Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Palantir's Premium Valuation, Yum Considers Offloading Pizza Hut, Spotify Rules Audio Streaming
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- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
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- 0:24Speaker 2: All right, let's get back to some of these tech
- 0:26Speaker 2: earnings coming in here. Palanteer Uber. Yes, I arbitrage between
- 0:32Speaker 2: Uber and Lyft and people who don't do that. I
- 0:33Speaker 2: don't understand those people because I get huge discounts twenty
- 0:36Speaker 2: thirty percent.
- 0:37Speaker 3: Wait, so you whenever you need to go somewhere, you're
- 0:39Speaker 3: going to check both apps and then figure out which one.
- 0:41Speaker 2: It takes an incremental like eight seconds, and it saves
- 0:44Speaker 2: me real money. And Matt Miller and I had this
- 0:46Speaker 2: fight on the air. He doesn't do it. He's brand loyalty.
- 0:49Speaker 4: I'm like, you're leaving money.
- 0:50Speaker 3: No, No, there's no loyalty to this. This is all
- 0:52Speaker 3: about how much it costs. Yeah, I don't know, it's
- 0:54Speaker 3: just a commodity. How about the money?
- 0:56Speaker 4: Exactly right?
- 0:57Speaker 2: Man Deeps saying somehow he's built a career on doing
- 0:59Speaker 2: this stuff and Deep seeing these are senior tech analysts
- 1:01Speaker 2: Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 1:02Speaker 4: Mandy, let's start with pat Palenteer. What you call on
- 1:06Speaker 4: that and what do you make of the stock action today?
- 1:08Speaker 2: What I'd love to just get your thought on the company,
- 1:10Speaker 2: the stock and what do you think of the action today?
- 1:12Speaker 5: The solo, I mean, Palenteer still is the most expensive
- 1:16Speaker 5: enterprise software business. So at a five hundred billion dollar valuation,
- 1:20Speaker 5: you have to ask yourself, you know, is this the
- 1:24Speaker 5: best software company that I can own or is there
- 1:27Speaker 5: something else out there in the world of AI, which,
- 1:31Speaker 5: to my mind, open Ai and Entropic are also recurring
- 1:34Speaker 5: revenue software businesses. Yes, open ai is much bigger in
- 1:39Speaker 5: their ambitions with regards to a consumer business and an
- 1:42Speaker 5: enterprise API business. But these companies Open Ai and Tropic
- 1:47Speaker 5: are growing triple digits and open Ai, for example, is
- 1:51Speaker 5: at a thirteen billion plus revenue run rate. So when
- 1:55Speaker 5: I compare an open Ei and Tropic to Palenteer Talenteer,
- 2:00Speaker 5: you're at four billion dollars rund rate, growing at a
- 2:02Speaker 5: very healthy fifty percent, trading at one hundred times cv
- 2:06Speaker 5: DO sales. That is where I think the valuation is
- 2:11Speaker 5: what gives me a stop.
- 2:12Speaker 2: Here, Okay, I was raised by gentlemen where you did
- 2:15Speaker 2: pe ratio, and then I got converted to EV to ibata,
- 2:18Speaker 2: and then you people in technology got me focusing on
- 2:21Speaker 2: multiples of revenue.
- 2:23Speaker 5: Where it comes to software companies not other businesses. Yes, exactly.
- 2:27Speaker 2: And then I said, all right, I can kind of
- 2:28Speaker 2: get used to five, six, seven, eight times revenue.
- 2:30Speaker 4: Now you're telling me what one hundred times?
- 2:32Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's It's like peg ratio and eyeballs back
- 2:36Speaker 3: in the day. So mandeep when it comes to Pounder
- 2:40Speaker 3: on what it does though there's no other company like it, right,
- 2:43Speaker 3: that's the issue. It counts big governments as its customers
- 2:46Speaker 3: and then now increasingly big companies. And as much as
- 2:49Speaker 3: you can compare a Pounder as a stock to other
- 2:51Speaker 3: AI plays, the actual responsibilities has the business that it
- 2:57Speaker 3: conducts is irreplaceable, irreplicable.
- 3:02Speaker 5: They clearly have a very strong mode in terms of
- 3:06Speaker 5: you know, creating an ontology. That's what they call basically
- 3:10Speaker 5: making sense of data that an enterprise may have. And
- 3:14Speaker 5: think about you know, any enterprise, they'll have ten twenty systems,
- 3:19Speaker 5: a lot of data replication, and Talenteer can give you
- 3:23Speaker 5: like a master data where they can help you get
- 3:27Speaker 5: rid of all their interundancies and give you data that
- 3:30Speaker 5: really matters for your AI. And so think about an
- 3:34Speaker 5: organization that has a billion dollar IT budget spending billions
- 3:37Speaker 5: of dollars on AI. Why would you not spend fifty
- 3:41Speaker 5: million dollars on Talenteers, especially if you are a government
- 3:45Speaker 5: or bank or a manufacturing company and not a tech company.
- 3:49Speaker 5: That's why Palenteer's customer base is not your sophisticated tech
- 3:53Speaker 5: companies like Google, a Meta or you know, any of
- 3:56Speaker 5: the tech players, because they do their own thing, but
- 3:58Speaker 5: it's your bank. Not that they're not sophisticated, but they
- 4:02Speaker 5: need more help with organizing their data and Talenteer gives
- 4:06Speaker 5: you an out of the box solution. And in this
- 4:09Speaker 5: age of AI men, things are really kind of getting
- 4:12Speaker 5: bigger and bigger in terms of spend. The last thing
- 4:15Speaker 5: you want to save on is spending on data because
- 4:19Speaker 5: if your overall project fields since you didn't have good data,
- 4:23Speaker 5: then it's bad ROI. And that's where Talenteer is really
- 4:27Speaker 5: benefiting and making a case Guys, you're spending so much
- 4:29Speaker 5: on infrastructure, why are you not spending on data? And
- 4:33Speaker 5: I think that's a good pitch.
- 4:34Speaker 4: Don't ship out on the data. Stay with us. More
- 4:37Speaker 4: from Bloomberg Intelligence coming.
- 4:38Speaker 1: Up there For this, you're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast.
- 4:45Speaker 1: Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple,
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- 4:57Speaker 2: Looking at young brands today, that's a stock in the news.
- 5:00Speaker 2: Uh sucks up five point six percent today, It's up
- 5:02Speaker 2: about ten percent year to date. Launching a strategic review
- 5:07Speaker 2: focusing on their Pizza Hut brand. There, let's break it
- 5:10Speaker 2: down a little bit with Michael Halen. He's a senior
- 5:12Speaker 2: restaurant analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Michael, when I was in
- 5:16Speaker 2: college in Richmond, Virginia, Pizza Hut was the bomb. That's
- 5:18Speaker 2: all we had down there for pizza. What's going on
- 5:20Speaker 2: with the Pizza Hut and what's Yum's thinking about?
- 5:24Speaker 5: Yeah?
- 5:24Speaker 6: Uh, you know, I miss I missed Pizza Hut from
- 5:27Speaker 6: back in the day.
- 5:28Speaker 4: You know, I feel like the quality.
- 5:29Speaker 6: Has slipped since then. Man, I lost those breadsticks especially Uh.
- 5:34Speaker 6: You know, UH International has been okay, but US has
- 5:39Speaker 6: been a big time drag on UFC. On a on
- 5:45Speaker 6: young brand's results. So yeah, so I think this was
- 5:50Speaker 6: kind of a long time coming. It's really been a
- 5:52Speaker 6: drag on the top and bottom line growth. You know,
- 5:56Speaker 6: Taco Bell is an absolute monster, is putting up unit
- 6:00Speaker 6: growth as well as same store sales growth quarter after
- 6:03Speaker 6: quarter after quarter. KFC has had some well documented same
- 6:08Speaker 6: store sales issues in the US, but that seems to
- 6:11Speaker 6: be turning. They had a solid little quarter here with
- 6:16Speaker 6: flat same store sales versus six straight quarters of decline,
- 6:19Speaker 6: so that business seems to be accelerating a little bit.
- 6:22Speaker 6: And KFC unit growth overseas is phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal.
- 6:26Speaker 4: They crush it overseas.
- 6:27Speaker 6: Yeah, so Pizza Hut has been this drag on this
- 6:31Speaker 6: business for quite some time. I think the street is
- 6:35Speaker 6: really excited about a potential divestiture here.
- 6:38Speaker 2: Any potential buyers out there that you can identify, No.
- 6:43Speaker 4: We don't have.
- 6:44Speaker 6: We don't think any of the companies in the public
- 6:47Speaker 6: market are going to be an acquirer of Pizza Hut. Yeah,
- 6:52Speaker 6: you know, this thing is, like I said, has struggled mightily.
- 6:56Speaker 6: I mean, we can see pete private equity. I think
- 6:59Speaker 6: private equity would be a good fit right, because it's
- 7:04Speaker 6: going to take you know, management set on the call.
- 7:06Speaker 6: It might take some of their markets two three years
- 7:09Speaker 6: to get them back to like their rightful position as
- 7:12Speaker 6: market leader in those countries they which they see as
- 7:16Speaker 6: their rightful, you know position. I think Dominos would have
- 7:20Speaker 6: something to say about that. But you know, it's gonna
- 7:23Speaker 6: take a few years to turn around some of these markets,
- 7:25Speaker 6: and private equity obviously looking out a five to seven
- 7:28Speaker 6: year time horizon would be a good fit.
- 7:31Speaker 2: All right, Mike, Let's step back the restaurant space in general,
- 7:34Speaker 2: getting through you know, earning season here. What are you
- 7:37Speaker 2: learning about kind of the consumer out there from the
- 7:40Speaker 2: restaurant perspective.
- 7:42Speaker 6: Yeah, today we heard from Wingstop and another fast casual
- 7:47Speaker 6: chain that's struggling also partly been a victim of its
- 7:50Speaker 6: own success.
- 7:51Speaker 7: Right.
- 7:51Speaker 6: It's absolutely crushed it over the last six years and
- 7:54Speaker 6: is lapping very very strong results from last year. But
- 7:57Speaker 6: they talked some more about lowing come consumers and Hispanic
- 8:01Speaker 6: consumer weakness and it broadening here in the third quarter.
- 8:08Speaker 6: The stock is up pretty significantly, though. We think there's
- 8:11Speaker 6: some couple of things going on. Number one, is stock
- 8:13Speaker 6: sold off big time off that Chipotle's poor third quarter print.
- 8:18Speaker 6: And secondly, there's some optimism here, I think around the
- 8:21Speaker 6: smart kitchens. So what's a smart kitchen they're so they're
- 8:25Speaker 6: rolling out some kitchen technology that's boosting operations. It's speeding
- 8:31Speaker 6: up service times. You know, they're they're putting out consistent
- 8:35Speaker 6: ten minute service times, which is fifty percent better than
- 8:40Speaker 6: they were doing prior. Accuracy is better, Food's getting to
- 8:45Speaker 6: customers hotter and fresher, and people are going to have
- 8:49Speaker 6: a better experience. And so stores that have had this
- 8:51Speaker 6: technology right now, it's in about two thirds of the
- 8:55Speaker 6: US stores, It's going to be in all three thousand
- 8:57Speaker 6: by the end of the year. But stores that have
- 8:59Speaker 6: this equipment and have had it the longest are outperforming
- 9:03Speaker 6: on same source sales by five hundred basis points.
- 9:06Speaker 4: So we think that's that's why the stock is up
- 9:10Speaker 4: so much.
- 9:10Speaker 6: People are now a little bit more confident in a
- 9:13Speaker 6: positive twenty twenty six despite the decelerating trends here in
- 9:19Speaker 6: the third quarter.
- 9:20Speaker 2: Boy, big Big Pop today stocks up thirteen percent today,
- 9:23Speaker 2: down fourteen percent year to date, but a good move today.
- 9:26Speaker 2: I don't think there's wingstops in Jersey, Are there Mike,
- 9:28Speaker 2: I haven't seen one.
- 9:31Speaker 6: Yeah, there's there's some, but there's there's not you know,
- 9:33Speaker 6: there's not a whole bunch. You know, Texas, it's strong
- 9:37Speaker 6: in Texas.
- 9:38Speaker 4: They're talking about the Southwest being strong.
- 9:40Speaker 6: But now, man, we need some more new Jersey wing
- 9:43Speaker 6: stuff franchisees.
- 9:45Speaker 2: The product's pretty good, absolutely. So what's going on on
- 9:49Speaker 2: the laborfront for restaurants? I'm thinking quick service restaurants. You know,
- 9:53Speaker 2: with the southern border shut off, that was one of
- 9:56Speaker 2: the industries that said we may have some labor problems
- 9:58Speaker 2: associated with that.
- 10:00Speaker 4: You heard from your companies about that.
- 10:02Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, our companies just talk about the fact
- 10:07Speaker 6: that they use Everify and there and they do everything
- 10:11Speaker 6: by the book, which you know, I think is predominantly
- 10:14Speaker 6: the case. The impact that you know you're seeing a
- 10:18Speaker 6: is with more of the independent restaurants.
- 10:20Speaker 5: OK.
- 10:20Speaker 6: But then be also kind of causes labor costs to
- 10:26Speaker 6: go higher here for the public chains, right, and they're
- 10:29Speaker 6: seeing another four to five you know, wage rate inflation
- 10:34Speaker 6: this year. That's been pretty common year in and year
- 10:37Speaker 6: out since the pandemic.
- 10:38Speaker 4: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 10:45Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 10:49Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
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- 10:58Speaker 2: YouTube, Ranganath and she covers all the media names, including Spotify,
- 11:04Speaker 2: and she explained it to me very clearly early on in.
- 11:07Speaker 4: Coverage of this company.
- 11:08Speaker 2: I think of Spotify as kind of the Netflix for music,
- 11:11Speaker 2: and it's like, okay, now I get it.
- 11:13Speaker 4: Keitha, thanks so much for joining us here. What did
- 11:15Speaker 4: you make of the Spotify numbers?
- 11:17Speaker 7: I actually like the Spotify numbers, Paul. I mean, you know,
- 11:20Speaker 7: the big numbers that we always look for are, of course,
- 11:22Speaker 7: the user metrics. We want to see them kind of
- 11:25Speaker 7: do well on both monthly active users, which are basically
- 11:28Speaker 7: the free listeners, as well as the premium subscribers, which
- 11:31Speaker 7: is basically, you know, everyone paying about twelve dollars a
- 11:33Speaker 7: month for a Spotify subscription, and both those numbers came
- 11:36Speaker 7: in well ahead of guidance. The other number that we
- 11:39Speaker 7: look for in Spotify results is gross margin. This has
- 11:42Speaker 7: been you know, a constant point of debate, but Spotify
- 11:46Speaker 7: has done really well in terms of expanding their gross margin.
- 11:50Speaker 7: They again delivered numbers ahead of guidance both for you know,
- 11:54Speaker 7: third quarter as well as ahead of forecast for the
- 11:56Speaker 7: fourth quarter in terms of guidance. So fundamentals seem to
- 11:59Speaker 7: be really strong. I think the one concern, Paul, that
- 12:03Speaker 7: has really kind of emerged with Spotify over the past
- 12:06Speaker 7: few months is pricing power. You know, are they going
- 12:09Speaker 7: to keep you know, being able to increase prices? And
- 12:13Speaker 7: this is something that has dominated the conversation for not
- 12:16Speaker 7: just Spotify, but of course for any streaming company. We've
- 12:18Speaker 7: seen Netflix, as you just pointed out, demonstrate really good
- 12:22Speaker 7: pricing power. I think Spotify has very good pricing power
- 12:24Speaker 7: as well, but people are really waiting for the next
- 12:27Speaker 7: big US price hike to really gain more confidence in
- 12:30Speaker 7: the story.
- 12:31Speaker 2: Keith, what's the competitive landscape for Spotify out there? Because
- 12:34Speaker 2: as we think about the video business, it's Netflix and
- 12:37Speaker 2: then a kind of a big drop down to Disney
- 12:39Speaker 2: and then a bigger drop to kind of everybody else
- 12:41Speaker 2: fighting it out.
- 12:42Speaker 4: What's the landscape for in the audio business.
- 12:45Speaker 7: It's actually very similar, Paul. In fact, you know, Spotify
- 12:49Speaker 7: just leads by a wide, wide margin. So if you
- 12:52Speaker 7: just look at both the global audio streaming market in
- 12:55Speaker 7: terms of subscribers, they have about a thirty three percent
- 12:57Speaker 7: share globally. They have close to almost forty percent share
- 13:01Speaker 7: in the US market, so way ahead of their competitors.
- 13:04Speaker 7: So obviously gives them a lot of I think, you know,
- 13:08Speaker 7: again we come back to pricing power. Gives them definitely
- 13:11Speaker 7: a lot of pricing power in the market.
- 13:13Speaker 2: So what's the on the cost structure for them? What
- 13:16Speaker 2: are the real levers for them? It seems like you know,
- 13:18Speaker 2: the I know at Netflix and they got to write big,
- 13:21Speaker 2: big checks to you know, either license content or you know,
- 13:25Speaker 2: create their own content.
- 13:27Speaker 4: What's it like on the Spotify side.
- 13:30Speaker 7: Yeah, you bring up an excellent point, Paul, And this
- 13:31Speaker 7: has kind of again been one of the pain points
- 13:33Speaker 7: for Spotify because again, this is a music streaming service.
- 13:36Speaker 7: They don't own any of you know, the music music itself.
- 13:41Speaker 7: That's all kind of controlled by the labels, and as
- 13:44Speaker 7: you well know, content is king.
- 13:46Speaker 4: So this is really where.
- 13:47Speaker 7: Spotify has a lot of trouble because for every dollar
- 13:50Speaker 7: that they earned, about seventy cents goes back to the
- 13:53Speaker 7: music label, so they have very little leverage. They've been
- 13:56Speaker 7: trying to kind of change that whole dynamic, that whole
- 13:59Speaker 7: EQUI come up with more of their content. So a
- 14:02Speaker 7: big investment area for them has been you know, podcast
- 14:05Speaker 7: has been audiobooks where they kind of get better you know,
- 14:08Speaker 7: profit dynamics.
- 14:10Speaker 4: It has worked well.
- 14:11Speaker 7: But actually one of the things that we're kind of
- 14:13Speaker 7: looking for next year is we're going to see a
- 14:16Speaker 7: step up in all of the royalty costs. And that's
- 14:20Speaker 7: again something that the street and investors are a little
- 14:23Speaker 7: bit nervous about because we need to see how you know,
- 14:26Speaker 7: Spotify kind of manages their whole margin expansion story as
- 14:30Speaker 7: those royalty costs go up, So the amount that they're
- 14:34Speaker 7: paying all of the music labels, the warners, and the
- 14:36Speaker 7: universals of the world is going to go up slightly.
- 14:38Speaker 7: But we still think that they're in good shape. They've
- 14:40Speaker 7: been adding a ton of new features to all of
- 14:42Speaker 7: their tiers. They're probably going to debut some new tiers again.
- 14:46Speaker 7: All of that bills to that whole pricing, power and
- 14:48Speaker 7: monetization story.
- 14:49Speaker 2: And how is Apple as a competitor here, Because anytime
- 14:52Speaker 2: I see a company that's even remotely in competition Apple,
- 14:56Speaker 2: I get nervous.
- 14:58Speaker 7: So Apple, you know, if you're just kind of looking
- 15:00Speaker 7: at it. In terms of share, they are way below Spotify,
- 15:05Speaker 7: both globally as well as in the US market, so
- 15:07Speaker 7: not much of a competitor from from a share standpoint.
- 15:12Speaker 7: In fact, they've even priced their products slightly lower. Some
- 15:15Speaker 7: of the you know, some of the noise around Spotify
- 15:18Speaker 7: and Apple has been you know, in terms of the
- 15:20Speaker 7: iOS and whether you know, Spotify can kind of get
- 15:23Speaker 7: better terms, and they managed to do that as well,
- 15:26Speaker 7: So some of the changes on the iOS system have
- 15:29Speaker 7: actually helped Spotify in terms of getting a better market
- 15:33Speaker 7: share and getting better economics. Actually, so Apple Music not
- 15:37Speaker 7: too much of a worry for Spotify.
- 15:39Speaker 2: All right, let's switch gears to some of the big
- 15:42Speaker 2: cat media names you cover. I need to get an update,
- 15:45Speaker 2: Githa on Paramount, Warner Brothers, Discovery, Comcast, any movement forward
- 15:51Speaker 2: there or have to wait to the Allen Company conference
- 15:53Speaker 2: next summer to.
- 15:54Speaker 4: Get something done.
- 15:56Speaker 7: Yeah, we really don't know. We haven't heard anything. So
- 15:58Speaker 7: just a few days back, I think it was just
- 16:01Speaker 7: for last week and we heard that Netflix was kind
- 16:03Speaker 7: of poking around. So Warner Brothers Discovery at this point
- 16:06Speaker 7: has opened up their books to any of the interested parties.
- 16:10Speaker 7: There were news reports and Netflix is looking at some
- 16:13Speaker 7: of the financials of Warner Brothers Discovery. Again, this doesn't
- 16:16Speaker 7: necessarily mean that a bit is coming, but of course
- 16:19Speaker 7: anybody who you know has a chance, I'm sure, wants
- 16:22Speaker 7: to take a look at the Warner Brothers Discovery, especially
- 16:24Speaker 7: the studio and the streaming asset. So right now we
- 16:26Speaker 7: know Comcast is interested, we know Netflix is definitely interested,
- 16:29Speaker 7: and of course Paramount Skydance is interested. But again Paramoun
- 16:32Speaker 7: skid as interested for the whole company, so streaming studio
- 16:36Speaker 7: plus the TV networks.
- 16:37Speaker 5: So this is.
- 16:38Speaker 7: Again you know, I don't know it's how it's going
- 16:41Speaker 7: to play out, but hopefully we should get to hear
- 16:43Speaker 7: from you know, somebody pretty soon. Warner Brothers Discovery is
- 16:47Speaker 7: reporting a little later this week.
- 16:49Speaker 4: Boy. Yeah, you think about it, Gith.
- 16:51Speaker 2: I mean, you've got a company whose board and whose
- 16:54Speaker 2: CEO seems to be open to a deal. You would
- 16:56Speaker 2: think that something get happened quickly, but it's not.
- 16:59Speaker 7: How is it? Price has been a sticking point, Paul,
- 17:03Speaker 7: So we know that. Yeah, so we know that you know,
- 17:07Speaker 7: a paramount has come in with about twenty four dollars
- 17:09Speaker 7: a share. It looks like David's also was looking for
- 17:12Speaker 7: something north of thirty dollars, so again it's you know,
- 17:15Speaker 7: it's all going to come down to those negotiations.
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