Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / GE to Buy Consolidated Precision Products for $11.75 Billion
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts.
- 0:05Speaker 2: Radio.
- 0:06Speaker 3: News.
- 0:09Speaker 4: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 0:13Speaker 4: weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android
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- 0:23Speaker 5: I had an M & A trade here today that
- 0:26Speaker 5: I think got the attention of a lot of folks.
- 0:28Speaker 5: General Electric, GE. to buy consolidated precision products for $ 11. 75 billion.
- 0:35Speaker 5: I have no idea what consolidated precision products does for
- 0:38Speaker 5: a living, but our next guest does. George Ferguson joins us.
- 0:41Speaker 5: He covers all the airlines, all the aerospace companies. George,
- 0:45Speaker 5: first of all, I was talking earlier this morning to
- 0:47Speaker 5: John Tucker. I can't remember the last time GE made
- 0:50Speaker 5: a major acquisition. I've spent the last 20 years hearing
- 0:53Speaker 5: about all the stuff they're divesting.
- 0:55Speaker 6: Good point.
- 0:55Speaker 5: Here's GE buying it. George, talk to us about this deal.
- 0:57Speaker 5: What's GE doing here?
- 0:59Speaker 6: Yeah, they have, like you said, largely been divesting and
- 1:02Speaker 6: turning themselves into a pure play arrow. This looks to
- 1:05Speaker 6: me like GE is going out and buying into their
- 1:09Speaker 6: supply chain. My guess is they're looking for obstacles to
- 1:13Speaker 6: building more engines and more engine parts because everybody's having
- 1:17Speaker 6: a problem right now getting the throughput they want. And look,
- 1:21Speaker 6: I think it probably sets GE up for the potential,
- 1:27Speaker 6: maybe even to take more share on this generation of
- 1:31Speaker 6: jet engines. So one of the big challenges right now
- 1:35Speaker 6: for the air framers, Boeing and Airbus, especially Airbus, is
- 1:39Speaker 6: getting enough engines to build aircraft and deliver to customers.
- 1:43Speaker 6: Both of them have backlogs that are about a decade long,
- 1:48Speaker 6: definitely drive well into the 2030s because it's not a
- 1:51Speaker 6: sequential backlog. But Airbus keeps asking RTX to give them
- 1:55Speaker 6: more engines so they can make more new aircraft. RTX
- 2:00Speaker 6: keeps begging that off right now because they're in the
- 2:03Speaker 6: midst of trying to fix their problems with their geared
- 2:06Speaker 6: turbofan engine. This could give GE the opportunity to build
- 2:10Speaker 6: more LEAPs, which is their next generation engine, deliver into
- 2:14Speaker 6: Airbus potentially, which wants to go to 75 a month
- 2:17Speaker 6: for the A320 and take even more share in the
- 2:21Speaker 6: current cycle of the aircraft business.
- 2:24Speaker 5: Okay.
- 2:24Speaker 2: I also have to get used to the fact that
- 2:26Speaker 2: GE is actually GE Aerospace, which, you know, kind of
- 2:29Speaker 2: requires me to, you know, rewire my brain a little bit,
- 2:32Speaker 2: but GE Aerospace to fund this deal with $ 7 billion
- 2:35Speaker 2: in cash, the remainder in new debt. You mentioned that
- 2:38Speaker 2: it's solidifying its supply chain. Does that mean that regulators
- 2:43Speaker 2: might jump in and look at this, um, with some skepticism?
- 2:47Speaker 7: Look, I, I, yeah, I, I don't, I think regulators
- 2:51Speaker 7: will absolutely look at it, um, I can't tell you
- 2:55Speaker 7: what the supply chain for precision casters look like. But
- 3:00Speaker 7: what we hear from GE, because it is a private company,
- 3:03Speaker 7: what we hear from GE is they are a supplier
- 3:05Speaker 7: to the industry. So I'm almost certain you're going to
- 3:09Speaker 7: see some, you know, some judicial oversight whether or not
- 3:13Speaker 7: there's too much concentration there.
- 3:15Speaker 5: I had the DES function on the Bloomberg terminal for
- 3:17Speaker 5: consolidated precision products. They manufacture precision metal castings for the
- 3:22Speaker 5: aerospace defense and power generation industries. That seems like right
- 3:26Speaker 5: up George's alley, like manufacturing aerospace. And they're located in
- 3:31Speaker 5: the city of Industry, California.
- 3:32Speaker 1: I don't know where that is, but Southern California, I believe.
- 3:35Speaker 1: Southern California.
- 3:36Speaker 5: OK. So, George, while we've got you on the horn here, Boeing,
- 3:40Speaker 5: I got to ask, I mean, where are we on
- 3:43Speaker 5: deliveries of 737s? That's all I know about the Boeing story.
- 3:46Speaker 5: I'm sticking with that strategy. Tell me what the delivery
- 3:49Speaker 5: situation looks like for the 737.
- 3:50Speaker 6: Well, so I have to tell you, it's been a
- 3:53Speaker 6: busy morning here in aerospace, right? Airbus reported their deliveries.
- 3:59Speaker 7: Yesterday.
- 4:00Speaker 6: So they tried to sneak them in on Labor Day.
- 4:01Speaker 6: And they were a bit weak. And Boeing just announced
- 4:04Speaker 6: something as we were going on the air. So honestly,
- 4:07Speaker 6: I have not seen it. I will tell you that
- 4:10Speaker 6: Boeing has been doing better than Airbus. We looked at
- 4:13Speaker 6: Airbus August numbers. Airbus is going to have to build
- 4:17Speaker 6: 75 A320s per month till the end of the year
- 4:21Speaker 6: to get to their guidance for A320s. They've never done
- 4:24Speaker 6: that every four months sequentially. Again, Boeing's been having a
- 4:28Speaker 6: better time at it, but Boeing's coming from, you know,
- 4:31Speaker 6: from the easier end of the curve, I'd say, because
- 4:34Speaker 6: they're not sort of approaching those, approaching the levels they
- 4:38Speaker 6: were delivering prior to the pandemics. But we'll be on
- 4:41Speaker 6: Boeing here in a minute. It's been kind of a,
- 4:43Speaker 6: it's been a busy airspace.
- 4:44Speaker 3: Exactly.
- 4:44Speaker 5: Well, I'll give you the Bloomberg News reporting. Boeing delivered
- 4:47Speaker 5: 51 commercial aircraft in August, its lowest number in four months,
- 4:50Speaker 5: as output of the wide-body 787 Dreamliner dropped Importantly for me,
- 4:55Speaker 5: because I listen to you and I read your research,
- 4:57Speaker 5: the 737 type aircraft, they delivered 42.
- 5:01Speaker 8: So there you go.
- 5:02Speaker 5: So everybody's reporting their deliveries.
- 5:04Speaker 6: Which isn't bad. 47 is what their target is, and
- 5:07Speaker 6: it's August, right?
- 5:08Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 5:09Speaker 6: So we know August is light, but the question is,
- 5:11Speaker 6: what's the setup for the end of the year?
- 5:13Speaker 7: We'll be looking at that shortly.
- 5:15Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 5:22Speaker 4: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast.
- 5:25Speaker 1: Catch us live weekdays at 10 a.m.
- 5:27Speaker 4: Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg
- 5:30Speaker 4: Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts
- 5:34Speaker 4: or watch us live on YouTube.
- 5:37Speaker 2: Let's turn back to the tech sector because we can't
- 5:39Speaker 2: stray too far away from it. There have been a
- 5:41Speaker 2: couple of deals, an actual deal and then a non-deal
- 5:45Speaker 2: this morning in the tech sector. You have Qualcomm making
- 5:49Speaker 2: a deal with Amazon, but then you also have Anthropic
- 5:52Speaker 2: walking away from a purchase. So we had to bring
- 5:55Speaker 2: in Mandeep Singh. He is our global head of tech
- 5:57Speaker 2: research here at Bloomberg Intelligence. Mandeep, let's start with Anthropic.
- 6:01Speaker 2: Our reporting shows that it has decided to walk away
- 6:04Speaker 2: from a $ 6 billion purchase of Descartes AI, which is
- 6:07Speaker 2: an AI startup. What does that say about what Anthropic
- 6:12Speaker 2: wants to do or can do before it goes public?
- 6:15Speaker 3: Well, right now, you know, we've seen these companies are
- 6:19Speaker 3: super active when it comes to just partnerships and any deals.
- 6:23Speaker 3: NVIDIA hugging face was a big deal last week. And
- 6:28Speaker 3: to my mind, I mean, Anthropic really has a lot
- 6:30Speaker 3: going right for them. And it is about plugging whatever
- 6:34Speaker 3: gaps they have. So in this case, this company does
- 6:37Speaker 3: chip optimization. And we know Anthropic has the most premium
- 6:42Speaker 3: tokens in the market. So when it comes to the
- 6:44Speaker 3: token pricing, they are able to charge a premium. And
- 6:47Speaker 3: if they are able to optimize the infrastructure that they
- 6:51Speaker 3: run on, that makes sense. But obviously, they didn't agree
- 6:54Speaker 3: on something. We don't know what it was. I don't
- 6:58Speaker 3: think it would be the price, given Anthropic really has
- 7:01Speaker 3: the deep pockets now to make any acquisition. So it
- 7:04Speaker 3: was something, I think, more strategic in terms of aligning.
- 7:07Speaker 3: And this company did get an offer from NVIDIA, Descartes,
- 7:12Speaker 3: and they turned down the offer. But to my mind,
- 7:15Speaker 3: Anthropic has done everything organically. And look, they have the
- 7:19Speaker 3: best coding agents, so they could code anything if they
- 7:21Speaker 3: wanted to.
- 7:23Speaker 5: Are we expecting them to come public and when?
- 7:26Speaker 9: It could be as soon as this week.
- 7:27Speaker 3: Again, I don't know the exact details on when they
- 7:33Speaker 3: will file the S-1, but there are rumors it could
- 7:36Speaker 3: be as soon as this week or next.
- 7:38Speaker 5: All right, so here's a Qualcomm deal. They're the largest
- 7:42Speaker 5: maker of smartphone processors, Qualcomm is. They signed up Amazon.com
- 7:46Speaker 5: as a data center chip customer. That's good news, I think,
- 7:49Speaker 5: for Qualcomm. But what's even better, they gave Amazon the
- 7:53Speaker 5: right to acquire as much as $ 4 billion in shares.
- 7:56Speaker 5: What's going on there? Is this another one of your
- 7:58Speaker 5: circular deals, Mandip, that I'm worried about?
- 8:00Speaker 3: I mean, look, at this point of time, all the
- 8:03Speaker 3: chip companies, especially the ones that are not NVIDIA. So
- 8:07Speaker 3: AMD ended up doing a similar warrant structure with OpenAI
- 8:11Speaker 3: and Meta. And I'm not surprised Qualcomm being the new
- 8:15Speaker 3: player on the block when it comes to the data
- 8:18Speaker 3: center market, which is in trillions of dollars. And everyone
- 8:21Speaker 3: knows that. So Qualcomm being a more consumer device centric
- 8:25Speaker 3: chip player wants to expand in data center. And what
- 8:29Speaker 3: better way to do it than partner with Amazon? And
- 8:32Speaker 3: they had to give Amazon some incentive. So in this case,
- 8:35Speaker 3: it was the warrant. I mean, the existing shareholders may
- 8:38Speaker 3: complain and say, why are they diluting the existing shareholders?
- 8:43Speaker 3: But to my mind, strategically, it makes a ton of
- 8:45Speaker 3: sense and it gives Qualcomm, some skin in the game
- 8:48Speaker 3: when it comes to this large data center market.
- 8:50Speaker 2: And investors seem to agree because there's no fear of
- 8:53Speaker 2: dilution showing up in the share price today. Qualcomm is
- 8:55Speaker 2: up about 5% in trading. Amazon obviously not putting all
- 9:00Speaker 2: its chips with Qualcomm, right? I mean, it's spreading out.
- 9:02Speaker 2: It's not risk, but it's definitely... Relying on a number
- 9:07Speaker 2: of different suppliers.
- 9:08Speaker 3: Yeah, and they make their own chips. So right now,
- 9:10Speaker 3: the real limiting factor is the fab capacity. So what
- 9:15Speaker 3: kind of TSMC allocation can you get? So Amazon has
- 9:19Speaker 3: its own allocation. NVIDIA has prepaid for 70% plus of
- 9:23Speaker 3: TSMC's capacity for the foreseeable future. So how do you
- 9:27Speaker 3: make more chips? You got to partner with whoever is remaining.
- 9:31Speaker 3: So it's your Qualcomm's, your AMD's, and you know, whoever
- 9:34Speaker 3: is remaining there.
- 9:35Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 9:42Speaker 4: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 9:46Speaker 4: weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android
- 9:49Speaker 4: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
- 9:53Speaker 4: you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
- 9:57Speaker 5: Our tech team, research team at Bloomberg Intelligence which Mandeep
- 10:00Speaker 5: Singh and Anurag Rana.
- 10:02Speaker 1: It keeps growing.
- 10:03Speaker 5: Yeah, thankfully, we get some new voices. I'm sick and
- 10:05Speaker 5: tired of talking to those guys. I mean, they're pretty
- 10:07Speaker 5: good and all, but I want some new voices. Fresh perspective. Yeah,
- 10:11Speaker 5: Derek Mogul joins us here. He's the technology analyst for
- 10:13Speaker 5: Bloomberg Intelligence. I recently joined the team. Appreciate it. Talk
- 10:17Speaker 5: to us about AI storage. Are your companies, are they
- 10:21Speaker 5: riding this AI wave? And if so, how are they
- 10:23Speaker 5: doing that?
- 10:24Speaker 3: Oh, well, they are.
- 10:25Speaker 10: So with AI, inference is actually driving storage from a
- 10:28Speaker 10: passive capacity to more active extension of memory. So it's
- 10:33Speaker 10: creating an enormous amount of active data, but this data
- 10:36Speaker 10: has to be accessed repeatedly and concurrently. So basically what's
- 10:40Speaker 10: going on is that's overwhelming DRAM and HBMs What's HBM?
- 10:44Speaker 5: High bandwidth memory.
- 10:47Speaker 10: So it's overwhelming these memory sources, and it's actually flowing
- 10:50Speaker 10: into other layers of storage. So this is creating huge demand,
- 10:54Speaker 10: and it's creating what we call a memory and storage hierarchy.
- 10:58Speaker 10: So you have HBM and DRAM at the top of
- 11:00Speaker 10: the pyramid, and then as data flows down, it flows
- 11:03Speaker 10: down into Flash, and then it flows down to HDD.
- 11:05Speaker 10: So it's reinvigorating the storage industry for sure.
- 11:08Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 11:09Speaker 2: It seems like any company that's modestly involved in memory
- 11:12Speaker 2: chips has just, you know, the stock has gone haywire
- 11:15Speaker 2: over the last couple of months.
- 11:16Speaker 1: You do a lot of work on this.
- 11:18Speaker 2: Your modeling points to almost five times growth in storage
- 11:21Speaker 2: spending by 2030.
- 11:22Speaker 1: And all of that is just part of the whole
- 11:24Speaker 1: build out of AI infrastructure?
- 11:26Speaker 9: Yeah, that's exactly right.
- 11:27Speaker 10: So it really comes down to more data being created
- 11:31Speaker 10: by AI and The data being costing more to store.
- 11:35Speaker 10: So we do model about 25% CAGR in the underlying
- 11:38Speaker 10: BIT demand growth through 2030. And this is really based
- 11:41Speaker 10: on the supplier guidance. And I mean, we've all heard
- 11:43Speaker 10: about these LTAs. LTAs are now spanning out to the 2030s.
- 11:46Speaker 1: Long-term agreements.
- 11:47Speaker 6: Long-term agreements, sorry.
- 11:48Speaker 1: Yep.
- 11:49Speaker 10: And then compounding that is ASPs. So storage has historically
- 11:53Speaker 10: been a deflationary industry, but we're seeing price increases for
- 11:55Speaker 10: the first time in decades. So if you add two
- 11:58Speaker 10: and two together, yeah, that's 5x increase in the storage TAM.
- 12:01Speaker 6: All right.
- 12:02Speaker 5: Let's be honest. You were born on third base. You
- 12:04Speaker 5: thought you hit a triple. Look at some of these
- 12:06Speaker 5: names on your list. Seagate Technologies, Western Digital, Micron. These
- 12:10Speaker 5: things are up like 100, 200% this year.
- 12:12Speaker 1: It's like flashback to the 90s.
- 12:14Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 12:14Speaker 5: I mean, so what's going on with these names? Are
- 12:17Speaker 5: people just trying to, are they just sensing that there's
- 12:20Speaker 5: going to be demand for these products?
- 12:22Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 12:22Speaker 10: Like really for like next several years? I mean, these
- 12:26Speaker 10: guys are guiding as such. I mean, they're guiding sustained
- 12:28Speaker 10: bit demand into the 2030s. And they're talking about LTAs
- 12:32Speaker 10: going out. I mean, Western Digital, I believe, talked about
- 12:34Speaker 10: LTAs out to 2032.
- 12:36Speaker 5: So as an analyst, as an investor, you have some
- 12:38Speaker 5: visibility on revenue, right?
- 12:41Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 12:41Speaker 10: I mean, it's up massively, especially on the flash side.
- 12:44Speaker 10: I mean, ASPs in flash are up three to four
- 12:46Speaker 10: X this year alone that compounds upon 20, 25% bid growth.
- 12:49Speaker 10: I mean, that, that, I mean, those are enormous numbers.
- 12:54Speaker 2: So for a company like Western Digital, trading at 36
- 12:57Speaker 2: times earnings, I mean, this, like you said, once upon
- 13:00Speaker 2: a time was a very cyclical company, and the products
- 13:03Speaker 2: it made were, you know, they just kind of went
- 13:04Speaker 2: down in price overall. Is that expensive for Western Digital,
- 13:08Speaker 2: 36 times earnings?
- 13:09Speaker 10: It is expensive, but again, the company is now guiding
- 13:12Speaker 10: to 25% demand bid growth through 2030. 10 points of that,
- 13:18Speaker 10: I estimate, is from AI alone. So they do get
- 13:21Speaker 10: some upside from the AI.
- 13:21Speaker 6: I'll just add a quick comment.
- 13:26Speaker 2: Seagate trading at 59 times reported earnings.
- 13:29Speaker 5: But you look to the forward earnings, that multiple's cut
- 13:32Speaker 5: in half 25 times. So again, like we saw with NVIDIA,
- 13:36Speaker 5: these companies are earning their way into their multiples. So
- 13:39Speaker 5: it's just amazing. Is your business, like one of the
- 13:42Speaker 5: first things I learned about your business, which is the
- 13:44Speaker 5: hardware side of tech, is it's cyclical and you got
- 13:47Speaker 5: to get the cycle right. Is it still cyclical these days?
- 13:50Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great question.
- 13:52Speaker 10: So the way I see it is the storage industry
- 13:54Speaker 10: has bifurcated into the legacy cyclical industry. So it's cell
- 13:57Speaker 10: phone storage, PC storage. That still rides the normal cycles,
- 14:01Speaker 10: like high highs and low lows. But I would say
- 14:04Speaker 10: on the AI side, it seems like it's more sustained.
- 14:07Speaker 1: It's less cyclical.
- 14:08Speaker 10: Of course, it could crash at some point. But for
- 14:11Speaker 10: the time being, I mean, we're seeing long-term demand and
- 14:13Speaker 10: sustained demand.
- 14:14Speaker 5: Okay.
- 14:14Speaker 1: What could cause it to crash?
- 14:16Speaker 10: Well, I mean, number one, I mean, this can cause
- 14:18Speaker 10: the whole market to crash if hyperscalers stop spending. I mean,
- 14:22Speaker 10: that's the bottom line.
- 14:23Speaker 5: And we haven't seen or heard any of that, have we?
- 14:25Speaker 10: No, there's no inkling of that at the current moment.
- 14:28Speaker 10: I mean, if you think about it, are we going
- 14:30Speaker 10: to use less and less AI? Are you going to
- 14:32Speaker 10: use chat GPT less? No, I mean, you're going to
- 14:34Speaker 10: continue to use it, and I think it'll continue to proliferate.
- 14:37Speaker 10: Enterprises are using it more and more, Claude. So, I mean,
- 14:40Speaker 10: over time, I think you can make a strong case
- 14:42Speaker 10: that demand will hold up.
- 14:44Speaker 1: So for these stores.
- 14:45Speaker 2: For these storage companies that are seeing so much more demand,
- 14:49Speaker 2: will they need to spend more as well in order
- 14:51Speaker 2: to meet this demand?
- 14:53Speaker 10: Yeah, that's a great question. So on the flash side,
- 14:56Speaker 10: they are increasing capacity. I mean, prices are up 3
- 15:00Speaker 10: to 4x just due to the insufficiency of supply. So
- 15:03Speaker 10: they are ramping new facilities, and they should come online
- 15:06Speaker 10: in the 2028 through 2030 timeframe. And of course, they're
- 15:08Speaker 10: spending massive amounts of CapEx on that. The HDD players
- 15:11Speaker 10: are taking a more measured approach. So they're not actually
- 15:14Speaker 10: increasing supply through increasing manufacturing capacity, but what they're doing
- 15:18Speaker 10: is just increasing the aerial density of the platters, like
- 15:21Speaker 10: the spinning disc platters in their HDDs.
- 15:24Speaker 1: Stay with us.
- 15:25Speaker 4: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this. You're listening
- 15:32Speaker 4: to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at
- 15:35Speaker 4: 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with
- 15:38Speaker 4: the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get
- 15:41Speaker 4: your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
- 15:45Speaker 5: Here's the first story I read when I got in
- 15:47Speaker 5: the car at 4.40 a.m. this morning. It's about Millennium,
- 15:50Speaker 5: the big hedge fund. I thought they were big. I
- 15:52Speaker 5: had no idea how big Izzy and his folks are
- 15:55Speaker 5: there at Millennium. nearing $ 100 billion in assets under management.
- 16:00Speaker 5: Just blew me away. That's the subject of our big
- 16:02Speaker 5: take story on the Bloomberg Tribune. You know how we
- 16:04Speaker 5: love the big take stories. I got a green bee,
- 16:06Speaker 5: which I think is important for the reporters on the story.
- 16:08Speaker 5: I like to call that out. Hema Parmar joins us here.
- 16:11Speaker 5: She co-wrote this with Catherine Burton. Hema, talk to us
- 16:14Speaker 5: about Millennium Management, one of the biggest, or I think
- 16:17Speaker 5: the biggest hedge fund out there in the world. What
- 16:19Speaker 5: is your reporting?
- 16:20Speaker 1: Discover.
- 16:21Speaker 3: It's big.
- 16:22Speaker 1: It's huge.
- 16:22Speaker 8: It's swelled in size, as the industry has as well.
- 16:28Speaker 8: And now they're at $ 97 billion, making it the world's
- 16:31Speaker 8: second biggest hedge fund.
- 16:32Speaker 9: They're close to.
- 16:33Speaker 8: Topping $ 100 billion soon enough. There's no plans to slow down.
- 16:37Speaker 8: He's raising $ 22 billion. On top of that, he's planning
- 16:43Speaker 8: to potentially in talks to raise another $ 3 billion for
- 16:46Speaker 8: an illiquid credit fund.
- 16:48Speaker 9: There's a lot happening.
- 16:49Speaker 8: Soon enough, within a few years, it wouldn't be a
- 16:51Speaker 8: surprise for Millennium to run more than $ 130 billion.
- 16:54Speaker 5: It's extraordinary. I mean, a lot of managers will tell you,
- 16:58Speaker 5: I'm capping the size of my book because I can't
- 17:01Speaker 5: generate the returns with more capital. There's only so many
- 17:05Speaker 5: names out there.
- 17:05Speaker 4: How does.
- 17:07Speaker 5: Mr. Englander, known on the street as Izzy. How does
- 17:10Speaker 5: he kind of deal with that? How does he set
- 17:11Speaker 5: up his firm?
- 17:13Speaker 3: Yes.
- 17:13Speaker 8: So this idea of being capacity constrained, where you get
- 17:16Speaker 8: so big that it now impedes returns. This has been
- 17:20Speaker 8: felled a number of hedge funds. It's something that we
- 17:23Speaker 8: see across the space. A lot of other multistrats have
- 17:26Speaker 8: either capped their size or some firms have given money back. Bridgewater,
- 17:31Speaker 8: which was the world's biggest hedgerow for a long time,
- 17:34Speaker 8: they had their performance curbed because they grew too big
- 17:37Speaker 8: and had to shrink their pure alpha fund so that
- 17:41Speaker 8: they can get back on track. What Izzy's done with
- 17:44Speaker 8: his firm is is managed to avoid this capacity-constrained problem.
- 17:49Speaker 9: And the way he's done that is by having his.
- 17:52Speaker 8: Fund do so many different types of strategies, by spawning
- 17:56Speaker 8: this movement to invest in outside hedge funds. So now
- 18:00Speaker 8: they invest a hedge fund investing in another hedge fund.
- 18:03Speaker 8: And now they're even plugging in full businesses like Bobby
- 18:06Speaker 8: Jane's Jane Capital, which has seven business lines and 400
- 18:11Speaker 8: staff of its own to really spread out all the
- 18:14Speaker 8: investments across different things. And so they've built this kind
- 18:19Speaker 8: of new, more complicated model to be market neutral, but
- 18:23Speaker 8: to have a ton of money and a ton of
- 18:26Speaker 8: things invested across all these little, little siloed pods that
- 18:30Speaker 8: trade independently.
- 18:31Speaker 3: Wow.
- 18:32Speaker 5: Now, Izzy Englander, the founder of this firm, he's 77
- 18:36Speaker 5: years old. Has he discussed succession planning at all?
- 18:39Speaker 7: Yes.
- 18:39Speaker 8: So the firm recently, I think last year or so,
- 18:43Speaker 8: sold an equity stake. It was the first time that
- 18:46Speaker 8: Izzy had given up some of his equity stake. He
- 18:47Speaker 8: was basically a full owner of the firm. and sold
- 18:51Speaker 8: about 15% of it. This was one of many things
- 18:54Speaker 8: the firm has done to be more institutional, so that
- 18:57Speaker 8: when Izzy steps back, or as he ages, the firm
- 19:02Speaker 8: can still continue.
- 19:03Speaker 9: And we see that through the.
- 19:05Speaker 8: Creation of an office of the CIO, which, as this group,
- 19:09Speaker 8: they make decisions for the firm. And you see that
- 19:12Speaker 8: the firm in general is no longer... a smaller pawn shop, right?
- 19:16Speaker 8: They are this now big institution in the industry. You
- 19:19Speaker 8: see that with the size. You see that with the
- 19:21Speaker 8: way the firm is run. You see that with the
- 19:23Speaker 8: new things they're doing. And so the firm should live
- 19:28Speaker 8: on beyond Izzy's participation in the firm.
- 19:32Speaker 9: And that's the whole goal, that it sustains.
- 19:34Speaker 5: You know, back in my day, so let's call it
- 19:36Speaker 5: late 90s, early 2000s, wasn't that uncommon for somebody to
- 19:40Speaker 5: have a good three, four year run on the city
- 19:42Speaker 5: currency desk or the Morgan Stanley Bond desk and go
- 19:45Speaker 5: out and raise a billion or two and start their
- 19:46Speaker 5: own hedge fund? Does that still happen in a world where...
- 19:49Speaker 5: Millennium has a hundred billion in assets under management?
- 19:52Speaker 1: It's a lot harder.
- 19:52Speaker 8: I mean, it's been hard to launch a hedge fund
- 19:55Speaker 8: for years. And you see some people like Bobby Jane
- 19:58Speaker 8: raise five billion for his hedge fund. Even he had
- 20:01Speaker 8: his own struggles. What you're seeing now is a PM
- 20:05Speaker 8: have to think about Do I start my own firm,
- 20:08Speaker 8: have my name on the shop, raise money independently, and
- 20:12Speaker 8: try to make it?
- 20:13Speaker 9: Or do I now take this other door, which.
- 20:16Speaker 8: Is potentially allow myself to take money from Millennium, be
- 20:21Speaker 8: an external pod? In some cases, you do get your
- 20:23Speaker 8: own name on the door, right? And you are.
- 20:26Speaker 9: Allowed to take on outside capital as well.
- 20:29Speaker 8: Sometimes Millennium will demand exclusivity. And then you are faced
- 20:33Speaker 8: with those same risk constraints that Izzy's famous for.
- 20:36Speaker 5: One of the greatest business models on global Wall Street
- 20:39Speaker 5: is 2 in 20. You get 2% fee on assets
- 20:43Speaker 5: under management. You get 20% of the upside. If I
- 20:46Speaker 5: do the math for Mr. Engler, $ 100 billion, that's $ 2
- 20:51Speaker 5: billion a year of just management fees. That is extraordinary.
- 20:55Speaker 1: It's extraordinary.
- 20:56Speaker 8: And then when you think about multistrats, they have pass-through fees.
- 20:59Speaker 8: So they make the investor, the LP... pay for basically
- 21:03Speaker 8: the cost of running the firm. It could be the
- 21:06Speaker 8: terminal cost, the PM salaries, which are so expensive, the
- 21:11Speaker 8: costs of desks and chairs and tables, printer paper. You
- 21:15Speaker 8: can really pass through so many of those expenses onto
- 21:19Speaker 8: the investor. And look, investors really care about the net return.
- 21:22Speaker 8: So Izzy has a track record of producing annual returns
- 21:26Speaker 8: of at least 10%. And that's what the goal is.
- 21:30Speaker 8: But the expenses on top of that are pretty incredible.
- 21:35Speaker 8: The 10% return typically is net of fees. So they
- 21:38Speaker 8: would have had to have done.
- 21:38Speaker 7: 20% or more.
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