. So I
- 53:54Speaker 18: think that's really translating both into the results that you've seen.
- 53:58Speaker 18: It's part of what factors and to our guidance, along
- 54:01Speaker 18: with of course a big range of possible macroeconomic outcomes.
- 54:05Speaker 18: At the same time, we're really excited about a newer
- 54:08Speaker 18: opportunity ahead of us in the GENAI space, and that's
- 54:12Speaker 18: really around building compelling new consumer experiences. Mark talked about
- 54:17Speaker 18: some of the things we're working on on the call yesterday,
- 54:20Speaker 18: making it easier for people to create better, more individualized content,
- 54:25Speaker 18: and then of course also making it easier for businesses
- 54:27Speaker 18: to communicate with the consumers that they want to reach.
- 54:31Speaker 12: That is newer for us.
- 54:33Speaker 18: That's not factored into our revenue guidance or our revenue
- 54:36Speaker 18: outlook in any meaningful way, but it's something that we're
- 54:40Speaker 18: really excited about the opportunity to build new and compelling experiences,
- 54:44Speaker 18: and we think it'll be an important part of our future.
- 54:47Speaker 16: Susan, why did Meta change its mind about charging cloud
- 54:52Speaker 16: providers for access to Lama too, I'm not.
- 54:59Speaker 12: Sure what you mean by changed.
- 55:00Speaker 18: By changing our mind, we've made Lama to free and
- 55:04Speaker 18: widely accessible. They're a small handful of really large cloud
- 55:08Speaker 18: providers that we're working on specific arrangements with, but broadly speaking,
- 55:13Speaker 18: we expect this to be free, and we want it
- 55:15Speaker 18: to be accessible to a really to a really wide
- 55:19Speaker 18: range of possible use cases.
- 55:21Speaker 17: Cloud providers, will they be charged anything.
- 55:27Speaker 18: This is a place where, again with very specific cloud
- 55:30Speaker 18: providers who have very large user bases. Again we're working
- 55:33Speaker 18: on specific arrangements with them, but it's not something that
- 55:36Speaker 18: we broadly anticipate charging.
- 55:37Speaker 17: For and of course, we're all waiting to see when
- 55:40Speaker 17: you turn on the money funnel from Threads. I'm interested
- 55:43Speaker 17: as to how much inbound you're getting from clients, how
- 55:47Speaker 17: many want the capacity to start advertising alongside Threads.
- 55:50Speaker 12: At the moment, you know, we're really very pleased with Threads.
- 55:55Speaker 18: It's a new standalone app that you know, we released
- 55:58Speaker 18: earlier this month, and we're where it is in both
- 56:02Speaker 18: user growth terms as well as engagement and retention trends.
- 56:06Speaker 18: Is certainly ahead of where we would have expected for
- 56:08Speaker 18: a brand new standalone app, but it's incredibly early in
- 56:11Speaker 18: its life cycle. This is not something that we expect
- 56:14Speaker 18: that we're going to monetize in the near term. We
- 56:16Speaker 18: know when we launch new consumer experiences that there is
- 56:19Speaker 18: a playbook around all of the product foundation work that
- 56:23Speaker 18: needs to be done, around core features that users will
- 56:26Speaker 18: ask for, being responsive to things that futures users are
- 56:30Speaker 18: looking for in the product, scaling it over time to
- 56:33Speaker 18: a much larger user base, focusing on driving increased engagement
- 56:38Speaker 18: and retention. Those are all things that we're going to
- 56:40Speaker 18: need to do in advance of thinking about monetization. But
- 56:44Speaker 18: it's a playbook that we've executed multiple times and We're
- 56:47Speaker 18: excited for the opportunity to do that again here.
- 56:51Speaker 16: Susan, I think I'm right in saying you a Facebook
- 56:53Speaker 16: employee number four hundred and something, four hundred and eight.
- 56:57Speaker 16: How has the launched a Threads compared internally to bringing
- 57:03Speaker 16: in Instagram, WhatsApp, the launch of the hardware business and quest.
- 57:09Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 57:10Speaker 18: So I joined then Facebook back in two thousand and
- 57:13Speaker 18: eight when they're around four hundred people here, and so
- 57:16Speaker 18: I've seen us launch a lot of things over the
- 57:18Speaker 18: course of that period. Now, some of those examples that
- 57:20Speaker 18: you mentioned, like Instagram obviously were already popular apps when
- 57:24Speaker 18: we acquired them. But I think that over the course
- 57:26Speaker 18: of that time, we've learned a lot of things about
- 57:29Speaker 18: how to bring products to market, thinking about the trade
- 57:32Speaker 18: offs between standalone apps or features within existing apps. We've
- 57:36Speaker 18: learned a lot in our growth playbook and how to
- 57:38Speaker 18: drive engagement and retention, and I think we're going to
- 57:41Speaker 18: bring a lot of those lessons to the way that
- 57:43Speaker 18: we execute against our vision for Threads.
- 57:47Speaker 16: Caroline asked you about the inbound interest your existing advertisers, saying, Hey, Susan,
- 57:53Speaker 16: when can I put something on the Threads platform. I
- 57:55Speaker 16: know you're being conservative and careful about the development, and
- 58:00Speaker 16: that mark emphasize a lot of product work needs to
- 58:02Speaker 16: be done as well. But how do you see the
- 58:05Speaker 16: roadmaps for Threads going, you know, how do you change
- 58:08Speaker 16: the product so it is monetizable.
- 58:12Speaker 18: Well, we're excited obviously that there is interest both in Threads,
- 58:16Speaker 18: the consumer product and of course the eventual prospect of
- 58:19Speaker 18: advertising on it.
- 58:20Speaker 12: But it's really just too early, i think.
- 58:22Speaker 18: To be very specific about what the ads business on
- 58:26Speaker 18: thread will look like in detail. We're really focused on
- 58:29Speaker 18: executing on the consumer experience first, making it a great
- 58:33Speaker 18: and productive and friendly place for people to have public conversations,
- 58:37Speaker 18: growing it to scale, investing in the features that people want,
- 58:41Speaker 18: and we'll get to monetization at the right time.
- 58:44Speaker 17: Of course, us in the media had a field day
- 58:46Speaker 17: thinking about the competitive force that Threads is Visa VX,
- 58:50Speaker 17: and then we think about the competition more broadly, you
- 58:53Speaker 17: versus TikTok, when I'm thinking of the success of reels
- 58:56Speaker 17: of late, when we're actually more broadly thinking about how
- 58:59Speaker 17: Meta makes it self not just the money spinner, but
- 59:02Speaker 17: a culture spinner here where people start trends not just
- 59:06Speaker 17: perhaps copy them from TikTok and bring them on to reels.
- 59:09Speaker 17: Do you feel you've got that now at Meta?
- 59:14Speaker 18: I think that we've been, over the course of the
- 59:16Speaker 18: time that I've been here, you know, constantly focused on innovation,
- 59:21Speaker 18: and I think that we've brought that to bear with
- 59:23Speaker 18: a lot of the experiences in our family of apps.
- 59:25Speaker 18: And at the same time, when there are clear secular
- 59:28Speaker 18: trends in the industry in terms of formats or experiences
- 59:32Speaker 18: that consumers are looking for, we look to integrate those too,
- 59:35Speaker 18: and I think we've done a really good job at
- 59:37Speaker 18: executing on both of those fronts. And then of course,
- 59:40Speaker 18: looking forward, I think we're really excited about the innovation
- 59:44Speaker 18: opportunities ahead of us. With Jenai, we think we're industry
- 59:48Speaker 18: leading here and then of course over the very long.
- 59:51Speaker 12: Term with our vision for reality labs and the Metaverse.
- 59:54Speaker 17: We are of course with the Meta Chief financial Officers
- 59:57Speaker 17: Susan Lee, We're welcome across TV and with our audiences
- 1:00:01Speaker 17: and Susan, I've all started talking about everything apps now.
- 1:00:04Speaker 17: I know you're about the money, not always developing the product,
- 1:00:08Speaker 17: but you think about everything app as Meta as there
- 1:00:10Speaker 17: a race on to ensure that we can build that
- 1:00:12Speaker 17: here in the us, and you'll.
- 1:00:13Speaker 7: Be part of it.
- 1:00:16Speaker 12: It's a great question.
- 1:00:17Speaker 18: I know that there are other regions around the world,
- 1:00:19Speaker 18: in particular Asia, where there are apps that have gone
- 1:00:21Speaker 18: down this model. That's not a model that we have
- 1:00:24Speaker 18: right now. We haven't seen that use case to the
- 1:00:27Speaker 18: same extent in North America. But you know, I would
- 1:00:32Speaker 18: say that we're really invested in the opportunities that we
- 1:00:35Speaker 18: have ahead of us across our family of apps right now,
- 1:00:38Speaker 18: including Threads, which is the newest standalone app in our portfolio.
- 1:00:42Speaker 18: And then there's just a lot that we can do
- 1:00:44Speaker 18: to make the experiences across our family of apps richer
- 1:00:47Speaker 18: and more engaging with the investments that we've made already
- 1:00:50Speaker 18: in AI and especially recommending content that you don't already follow,
- 1:00:54Speaker 18: and we know that that's brought richer content experiences to people,
- 1:00:58Speaker 18: is growing engagement across the apps, and we'll release you know,
- 1:01:03Speaker 18: we'll be releasing features over the course of the next years.
- 1:01:06Speaker 18: But we're really excited about what we think that this
- 1:01:08Speaker 18: is going to bring to bear for the consumer experience
- 1:01:11Speaker 18: and of course also eventually for businesses to connect with
- 1:01:14Speaker 18: consumers across the family of apps too.
- 1:01:17Speaker 16: Susan investors were sanguine about the idea that expenses could
- 1:01:21Speaker 16: creep up. I want if you just tell us what
- 1:01:23Speaker 16: your priorities are, where you'll invest in talent in the metaverse,
- 1:01:28Speaker 16: whether your investments will be on the content side or
- 1:01:30Speaker 16: the hardware side.
- 1:01:33Speaker 12: Great question.
- 1:01:34Speaker 18: We talked about this a little bit on the call
- 1:01:36Speaker 18: yesterday when we gave some coller into the twenty twenty
- 1:01:38Speaker 18: four outlook. The three themes that I really want to
- 1:01:41Speaker 18: talk about there are. First, we expect that our infrastructure
- 1:01:45Speaker 18: costs are going to grow because of the investments we've
- 1:01:47Speaker 18: made in AI, building GPU capacity, you know, that will
- 1:01:51Speaker 18: go towards both the core AI work and the ranking
- 1:01:54Speaker 18: and recommendation engines that I talked about, along with the
- 1:01:57Speaker 18: new GENAI investments. So that's a place where we're investing
- 1:02:00Speaker 18: certainly in a lot of hardware, along with the infrastructure
- 1:02:04Speaker 18: such as data centers and network equipment that you need
- 1:02:06Speaker 18: to support that. The second area that we talked about
- 1:02:09Speaker 18: is we are evolving our workforce toward a more technical mix,
- 1:02:13Speaker 18: you know, and we want to hire top tier technical
- 1:02:16Speaker 18: talent where we can towards some of our most compelling opportunities,
- 1:02:21Speaker 18: including AI and machine learning engineers to work on the
- 1:02:25Speaker 18: AI efforts we talked about, and so that's a place
- 1:02:28Speaker 18: where we are going to be investing, but we're going
- 1:02:31Speaker 18: to be doing it in a very thoughtful way, making
- 1:02:33Speaker 18: sure that we're really focusing on the core priorities and
- 1:02:36Speaker 18: making trade offs we're appropriate. The third thing that we
- 1:02:39Speaker 18: talked about is on the reality lab side. That's certainly
- 1:02:42Speaker 18: a very long time horizon and ambitious vision, and we're
- 1:02:45Speaker 18: going to be investing in deploying capital toward it.
- 1:02:48Speaker 17: The capital coming from that you already have. Are you
- 1:02:51Speaker 17: looking at the bond market, are you looking at raising
- 1:02:53Speaker 17: more funds?
- 1:02:56Speaker 18: You know, we certainly generate enough free cash flow right
- 1:03:00Speaker 18: now for us to invest across the organic opportunities ahead
- 1:03:04Speaker 18: of us that we see that are compelling. We have
- 1:03:08Speaker 18: been raising that we did earlier this year, just as
- 1:03:11Speaker 18: we're evolving our capital structure going forward, and that's something
- 1:03:14Speaker 18: that will continue to look at and I think do
- 1:03:16Speaker 18: on a measured pace going forward. But in terms of
- 1:03:20Speaker 18: thinking about the capital available to us now, you know,
- 1:03:23Speaker 18: we generate a lot of capital that we're always looking
- 1:03:26Speaker 18: to allocate across the organic opportunities that we have, and
- 1:03:29Speaker 18: we've talked about some of those and then of course
- 1:03:32Speaker 18: shareholder returns.
- 1:03:33Speaker 16: Susan really quickly before we lose you. How do you
- 1:03:36Speaker 16: and Mark split up responsibilities at the company. What's it
- 1:03:39Speaker 16: like working with Mark?
- 1:03:41Speaker 18: You know, I've had the privilege of working with and
- 1:03:45Speaker 18: learning from Mark for fifteen years here, obviously as CEO,
- 1:03:50Speaker 18: you know, and as a product visionary. He really shepherds
- 1:03:53Speaker 18: the product roadmap and has defined the long term vision
- 1:03:57Speaker 18: for a lot of the things that we're investing in
- 1:03:59Speaker 18: with incredibly ambitious goals, and I think that's a tremendous
- 1:04:03Speaker 18: and powerful motivator for us, and I try to make
- 1:04:06Speaker 18: sure that we have the financial frameworks and targets that
- 1:04:09Speaker 18: are going to enable us to invest against those things.
- 1:04:12Speaker 18: Innovation isn't free, and that's something that we're very mindful of,
- 1:04:16Speaker 18: and we recognize that, especially against some of our longest
- 1:04:19Speaker 18: time horizon ambitions, we have to earn the right to
- 1:04:22Speaker 18: put capital towards those things in the way that we do.
- 1:04:26Speaker 12: What I will say, having worked with.
- 1:04:27Speaker 18: Mark for such a long time is he's tremendous at
- 1:04:30Speaker 18: adapting to the time that we're in. And so whether
- 1:04:33Speaker 18: that was leading a four hundred person startup when I joined,
- 1:04:37Speaker 18: whether that was overseeing our transition to the public markets
- 1:04:40Speaker 18: during the shift to mobile, or whether that was this
- 1:04:44Speaker 18: past year, helping us really retool our cost structure and
- 1:04:47Speaker 18: the way we operate, and leading on the Year of Efficiency.
- 1:04:51Speaker 18: I think Mark is tremendously good at making hard decisions,
- 1:04:54Speaker 18: at acting on them with conviction and looking forward.
- 1:04:58Speaker 16: Mesa Chief financial Officer, Thank you so much.
- 1:05:04Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can
- 1:05:07Speaker 2: subscribe and listen to interviews on Apple Podcasts or whatever.
- 1:05:11Speaker 5: Podcast platform you prefer.
- 1:05:13Speaker 2: I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller nineteen
- 1:05:16Speaker 2: seventy three.
- 1:05:17Speaker 1: And I'm Faul Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney.
- 1:05:20Speaker 1: Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio.