Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Instant Reaction Earnings Roundup: Microsoft, Meta & Tesla Deliver Results
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- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
- 0:09Speaker 2: This is a breaking news update from Bloomberg, instant reaction
- 0:14Speaker 2: and analysis from our three thousand journalists and analysts around
- 0:17Speaker 2: the world.
- 0:20Speaker 3: Carol Masser along with Tim Stanovik live in our Bloomberg
- 0:22Speaker 3: Interactive Brokers studio. As we mentioned, those big three of
- 0:26Speaker 3: the MAGS seven reporting right now, Meta is up about
- 0:29Speaker 3: four and a quarter percent. Microsoft down about five percent
- 0:32Speaker 3: off its after market lows. Tesla has also bounced back here.
- 0:36Speaker 2: I want to bring in Bloomberg Intelligence Senior technology analyst
- 0:39Speaker 2: on orog Rana. He joins us in Bloomberg's Chicago bureau.
- 0:43Speaker 2: Microsoft down five percent right now. Taking a look at
- 0:47Speaker 2: some of the headlines on arog dot crossed, I know
- 0:50Speaker 2: you've only had a few minutes to actually look at these.
- 0:53Speaker 2: Second quarter Azure and other cloud revenue XFX was up
- 0:56Speaker 2: thirty eight percent, meeting estimates. Second quarter revenue for the
- 0:59Speaker 2: company beat estimates at eighty one point two seven billion dollars.
- 1:05Speaker 2: Second quarter intelligent cloud revenue beat estimates. We also saw
- 1:09Speaker 2: forty three hundred Microsoft three sixty five commercial seats grew
- 1:12Speaker 2: six percent. Forty five percent of commercial RPO was driven
- 1:15Speaker 2: by Open Ai commitments Commercial Remaining Performance Obligation six hundred
- 1:19Speaker 2: and twenty five billion dollars. What's not to love here?
- 1:23Speaker 2: Is it all about capex?
- 1:25Speaker 4: No? I think it's usually high expectations, and you know
- 1:28Speaker 4: the fact that they only met Azure growth rates, which
- 1:31Speaker 4: was thirty eight percent. I think that's probably weighing on
- 1:34Speaker 4: the stock because you know, one would have expected them
- 1:36Speaker 4: to blow out that number. It has been around thirty
- 1:39Speaker 4: nine percent the last couple of quotos, so I think
- 1:41Speaker 4: that's where a little disappointment could be. But that could
- 1:43Speaker 4: also be because of supply constraints. That's something we have
- 1:46Speaker 4: highlighted in our research before. But you know, if you
- 1:49Speaker 4: look at some of the other numbers, such as our
- 1:50Speaker 4: PO you mentioned above, six hundred billion, that's very impressive,
- 1:54Speaker 4: and we already know the capex was going to go up,
- 1:56Speaker 4: So I think in tandem, that's the only number that
- 1:58Speaker 4: sticks out that they didn't beat by a decent amount.
- 2:02Speaker 3: All right, So then I don't know, what do we
- 2:03Speaker 3: want to dig into a little bit more deeper? It
- 2:06Speaker 3: does Microsoft's quarter includes net gains from investments.
- 2:09Speaker 5: In open Ai.
- 2:10Speaker 3: Are we going to get a little bit more of
- 2:12Speaker 3: a picture about that and what's going on there?
- 2:16Speaker 4: I think the question I have is, you know, there's
- 2:17Speaker 4: a big number that you know, that six hundred and
- 2:20Speaker 4: ninety six hundred plus billion RQO you mentioned, there is
- 2:23Speaker 4: a large portion of that comes from OPENINGI. So the
- 2:26Speaker 4: big question is, you know, how is Opening I going
- 2:28Speaker 4: to fund this thing? Do they have the capital to
- 2:31Speaker 4: actually fund let's say two hundred plus billion dollar commitment.
- 2:33Speaker 4: But other than that, what are other clients spending that
- 2:36Speaker 4: are not Open EI? And you know, how is that
- 2:39Speaker 4: business going? And if that wasn't the case, how should
- 2:42Speaker 4: we look at as your growth in the coming quarters.
- 2:44Speaker 4: I think those are the big questions that we need
- 2:46Speaker 4: answered right now.
- 2:47Speaker 2: I don't remember where I saw this. I don't remember
- 2:49Speaker 2: if it was on a program yesterday. I think I might.
- 2:53Speaker 2: My brain is mush. I'm sorry on rock, but was it?
- 2:56Speaker 6: It was all.
- 2:57Speaker 2: About Claude from Anthropic competing with Copilot and Claude offering
- 3:04Speaker 2: products and services at a fraction of the cost or
- 3:08Speaker 2: even free versus what companies are paying for. When it
- 3:13Speaker 2: comes to Microsoft Copilot, how big of a threat is that?
- 3:17Speaker 7: Oh?
- 3:17Speaker 4: Actually, I mean to be very honest, right now, the
- 3:20Speaker 4: entire software sector has been absolute under threat because of
- 3:24Speaker 4: a lot of what you are mentioning, whether it's claud
- 3:26Speaker 4: or whether it's opening Eye tools, or whether it's open source.
- 3:29Speaker 4: I mean, look at the valuations of software companies. They've
- 3:32Speaker 4: been completely destroyed over the last six to nine months,
- 3:35Speaker 4: and a large portion of that is driven by what
- 3:37Speaker 4: you just said.
- 3:40Speaker 3: So interesting, Well, you know, yeah, I mean, so is
- 3:43Speaker 3: it in flux still safe to say, Ana Rag in
- 3:46Speaker 3: terms of who ultimately are going to be the leaders
- 3:50Speaker 3: when it comes to this AI world or will there
- 3:53Speaker 3: be multiple big players.
- 3:56Speaker 4: So we are absolutely influx right now as to who
- 3:58Speaker 4: will own the final product, and that's partially the reason
- 4:01Speaker 4: when you have these valuations go all over the place.
- 4:04Speaker 4: But I would you know, comfortably say, when it comes
- 4:07Speaker 4: to somebody like a Microsoft's cloud portfolio or Amazon's cloud
- 4:10Speaker 4: portfolio or Google's cloud revenue, I think these three companies
- 4:14Speaker 4: will dictate a large portion of that market share just
- 4:17Speaker 4: because they have the capital to do it, they have
- 4:19Speaker 4: massive market shares, and they have also the distribution. So
- 4:22Speaker 4: these three I think will remain the way it is,
- 4:24Speaker 4: the rest of the industry will shift around. We still
- 4:27Speaker 4: think software has a place in this world and you know,
- 4:30Speaker 4: there will be some damage, but it's not going to
- 4:32Speaker 4: get completely blown up. And let's see how that shapes up.
- 4:36Speaker 2: What's the damage That will say in your view, what's
- 4:38Speaker 2: your production.
- 4:39Speaker 4: So if you are just selling a tool out there
- 4:42Speaker 4: in the public to an enterprise or a small business,
- 4:45Speaker 4: you may not get the same kind of premium that
- 4:48Speaker 4: you were before. Remember software a business with eighteen ninety
- 4:51Speaker 4: percent gross margin business. But if you can spin some
- 4:54Speaker 4: of that coded up, you know, using wipe coding or internally,
- 4:57Speaker 4: you may not need some of those tools out there. Now.
- 5:00Speaker 4: We think, at least on the enterprise side, having a
- 5:04Speaker 4: core system of record something like you know, the one
- 5:06Speaker 4: that's sold by SAP or a workday they're far more
- 5:10Speaker 4: important and people are not going to rip them apart
- 5:12Speaker 4: and use white boarding tools internally out there. But if
- 5:15Speaker 4: you are a visualization software or some kind of connected
- 5:18Speaker 4: in between, you may not need to have that software.
- 5:20Speaker 4: So there is a lot that's going to happen over
- 5:22Speaker 4: the next three to five years.
- 5:24Speaker 7: You know.
- 5:24Speaker 3: Interestingly, you know, looking at Microsoft Meta this year and
- 5:27Speaker 3: last year, how the stock the stocks have done. They
- 5:30Speaker 3: definitely underperformed some of the other mags seven names and
- 5:33Speaker 3: certainly some of the other large.
- 5:35Speaker 5: Cap tech names. But I'm just curious.
- 5:37Speaker 3: You know, the concerns have been about the AI spend
- 5:40Speaker 3: and whether it's going to pay off signs here for
- 5:42Speaker 3: Microsoft analog that you're seeing that it does make sense
- 5:46Speaker 3: this spend that Microsoft is doing.
- 5:48Speaker 5: The ROI is there.
- 5:51Speaker 4: Yeah, well, Microsoft, it's definitely there. I Mean. The only
- 5:53Speaker 4: I would say, the long term hangarp is you know
- 5:55Speaker 4: what happens when the opening air relationship breaks through? I mean,
- 5:59Speaker 4: all goes up way. That's the only big risk for
- 6:01Speaker 4: Microsoft in the long run. They'll have to figure out
- 6:03Speaker 4: their own LLM by then. But other than that, I mean,
- 6:06Speaker 4: their cloud infrastructure product is pretty good and you know,
- 6:09Speaker 4: it's gaining market share and according to our calculations, it
- 6:12Speaker 4: will overtake Amazon in the next you know, let's say
- 6:15Speaker 4: three audios or so.
- 6:16Speaker 2: On a rock. Do they really have to figure out
- 6:18Speaker 2: their own LLM? I mean, how much of open ai
- 6:21Speaker 2: do they own?
- 6:22Speaker 4: But it just doesn't matter if they own or not,
- 6:24Speaker 4: because they have the IP rights only until I think
- 6:27Speaker 4: it's twenty thirty two, one of those years, and after
- 6:30Speaker 4: that they can't use those models after that, So remember
- 6:32Speaker 4: that part of it as well, not the financial part
- 6:34Speaker 4: will stay. But it's the actual engine that is driving copilot,
- 6:38Speaker 4: that's driving GitHub copilot or the Microsoft three sixty five
- 6:42Speaker 4: copilot that you talk about. You know, that's the intelligence
- 6:44Speaker 4: that goes into that model.
- 6:45Speaker 2: How do you do that? How do you do that?
- 6:47Speaker 2: From just a resources perspective, if you have if you
- 6:50Speaker 2: have spent so many billions of dollars supporting open ai
- 6:54Speaker 2: and chat GPT, well.
- 6:56Speaker 4: They have their own models that are going on. It's
- 6:58Speaker 4: just not as good as whether it's opening a lot
- 7:00Speaker 4: at this point, but they are putting a lot of
- 7:02Speaker 4: effort behind it, and most of our leads that and
- 7:04Speaker 4: that's where we need to see what kind of ROI
- 7:07Speaker 4: do we see there and do they actually get their
- 7:09Speaker 4: act together over the next few years.
- 7:11Speaker 3: All right, I want to go over to IBM, which
- 7:13Speaker 3: actually outperformed Microsoft last year. It was up about thirty
- 7:17Speaker 3: five percent, and we are seeing this stock up about
- 7:20Speaker 3: eight point four percent following its earnings release. Here they
- 7:25Speaker 3: post revenue that topped estimates. They talked about software gains,
- 7:29Speaker 3: specifically at software unit revenue up twelve percent to nineteen
- 7:33Speaker 3: point seven billion in the fourth quarter, software business jumping
- 7:36Speaker 3: fourteen percent to just over nine billion dollars and the
- 7:39Speaker 3: company projecting that revenue will grow more than five percent
- 7:42Speaker 3: this year, and the company's CEO saying, quote, we enter
- 7:45Speaker 3: twenty twenty six with momentum and in a position of strength.
- 7:49Speaker 3: I don't know if you've had a chance to look
- 7:50Speaker 3: at IBM an a rag walk us through what we're
- 7:54Speaker 3: seeing with this company.
- 7:56Speaker 4: Yeah, I was a bit surprised. Actually, the nine percent
- 7:58Speaker 4: number on the software side is a witch shocking. I mean,
- 8:01Speaker 4: for them to be, you know, total growth rate of
- 8:03Speaker 4: nine percent and software in double digits, I mean, we
- 8:05Speaker 4: were not expecting that. So there's a lot to feel
- 8:07Speaker 4: in that particular one and go back and see, you know,
- 8:10Speaker 4: which segments outperformed. Now there's a tiny bit of MNA there,
- 8:13Speaker 4: but even without that, I mean, I think this is
- 8:16Speaker 4: very good. And the big number for one us is
- 8:19Speaker 4: that the cash flow is going to go up by
- 8:20Speaker 4: a billion dollars next year. So I think IBM's turned
- 8:23Speaker 4: them around very well. I think the strategy is executing
- 8:26Speaker 4: well and Urvan's done a good job in this case.
- 8:29Speaker 2: The acquisitions red Hat Hashi Corp, Confluent. That's a big
- 8:33Speaker 2: part of the spend is that like looking to sort
- 8:36Speaker 2: of what Salesforce has done in recent years growing through
- 8:38Speaker 2: these acquisitions.
- 8:40Speaker 4: I think there's nothing wrong in growing through acquisitions if
- 8:43Speaker 4: you don't pay enough for them. If you pay the
- 8:45Speaker 4: right amount, and in this case for IBM, every two
- 8:47Speaker 4: years they'd go out and buy something that would help
- 8:50Speaker 4: their gross margins, that would help their adjusted EBITA, that
- 8:53Speaker 4: would help their free cash flow, and they use that
- 8:55Speaker 4: cash flow to buy more. But they're already concentrated in
- 8:58Speaker 4: certain areas such as hybrid cloud or the ability to
- 9:02Speaker 4: make sure that the internal IEA infrastructure of a company
- 9:06Speaker 4: or the enterprises is something that they have a good
- 9:08Speaker 4: handle on and I think they're doing executing it very well.
- 9:11Speaker 3: Listen, there are bookings for their AI business at IBM
- 9:15Speaker 3: exceeded twelve point five billion.
- 9:19Speaker 5: Since mid twenty twenty three.
- 9:21Speaker 3: That's an increase from the nine and a half billion
- 9:24Speaker 3: disclosed during its prior earnings report. A bit more than
- 9:27Speaker 3: eighty percent of the bookings come from the consulting unit,
- 9:30Speaker 3: with the rest in software. According to the CFO in
- 9:32Speaker 3: an interview, their AI exposure, I mean this is something
- 9:37Speaker 3: that has been I think helping the struggling along struggling
- 9:40Speaker 3: consulting division.
- 9:41Speaker 5: So are we seeing improvement.
- 9:44Speaker 4: But the consulting division only grew up one percent, So
- 9:46Speaker 4: even though they are getting a lot of that, as
- 9:48Speaker 4: you said, eighty percent of those bookings from consulting, it's
- 9:51Speaker 4: not driving the entire division up because, as we know
- 9:55Speaker 4: from some of the other vendors and we'll find out
- 9:57Speaker 4: today also, the non AI spending is pretty bad right
- 10:01Speaker 4: now throughout the ecosystem, so people are cutting back on
- 10:04Speaker 4: that and deploying those funds into AI related services, and
- 10:08Speaker 4: that's something that's hurting IBM as well. But imagine, even
- 10:11Speaker 4: with consulting growing only one percent, the total compan growth
- 10:15Speaker 4: rate was nine percent, and I think that's something to
- 10:18Speaker 4: be proud of.
- 10:19Speaker 3: All Right, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior technology analyst Anna Ragrana, just
- 10:23Speaker 3: stay with us for a moment, because we do want
- 10:24Speaker 3: to bring in James chockmac partner and chief investment officer
- 10:27Speaker 3: at Clockwise Capital with about seventy million in assets under
- 10:31Speaker 3: management of fund that we often talk about owns and
- 10:34Speaker 3: invest in a lot of these big cap names. I
- 10:36Speaker 3: want to go back to Microsoft, Jim, James, tell us
- 10:41Speaker 3: your take on what we got from Microsoft the stock
- 10:44Speaker 3: right now?
- 10:44Speaker 5: Data about four and a quarter percent.
- 10:48Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting.
- 10:49Speaker 1: Right before earnings came out, I was getting the latest
- 10:51Speaker 1: Bogie numbers for the Azure number, and you know, it
- 10:55Speaker 1: remained in the high thirties, around thirty nine percent, and
- 10:57Speaker 1: that's kind of where the numbers landed right around there.
- 11:00Speaker 1: And uh, I was saying, I'm telling our team that,
- 11:02Speaker 1: you know, this is a pretty lofty expectation, especially the
- 11:06Speaker 1: fact that you know it's retraced somewhat heading into the quarter.
- 11:09Speaker 1: So you know, a lot of I expectations on all
- 11:13Speaker 1: these companies, Microsoft right on up there with all of them,
- 11:16Speaker 1: and the valuation it is where it is, with that
- 11:19Speaker 1: double digit times sales, you know you want it. It's
- 11:22Speaker 1: great that it's a subscription asset, it's a recurring revenue business.
- 11:27Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, you know, you've
- 11:29Speaker 1: got to deliver the growth and it's all about the
- 11:31Speaker 1: growth relative to expectations. And in this case, it was
- 11:35Speaker 1: just inline on Microsoft.
- 11:37Speaker 2: James, you own Microsoft in your clockwise US core equity
- 11:42Speaker 2: TF ticker time it's the sixth biggest holding, about four
- 11:45Speaker 2: point six percent of the fun It's down three point
- 11:48Speaker 2: six percent after hours four sixty four roughly would you
- 11:51Speaker 2: buy at these levels out to your position.
- 11:54Speaker 1: No, No, I think what we're maintaining it. The way
- 11:57Speaker 1: we're looking at it is, you know, we're about half
- 12:00Speaker 1: the weight of where it is in the Nasdaq. You know,
- 12:03Speaker 1: we feel comfortable being underweight that, and that's on a
- 12:06Speaker 1: growth basis. We actually have hedges within the ETF as
- 12:09Speaker 1: well where we're short the NASDAC and the SMP, so
- 12:14Speaker 1: the net weight is actually closer to four percent, So
- 12:17Speaker 1: you know, it is a top top ten weight within
- 12:20Speaker 1: the fund. But you know, we think that you know,
- 12:22Speaker 1: where you want to be overweight is outside of big cap.
- 12:26Speaker 1: You know, we're looking at small cap, We're looking at
- 12:28Speaker 1: continue to look at commodities. We think that's where the
- 12:31Speaker 1: money is going to go.
- 12:31Speaker 3: James, We're going to broaden out. But safe to say
- 12:33Speaker 3: you're not that impressed with Microsoft.
- 12:35Speaker 5: It sounds it was.
- 12:37Speaker 1: It was a whole hump. You know, it's kind of
- 12:39Speaker 1: what we expected. It just didn't surpassed expectations. But does
- 12:44Speaker 1: the results do not warrant to change in our view?
- 12:48Speaker 5: All Right, We're going to broad out.
- 12:49Speaker 3: In just a moment, I want to bring in anorog
- 12:51Speaker 3: Rana back from our Bloomberg Intelligence team. He's senior tech analyst.
- 12:54Speaker 3: Just a final thought, James isn't impressed?
- 12:58Speaker 5: Should he be?
- 13:00Speaker 4: Well, the thing is, think about it this way. The
- 13:02Speaker 4: backlog is up and the capexis up, then why is
- 13:05Speaker 4: in growth accelerating? And I think that's the biggest question
- 13:08Speaker 4: for all of us. I personally think it's a supply problem.
- 13:11Speaker 4: But it's a temporary problem. But as you know, we
- 13:14Speaker 4: know right now people the trade is to sell software
- 13:17Speaker 4: and buy semis and I think you know, I don't
- 13:19Speaker 4: see that changing tomorrow morning.
- 13:21Speaker 3: All right, we're going to leave it there. Hey, listen,
- 13:23Speaker 3: we'll be checking out your research an ourang, Thank you
- 13:25Speaker 3: so much. Bloomberg Intelligence Senior technology analyst Anna rog Rana.
- 13:28Speaker 3: James Schachmak though still with us right now. We want
- 13:30Speaker 3: to get more meta platforms. Bloomberg New Senior Technology reporter
- 13:34Speaker 3: Kurt Wagner with us. He is author of Battle for
- 13:36Speaker 3: the Bird, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk and the forty four
- 13:38Speaker 3: billion dollar Fight for Twitter. So he's out there in
- 13:41Speaker 3: the Bloomberg San Francisco bureau.
- 13:43Speaker 5: Take it away, meta.
- 13:44Speaker 3: What jumps out for you, because right now we're looking
- 13:46Speaker 3: at a stock that's up here in the aftermarket.
- 13:48Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it's it's pretty much all good news,
- 13:51Speaker 8: especially if you believe in this AI vision that Mark
- 13:54Speaker 8: Zuckerberg has the Q four holiday quarter sales where it
- 13:58Speaker 8: beats the Q one projection, We're beat. The real, maybe
- 14:02Speaker 8: surprising thing was just how high the capital expenditures are
- 14:06Speaker 8: supposed to be in twenty twenty six. I think the
- 14:08Speaker 8: estimate was around one hundred and eleven billion metas forecasting
- 14:12Speaker 8: in between one fifteen and one thirty five billion. But again,
- 14:15Speaker 8: if you are a believer in this sort of AI
- 14:18Speaker 8: world that we're living in right now, that's an exciting thing.
- 14:22Speaker 8: I mean, this is a company that is going absolutely
- 14:25Speaker 8: full steam ahead into AI, and you know, I think
- 14:29Speaker 8: those numbers reflect that.
- 14:30Speaker 2: Not into the metaverse. We should note that meta shares extend.
- 14:32Speaker 2: They're getting to more than five percent right now. So
- 14:34Speaker 2: there are a lot of people out there, Kurt, who
- 14:37Speaker 2: who are believing this story. It's not like this though
- 14:40Speaker 2: every quarter. There have been quarters of late where meta platforms,
- 14:46Speaker 2: almost at Facebook comes out and says we're spending more
- 14:50Speaker 2: money than you want us to spend and you and
- 14:53Speaker 2: then investors do not reward them for it. What is
- 14:55Speaker 2: different this time.
- 14:57Speaker 8: Well, not just quarters of late, how about just last order? Right,
- 15:01Speaker 8: this is exactly what we talked about in Q three.
- 15:04Speaker 8: They didn't have these specific numbers, but they basically said, hey,
- 15:07Speaker 8: our capex is going to increase meaningfully. In twenty twenty six,
- 15:11Speaker 8: the stock went down fourteen percent. Everyone was very concerned
- 15:14Speaker 8: with this added spending. And yet today when the numbers
- 15:18Speaker 8: come out and they're they're higher than estimate, sessimate's presumably
- 15:21Speaker 8: built in that commentary from last quarter, it doesn't seem
- 15:25Speaker 8: to be as much of a problem. My guess is
- 15:27Speaker 8: that they are seeing, you know, this Q one revenue,
- 15:30Speaker 8: for example, which is going to come in two three
- 15:33Speaker 8: four billion dollars higher than expected. They're just seeing this
- 15:38Speaker 8: ads business that is completely churning money out. And so
- 15:43Speaker 8: if you feel that you have the money coming in,
- 15:45Speaker 8: maybe you stomach those higher numbers than you would have expected.
- 15:50Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean on the live blog, you guys, I
- 15:52Speaker 3: think you put this out Kurt Family daily active people
- 15:56Speaker 3: three point fifty eight billion, an increase of seven percent
- 15:58Speaker 3: year over year, and then the average price per AD
- 16:01Speaker 3: increase by six to nine percent year over year for
- 16:03Speaker 3: the fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty five, respectively.
- 16:06Speaker 3: So I mean this is showing that they're investing in AI.
- 16:10Speaker 3: We're seeing it on the platform, we're seeing it in
- 16:12Speaker 3: the ad dollars.
- 16:13Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 16:14Speaker 8: I mean my guess is that we're going to jump
- 16:16Speaker 8: on this earnings call here in a minute or two,
- 16:18Speaker 8: and you're going to hear the company talk a lot
- 16:20Speaker 8: about how AI is impacting the ads business, because that's
- 16:23Speaker 8: what they need to do to sell this right now.
- 16:25Speaker 6: Right, it's hard to say are they right?
- 16:27Speaker 5: But current is it?
- 16:28Speaker 4: Like?
- 16:28Speaker 5: Are we seeing it in the numbers?
- 16:31Speaker 8: It is in part because you see that that rise
- 16:34Speaker 8: in average cost per AD, that's because people are getting
- 16:37Speaker 8: more granular, more targeted. They're spending less to create some
- 16:42Speaker 8: of this ad copy because AI can do it for them.
- 16:44Speaker 8: There's a bunch of ways that AI can truly improve
- 16:48Speaker 8: the ads business.
- 16:49Speaker 6: You just don't.
- 16:50Speaker 8: It's not as sexy, right, It's not as obvious, maybe
- 16:52Speaker 8: because a lot of it's happening incrementally behind the scenes.
- 16:56Speaker 8: That is a story in a narrative that this company
- 16:59Speaker 8: needs to sell. Because if you're just simply saying trust
- 17:01Speaker 8: us for building a fifty billion dollars data center in Louisiana,
- 17:04Speaker 8: and you'll see the returns of that in seven years.
- 17:06Speaker 8: That's the hard pitch.
- 17:08Speaker 6: But if you say, hey, look, check it out.
- 17:09Speaker 8: The ads business is growing quarter after quarter because of
- 17:12Speaker 8: these AD improvements, these AI improvements we're making. That's the
- 17:16Speaker 8: narrative that they're going to want to sell to people today.
- 17:18Speaker 2: Kirk Wagner, you got to go. You got some work
- 17:20Speaker 2: to do. I want you to I want to let
- 17:23Speaker 2: you get back to that work. Thanks so much for
- 17:24Speaker 2: joining us. That's Kurt Wagner, senior technology reporter who covers
- 17:27Speaker 2: social media. He's the author of Battle for the Bird Jackdoor,
- 17:30Speaker 2: c Elon Musk in the forty four billion dollar Fight
- 17:32Speaker 2: for Twitter's soul.
- 17:33Speaker 3: All right, right now, we're looking at Meta shares. They're
- 17:35Speaker 3: up about six point two percent as we speak. We've
- 17:38Speaker 3: got Microsoft down about three point six percent. Tesla is
- 17:42Speaker 3: up three and a quarter percent. And then check this out.
- 17:44Speaker 3: IBM been around for a while. It's up about eight
- 17:47Speaker 3: percent here in the aftermarket.
- 17:49Speaker 4: All right.
- 17:49Speaker 3: James Chokmak, we're talking with him, partner and chief investment
- 17:52Speaker 3: officer at Clockwise Capital with us from Miami.
- 17:54Speaker 5: He is not going anywhere.
- 17:55Speaker 3: Ed Lulow also with as Bloomberg Tech a co host
- 17:58Speaker 3: on Bloomberg Television. He's out there in the bog San
- 18:00Speaker 3: Francisco bureau. He has been glued to his phone and
- 18:03Speaker 3: computer watching all of the results since he did his
- 18:06Speaker 3: broadcast earlier on BTV. Hey, ed, what's jumping out? You know,
- 18:10Speaker 3: I don't know where do you think we should start with?
- 18:12Speaker 3: Whether it's Meta, Microsoft or Tesla.
- 18:15Speaker 9: I would start with Tesla, but only because you know,
- 18:19Speaker 9: the story that jumped out wasn't the story we were
- 18:21Speaker 9: prepared for, and I think that it's important to be
- 18:24Speaker 9: honest about that. And that is Tesla pulling the trigger
- 18:27Speaker 9: on a two billion dollar investment in Xai. If you
- 18:30Speaker 9: guys remember, this was a non binding shareholder resolution in
- 18:34Speaker 9: November as part of the annual shareholder meeting, and the
- 18:37Speaker 9: outcome was kind of weird because a lot of shareholders
- 18:40Speaker 9: abstained from voting. That told us that that even though
- 18:44Speaker 9: the board wasn't bound to the outcome, a lot of
- 18:46Speaker 9: shareholders were like, h do we really want to go
- 18:48Speaker 9: down that route?
- 18:49Speaker 6: Well, Tesla's done it.
- 18:50Speaker 9: Not only are they investing two billion dollars into Xai
- 18:53Speaker 9: through Xai's recent Series E round, but they now have
- 18:56Speaker 9: an agreement in prace what they call a framework to
- 18:59Speaker 9: work on technology and product together. Okay, and it's this
- 19:03Speaker 9: like closer inter mesh of Elon Inc.
- 19:05Speaker 2: Right, So, what's the sales pitch to investors in Tesla
- 19:09Speaker 2: as a car company, in Tesla as a robotaxi company,
- 19:13Speaker 2: in Tesla as a robot company that says, you know,
- 19:16Speaker 2: this is in the best interests of shareholders to make
- 19:19Speaker 2: an investment in Elon's ai company XAI.
- 19:23Speaker 6: There are like ten different answers to that.
- 19:24Speaker 9: I mean, the first thing to state is that this
- 19:26Speaker 9: was believe it or not a double check the Bloomberg
- 19:29Speaker 9: the first annual revenue decline that Tesla's ever had, so
- 19:33Speaker 9: revenues overall revenues from all its divisions drop three percent,
- 19:37Speaker 9: and they blame that on lower vehicle deliveries and sales
- 19:40Speaker 9: and lower regulatory tax credits. So that's kind of interesting.
- 19:44Speaker 9: But this shareholder deck is about the future where Tesla
- 19:47Speaker 9: doesn't sell vehicles as its principal line of business. It
- 19:51Speaker 9: does physical AI through robotics and through robotaxi, and as
- 19:56Speaker 9: it relates to XAI. There were definitely two schools of thought.
- 20:00Speaker 9: There are the Tesla bulls that basically said if they
- 20:03Speaker 9: invest in Xai, all of this stuff will happen quicker
- 20:06Speaker 9: because Xai is so good at the software side of AI.
- 20:10Speaker 9: They're very bullish Tesla shareholders that were like, whoa this,
- 20:13Speaker 9: Xai is a company that burns billions of dollars a quarter.
- 20:17Speaker 9: Do you want Tesla to be the entity that's propping
- 20:20Speaker 9: that up? If Tesla's already doing work internally on software.
- 20:23Speaker 9: So this was a really interesting deck. The quarter's numbers gone,
- 20:27Speaker 9: the quarter gone, I mean, it doesn't really mean anything
- 20:30Speaker 9: at this point.
- 20:31Speaker 3: James Chakmark come on in and you know, highlighting that
- 20:35Speaker 3: Tesla greet to invest about two billion in Elon Musk's
- 20:38Speaker 3: Xai startup. We talked with you a little bit about
- 20:42Speaker 3: Tesla before, a small position in your fund. What's how
- 20:48Speaker 3: significant do you think that is? Does it make it
- 20:51Speaker 3: more interesting the Tesla story here?
- 20:54Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it'd add another element to the story.
- 20:59Speaker 1: But you know that's not why we're investors in it.
- 21:03Speaker 1: I don't think that that's going to be something that's
- 21:07Speaker 1: you know, factored in in a material way one way
- 21:11Speaker 1: or another at the at the current time. So you know,
- 21:15Speaker 1: we're looking at it from a long term standpoint. The
- 21:17Speaker 1: optionality on all those areas that you listed, from robotics
- 21:22Speaker 1: to self driving, autonomous driving, and you know that's where
- 21:26Speaker 1: the opportunities lie, and that's why we're invested in it.
- 21:28Speaker 1: But at the valuations that it's at, and you know,
- 21:31Speaker 1: question marks around you know, the demand side, and give
- 21:34Speaker 1: it a macro backdrop. You know, we just think, you know,
- 21:38Speaker 1: it's prudent to be cautious with it, but still maintain
- 21:42Speaker 1: a small position in the portfolio.
- 21:45Speaker 2: Uh, but keep that small position and not get not
- 21:48Speaker 2: make it any bigger.
- 21:51Speaker 1: At this time, I got to listen to the calls,
- 21:53Speaker 1: see see what happens.
- 21:54Speaker 2: I mean, but you could hear you could hear something today.
- 21:57Speaker 2: You could hear something today that would make you change
- 21:59Speaker 2: your mind.
- 22:01Speaker 1: If and only if it provides a change in my estimates.
- 22:05Speaker 1: Because really one of the things that I focus on,
- 22:09Speaker 1: I prioritize is what is the degree of the change
- 22:12Speaker 1: in the estimates and absolute terms, and also what is
- 22:14Speaker 1: the percentage change and estimates and what is the percentage
- 22:18Speaker 1: change in the rate of growth Because these companies with
- 22:23Speaker 1: these valuations, you have to be able to show the
- 22:26Speaker 1: sustainability of those growth curves. Without that sustainability then you
- 22:30Speaker 1: come into questions about the sustainability of the valuations. And
- 22:34Speaker 1: with these valuations being where they are, not only from
- 22:37Speaker 1: a stock perspective, but the market perspective. You know, one
- 22:39Speaker 1: little thing can cause things to break. I mean, you
- 22:42Speaker 1: saw what happened with Intel last week, down seventeen percent
- 22:45Speaker 1: on that quarter. And you know this is a company
- 22:47Speaker 1: that the White House is backing. So you know what,
- 22:53Speaker 1: it doesn't take. It takes an instant, you know, to
- 22:57Speaker 1: break the valuation. Even though it takes a long time
- 23:00Speaker 1: for that value, we should to expand.
- 23:01Speaker 6: So you gotta be careful, all right, We got to run.
- 23:04Speaker 3: Hey, James, thank you so much hanging around with us
- 23:06Speaker 3: for about forty five minutes. Really appreciate going through all
- 23:09Speaker 3: these earnings with you. James chock Mak, partner and chief
- 23:12Speaker 3: investment officer at Clockwise Capital, joining us from Miami. Still
- 23:16Speaker 3: with us, of course, our own Ed Ludlow, Bloomberg Tech
- 23:19Speaker 3: co host on Bloomberg TV. You know, Ed, I was
- 23:23Speaker 3: thinking about what you were talking about with Xia.
- 23:25Speaker 5: What would you want to ask? What do you hope
- 23:28Speaker 5: is asked on the call with the company here?
- 23:30Speaker 9: Oh, just the why they decided to go ahead? What
- 23:33Speaker 9: like the more specific rationale was so you know, the
- 23:36Speaker 9: concerns were well stated, the worry that Tesla would be
- 23:39Speaker 9: kind of the cash cow to fund the loss making business.
- 23:42Speaker 9: But they have explained in detail, you know that there's
- 23:45Speaker 9: a plan for them to work both on products and
- 23:47Speaker 9: technology sharing and that and that was you know, those
- 23:50Speaker 9: that were more sorry, guys, Chelsea have just taken the
- 23:54Speaker 9: lead in the eighty four.
- 23:55Speaker 2: The only thing and the only thing, the only sorry,
- 23:59Speaker 2: your attention away.
- 24:00Speaker 9: That's if the boss if the bosses are watching, I'm
- 24:03Speaker 9: really sorry. My phone's going ballistic because it means we
- 24:06Speaker 9: qualify for the next phase automatically. Anyway, you know what
- 24:10Speaker 9: your guest was just talking about, though, Like the thing
- 24:12Speaker 9: that Tesla's done in the shareholder deck in a lot
- 24:14Speaker 9: more detail than it's done before, is talk about how
- 24:17Speaker 9: these future products are currently contributing to top and bottom line.
- 24:22Speaker 9: Tesla has always done the plus and minus columns of
- 24:26Speaker 9: revenue and profit, but actually they started giving a bit
- 24:29Speaker 9: more data. So for example, as of the fourth quarter,
- 24:32Speaker 9: there will one point one million FC paid subscribers active subscribers. Okay,
- 24:37Speaker 9: and in the profit column they are saying that our
- 24:39Speaker 9: profit has been boosted by those revenues, by those software
- 24:44Speaker 9: revenue sales, and so like extrapolate out to XAI.
- 24:48Speaker 6: You can just envisage your world like I drive every
- 24:50Speaker 6: day using.
- 24:50Speaker 9: FSD to work, and in the cockpit of the car,
- 24:54Speaker 9: I use the Grock voice assistant to communicate like how
- 24:58Speaker 9: do they monetize that you'd expect and to talk about
- 25:00Speaker 9: that kind of stuff on the cool I think.
- 25:03Speaker 2: This is this is okay, this is what I'm interested in.
- 25:06Speaker 3: Well, so let's wait. You know what, we want to
- 25:09Speaker 3: throw another voice into this. Do not go, Do not
- 25:11Speaker 3: leave us at Ludlow. We want you still here. I
- 25:13Speaker 3: think our own Steve Man, a Bloomberg Intelligence Global Autos
- 25:17Speaker 3: and Industrials research manager, is here with us as well.
- 25:21Speaker 5: Steve, come on in too.
- 25:23Speaker 3: Hopefully you've been listening to what Ed has to say.
- 25:26Speaker 3: What what jumps out for you in this Tesla results?
- 25:30Speaker 7: Well, I think on the car side, nothing nothing of surprise,
- 25:34Speaker 7: uh with you know, margins a lot better than we expected,
- 25:39Speaker 7: but that's only from higher production. But what's really interesting
- 25:43Speaker 7: for us is really now you know, Elon must have
- 25:46Speaker 7: been talking a lot about rolling out Groobo Taxi. It
- 25:50Speaker 7: was just top but now it's kind of codified in
- 25:53Speaker 7: the in the presentation now that they're going to roll
- 25:56Speaker 7: out in nine cities beyond Austin. So I think a
- 26:00Speaker 7: lot of the investors are expecting, you know, the timeline
- 26:04Speaker 7: of that scaling up on robo taxi, and I think
- 26:07Speaker 7: we're seeing that.
- 26:08Speaker 3: But the only thing is like, I'm going to go
- 26:09Speaker 3: to our live blog and Ed, come on back in here.
- 26:12Speaker 3: I'm looking for it on the live blog. But how
- 26:14Speaker 3: that they have made promises before to kind of roll out, and.
- 26:18Speaker 2: I mean, it's like it just hasn't happened. That's part
- 26:21Speaker 2: for the course for Elon.
- 26:22Speaker 3: No, I know, and we used to have a clock thing,
- 26:24Speaker 3: I think on the Bloomberg like tracking, you know, Elon
- 26:28Speaker 3: and his promises.
- 26:29Speaker 9: We did an episode of Wall Street Week last month
- 26:32Speaker 9: on robotaxi, right, and the opening line was, you know,
- 26:34Speaker 9: five years ago, Elon Musk promised that there would be
- 26:37Speaker 9: robotaxis all over public roads by the end of that year.
- 26:40Speaker 9: And here we are at the beginning of twenty twenty
- 26:42Speaker 9: six and in a very limited ten vehicle pilot. Tesla
- 26:46Speaker 9: has just removed the safety monitor from those vehicles that
- 26:51Speaker 9: are in Austin, Texas for ROBOTAXI WEAIMO, by comparison, has
- 26:55Speaker 9: many hundreds more than that on public roads, charging a
- 26:58Speaker 9: fair no human in in operation. The thing is that
- 27:02Speaker 9: your last guest deluded to this. You're like pressing him
- 27:05Speaker 9: on why he had the conviction in this this thesis.
- 27:08Speaker 9: But for lots of people, it's the idea that Elon
- 27:11Speaker 9: Musk makes many projections and gives many timelines, and even
- 27:14Speaker 9: though he misses those dates, he often gets there in
- 27:17Speaker 9: the end. And I suspect that I've said that sentence
- 27:19Speaker 9: toe debatam many hundreds of times before.
- 27:23Speaker 2: So Steve Man, come on back here? Does he? Does
- 27:24Speaker 2: he get there this time? With the ROBOTAXI rollout?
- 27:28Speaker 3: Is?
- 27:29Speaker 2: Are we going to be riding in robotaxis when we
- 27:31Speaker 2: go to visit places apart from Austin anytime soon?
- 27:34Speaker 4: Yeah?
- 27:35Speaker 7: I mean, I think the fact that he's, you know,
- 27:38Speaker 7: putting the plan on paper says a lot. You know,
- 27:42Speaker 7: from my perspective, it's not just talking anymore. He's making
- 27:46Speaker 7: a big commitment to the investors, and that's what the
- 27:49Speaker 7: investor are expecting. So yeah, nine cities, mostly down south.
- 27:55Speaker 7: I think it. Look, I think the rollout will continue
- 27:58Speaker 7: to be slow. I mean, and Tesla is a big name.
- 28:01Speaker 7: They don't have much room to make a mistake, so
- 28:05Speaker 7: they're going to take it slow. They're probably going to
- 28:08Speaker 7: have safety drivers in those cities initially, similar to what
- 28:12Speaker 7: Weimo has done, and then startly removing those safety drivers
- 28:16Speaker 7: in once they gain confidence. But at the end of
- 28:20Speaker 7: the day, the point is we're expecting scaling up of
- 28:26Speaker 7: that business and to drive a new revenue stream for
- 28:29Speaker 7: the company, and looks like it's happening sooner than later.
- 28:32Speaker 4: Now.
- 28:33Speaker 3: It's fascinating. I feel a little managed Edla Low come
- 28:36Speaker 3: on in here. I mean, it's just amazing that we're
- 28:39Speaker 3: talking about Tesla and really not focusing on a less expensive.
- 28:44Speaker 2: Callay, focusing on Chelsea versus Napoli.
- 28:47Speaker 5: No no, no, no no.
- 28:47Speaker 3: But I just know it's fine. It's part of what
- 28:51Speaker 3: we love about you. But I mean, it's just interesting
- 28:53Speaker 3: that we're like, Okay, it's these taxis and it's robots
- 28:58Speaker 3: and it may take a.
- 29:00Speaker 5: While, but we're in. We're in.
- 29:02Speaker 3: And we talked to Kathy Wooden. She's like, this is
- 29:04Speaker 3: the company going forward?
- 29:06Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 29:07Speaker 9: I mean, you know, I don't want to speak on
- 29:08Speaker 9: his behalf, but Steve's point is echoed by by many
- 29:12Speaker 9: that either are bullish or bearish on Tesla. They've put
- 29:16Speaker 9: this in the shareholder deck. It's in writing the explanation
- 29:19Speaker 9: of what they plan to do, plus some timeline in it,
- 29:22Speaker 9: plus the impact to top and bottom line that you
- 29:25Speaker 9: know it's in there. Steve wrote in his January twelfth
- 29:30Speaker 9: research without putting him on the spot, that twenty six
- 29:33Speaker 9: is the year that Tesla pivots to physical AI for
- 29:36Speaker 9: many people, that that is something that started in twenty
- 29:39Speaker 9: twenty five. But there is still an element with Tesla
- 29:43Speaker 9: right the stocks up less than three percent in after
- 29:45Speaker 9: hours that Elon Musk will likely say something on the
- 29:49Speaker 9: call that will move the needle, and it's about, you know,
- 29:51Speaker 9: whether investors do or don't believe him. The one little
- 29:55Speaker 9: teaser that I will leave with you is there's a
- 29:57Speaker 9: line on the deck that talks about deeper vertical integration.
- 30:02Speaker 9: And you know, Dana Hole, you know, messaged me right
- 30:04Speaker 9: away saying did you see that?
- 30:06Speaker 6: What do you think? That means? Don't know?
- 30:09Speaker 9: But Elon's talks about all kinds of things, building its
- 30:11Speaker 9: own chip fab. Where does SpaceX factor into this? One
- 30:15Speaker 9: of the most voted up retail questions because you know,
- 30:18Speaker 9: test of fields questions from retail investors is will Tesla
- 30:22Speaker 9: A shareholders get priority access to a SpaceX ipo.
- 30:26Speaker 6: All of these things keep people looking to the horizon.
- 30:28Speaker 2: It depends on where the planets are aligned, I think
- 30:31Speaker 2: is the.
- 30:31Speaker 3: It's great, this is on our live blog. We will
- 30:34Speaker 3: manage the businesses such that we ensure a strong balance sheet,
- 30:37Speaker 3: maintaining sufficient liquidity to fund our product roadmap, long term
- 30:41Speaker 3: capacity expansion plans, including further vertical integration, and other expenses.
- 30:45Speaker 3: And as you said, Dana writes, would love more details,
- 30:49Speaker 3: and it sounds like you would would too.
- 30:52Speaker 2: You didn't even mention you didn't even hear my planetary
- 30:54Speaker 2: alignment joke.
- 30:55Speaker 3: Oh sorry, okay, ed laugh Johnnie Steve Mann final thoughts
- 31:00Speaker 3: from you thirty seconds here when it comes to Tesla.
- 31:03Speaker 7: Yeah, you guys talked about a little bit about the
- 31:06Speaker 7: two billion dollar investment in Xai. It totally makes sense
- 31:10Speaker 7: for me because, look, Grock is starting to be integrated
- 31:14Speaker 7: into Tesla vehicles. You know, especially in the navigational you
- 31:17Speaker 7: can tell groc basically, you know, I want to go home,
- 31:20Speaker 7: but in between I want to stop at Starbucks or
- 31:22Speaker 7: stop at the grocery store and actually will help you
- 31:25Speaker 7: navigate to those different points. And look that that you
- 31:31Speaker 7: know they're testing it out now, that system won't be
- 31:34Speaker 7: on the robotaxi because you know there's no driver there.
- 31:38Speaker 7: So it's if you take a step back and look
- 31:40Speaker 7: at this thing, this whole elon must AI thing. I
- 31:45Speaker 7: wouldn't be surprised if there's going to be more kind
- 31:48Speaker 7: of cross investments between the companies that are all going
- 31:53Speaker 7: to be tied together on this AI endeavor.
- 31:55Speaker 5: Wait, did I hear circular financing again? I don't know.
- 31:58Speaker 3: I don't know anyway, fascinating faster, Steve Man, thank you
- 32:01Speaker 3: so much. Bloomer Intelligence Global autos and Industrial's research manager
- 32:05Speaker 3: joining us here. Hey real quickly ed thirty seconds for
- 32:09Speaker 3: you go anywhere. Whether it's Meta which is rowling about
- 32:13Speaker 3: nine percent in the aftermarket, Microsoft down five percent, Tesselas
- 32:16Speaker 3: up three percent, where do you want to go?
- 32:18Speaker 6: The stories are really straightforward.
- 32:20Speaker 9: Meta said that revenue growth strong, and then they boosted
- 32:24Speaker 9: the capex range for the year beyond consensus.
- 32:26Speaker 6: It's a simple formula. We're repeating.
- 32:28Speaker 9: Microsoft's Azure cloud unit growth thirty eight percent, in line
- 32:32Speaker 9: with estimate consensus, but at the top end, people were like,
- 32:35Speaker 9: where's my forty percent growth? And they told us about
- 32:38Speaker 9: their capital expenditures and those kind of exceeded, and still
- 32:42Speaker 9: the market was disappointed. It's a very high bar on
- 32:44Speaker 9: a simple formula that we've discussed. Endlessly spend more on
- 32:47Speaker 9: AI investment in infrastructure, but show us very strong top
- 32:51Speaker 9: line growth as a direct result of it.
- 32:53Speaker 3: You rock, go back to the match, all right. Of course,
- 32:58Speaker 3: that's Ed Lovelow as OA is. He is co host
- 33:01Speaker 3: of Bloomberg Tech on Bloomberg TV. Catch him at eleven
- 33:05Speaker 3: am Wall Street Time Monday through Friday.
- 33:08Speaker 7: H m hmm.