Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / 7-Eleven Owner Gets Buyout Offer
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- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
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- 0:25Speaker 4: All right, we'll get an M and a trade here today,
- 0:27Speaker 4: which I think it's near and dear to a lot
- 0:28Speaker 4: of folks that are particularly through seven eleven fans. I'm
- 0:31Speaker 4: a wah wah guy myself.
- 0:32Speaker 5: Crystal cover that story as well this morning. I mean
- 0:35Speaker 5: seven to eleven has the Icy, which I like versus
- 0:39Speaker 5: the Slurpie.
- 0:40Speaker 6: What's the slur The Slurpy is? I think.
- 0:45Speaker 5: Grainier? You know, the Icy is a lot smoother. Yep,
- 0:48Speaker 5: And I'm a bigger fan of the Icy. Had one
- 0:50Speaker 5: last night that my drive home from Gray State of Ohio.
- 0:53Speaker 6: You were in Ohio? Yeah, what'd you drive?
- 0:56Speaker 5: I drove back in my Dodge Challenger RT scat pack
- 0:59Speaker 5: wide body on I eighty. Yeah that's a good cruiser.
- 1:02Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. Diana Rossettopania joints us here in our studios.
- 1:07Speaker 4: She's a Bloomberg Intelligence consumer Staples Anos who is couch
- 1:11Speaker 4: Tard and why are they buying seven eleven for thirty
- 1:14Speaker 4: one billion dollars.
- 1:15Speaker 7: Well, Cushtard is the second largest convenience store in the
- 1:22Speaker 7: United States. They manage circle K, yes, and.
- 1:27Speaker 5: That's why they have a French name that sounds funny
- 1:30Speaker 5: to American years.
- 1:31Speaker 7: Yes, it took me actually a while to be able
- 1:33Speaker 7: to pronounce their name. But yeah, so they're very inquisitive.
- 1:38Speaker 7: We're not that surprised that they are, you know, their stocks,
- 1:44Speaker 7: that they want to buy something. But sevent eleven is
- 1:47Speaker 7: actually a big name. There's valuations going from like fifty
- 1:52Speaker 7: billion dollars to as much as like eighty five billion dollars.
- 1:56Speaker 7: So for them to be able to do that, it's
- 1:59Speaker 7: it's quite impressive. If they are able to.
- 2:02Speaker 5: It's always surprising, I think to people who aren't in
- 2:05Speaker 5: the know that seven to eleven is owned by a
- 2:08Speaker 5: Japanese holding company, and I think they own Speedway as well.
- 2:11Speaker 5: These seem like such American brands. So does Circle K
- 2:15Speaker 5: and it's owned by a Canadian company. Is there going
- 2:18Speaker 5: to be anti trust issues here?
- 2:21Speaker 7: Well, for sure, the FDC, I mean, ask Kroger. They
- 2:24Speaker 7: have been trying to purchase Albertson's for a couple of
- 2:27Speaker 7: years now. So if they actually come up with the
- 2:30Speaker 7: numbers and there's acceptance, I'm sure the FDC will have
- 2:33Speaker 7: something to say. Seven eleven has like about fourteen percent
- 2:37Speaker 7: of market share in the United States, whereas Skushtar with
- 2:41Speaker 7: their Circle K brand, they have about five percent. So
- 2:44Speaker 7: it definitely will be you know, up for again.
- 2:48Speaker 6: I'm a wah wah guy, but you know I can.
- 2:50Speaker 5: See is wah wah just like a New Jersey.
- 2:52Speaker 6: No, no, but it is.
- 2:53Speaker 7: What is it's the It's in the Northeast. There's mostly
- 2:56Speaker 7: in the Northeast. So but yeah, there's.
- 2:58Speaker 4: Explained to me this convenient store business. What's the economics
- 3:02Speaker 4: of a convenience store?
- 3:03Speaker 6: I just see people going in and out all the time.
- 3:05Speaker 6: What's the economics?
- 3:06Speaker 7: Well, basically, they want you to go in for your gas.
- 3:10Speaker 7: They're very competitive in gas prices. Fuel margins have been
- 3:14Speaker 7: improven in the past few years. Kush Star actually has
- 3:18Speaker 7: about forty cents per gallon in terms of fuel margins.
- 3:22Speaker 7: But what they're making money on is when you go
- 3:25Speaker 7: into the store, particularly if you buy their sandwich sandwiches.
- 3:29Speaker 7: The margins for that is like fifty percent.
- 3:32Speaker 6: It's true.
- 3:33Speaker 5: I was, by the way, I was filling up on
- 3:34Speaker 5: the way there and back for more than four dollars
- 3:38Speaker 5: and fifty cents a gallon.
- 3:39Speaker 6: O because you're putting in the super duper high.
- 3:41Speaker 5: I go with ninety three, and then I go in
- 3:44Speaker 5: and I pick up a Snickers bar for my kid brother,
- 3:48Speaker 5: and I got I don't know, like a TwixT. Each
- 3:51Speaker 5: of those candy bars was more than two dollars and
- 3:54Speaker 5: fifty cents.
- 3:55Speaker 6: That's margin there.
- 3:56Speaker 5: And I'm starting to feel like a really old man,
- 3:57Speaker 5: you know, because when I was a kid, fifty cents
- 4:01Speaker 5: is what you paid for these things.
- 4:02Speaker 6: So are these good businesses?
- 4:03Speaker 7: I mean, oh yeah, if they're buying, I'm sure you know.
- 4:08Speaker 7: They they they think that there's some good business. I mean,
- 4:11Speaker 7: Kushtart has Usually they they do big acquisitions. The last
- 4:15Speaker 7: acquisition that they did was for eleven billion dollars for
- 4:19Speaker 7: the total energy is in the in Europe, but they
- 4:24Speaker 7: usually in the US they usually buy smaller operators. For example.
- 4:29Speaker 7: Also this morning they announced that they bought get Go
- 4:31Speaker 7: from Giant Eagle. So that's another convenience store which is
- 4:35Speaker 7: in the you know, with.
- 4:36Speaker 5: The delicious cold pork sandwich by the way.
- 4:38Speaker 7: Oh well, I actually haven't tried it.
- 4:41Speaker 5: Yeah, I had one to go this weekend. H where's
- 4:42Speaker 5: the get go? I had them in Pennsylvania.
- 4:45Speaker 7: Yeah, it's it's regional.
- 4:47Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, all.
- 4:48Speaker 6: Right, it's the Midwest. It's part of the world.
- 4:49Speaker 3: I don't go to.
- 4:50Speaker 5: I skipped the what's the one you like the cracker barrel?
- 4:52Speaker 4: Cracker barrel, I declined, But you probably drove through past
- 4:56Speaker 4: like one hundred of them month.
- 4:57Speaker 5: Yes, yes, a lot of that. And I used to
- 4:58Speaker 5: always stop because you get a books books on tape
- 5:01Speaker 5: at one and then you'd return it at the next
- 5:05Speaker 5: But you know, longer.
- 5:05Speaker 4: What else were seeing in your space than in a
- 5:07Speaker 4: retail space? What are some of the key things people
- 5:09Speaker 4: are looking atuse you cover a.
- 5:10Speaker 7: Lot of retail, Yeah, I mean, obviously, this is like
- 5:13Speaker 7: the biggest thing that has happened today.
- 5:17Speaker 5: It's one of the biggest deals of the year, right well, yeah,
- 5:20Speaker 5: even Dollars puts it like number two.
- 5:23Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, obviously the Kruger Albertson's acquisition. It's also
- 5:28Speaker 7: the talk of the town. There's like likelihood that it
- 5:31Speaker 7: might not happen. The FDC might object So what.
- 5:33Speaker 4: Are we going to hear about that deal, because we've
- 5:34Speaker 4: been talking about Kruger's and Albertson's for a long time.
- 5:37Speaker 7: Yeah, honestly, like it really depends on, you know, what
- 5:40Speaker 7: happens with the election and how you know, M and
- 5:46Speaker 7: A friendly the FDC will be afterwards, all.
- 5:48Speaker 4: Right, Well, seven to eleven by the numbers, and this
- 5:50Speaker 4: is according to Bloomberger reporting eighty five thousand stores. That's huge,
- 5:55Speaker 4: and they've got one hundred and fifty seven thousand employees.
- 5:58Speaker 6: That's a big business. Yeah, you know cushcharges.
- 6:00Speaker 4: I mean it's cure Start's got a bigger valuation fifty
- 6:04Speaker 4: eight billion dollars valuation versus thirty eight for the seven
- 6:07Speaker 4: and eleven, so much higher valuation using that stock in cash,
- 6:11Speaker 4: I guess to get bigger.
- 6:12Speaker 7: Yeah, I think, you know, definitely, I mean, obviously I
- 6:15Speaker 7: see this as an Asia play, to be honest with.
- 6:18Speaker 5: You, which we've seen more and more and more of, right,
- 6:21Speaker 5: I mean, if you look at activists investors involved in
- 6:25Speaker 5: Japanese stocks, for example, it goes from fifteen and twenty
- 6:29Speaker 5: twenty two to twenty five last year to twenty eight
- 6:33Speaker 5: so far this year, and we're only in the first half.
- 6:35Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean seven eleven has like thirty one percent
- 6:38Speaker 7: of the Asia Pacific market share.
- 6:40Speaker 6: So yeah, now we're talking.
- 6:41Speaker 4: Now we're talking, Diana, Thank you so much for joining us. Diana, Orstopena,
- 6:46Speaker 4: another one I hired back in today. She's blossomed into
- 6:49Speaker 4: this great analyst. Very cool to see consumer staples analysts
- 6:52Speaker 4: Bloomberg Intelligence joining us in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio,
- 6:56Speaker 4: not mailing it in from like Nantucket or dear Value.
- 7:01Speaker 5: Work from home.
- 7:02Speaker 6: Yeah, so BI Management, we know what's going on.
- 7:07Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
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- 7:21Speaker 2: say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 7:25Speaker 4: All right, our good friend Carl Icon in the news,
- 7:28Speaker 4: but I don't think for reasons he wants to be.
- 7:30Speaker 4: Crystal c joins us Bloomberg US Deals reporter Crystal. What's
- 7:34Speaker 4: going on with our good friend Carl Icon? He had
- 7:36Speaker 4: some some issues with the SEC.
- 7:38Speaker 8: I think, yeah, I think he's probably quite glad about
- 7:41Speaker 8: today's news This is like coming to an end something
- 7:44Speaker 8: that's hungover, like hangover his head on its friends for
- 7:47Speaker 8: a while. Today's news is that Hits firm and him
- 7:51Speaker 8: are settling a charge with the SEC and paying a
- 7:54Speaker 8: fine of two million dollars combined. And that is an
- 7:57Speaker 8: investigation on the back of the Hindenburg recent report from
- 8:01Speaker 8: twenty twenty three saying that they've inflated some of their
- 8:03Speaker 8: asset values and quote unquote operate like a ponse scheme.
- 8:07Speaker 8: So this is actually in some way good news, even
- 8:11Speaker 8: though the stock doesn't quite reflect that today.
- 8:13Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 8:13Speaker 5: No, the stock took a hit I think was last
- 8:16Speaker 5: year in May when we first learned about these investigations,
- 8:19Speaker 5: and short sellers started questioning what carl Icon's loans were
- 8:25Speaker 5: really based on. Does this wrap it up? Is this
- 8:29Speaker 5: the end of it?
- 8:31Speaker 8: It looks like the end of it. So there are
- 8:32Speaker 8: two investigations, if you remember this. One is the SEC
- 8:35Speaker 8: investigation at settlement. The other one they had previously disclosed
- 8:39Speaker 8: that they were contacted by the US Attorney's Office, and
- 8:42Speaker 8: today they put out a statement IEP and I competitive
- 8:45Speaker 8: statement saying that they haven't received any substantive communication from
- 8:50Speaker 8: the US Attorney's office since the initial approach, so they,
- 8:55Speaker 8: I guess you can take it as a good sign
- 8:57Speaker 8: no news and sometimes good news and off us reporter,
- 9:00Speaker 8: but for like them.
- 9:03Speaker 5: You know that fifty dollars company, you know, fifty dollars
- 9:06Speaker 5: plus and now it's a fifteen dollars company.
- 9:09Speaker 8: Yeah, all right, and shares it down today as well.
- 9:11Speaker 6: What's the all right?
- 9:12Speaker 4: I'm just looking at the stock here, as Matt saying,
- 9:14Speaker 4: it's down seven percent today, down about eight percent year
- 9:16Speaker 4: to date, and down thirty.
- 9:17Speaker 6: Percent over the trailing twelve months. So not a great
- 9:20Speaker 6: move there, Crystal.
- 9:21Speaker 4: Thanks so much for joining us, Crystal, see just giving
- 9:23Speaker 4: us the update there. Carl Icon settling it what is
- 9:25Speaker 4: for him, I'm sure a very small number, couple of
- 9:27Speaker 4: million dollars to settle some issues with.
- 9:29Speaker 6: The se c i EP. Carl Ion is eighty eight
- 9:33Speaker 6: years old.
- 9:34Speaker 5: Icon, he's in good shape for eighty eight. That is
- 9:37Speaker 5: still a very sharp guy. His company, I mean, this
- 9:40Speaker 5: is a diversified holding company. They hold automotive investments, energy, gaming, railcar,
- 9:49Speaker 5: food packaging, Marcus real estate, medals, home fashion.
- 9:54Speaker 6: Market cap seven point five billion dollars.
- 9:58Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 10:02Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Effocar.
- 10:04Speaker 3: Playing Android otto with the Bloomberg Business App.
- 10:07Speaker 2: Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch
- 10:10Speaker 2: us live on YouTube.
- 10:13Speaker 4: Matthew Miller sitting in for Al Steel today in our
- 10:15Speaker 4: Bloomberg Dinner Actor Brokers Studio. We're streaming live on YouTube
- 10:18Speaker 4: as well as I hit over to YouTube dot com
- 10:20Speaker 4: and search Bloomberg Podcast and that's where you will find us.
- 10:22Speaker 6: Green on the screen today. Boy, that two weeks.
- 10:25Speaker 4: Ago today when we had that big sell off and
- 10:28Speaker 4: that man fixed jumping above sixty, you know, we got
- 10:31Speaker 4: the vix back down below fifteen. It's just amazing the
- 10:34Speaker 4: round trip we've had. So I don't know what to
- 10:37Speaker 4: make of it, but I think our next guest might.
- 10:39Speaker 4: Carl Schleife, chief investment officer at a Bimoh Family office,
- 10:44Speaker 4: joined us via that Zoom thing. Carol, what's your opinion
- 10:48Speaker 4: on what we've seen over the past couple of weeks again,
- 10:51Speaker 4: starting with two weeks ago today when we had that
- 10:53Speaker 4: panic sell off.
- 10:54Speaker 9: Yeah, it's not necessarily unusual for August to be exceedingly volved.
- 10:58Speaker 9: All we've got a lot of senior people on the beach,
- 11:02Speaker 9: and it can very frequently lead to some choppy trading,
- 11:07Speaker 9: like we saw. It was a little eye popping back then,
- 11:10Speaker 9: but having lived through the nineteen eighty seven issue, which
- 11:13Speaker 9: was October, but still did a Friday to Monday, if
- 11:16Speaker 9: that Monday had been similar, it would have been down
- 11:18Speaker 9: nine thousand points on the Dow, not just a mere thousand.
- 11:21Speaker 5: That's great, but.
- 11:24Speaker 9: It's not unusual at all to see that kind of volatility.
- 11:28Speaker 9: I actually would have expected it to have to follow
- 11:31Speaker 9: through for a few days, and I wouldn't write off
- 11:33Speaker 9: that we're done seeing volatility, especially if we get into
- 11:38Speaker 9: Friday and people don't like what Paul says in the speech,
- 11:42Speaker 9: and or we're just in between earnings and now we're
- 11:46Speaker 9: off a good earning seats and we don't have much
- 11:48Speaker 9: going until the Fed meets again after this week in September.
- 11:53Speaker 5: So well, we get to continuing claims out before that,
- 11:56Speaker 5: and it seems like every little data point has become
- 11:59Speaker 5: a big event for markets with I guess, you know,
- 12:05Speaker 5: low volume, that's that's going to happen. But what could
- 12:09Speaker 5: Powell say that would disappoint.
- 12:13Speaker 9: If he pushed off the likelihood of a September card,
- 12:17Speaker 9: because I think most of the expectations are you'll see
- 12:20Speaker 9: a cut in September. The question is just how much
- 12:24Speaker 9: twenty five basis points, fifty basis points will he be
- 12:27Speaker 9: able to structure commentary that actually, FED policy currently is
- 12:33Speaker 9: very restrictive given where the economic data is coming in.
- 12:36Speaker 9: And yes, the FED has made us all very data
- 12:39Speaker 9: dependent and data watchers on every single point trying to
- 12:42Speaker 9: figure out which way the Fed's going to go. But
- 12:45Speaker 9: there is a rationale and an ability for the FED
- 12:47Speaker 9: to be able to say, hey, our policy is restrictive.
- 12:51Speaker 9: We could actually chunk it down a time or two
- 12:53Speaker 9: and it wouldn't be indicative of a softening economy. You've
- 12:56Speaker 9: also got some retail numbers coming out this week which
- 12:59Speaker 9: people will be watching closely at the biggest retailer report
- 13:03Speaker 9: last week. And you've also got Nvidia coming out and
- 13:05Speaker 9: if people don't like that, they haven't knocked it out.
- 13:08Speaker 10: Of the park.
- 13:09Speaker 9: Over and above where the expectations are, you could see
- 13:11Speaker 9: that volatility in the markets in the short run.
- 13:15Speaker 4: All right, Carol, we've done this round trip over the
- 13:17Speaker 4: past couple of weeks.
- 13:19Speaker 6: What do I do now in the equity markets.
- 13:22Speaker 9: Well, I think you stay invested. Hopefully you were invested
- 13:25Speaker 9: through all of that and set tight. You know, we
- 13:27Speaker 9: were advising clients.
- 13:28Speaker 8: You know.
- 13:29Speaker 9: The interesting thing is is if you had a diversified portfolio,
- 13:33Speaker 9: even on that Friday and Monday that were very volatile,
- 13:36Speaker 9: your bonds did well because the rates came down to
- 13:38Speaker 9: the bond prices went up, so you had that durability
- 13:41Speaker 9: built into the portfolio. You also look more broadly at
- 13:44Speaker 9: things that should benefit if the FED does start to cut, right,
- 13:48Speaker 9: small caps should benefit, mid cap should benefit. Lots of
- 13:52Speaker 9: different industries here in the US should continue to benefit.
- 13:55Speaker 9: And we do suspect that once those rates come down,
- 13:58Speaker 9: you'll see a consumers continue to spend because they're employed.
- 14:03Speaker 9: You'll see businesses we suspect spend more than is expected
- 14:07Speaker 9: right now. And maybe the biggest surprise out there is
- 14:10Speaker 9: how low that tenure yield is, because we suspect it'll
- 14:13Speaker 9: drift higher over the intermediate longer term.
- 14:16Speaker 5: All right, So once the FED, I mean, I guess
- 14:19Speaker 5: we're all on the same page that they are going
- 14:20Speaker 5: to cut and buyk So twenty five basis points do
- 14:24Speaker 5: they continue to do that? Carol? Because we're growing still
- 14:28Speaker 5: at two and a half plus percent, and unemployment, although
- 14:32Speaker 5: it ticked up, is still only four point three percent,
- 14:34Speaker 5: which is very low. Inflation is also well under three
- 14:39Speaker 5: percent now, which is back to well less than even
- 14:42Speaker 5: its historical average. So does the Fed really need to
- 14:46Speaker 5: be moving interest rates around? Why don't they just hold
- 14:49Speaker 5: tight so that they have more powder left if something
- 14:51Speaker 5: bad happens.
- 14:52Speaker 9: They still have an incredible amount of powder if you
- 14:55Speaker 9: think through that. For ten to fifteen years, they had
- 14:57Speaker 9: basically no powder because there was zero to zero point
- 15:01Speaker 9: five percent. They're at five and a quarter five point
- 15:05Speaker 9: three percent right now, so they've got substantial policy room
- 15:10Speaker 9: and still leaving policy room even if they brought it
- 15:12Speaker 9: down one hundred basis points over the next six months
- 15:15Speaker 9: or so, You've still got got room in there to
- 15:18Speaker 9: be able to cut if things really did tail off.
- 15:21Speaker 9: And the last thing they want to do is be
- 15:23Speaker 9: caught behind the curve too, especially on that employment market,
- 15:26Speaker 9: because you've seen the momentum tick up there, and granted
- 15:29Speaker 9: it's from people coming into the market, but one question
- 15:33Speaker 9: you have for yourself is are they coming into the
- 15:35Speaker 9: market because of the they're being pinched by inflation? And
- 15:39Speaker 9: really feel a need.
- 15:41Speaker 4: Carol, I know in your notes here you've got industrials
- 15:44Speaker 4: and materials as a couple sectors you're looking at.
- 15:46Speaker 6: That's not very exciting. Why are you guys looking at that?
- 15:50Speaker 9: Well, the thing of it is you look at the
- 15:52Speaker 9: charts on some of those industrials and materials, and they've
- 15:54Speaker 9: looked the charts actually look a lot like in videos
- 15:57Speaker 9: chart does in terms of there's a lot of fiscal
- 16:01Speaker 9: stimulus or a lot of fiscal spending plans still in
- 16:04Speaker 9: the works. Much of that money has been allocated but
- 16:07Speaker 9: not necessarily spent, and a lot of that's not necessarily
- 16:11Speaker 9: going to be pulled back. And the reindustrialization that bringing
- 16:16Speaker 9: manufacturing back to the United States. A lot of those
- 16:19Speaker 9: plans are in process, they had to work through local permitting,
- 16:22Speaker 9: and we don't think they're going to be turned back.
- 16:24Speaker 9: You've also got infrastructure spent, so there's a lot of
- 16:27Speaker 9: reasons to think through that. But you've also got the
- 16:30Speaker 9: notion where if you go back and look over the
- 16:32Speaker 9: last twenty or thirty years, the industrial component of the
- 16:36Speaker 9: S and P is shrunk, and given the attention and
- 16:43Speaker 9: the spending, we're focusing on that sector or those sectors.
- 16:47Speaker 9: We expect you'll see them expand and perhaps as a
- 16:51Speaker 9: percentage of the S and P as well as the
- 16:55Speaker 9: leadership shifts to a more broad group of participating industry.
- 17:02Speaker 5: Carol, when you look at your portfolio, do you need
- 17:06Speaker 5: to change anything if Donald Trump wins this election?
- 17:11Speaker 9: We're feeling pretty comfortable about where the portfolios are, and
- 17:15Speaker 9: a lot of it would depend on if mister Trump
- 17:17Speaker 9: wins the election and what does the composition of House
- 17:21Speaker 9: and Senate look like. So there's a big piece of that,
- 17:24Speaker 9: and we typically have always advised people not necessarily to
- 17:27Speaker 9: trade on potential who wins who doesn't. You know, the
- 17:31Speaker 9: theory have been, for example, that energy stocks should do
- 17:34Speaker 9: better under Trump presidency than a Biden presidency, but the
- 17:38Speaker 9: opposite to be the fact. So building sturdy portfolios for
- 17:42Speaker 9: intermediate long term investment always is the wise and being
- 17:46Speaker 9: able to adjust your tweak at the margins after we
- 17:49Speaker 9: see what the outcome is.
- 17:52Speaker 5: There.
- 17:53Speaker 9: We might make some adjustments, but most likely not because
- 17:56Speaker 9: we tend to build really sturdy portfolios and think the
- 17:58Speaker 9: economy is going to do quite well under either president.
- 18:01Speaker 4: All right, Carol, thank you so much for joining us
- 18:03Speaker 4: as always Kyle Schleich, chief investment Officer for Bemo Family Office.
- 18:09Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 18:13Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecard.
- 18:15Speaker 3: Play and Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business App.
- 18:18Speaker 2: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 18:21Speaker 2: flagship New York station. Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 18:27Speaker 6: We've got Matthew Miller sitting in for Alex Steele.
- 18:29Speaker 5: Here.
- 18:30Speaker 4: I'm Paul Sweeney. We're live here in our Bloomberg Interactive
- 18:32Speaker 4: Broker Studio. We're streaming live on YouTube's ahead over to
- 18:35Speaker 4: YouTube dot com search Bloomberg Podcast, and that's where you
- 18:38Speaker 4: will find us. Matt you want to talk about evs.
- 18:40Speaker 5: I would love to. Yeah.
- 18:41Speaker 6: Okay.
- 18:41Speaker 4: It's great timing that you're here, because we today we're
- 18:44Speaker 4: gonna talk a little bit about EV's with our good
- 18:45Speaker 4: friend Corey Kanter. He's the lead US Electric Vehicle Analyst. Yes,
- 18:49Speaker 4: there is such a thing. At Bloomberg and New Energy Finance,
- 18:52Speaker 4: they prefer bn EF.
- 18:53Speaker 6: I don't care.
- 18:54Speaker 4: Uh.
- 18:55Speaker 6: He joins us here on our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio.
- 18:58Speaker 6: Corey give us a state of the market.
- 19:01Speaker 4: These days about where we are in this long evolution
- 19:05Speaker 4: from you know, internal combustion engines to getting to an
- 19:08Speaker 4: all electric world.
- 19:09Speaker 6: Where kind of are we on that spectrum today? Yeah,
- 19:12Speaker 6: we're We're in twenty twenty four.
- 19:13Speaker 11: We're in a bit of i'd say a bumpy moment,
- 19:16Speaker 11: bumpy first half of the year. If we step back
- 19:18Speaker 11: and look at twenty twenty three compared to twenty twenty two,
- 19:21Speaker 11: you saw in the US about fifty percent year on
- 19:24Speaker 11: year growth for electric vehicles in the US. First half
- 19:27Speaker 11: of this year, you're looking more at that kind of
- 19:28Speaker 11: ten to fifteen percent, depending on where you get your numbers.
- 19:32Speaker 5: We were fifty percent growth last year and we're fifteen
- 19:35Speaker 5: percent this year.
- 19:36Speaker 11: So basically, if you take out the largest automaker, Tesla,
- 19:40Speaker 11: which has had a very difficult first half of this year,
- 19:43Speaker 11: you're still seeing amongst the automakers, your high endie your
- 19:46Speaker 11: Ford thirty forty percent year on year growth, more.
- 19:49Speaker 5: In the trajectory of what we saw last year.
- 19:51Speaker 11: But Tesla's stagnation and kind of i'd say aging lineup
- 19:55Speaker 11: has brought down that US average more to that kind
- 19:57Speaker 11: of ten to twenty percent.
- 19:59Speaker 5: Well, and elon Trump's pandering love for Elon Musk's pandering
- 20:03Speaker 5: love for Donald Trump. Did you listen to that interview
- 20:05Speaker 5: the other day? I think interviews the wrong word. Did
- 20:07Speaker 5: you listen to that conversation conversation? I mean it was
- 20:10Speaker 5: pretty crazy. Trump was like, you make great cars, but
- 20:13Speaker 5: we don't all need electric vehicles, and Musk didn't even
- 20:17Speaker 5: really go go up against them.
- 20:19Speaker 11: I saw some clips from the conversation. I think less
- 20:22Speaker 11: of the overall listening. I'm on Twitter maybe too much,
- 20:25Speaker 11: but more for sports and less for spaces. With Tesla
- 20:29Speaker 11: in particular, there's been some challenges in California, as Bloomberg
- 20:32Speaker 11: News his own down to Hall has covered. You've seen quarter,
- 20:36Speaker 11: you know, on quarter reduction of overall sales compared.
- 20:39Speaker 6: To the previous year.
- 20:40Speaker 11: So Tesla may have a California problem. Actually, my sister
- 20:44Speaker 11: just got a Tesla Model Why, which continues to be
- 20:46Speaker 11: the best selling vehicle amongst TVs, and Ludlow.
- 20:49Speaker 5: Just got one, the co host of Bloomberg Technology, I mean,
- 20:53Speaker 5: Marian just got one, who runs the makeup room back here.
- 20:56Speaker 5: It's a hot vehicle in terms of sales, right, but
- 20:59Speaker 5: it's not I guess, helping the overall number.
- 21:01Speaker 11: It's also they haven't released a new vehicle excluding the
- 21:04Speaker 11: cyber truck, which has had very limited production, and all
- 21:07Speaker 11: of those vehicles over one hundred thousand dollars. That kind
- 21:10Speaker 11: of expected more affordable Tesla, which you know, if you
- 21:13Speaker 11: talk to me a year ago, we would have expected
- 21:14Speaker 11: in twenty twenty five, has been kicked back to you know,
- 21:18Speaker 11: a couple of years afterwards. Tesla is aiming to introduce
- 21:21Speaker 11: some low cost models, but I think, just like anything,
- 21:23Speaker 11: Tesla's a moving target.
- 21:24Speaker 5: It's pretty low cost. You can get into a model.
- 21:27Speaker 3: Why.
- 21:27Speaker 5: I think after all rebates are said and done, for
- 21:30Speaker 5: about thirty four grand, which you know it's not less
- 21:34Speaker 5: than thirty I know that's where they want to go,
- 21:36Speaker 5: but it's near as damn it to it. It's a
- 21:39Speaker 5: problem though, when the governor of California asks people please
- 21:42Speaker 5: not to charge your electric vehicles because the grid can't
- 21:45Speaker 5: handle it, right, I mean, can we really get much
- 21:48Speaker 5: bigger if we're already warning people not to charge.
- 21:51Speaker 11: I think I'm a you know, it's going to continue
- 21:54Speaker 11: to be I think a challenge for electric vehicles in
- 21:56Speaker 11: this particular year. That being said, California has had a
- 21:59Speaker 11: lot of batter storage, right and if you look at
- 22:01Speaker 11: how they're handling their grid, it's completely different than three
- 22:04Speaker 11: four years ago. Utilities have to get more I think structured.
- 22:08Speaker 11: I'm more concerned about EV charging on the public side
- 22:11Speaker 11: compared to the vva G element of it. But sohos California,
- 22:14Speaker 11: so goes the nation. They've also had a stagnation there
- 22:17Speaker 11: around twenty five percent EV shriff sale in the first
- 22:20Speaker 11: half of this year. That's pretty much where they were
- 22:21Speaker 11: at at the end of last year.
- 22:23Speaker 6: Really high, Yeah, it is high.
- 22:24Speaker 5: Are we seeing more chargers put in? I live in Scarsdale,
- 22:29Speaker 5: and I've had problems with multiple EV charging stations either
- 22:35Speaker 5: broken or too full. It would make sense to me
- 22:39Speaker 5: for every gas station owner to just put in a
- 22:41Speaker 5: couple chargers, but they don't seem to be doing it.
- 22:43Speaker 11: There is a challenge with what's called demand charges, which
- 22:46Speaker 11: is then pulling from the grid. It may theoretically sound
- 22:48Speaker 11: like a great idea, but if you're adding for those
- 22:50Speaker 11: grid upgrades and those additional costs, it might not be
- 22:52Speaker 11: worth it for the gas station operator. I think the
- 22:54Speaker 11: good news is a lot of the federal money hasn't
- 22:56Speaker 11: been spent. I think there's been a misconception that you know,
- 22:59Speaker 11: the five billion dollars the nationally V infrastructure program has
- 23:02Speaker 11: actually gone out. It's gone to states, and they have
- 23:04Speaker 11: to actually begin to deploy those chargers. So it's it's
- 23:07Speaker 11: still moving too slow. In terms of the consumer, they
- 23:10Speaker 11: want to see a charging network that they feel comfortable
- 23:12Speaker 11: with them. Until you get to that point, you can
- 23:14Speaker 11: hardly say that it's going well enough. You're also seeing
- 23:16Speaker 11: this kind of NACS North American Charging Standard transition, the
- 23:20Speaker 11: Tesla supercharging network that has also been stymied by all
- 23:23Speaker 11: the firings of that supercharging team. So it's messy and
- 23:26Speaker 11: bumpy here in the US. I think in terms of
- 23:28Speaker 11: good news, we can point out the Inflation Reduction Act
- 23:30Speaker 11: investments beginning to actually come online and bear fruit if
- 23:33Speaker 11: we want to talk about that too.
- 23:34Speaker 6: Samantha writes in and says, is hybrid the way to go?
- 23:37Speaker 11: Oh okay, Well, hybrid hybrids have done well in the
- 23:42Speaker 11: first half of this year. You're looking at Toyota even
- 23:44Speaker 11: aiming to go at full hybrid. I think plug in
- 23:46Speaker 11: hybrids have maybe been overhyped in terms of the kind
- 23:49Speaker 11: of focus and attention that's when you have both the
- 23:51Speaker 11: battery electric engine and the kind of gas engine. There's
- 23:54Speaker 11: not too many models besides the Jeep Wrangler P have
- 23:56Speaker 11: that does well, so wait and see. I think both
- 24:00Speaker 11: and hybrid are going to play a major role in
- 24:01Speaker 11: the US market going forward. I think with plug and hybrid,
- 24:04Speaker 11: you need them to get a lot better.
- 24:05Speaker 2: I think.
- 24:05Speaker 5: I mean, my wife had the Volvo XC nine d T,
- 24:08Speaker 5: a plug in hybrid for two years.
- 24:10Speaker 6: Doesn't have anymore.
- 24:11Speaker 5: That was a lease and we got we got out
- 24:14Speaker 5: of that lease. But she loved it because for the
- 24:17Speaker 5: most part she was just around town on electric power
- 24:20Speaker 5: the whole time. In fact, in the first year that
- 24:23Speaker 5: we had the car, she only filled it up with
- 24:25Speaker 5: gas twice.
- 24:25Speaker 11: Yeah, that's pretty remarkable.
- 24:27Speaker 5: But is that like a niche use case or I mean,
- 24:29Speaker 5: I feel like there's a lot of suburban that's.
- 24:31Speaker 11: Probably the idealized use case right of a smart PEF driver.
- 24:35Speaker 11: And I think when we've done our reports and analysis
- 24:37Speaker 11: on pvs, just as you have the more savvy BEV
- 24:39Speaker 11: drivers battery electric vehicle drivers to you know, the more
- 24:42Speaker 11: mass market, it doesn't mean that future PF drivers would
- 24:45Speaker 11: would drive that way. They might just say, oh, we're
- 24:47Speaker 11: going to fill it up with gas because we're used
- 24:48Speaker 11: to it with the hybrid experience. What we want to
- 24:51Speaker 11: see more of is in China, the all electric mode
- 24:54Speaker 11: is about twice the volume weighted average all electric mode
- 24:57Speaker 11: here in the US. So you want to see more
- 24:58Speaker 11: of those kind of like Toyota, you have ranged fifty
- 25:01Speaker 11: miles forty miles less of this like eighteen because then
- 25:04Speaker 11: are you really going to fill it up on electric.
- 25:06Speaker 5: My favorite hybrid that I've test driven recently for my podcast,
- 25:11Speaker 5: which is called Hot Pursuit exactly. You can download that
- 25:13Speaker 5: on Bloomberg dot com or wherever your podcast.
- 25:15Speaker 6: Of course.
- 25:16Speaker 5: I drove the Corvette E Ray really, which has the
- 25:20Speaker 5: six point two liters V eight behind you and an
- 25:22Speaker 5: electric motor on the front axle, and that eliminates any
- 25:28Speaker 5: kind of lag that you might get, like zero to ten.
- 25:30Speaker 5: So as a result, six hundred and fifty five host
- 25:33Speaker 5: power zero to sixty and two and a half seconds.
- 25:35Speaker 6: Wow, how often you need to do that? Of course?
- 25:37Speaker 6: Cory Canter, thanks so much for joining US.
- 25:39Speaker 4: Corey Canter, lead US Electric Vehicle analyst at BNF.
- 25:44Speaker 6: He's still talking.
- 25:45Speaker 4: I'm not going there, but these guys can go out
- 25:47Speaker 4: and talk about it all they want, you know, but
- 25:49Speaker 4: maybe I'll go hybrid at some point.
- 25:51Speaker 5: I think it's the way to go. I think it's
- 25:53Speaker 5: the way forward for now, until we deal with the
- 25:55Speaker 5: grid and the charging issues. You know, depends on your
- 25:59Speaker 5: specific use case.
- 26:00Speaker 6: You're not driving the Volvo anymore.
- 26:01Speaker 5: Way, No, we switched over to uh. I'm actually I
- 26:05Speaker 5: wish we'd kept it. I'm a little bit disappointed.
- 26:07Speaker 6: All right, we have to figure that out.
- 26:10Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 26:14Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android
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- 26:28Speaker 4: We're here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. We're streaming
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- 26:36Speaker 4: We have a season professional like a trader investor, like
- 26:39Speaker 4: a person who does this stuff for a living, in
- 26:41Speaker 4: studio Frank Moncam Senior Portfolio Manager and Timo in our
- 26:44Speaker 4: Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio.
- 26:47Speaker 6: Frank, what are you doing? In this market. Where do
- 26:49Speaker 6: you see opportunities today?
- 26:50Speaker 4: I mean, I got the FEDS going out to Wyoming
- 26:52Speaker 4: or something and they're gonna have some economists out there.
- 26:55Speaker 6: What do you how are you approaching this market these days?
- 26:58Speaker 10: Well, thanks thanks for having me on today. You know,
- 27:02Speaker 10: I think that you know, the FED here is is
- 27:05Speaker 10: probably getting everything he needs here to be able to
- 27:08Speaker 10: pivot a little bit into into the easing cycle. We
- 27:11Speaker 10: were looking at is just trying to be mindful of
- 27:13Speaker 10: the volatility. It's still plague in markets here. I mean,
- 27:17Speaker 10: we get into this Jackson Hole meeting at the end
- 27:20Speaker 10: of the week with a FED that's basically going to
- 27:22Speaker 10: look at you know, what's going on in finishing conditions,
- 27:25Speaker 10: right obviously we know to September rate cut that's not
- 27:28Speaker 10: baked ten and for for for obvious reasons, in plats
- 27:32Speaker 10: come down. We've seen this decceleration and growth. You know,
- 27:35Speaker 10: we had a little bit of an NFP scare here,
- 27:38Speaker 10: but you know, we got we got to remind remind
- 27:40Speaker 10: ourselves that this market has been super bowl though in
- 27:42Speaker 10: terms of pricing. You know, the easing cycle. We went
- 27:45Speaker 10: from seven cuts in the first quarter yeh to about
- 27:47Speaker 10: three and a half. I mean it was five and
- 27:49Speaker 10: a half two weeks ago. You know, I think one
- 27:52Speaker 10: thing I really want to watch is the FED is
- 27:54Speaker 10: really not going to you know, come out with anything
- 27:56Speaker 10: really decisive as far as the pace of right cuts
- 27:59Speaker 10: between nine end of the year. But it's mostly there
- 28:02Speaker 10: the tone with which they describe the current environment. So
- 28:06Speaker 10: what I want to keep my eyes on really is UH,
- 28:09Speaker 10: what they're going to say about UH financial conditions easing
- 28:12Speaker 10: UH and potentially our star right and you know, it's
- 28:16Speaker 10: it's it's really one of those things where in terms
- 28:19Speaker 10: of what we're seeing in the markets and how we
- 28:20Speaker 10: should be positioning with with this spread meeting and and
- 28:23Speaker 10: also the d n C. Right, there's there's there's a
- 28:25Speaker 10: couple of vital catalysts that are on that kind of
- 28:29Speaker 10: this week. It's it's really to think about the fact
- 28:32Speaker 10: that we're at a very liquid, you know market right now.
- 28:36Speaker 10: I was joking with friends of the weekend saying, you know,
- 28:39Speaker 10: the liquidity has migrated away from capital markets into into
- 28:42Speaker 10: rose and at this time of the.
- 28:44Speaker 6: Year, it's typical.
- 28:46Speaker 10: So you know, the the the NFB print print for
- 28:50Speaker 10: for August is going to be very critical. My my, my,
- 28:53Speaker 10: view in this market is that the way that we've
- 28:55Speaker 10: seen the Vics kind of retrace so quickly, to me,
- 28:59Speaker 10: it's not really a sign a healthy market. So I
- 29:01Speaker 10: continue to want to be watchful of volatility ahead of
- 29:04Speaker 10: us with the election cycle, with a geopolitical cycle, and
- 29:08Speaker 10: I think with the Vicks having collapsed basically from sixty
- 29:12Speaker 10: five to about sub fifteen today, I think it's an
- 29:15Speaker 10: opportunity to look for some downslaw protection again as we
- 29:18Speaker 10: get into the fall.
- 29:19Speaker 12: You know, Frank, you mentioned that sort of typical August
- 29:21Speaker 12: liquidity problem that we've run into a million times before.
- 29:24Speaker 12: Paul and I were talking about it before. Is that
- 29:27Speaker 12: the main story of that correction we saw from you know,
- 29:30Speaker 12: the first half of August that in the carry trade.
- 29:33Speaker 6: Was there anything else more there?
- 29:35Speaker 12: Do you think, you know, we're back almost.
- 29:36Speaker 5: To where we were before that that really nasty sell off.
- 29:39Speaker 10: Yeah, I think definitely. I mean it had to do
- 29:42Speaker 10: with it. But I also think that, you know, I've
- 29:44Speaker 10: been on the record saying that you know, you know,
- 29:46Speaker 10: protection was really really cheap. I thought volatility was cheap.
- 29:48Speaker 10: I thought, you know, skew was really cheap. It did materialize,
- 29:52Speaker 10: it was shortly, but it did materialize. But to your point,
- 29:54Speaker 10: I think there's also the fact that the market is
- 29:56Speaker 10: really over extending to the to the to the upside
- 29:59Speaker 10: in terms of positioning, right, I mean, positioning was super overstretched,
- 30:03Speaker 10: not just for the broader market, but also for you know,
- 30:06Speaker 10: within the mega megacap tech sector. And you know, whenever
- 30:10Speaker 10: you get you get to these levels, even with a
- 30:12Speaker 10: bullish market, you're kind of due for a bit of
- 30:14Speaker 10: a of correction. And and it's funny when the market
- 30:18Speaker 10: is is really overextended on technicals, which was the case,
- 30:21Speaker 10: because positioning is a technical indicator. All it takes is
- 30:24Speaker 10: just one little technical place to happen for things to unravel.
- 30:28Speaker 10: And I think that's what took place in addition to
- 30:31Speaker 10: you know the obviously the the the GPUI carry onlind
- 30:36Speaker 10: and and also just you know, the SAM rule has
- 30:38Speaker 10: has been triggered for a for a lot of augos
- 30:40Speaker 10: out there that that trade around these types of signals.
- 30:43Speaker 10: I mean, all these things kind of all happened at
- 30:45Speaker 10: the same time and in a period of time where
- 30:48Speaker 10: the liquidity is very thin, So you know, I think
- 30:50Speaker 10: it made a lot of sense for the market to
- 30:51Speaker 10: pull back the way it did.
- 30:52Speaker 4: How about on the commodities. I mean a lot of
- 30:55Speaker 4: people to say buy gold and short everything else. What
- 30:58Speaker 4: I mean, you know, Mike McGall and I'm coding.
- 31:00Speaker 10: Yeah, sure, yeah, Mike, Mike's Mike's a front I you know,
- 31:05Speaker 10: I it's hard to disagree with that, right, I mean,
- 31:07Speaker 10: when you look at the commodities complex where we are
- 31:09Speaker 10: right now, when you look at things like oil and copper,
- 31:13Speaker 10: you're still getting a lot of mixed signals. You know,
- 31:15Speaker 10: for the take the case of oil for instance, you know,
- 31:18Speaker 10: we we've we've got we've stayed into this range on
- 31:21Speaker 10: let's use brent as a as a benchmark, between seventy
- 31:23Speaker 10: five and ninety dollars a bow, and you can you
- 31:27Speaker 10: can clearly see that it's it's it's it's a range
- 31:30Speaker 10: that's that's been basically kept intact because you've got offsetting caalysts.
- 31:34Speaker 10: So it's really market that's really.
- 31:36Speaker 6: Hard to read.
- 31:37Speaker 10: On the one side, you don't really want to short
- 31:38Speaker 10: it because there's a cycular shortage of investment and crewd
- 31:43Speaker 10: and all that stuff. But it's cyclical, is really fair
- 31:46Speaker 10: fairly bearish, to be honest with you, And you know, opek,
- 31:49Speaker 10: Now the OPEC put to me, is getting softer and
- 31:52Speaker 10: softer and moving lower and lower. I think the Saudis
- 31:55Speaker 10: need cash. I mean there's a little bit of a
- 31:56Speaker 10: fiscal distress in Saudi's right now. I mean they've run
- 32:00Speaker 10: they've only run a fiscal surplus, you know one of
- 32:02Speaker 10: the last ten years, says a lot. So for them
- 32:05Speaker 10: now it's it's no longer trying to fight you know,
- 32:07Speaker 10: the the you know, the flat price as much as
- 32:09Speaker 10: they used to. But when we look at the market
- 32:12Speaker 10: like gold, you know, it's really all starts, you know,
- 32:14Speaker 10: being online. You know, there's there's I think there's additional
- 32:16Speaker 10: momentum here with central banks continue to buy. You know,
- 32:19Speaker 10: this Chinese I'm hearing are kind of looking for a
- 32:22Speaker 10: little bit of a pull back, you know, ten to
- 32:24Speaker 10: fifteen percent to probably add add more, you know, the
- 32:28Speaker 10: PBOC that is, which is the main buyer in this market.
- 32:31Speaker 10: So you know, gold looks really really good, and only
- 32:33Speaker 10: thing there it's it's it's a bit it's a slightly
- 32:35Speaker 10: overextended to be upside, but there could be momentum there.
- 32:38Speaker 10: So I think the strategy really in commodities is I
- 32:41Speaker 10: would want to ride this momentum and and you know,
- 32:44Speaker 10: potentially it keeps on dry powder on the side to
- 32:46Speaker 10: add on dips and also just just continue to look
- 32:49Speaker 10: for a relative value of dis locations within commodities. You know,
- 32:52Speaker 10: you know oil versus gold as in bullish bullish gold
- 32:57Speaker 10: kind of bearish or oil. There is these kind of
- 32:59Speaker 10: RB plays, and you know gold versus copper also. Yeah,
- 33:04Speaker 10: so you know, I think I think oil gold here
- 33:07Speaker 10: is the you know, the main game in town, and
- 33:11Speaker 10: the way to play really is to perhaps look for
- 33:13Speaker 10: dips and look for ob players versus other commodities.
- 33:16Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 33:16Speaker 12: To get back to the FED for a minute, you know,
- 33:18Speaker 12: I'm looking at our world interest rate probability function. It
- 33:21Speaker 12: basically just susses out how many interest rate cuts the
- 33:25Speaker 12: Fed funds futures traders are expecting.
- 33:27Speaker 6: It's look at it, like three and a half, maybe
- 33:30Speaker 6: almost four cuts this morning.
- 33:33Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, by the end of you know, and we
- 33:34Speaker 12: only have three meetings coming up, so that's even thinking
- 33:37Speaker 12: people are thinking we'll get a fifty basis points at
- 33:40Speaker 12: one of them, I guess. But what's the risk there,
- 33:42Speaker 12: I mean, is the is the market in Fed fund's
- 33:45Speaker 12: futures just bracing for more bad eco news? And is there,
- 33:49Speaker 12: you know, a risk one way or the other that
- 33:50Speaker 12: they'll get this wrong.
- 33:52Speaker 10: Yeah, I you know, I thought five and a half
- 33:55Speaker 10: cuts two weeks ago was over stretched. In fact, we're
- 33:58Speaker 10: we're kind of we kind of took the other side
- 33:59Speaker 10: of that, which is worked out so far. I mean
- 34:01Speaker 10: we're down to three point eight that's roughly almost four
- 34:03Speaker 10: cuts between and the end of the year. I think
- 34:06Speaker 10: the real wager here is around the August jobs data.
- 34:11Speaker 10: Right if we were to break the one hundred k
- 34:15Speaker 10: jobs mark and the unemployment rate to take up maybe
- 34:18Speaker 10: to four point four percent or four point five percent,
- 34:20Speaker 10: and I think, you know, there's a chance that we
- 34:24Speaker 10: could get a fifty basis point cut in September. And
- 34:28Speaker 10: I think what the market is really getting at here
- 34:30Speaker 10: is that if we get fifty in September, we're probably
- 34:31Speaker 10: going to get fifty on the next one because the
- 34:33Speaker 10: Fed then realizes that maybe it's a little bit of
- 34:35Speaker 10: mind curve. So I think this whole wager is around
- 34:38Speaker 10: this August NFP, which my my view on that is
- 34:44Speaker 10: based on the seasonality of the data. I think the
- 34:46Speaker 10: July print could could easily have been it could have
- 34:49Speaker 10: easily been a bit of a an out liar here
- 34:52Speaker 10: because of seasonality right.
- 34:55Speaker 6: In Houston to correct, and then some of the heat waves.
- 34:57Speaker 10: There's been a lot of you know, activities being canceled
- 35:00Speaker 10: in the summer because of heat waves in a couple
- 35:01Speaker 10: of states. So that's all playing into that. So I
- 35:04Speaker 10: think it's one of those things where it could be
- 35:06Speaker 10: kind of almost binary, where we either get the fifty
- 35:08Speaker 10: to fifty twenty five, which gets you to the to
- 35:10Speaker 10: the what you know, what works is w rb S
- 35:13Speaker 10: pricing right now, or we might even get to a
- 35:15Speaker 10: point where we only get one or two cuts, right.
- 35:17Speaker 10: It could be one of those things where it's kind
- 35:19Speaker 10: of if if we realize July was a blip and
- 35:22Speaker 10: we get it one, we might get it one and
- 35:23Speaker 10: done with. I FED just makes an adjustment cuts because
- 35:26Speaker 10: I think this thing is super telegraphed. They can't really
- 35:28Speaker 10: backtrack on the September cut. I think it was spoop markets,
- 35:31Speaker 10: which is not what the FED wants to do. So
- 35:33Speaker 10: I think it might just deliver a twenty five and
- 35:35Speaker 10: kind of wait and see post election if that's if
- 35:38Speaker 10: we get a strong or decent NFB, you know in
- 35:42Speaker 10: the early.
- 35:43Speaker 12: So no taking off on the Friday's payroll day. No,
- 35:48Speaker 12: no summer Friday. Summer Fridays are over.
- 35:51Speaker 4: I'm for me, all right, Frank, thanks so much for
- 35:53Speaker 4: joining us. Frank Monham, he's a senior portfolio manager and
- 35:55Speaker 4: then team off. This whole money management thing doesn't work
- 35:57Speaker 4: after you you get a voice for radio. I mean
- 36:00Speaker 4: that's like, I mean incredible. I just told my producer,
- 36:03Speaker 4: let's get this guy in right.
- 36:05Speaker 6: In our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. We appreciate getting some
- 36:08Speaker 6: of his time.
- 36:10Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
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- 36:28Speaker 4: Paul Swynn here and Michael Reagan sitting and for Alex
- 36:30Speaker 4: Steele said, day, Stay Lauder, el's a ticker symbol. Stocks
- 36:35Speaker 4: down like thirty five percent that year to date turnaround
- 36:39Speaker 4: change in management. Red Brown Joints earnings reporter for Bloomberg News,
- 36:42Speaker 4: read what's going on with that stay Launder?
- 36:44Speaker 6: Yeah?
- 36:44Speaker 1: I think today you know, the highest level is just
- 36:47Speaker 1: like this is a clean slate I think for this company.
- 36:49Speaker 1: We saw obviously CEO stepping away at the end of
- 36:52Speaker 1: this year. CFO is actually also leaving on the same time,
- 36:56Speaker 1: so you know, a new management team. And also if
- 36:58Speaker 1: we look at the guidance that they gave out for
- 36:59Speaker 1: their fist with twenty twenty five today, it came in
- 37:02Speaker 1: much lower than what an elks we're expecting and else
- 37:05Speaker 1: we're expecting to see constant currency growth. They were expecting
- 37:08Speaker 1: to see earnings about the whole dollar higher than what
- 37:11Speaker 1: the company guided for. So again just kind of setting
- 37:14Speaker 1: a low bar for this company going forward, clean slate,
- 37:17Speaker 1: let's go from here, I think is kind of the
- 37:18Speaker 1: message that they're going to be trying to change the
- 37:21Speaker 1: narrative to going forward.
- 37:23Speaker 12: Red How big of a deal is China to Estay Lauder.
- 37:26Speaker 12: I know they have a pretty decent sized business. There
- 37:28Speaker 12: was that part of the sort of disappointing results this quarter.
- 37:31Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that is the main culprit
- 37:33Speaker 1: of the issues that they're they're going through. I mean,
- 37:35Speaker 1: we've seen throughout this earning season a lot of these companies,
- 37:38Speaker 1: especially in the luxury space, that have tied their fortunes
- 37:40Speaker 1: to China are paying the price of that at the moment.
- 37:44Speaker 1: So China came in really soft again this quarter and
- 37:47Speaker 1: als we're expecting for around three or four percent growth
- 37:50Speaker 1: in the Asia region, which is dominated by China obviously,
- 37:52Speaker 1: and what they saw was a four percent contraction in
- 37:55Speaker 1: that market. So yeah, again paying the paying the price
- 37:59Speaker 1: for the investment in that region. As China sales demand
- 38:05Speaker 1: for these luxury products, whether it's LVMH's goods or you know, fashion,
- 38:09Speaker 1: anything like that. And then also skincare, fragrance, things like
- 38:12Speaker 1: that are also weak as the demand waivers there.
- 38:16Speaker 4: Just reading some of the reporting on this here company
- 38:19Speaker 4: in the midst of a turnaround, I'm not sure necessarily
- 38:21Speaker 4: what it has to be turned around, but the stock's
- 38:22Speaker 4: down thirty five percent, so that tells me that a
- 38:25Speaker 4: year to date, So that tells me whatever they're doing
- 38:27Speaker 4: ain't working.
- 38:28Speaker 6: So when you get it, presumably a new management team
- 38:30Speaker 6: coming in.
- 38:30Speaker 4: Do they want somebody from inside or maybe some fresh
- 38:34Speaker 4: set of eyes coming from the outside.
- 38:36Speaker 6: What's the thinking there?
- 38:37Speaker 1: I think you know, both the CEO CFO have been
- 38:41Speaker 1: there for over a decade now, so I mean it's
- 38:44Speaker 1: always good to have somebody within the company knows the company,
- 38:47Speaker 1: but it might be time for some fresh eyes.
- 38:50Speaker 6: The company has.
- 38:51Speaker 1: Missed guidance or cut guidance several times over the last
- 38:54Speaker 1: few years. Analysts start to get when that happens, analysts
- 38:57Speaker 1: starts to feel they starts to lose comp It's in
- 39:00Speaker 1: in that management group's ability to understand or grapple with
- 39:04Speaker 1: the business dynamics at the moment. So I think there
- 39:07Speaker 1: could be some calls for an outside look. The company
- 39:09Speaker 1: says they're already undertaking the next CEO search. Obviously they're
- 39:14Speaker 1: going to say they're they're considering internal and external candidates.
- 39:16Speaker 1: But yeah, definitely might be time for a for a
- 39:19Speaker 1: fresh look.
- 39:20Speaker 12: I'm smirking here a little bit looking back on a
- 39:23Speaker 12: story we had out in February on Esta Lauter, where
- 39:27Speaker 12: CEO Fabrizio Freda said, I'm not going anywhere precedent, but Red,
- 39:33Speaker 12: you know, I don't know how much of an expert
- 39:34Speaker 12: you are on the beauty care market and skincare, but
- 39:38Speaker 12: you know, are they an outlier here? As far as
- 39:41Speaker 12: you know, you go through a million earnings reports every
- 39:43Speaker 12: quarter year? Are they are they an outlier as far
- 39:46Speaker 12: as that you know, consumer discretionary space or are we
- 39:50Speaker 12: seeing similar stories from other you know, companies that depend
- 39:54Speaker 12: on I don't know whether it's beauty care or you know,
- 39:57Speaker 12: high fashion, you know, is is there.
- 40:00Speaker 5: A theme here?
- 40:01Speaker 1: I don't know what gave it away that I'm not
- 40:02Speaker 1: ANX but you have good skin. No, I don't think
- 40:07Speaker 1: they're an outlier. Look, I think it's you see something
- 40:11Speaker 1: for me. The similar trend that I'm picking up across
- 40:12Speaker 1: all of the retail, even you know, something as far
- 40:14Speaker 1: away as home depot is that people are focused on needs,
- 40:18Speaker 1: not once and this luxury space skincare especially.
- 40:22Speaker 5: Is a want, it's not a need.
- 40:24Speaker 1: A fragrance is a want, not a need. So consumers
- 40:26Speaker 1: are cutting back where they can, whether it's you know,
- 40:30Speaker 1: fixing your house up or yeah, making yourself appear a
- 40:32Speaker 1: little bit better, it doesn't matter. That's that's kind of
- 40:36Speaker 1: the the macro pressure is gonna win out in this
- 40:38Speaker 1: this this this scenario.
- 40:39Speaker 4: But as our good friend Samantha writes in Alex Steele
- 40:43Speaker 4: has always told us that you have to invest in
- 40:46Speaker 4: your face, which she does and Michael John Tucker and
- 40:49Speaker 4: I do not.
- 40:50Speaker 12: So I mean, clearly, my face is a value stock
- 40:54Speaker 12: right now.
- 40:55Speaker 4: But all I know is during the lockdown across the street,
- 40:59Speaker 4: the Spore store packed.
- 41:00Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, no matter what, people need to get
- 41:03Speaker 6: that stuff.
- 41:05Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean, I guess in the pandemic people had
- 41:07Speaker 12: a few extra bucks they weren't spending on concerts and movies.
- 41:10Speaker 6: It was just it shocked me how strong that category is.
- 41:14Speaker 1: Yeah, and then right after the pandemic as well, they
- 41:16Speaker 1: did really well because people were like, I'm.
- 41:18Speaker 6: Emerging from the world.
- 41:19Speaker 1: I want to make sure, Yeah, I haven't shaped my
- 41:21Speaker 1: face in six months, I might as well get moisturized
- 41:24Speaker 1: or something.
- 41:24Speaker 6: But yeah, it's there.
- 41:25Speaker 1: There's trends have just fallen off now and they haven't
- 41:28Speaker 1: really returned to like pre pandemic.
- 41:29Speaker 6: Levels of growth.
- 41:30Speaker 10: You know, excuse me.
- 41:32Speaker 1: Este later was a was a company that was like
- 41:34Speaker 1: really you know, flying into the pandemic and through the pandemic.
- 41:37Speaker 1: And then yeah, just the the fall off of China
- 41:39Speaker 1: and then the United States as well is kind of
- 41:42Speaker 1: not getting a lot of attention at the moment. But
- 41:43Speaker 1: like US sales contracted as well this quarter. It's maybe
- 41:46Speaker 1: hidden because there's been so much emphasis on China. Yeah,
- 41:49Speaker 1: but those are the two biggest markets and both are
- 41:50Speaker 1: are are underperforming I think at the moment.
- 41:52Speaker 12: So it still seems like China's consumer economy is a
- 41:56Speaker 12: bit of a black box to analyst, Do you find
- 41:59Speaker 12: a lot of surprise is either upside or downside on
- 42:02Speaker 12: companies as far as their their business in China goes.
- 42:04Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard to get a read because if you think,
- 42:06Speaker 1: like there was so much worry and again jumping around here,
- 42:10Speaker 1: but I just connecting all the different kind of earnings threads,
- 42:13Speaker 1: Like there was so much worry going into Apple's report
- 42:15Speaker 1: of like where where's the Chinese consumer? Are they buying iPhones?
- 42:18Speaker 1: Things like that? You know, it's the same dollar that's
- 42:19Speaker 1: going towards these things. But yeah, it's really hard to
- 42:23Speaker 1: get a read because Apple well performs, Esday Lauder underperforms.
- 42:27Speaker 6: Yeah, it is.
- 42:27Speaker 1: It is just a kind of you know, most of
- 42:28Speaker 1: the analysts, they said here in New York, they're just
- 42:30Speaker 1: looking at data points, so it is kind of a
- 42:31Speaker 1: tough read.
- 42:32Speaker 4: I'm looking at the stock of Esday Lauder and looking
- 42:34Speaker 4: at the chart here at Pete at about three hundred
- 42:36Speaker 4: and seventy dollars literally on the last trading day of
- 42:39Speaker 4: twenty twenty one, down seventy five percent since then, Wow,
- 42:42Speaker 4: from three seventy to here we are at ninety four,
- 42:45Speaker 4: So a big move here, And I guess the next
- 42:48Speaker 4: you know, in Vidia is coming up.
- 42:50Speaker 6: That's still not for another week or so, right.
- 42:52Speaker 5: Yeah, that's next Wednesday.
- 42:53Speaker 6: I mean, they're so late in the earning cycle. I
- 42:56Speaker 6: don't know why. I'm sure there's a story there, but man,
- 42:58Speaker 6: it feels like the market's going to be hanging on
- 43:01Speaker 6: that one.
- 43:01Speaker 4: Are the expectations as high as they always have been
- 43:04Speaker 4: for in video?
- 43:06Speaker 1: Yeah, they will, of course, they will be flying extremely
- 43:09Speaker 1: high into that that report. And then if we think
- 43:12Speaker 1: kind of about the AI story of this earning season
- 43:15Speaker 1: is that people have been maybe investing a little bit
- 43:17Speaker 1: too much. We're not seeing the growth that we would
- 43:20Speaker 1: have liked out of those investments. But of course in
- 43:21Speaker 1: videos on the other side of that, they're one, they're
- 43:23Speaker 1: the ones receiving a lot of that investment. So could
- 43:26Speaker 1: be again kind of the outperformer of of of that group.
- 43:30Speaker 1: But yeah, definitely very high expectations. And yeah, with high
- 43:33Speaker 1: expectations there's high risk as well.
- 43:35Speaker 12: Anything else on your radar read that you're looking for.
- 43:38Speaker 12: You know, we're in that kind of weird period for
- 43:40Speaker 12: earnings where you only get the stragglers. Is there anyone
- 43:42Speaker 12: else we should really keep an eye on.
- 43:44Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's just it's it's continue with the
- 43:46Speaker 1: retail stocks over the next week especially.
- 43:49Speaker 6: I'm just trying to think.
- 43:50Speaker 1: There's like a thousand names running through my mind now.
- 43:52Speaker 4: But the retailers, they tend to come late in the cycle. Yeah,
- 43:56Speaker 4: it'll be good, good read on the consumer. And then again,
- 43:59Speaker 4: as you mentioned that, the the Nvidia coming up, this
- 44:03Speaker 4: can be huge, not just for like Nvidia itself or
- 44:05Speaker 4: the tech stocks in general, but I think the market overall.
- 44:08Speaker 12: Yeah, it really seems like it's the will show us
- 44:10Speaker 12: the money phase of the AI craze right now, So
- 44:14Speaker 12: you know, you know, an end video might be the
- 44:16Speaker 12: outlier there.
- 44:16Speaker 6: But all right, we'll say on top of it, I'm
- 44:18Speaker 6: sure we'll be talking to you.
- 44:19Speaker 4: Red Red Brown, Ernie's reporter Bloomberg News, joining us live
- 44:21Speaker 4: here in our Bloomberg Interactive of Broker's studio here.
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