Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / BI Weekend: Delta Earnings, Google-Apple Deal, Lululemon Outlook
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- 0:00Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio, Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Intelligence
- 0:11Speaker 1: with Scarletfoo and Paul Sweeney.
- 0:13Speaker 2: How do you think the FED is looking at tariffs?
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- 0:24Speaker 4: And corporate news from across the globe.
- 0:26Speaker 2: Could we see a market disruption of market events? So
- 0:29Speaker 2: people just too exuberant out there? You see some so
- 0:32Speaker 2: called low quality stocks driving this short term rally.
- 0:34Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence with Scarletfoo and Paul Sweeney on Bloomberg Radio,
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- 0:42Speaker 5: I'm Scarlettfoo and I'm Alexandra Semenova fill in for Paul Sweeney.
- 0:45Speaker 2: On today's Bloomberg Intelligence Show. We dig inside the big
- 0:48Speaker 2: business stories impacting Wall Street and the global markets.
- 0:51Speaker 5: Each and every week, we provide in depth research and
- 0:54Speaker 5: data on some of the two thousand companies and one
- 0:56Speaker 5: hundred and thirty industries are analysts cover worldwide.
- 0:59Speaker 2: Today, we'll look why the athletic apparel company Lulu Lemon
- 1:02Speaker 2: sees signs of a rebound in the fourth quarter.
- 1:04Speaker 5: Plus a look at why the tech giant Meta is
- 1:07Speaker 5: beginning to cut more jobs at its reality Labs division.
- 1:10Speaker 2: But first we begin with the aerospace industry.
- 1:13Speaker 5: This week, Delta Airlines reported fourth quarter earnings that missed
- 1:16Speaker 5: Wall Street's expectations. The company also said it will be
- 1:19Speaker 5: taking a more cautious view for twenty twenty six.
- 1:22Speaker 2: For more, Alex and I were joined by George ferguson
- 1:25Speaker 2: Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Aerospace, Defense and Airlines analyst.
- 1:28Speaker 5: We first asked George for his take on Delta's recent earnings.
- 1:32Speaker 6: Really, what we saw here from Delta was a continuation
- 1:35Speaker 6: of the you know, the premium and the loyalty revenue
- 1:39Speaker 6: are rolling in strongly, rolling in I think sort of
- 1:43Speaker 6: five to seven percent if I recall correctly, you know
- 1:46Speaker 6: above sort of GDP growth rates.
- 1:48Speaker 4: But the back of the airplane, you know.
- 1:51Speaker 6: They call it the main cabin or bas the economy
- 1:54Speaker 6: that's there was that revenue was down seven percent and
- 1:57Speaker 6: a quarter where Delta was growing a couple percent. And
- 2:00Speaker 6: so I think we still see this premium trend, and
- 2:04Speaker 6: I think we're going to see a lot of growth in.
- 2:06Speaker 4: Premium seats this year.
- 2:07Speaker 6: We've got Southwest converting to some you know, to more
- 2:11Speaker 6: of a full service carriers premium. Delta plans to go premium,
- 2:14Speaker 6: United plans to go premium. Alaska Jet Blue, everyone wants
- 2:18Speaker 6: to go premium. So I think there's probably some concern
- 2:22Speaker 6: in the marketplace that maybe premium gets crowded and pushes
- 2:26Speaker 6: closer to that main cabin kind of kind of fair
- 2:30Speaker 6: rather than main cabin coming up.
- 2:33Speaker 5: Delta said they're bracing for risk to their forecast, noting
- 2:36Speaker 5: the geopolitical environment, whether it's international or domestic POLICI ge
- 2:41Speaker 5: or is this unusual for them to issue this kind
- 2:43Speaker 5: of morning Well, I mean.
- 2:45Speaker 6: Again, I think we're at the beginning of the year,
- 2:47Speaker 6: and management teams like the caveat things right, and so
- 2:51Speaker 6: I guess what I would say is we had plenty
- 2:54Speaker 6: of geopolitical challenges in twenty twenty five. You know, we
- 2:58Speaker 6: were watching transit demand closely because you've got a war
- 3:03Speaker 6: raging in Ukraine's been doing that for a bunch of
- 3:05Speaker 6: years now. Didn't seem to slow down that demand. That
- 3:09Speaker 6: demand seemed to do okay some days. I wonder if
- 3:12Speaker 6: there maybe there's more risk domestically, right. One of the
- 3:15Speaker 6: other things we're watching is the President wants to cap
- 3:18Speaker 6: interest rates for the credit card companies at ten percent.
- 3:21Speaker 6: Loyalty through the MX program brings a lot of money
- 3:24Speaker 6: in for Delta, definitely a source of their competitive advantage.
- 3:30Speaker 6: And I think if you're capping interest rates, I think
- 3:32Speaker 6: some of those credit card programs have to change and
- 3:34Speaker 6: that would hurt some of those loyalty programs. So there's
- 3:37Speaker 6: I mean, there's risk all over the place all the time. Again,
- 3:39Speaker 6: the geopolitical didn't seem to hurt demand as much as
- 3:42Speaker 6: we would expect it in twenty twenty five.
- 3:44Speaker 2: Right, It kind of always threatens to hurt demand, but
- 3:46Speaker 2: in the end, people still prioritize traveling and paying for traveling.
- 3:51Speaker 2: One of the comments from Delta was that the airline
- 3:53Speaker 2: industry could see consolidation in twenty twenty six. Which players
- 3:58Speaker 2: would that most likely involved.
- 4:01Speaker 6: Yeah, so we're already starting to see some of that, right.
- 4:03Speaker 6: We had an announcement the other day that Allegiance and
- 4:07Speaker 6: Sun Country are going to put themselves together. They're two
- 4:10Speaker 6: smaller low cost airlines, some of them pretty quickly growing there,
- 4:15Speaker 6: quickly growing, so they'll consolidate. Uh, you know, we've heard
- 4:19Speaker 6: discussion about Frontier potentially buying Spirit Airlines. We still have
- 4:24Speaker 6: to see, you know, the ultimate outcome for Spirit yuring
- 4:27Speaker 6: Chapter eleven. We're trying to figure out what their structuring
- 4:29Speaker 6: looks like the second time they've been there.
- 4:31Speaker 4: So you can see on the edges.
- 4:34Speaker 6: Especially where in that low cost marketplace, you can see
- 4:40Speaker 6: consolidation beginning.
- 4:42Speaker 4: It takes a long.
- 4:43Speaker 6: Time and that's the challenge, but you can see some
- 4:47Speaker 6: of that consolidation already begin. We don't see the big
- 4:49Speaker 6: players getting consolidated, but you're not You're not going to
- 4:52Speaker 6: put together. I think you're not going to see sort
- 4:54Speaker 6: of a united to Delta and America and the Southwest.
- 4:58Speaker 6: They're not going to We're not gonna put an any
- 5:00Speaker 6: of those together. I think that's too much, but I
- 5:03Speaker 6: think a lot of other stuff is potentially in play.
- 5:05Speaker 4: George.
- 5:05Speaker 5: We also got news that Delta is ordering thirty Boeing
- 5:09Speaker 5: seven eighty seven Dreamliner jets, aiming to boost the company.
- 5:14Speaker 5: How much do you expect this purchase to impact its
- 5:17Speaker 5: bottom line?
- 5:19Speaker 6: Yeah, so they're not going to see these airplanes until
- 5:22Speaker 6: twenty thirty, so it's a bit of a ways away.
- 5:25Speaker 6: They're replacing seven six sevens, which are old airplanes. We
- 5:30Speaker 6: have an average age of them about twenty seven years
- 5:32Speaker 6: right now, you know the seven eight is going to
- 5:35Speaker 6: be a lot more efficient. Delta gave some numbers they
- 5:38Speaker 6: fifteen ish plus percent more efficient, so I think that
- 5:43Speaker 6: really helps the bottom line. Also very interesting to us
- 5:46Speaker 6: is that Delta is traditionally more of an air bus shop.
- 5:50Speaker 6: They buy a lot of Airbus product. The recent wide
- 5:53Speaker 6: bodies they've bought. Our airbus is a three fifty and
- 5:56Speaker 6: air buses a three thirty. Again, the Boeing wide bodies
- 6:00Speaker 6: told you twenty eight ish years old. Interesting to see
- 6:04Speaker 6: them come in for the seven eighty seven. That's really,
- 6:07Speaker 6: I think, been a category leader in that small narrow
- 6:10Speaker 6: body world. Boeing has over one thousand orders for that airplane.
- 6:14Speaker 6: We see rates continued to rise, which to improve profitability at.
- 6:18Speaker 4: Boeing as they put more through put in that seven eight.
- 6:21Speaker 6: I thought it was a bit of an endorsement for
- 6:23Speaker 6: seven eight, even though Delta is not going to say that.
- 6:25Speaker 2: Probably our thanks to George Ferguson, our senior Aerospace, Defense
- 6:29Speaker 2: and Airlines analyst.
- 6:30Speaker 5: This week we focused on a Bloomberg Big Take story
- 6:33Speaker 5: titled the CEO Playbook to Navigating Trump. You can find
- 6:37Speaker 5: it on Bloomberg dot Com and the Terminal.
- 6:39Speaker 2: So the story looks at how public feuds and protectionist
- 6:42Speaker 2: threats have turned CEO's dealings with the White House into
- 6:45Speaker 2: a high stakes game of loyalty and leverage.
- 6:48Speaker 5: And for the story, Bloomberg News recently spoke to experts
- 6:51Speaker 5: and business leaders on how CEOs should navigate Trump's second term.
- 6:55Speaker 2: For more on all of this, we were joined by
- 6:57Speaker 2: one of the Big Takes authors, Matthew Boyle, Bloomberg Senior
- 7:00Speaker 2: Management reporter.
- 7:01Speaker 5: We first asked Matt to break down some of the
- 7:03Speaker 5: challenges faced while interviewing CEOs for the story.
- 7:06Speaker 7: I mean the usual sort of voices of Corporate America,
- 7:10Speaker 7: the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable. We're just like,
- 7:13Speaker 7: you know, we're going to take a pass on this one,
- 7:16Speaker 7: and just about every CEO under the sun, you know,
- 7:19Speaker 7: just they just don't want to go there. It's like
- 7:20Speaker 7: the third rail. So it was challenging to report, but
- 7:23Speaker 7: we had a lot of great conversations, let's say, on background,
- 7:26Speaker 7: with those who are advising CEOs, and that led to
- 7:30Speaker 7: our playbook. Here the five rules for dealing with the
- 7:33Speaker 7: Trump Madness.
- 7:34Speaker 5: Matt We've seen a growing number of business leaders recently
- 7:37Speaker 5: kind of push back more than usual on some of
- 7:39Speaker 5: President Trump's policy proposals. We had City CFO this morning
- 7:43Speaker 5: pushing back on the credit card cap. X On Mobile
- 7:45Speaker 5: CEO calling Venezuela an investable. Is this unusual in what
- 7:49Speaker 5: might be the consequences for them?
- 7:51Speaker 7: Yeah, it takes a certain CEO to push back. It
- 7:54Speaker 7: takes a Jamie Diamond or the CEO of ex On Mobile,
- 7:56Speaker 7: who have the clout and the authority and the industry
- 7:59Speaker 7: backing to say no, you know, this is actually not
- 8:02Speaker 7: perhaps a good idea. But most of the time, as
- 8:05Speaker 7: we saw with tariffs, it was happening behind the scenes.
- 8:08Speaker 7: You remember, this is going back aways. But when Trump
- 8:11Speaker 7: told the Walmart CEO, Doug McMillan to eat the tariffs,
- 8:15Speaker 7: Walmart said nothing, and that was probably pretty wise. There
- 8:18Speaker 7: was no reason to get into a public spat on
- 8:20Speaker 7: true social with Trump. So but now maybe it's because
- 8:24Speaker 7: Trump is in a different position twelve months later, or
- 8:27Speaker 7: it's the issues involved. You know, banking CEOs are very
- 8:30Speaker 7: happy to go out against interest ratecaps, but we are
- 8:33Speaker 7: seeing in certain cases some CEOs pushed back.
- 8:36Speaker 2: Yes, and direct engagement does seem to pay off if
- 8:39Speaker 2: you can find your way to the President's mobile phone,
- 8:43Speaker 2: which apparently he pans out the number pretty willingly to
- 8:46Speaker 2: certain top CEOs. You talk about in videos Jensen Huang
- 8:50Speaker 2: having a direct line to the president. Also Lipboon tam
- 8:54Speaker 2: of Intel being able to do that as well.
- 8:57Speaker 4: Exactly.
- 8:57Speaker 7: I mean Jensen in video ceo one on Joe in
- 9:00Speaker 7: December and said, you know, Trump is extraordinarily accessible. The
- 9:04Speaker 7: United Airline ceo said the same thing to us. I mean,
- 9:07Speaker 7: you can call this man up. He does answer his
- 9:09Speaker 7: cell phone, as we've seen sometimes at four thirty in
- 9:12Speaker 7: the morning he will pick up his cell phone. But
- 9:14Speaker 7: not everybody has Trump on speed dials. So a point
- 9:17Speaker 7: of our story was that you have to find a
- 9:19Speaker 7: way in, whether that's Susie Wiles, a chief of staff,
- 9:22Speaker 7: whether it's Scott Besson, Treasury or Commerce, Howard Lutnick, or
- 9:26Speaker 7: one of the sort of lower level aids. Also, I
- 9:28Speaker 7: mean we found that, you know, the director of the
- 9:31Speaker 7: White House Office of Public Liaison is somebody you can
- 9:34Speaker 7: you can go to also, So the point is to
- 9:36Speaker 7: find a way in, no matter how you do it.
- 9:39Speaker 5: Matt, what are some of the differences in how President
- 9:41Speaker 5: and Trump deals with business leaders in his second term
- 9:44Speaker 5: from his first term.
- 9:45Speaker 7: Well, the second term, he's a little bit more unshackled.
- 9:48Speaker 7: Let's say, in the first term, you had a few
- 9:51Speaker 7: more traditional Republican voices. You know, you had Rex Tillerson
- 9:55Speaker 7: in there and other folks who you know, were able
- 9:58Speaker 7: to maybe play a little defense. They were able to
- 10:00Speaker 7: slow walk some of Trump's more outrageous policy proposals. Now
- 10:05Speaker 7: it's just all true believers. So he's sort of unfettered.
- 10:09Speaker 7: He's unshackled, and there's really not many checks. So what
- 10:13Speaker 7: this means for CEOs is, yeah, they really can't hide.
- 10:15Speaker 7: They can't just say well, we'll let our industry association
- 10:18Speaker 7: take care of this or don't worry. I mean, look
- 10:20Speaker 7: at just the past week, what's been going on. CEOs
- 10:23Speaker 7: really need to be on watch.
- 10:25Speaker 5: Yeah, shackles is a fantastic word, a free range Trump right,
- 10:28Speaker 5: here we go, There we go.
- 10:30Speaker 2: The other thing that you could do, if you're trying
- 10:32Speaker 2: to get his attention or curry favor, is to give
- 10:34Speaker 2: him a made up award.
- 10:35Speaker 7: Yes, he does respond to these types of trinkets and trophies,
- 10:41Speaker 7: as we've seen with the Apple CEO, Tim Cook was
- 10:44Speaker 7: able to give him this sort of glass you know,
- 10:46Speaker 7: trophy with a twenty four carrot gold base or something,
- 10:49Speaker 7: you know, with the Apple logo on it. And you know,
- 10:51Speaker 7: guess what, you know, it was over tariffs and Cook
- 10:54Speaker 7: Apple we're looking for some relief on foreign microchip tariffs.
- 10:58Speaker 7: So and you know that helped. It also helped though
- 11:01Speaker 7: that Cook had really put in the work though, talking
- 11:03Speaker 7: to Trump for years now, going back to the first administration,
- 11:06Speaker 7: so you can't just you know, sort of throw a
- 11:08Speaker 7: trophy at him. But it does take some groundwork as well.
- 11:11Speaker 7: But look at the Swiss business executives also giving him
- 11:13Speaker 7: a you know, a gold rolex and you know, so
- 11:16Speaker 7: these things do tend to have an impact. As we say,
- 11:19Speaker 7: everything is a transaction with this president.
- 11:22Speaker 5: Matt, you mentioned it's been difficult getting people to speak
- 11:25Speaker 5: to you for this story. Did any of the business
- 11:27Speaker 5: leaders you spoke to give you reasoning for why they
- 11:30Speaker 5: might be afraid to talk or did they kind of
- 11:32Speaker 5: just brush you off?
- 11:33Speaker 7: It's I mean, many brush us off through their gatekeepers.
- 11:35Speaker 7: They just the thing is, they just don't see much upside.
- 11:38Speaker 7: They don't want to be the one CEO talking to
- 11:41Speaker 7: any reporter on the record. But as we've seen now,
- 11:44Speaker 7: maybe we might see some more come out of the
- 11:45Speaker 7: woodwork now that Diamond and others are talking about, you know,
- 11:49Speaker 7: the interest rates. The defense companies also might have something
- 11:53Speaker 7: to say about Trump pressuring them to, you know, to
- 11:55Speaker 7: up their game.
- 11:57Speaker 4: So we'll see.
- 11:58Speaker 7: But it's that you know, CEO is a yea, and
- 12:00Speaker 7: that they might be speaking out on certain issues, but
- 12:02Speaker 7: when it comes to Trump again, they just fail to
- 12:05Speaker 7: see the upside. But at this point, as we say,
- 12:08Speaker 7: or it was a Yale School of Management person wrote
- 12:11Speaker 7: in Bloomberg Opinion, the chaos is not just no longer
- 12:14Speaker 7: in the background. The chaos is baked in. It's in
- 12:17Speaker 7: the system. It's coming for them. So they might want
- 12:20Speaker 7: us talk.
- 12:20Speaker 2: Yeah, it's front and center, and it feels in many
- 12:22Speaker 2: ways like those who know how to navigate governments and
- 12:25Speaker 2: emerging markets might be better positioned.
- 12:27Speaker 8: Yea.
- 12:27Speaker 7: So you have that experience exactly, you know, of that
- 12:30Speaker 7: sort of slightly more chaotic, slightly more free wheeling environments,
- 12:33Speaker 7: and many of these big multinationals, of course, do operate
- 12:36Speaker 7: in those areas.
- 12:37Speaker 2: Our thanks to Matthew Boyle Bloomberg senior management reporter, coming
- 12:41Speaker 2: up a look at why the tech giant Nvidia and
- 12:43Speaker 2: the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly are partnering up. You're listening
- 12:46Speaker 2: to Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio, providing in depth research
- 12:50Speaker 2: and data on two thousand companies and one hundred thirty industries.
- 12:53Speaker 5: You can access Bloomberg Intelligence via Big on the terminal.
- 12:57Speaker 5: I'm Alexandra Semenova.
- 12:58Speaker 2: And I'm Scarlett Foo is Bloomberg.
- 13:05Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Intelligence with Scarlet Foo and Paul Sweeney
- 13:09Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio.
- 13:12Speaker 5: I'm Scarlettfou and I'm Alexandra Semenova filling in for Paul Sweeney.
- 13:15Speaker 2: We moved to some news in big tech this week.
- 13:18Speaker 5: Alphabet's Google confirmed that it has entered a multi year
- 13:21Speaker 5: deal with Apple.
- 13:22Speaker 2: This will allow Alphabet to power the iPhone maker's artificial
- 13:25Speaker 2: intelligence technology, including the Serie voice assistant.
- 13:28Speaker 5: We reported late last year that the two companies were
- 13:31Speaker 5: finalizing such a deal, with Apple planning to pay about
- 13:34Speaker 5: one billion dollars a year.
- 13:35Speaker 2: For more on this, we're joined by Ano Agrana, Bloomberg
- 13:37Speaker 2: Intelligence technology analyst.
- 13:39Speaker 5: We first asked Ana rog about the specific advantages Google
- 13:43Speaker 5: brings to Apple with its Gemini models.
- 13:45Speaker 9: Now we go back in history. Apple doesn't have that
- 13:49Speaker 9: big of their own foundational model on which it's running
- 13:53Speaker 9: or it's supposed to run some of these technologies. But
- 13:56Speaker 9: Apple and Google go back long way. They have a
- 13:59Speaker 9: very very good agreement on search, which pays Apple billions
- 14:04Speaker 9: of dollars. So you know, there was some legal issue
- 14:07Speaker 9: around it. So we always knew that once that legal
- 14:10Speaker 9: issue goes away, Apple may be working closely with Google
- 14:13Speaker 9: to basically outsource a lot of their foundational models into
- 14:17Speaker 9: the technology that they have.
- 14:18Speaker 4: They have.
- 14:19Speaker 9: Now it's possible that the next CD upgrade, which is
- 14:22Speaker 9: most likely going to be in the March April timeframe,
- 14:26Speaker 9: could be that one big moment that we are all
- 14:28Speaker 9: looking for Apple to finally come out and say that, okay,
- 14:31Speaker 9: you know we are not a laggard in AI, that
- 14:33Speaker 9: they also have a product that's pretty good.
- 14:35Speaker 5: Ana rag I saw a tweet actually from the official
- 14:38Speaker 5: Google account announcing this deal, and Elon Musk replied. He
- 14:42Speaker 5: said that this seems like an unreasonable concentration of power
- 14:46Speaker 5: for Google obviously has a vested interest here, given you know,
- 14:51Speaker 5: his participation in XAI, but does he have a point,
- 14:54Speaker 5: what are the regulatory risks around this deal?
- 14:57Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean he won't have a point if his
- 14:59Speaker 9: model been used at that point. So I mean everybody
- 15:02Speaker 9: is trying to pitch Apple to use that model. But
- 15:05Speaker 9: you know, at the end of the day, Apple actually,
- 15:07Speaker 9: for the first time, if you go back a year
- 15:10Speaker 9: and a half ago, they used open ai. I mean
- 15:12Speaker 9: you can still use open ai when you go to
- 15:14Speaker 9: Syria and ask a question and it can take you
- 15:16Speaker 9: out of there. But for Apple, it has to be
- 15:19Speaker 9: integrated within the iOS, within the software, but they won't
- 15:24Speaker 9: do it to an outside vendor where they don't control
- 15:27Speaker 9: the data. So what Apple's going to do here, They're
- 15:30Speaker 9: going to use the foundational models from Google, but they're
- 15:32Speaker 9: going to run a lot of that either on the
- 15:34Speaker 9: device or their own private, private cloud data centers, which
- 15:38Speaker 9: means they will still protect the privacy of that question
- 15:42Speaker 9: and not let it have you know, access to other
- 15:44Speaker 9: players as well.
- 15:45Speaker 2: Yeah, the privacy angle is really big for Apple. It's
- 15:47Speaker 2: kind of its mark of distinction here among the big
- 15:50Speaker 2: tech players.
- 15:51Speaker 5: An rag.
- 15:52Speaker 2: Apple has seen this exodus of talent AI talent going
- 15:56Speaker 2: to other big tech companies in recent months. Does this
- 15:59Speaker 2: small year deal with alphabet, with Google change any of that.
- 16:04Speaker 2: Does that stanch the bleeding at all?
- 16:07Speaker 4: Yeah?
- 16:07Speaker 9: For me, it does only because I am now buying
- 16:10Speaker 9: the model outright from somebody who's doing all the hard work.
- 16:13Speaker 9: So I'm not in the business of model development. If
- 16:16Speaker 9: I can use the best model that's out there into
- 16:18Speaker 9: my product and I pay them some money, and the
- 16:21Speaker 9: humor amount is about a billion dollars a year, which is,
- 16:24Speaker 9: to be honest, nothing compared to how many billions these
- 16:27Speaker 9: companies are spending to come up with their own large
- 16:30Speaker 9: language model. And that's what actually Apple said in the
- 16:33Speaker 9: search case and says, I'm not in the search business.
- 16:36Speaker 9: If Google has the best search, I will outsource that
- 16:38Speaker 9: technology into my products from them.
- 16:40Speaker 2: Are thanks to Honor Agrana, bi's technology analyst.
- 16:43Speaker 5: We move next to news from the athletic apparel company
- 16:46Speaker 5: Lululemon Athletica.
- 16:48Speaker 2: This week, Lululemon said it's fourth quarter sales would land
- 16:51Speaker 2: at the higher end of its twenty twenty five guidance.
- 16:53Speaker 5: It's a sign that the yoga war company is regaining
- 16:56Speaker 5: some momentum following a series of disappointing results.
- 16:59Speaker 2: For more, Alex and I were joined by Punam Goyel,
- 17:01Speaker 2: senior US e Commerce and retail analyst.
- 17:04Speaker 5: We first asked Poonam to break down how the company's
- 17:06Speaker 5: turnaround is going.
- 17:08Speaker 10: So, the loyalty program is not something that Lulu Lemon
- 17:11Speaker 10: has had for a long long time, but it does help,
- 17:15Speaker 10: just like with any other loyalty program. You know, it
- 17:18Speaker 10: gives you perks. You have access to Lulu Lemon merchandise,
- 17:22Speaker 10: who have access to Lulu Lemon events, etc. And it
- 17:25Speaker 10: does bring the member who enjoys the lul Lemon experience
- 17:29Speaker 10: to keep coming back. It's an added reward for those
- 17:33Speaker 10: who have been loyal to the company. But make no mistakes,
- 17:37Speaker 10: that is not what's going to drive the turnaround. Their
- 17:40Speaker 10: turnaround needs a lot more than that.
- 17:42Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, loyalty programs are something that most brands
- 17:46Speaker 2: have and Lula Lemon has some more structural issues when
- 17:49Speaker 2: it comes to Lululemon. Separate from the loyalty program, Lulu
- 17:52Speaker 2: has pre announced fourth quarter sales and it comes in
- 17:55Speaker 2: at the higher end of its guidance. This is kind
- 17:57Speaker 2: of surprising because Lulua Lemon has struggled to connect with
- 18:00Speaker 2: choppers the last couple of quarters.
- 18:03Speaker 10: Yes, you can say that it's surprising, but at the
- 18:05Speaker 10: end of the day, the sales are still down. The
- 18:08Speaker 10: estimate was for sales to be down negative one to
- 18:10Speaker 10: three percent, so maybe you're close to minus one. That's
- 18:13Speaker 10: still not where we expect Lemon to be. This doesn't
- 18:17Speaker 10: tell me that the turnaround is you know, has started
- 18:21Speaker 10: and is underway and things will begin to improve quarter
- 18:24Speaker 10: after quarter. I think it's good, but I need a
- 18:27Speaker 10: lot more to be confident that the turnaround will begin
- 18:30Speaker 10: to take place.
- 18:32Speaker 5: What are some of the macroeconomic trends that are driving
- 18:35Speaker 5: Lululemon's customer base. Is it inflation? Is it just an
- 18:39Speaker 5: overall change in discretionary spending patterns?
- 18:42Speaker 2: What is it?
- 18:43Speaker 10: Yeah, so the macro economy has been you know, good
- 18:46Speaker 10: and bad. The luxury consumer has been doing well Lemon.
- 18:50Speaker 10: You could argue SIT's in the affluent space of active wear.
- 18:54Speaker 10: But that said, it's not that the customer is frushured
- 18:57Speaker 10: and that's why their sales have fallen. It is that
- 19:00Speaker 10: they have lacked innovation and execution has been weak. So
- 19:04Speaker 10: the key here is a company specific issue that they
- 19:08Speaker 10: need to resolve, and they are working towards it. We
- 19:11Speaker 10: will be getting a new CEO hopefully at some point
- 19:13Speaker 10: in twenty twenty six, and it'll really be then where
- 19:17Speaker 10: we can see who comes in, what's the strategy, and
- 19:20Speaker 10: how does lul Lemon re engage. It's for a customer
- 19:24Speaker 10: that probably still loves the brand but just hasn't found
- 19:27Speaker 10: enough new to keep going back and back.
- 19:30Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 19:30Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think about the competitors that Lulu Lemon faces
- 19:33Speaker 2: in the space. It ranges from Dorry to all the
- 19:38Speaker 2: other big names out there, including Nike, which offers perhaps
- 19:41Speaker 2: similar at leisure wear but at a lower price point too.
- 19:44Speaker 2: When it comes to this new CEO, Calvin MacDonald, the
- 19:46Speaker 2: current c is set to a step down, and I
- 19:48Speaker 2: know Elliott has been a big player in pushing for
- 19:51Speaker 2: Jan Nielsen, the former CFO at Ralph Lauren, to replace him.
- 19:55Speaker 2: What's the latest on that. Do we presume that Jane
- 19:58Speaker 2: Nielsen is going to be the next CEO?
- 20:01Speaker 10: I mean we don't know yet right so it's definitely
- 20:03Speaker 10: one of the contenders and could be. And I think
- 20:06Speaker 10: as long as they get a product led executive, which
- 20:09Speaker 10: he is, Little Lemon could be in good hands to
- 20:12Speaker 10: continue this turnaround.
- 20:14Speaker 2: Founder Chip Wilson is also kind of involved here, that's
- 20:17Speaker 2: another name that we haven't heard from in a while.
- 20:19Speaker 2: He founded the company. He no longer sits on the board,
- 20:22Speaker 2: but he still owns about nine percent of the stock.
- 20:25Speaker 2: How much do you pay attention to what he says?
- 20:28Speaker 10: We definitely look at it. Look what he said was important.
- 20:30Speaker 10: He founded the company. The company was grounded on innovation,
- 20:34Speaker 10: on products, and I think he makes fair points that
- 20:38Speaker 10: the company needs to kind of really re engage with
- 20:42Speaker 10: the customer and go back to its roots, which is,
- 20:45Speaker 10: are you still ahead of the competition? Like you know
- 20:47Speaker 10: you mentioned earlier, competition has increased, and it has, but
- 20:51Speaker 10: competition was always there. But where is Little Lemon ahead
- 20:54Speaker 10: of it? Can you get similar at leisure pants or
- 20:57Speaker 10: leggings at Vory or at Aloe or at Latta? How
- 21:01Speaker 10: does Little Lemons stand out today? And that's the big
- 21:04Speaker 10: question that they need to answer.
- 21:06Speaker 2: Our thanks to put Im Goyel, senior US e Commerce
- 21:08Speaker 2: and retail analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 21:10Speaker 5: We move next to the biotech space.
- 21:12Speaker 2: And this week tech Giant and Nvidia announced plans to
- 21:15Speaker 2: invest a billion dollars over five years in a new
- 21:18Speaker 2: AI lab. And that's with the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly
- 21:21Speaker 2: for more on this.
- 21:22Speaker 5: We were joined by Sam Fazzelli, Bloomberg Intelligence, Director of
- 21:25Speaker 5: Research for Global Industries and senior pharmaceuticals analysts.
- 21:29Speaker 2: We started off by asking Sam to break down the
- 21:31Speaker 2: latest news at ELI Lilly.
- 21:33Speaker 11: Well, look, I think these are the brillion dollar club
- 21:36Speaker 11: getting together. A billion dollars is probably dropping the ocean
- 21:39Speaker 11: for both of them. It's over five years. And what
- 21:43Speaker 11: I think the aim of this, at the end of
- 21:45Speaker 11: the day is to try and automate and speed up
- 21:48Speaker 11: as much of the partly the drudgery of doing lab work,
- 21:52Speaker 11: because lab work just like as if you were a
- 21:54Speaker 11: doctor in a clinical setting, you need to take a
- 21:58Speaker 11: lot of notes, a lot of detail. But at the
- 22:00Speaker 11: same time, I think they're investing in what appears to
- 22:04Speaker 11: be automating twenty four to seven experiments, things that human
- 22:08Speaker 11: beings just can't do. And I know, having been a scientist,
- 22:12Speaker 11: that sometimes your life is on hold because you have
- 22:14Speaker 11: to go back and deal with your experiments, yoursells, or
- 22:18Speaker 11: whatever it is that you're running. So a lot of
- 22:20Speaker 11: these things I think could speed up and also make
- 22:22Speaker 11: the life of the scientists a little bit easier at
- 22:25Speaker 11: the end of the day, though I think the am
- 22:27Speaker 11: here is to try and get scientific discoveries translated to
- 22:31Speaker 11: drugs quicker and get them to market quicker.
- 22:34Speaker 5: Sam, What does this mean for Eli Lilly's rivals? Do
- 22:37Speaker 5: you expect that we'll see some of its competitors also
- 22:39Speaker 5: ramp up their AI endeavors given its partnership with the
- 22:42Speaker 5: company like Nvidia.
- 22:44Speaker 11: Pretty much all pharma companies. And I just want to
- 22:47Speaker 11: point you to a recent survey that EI Bloomberg Intelligence
- 22:50Speaker 11: has done that looked at ten different industries, one of
- 22:54Speaker 11: which being the pharmaceutical industry. Ask executives, what are you
- 22:58Speaker 11: doing with this? What are you trying to get to?
- 23:00Speaker 11: What is the aim? At the end? Everybody is at this.
- 23:03Speaker 11: This is not something specific to Lily. And you know, Google,
- 23:07Speaker 11: for example, has has through deep Mind, has created an
- 23:11Speaker 11: agentic KI called Google Scientists. It's like, I think four
- 23:15Speaker 11: agents or five agents who interact with each other and
- 23:17Speaker 11: check each other's hypothesis. So a lot of this is
- 23:20Speaker 11: going on in all companies, but of course here we
- 23:22Speaker 11: have Lily, one of the richest farmer companies around in
- 23:26Speaker 11: terms of the amount of cash blow that is got
- 23:28Speaker 11: really being able to spend the money without really impacting it.
- 23:33Speaker 11: It's balance sheet and cash flow, and I'm pretty sure
- 23:36Speaker 11: everybody's at this, but clearly this is the news, doujou if.
- 23:40Speaker 2: You like, absolutely, Like you said, it's a drop in
- 23:43Speaker 2: the bucket for both of these companies. But when you
- 23:44Speaker 2: have a number like one billion dollars and these big
- 23:47Speaker 2: brand names, it gets people's attention. What also gets my attention, Sam,
- 23:51Speaker 2: is Maderna. Maderna obviously one of the vaccine makers during
- 23:55Speaker 2: the pandemic, but it's had a rough go at it
- 23:59Speaker 2: recently because it's so dependent on these vaccines and we
- 24:03Speaker 2: have an administration that is kind of anti vaccine right now.
- 24:06Speaker 2: Yet madernal pre announced at the JP Morgan Healthcare conference
- 24:09Speaker 2: that is the US COVID business did better than expected.
- 24:12Speaker 2: Is Madernas starting to stabilize, Well.
- 24:16Speaker 11: One would hope. So they've stuck with their aim of
- 24:21Speaker 11: growing twenty twenty six point ten percent. But you know,
- 24:24Speaker 11: if you look back at the beginning of the year,
- 24:26Speaker 11: where the company in twenty twenty five started with guidance
- 24:31Speaker 11: and where we ended up, we're a good five six
- 24:33Speaker 11: hundred million dollars short of what the hope was at
- 24:36Speaker 11: the beginning of the year. So everybody, I thinking knows
- 24:39Speaker 11: that this is a very difficult market to call for
- 24:41Speaker 11: exactly the reasons you just highlighted. There is a constant
- 24:44Speaker 11: change in the way that the administration in the US,
- 24:47Speaker 11: and not just the US elsewhere is also dealing with vaccination,
- 24:51Speaker 11: particularly in the COVID side of things. Other vaccinations are
- 24:55Speaker 11: still pretty much well settled and at least outside the US.
- 25:00Speaker 11: Problem also that MODERNA is going to face or has
- 25:03Speaker 11: been facing, is that there are lots of people. There's
- 25:06Speaker 11: I think my patent colleagues say that at least twenty
- 25:09Speaker 11: various directions of legal cases or trials going on different
- 25:13Speaker 11: groups saying you're infringing my patents, so you've fringe my
- 25:16Speaker 11: patents and you need to because there was billions and
- 25:18Speaker 11: billions of dollars of revenues. So some of that is
- 25:22Speaker 11: coming potentially in the March timeframe, very lightly against a
- 25:28Speaker 11: trial coming up against our Bridges, another company that's listed
- 25:31Speaker 11: in the US. So some of that is I think
- 25:33Speaker 11: something that might keep people from getting too excited.
- 25:36Speaker 5: Our Thanks to Sam Fazzelli, Bloomberg Intelligence Director of Research
- 25:40Speaker 5: for Global Industries and senior pharmaceuticals analyst, coming up all
- 25:43Speaker 5: look at how artificial intelligence is changing shopping.
- 25:46Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio, providing in
- 25:49Speaker 2: depth research and data on two thousand companies and one
- 25:52Speaker 2: hundred and thirty industries.
- 25:54Speaker 5: You can access Bloomberg Intelligence via big on the terminal.
- 25:57Speaker 5: I'm Alexandra Semenova and I'm Scarlett Foo. This is Bloomberg.
- 26:09Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Intelligence with Scarlet Foo and Paul Sweeney
- 26:14Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio.
- 26:16Speaker 2: I'm Scarlet Foo.
- 26:17Speaker 5: And I'm Alexandra Semenova filling in for Paul Sweeney.
- 26:20Speaker 2: We move now to some news in the tech space.
- 26:22Speaker 5: This week, we heard that the tech giant Meta Platforms
- 26:25Speaker 5: is beginning to cut more than a thousand jobs from
- 26:27Speaker 5: its Reality Labs division.
- 26:29Speaker 2: It's part of a plan to redirect resources from virtual
- 26:31Speaker 2: reality and metaverse products towards AI, wearables and phone features.
- 26:36Speaker 5: For more on this and the latest tech news, we
- 26:37Speaker 5: were joined by Mandeep Saying, global tech research head at
- 26:40Speaker 5: Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 26:41Speaker 2: We first as Ban Deep what these job cuts mean
- 26:44Speaker 2: for Meta's bottom line.
- 26:45Speaker 8: I mean reality Lab segment is almost losing twenty billion
- 26:50Speaker 8: dollars a year and cumulatively they've lost about seventy billion
- 26:54Speaker 8: dollars over the past three years, so a lot of
- 26:57Speaker 8: investors questioned, you know, how long they were expected to
- 27:03Speaker 8: remain patient on those kind of losses. And I think
- 27:06Speaker 8: the initial rumors were about a thirty percent cut in
- 27:10Speaker 8: that unit. So this is somewhat below expectations in terms
- 27:14Speaker 8: of ten percent job cut, but it just goes to
- 27:17Speaker 8: show that right now, the companies obviously focus more on
- 27:22Speaker 8: the AI side in terms of building the infrastructure, building
- 27:25Speaker 8: their own large anguid model, and it may take a
- 27:28Speaker 8: while to you know, really bring it, bring that LLLM
- 27:33Speaker 8: concept in that variables or the whether it's a VR
- 27:37Speaker 8: headsets or the glasses. And I mean when you compare
- 27:43Speaker 8: VR headsets or the glasses that they're selling to let's
- 27:47Speaker 8: say AirPods, the number of units pale in comparison. We're talking,
- 27:51Speaker 8: you know, ten million, maybe if they do twenty million.
- 27:54Speaker 8: Apple does more than one hundred million AirPods a year,
- 27:57Speaker 8: So what's the opportunity here? And I think that's where
- 28:01Speaker 8: you probably will see more cuts in that business.
- 28:04Speaker 2: That is a really really important contrast to make there
- 28:07Speaker 2: in terms of what Meta is trying to do, because
- 28:09Speaker 2: they want to be part of the mass market here,
- 28:12Speaker 2: but it's not quite there yet. Mindy. As Meta pivots
- 28:16Speaker 2: away from VR and the metaverse to AI, what does
- 28:18Speaker 2: that mean for spending? I mean, they obviously had to
- 28:20Speaker 2: spend a lot to build out the metaverse, to build
- 28:23Speaker 2: out their VR offerings, and now they're going to shift
- 28:27Speaker 2: everything to building out the AI offerings of large language models,
- 28:31Speaker 2: these AI glasses. What do you think that the pace
- 28:35Speaker 2: of spending will just kind of continue, It won't really
- 28:37Speaker 2: shift all that much.
- 28:39Speaker 8: Yes, On the AI side, the opportunity is huge. What
- 28:42Speaker 8: everyone is chasing right now is an AI agent that
- 28:46Speaker 8: can book your travel, your Uber trip, order food, you know,
- 28:50Speaker 8: do shopping for you. That's the vision Google is chasing.
- 28:53Speaker 8: That's what Amazon alexaplus launch was all about. So Meta
- 28:58Speaker 8: has that surface area with you know, Instagram and WhatsApp,
- 29:01Speaker 8: and you could argue they could in theory develop such
- 29:05Speaker 8: an agent, but the hard part is integration and getting
- 29:09Speaker 8: the AI to where it's you know, reliable and predictable.
- 29:13Speaker 8: And that's where I mean, it's anybody's guests who is
- 29:17Speaker 8: best positioned. I think the Apple Google partnership that we
- 29:22Speaker 8: saw this week is probably a negative for Meta in
- 29:25Speaker 8: this sense. Like, if Apple is setting up defaults in
- 29:29Speaker 8: their phone, then that makes it hard for an external
- 29:33Speaker 8: kind of agent to do these kind of things. So
- 29:37Speaker 8: from that perspective, distribution really matters and operating system control
- 29:42Speaker 8: really matters. So Meta is somewhat at a disadvantage when
- 29:46Speaker 8: it comes to, you know, their distribution on Apple and
- 29:49Speaker 8: Android devices.
- 29:51Speaker 5: Mandy. We also got new Airbnb hired Meta's head of
- 29:54Speaker 5: General AI, which is really interesting because wasn't it not
- 29:58Speaker 5: too long ago that they declined work with open AI.
- 30:01Speaker 5: What does this all mean for its artificial intelligence endeavors.
- 30:04Speaker 8: Yeah, I think Brian Chesky has been quite vocal about
- 30:08Speaker 8: using open source llms as opposed to you know, proprietary
- 30:13Speaker 8: llms like open AI and Gemini, and so his thing is,
- 30:17Speaker 8: I've got a direct customer traffic coming to my website.
- 30:21Speaker 8: If I give away you know, my bookings interface to
- 30:26Speaker 8: these llms, then I'm losing that customer direct customer touch.
- 30:30Speaker 8: And he doesn't want to do that. He instead wants
- 30:33Speaker 8: to build his own LLM based on an open source
- 30:36Speaker 8: model that's already out there, and that's where you know,
- 30:39Speaker 8: Meta has open source their model in the past, so
- 30:42Speaker 8: it makes sense to have somebody from Meta come in
- 30:45Speaker 8: and do something along those lines. AB and B has
- 30:49Speaker 8: been open to using Chinese open source models and building
- 30:52Speaker 8: on top of that. So from that perspective, it's an
- 30:54Speaker 8: interesting strategy that they are going ahead with in terms
- 30:58Speaker 8: of using all kinds of open source and not just
- 31:01Speaker 8: you know, the US based model.
- 31:02Speaker 2: Who in the tech world is winning the talent war
- 31:04Speaker 2: because it felt like for a long time open AI
- 31:08Speaker 2: and traffic they were, you know, picking up a lot
- 31:10Speaker 2: of talent. Is that still the case?
- 31:13Speaker 8: I mean right now, the talent is going to where
- 31:15Speaker 8: the compute is. If you don't have the compute, you
- 31:19Speaker 8: just cannot attract the talent because these models need a
- 31:22Speaker 8: lot of compute for training. And you may be the
- 31:25Speaker 8: smartest person, but if you don't have the computer, you
- 31:28Speaker 8: can't test your idea. So from that perspective, infrastructure build
- 31:32Speaker 8: really matters, which is why in Nvidia, even though they
- 31:34Speaker 8: are the chip provider, now they launch their own foundational
- 31:38Speaker 8: model in autos self driving that just goes to show
- 31:42Speaker 8: what compute can do, you know, and Vidia is definitely
- 31:45Speaker 8: moving up the stax. It will be interesting to see
- 31:47Speaker 8: how many areas where they compete in with their own
- 31:50Speaker 8: foundational model man Deep.
- 31:52Speaker 5: We're early into the earning season, but big tech results
- 31:55Speaker 5: will be here before we know it. And obviously the
- 31:57Speaker 5: bar is really high when it comes to what these
- 31:59Speaker 5: companies are saying about how they're monetizing their heavy AI investments.
- 32:03Speaker 5: Do you think that they'll live up to the expectations.
- 32:06Speaker 8: I think right now you have to focus on where
- 32:08Speaker 8: you will see positive earnings revisions, and given the kapex
- 32:13Speaker 8: investments are going up for this year, it's going to
- 32:16Speaker 8: be hard to show, you know, positive revisions when it
- 32:19Speaker 8: comes to earnings, except for someone like Alphabet that really
- 32:24Speaker 8: has seen a big shift in sentiment because one everyone
- 32:28Speaker 8: realizes that their models have caught up, and they also
- 32:31Speaker 8: are the most efficient when it comes to their stack,
- 32:34Speaker 8: the use of TPUs and low cost inferencing. So from
- 32:37Speaker 8: that perspective, I think Alphabet clearly is best position to
- 32:41Speaker 8: deliver positive surprises. But for someone like Meta, I mean,
- 32:44Speaker 8: if you're hearing job cuts, then you know probably it's
- 32:48Speaker 8: going to be hard for them to you know, show
- 32:49Speaker 8: positive revisions this year.
- 32:51Speaker 5: Our thanks to man Deep sing Global Tech Research had
- 32:54Speaker 5: at Bloomberg Intelligence this week.
- 32:56Speaker 2: We also looked at the e commerce platform Commerce which
- 32:59Speaker 2: provides a driven tools for brands and retaillers. This company
- 33:03Speaker 2: trades on the NAZAC under the ticker CMRC.
- 33:06Speaker 5: We were joined by the company's CEO, Travis Hess, who
- 33:09Speaker 5: discussed how AI is changing shopping and this came on
- 33:12Speaker 5: the heels of Google launching its Universal Commerce Protocol or UCP.
- 33:17Speaker 2: Commerce is an active partner in UCP, which enables buying
- 33:20Speaker 2: directly across Google's AI surfaces. We first asked Travis to
- 33:24Speaker 2: break down Google's UCP and just how exactly this makes
- 33:28Speaker 2: shopping easier.
- 33:30Speaker 3: Given the extent of which Google plays in all of
- 33:32Speaker 3: our lives and how people think of them, It's essentially
- 33:36Speaker 3: setting the foundation and the standard for brands and retailers
- 33:40Speaker 3: and other organizations to be able to scale agent to
- 33:42Speaker 3: commerce across all of the surfaces that Google AI would hit.
- 33:46Speaker 3: So think of the contextualized conversations everyone's having through answer
- 33:50Speaker 3: engines today. Those conversations are then dynamically recommending not only
- 33:55Speaker 3: experiences and facts, but certainly shopping and brands based on
- 33:58Speaker 3: the enrichment of data against those surfaces, and Google is
- 34:01Speaker 3: enabling a standard by which consumers would be able to
- 34:04Speaker 3: buy in a standardized, safe secure way. As it serves
- 34:08Speaker 3: up discovery, you'll be able to buy seamlessly across those surfaces.
- 34:12Speaker 5: Travis, can you walk us through how AI will change
- 34:14Speaker 5: the shopping experience in practical terms? Let's say I'm looking
- 34:18Speaker 5: for a bag? How do I go about using your platform?
- 34:21Speaker 3: The consumer behavior has changed more than anything, So the
- 34:24Speaker 3: amount of eyeballs and behavior going to the answer engines
- 34:27Speaker 3: is probably the fastest adopting technology we've seen. So because
- 34:30Speaker 3: the consumers are going there and they're having these conversations,
- 34:33Speaker 3: brands and retailers are having to respond in kind, and
- 34:36Speaker 3: they tend to have a fair amount of brand ethos,
- 34:39Speaker 3: so they're very concerned about where they show up, how
- 34:41Speaker 3: they show up, and who they show up next to.
- 34:42Speaker 3: So trust is at the cornerstone of this. So a
- 34:44Speaker 3: lot of the foundational stuff you're hearing about now is
- 34:47Speaker 3: to set up that trust. So when you're shopping for
- 34:48Speaker 3: that bag, it's giving you a response that you can
- 34:52Speaker 3: objectively trust. It's not serving up who paid the most
- 34:55Speaker 3: to be listed or injected in that conversation. The thesis
- 34:58Speaker 3: behind this is based on your own behavior within those
- 35:01Speaker 3: answer engines, and of course other behavior within Google. Whether
- 35:04Speaker 3: that's through Chrome or through other Google products. They have
- 35:07Speaker 3: a unique advantage there because of the amount of surfaces
- 35:10Speaker 3: an individual might use to synthesize that in a hyper
- 35:14Speaker 3: personalized way. So think of it as not only shopping either,
- 35:17Speaker 3: but think of going into your favorite store and someone
- 35:20Speaker 3: as you walk in can scan a code and immediately
- 35:22Speaker 3: knows what you own, what you like, where you're going,
- 35:25Speaker 3: what you're looking for, so they could curate something for
- 35:27Speaker 3: you immediately. Where that friction is removed through the process.
- 35:30Speaker 3: Think of that virtually in this particular capacity. That's the
- 35:33Speaker 3: future state.
- 35:34Speaker 2: So all the information that Google has on me, they
- 35:36Speaker 2: are also selling who are they selling it to?
- 35:38Speaker 3: Oh that's not for me, that's that's top.
- 35:42Speaker 2: I mean. The reason I ask is because it depends
- 35:44Speaker 2: on me logging into Google for them to give me
- 35:46Speaker 2: those personalized recommendations. If I don't choose to log in,
- 35:49Speaker 2: then I end up with the equivalent of a Google
- 35:51Speaker 2: search on a public computer.
- 35:53Speaker 8: You do.
- 35:53Speaker 3: I think the models are changing. Certainly the old model
- 35:56Speaker 3: was you're searching for terms, and certainly organizations are optimizing
- 36:00Speaker 3: through SEO to be listed organically at the top, or
- 36:02Speaker 3: they're through paid search, but listed that still exists today
- 36:06Speaker 3: certainly in this behavior that drives that, but where this
- 36:08Speaker 3: is evolving to is called GEO, so generative optimization, which
- 36:12Speaker 3: is really going to be a combination of structured data,
- 36:15Speaker 3: which is like product catalog data, skew, color size, all
- 36:18Speaker 3: those dynamics dimensions coupled with unstructured data, which are brand guidelines,
- 36:23Speaker 3: call center, transcripts, blogs, articles, all the things that would
- 36:27Speaker 3: contextualize that brand and that product, if you will. That's
- 36:32Speaker 3: being enriched oftentimes by us on the petonomic side, which
- 36:35Speaker 3: is part of our portfolio, and then syndicated across these
- 36:37Speaker 3: different surfaces, be that Google or Open AI or Microsoft
- 36:42Speaker 3: or whomever. And it's going to continue to expand as
- 36:44Speaker 3: the channels have expanded over the last several years.
- 36:46Speaker 5: What kind of AI trends and retail trends have you
- 36:49Speaker 5: been monitoring.
- 36:50Speaker 3: It's all about AI this year. That's what's hot exactly
- 36:53Speaker 3: this right, I think there's two sides of the spectrum.
- 36:55Speaker 3: There's a lot of buzz, which is exciting, but at
- 36:58Speaker 3: the same time, it's confusing a lot of people. Is
- 37:00Speaker 3: everyone is doing everything and it's hard to kind of reconcile,
- 37:04Speaker 3: like what's meaningful to the business I think for larger
- 37:06Speaker 3: organizations that we work with, brand manufacturers and retailers, trust,
- 37:11Speaker 3: brand ethos, and security are top of mind. So for them,
- 37:14Speaker 3: it's less about the sizzle, it's more about the stake
- 37:16Speaker 3: and the foundational elements. I think the importance of the
- 37:19Speaker 3: Google announcement is they are taking a very pragmatic approach
- 37:22Speaker 3: to this to lay the tracks so this can scale
- 37:25Speaker 3: and scale properly with trust, with security, and most importantly
- 37:28Speaker 3: with a frictionless experience for customers. Because the brands don't
- 37:32Speaker 3: want to lose that customer data. They still want to
- 37:33Speaker 3: maintain that experience, even though they're not fully controlling the
- 37:37Speaker 3: surface by which they're showing up against. It's not like
- 37:39Speaker 3: they're showing up against their own websites, so they're in
- 37:42Speaker 3: a surface they don't completely control. They're controlling part of
- 37:45Speaker 3: it through the data enrichment in syndication, but they're not
- 37:47Speaker 3: controlling all of it. So they're very, very concerned that
- 37:51Speaker 3: that experience is a positive one and a frictional list one.
- 37:54Speaker 3: Otherwise it has ramifications, It drives cost up and call centers,
- 37:57Speaker 3: it drives maybe negative customer experience, it drives back things
- 38:00Speaker 3: exactly we're in turns bad things on the back end.
- 38:03Speaker 3: So that's the reconciliation people are trying to have. But yes,
- 38:06Speaker 3: that EI has sucked all the oxygen out of the
- 38:09Speaker 3: room at Javis.
- 38:09Speaker 4: And it's a big rule.
- 38:10Speaker 2: What will AI not change for shoppers?
- 38:15Speaker 3: But will it not change for shoppers? I think the
- 38:20Speaker 3: behavior and the surfaces by which they're going to they're
- 38:23Speaker 3: still going to go to. Right. I think new ones
- 38:25Speaker 3: are showing up. I think the expectation personalization has been
- 38:29Speaker 3: promised for a long time. I think there's some hesitancy
- 38:33Speaker 3: there around the trust, So I think overcoming the trust
- 38:36Speaker 3: aspect of this and having that reinforced through continued behavior.
- 38:40Speaker 3: The shopping is very new. There was a big rush
- 38:42Speaker 3: to do this in holiday and the experiences weren't great,
- 38:45Speaker 3: so I think there's a little bit of hesitation. I
- 38:47Speaker 3: think you'll see a much more robust offering this holiday season.
- 38:50Speaker 5: Our thanks to Commerce CEO Travis Hess.
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- 38:59Speaker 2: and one hundred the industries.
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- 39:04Speaker 5: on the terminal I'm Alexandra Samonova and.
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