Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Nippon Steel Takeover of US Steel Blocked

Transcript

Nippon Steel Takeover of US Steel Blocked · Bloomberg Intelligence

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Eastern on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: us live on YouTube.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Let's switch gears here, give a little bit more time
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: on this US Steel deer a deal. That's the stock
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: tickers X, which I thought it would have been Xerox,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: but it's X for US steal. There you go, President
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Biden blocking that deal. The stock is trading down today.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Let's get some more news on that. Michael Shepherd, Bloomberg
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Senior editor in Washington, DC, DC. Hey, Michael, why is
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: President Biden blocking this deal?
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: Is this simply a political move here?
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: Well, it is certainly political. He is also invoking national
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: security concerns and considerations in the world Order that he
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: released and signed today. It was also part of the
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: statement that he issued to the public saying that he
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: thought it was in the US national security interest to
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: keep US Steel domestically owned and headquartered. And this was
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: one of the key justifications he had been making for
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: months since the deal was announced back in December twenty
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: twenty three. This is something he had expressed opposition to
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: throughout the past year, but he had never come out
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: outright saying that I will block this. President ele like
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump of course, has done so, and he said
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: that if the deal had ended up on his desk
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: in some fashion or had not been completed by the
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: time he takes office later this month, he also would
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: work to block the transaction, of course, as sending the
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: companies back to the drawing board. And we're seeing what
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: it's doing to shares of US Steel today, which are
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: down seven percent at last.
• 1:52
  Speaker 5: Check from last night check. Though, wasn't Japan like an
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: ally of ours? So why would an ally present national
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: security risk?
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: Well, that's a great question, Alex because usually the committee
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: that oversees reviews of big transactions like this on national
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: security grounds, it's called the Committee on Foreign Investment in
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: the US.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: It's secretive.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: It also tends to focus on any transaction that could
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: deal more with an adversary rather than a very close
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: ally like Japan.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: But the US is.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: Looking at this is perhaps more question of will the
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: company's priorities it once merged, diverge from the US national
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: interest it's a little bit more subtle, but there is
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: a more basic question here at hand, and of course
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: that is the political one that Paul raised at the top,
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: and that is part of the key argument. Biden also
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: said that he is concerned about manufacturing jobs in the US,
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: and this is part of another step that he wants
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: to take to ensure that they are not jeopardized somehow.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Is there any sense of what happens next? I mean,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: what does US Steel do do we? I mean, I
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: guess they just sit around to wait for another buyer.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Maybe.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: Well, there are a couple of things that are on
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: the table for them. One is going to court, you know,
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: a time honored tradition now in the US where we
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: see companies taking the government and regulators to court to
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: see if they can overturn a government action. We are
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: seeing TikTok do this right now, trying to get this
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: divestor ban law voided before it takes effect on January nineteenth,
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: and we see arguments in that case next week. But
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: for US Steel and Nippon Steel, they have signaled that
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: they may try to go to court. US Steel if
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: a court move somehow fails, they will then be forced
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: to reconsider their options.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Will they look for another buyer.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: Will they have to maybe shed some assets, some plants,
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: some production someplace. Will it end up costing jobs in
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: some locations. Those are all questions that they're going to
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: have to consider.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: Both Nippon Steele and US Steel had insisted that this
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: transaction was necessary to preserve jobs and to maintain production
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: capacity here in the US with some investment coming from Japan.
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: So and this also raised the question in Cleveland Cliffs
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: if you guys remember, actually tried to make.
• 4:09
  Speaker 6: A bid for it. They lost out to Nippon Steel.
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: For a moment, there might be a merger possibility there,
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: but in the meantime Cleveland Cliffs bought a Canadian producer.
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: So now they're waffling back on US steal real quick
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: before we let you go do this. The union workers
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: steel workers want the deal or not the deal.
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: You know, the union leadership was very much against this.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: This is very off brand for them. And in fact,
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: there are clips of Biden from back in April standing
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: with steel workers in Pittsburgh saying that he was adamantly
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: opposed to the transaction. But some in the rank and
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: file actually took a more nuanced view, and that was that, Hey,
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: if Nippon Steel buys US steel, maybe this will actually
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: help us get the kind of investment that we need
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: to add jobs or at least preserve the ones that
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: we have.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: All Right, so much for the markets deciding what happens
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: out there that the government involved. Michael Shepherd, thanks so
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: much for joining us, Senior editor, Bloomberg News, joining us
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: from Washington, DC.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch the program
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarplay and Android
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
• 5:24
  Speaker 6: This is Bloomberg Intelligence Radio.
• 5:25
  Speaker 5: We are broadcasting to live from our interactive broker studio
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: right here in midtown Manhattan.
• 5:30
  Speaker 6: I want to go back to that ism.
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: So hitting a nine month high new orders the highest
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: since January. Employment though did fall, production though jumped, it
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: looks all in all to be a relatively solid number.
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: So I want to get more on this with Walter Todd, President,
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: chief investment officer and managing director at Greenwood Capital. So
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: the second I wind up seeing this number. I thought
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: back to something that Torres and Slock of Apollo had
• 5:51
  Speaker 5: written about, saying that the Fed cuts and the financial
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: markets will actually boost GDP over the coming quarters by
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: one percentage point and boost inflation by half a percentage point.
• 6:01
  Speaker 6: Would you be prepping for that at all?
• 6:04
  Speaker 7: Well, Alex, good morning, Happy New year, Thanks for having me. Yeah, so,
• 6:08
  Speaker 7: I think this is the dynamic of the market and
• 6:10
  Speaker 7: the balancing act here. Going back to that report, you
• 6:12
  Speaker 7: just reference the prices paid component of that was higher,
• 6:15
  Speaker 7: So we had new orders higher, the top line number higher,
• 6:18
  Speaker 7: prices paid higher, but employment lower. That's not a good
• 6:21
  Speaker 7: combination of seemingly a slower employment market but yet higher
• 6:25
  Speaker 7: inflation and potentially higher GDP. When you look at the
• 6:28
  Speaker 7: GDP now forecast for the fourth quarter, it's about two
• 6:31
  Speaker 7: and a half to three percent. So the economy seems
• 6:35
  Speaker 7: fairly solid on the surface, but the labor market is key,
• 6:39
  Speaker 7: and the report we get next Friday is going to
• 6:41
  Speaker 7: be a big one for the market.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: So, Walter, how are you guys thinking about this federal
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: reserve here in twenty twenty five, It looks like the
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: market's kind of discounting maybe two rate hikes.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: Does that seem reasonable to you? What are you guys
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: thinking about?
• 6:55
  Speaker 7: Yeah, So that's in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four.
• 6:59
  Speaker 7: The biggest shift, obviously was the FED expectations September when
• 7:03
  Speaker 7: they cut half a point. We had seven to eight
• 7:05
  Speaker 7: cuts baked into twenty twenty five. Now we have, you know,
• 7:08
  Speaker 7: less than two baked in, the first one coming in June. Again,
• 7:12
  Speaker 7: it goes back to the labor market. If inflation can
• 7:16
  Speaker 7: kind of stay where it is to moderate and the
• 7:18
  Speaker 7: labor markets stay solid, I think two is probably the
• 7:20
  Speaker 7: right number. My guess is that the labor market continues
• 7:24
  Speaker 7: to weaken a bit as we move through the course
• 7:27
  Speaker 7: of twenty twenty five, and that's going to force the
• 7:28
  Speaker 7: FED to maybe shift again their narrative as they did
• 7:32
  Speaker 7: in December, and we saw that pretty violent market reaction
• 7:35
  Speaker 7: over a twenty four hour period with the S and
• 7:37
  Speaker 7: P down four percent. So I think that's one of
• 7:40
  Speaker 7: the many unknowns for twenty twenty five is you can
• 7:43
  Speaker 7: the FED stick with that that two cut outlook or
• 7:45
  Speaker 7: a they going to have to shift again if the
• 7:47
  Speaker 7: labor market and the economy weekends as they moved.
• 7:50
  Speaker 5: Through in some ways that feels really binary. So how
• 7:52
  Speaker 5: do you position for that?
• 7:55
  Speaker 7: Well, I think it goes back to a couple of things. Diversification,
• 7:59
  Speaker 7: which has been a dirty word for the past two years.
• 8:01
  Speaker 7: You wanted to be concentrated in five to ten names
• 8:04
  Speaker 7: to outperform the market, but I think having diversification among
• 8:08
  Speaker 7: different sectors, different industries, even different geographies again x US
• 8:13
  Speaker 7: another dirty word for the past number of years, looking
• 8:16
  Speaker 7: outside the US where evaluations are much cheaper as the
• 8:19
  Speaker 7: potential opportunity there. I think also rebalancing, being disciplined with
• 8:25
  Speaker 7: acid allocation. If you've been fortunate enough to be overweight
• 8:29
  Speaker 7: stocks for the past two years, you're more overweight than
• 8:31
  Speaker 7: you were two years ago significantly, So using this opportunity
• 8:35
  Speaker 7: and strength to rebalance a portfolio and pick up some
• 8:38
  Speaker 7: still very attractive fixed income yields, whether you look at
• 8:42
  Speaker 7: treasuries or corporate bonds.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: All right, let's go there, Walter.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I love to get your thoughts on kind of the
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: fixed income opportunities again, because an investor can buy a
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: two year treasure and get four and a quarter percent,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: it seems like an honest way to make a living.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Do we take some credit risk above and beyond that,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: how do you think about credit risk?
• 8:59
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's an interesting question because spreads on the surface
• 9:02
  Speaker 7: are extremely tight, and the tightest they've almost historically been,
• 9:05
  Speaker 7: whether you look at high yield or investment grade bonds.
• 9:09
  Speaker 7: At the same time, the argument could be made that
• 9:11
  Speaker 7: the balance sheet of Apple or Johnson and Johnson might
• 9:15
  Speaker 7: be better than the balanchiet of the US government. So
• 9:17
  Speaker 7: I think having a blend, having a blend of high
• 9:20
  Speaker 7: grade corporate bonds as well as some treasuries. But I
• 9:23
  Speaker 7: think the temptation to stay on that front end, particularly
• 9:26
  Speaker 7: with the shift and the Fed narrative, is a big one.
• 9:29
  Speaker 7: But we would use the opportunity of the backup in
• 9:32
  Speaker 7: rates to extend duration a little bit, and I go crazy,
• 9:35
  Speaker 7: not go certainly nothing beyond ten years, but look at
• 9:38
  Speaker 7: that three, five and seven year part of the curve
• 9:41
  Speaker 7: as an opportunity to lock in some of these yields
• 9:44
  Speaker 7: as they backed up almost one hundred basis points since
• 9:47
  Speaker 7: the low's in September.
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: I'm going to ask the question that I stole from
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: Paul yesterday because it was a good one.
• 9:52
  Speaker 6: Do you stick with what got you here?
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: So?
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: Is this going to be another year that you got
• 9:56
  Speaker 5: to own big tech.
• 10:00
  Speaker 7: Yeah, So I think for us, our opinion is we
• 10:04
  Speaker 7: think it's a balance. Right, we will think you abandoned.
• 10:07
  Speaker 7: We don't think it's binary. You don't think We don't
• 10:09
  Speaker 7: think you abandoned big tech. But at the same time,
• 10:11
  Speaker 7: if you've been really concentrated in that area, fortunately for
• 10:15
  Speaker 7: the for the past two years, take this opportunity to
• 10:18
  Speaker 7: rebalance a bit and look for opportunities outside of those areas.
• 10:22
  Speaker 7: Very expensive valuations in those in that part of the market.
• 10:26
  Speaker 7: When you go look at energy or healthcare again, nobody
• 10:29
  Speaker 7: wanted those in twenty twenty four, very inexpensive valuations. You
• 10:34
  Speaker 7: could find good quality companies with good growth prospects that
• 10:38
  Speaker 7: are much cheaper than some of those big names. So
• 10:41
  Speaker 7: we would advocate for diversifying beyond the top of five
• 10:45
  Speaker 7: to ten names.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Do you what's kind of a model portfolio for you guys?
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you have a model portfolio, but
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: like stocks, bonds, alternatives, where do you kind of start
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: from as ground.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Zero for maybe your accounts?
• 10:58
  Speaker 7: Yeah, So to say, obvious, every investors unique in terms
• 11:02
  Speaker 7: of what they're looking for in their allocation. But we
• 11:04
  Speaker 7: do like to have a blend of stocks, both large
• 11:08
  Speaker 7: cap as well as maybe MidCap and xus allocations there.
• 11:12
  Speaker 7: Fixed income, both intermediate and shorter duration fixed income, and
• 11:18
  Speaker 7: also alternatives. We're starting to blend alternatives into that. We've
• 11:21
  Speaker 7: got two opportunities to do that. We partner with a
• 11:23
  Speaker 7: company called First Trust as an alternative suite, but we
• 11:26
  Speaker 7: also have ETF based portfolios that we have built that
• 11:30
  Speaker 7: utilize alternative asset classes to structure that and incorporate that
• 11:34
  Speaker 7: in portfolios. And I think that's another opportunity as we
• 11:37
  Speaker 7: look forward again, not looking back at what's worked over
• 11:40
  Speaker 7: the past two years, but looking forward, there's an opportunity
• 11:43
  Speaker 7: there to incorporate those in two portfolios.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: All Right, Walter, thank you so much for joining us.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Appreciate getting a few minutes of your time. As Walter Todd, President,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: chief investment Officer, and managing director of Greenwood Capital based
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: in Greenwood, South Carolina, which is kind of like great
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: smacking in the middle of the state. Looks like a
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: nice town there.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple Coarclay, and Android
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: you get your podcasts or watch US live on YouTube.
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: So again, US seargeon general calling for cancer warnings on
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: an alcohol label. Duncan Fox's Bloomberg Intelligence senior consumer staples analyst.
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: We're clearly seeing alcohol stocks, Brown Foreman, molten Core's consolation
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: brands get hit. What would be the real impact here
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: if a label came.
• 12:34
  Speaker 8: On, Well, if it came on, I maschreming, it would
• 12:39
  Speaker 8: become't similar to what happened in tobacco, where you'd just
• 12:42
  Speaker 8: see volume come under a little bit of pressure in
• 12:45
  Speaker 8: the short term. Tobacco volume generally is to have about
• 12:49
  Speaker 8: sort of three to four percent. It's been a bit
• 12:51
  Speaker 8: worse in the US recently, but I would assume that's
• 12:55
  Speaker 8: the sort of thing that you would go to if
• 12:57
  Speaker 8: it was done globally. At the moment, this seems to
• 13:01
  Speaker 8: be something coming out of the US, and I'm assuming
• 13:03
  Speaker 8: it would probably just stay in the US at this moment,
• 13:06
  Speaker 8: but who knows. I have no idea how long it
• 13:08
  Speaker 8: will take to get any regulation through.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Do I'm going to have the companies talked about this
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: at all, or this risk highlighted it? What do the
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: companies say about something like this?
• 13:20
  Speaker 8: I think there are shocked, as I was when I
• 13:22
  Speaker 8: saw it at the screen. I don't think anybody had
• 13:25
  Speaker 8: any clue this is going to come from anywhere. Frankly,
• 13:29
  Speaker 8: I think I heard your previous person on the radio
• 13:35
  Speaker 8: there and they're saying, we all know alcohol is bad
• 13:37
  Speaker 8: for you. That God all sorts of warnings already on there,
• 13:40
  Speaker 8: but obviously not the one that would say cancer, which
• 13:43
  Speaker 8: would be certainly worries on people. So they have drink
• 13:47
  Speaker 8: responsibly on there and all those sort of things. So
• 13:50
  Speaker 8: this one's come out of nowhere, and I think, to
• 13:52
  Speaker 8: be fair, the industry has been trying to do sensible
• 13:55
  Speaker 8: things for years, essentially trying to get us to drink
• 13:59
  Speaker 8: better quality product and drink less of it. So yeah,
• 14:03
  Speaker 8: this one's a bit of a surprise.
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: It's also interesting because I wonder what the direct impact
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: would be in terms of timelines. Like I mean, clearly,
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: there was a world where women drank when they were pregnant,
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: and then everyone figured out that wasn't good for them,
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: and then it would harm the fetus, and then therefore
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: then there was a warning label now on the alcohol bottle,
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: which then prevented eventually women from not drinking mostly when
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: they're pregnant. So what's like a time lag for stuff
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: like this, Like if a label gets slapped on today,
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: when do people start paying attention.
• 14:31
  Speaker 8: Well, the only thing I can talk about here is
• 14:35
  Speaker 8: what happened on tobacco and they started saying it was
• 14:38
  Speaker 8: cans in nineteen fifty six, I think somewhere around then
• 14:42
  Speaker 8: that it was nineteen sixty four when the US Surgeon
• 14:44
  Speaker 8: General put in the saying it actually does cause can
• 14:48
  Speaker 8: So then it was nineteen sixty six before you actually
• 14:50
  Speaker 8: got the label onto the tobacco packet. It was even
• 14:55
  Speaker 8: later in Europe. It was about nineteen seventy one in
• 14:58
  Speaker 8: the UK. I think it was two thousand sixteen in Europe,
• 15:01
  Speaker 8: so it could take some time. Now people stopped smoking,
• 15:06
  Speaker 8: or certainly smoking incident fell from about fifty percent around
• 15:09
  Speaker 8: about nineteen sixty and has come down sort of consistently
• 15:13
  Speaker 8: ever since. So I guess the talker that would mean
• 15:17
  Speaker 8: people would consider switching to soft drinks or to lower
• 15:20
  Speaker 8: alcohol stuff, although I'm assuring lower alcohol stuff maybe have
• 15:24
  Speaker 8: a similar block on it because it's got some alcohol
• 15:29
  Speaker 8: in there, and I couldn't tell you whether the amount
• 15:31
  Speaker 8: and whether spirits are worse than beer or not. I
• 15:34
  Speaker 8: have absolutely no idea I'm not seeing. The medical data on.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: That alcohol links to cancer have been known since the
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighties in clings to Bloomberg's reporting, and the substances
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: ranked US a third leading preventable cause of the disease.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: So alcohol causes about one hundred thousand cases of cancer
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: in twenty thousand related deaths.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Each year in the US.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: And that's according to the f the Surgeon General, far
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: more than the thirteenty five hundred alcohol related fatalities from
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: traffic rashes, just to give you some numbers here. So
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: we're seeing a little bit of a sell off in
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: the stocks here. Is this kind of in line with
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: what you would expect because it doesn't seem like it's
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: too traumatic to the stocks at this point.
• 16:16
  Speaker 8: Well, I mean the moment it's shock, I think that
• 16:18
  Speaker 8: that's sending them down because we just don't know all
• 16:20
  Speaker 8: this will get carried on through the rest of the world.
• 16:24
  Speaker 8: We have no idea when it will be put on
• 16:26
  Speaker 8: or if it will be put on in the US.
• 16:30
  Speaker 8: The data, no doubt, the alcohol companies will say some
• 16:35
  Speaker 8: of that data may be skewed because there can be
• 16:38
  Speaker 8: other things that will be related, you know, showing a
• 16:40
  Speaker 8: bad diet and obesity as number two. I think in
• 16:43
  Speaker 8: certain generals less hind Tobacca in terms of giving counsel.
• 16:47
  Speaker 8: But I'm not hearing anything about them putting counters from
• 16:50
  Speaker 8: food packaging, So I mean, I think there could be
• 16:53
  Speaker 8: a long way to go before we see anything actually
• 16:55
  Speaker 8: happen on the label. But you're right the discussions now,
• 17:00
  Speaker 8: so people will start talking about it. I'm sure it'll
• 17:03
  Speaker 8: get into the into newspapers and online, and it may
• 17:08
  Speaker 8: affect people's consumption habits. I have absolutely no idea. I've
• 17:12
  Speaker 8: got nothing to basis on at the moment, so I'm
• 17:14
  Speaker 8: just sort of assuming the volume will probably come under
• 17:17
  Speaker 8: a little bit of pressure. But my guess is for
• 17:19
  Speaker 8: the company's the beverage will probably push prices up a
• 17:22
  Speaker 8: little bit more to like tobacco, cop this hat and
• 17:25
  Speaker 8: try and not set some of that that.
• 17:26
  Speaker 6: Hit well, Duncan, We appreciate the insight.
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: Thank you very much, Duncan Fox, Bloomberg Intelligence, Senior Consumer
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: Staples Analysts.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast, available on Apple, Spotify
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: weekday ten am to noon Eastern on Bloomberg dot com,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and always on the Bloomberg terminal