Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Broadcom Slides After AI Chip Forecast Underwhelms Investors
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
- 0:04Speaker 2: Podcasts.
- 0:05Speaker 3: Radio.
- 0:06Speaker 4: News.
- 0:09Speaker 5: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 0:13Speaker 5: weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android
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- 0:23Speaker 6: Let's get back to the news flow, folks.
- 0:25Speaker 4: I tell you, the news flow does not know that it's,
- 0:28Speaker 4: you know, the Thursday before Labor Day weekend.
- 0:30Speaker 6: It just keeps coming.
- 0:31Speaker 1: You're waiting for a slowdown.
- 0:32Speaker 6: Particularly.
- 0:33Speaker 7: Yeah.
- 0:33Speaker 6: And particularly in the tech space, we've got earnings. We've
- 0:35Speaker 6: got M & A.
- 0:36Speaker 4: Let's check in with Matthew Bloxham, senior media and tech
- 0:38Speaker 4: analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. He's over there in that tech
- 0:41Speaker 4: hub of London, England. Matt, let's talk with Broadcom. Here's
- 0:46Speaker 4: my takeaway from the Broadcom earnings. They predicted a boom
- 0:49Speaker 4: in artificial intelligence chip sales, like what we've been experiencing
- 0:52Speaker 4: over the last several years, predicted a boom in artificial
- 0:55Speaker 4: intelligence chip sales over the next two years, helping to
- 0:59Speaker 4: renew optimism that it can challenge NVIDIA's dominance there. So
- 1:04Speaker 4: this spending cycle, it shows no signs of slowing, does it, Matthew?
- 1:09Speaker 5: It does not.
- 1:10Speaker 8: And obviously what we heard from them was that they
- 1:12Speaker 8: expect both Anthropic and OpenAI to become their most important customers,
- 1:19Speaker 8: eclipsing Google. And that's significant because it shows you that
- 1:25Speaker 8: there's kind of substance behind the plans and capital raising
- 1:29Speaker 8: that these companies are undertaking. But, you know, obviously that
- 1:34Speaker 8: kind of midterm runway does change. is really contingent on
- 1:38Speaker 8: the current momentum continuing. And I think what we're seeing
- 1:44Speaker 8: and the opportunity for Broadcom is very much that these
- 1:48Speaker 8: big hyperscalers don't want to be purely reliant on NVIDIA
- 1:53Speaker 8: for their technology. They're looking to diversify and Broadcom is
- 1:58Speaker 8: going to be an incredibly important partner for them in
- 2:00Speaker 8: that technology diversification.
- 2:02Speaker 3: Yeah. Hawk 10, the CEO is saying we have six
- 2:04Speaker 3: customers and four of them are just simply going to
- 2:06Speaker 3: be huge. So these hyperscalers, when they kind of spread
- 2:10Speaker 3: out their needs across different suppliers, how broadly, how widely
- 2:14Speaker 3: can they spread that out? I mean, they don't want
- 2:16Speaker 3: eight suppliers for their chips, do they? They want to
- 2:19Speaker 3: limit it to a handful.
- 2:22Speaker 8: Yeah, I think there's a balance. And we'll see that
- 2:24Speaker 8: there are also some compete risk vehicles. You know, Google,
- 2:27Speaker 8: as well as being a hyperscaler competitor, is also a
- 2:32Speaker 8: technology competitor, too. So there's a balance to be had.
- 2:36Speaker 8: You know, I think maybe kind of two or three
- 2:39Speaker 8: key suppliers is probably going to be sufficient for most
- 2:42Speaker 8: of them. But you want those two or three suppliers
- 2:44Speaker 8: to be genuinely competitive. you know kind of uh independent
- 2:47Speaker 8: uh and and robust obviously we've had a lot of
- 2:50Speaker 8: supply constraints um in the recent past and you know
- 2:54Speaker 8: that they continue to kind of impact the growth of
- 2:57Speaker 8: the industry um so i wouldn't be surprised that in
- 3:00Speaker 8: the short term there's even some kind of broader diversification
- 3:04Speaker 8: beyond the two or three you know i think there'll
- 3:06Speaker 8: be a core two or three uh but they'll be
- 3:08Speaker 8: looking at uh innovative technology around the edges just to
- 3:12Speaker 8: kind of make sure that they've got as much supply
- 3:15Speaker 8: coming through as they can get their hands on.
- 3:17Speaker 4: Matthew, as this, I guess, AI theme continues to ripple
- 3:22Speaker 4: through the technology space writ large, one of the potential
- 3:26Speaker 4: losers was called out, you know, like a year, year
- 3:28Speaker 4: and a half ago, certain software companies that might be
- 3:30Speaker 4: displaced by AI. I mean, one of them that doesn't
- 3:34Speaker 4: appear to be at all is Snowflake. They reported some really,
- 3:37Speaker 4: really good earnings yesterday. And they talked about using AI-assisted
- 3:41Speaker 4: coding tool, how that's been a big hit for them.
- 3:44Speaker 4: So there's an example, I guess, of a software company
- 3:47Speaker 4: adapting AI to making their products even better.
- 3:50Speaker 6: What did you make of the Snowflake earnings?
- 3:53Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, if I'm honest, I'm surprised at quite
- 3:57Speaker 8: how much the shares have reacted to the results, because
- 4:00Speaker 8: obviously there's a beat on the earnings that they reported
- 4:03Speaker 8: and an upgrade to the guidance for the full year.
- 4:08Speaker 8: It's not that big, if I'm honest, but I guess
- 4:11Speaker 8: it's kind of what you kind of mentioned here is that,
- 4:14Speaker 8: you know, I think there's been a lot of scrutiny
- 4:16Speaker 8: around software companies and their ability to adapt to the
- 4:21Speaker 8: AI opportunity rather than being replaced by it. And I
- 4:24Speaker 8: think what we've seen today in the Snowflake numbers is
- 4:29Speaker 8: that Their execution against AI and adopting it and integrating
- 4:34Speaker 8: it into their software is going incredibly well. And so
- 4:38Speaker 8: I think probably what you're seeing in the share price today,
- 4:40Speaker 8: that it's not just so much about the next two
- 4:44Speaker 8: or three quarters or even the next 12 or 18 months.
- 4:46Speaker 8: It's the view that actually, yeah, you know, they're grasping
- 4:50Speaker 8: this opportunity and it's going to create a kind of
- 4:52Speaker 8: mid to long term opportunity for them that's not fully
- 4:55Speaker 8: appreciated in the numbers yet.
- 4:56Speaker 4: Yeah, it feels like a little bit of a really
- 4:58Speaker 4: for Ali trading today, up 20%, up 60% over the
- 5:02Speaker 4: year to date. But it's almost like even a similar
- 5:04Speaker 4: thing happened to Microsoft when they reported their last quarter.
- 5:07Speaker 4: People said, oh, these guys can grow and adapt and
- 5:11Speaker 4: use AI and all that.
- 5:12Speaker 6: So I think that's case by case. You put up
- 5:14Speaker 6: the numbers and boom.
- 5:16Speaker 1: Also depends on the mood of the market at any
- 5:17Speaker 1: given point.
- 5:18Speaker 3: There's been a lot to be worried about, and that
- 5:20Speaker 3: kind of casts a pall over everything. You've got to
- 5:24Speaker 3: consider all the macro factors, too. Before we let you go, Matthew,
- 5:27Speaker 3: just a quick comment from you on NVIDIA acquiring this
- 5:31Speaker 3: AI platform, Hugging Face. NVIDIA getting into software, is that
- 5:35Speaker 3: a good idea?
- 5:38Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it is. Obviously, NVIDIA is playing this
- 5:41Speaker 8: role of kind of key cheerleader, if you like, for
- 5:46Speaker 8: the whole AI industry and are looking to use their
- 5:49Speaker 8: financial and technological clout to kind of really make sure
- 5:53Speaker 8: that the industry continues to develop in every direction. I
- 5:57Speaker 8: think the kind of critical thing here, there's been a
- 6:00Speaker 8: lot of talk about open source and that Hugging Face
- 6:04Speaker 8: is kind of really the home for open source AI software. And,
- 6:08Speaker 8: you know, I think NVIDIA kind of looks to the
- 6:10Speaker 8: kind of mid to long term and thinks, well, you know,
- 6:12Speaker 8: if we don't play a role in making sure that
- 6:15Speaker 8: the open source community remains strong and vibrant and grows,
- 6:19Speaker 8: then we're going to be left with an industry that's
- 6:22Speaker 8: dominated by a very small number of very large, very
- 6:26Speaker 8: powerful closed source businesses, you know, the likes of OpenAI,
- 6:29Speaker 8: the likes of Intel. anthropic. And that's A, not good
- 6:34Speaker 8: for the industry as a whole, and B, probably wouldn't
- 6:36Speaker 8: be good for NVIDIA because it would create a lot
- 6:39Speaker 8: of concentration of their customers. And as we were talking
- 6:43Speaker 8: about earlier with Broadcom, potentially if they're diversifying away from
- 6:47Speaker 8: NVIDIA technology, that potentially limits the NVIDIA opportunity. So I
- 6:51Speaker 8: think it makes a lot of sense for the industry
- 6:54Speaker 8: as a whole, and it definitely makes a lot of
- 6:56Speaker 8: sense for NVIDIA in terms of protecting the midterm opportunity
- 6:59Speaker 8: for them.
- 7:01Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 7:07Speaker 5: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 7:11Speaker 5: weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android
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- 7:22Speaker 8: All right.
- 7:22Speaker 4: I've been doing the stock market thing for 40 years.
- 7:24Speaker 4: I have no idea what's going on or how this works.
- 7:26Speaker 4: HP Enterprises, for example, But our fiscal third quarter sales
- 7:30Speaker 4: beat estimates. Fourth quarter outlook beat estimates. What's the stock doing?
- 7:35Speaker 6: Down 7%.
- 7:36Speaker 4: No idea what's going on. But the next guest, he
- 7:38Speaker 4: knows what's going on. Wu Jinhou, Senior Technology Analyst for
- 7:40Speaker 4: Bloomberg Intelligence. Wu, what's going on with HPE stock today?
- 7:44Speaker 4: I thought it was a pretty solid quarter all around here,
- 7:46Speaker 4: but I guess the stock's up 100% and you can't
- 7:48Speaker 4: win every day.
- 7:50Speaker 2: Well, hey, Paul. Look, quite frankly, as a head scratcher myself,
- 7:57Speaker 2: in terms, you know, we can't talk about valuations and
- 8:00Speaker 2: stock movements. But the quarter all in all, to your point,
- 8:03Speaker 2: has been very, very good, right? And especially in the outlook.
- 8:06Speaker 2: You know, not only did they raise 26, but they
- 8:11Speaker 2: also raised their preliminary fiscal 2027 growth outlook because the
- 8:16Speaker 2: fundamentals are so strong. And, you know, quite frankly, you know,
- 8:22Speaker 2: investors should be a little bit happier than the way
- 8:24Speaker 2: they're reacting today.
- 8:27Speaker 3: Yeah, HPE's report followed blowout results from Dell, who it
- 8:30Speaker 3: competes against in those AI servers, and, of course, AI
- 8:33Speaker 3: chipmaker NVIDIA, kind of the poster child for the AI boom,
- 8:38Speaker 3: really raised the bar. How much of this is tied to,
- 8:41Speaker 3: you know, Paul saying that the stock has done tremendously well?
- 8:45Speaker 3: I look at total return, which includes dividends, 257% over
- 8:49Speaker 3: the last five years. And then if you just look
- 8:51Speaker 3: over the past one year, 114% total return. I mean,
- 8:56Speaker 3: the stock has priced in a lot.
- 8:59Speaker 2: Well, look, hey, Scarlett, so I will tell you that
- 9:02Speaker 2: there's a couple things going on, right? Dell's $ 25 billion.
- 9:07Speaker 2: Guidance increase was definitely a tough act to follow, right?
- 9:10Speaker 2: So I guess investors were expecting a similar follow through
- 9:13Speaker 2: to that, but they're not. But if we also look
- 9:16Speaker 2: at it from a valuation standpoint, Scarlett, relative valuation, I
- 9:21Speaker 2: think Dell is trading at roughly 18 times forward earnings.
- 9:26Speaker 2: HPE is roughly around 14 times. So there is a discount.
- 9:31Speaker 2: I will tell you that there's a couple of things
- 9:33Speaker 2: going on. HPE doesn't have as big of an AI
- 9:36Speaker 2: server exposure as Dell does. Quite frankly, it's probably one
- 9:42Speaker 2: fifth of that, if not smaller, of Dell's. And that
- 9:45Speaker 2: could be somewhat of a valuation drag because at the
- 9:49Speaker 2: end of the day, even though it is a low
- 9:51Speaker 2: margin business, it throws off a lot of operating cash
- 9:54Speaker 2: flow if they can get into the right deals.
- 9:57Speaker 4: Hey, Wooj, when you look across the portfolio of products, services,
- 10:00Speaker 4: HB provides the marketplace, are you comfortable with that? Is
- 10:03Speaker 4: the street comfortable with that? Or are there areas where
- 10:05Speaker 4: they need to either invest or maybe buy?
- 10:08Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I like the portfolio where it stands right now, right?
- 10:13Speaker 2: They've had a stated goal of focusing more on profitability,
- 10:16Speaker 2: and they made the acquisition of Juniper last year, and
- 10:21Speaker 2: that is going to be a margin boost. And the
- 10:22Speaker 2: way Antonio ended his earnings call was that, hey, they
- 10:26Speaker 2: consider themselves more of a networking company more so than
- 10:30Speaker 2: anything else. Where I'm most critical of HPE is that
- 10:35Speaker 2: they also own Cray computers, and that really should have
- 10:39Speaker 2: opened the door for them to be a market leader
- 10:41Speaker 2: in these multi-billion, hundreds of billions of dollars of AI
- 10:47Speaker 2: server deals. And I really think that management has missed
- 10:52Speaker 2: on that. And they continue to stand the course on
- 10:55Speaker 2: going for higher margin AI server deals. And quite frankly,
- 10:58Speaker 2: that was an opportunity missed.
- 11:00Speaker 6: Gotcha.
- 11:01Speaker 3: You mentioned networking equipment kind of being what it does,
- 11:06Speaker 3: and the AI servers as a smaller part of their business.
- 11:10Speaker 3: HPE also announced this partnership with Oracle to provide networking
- 11:13Speaker 3: equipment to Oracle's data centers. Is that a risk, given
- 11:18Speaker 3: that at least credit investors look at Oracle kind of skeptically?
- 11:23Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's one of the knocks on the deal. But,
- 11:26Speaker 2: you know, I think it should be OK for the
- 11:28Speaker 2: next couple of quarters. There's a couple of things here, Scarlett,
- 11:31Speaker 2: that I think investors were focused on. There was some
- 11:36Speaker 2: sort of secular financing. HPE issued some warrants as part of,
- 11:41Speaker 2: you know, related to the partnership with Oracle. And I
- 11:45Speaker 2: looked at the 10Q filing today, and thank you, Paul,
- 11:48Speaker 2: for having us read the 10Qs. But, you know, 4
- 11:53Speaker 2: million shares were tied to that deal. So, you know,
- 11:58Speaker 2: from a dilution standpoint, it's really not a big deal.
- 12:01Speaker 2: You know, we have to trust Oracle to go on
- 12:05Speaker 2: and continue on with some of these deals. And at
- 12:07Speaker 2: the end of the day, HPE should be able to
- 12:09Speaker 2: get its money.
- 12:10Speaker 6: So, which we've now had, I don't know, 24 hours
- 12:12Speaker 6: to digest that conversation.
- 12:14Speaker 4: News out of Dell that they're taking their guidance up
- 12:17Speaker 4: a monster amount that we've really never seen before. When
- 12:20Speaker 4: you talk to institutional investor clients, how are they putting
- 12:22Speaker 4: that into context these days? Because that was just a
- 12:25Speaker 4: monster print from Dell yesterday.
- 12:27Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the thing. It's a monster print and
- 12:29Speaker 2: they're trying to, you know, the trade has been long Dell,
- 12:35Speaker 2: short HPE. And I don't view this as a binary
- 12:38Speaker 2: type of outcome, right? I do think that Dell is
- 12:41Speaker 2: going to do its thing and they're going to win.
- 12:43Speaker 2: I think there may have been some share shifts that
- 12:45Speaker 2: have gone on based on Dell's results. But at the
- 12:48Speaker 2: end of the day, HPE is going on this phenomenal
- 12:50Speaker 2: growth run on the traditional server business. And given that
- 12:54Speaker 2: they've been able to give out 2027 guidance, it's going
- 12:56Speaker 2: to be durable. Now, when you had me on before,
- 13:01Speaker 2: you asked about the cyclicality of the traditional server business.
- 13:05Speaker 2: What we're seeing from corporates is that they're looking to
- 13:08Speaker 2: upgrade their IT infrastructure to help support AI workloads inside
- 13:17Speaker 2: the corporates and lower the token costs. So that's going
- 13:20Speaker 2: to help HPE in my mind.
- 13:21Speaker 7: All right.
- 13:22Speaker 6: So here's my.
- 13:23Speaker 4: dumb question of the day, but this was actually my
- 13:25Speaker 4: job at one point when I was a youngster on
- 13:27Speaker 4: the equity.
- 13:27Speaker 6: Capital markets desk.
- 13:28Speaker 4: I would call our companies, our clients, that had a
- 13:31Speaker 4: $ 500 stock price and say, hey, are you interested in
- 13:34Speaker 4: a stock split? We think you should do a stock
- 13:36Speaker 4: split here, blah, blah, blah, blah. What does Dell say
- 13:39Speaker 4: about that? Do they even talk about that or they
- 13:41Speaker 4: don't mind a $ 500 handle on their stock?
- 13:44Speaker 2: Look, if, you know, Berkshire Hathaway can get away with,
- 13:48Speaker 2: you know, thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars stock,
- 13:51Speaker 2: why can't Dell?
- 13:52Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a good point. If I'm Michael Dell, I
- 13:54Speaker 6: would say, hey, if Warren can do it, I can
- 13:56Speaker 6: do it to do it. It's a high class problem
- 13:58Speaker 6: to have. Woojin Ho, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
- 14:00Speaker 4: Busy couple of days for you with some of these
- 14:02Speaker 4: big tech companies reporting earnings.
- 14:03Speaker 6: Appreciate getting some of your time.
- 14:05Speaker 4: Woojin Ho, folks, he's Senior Technology Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence
- 14:08Speaker 4: working at our Princeton office.
- 14:11Speaker 1: Stay with us.
- 14:12Speaker 5: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this. You're listening
- 14:18Speaker 5: to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at
- 14:22Speaker 5: 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with
- 14:25Speaker 5: the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get
- 14:28Speaker 5: your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
- 14:31Speaker 6: All right, Scarlett, I just learned a new term today.
- 14:35Speaker 6: Semi-scratch cooking.
- 14:38Speaker 1: Do we do it?
- 14:39Speaker 4: I don't know, but our next guest can help us
- 14:41Speaker 4: out here. Diana Rosado-Pena, Consumer Staples Analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 14:46Speaker 6: What is... semi-scratch cooking.
- 14:49Speaker 4: And if I want to play it in the stock market,
- 14:51Speaker 4: how do I do that? Yes.
- 14:52Speaker 7: So basically it is based off of what Campbell's has said. It's,
- 14:57Speaker 7: it's basically when you cook a meal in less than
- 15:02Speaker 7: 30 minutes and with less than five ingredients. So they're
- 15:05Speaker 7: positioning themselves, this is Campbell's soup in terms of like,
- 15:10Speaker 7: you know, with their soups and condensed soups and all
- 15:13Speaker 7: of that. to make it easier for you to, you know,
- 15:17Speaker 7: do that and, you know, save time and money.
- 15:20Speaker 6: I guess.
- 15:21Speaker 1: So you're kind of cooking, but in a very truncated way.
- 15:24Speaker 2: Yes.
- 15:25Speaker 1: And you can feel some sense of accomplishment from that. Exactly.
- 15:29Speaker 3: But how does that match up with this current demand
- 15:32Speaker 3: for protein and healthy foods? I mean, condensed soup has
- 15:36Speaker 3: a lot of sodium, for instance.
- 15:37Speaker 4: Yes.
- 15:37Speaker 7: Yes, but they are hoping that because of, you know,
- 15:42Speaker 7: the fact that you add your own ingredients as well,
- 15:45Speaker 7: then you kind of.
- 15:46Speaker 3: So I'll add organic milk to my cream of mushroom
- 15:48Speaker 3: and that'll make it better.
- 15:49Speaker 7: Like some protein in that. They're also coming up with
- 15:52Speaker 7: like new products. lines with added protein, especially for like
- 15:57Speaker 7: drinkable soup and stuff like that. But, you know, cooking
- 16:00Speaker 7: is now it's like half of their meal, uh, meal
- 16:04Speaker 7: and beverages, uh, segment sales. So it seems that it's, it's,
- 16:08Speaker 7: it's growing for them.
- 16:10Speaker 6: It's, but they just reported earning some disappointing results.
- 16:13Speaker 8: Yes.
- 16:13Speaker 4: And then they also cut their dividend, uh, cut 13%
- 16:17Speaker 4: of salaried workforce.
- 16:18Speaker 6: What's going on here with Campbell's soup company?
- 16:21Speaker 7: So basically, the biggest issue is snacks. Snacks is a
- 16:26Speaker 7: very challenged segment for them, particularly on chips or salty snacks,
- 16:33Speaker 7: which is, you know, we have seen in the past
- 16:35Speaker 7: year salty snack sales as the category. It has slowed down.
- 16:41Speaker 7: People are more conscious about what they're eating. You know, dieting,
- 16:45Speaker 7: GLP-1 might play into that as well. And also, it
- 16:50Speaker 7: has become really aggressive in terms of pricing. I mean,
- 16:53Speaker 7: PepsiCo has 60% of their products. the salty snacks market.
- 16:57Speaker 7: So definitely that seems to be working against them, against Campbell's.
- 17:01Speaker 1: So Paul is a big fan of goldfish.
- 17:03Speaker 3: Every day around 10, 18 p.m., he goes upstairs and
- 17:07Speaker 3: gets a cup of goldfish. And Campbell's has done a
- 17:10Speaker 3: pretty good job with reviving sales of goldfish.
- 17:13Speaker 1: What did it do with the goldfish line?
- 17:15Speaker 7: So they're actually starting to, it's been marketing, it's been
- 17:21Speaker 7: packet sizes, it's been they're going to introduce a goldfish gluten-free.
- 17:26Speaker 7: So all those, they're really trying to get into what
- 17:31Speaker 7: the trends for nutrition are about, and they're following them.
- 17:36Speaker 1: Macho-flavored goldfish, Paul. Oh, I don't know about that.
- 17:41Speaker 4: Campbell's Soup Company. IPO-ed November 16th, 1954. How about that?
- 17:48Speaker 1: That is a moment in time.
- 17:50Speaker 6: How cool is that? Based in Camden, New Jersey.
- 17:52Speaker 1: I was waiting for the New Jersey reference. We got it.
- 17:55Speaker 4: What does a company say they want to be when
- 17:57Speaker 4: they grow up? I mean, there's been so much consolidation
- 18:00Speaker 4: in this industry. They've been around forever.
- 18:02Speaker 7: Yeah.
- 18:04Speaker 4: Is there still any kind of family connection or anything
- 18:06Speaker 4: like that that says we're just going to stay independent forever?
- 18:09Speaker 6: In a consolidating world, what do they want to be?
- 18:12Speaker 7: Well, I think they want to, at least we're hoping,
- 18:17Speaker 7: is to bring shareholder returns. And they seem to be
- 18:21Speaker 7: committed with that. But not necessarily this year. Like you said,
- 18:26Speaker 7: they slashed dividend interest. This is the third company that
- 18:30Speaker 7: has done that this year after Conagra and B & G. And,
- 18:34Speaker 7: you know, a consumer staples company cutting dividends is... It's
- 18:38Speaker 7: a significant red flag as I will see it. You know,
- 18:42Speaker 7: you don't have a lot of growth. So share buybacks
- 18:46Speaker 7: and dividends are, you know, you're bread and butter and
- 18:49Speaker 7: you're not necessarily doing that. So, yeah, they're hoping they
- 18:54Speaker 7: save $ 170 million annually that is going to go to
- 18:59Speaker 7: debt repayment.
- 19:01Speaker 3: So it feels like Campbell's is at the center of
- 19:03Speaker 3: a lot of trends that are overtaking it and societal trends,
- 19:07Speaker 3: whether it's GLP-1, whether it's people being more healthy, people
- 19:10Speaker 3: wanting to cook, but with limited ingredients and unlimited time margins.
- 19:15Speaker 1: What about tariffs? How do tariffs affect a company like
- 19:18Speaker 1: Campbell's Soup? Well, they affect them significantly.
- 19:20Speaker 7: They did not mention it this quarter, but tariffs on
- 19:25Speaker 7: steel has been a significant headwind for them. And that
- 19:30Speaker 7: is obviously something that they're working through. They actually expect
- 19:36Speaker 7: COGS for fiscal 2026 to be about 5% to 6% greater.
- 19:40Speaker 1: Cost of goods sold.
- 19:41Speaker 7: Yes, exactly. And obviously, they are going to increase prices
- 19:46Speaker 7: in 60% of their portfolio around the same 4% to 5%.
- 19:51Speaker 7: So price increases, they are willing to sacrifice some volume
- 19:56Speaker 7: on that. The elasticity is significant compared to others.
- 20:00Speaker 6: All right.
- 20:01Speaker 1: Favorite Campbell's soup when you're a child?
- 20:03Speaker 5: Flavor.
- 20:05Speaker 7: Chicken noodle soup. Is that lame?
- 20:07Speaker 3: I like chicken with stars because I thought the stars
- 20:10Speaker 3: were cute.
- 20:11Speaker 6: I'm a Manhattan clam chowder guy.
- 20:13Speaker 1: I like cream of mushroom.
- 20:15Speaker 6: Solid. We had that stacked.
- 20:18Speaker 4: Apocalypse was coming. We had so much of that in
- 20:21Speaker 4: our house. Again, I was the last of four children.
- 20:25Speaker 4: Cooking food wasn't really on the agenda for the rent.
- 20:27Speaker 1: You're hungry? Have some Manhattan clam chowder. Go for it.
- 20:30Speaker 4: Or goldfish.
- 20:31Speaker 5: This is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
- 20:36Speaker 5: and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each weekday,
- 20:40Speaker 5: 10 a.m. to noon Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn,
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