Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Bloomberg Intelligence: Berkshire Earnings Jump
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- 0:25Speaker 3: Berkshire Hathaway people talking about this scene getting close to
- 0:27Speaker 3: a one trillion dollar valuation.
- 0:29Speaker 4: Find all I care about it?
- 0:30Speaker 3: What are they gonna do with their cash? Matthew Palozola,
- 0:33Speaker 3: he joins us here. He's from Bloomberg Intelligence. He covers
- 0:36Speaker 3: all the insurance comes, including Berkshire. So, Matthew, how much
- 0:40Speaker 3: cash do they really have on their balance sheet? And
- 0:43Speaker 3: we've been asking the same question for years? What do
- 0:46Speaker 3: they do with it? Anything new coming out of Omaha?
- 0:49Speaker 5: No, So about one hundred and sixty eight billion of cash.
- 0:54Speaker 5: We've been talking about this for a long time. They
- 0:56Speaker 5: haven't had a ton to do with the cash. Buffett
- 0:59Speaker 5: had said there's almost no targets outside of the US
- 1:03Speaker 5: that he would be interested in, and the ones inside
- 1:06Speaker 5: the US, the prices are getting driven up on competition.
- 1:09Speaker 5: So it was it was a real I thought a
- 1:12Speaker 5: kind of negative tone in the letter not only on
- 1:15Speaker 5: that but on some of their operations as well.
- 1:17Speaker 6: So a walkers through that, like, what were raised concerns
- 1:19Speaker 6: for you?
- 1:20Speaker 5: Yeah, So the beginning of last year at the annual meeting,
- 1:23Speaker 5: Buffett had said, we think the energy business, in the
- 1:25Speaker 5: railroad business, they're going to be he's gonna be lower
- 1:28Speaker 5: in twenty twenty three versus twenty two. What happened was
- 1:32Speaker 5: they were lower, but there was actually a couple of
- 1:34Speaker 5: externalities as well that made them even worse and their
- 1:37Speaker 5: their go forward concerns. The first one was labor costs
- 1:41Speaker 5: in the railroad that they were having a labor shortage
- 1:45Speaker 5: and they were paying their people more so the margins
- 1:47Speaker 5: in that Burlington Northern Santa Fe seemed to be like
- 1:50Speaker 5: they're going to underperform peers on a go forward basis.
- 1:54Speaker 5: The second was in energy in the West Coast. There's
- 1:58Speaker 5: a lot of litigation on wildfire, there's a lot of
- 2:01Speaker 5: regulation on their profits, and the outlook there didn't look
- 2:04Speaker 5: at you either.
- 2:05Speaker 7: So but to that point, what I find interesting is
- 2:07Speaker 7: that for the railroad, for example, that's why there's the
- 2:10Speaker 7: cash pile, right because you make the argument that I
- 2:13Speaker 7: have one hundred and sixty seven billion dollars in cash
- 2:16Speaker 7: because when things don't go well, I don't have to
- 2:17Speaker 7: go to a bank.
- 2:18Speaker 6: I don't have to get a loan. I can manage that.
- 2:20Speaker 5: So their cash pile is far in excess of what
- 2:24Speaker 5: they would need, right, So they they want to keep
- 2:26Speaker 5: a buffer of like twenty billion, and they have one
- 2:28Speaker 5: hundred and sixty seven right, So they're not keeping it
- 2:34Speaker 5: to support the businesses. They're keeping it because there's just
- 2:37Speaker 5: nothing good to do with it.
- 2:39Speaker 3: Historically, what is warrant said about dividends or lack their own?
- 2:44Speaker 5: So he likes getting them, and he will and he'll
- 2:47Speaker 5: never pay them, right, So I think in a post
- 2:50Speaker 5: buffet Berkshire, maybe that's something that happens with greg Abel.
- 2:54Speaker 5: I'm not one hundred percent sure, but it's never going
- 2:57Speaker 5: to happen when he's in charge.
- 3:00Speaker 4: That's just a philosophical thing with him.
- 3:02Speaker 5: Yeah, he thinks we can do better with the cash
- 3:06Speaker 5: than giving it back to you and letting you take
- 3:08Speaker 5: the alternative.
- 3:08Speaker 6: Ask a really down question, where is that cash?
- 3:11Speaker 8: Like?
- 3:11Speaker 6: Is it in a money market fund?
- 3:12Speaker 4: Like?
- 3:12Speaker 6: Is it in bomb?
- 3:13Speaker 5: It's in money markets, bonds, short term securities? And what
- 3:16Speaker 5: happened last year was the short term rates went up
- 3:20Speaker 5: so much that they were earning a ton of money
- 3:22Speaker 5: on it. I think that actually took they were they
- 3:24Speaker 5: went from something earning like fifty million to like five
- 3:27Speaker 5: billion or something just just on the cash. And I
- 3:30Speaker 5: actually think that took a lot of pressure off, even
- 3:33Speaker 5: them investing in equities.
- 3:35Speaker 3: So how do people I mean, you're an insurance sannel,
- 3:38Speaker 3: so you're an odd duct to begin with.
- 3:39Speaker 4: Right, No, it's crazy accounting. You don't know what's going on.
- 3:43Speaker 3: How do you how do you and other analysts really
- 3:46Speaker 3: analyze this conglomerate or do you just say, hey, it's
- 3:49Speaker 3: a GDP growth company and that's it a slap a
- 3:51Speaker 3: GDP mop.
- 3:52Speaker 5: But on it, I mean, I wouldn't say that it's tough.
- 3:55Speaker 5: We try to look at it, you know, some of
- 3:57Speaker 5: the parts you can value the company looking at the float.
- 4:00Speaker 5: In the insurance business, there's there's a couple of different
- 4:02Speaker 5: methods to do it, you know, even just on a
- 4:05Speaker 5: simple pe right and what they're earning. It seems like
- 4:09Speaker 5: generally the values of the businesses kind of fall in
- 4:13Speaker 5: line with with peers. Like, I don't think there's a
- 4:15Speaker 5: conglomerate discount me anymore. I would consistently argue that it's
- 4:21Speaker 5: not a GDP company, that it's got best in class businesses,
- 4:25Speaker 5: pricing power businesses. So you're not going to just see
- 4:28Speaker 5: them growing, you know, two to three percent a year.
- 4:31Speaker 5: But you know a ton of the the emphasis goes
- 4:35Speaker 5: on their investments and you know what they can buy.
- 4:38Speaker 6: What do you think they should buy?
- 4:40Speaker 5: You know, something I was thinking of over the weekend.
- 4:42Speaker 5: I was thinking they were gonna buy Occidental, right, and
- 4:44Speaker 5: they threw cold water on that last year. He said
- 4:47Speaker 5: it again in the letter this year they wasn't gonna
- 4:50Speaker 5: buy it. But something I thought find fits into his
- 4:55Speaker 5: niche would be maybe entertainment. Right, So if you think
- 4:59Speaker 5: about the thing lot, you know, maybe you're.
- 5:03Speaker 6: You're not looking at right now.
- 5:04Speaker 5: I think that because look what does he look at.
- 5:07Speaker 5: He looks at stuff that there's going to be consistent
- 5:10Speaker 5: demand for.
- 5:11Speaker 9: Right.
- 5:11Speaker 5: Maybe it's a little old school like he still thinks that.
- 5:15Speaker 5: He says Cole's not going anywhere anytime soon. You know,
- 5:18Speaker 5: it's not He bought these Japanese trading houses, right. The
- 5:23Speaker 5: investment there is around nineteen billion dollars in value, and
- 5:26Speaker 5: if you look at them, they're not AYI they're not flashy,
- 5:29Speaker 5: they're not tech, but they are steeply involved in these
- 5:32Speaker 5: things that are just not going away. And I think that,
- 5:35Speaker 5: you know, I don't cover entertainment, but I think you know,
- 5:38Speaker 5: there you go, Paul, Maybe you have an idea going up,
- 5:41Speaker 5: but the whole town's for sale. There's always going to
- 5:44Speaker 5: be a market for entertainment.
- 5:45Speaker 9: We always need to be entertained.
- 5:46Speaker 5: So I don't know, maybe there's something in there.
- 5:48Speaker 7: Well, I mean to your Oxy point, I mean it's
- 5:50Speaker 7: not that he was he was offered a really good deal,
- 5:53Speaker 7: Like he got a really good deal on some shares
- 5:56Speaker 7: when Oxy was looking to buy In and Darko and
- 5:57Speaker 7: they needed cash. They needed cash quickly because Chevron was
- 6:00Speaker 7: also making a bid. So like, will things get dramatic
- 6:03Speaker 7: enough or distressed enough for there to be a really
- 6:05Speaker 7: good deal? Might not be buy the whole company, but
- 6:07Speaker 7: get that good deal.
- 6:08Speaker 6: What do you think?
- 6:09Speaker 8: You know?
- 6:09Speaker 5: He always says he buys he would love to own
- 6:12Speaker 5: all of the companies he owns, like he would love
- 6:14Speaker 5: to own Apple, right, but he can own the whole company.
- 6:18Speaker 5: I mean, just say, we're not interested in necessarily running Occidental, right,
- 6:22Speaker 5: So I could see them buying up more of it.
- 6:24Speaker 5: I mean, they have the warrants that will increase their
- 6:27Speaker 5: ownership given the strike price. But I don't again like
- 6:32Speaker 5: they're not going they don't want to run it, but
- 6:33Speaker 5: I think they would own as much.
- 6:35Speaker 9: Of it as they could.
- 6:36Speaker 4: Step back.
- 6:36Speaker 3: Your P and C property and Casualty's what's the call here?
- 6:40Speaker 4: Do we like it? Do we not like them?
- 6:41Speaker 5: So for Berkshire's businesses specifically, they leaned into the Florida
- 6:47Speaker 5: reinsurance market heavily last year. Okay, and that worked out well.
- 6:52Speaker 5: And you know, I've been guilty of saying this, and
- 6:55Speaker 5: you see it sometimes in the press that they quote
- 6:56Speaker 5: bet on the market, right. They didn't bet on it.
- 7:00Speaker 5: They didn't like place their chips on black and hope
- 7:02Speaker 5: that it worked out right. It was a risk adjusted play.
- 7:06Speaker 5: They said, if we have an average hurricane season in Florida,
- 7:10Speaker 5: we'll still make a nice return. What happened is we
- 7:13Speaker 5: had a far below average, so they made a lot
- 7:15Speaker 5: of money. The other business for them that's kind of
- 7:18Speaker 5: turning around is Geico. So if anyone here drives a car,
- 7:21Speaker 5: has a car, you've probably seen auto insurance costs going
- 7:24Speaker 5: up dramatically. You've probably also seen a lot less advertising,
- 7:29Speaker 5: so they spent it. Did some back of the envelope
- 7:31Speaker 5: calculations about one point five billion dollars less on advertising
- 7:36Speaker 5: this year just in Geico. Then they wouldn't on a
- 7:40Speaker 5: run rate basis, And why was it. They did that
- 7:41Speaker 5: to protect the profitability of the business. So the combined
- 7:45Speaker 5: ratio of the business is kind of the inverse of
- 7:47Speaker 5: their profit margin. Right, they hoped to make about a
- 7:50Speaker 5: four percent profit margin underwriting insurance. They were probably gonna
- 7:55Speaker 5: make zero if they didn't cut their ads spend dramatically.
- 7:58Speaker 5: So they cut the ad spend. They've cut policies to
- 8:00Speaker 5: specifically on the West Coast, to kind of pair that down.
- 8:05Speaker 5: So that business was actually a nice performer this year,
- 8:08Speaker 5: but because they spend a lot less money on advertising.
- 8:11Speaker 4: Really interesting, that's money on my companies.
- 8:13Speaker 6: Yeah, that's dope. Sorry about that.
- 8:16Speaker 7: Matt Halizoa, We appreciate it. Thank you very much. Joining
- 8:19Speaker 7: us from Bloomberg Intelligence. He's the P and C Insurance
- 8:22Speaker 7: senior analyst there and also covers all things of Berkshire Hathaway.
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- 8:46Speaker 7: Stocks are definitely still going up. Everyone's really confused about
- 8:49Speaker 7: it and scratching their head. Yet no one's actually selling necessarily,
- 8:53Speaker 7: like you cannot get a sell off in this rally.
- 8:56Speaker 7: Kathy and Whistle is managing director at Morgan Stanley Private
- 8:59Speaker 7: Wealth Management, and she joins us, Now, Kathy, why won't
- 9:02Speaker 7: markets go down?
- 9:05Speaker 10: That's a great question, Alex, You're always throwing those tricky
- 9:07Speaker 10: ones at me. I would say basically that everyone is
- 9:11Speaker 10: still enthusiastic about the opportunity of interest rates coming down eventually.
- 9:16Speaker 10: So there was a little bit of a pullback a
- 9:20Speaker 10: couple of weeks ago when we all realized that the
- 9:23Speaker 10: Fed was not going to start cutting rates as soon
- 9:25Speaker 10: as they had originally thought. But now we know they're
- 9:28Speaker 10: going to cut eventually, so we want to get our
- 9:30Speaker 10: money in and have a long term view and get
- 9:33Speaker 10: some of the growth that's been going on. A little
- 9:34Speaker 10: bit of its FOMO, a little bit of it is
- 9:36Speaker 10: long term thinking.
- 9:37Speaker 3: So Kathy, we're pretty much through the earning season here.
- 9:41Speaker 3: I'm not sure I've seen earnings rise as much as
- 9:43Speaker 3: the market has. So what did you take away from
- 9:46Speaker 3: this earnings cycle here?
- 9:48Speaker 10: Yeah, we were expecting earnings to get hit somewhat because
- 9:53Speaker 10: over the last year or so, companies have been still
- 9:57Speaker 10: very positive with their expectation, and at some point they
- 10:01Speaker 10: we're going to have to pull in because there are
- 10:03Speaker 10: sales that are going down, the cost of goods is
- 10:06Speaker 10: getting more expensive, and it's harder and harder to get
- 10:09Speaker 10: that earnings number that they want in order to impress
- 10:12Speaker 10: their shareholders. At the end of the day, there's only
- 10:15Speaker 10: two ways to get the earnings to look good, and
- 10:18Speaker 10: that's either to increase your sales and your revenue or
- 10:22Speaker 10: to decrease your expenses. And a lot of companies are
- 10:26Speaker 10: starting to decrease expenses. We're seeing that with the layoffs,
- 10:29Speaker 10: and this is what we're thinking about of why companies
- 10:33Speaker 10: are trying to reach those numbers by making those cuts
- 10:35Speaker 10: and laying people off. And it's not necessarily the most
- 10:38Speaker 10: healthy way to meet numbers.
- 10:40Speaker 6: So, Kathy, what do you do? Then? Golden Sachs had
- 10:44Speaker 6: a noubt.
- 10:44Speaker 7: They talked about how hedge funds are selling tech last
- 10:47Speaker 7: week and they're buying consumer staples for example.
- 10:50Speaker 6: What do you do in this environment.
- 10:52Speaker 10: Yeah, one of the things that I'm doing with clients
- 10:55Speaker 10: actually is a very simple basic concept of asset allocation, right,
- 10:58Speaker 10: which where you're starting with how much is the percentage
- 11:01Speaker 10: you have in equities versus fixed income versus alternative investing,
- 11:06Speaker 10: And I'm peeling back a little bit. For those clients
- 11:08Speaker 10: that have stayed in the markets and have you done
- 11:10Speaker 10: quite well, you can peel back a little bit from
- 11:13Speaker 10: those names that have had a big run up and
- 11:15Speaker 10: start going more into that whole fixed income arena because
- 11:18Speaker 10: you are getting paid now for fixed income, which we
- 11:21Speaker 10: haven't gotten paid in years for fixed income. So there's
- 11:23Speaker 10: opportunities there. If the FED does go ahead and reduce
- 11:27Speaker 10: rates at some point in the future, there's a chance
- 11:29Speaker 10: for a little bit of a pop up too. So
- 11:31Speaker 10: I think just looking at allocation is the first step,
- 11:34Speaker 10: and the second step is looking at different areas of
- 11:36Speaker 10: the market that we think will do well. We've liked
- 11:39Speaker 10: consumer staples, We've liked you know, everyone has to buy toothpaste, right,
- 11:42Speaker 10: everybody's got to buy the basic products. So you can
- 11:46Speaker 10: still go there. You can go healthcare. Healthcare should do well.
- 11:50Speaker 10: We've seen some good numbers over this last earning season
- 11:53Speaker 10: two with healthcare, and we think we'll do, you know,
- 11:55Speaker 10: continue to do well there. And I think the financials
- 11:58Speaker 10: still have a nice opportunity to recover in this market
- 12:02Speaker 10: as well. So those are some of the areas that
- 12:04Speaker 10: we're looking at.
- 12:05Speaker 4: Kathy.
- 12:05Speaker 3: On the fixed income side, how much credit risk are
- 12:07Speaker 3: you suggesting your clients take. Do they stick with the
- 12:09Speaker 3: treasures where you can still get very nice yields or
- 12:12Speaker 3: do you go out into the credit space and maybe
- 12:15Speaker 3: take a little bit more risk for a little bit
- 12:16Speaker 3: more return.
- 12:17Speaker 10: Well, that's a great question, and it's something I've been
- 12:19Speaker 10: having a conversation with my clients about. I don't think
- 12:23Speaker 10: if we're going to have, you know, the Fed raise
- 12:26Speaker 10: rates sometime this year, these higher short term rates are
- 12:29Speaker 10: going to eventually go away and then it's going to
- 12:32Speaker 10: be too late to lock into the longer higher rates.
- 12:35Speaker 10: So I've been slowly legging clients out of these short
- 12:38Speaker 10: term rates the Treasury bills and things like that, and
- 12:40Speaker 10: going a little bit longer. If it's a taxable account
- 12:43Speaker 10: and they're in a higher tax bracket. We're looking at
- 12:45Speaker 10: municipal bonds. I really like municipal bonds for those clients,
- 12:48Speaker 10: so does Paul. Great, Thanks Alex. So the second piece
- 12:54Speaker 10: of that is where are taxes going? They are definitely
- 12:57Speaker 10: not going down. I don't know if they'll go up,
- 12:59Speaker 10: maybe they'll stay the same, but they are definitely not
- 13:01Speaker 10: going down. The chances with a deficit and different things
- 13:05Speaker 10: that are going on, we may see taxes at some
- 13:07Speaker 10: point go up.
- 13:09Speaker 8: There.
- 13:09Speaker 10: It wasn't that many years ago or decades ago that
- 13:12Speaker 10: we were in a much higher tax bracket in this
- 13:15Speaker 10: country for the highest earners. And if that happens, municipals
- 13:18Speaker 10: will be extremely valuable in your portfolio as well.
- 13:22Speaker 7: This is also sort of a basic but yet silly question.
- 13:25Speaker 7: So when you're taking a look at your asset allocation,
- 13:27Speaker 7: your barbells and all of that, what do you pay
- 13:29Speaker 7: attention to, Like, is it when the earnings cross the tape?
- 13:32Speaker 6: Is it going to be the PCE on Thursday? Is
- 13:35Speaker 6: it going to be the Fed?
- 13:36Speaker 8: Like?
- 13:36Speaker 7: We all know where this is going, right, So do
- 13:38Speaker 7: you just kind of like do your thing and check
- 13:39Speaker 7: back in six months later?
- 13:42Speaker 10: I try, you know, I do look at the different
- 13:45Speaker 10: data that comes across, you know, whether it's you know,
- 13:48Speaker 10: PMI or housing starts or things like that. I think
- 13:51Speaker 10: it's interesting that we're starting to see the numbers look
- 13:54Speaker 10: a little bit more positive for home buyers, right And
- 13:58Speaker 10: it's probably because sometimes when when people are waiting too long,
- 14:01Speaker 10: it kind of compresses that demand up, so then eventually
- 14:04Speaker 10: they have to start I know a lot of investors
- 14:08Speaker 10: are starting to think about purchasing because they just can't
- 14:11Speaker 10: wait any longer. And there's also the idea that you
- 14:13Speaker 10: can always refinance in a few years if rates to
- 14:16Speaker 10: go down. So I think that you have to look
- 14:18Speaker 10: at what your priorities are when it comes to your
- 14:20Speaker 10: values and goals and how you want to live your life,
- 14:22Speaker 10: and then try to find the best way possible to
- 14:24Speaker 10: do that. In terms of looking at all these different numbers.
- 14:27Speaker 10: When I think about clients, it's a little bit easier
- 14:30Speaker 10: for me in the sense that we have a longer
- 14:32Speaker 10: term view. We don't have a day to day We're
- 14:33Speaker 10: not traders, you know. I don't have institutional clients. I
- 14:37Speaker 10: have private wealth clients, individual clients, business owners, entrepreneurs, c
- 14:42Speaker 10: SPIT executives that are trying to figure out what to
- 14:44Speaker 10: do with their money and how to make it, you know,
- 14:47Speaker 10: build and last. I've had conversations with a lot of
- 14:49Speaker 10: clients in their late fifties. Their whole life, they've been
- 14:52Speaker 10: in the accumulation phase, right, They're growing, they're adding money
- 14:55Speaker 10: to their portfolio, and it's pretty you know, pretty low key.
- 15:00Speaker 10: Now they're starting to think about retirement, and I can
- 15:02Speaker 10: tell you people get stressed when they start thinking about, oh,
- 15:05Speaker 10: now I have to take this money and put put
- 15:07Speaker 10: you know, I'm in the distribution phase, like how am
- 15:09Speaker 10: I going to start using that money for the rest
- 15:11Speaker 10: of my life? And it's a little scary, which is
- 15:14Speaker 10: why I also think, you know, clients can do a
- 15:16Speaker 10: financial plan which gives you a really great roadmap year
- 15:19Speaker 10: to year about what kind of money you'll come in
- 15:21Speaker 10: into your portfolio and how to you know, spend it
- 15:24Speaker 10: throughout each year so that you have it for the
- 15:26Speaker 10: rest of your life. So these are like the longer
- 15:28Speaker 10: term themes and topics I'm thinking about when I think
- 15:31Speaker 10: about clients, and I'm also looking for you know, earlier
- 15:34Speaker 10: people were talking about how you know, there's a strategy.
- 15:37Speaker 10: You know, Buffett takes the strategy of trying to find
- 15:39Speaker 10: dislocations in the market. I've always thought that that is
- 15:43Speaker 10: the best way to think about clients' portfolios, their individual portfolios,
- 15:48Speaker 10: like when is there a dislocation in the market, and
- 15:51Speaker 10: can we take advantage of that. So when we see
- 15:55Speaker 10: the interest rates change favorably for individual investors and their
- 15:59Speaker 10: yields are getting higher, that's a great time to say that,
- 16:01Speaker 10: you know, we have a little money on the sidelines,
- 16:03Speaker 10: let's start putting that to work.
- 16:05Speaker 3: Kathy, to what extent do you guide your clients into
- 16:08Speaker 3: alternative investments, whether that's private equity, private credit, hedge funds.
- 16:13Speaker 4: How does that work?
- 16:14Speaker 8: Yeah?
- 16:14Speaker 10: Absolutely so. Of course alternative investments, you know, you need
- 16:18Speaker 10: to qualify for it, so you have to be like
- 16:19Speaker 10: a certain level of investor. However, they're becoming more and
- 16:23Speaker 10: more democratized and becoming more available to more investors than
- 16:29Speaker 10: in the past. So the way I think about it
- 16:31Speaker 10: is this equities they've had a run. We had like
- 16:34Speaker 10: a ten year you know, double digit return. I think
- 16:37Speaker 10: it was like, what was it, twenty ten or so
- 16:40Speaker 10: to twenty twenty, something like that. We think alternatives are
- 16:44Speaker 10: an area where we can see double returns for the
- 16:46Speaker 10: next ten years, so we definitely want our clients in there.
- 16:48Speaker 10: And so I'm looking at an asset allocation of anywhere
- 16:51Speaker 10: on equities from like fifty to sixty. Now that fixed
- 16:53Speaker 10: income is back in the game, we can peel back
- 16:56Speaker 10: from the equities and add more to fixed InCom because
- 16:58Speaker 10: we were kind of avoiding a fixed income for a
- 17:00Speaker 10: larger portion of the portfolio in the last So you know,
- 17:03Speaker 10: a few years, so you've got like fifty to sixty
- 17:05Speaker 10: percent equities, maybe you've got like twenty to thirty percent
- 17:08Speaker 10: fixed income, and fifteen to twenty. You know, you can
- 17:11Speaker 10: go depending on the size of the clients net worth.
- 17:13Speaker 10: He goes high as thirty percent and alternatives, but fifteen
- 17:16Speaker 10: to twenty is really like a good number, and when
- 17:19Speaker 10: we're looking at it, we're looking at trying to level up,
- 17:22Speaker 10: you know, sort of what the client is looking for
- 17:24Speaker 10: versus their time frame, the liquidity needs and all those
- 17:28Speaker 10: things that need to be considered.
- 17:31Speaker 6: Really interesting. Yep, that's a lot though. Fifteen to twenty.
- 17:33Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what I hear. I mean, we I hear
- 17:35Speaker 4: that from the retail it's very typical.
- 17:37Speaker 10: Now it's like I would say, that's what's typical for
- 17:40Speaker 10: the you know, the high networth investor.
- 17:43Speaker 4: All Right, Kathy, thank you so much for joining us.
- 17:44Speaker 3: Really appreciate that as always, Kathy at and Twistle Managing
- 17:47Speaker 3: Director Morgan Stanley Private Wealth and Management joining us on
- 17:51Speaker 3: a zoom calf from lovely.
- 17:52Speaker 4: Ridgewood to New Jersey. They love me and Ridgewood. That's
- 17:54Speaker 4: a great tent.
- 17:55Speaker 6: They love you, Eymer in Jersey.
- 17:57Speaker 1: They let you go to Ridgewood.
- 17:58Speaker 4: Yeah, I know exactly.
- 18:00Speaker 3: I slipped in there the country club. You know, I
- 18:03Speaker 3: made it once a Ridgewood country club. Lost many golf
- 18:05Speaker 3: balls there. It's a great, great old course.
- 18:08Speaker 4: I love it there, you know.
- 18:09Speaker 3: But we were at a remote for one of our
- 18:13Speaker 3: ria folks, retro investment advisors, And that's what the advisors
- 18:16Speaker 3: are saying. They have a ton of demand from their
- 18:18Speaker 3: clients for alternative investments.
- 18:20Speaker 4: Is much harder than I thought.
- 18:21Speaker 7: Yeah, it's like with bitcoin, it's like is it gonna
- 18:23Speaker 7: be ten percent or one percent? And that really makes
- 18:26Speaker 7: quite a big difference.
- 18:28Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 18:32Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Eastern.
- 18:34Speaker 9: On Apple car Play and then broud Otto with the
- 18:36Speaker 9: Bloomberg Business app.
- 18:37Speaker 2: Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch
- 18:40Speaker 2: us live on YouTube.
- 18:43Speaker 3: Amazon, that's another big name now that is now in
- 18:46Speaker 3: the dal Jones industrials.
- 18:48Speaker 4: Good for them, it's a big day for them. But
- 18:50Speaker 4: the question is kind of where do we go from here?
- 18:52Speaker 3: What are the drivers here for our good friends at Amazon,
- 18:56Speaker 3: because they are the biggest play on retail, but they're
- 19:00Speaker 3: also one of the big plays on the cloud and
- 19:02Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff. So put them Goile It's
- 19:03Speaker 3: her job to figure all that stuff out. She's a
- 19:05Speaker 3: senior anos covering all the retail stuff for Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 19:08Speaker 3: Put them what's the if you go talk to your
- 19:11Speaker 3: clients out there, your institutional investor clients. What's kind of
- 19:14Speaker 3: the play on Amazon? Is it just shut up, I
- 19:16Speaker 3: got to own it, or I own it only for
- 19:19Speaker 3: the cloud? Or what's kind of the story behind the
- 19:22Speaker 3: Amazon play right now?
- 19:24Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it's all about profits. For a long time,
- 19:26Speaker 8: Amazon was all about marketshare, and today the story is
- 19:29Speaker 8: really a profit story. It's the profitability that's about to
- 19:33Speaker 8: unfold at Amazon that's really getting people excited and interested.
- 19:37Speaker 8: We wrote about this a few months ago, where you know,
- 19:39Speaker 8: if you look at their most lucrative businesses. And everyone
- 19:43Speaker 8: knows of the cloud, which generates thirty percent EBIT margins,
- 19:46Speaker 8: which we think can go to forty percent. That could
- 19:49Speaker 8: be a two hundred billion dollar business. So you're looking
- 19:51Speaker 8: at sixty to eighty billion dollars in profits in the
- 19:54Speaker 8: coming years. But then if you add advertising to then, Paul,
- 19:58Speaker 8: you know the space, well, they have fifty percent EBIT margins,
- 20:02Speaker 8: and we can see advertising growing to one hundred billion
- 20:05Speaker 8: dollars in just a few years. So you're talking about
- 20:07Speaker 8: fifty billion in advertising, plus if you add another sixty
- 20:11Speaker 8: seventy of cloud, you're talking a big profit number here,
- 20:16Speaker 8: and I think that's what's getting people excited. Aside from that,
- 20:20Speaker 8: retail is growing. And part of the reason that advertising
- 20:23Speaker 8: is doing so well is because you talked about search
- 20:26Speaker 8: a little earlier. You know, people go into Amazon as
- 20:28Speaker 8: if it was a search engine. Right, You go in
- 20:30Speaker 8: and you search for something. But the difference with Amazon
- 20:33Speaker 8: versus a search engine is you go with the purchase intent.
- 20:37Speaker 8: People go into Amazon looking for something and to colleck
- 20:39Speaker 8: that buyba and they already know they want it. They
- 20:41Speaker 8: just want to find it and get it there in
- 20:43Speaker 8: two days or less.
- 20:44Speaker 7: That is such a good point. And this is a
- 20:45Speaker 7: great example of this story of Amazon replacing Walgreen. So
- 20:48Speaker 7: I was talking to an anchor who's been struggling with
- 20:51Speaker 7: feeling sick and feels like that winter, like you're just
- 20:53Speaker 7: sick all the time. And I was telling about airborne,
- 20:55Speaker 7: which you take if you feel a coming on of
- 20:58Speaker 7: a cold. She's like, oh, where do I buy it?
- 20:59Speaker 6: Amazon?
- 21:00Speaker 7: I'm like, no, go to your local drug store. It's
- 21:01Speaker 7: two blocks away. But that idea, right, like walking those
- 21:04Speaker 7: two blocks isn't going to happen. And I have to
- 21:06Speaker 7: go to Amazon to buy the thing because it'll come
- 21:08Speaker 7: in two days. And I'm not even worried about it.
- 21:11Speaker 7: Where is the downside?
- 21:12Speaker 9: Though?
- 21:12Speaker 6: Who know?
- 21:12Speaker 7: I mean, you laid out a pretty convincing case, So
- 21:15Speaker 7: how do I I don't know what do I worry about?
- 21:18Speaker 8: So I think you know the downside? If we enter
- 21:21Speaker 8: a consumer recession, clearly Amazon will be impacted, right, so
- 21:24Speaker 8: we'll the rest of retail. But I think that's near term,
- 21:27Speaker 8: and as we've seen in past cycles, what goes down
- 21:30Speaker 8: comes up eventually. Amazon is one of those places where
- 21:32Speaker 8: we think if you view it for the longer term,
- 21:35Speaker 8: there's just a lot of opportunity across all its businesses.
- 21:38Speaker 8: We can't control the macro, but with the logistics platform
- 21:42Speaker 8: in place, and even this example that you gave. You know,
- 21:46Speaker 8: you need cold medicine, or you need anything and you
- 21:48Speaker 8: have to go to CBS or somewhere else because you
- 21:51Speaker 8: need it. Now you can't wait six hours, twelve hours,
- 21:54Speaker 8: twenty four hours for it. But I'll tell you that
- 21:56Speaker 8: Amazon's delivery has gotten much faster. I mean, I'm seeing
- 22:00Speaker 8: stuff at my door that I ordered today in less
- 22:03Speaker 8: than twenty four hours, sometimes eight to twelve hours. And
- 22:06Speaker 8: that's pretty incredible. And that's really a part due to
- 22:09Speaker 8: their realignment of their distribution centers, which they were able
- 22:12Speaker 8: to infuse and even faster delivery.
- 22:15Speaker 3: See it now, I have a general idea where Punham
- 22:17Speaker 3: and her family live. It's literally amongst or very close
- 22:20Speaker 3: to like I think all these distribution centers in Central Jersey.
- 22:24Speaker 4: It's unbelievable.
- 22:25Speaker 3: I think we've got to be like the Central we
- 22:27Speaker 3: have to be like the distribution hub of the East Coast.
- 22:30Speaker 6: It seems like I feel like a Jersey primo.
- 22:33Speaker 3: Oh yeah, why yeah, I am so. When I see
- 22:35Speaker 3: the Gove, I tell them you know, so put them.
- 22:39Speaker 3: Let's let's back away from Amazon. Talk to us about
- 22:41Speaker 3: just retail in general. Here.
- 22:43Speaker 4: How's the consumer doing out there? How do you what
- 22:46Speaker 4: are you hearing from your companies?
- 22:48Speaker 8: I think the consumer is very focused on value today.
- 22:51Speaker 8: If you're seeing the retailers that are actually being able
- 22:53Speaker 8: to drive the share gains, you'll see that they offer
- 22:56Speaker 8: some sort of value in their proposition. Whether it was
- 22:59Speaker 8: from Walmart that you heard from earlier, you know, that's
- 23:01Speaker 8: doing well. But then we hear from the other retailers,
- 23:04Speaker 8: the more discretionary ones, and they're struggling. Even the at
- 23:08Speaker 8: leisure companies. We heard, you know, from Puma and Adidas.
- 23:11Speaker 8: We heard from some of the other companies where they
- 23:14Speaker 8: may have done well in four Q because holiday was
- 23:16Speaker 8: really strong last year, but when they look out for
- 23:19Speaker 8: their guidance, it's been conservative for the most part from
- 23:22Speaker 8: most of the retailers that I've heard from, And I
- 23:25Speaker 8: think that just goes to show you that you have
- 23:27Speaker 8: to have what the consumer wants, and you have to
- 23:29Speaker 8: have it at the price that the consumer wants it
- 23:31Speaker 8: at for you to actually succeed in today's environment.
- 23:35Speaker 7: Macy's comes out tomorrow, we have to wait for next
- 23:37Speaker 7: week for like Colds and Target and all those guys.
- 23:39Speaker 7: But Macy's comes out tomorrow. I mean, that's a fine
- 23:43Speaker 7: line to walk for Macy's.
- 23:44Speaker 6: What are you expecting?
- 23:46Speaker 8: Yeah, I think I think holiday was really really strong
- 23:49Speaker 8: last year. So I think when these companies report four
- 23:51Speaker 8: Q results, you will see some reflection of that even
- 23:54Speaker 8: across the department stores. But the question is really once
- 23:57Speaker 8: again on the longer term, right where they stand in
- 24:00Speaker 8: the longer term is the surviable business model? How many
- 24:03Speaker 8: stores should they have? How oh do we lose? You
- 24:07Speaker 8: kind of grappling with right now. And we are in
- 24:10Speaker 8: an environment where the consumer is spending on needs over
- 24:14Speaker 8: once and if it is un once they're traveling, that's
- 24:17Speaker 8: where they're going.
- 24:18Speaker 4: Yep, So we're you know, we talk about inflation.
- 24:20Speaker 3: Putum prices buy and large in the supermarket don't come
- 24:25Speaker 3: down after they shot up. However, many percent here that's
- 24:28Speaker 3: just the inflation rate of growth is slowing. How about
- 24:31Speaker 3: for like Adidas, do they ever cut the price of
- 24:35Speaker 3: a shoe because inflation's declining?
- 24:39Speaker 4: Does that wrappen?
- 24:40Speaker 8: No, they had discounts, right, So if you want to
- 24:42Speaker 8: bring prices down, retailers use discounts as a medium to
- 24:45Speaker 8: do that. But once prices go up, they don't come down.
- 24:49Speaker 3: See that's that's a problem with inflation. That's why inflation
- 24:53Speaker 3: is insidious.
- 24:54Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 24:54Speaker 7: But so to kind of Paul's question, but really to
- 24:57Speaker 7: my question, are we going to see a lot of
- 25:00Speaker 7: discounting from retailers?
- 25:01Speaker 9: So?
- 25:01Speaker 6: I don't know if you guys know this.
- 25:02Speaker 7: Have we talked about Alex's a counter indicator?
- 25:04Speaker 8: No?
- 25:05Speaker 7: I only shop on sale, Okay, so where I'm shopping,
- 25:08Speaker 7: you should be shorting the stocks. So this is a
- 25:10Speaker 7: joke that winds up happening because I'm shopping there because
- 25:12Speaker 7: their inventory is bloated and because the sales are so good.
- 25:16Speaker 7: So am I going to be going to Bluemi's in
- 25:18Speaker 7: the next couple weeks or they finally have their pricing
- 25:20Speaker 7: power in inventory in check?
- 25:23Speaker 8: I think inventory is getting more in check as we
- 25:26Speaker 8: move into the spring. So I was in stores actually
- 25:28Speaker 8: on Friday, and the discounts were pretty reasonable. They weren't
- 25:32Speaker 8: too aggressive. There were some clearance wracks across them all,
- 25:35Speaker 8: but I can tell you the stores were quiet. There
- 25:37Speaker 8: was no one in there on a Friday afternoon. It
- 25:40Speaker 8: was very, very quiet. So It's interesting because there's new
- 25:44Speaker 8: inventory that's flown in for the spring, and as stores
- 25:48Speaker 8: put this new inventory out, they're going to be a
- 25:50Speaker 8: little careful with their discounting, and we could see more
- 25:53Speaker 8: discounts come in in April on the spring inventory before
- 25:56Speaker 8: now they're being steady and careful with them.
- 25:58Speaker 3: I bought a new sport code over the weekend and
- 26:01Speaker 3: maybe i'll break it out for you guys on Friday.
- 26:03Speaker 4: Something looking forward to. Oh I can't wait.
- 26:07Speaker 6: This is the long cell. This is this is sort
- 26:09Speaker 6: of a.
- 26:12Speaker 4: Actually walked into a local retailer. Shopping local.
- 26:16Speaker 3: That's how you go because guess what the Brooks Brothers
- 26:20Speaker 3: and the Shrewsbury Mall done.
- 26:21Speaker 4: Close kidding, Yes, actually I've been there any number of times.
- 26:25Speaker 4: It's just a crushing blow, crushing blow.
- 26:28Speaker 3: Uh so put them what's the Is there a fashion
- 26:31Speaker 3: thing out there that that's moving the market, moving the needle,
- 26:35Speaker 3: that's maybe getting one of your names kind of outperforming
- 26:37Speaker 3: the others.
- 26:39Speaker 8: I think across fashion it's the same trend that we've
- 26:41Speaker 8: been seeing. You know, denim is still in in terms
- 26:45Speaker 8: of at leisure. People are dressing down still, but there
- 26:49Speaker 8: are more drops, are more balanced I think we're seeing
- 26:51Speaker 8: a little bit more of the work attire come back
- 26:53Speaker 8: into play since people are returning to work in a
- 26:56Speaker 8: more normal fashion, so we will start to see the
- 27:00Speaker 8: career part of the business is probably outperformed this year.
- 27:03Speaker 6: That's really interesting. Who said to benefit from something like that?
- 27:07Speaker 8: I say the Department stories, really any Amazon, any of
- 27:12Speaker 8: the retailers that have a more formal offering, and not
- 27:16Speaker 8: to say suits, right, you don't need to be wearing
- 27:18Speaker 8: suits to work anymore, but you do need to come
- 27:22Speaker 8: out of your comfort where whether it's joggers or leggings,
- 27:25Speaker 8: and really put on some dresses or some slacks to
- 27:29Speaker 8: get it to the work.
- 27:30Speaker 6: But John, take off those at leisure pants.
- 27:34Speaker 7: The fashion police Paul of yelling at some guy who
- 27:38Speaker 7: was like wearing jim shorts in the office.
- 27:40Speaker 3: Well, the one the sandals is almost a change that
- 27:44Speaker 3: could have been I'm taking your lanyard and your.
- 27:47Speaker 6: Badge and keep your toes in your shoes.
- 27:49Speaker 4: Yes exactly, I mean I'll go.
- 27:50Speaker 3: I'll sit there on the sixth floor on some of
- 27:52Speaker 3: these days and check people, give them some advice. Put
- 27:55Speaker 3: them goil thanks so much for joining us. Put them
- 27:57Speaker 3: Goyle Senior retail analyst for Bluemberg Intelligence. She was joining
- 28:02Speaker 3: us to via zoom from the Princeton, New Jersey headquarters
- 28:05Speaker 3: of a Bloomberg Intelligence, even though we fought for years
- 28:07Speaker 3: to get to New York.
- 28:10Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 28:14Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar.
- 28:16Speaker 9: Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business.
- 28:19Speaker 2: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 28:22Speaker 2: flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 28:28Speaker 7: We just had a headline crossing this is according to Semaphore,
- 28:31Speaker 7: that the FTC is going to sue a block the
- 28:33Speaker 7: Kroger Albertson's merger today. And this comes across as a
- 28:37Speaker 7: ton of M and A has taken place in many
- 28:39Speaker 7: different industries, and a lot of them going up against
- 28:41Speaker 7: the DOJ. Capital One Discover last week. There's been a
- 28:44Speaker 7: ton of oil mergers as well. So there's literally no
- 28:46Speaker 7: one else to talk to but Jennifer Ree. She's a
- 28:48Speaker 7: senior litigation analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. In my mind, the
- 28:52Speaker 7: best person on this topic pretty much out there on
- 28:54Speaker 7: the street. Oh yeah, for sure, Hey, Jen, there's a
- 28:57Speaker 7: lot to kind of get through right now, but in
- 28:59Speaker 7: terms of capital one and discover what's your prediction here?
- 29:04Speaker 1: This one is such a tough one.
- 29:05Speaker 3: You know.
- 29:06Speaker 1: I think that the Department of Justice is kind of
- 29:09Speaker 1: in a conundrum with this one, right because they're under
- 29:11Speaker 1: a directive to get tougher on deals, and in particular
- 29:14Speaker 1: get tougher on bank deals. I mean, this has come
- 29:16Speaker 1: from back in twenty twenty one when President Biden issued
- 29:20Speaker 1: an executive order saying, look, you know, we can't just
- 29:22Speaker 1: rubber stamp these bank deals. We've got these huge banks,
- 29:24Speaker 1: We've had problems with banking, and we need to get
- 29:27Speaker 1: more aggressive. And the Department of Justice is on board
- 29:30Speaker 1: with that, you know, we've heard their statements saying that
- 29:32Speaker 1: they're on board with that. But you also have a
- 29:35Speaker 1: market that simply hasn't been competitive for many, many, many years,
- 29:39Speaker 1: and that's in credit card processing.
- 29:40Speaker 11: Right.
- 29:41Speaker 1: We really have just two biggies, Visa and MasterCard, and
- 29:44Speaker 1: this deal provides an opportunity to really bolster competition in
- 29:48Speaker 1: an area that's been problematic ever since. I can remember.
- 29:52Speaker 1: When I started Anti trust, the very first lawsuit I
- 29:54Speaker 1: worked on was the Department of Justice versus Visa and
- 29:57Speaker 1: MasterCard alleging that they were engaging in con that was
- 30:00Speaker 1: blocking out Discover and American Express. And ever since then, right,
- 30:04Speaker 1: we've had allegations of or private litigation public litigation against
- 30:09Speaker 1: those two companies for antitrust violations, and we've had regulation.
- 30:13Speaker 1: So this is an oper This deal does have these
- 30:16Speaker 1: strong pro competitive benefits, but you've also seen massive political
- 30:20Speaker 1: reaction against it. So you really have two very strong
- 30:24Speaker 1: opposing sides. And I think it's just going to come
- 30:27Speaker 1: down to the investigation and how the Department of Justice
- 30:30Speaker 1: views the credit card issuing market and the overlaps in
- 30:33Speaker 1: the credit card issuing market between these two companies, and
- 30:36Speaker 1: how it weighs out any potential for harm it might
- 30:39Speaker 1: find against this pro competitive aspect.
- 30:43Speaker 3: So, but it seems like a reasonable argument that putting
- 30:46Speaker 3: Capital One and Discovered together does in fact create a
- 30:49Speaker 3: viable competitor to Visa master Card.
- 30:52Speaker 4: Otherwise there will never be a viable competitor.
- 30:55Speaker 1: Actly Yeah, No, that's exactly right. And that's why this
- 30:59Speaker 1: is an unusual deal, because you know, all companies with
- 31:02Speaker 1: deals come in and say, oh, they're all sorts of
- 31:03Speaker 1: pro competitive benefits that are going to benefit consumers and innovation,
- 31:06Speaker 1: et cetera. And usually, you know, sometimes they're kind of
- 31:10Speaker 1: lawyer created, sometimes they're really you know, it's unclear whether
- 31:14Speaker 1: they're going to come to fruition. And most of the
- 31:17Speaker 1: time the Department of Justice or Federal Trade Comission are
- 31:19Speaker 1: going to be very skeptical about those claims. They say
- 31:22Speaker 1: they don't really ever bear fruit. But in this case,
- 31:25Speaker 1: it's much it's a much stronger claim, and it is
- 31:28Speaker 1: kind of obvious to see how there really truly could
- 31:31Speaker 1: be a very significant pro competitive benefit here, and so
- 31:35Speaker 1: it could be one of these unique deals where that
- 31:37Speaker 1: aspect is given more weight than usual by the Department
- 31:41Speaker 1: of Justice and possibly be considered important enough to allow
- 31:45Speaker 1: the deal to go through even if there might be
- 31:47Speaker 1: some other issues.
- 31:48Speaker 7: Jen couldn't I have made the same argument with say
- 31:50Speaker 7: Spirit and Jet Blue, and that definitely didn't work out.
- 31:54Speaker 1: You know, it's so interesting you bring that up, because
- 31:56Speaker 1: I see so many parallels between that case and this case,
- 31:58Speaker 1: even though completely different intries. Because there was a very
- 32:01Speaker 1: strong argument that those two combined could have bolstered competition
- 32:05Speaker 1: against the legacy airlines Delta United, et cetera. But the
- 32:09Speaker 1: problem there was that there was a small set of
- 32:11Speaker 1: consumers that really depended on the unbundled low fares that
- 32:15Speaker 1: were offered by Spirit, and we're going to lose out
- 32:17Speaker 1: where Jet Blue took over those routes and retrofitted the
- 32:19Speaker 1: planes and created more space but raised fares and a
- 32:23Speaker 1: weird way, you kind of have the same dynamic here.
- 32:25Speaker 1: You can create a lot more competition as against the incumbents,
- 32:29Speaker 1: the big legacies Visa and MasterCard, but you might have
- 32:33Speaker 1: some sort of a negative effect on underserved consumers because
- 32:37Speaker 1: Capital wanted to discover when they issue credit, they tend
- 32:40Speaker 1: to focus more on underserved populations than do some of
- 32:43Speaker 1: the other big issuers of credit. So people who are
- 32:46Speaker 1: new to credit, people who carry a revolving balance, subprime borrowers.
- 32:52Speaker 1: And it may be that there's a view that this
- 32:54Speaker 1: impacts that a smaller group of subprime borrowers, and in
- 32:57Speaker 1: Jet Blue and Spirit, at the end of the day,
- 33:01Speaker 1: that one out the doj one because of that harmful
- 33:04Speaker 1: impact on a small set of particular consumers. You have
- 33:07Speaker 1: the same thing here, But what you might have here
- 33:10Speaker 1: is a stronger argument on the pro competitive side than
- 33:13Speaker 1: you had in that case.
- 33:15Speaker 3: Well, how about as Alex was just reporting here the
- 33:17Speaker 3: FTC to sue to block Kroeger Albertson's merger today it's
- 33:21Speaker 3: according to summerfor Ken, Isn't that an easy fix?
- 33:25Speaker 4: We just sell some stores where they overlap, You know.
- 33:28Speaker 1: That part of it is the easy fix. But remedies
- 33:30Speaker 1: have two pieces. It's what are you going to sell?
- 33:32Speaker 1: And who are you going to sell it to? And
- 33:33Speaker 1: both of those pieces have to pass muster. So I
- 33:36Speaker 1: think on the what are you going to sell? That's
- 33:38Speaker 1: probably an easy fix because ultimately the companies that they
- 33:41Speaker 1: can squabble over twenty stores or so, but if they
- 33:44Speaker 1: can sell them, if they have to sell them, The
- 33:46Speaker 1: issue here, I think is going to be all about
- 33:48Speaker 1: the buyer. This is CNS full sale, that is the
- 33:50Speaker 1: proposed divestiture buyer of all the stores the companies plan
- 33:53Speaker 1: to divest in order to get clearance, and it's just
- 33:56Speaker 1: not really clear whether they're going to be able to
- 33:58Speaker 1: take up to six hundred and fifty stores and actually
- 34:01Speaker 1: compete with those stores viably and keep those stores open
- 34:04Speaker 1: and maintain competition in each of these regions where there's
- 34:07Speaker 1: too much concentration by virtue of this deal. So I
- 34:11Speaker 1: think in court, what This is really going to come
- 34:13Speaker 1: down to is vetting that buyer and the companies are
- 34:16Speaker 1: going to have to produce a lot of evidence that
- 34:18Speaker 1: that's a good buyer that's motivated, motivated to compete, and
- 34:22Speaker 1: motivated to keep these stores open. And it's they're going
- 34:25Speaker 1: to have to convince the judge. And if they can
- 34:26Speaker 1: convince the judge of that on the buyer side, I
- 34:29Speaker 1: think the deal will get cleared. If they can't, then
- 34:32Speaker 1: I think the FTC will win.
- 34:33Speaker 7: There is there an argument you made for some of
- 34:37Speaker 7: these potential deals that are getting a hard time from
- 34:40Speaker 7: the DOJ or FTC to kind of bide time till No.
- 34:43Speaker 6: Number Six of this year.
- 34:46Speaker 1: Absolutely, like we're off the clock.
- 34:48Speaker 6: Like is this part of a strategy?
- 34:51Speaker 1: I mean absolutely, And look at capital want and discover
- 34:53Speaker 1: they very well are probably going to bleed into the
- 34:55Speaker 1: next administration, whether it's Democrat or Republican. There is no
- 35:00Speaker 1: no doubt, Alex. I mean historically Republican administrations have the
- 35:04Speaker 1: reputation in the merger world of being more business friendly
- 35:07Speaker 1: and also being far less skeptical of claims of efficiencies,
- 35:10Speaker 1: giving them a lot more weight. And that's going to
- 35:12Speaker 1: be important, as I mentioned in this deal. Right now,
- 35:15Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a wildcard. It used to
- 35:18Speaker 1: be ten years ago that whoever came in to run
- 35:21Speaker 1: the FTC, if we had a Republican president, whoever got
- 35:25Speaker 1: appointed as chair, the Republican majority there, and whoever came
- 35:28Speaker 1: in on the DOJ side, we're likely to be more
- 35:31Speaker 1: business friendly or likely to look at efficiencies in a
- 35:34Speaker 1: more friendly manner. Right now, though, we have kind of
- 35:38Speaker 1: two different kinds of Republicans. You have sort of a
- 35:40Speaker 1: Josh Holly type and that you guys may have seen
- 35:42Speaker 1: in the news that he's already come out and complained
- 35:44Speaker 1: about this deal, said the Department of Justice should block it.
- 35:47Speaker 1: And then you kind of have the Joe Simon's type,
- 35:49Speaker 1: who was the chair of the FTC in the previous
- 35:52Speaker 1: Trump administration, a little bit more traditional in the way
- 35:55Speaker 1: we think of Republicans in the anti trust world. And
- 35:58Speaker 1: so I think to some extent it might depend on
- 36:00Speaker 1: who you get at the DOJ, but I would still
- 36:03Speaker 1: say that it ticks higher. The chances of getting cleared
- 36:07Speaker 1: probably tick higher. We have a change of administrations next year.
- 36:11Speaker 3: So Jen, do you think this current administration, the fact
- 36:15Speaker 3: that it is tougher on consolidation on deals. Has that
- 36:18Speaker 3: had an impact on M and A activity or a
- 36:20Speaker 3: lot of companies just saying that it's not worth it.
- 36:23Speaker 1: You know, Paul, It's been a really strange cycle.
- 36:25Speaker 8: In my mind.
- 36:26Speaker 1: I think in the beginning, when deals started getting a
- 36:30Speaker 1: lot of pushback and a lot of more lawsuits than
- 36:32Speaker 1: were expected, it sort of slowed things down, right. I
- 36:36Speaker 1: feel like there was a period last year where in
- 36:38Speaker 1: the M and A slowed down, and now I feel
- 36:40Speaker 1: like it's really picking back up again. And so I
- 36:42Speaker 1: think there might be two reasons that it's picking back
- 36:44Speaker 1: up again a lot, at least from the antitrust side.
- 36:47Speaker 1: One is Alex mentioned maybe at this point, if you file,
- 36:50Speaker 1: you're going to bleed into the next administration. There might
- 36:53Speaker 1: be some expectation it's going to change, it'll be easier
- 36:56Speaker 1: to get a closed. But Paul, the other thing is
- 36:58Speaker 1: that the agencies haven't been that success court. So I
- 37:01Speaker 1: think there is sort of a feeling, Hey, if you're
- 37:03Speaker 1: willing to put in the time and the money and
- 37:05Speaker 1: you're willing to litigate, you have a really solid chance
- 37:07Speaker 1: of winning at court, even if you face this really
- 37:09Speaker 1: hostile aggressive FDC or DOJ and I think that could
- 37:12Speaker 1: also be contributing to more of these deals getting.
- 37:15Speaker 7: Signed now as well, Jenmy have like maybe a minute left,
- 37:18Speaker 7: but what about energy? All the energy deals, any one
- 37:21Speaker 7: of them not going to happen.
- 37:23Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what I think. My feeling and I
- 37:26Speaker 1: know it's surprising, my feeling on those is that they're
- 37:29Speaker 1: all going to get done. I think that there are
- 37:31Speaker 1: just reasons where if you look at those markets, and
- 37:34Speaker 1: you look at the permium basin, and you look at
- 37:36Speaker 1: the number of producers that are in the permium basin,
- 37:38Speaker 1: which I think is going to be the area that's
- 37:39Speaker 1: going to be of most concern, I think all those
- 37:42Speaker 1: deals get done. And mostly Alex. I'm saying that because
- 37:45Speaker 1: when I looked at the history of FTC action against
- 37:48Speaker 1: these kinds of deals, I didn't see anything that far upstream.
- 37:52Speaker 1: All of the divestitures, consent orders, attempts to block deals
- 37:56Speaker 1: were all downstream and not upstream. And so that's the
- 37:59Speaker 1: reason I think these deals get done.
- 38:01Speaker 7: This is our water cooler talk, by the way, Like
- 38:03Speaker 7: when I see jennif stare at the coffee, we're like, hey, man,
- 38:05Speaker 7: let's talk about that.
- 38:06Speaker 6: Oil deals just don't work clear?
- 38:08Speaker 4: Are they going to get? Jenry, thanks so much for
- 38:10Speaker 4: joining us. Jenniferree.
- 38:11Speaker 3: She is a senior litigation analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, joining
- 38:14Speaker 3: us via zoom And she is the go to person
- 38:18Speaker 3: on antitrust and I'll tell you institutional investors.
- 38:20Speaker 4: Her phone rings off the.
- 38:21Speaker 3: Hook when there's a big deal being litigated because she
- 38:25Speaker 3: has the goods.
- 38:25Speaker 2: Here, you're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us
- 38:31Speaker 2: live weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar.
- 38:34Speaker 9: Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business.
- 38:37Speaker 2: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 38:40Speaker 2: flagship New York station just say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 38:46Speaker 4: Love talking ETFs because that's where all the money's going.
- 38:49Speaker 4: It's just an amazing, amazing development.
- 38:51Speaker 3: In financial services over the last ten years or so
- 38:53Speaker 3: to see how the funds have just really just gone
- 38:56Speaker 3: into the ETFs, both passive and active. So it's why
- 39:00Speaker 3: we like to check in with our next guest, Sean O'Hara,
- 39:02Speaker 3: President of Pacer et FS. Sean, thanks so much for
- 39:05Speaker 3: joining us here. Talk to us about kind of where
- 39:08Speaker 3: you're seeing the flows these days. Is everybody trying to
- 39:12Speaker 3: chase the AI trade. Is it folks looking at tech?
- 39:16Speaker 3: Where are you seeing kind of the flows these days?
- 39:18Speaker 11: Yeah, good morning, Thanks guys for having me. I think,
- 39:20Speaker 11: you know, it's still the same, you know, as it
- 39:22Speaker 11: was last year. I think that there's real diverse spreading around.
- 39:27Speaker 11: If you will have the assets. Obviously there's people, you know,
- 39:29Speaker 11: chasing tech. I don't think you necessarily need to chase tech.
- 39:33Speaker 11: You could buy a broad market etip like the S
- 39:35Speaker 11: and P five hundred and still get pretty good tech exploriture,
- 39:37Speaker 11: but not have all your eggs in that basket. Our
- 39:40Speaker 11: flows continue to be leaning towards value. Small cap has
- 39:43Speaker 11: been a real being surprised for us here lately. We
- 39:46Speaker 11: do have the tech side of things. We've got a
- 39:48Speaker 11: data and infrastructure product. So I think we're sort of
- 39:51Speaker 11: where we were last year, which is a little bit
- 39:54Speaker 11: puzzling to me because last year, at least we were
- 39:57Speaker 11: coming off of really an obliteration in the tech name.
- 40:00Speaker 11: We're still stuck in the same place where we're looking
- 40:02Speaker 11: at interest rates and what the Fed's going to do.
- 40:04Speaker 11: We're trying to figure out whether they've actually done their
- 40:06Speaker 11: job and destroyed the US economy. I'm sorry, not destroyed.
- 40:09Speaker 11: The US economy but cooled things down inflation wise, and
- 40:13Speaker 11: then you know, earnings are always going to be the
- 40:14Speaker 11: issue going forward. You know, I'm not as impressed with
- 40:18Speaker 11: people beating their earnings as I am and what they're
- 40:20Speaker 11: forecasting is going to happen. And when you have these
- 40:22Speaker 11: reports like you got out of Palo Alto last week
- 40:25Speaker 11: where they sort of tamper things down, I think we're
- 40:27Speaker 11: at a level right now where the market's priced overall
- 40:29Speaker 11: a little bit on the high end, and so you know,
- 40:32Speaker 11: we have to be very very careful about bad use.
- 40:34Speaker 7: I mean, you made the joke about destroying the economy,
- 40:36Speaker 7: but man, that data continues to hold up really really well.
- 40:39Speaker 7: Is there a reactive sense to ETF flows like big
- 40:43Speaker 7: reversals that are happening? And I guess I'm just trying
- 40:45Speaker 7: to understand where the biggest miss price is. If inflation
- 40:49Speaker 7: kind of eventually keeps coming down and the data still
- 40:52Speaker 7: stays okay.
- 40:54Speaker 11: You know that could be what happens, Alex. You could
- 40:56Speaker 11: actually you know, they might not actually destroy the US economy,
- 40:59Speaker 11: might do up perfectly right. They may have gotten inflation
- 41:02Speaker 11: under control without you know, having unemployment spike and without
- 41:05Speaker 11: having a major impact on you know, everybody's earnings. I
- 41:08Speaker 11: think the interesting thing that's happening right now is that,
- 41:11Speaker 11: and I think you need to keep an eye on that,
- 41:13Speaker 11: is look at layoffs. I mean, we're starting to see
- 41:15Speaker 11: somewhat of an acceleration. So I think companies are starting
- 41:18Speaker 11: to think to themselves going forward, how do I increase
- 41:20Speaker 11: my earnings. Well, one way to do that would be
- 41:23Speaker 11: on the cost side of the ledger. And so as
- 41:26Speaker 11: we came out of COVID, you know, that was the
- 41:28Speaker 11: big spurt that got the big tech names going. Is
- 41:31Speaker 11: they were over you know, waight if you will employees
- 41:34Speaker 11: and they started to cut back and that's sort of
- 41:35Speaker 11: what juice their returns. And I think you're starting to
- 41:38Speaker 11: see that go sort of a little bit more broadly
- 41:40Speaker 11: across the board.
- 41:41Speaker 3: Hey, Sean, you say maybe one of the ways to
- 41:44Speaker 3: play AI is through the picks and shovels strategy.
- 41:48Speaker 4: Talk to us about how you'd get exposure that way.
- 41:50Speaker 11: Well, we have two strategies there. We own the data
- 41:53Speaker 11: centers and the cell phone towers, and so you can't
- 41:55Speaker 11: have AI streaming our Internet of things, e commerce and
- 41:59Speaker 11: online ge mean, you can't have that without the buildings
- 42:02Speaker 11: that essentially allow for all of the transmission of the data.
- 42:05Speaker 11: So that's one way to play it would be to
- 42:07Speaker 11: buy data centers and cell phone towers. We have an
- 42:09Speaker 11: ETF that does that the tickers sr V of our server.
- 42:13Speaker 11: And then the other way to do it is to play,
- 42:15Speaker 11: if you will, the software names and the chip makers
- 42:19Speaker 11: and those names are you know, basically in videos in
- 42:22Speaker 11: that mix. But it's not all about Nvidia. There are
- 42:24Speaker 11: a lot of companies in that space. So we have
- 42:26Speaker 11: an ETF that uh t r FK traffic that basically
- 42:30Speaker 11: takes everything out of the data centers and says that's
- 42:32Speaker 11: what we own.
- 42:34Speaker 7: When you talk about alternatives, we were talking to a
- 42:35Speaker 7: cat the entwhistle in the last hour about alternatives and stuff.
- 42:40Speaker 7: I'll throw bitcoin in there. Let's are some reads in
- 42:42Speaker 7: there too. What other kind of alternative ETF flows are
- 42:45Speaker 7: you seeing?
- 42:47Speaker 11: Well, we have an income story that we like that's
- 42:49Speaker 11: starting to pick up some steam. Essentially, its target is
- 42:52Speaker 11: to get four times to dividend of the S and
- 42:54Speaker 11: P five hundred. We do four times. Yes, the tickers
- 42:59Speaker 11: QDPO get it quadruple. Anyway we do that. The way
- 43:04Speaker 11: we do that is about eighty six percent of the
- 43:06Speaker 11: money is basically in the S and P five hundred
- 43:08Speaker 11: and fourteen percent of it's in T bills, and those
- 43:10Speaker 11: te bells are used to enter into futures contracts on
- 43:13Speaker 11: the dividends, and so we're able to pull forward three
- 43:15Speaker 11: times or a little bit more than three point one
- 43:17Speaker 11: four times this year's dividend by using those futures. And
- 43:20Speaker 11: so it's really done exactly what we've expected it to do.
- 43:24Speaker 11: And with all the emphasis, for example, on covered calls,
- 43:27Speaker 11: you know, with the success of some of the big
- 43:29Speaker 11: players in that space, we think the limitation on covered
- 43:31Speaker 11: calls is that you're selling away your upside, and with
- 43:33Speaker 11: the strategy like this, you don't sell your upside away.
- 43:36Speaker 11: So we're starting to see some interesting flows in that
- 43:38Speaker 11: area as well.
- 43:40Speaker 3: Sean, how do you compete in this market that's so
- 43:42Speaker 3: dominated by just literally a couple of three or four
- 43:46Speaker 3: kind of ETF providers here? How do you kind of
- 43:50Speaker 3: compete and set yourself apart?
- 43:52Speaker 11: We like to say innovative, disruptive, and unique. That's what
- 43:55Speaker 11: we build. So our neighbor at home in Malvern, Pennsylvania standguards.
- 43:58Speaker 11: You know who they are, we know what they do,
- 44:00Speaker 11: and we know that we're not ready to stand toe
- 44:02Speaker 11: to toe with them if you will invit it out
- 44:04Speaker 11: on costs or let State Street do that. So we
- 44:07Speaker 11: build strategies. We built an end user in mind or
- 44:10Speaker 11: an outcome in mind. Maybe that's extras return, or maybe
- 44:13Speaker 11: that's risk management, or maybe it's something like the count
- 44:15Speaker 11: series that just takes a completely different look at the
- 44:18Speaker 11: way you define value in this world. Instead of using
- 44:21Speaker 11: traditional price to book, we use free cash flow yield
- 44:24Speaker 11: because the stock market is primarily intangible assets today, and
- 44:28Speaker 11: so that's what we do. And so we've been able
- 44:31Speaker 11: to accumulate I think our reasonable amount of assets around
- 44:33Speaker 11: forty billion right now. I think there's a lot of
- 44:36Speaker 11: room for us to grow. And you know, if you're
- 44:38Speaker 11: innovative and you're disruptive and unique, and you have a
- 44:41Speaker 11: salesforce like we do that focuses on the financial advisors,
- 44:45Speaker 11: you can continue to build a nice business. I don't
- 44:47Speaker 11: have to have a five trillion dollar business. I just
- 44:50Speaker 11: keep growing it like we have it, and we'll continue
- 44:52Speaker 11: to do that without I.
- 44:53Speaker 7: Really want to have the job where you get to
- 44:55Speaker 7: come up with the names for these things, like the
- 44:56Speaker 7: tickers for us.
- 44:57Speaker 6: I want to do that.
- 44:58Speaker 7: That sounds like a good time before we let you go.
- 45:01Speaker 7: It's not just us that have been doing really well, right.
- 45:03Speaker 7: Japanese equity is ni K record high, the CAC, the
- 45:06Speaker 7: Dacks record highs. What opportunities are you seeing internationally?
- 45:10Speaker 11: Well, we missed Japan. We probably should have had a
- 45:12Speaker 11: product there because whenever Lauren Buffett starts to move in
- 45:15Speaker 11: an area, it's probably good to pay attention, and so
- 45:17Speaker 11: he's increasing his exposure there. So he's probably right. We've
- 45:20Speaker 11: seen a pretty big increase in our global and international.
- 45:25Speaker 11: My favorite story, and it may take patients. I'll just
- 45:28Speaker 11: warn all the viewers and listeners is emerging markets. I mean,
- 45:31Speaker 11: you know, we have an emerging market product that has
- 45:33Speaker 11: like a nine percent current dividend and it's one hundred
- 45:37Speaker 11: profitable emerging market names. And I think that cycle has
- 45:40Speaker 11: gone on too long. It could continue for a while,
- 45:43Speaker 11: but sooner or later, the emerging market cycle will change.
- 45:46Speaker 11: And if you think about historically how they do reletive
- 45:48Speaker 11: to us, over time they do better. It's just been
- 45:50Speaker 11: a currency problem here lately, and so for long term investors,
- 45:54Speaker 11: maybe you talk a little bit of money in emerging markets.
- 45:57Speaker 6: All right, Sean, great stuff.
- 45:59Speaker 7: Really appreciate O'Hara, President of Pacer ETFs, joins us really
- 46:03Speaker 7: appreciate that on the ETF inflows, outflows and where all
- 46:06Speaker 7: the action is.
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