Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Warner Bros. Investors Approve $110 Billion Paramount Deal
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
- 0:10Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am
- 0:14Speaker 1: Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg
- 0:17Speaker 1: Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts,
- 0:21Speaker 1: or watch us live on YouTube.
- 0:23Speaker 2: Warner Brothers investors approved one hundred and ten billion dollars
- 0:27Speaker 2: sale to Paramount. I also note, since I know David
- 0:30Speaker 2: saslof that investors reject CEO compensation package.
- 0:34Speaker 3: That's interesting.
- 0:34Speaker 4: I know, is that binding?
- 0:36Speaker 3: I don't know.
- 0:36Speaker 2: I don't know how lot works. But our next guest,
- 0:38Speaker 2: I think probably has some good reporting there, Chris Pomary.
- 0:40Speaker 2: He covers all the entertainment companies out there in Los
- 0:43Speaker 2: Angeles for Bloomberg News. Chris, what are you making the
- 0:45Speaker 2: news here today? I guess it's fairly well expected that
- 0:48Speaker 2: the shareholders would approve this sale to Paramount Sky Sky Dance. Paramount.
- 0:53Speaker 5: Yeah, they showed them the money and they said yes,
- 0:56Speaker 5: thirty one dollars this year, one hundred and ten billion
- 0:59Speaker 5: dollars total. The pay package vote is not binding, you know.
- 1:04Speaker 5: It's one of those say on paced things that companies
- 1:07Speaker 5: are required to do. If this company were continuing as
- 1:10Speaker 5: a public company, then you know, the board would take
- 1:13Speaker 5: the you know that into consideration and next year's pay.
- 1:16Speaker 5: But this this go round doesn't matter. They'll be gone
- 1:19Speaker 5: and David Satisov will have his money.
- 1:22Speaker 6: Right, We're looking at accelerating equity awards valued at more
- 1:26Speaker 6: than five hundred million and three hundred and thirty five
- 1:29Speaker 6: million dollars in potential tax reimbursements.
- 1:32Speaker 4: So he makes out pretty well, so he always does.
- 1:36Speaker 6: Chris, what does this mean for the thousands of Hollywood actors, screenwriters, directors,
- 1:42Speaker 6: and other workers in the industry who have come together
- 1:45Speaker 6: to oppose this merger? They were appealing to regulators, to policymakers.
- 1:50Speaker 6: I mean, do they still continue to try to press
- 1:53Speaker 6: state attorneys general to do something about this?
- 1:56Speaker 5: They can, and they will. It's you know, it's not
- 2:00Speaker 5: a done deal overall. Certainly it is from the shareholders standpoint.
- 2:04Speaker 5: It's a milestone in that regard, but there's still regulatory
- 2:07Speaker 5: approvals that have to be done, and everyone's sort of
- 2:11Speaker 5: anticipating lawsuits similar to what we've seen in a live
- 2:15Speaker 5: nation and other cases sort of opposing this deal. So yeah,
- 2:18Speaker 5: quite still.
- 2:19Speaker 4: Now on the federal government level, right.
- 2:21Speaker 5: It doesn't appear that that's the case. I mean, there's
- 2:23Speaker 5: been no official sign off. You know, the Paramount will
- 2:27Speaker 5: say that they've gotten clear into essentially from the DJ,
- 2:30Speaker 5: but there's really been no official sign off in Washington.
- 2:33Speaker 2: You know, the deal price is thirty one dollars a share.
- 2:36Speaker 2: Stocks trading at twenty seven dollars and thirty cents here.
- 2:39Speaker 2: That feels like a big discount to me from an
- 2:41Speaker 2: arbitrage perspective, given this deal is going to presumably closed
- 2:44Speaker 2: in a couple of months. So I guess what do
- 2:47Speaker 2: you think that uncertainty might be out there.
- 2:48Speaker 3: In the marketplace?
- 2:49Speaker 2: Chris? Is it regulatory? We need to get a sign
- 2:52Speaker 2: off from President Trump and that can always be a risk.
- 2:54Speaker 2: Is it some legal maybe lawsuits or something.
- 2:57Speaker 3: What do you think is there und?
- 2:59Speaker 5: I think all of above. I mean, really when we've
- 3:01Speaker 5: really just seen a steady drum beat. I mean, the
- 3:04Speaker 5: Hollywood community has sort of been against it, but you know,
- 3:06Speaker 5: they had to shift, they had to go. They were
- 3:09Speaker 5: posted to Netflix and then they sort of regather and
- 3:11Speaker 5: now now they're opposed to Paramount. And so but we've seen,
- 3:16Speaker 5: you know, the list of celebrities signing a petition against this,
- 3:19Speaker 5: growing the number of events, people like Corey Booker, the
- 3:22Speaker 5: Senator from New Jersey, of hell to sort of examine
- 3:25Speaker 5: this deal and criticize this deal. So whether all enough
- 3:29Speaker 5: mounts to something that will stop the deal still big
- 3:32Speaker 5: question mark there, but they're certainly sort of growing opposition.
- 3:36Speaker 6: So when does the companies Paramount, Warner Brothers Discovery, When
- 3:42Speaker 6: do they start doing some of the hard work of
- 3:44Speaker 6: integrating or is that something they cannot do until the
- 3:46Speaker 6: regulators have made clear that they're not opposing.
- 3:50Speaker 5: Yeah, they really have to wait to close. We saw
- 3:54Speaker 5: in that next Star Techner deal where they jumped as
- 3:57Speaker 5: soon as they got a clearance in Washington, and then
- 4:00Speaker 5: the lawsuit happens and now they're actually barred from integrating.
- 4:03Speaker 5: So very awkward situation. I imagine the Warner by the Paramount
- 4:07Speaker 5: folks are looking at that and saying, all right, well,
- 4:09Speaker 5: we should probably make sure we're in the clear before
- 4:12Speaker 5: we actually close this.
- 4:14Speaker 2: Chris, you're based in LA I'm sure you know a
- 4:16Speaker 2: lot of these folks that work at these entertainment companies.
- 4:19Speaker 2: How concerned are they just about La as a creative community,
- 4:24Speaker 2: as a Hollywood community? Because here in New Jersey, Netflix
- 4:27Speaker 2: is building a huge production complex in down A Fort Mammoth,
- 4:31Speaker 2: the old army base. Tore down everything at this huge
- 4:34Speaker 2: army base and are building this is a gajillion dollar
- 4:37Speaker 2: production facility. I mean, there's Vancouver, there's South Carolina. There's
- 4:41Speaker 2: lots of places that are taking business away. What's the
- 4:43Speaker 2: mood in LA.
- 4:44Speaker 4: Creatively, particularly gloomy.
- 4:49Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know it's been that way. We've written
- 4:51Speaker 5: about this for a couple of years now. You've had,
- 4:54Speaker 5: you know, the flight to other locations to shoot. There's
- 4:57Speaker 5: a big part of it. There's overall cutbacks and spend
- 5:00Speaker 5: among big companies, and the globalization of the business has
- 5:03Speaker 5: really changed things. And then you know we've got AI
- 5:07Speaker 5: as a threat. So jobs are definitely weak, particularly here
- 5:12Speaker 5: in the capital of entertainment. And so the idea of
- 5:16Speaker 5: this big merger. While David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount,
- 5:20Speaker 5: promises they'll be growth, everyone anticipates that it's going to
- 5:25Speaker 5: be very difficult in.
- 5:25Speaker 3: The labor market.
- 5:26Speaker 4: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 5:33Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 5:37Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple Cocklay and Android
- 5:40Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
- 5:43Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on Youtube'll.
- 5:47Speaker 2: Talk about the railroad stocks, one of my favorite sectors.
- 5:49Speaker 2: I used to cover this group back in the eighties.
- 5:52Speaker 2: I have all my earnings and models for the railroad
- 5:54Speaker 2: and trucking companies, but they're on floppy disc so I
- 5:57Speaker 2: don't think I can really access them anymore. But I'm
- 6:00Speaker 2: sure they're still killer. Lee Classical Senior Transport, Logistics and
- 6:03Speaker 2: Shipping analys fro Bloomberg Intelligence. He's got some pretty good
- 6:05Speaker 2: earnings models to here. So Union Pacific stocks up about
- 6:10Speaker 2: seven percent here today, up fifteen percent year today. How
- 6:12Speaker 2: are their earnings lead?
- 6:14Speaker 7: Yeah, their earnings were pretty good. They beat this morning
- 6:17Speaker 7: on the first quarter, and it really was driven on
- 6:19Speaker 7: productivity gains and pricing. The company was able to show
- 6:23Speaker 7: that it's able to operate a better network, a more
- 6:26Speaker 7: efficient network, despite the fact that volumes were slightly softer
- 6:30Speaker 7: than most expected.
- 6:31Speaker 3: They were down about one percent.
- 6:34Speaker 7: The company really does appear focused that it can continue
- 6:38Speaker 7: to get that productivity. Productivity could be more difficult if
- 6:41Speaker 7: volumes do increase. Their outlook on the volumes, I would
- 6:45Speaker 7: say was cautiously optimistic. There are some pluses and minuses.
- 6:49Speaker 7: They were positive on their bulk commodities like coal and
- 6:51Speaker 7: grain and also some domestic intermodal, while a little negative
- 6:56Speaker 7: on their outlook as it relates to housing for as
- 7:00Speaker 7: products that go into housing, automotives or international intermodals. So
- 7:04Speaker 7: I think the outlook was a mixed bag. But the
- 7:07Speaker 7: company is definitely executing on its plan, and it used
- 7:10Speaker 7: the earnings call it's an opportunity to kind of plug
- 7:15Speaker 7: the merits of its proposed merger with Norfolk Southern and folks.
- 7:20Speaker 2: Just for rail geeks like Lee and I, this is
- 7:23Speaker 2: a seismic transaction.
- 7:24Speaker 3: The railroad business would.
- 7:25Speaker 2: Create the first truly coast to coast to east west
- 7:29Speaker 2: rail system in the US.
- 7:31Speaker 8: LEE.
- 7:32Speaker 2: But of course, the big, big, big issue is will
- 7:34Speaker 2: the regulators allow. What's the feeling here?
- 7:38Speaker 7: You know, the feeling is really mixed amongst participants, obviously
- 7:42Speaker 7: Union Pacific and Northern Southern.
- 7:44Speaker 3: You really think the deal is going to get done.
- 7:46Speaker 7: If you're the other railroads or maybe some trucking companies,
- 7:49Speaker 7: you might be hoping that it doesn't. It is a
- 7:52Speaker 7: high regulatory hurdle that it has to meet. It has
- 7:55Speaker 7: to meet that it enhances competition, it's in the public interest.
- 7:59Speaker 7: Along time time ago, I think it was two thousand
- 8:01Speaker 7: and one, they changed the rules for mergers at the
- 8:03Speaker 7: STB and they wanted to kind of stop the consolidation
- 8:06Speaker 7: that was happening in the marketplace, and it was kind
- 8:09Speaker 7: of designed to stop a deal like this.
- 8:11Speaker 3: The reality is that if.
- 8:12Speaker 7: It does happen, it will create a truly transcontinental network.
- 8:17Speaker 7: That will mean that railcars will be touched less. And
- 8:20Speaker 7: if they're touched less, you would assume that hopefully they
- 8:22Speaker 7: can get better service and that could benefit from the
- 8:26Speaker 7: customers that are on it. They are, you know, full
- 8:29Speaker 7: press lobbying to try to get the deal done. They
- 8:32Speaker 7: recently announced a new locomotive, a new locomotive that commences
- 8:37Speaker 7: that commemorates, excuse me, the two hundred and fifty year
- 8:41Speaker 7: anniversary of the US And it also has Donald Trump's
- 8:45Speaker 7: name on the side. So it looks like they're they're
- 8:48Speaker 7: looking everywhere they can to get some help from the administration.
- 8:52Speaker 3: That's a good move.
- 8:54Speaker 2: How about if i'm CSX here, I noticed CSX stock
- 8:57Speaker 2: is at.
- 8:57Speaker 3: An all time high. I pump CSX.
- 9:00Speaker 2: Do I feel the need to maybe reach out to
- 9:04Speaker 2: Union Pacific or maybe the other Western railroad there and
- 9:08Speaker 2: figure out that we need to do a deal as well.
- 9:11Speaker 7: Yeah, so if the deal does happen, you would assume that,
- 9:14Speaker 7: you know, more mergers will come, whether that's a Burlington
- 9:17Speaker 7: Northern merger with CSX. Burlington Northern is owned by Berkshire
- 9:21Speaker 7: Hathaway and so obviously Berkshire Hathway has some deep pockets
- 9:24Speaker 7: to pay for CSX if it wanted to. Also could
- 9:27Speaker 7: make sense of CSX one with one of the Canadian competitors,
- 9:32Speaker 7: like a Canadian Pacific Kansas City, that could be an
- 9:36Speaker 7: option as well.
- 9:37Speaker 3: So if it does happen, and again it's a high.
- 9:40Speaker 7: Regulatory hurdle and we probably won't find out until late
- 9:43Speaker 7: next year, early twenty twenty eight whether the deal gets done.
- 9:47Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to take some time.
- 9:48Speaker 7: They have to refile with the STB because their initial
- 9:51Speaker 7: filing did not cut the mustard with the regulators, so
- 9:55Speaker 7: they wanted them to refile and that should happen probably
- 10:00Speaker 7: in the next thirty to sixty days. And so it
- 10:03Speaker 7: just takes time because this is a huge transaction that
- 10:05Speaker 7: the STB has Tom all over But yeah, I.
- 10:08Speaker 3: Mean just answer your question.
- 10:10Speaker 7: Yes, it could, you know, the announcement of the deal
- 10:13Speaker 7: because the two companies, N Pacific Norfolk Southern really can't
- 10:16Speaker 7: do anything together until they get approval. So it's been
- 10:18Speaker 7: an opportunity for other rails to work together.
- 10:21Speaker 3: And create new services.
- 10:23Speaker 7: And you've seen some share shift away from Norfolk Southern
- 10:25Speaker 7: to CSX on the intermodal side, which has been pretty
- 10:29Speaker 7: interesting to watch.
- 10:31Speaker 3: Lee.
- 10:31Speaker 2: What are your transport that you cover everything in the trucks,
- 10:34Speaker 2: the rails, the air freight, all that kind of stuff.
- 10:38Speaker 2: The big ocean shipping companies. What's been the collective I
- 10:42Speaker 2: don't know response to this war in Iran. Is it
- 10:44Speaker 2: localized just to that part of the world or is
- 10:46Speaker 2: it having wider ripple effects.
- 10:49Speaker 7: Yeah, obviously it's impacting, you know, the shipping industry. It's
- 10:53Speaker 7: keeping container rates artificially high just because it's tying up
- 10:57Speaker 7: capacity and also assuming if there's a lasting piece, a
- 11:01Speaker 7: sus canal can open up and that would make shipping
- 11:04Speaker 7: rates come down considerably.
- 11:06Speaker 5: You know.
- 11:06Speaker 7: The biggest thing is it's pushing energy prices higher, diesel
- 11:09Speaker 7: prices higher. That's a huge input for trucking rails. You know,
- 11:12Speaker 7: they do have mechanics to offset that through fuel search charges,
- 11:18Speaker 7: you know, just to pivot a little bit on the
- 11:20Speaker 7: truckload side. Night Swift reported earnings last night. Their reportings,
- 11:24Speaker 7: they pre announced and we knew it was gonna be
- 11:25Speaker 7: a great quarter, which it wasn't, but their outlook really improved.
- 11:29Speaker 7: So they expect rates to increase by high single digits,
- 11:31Speaker 7: to load double digits, and that's up from low to
- 11:35Speaker 7: mid single digits. So they're really seeing their rate recovery happening,
- 11:38Speaker 7: and that's really being driven on the supply side, supply
- 11:40Speaker 7: coming out of the market.
- 11:41Speaker 4: Stay with us.
- 11:42Speaker 3: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 11:48Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 11:52Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarplay and Android Auto
- 11:56Speaker 1: with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you
- 11:59Speaker 1: get your podcast, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 12:03Speaker 2: Well, Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager, reported a
- 12:07Speaker 2: larger than expect to jump in distributable earnings in the
- 12:10Speaker 2: first quarter, boosted by a robust start to the year
- 12:13Speaker 2: for deal making.
- 12:14Speaker 3: Let's break down further.
- 12:15Speaker 2: We're joined by Paul Goldberg, senior equity analysts for Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 12:19Speaker 2: Paul talks us about Blackstone. What did you learn from
- 12:21Speaker 2: their earnings and their call about their business?
- 12:25Speaker 9: I think the biggest thing for Blackstone is their size
- 12:28Speaker 9: and diversification. As they did see some outflows from the
- 12:31Speaker 9: retail fund the B credit in particular, they did get
- 12:35Speaker 9: a lot of inflows across the company, so almost seventy
- 12:38Speaker 9: billion dollars worth of inflows. So a lot of the
- 12:41Speaker 9: fundraising and a lot of the activity is still holding
- 12:46Speaker 9: up despite some of the pressure and the software pocket
- 12:49Speaker 9: and the retail and the credit side.
- 12:52Speaker 6: John Gray talked about AI infrastructure is driving Blackstone's performance.
- 12:56Speaker 4: What does that mean?
- 12:57Speaker 9: So they're invested in data centers, they invested in infrastructure
- 13:01Speaker 9: that supports the AI expansion. They talked about one hundred
- 13:05Speaker 9: and fifty billion dollars of assets across that kind of
- 13:10Speaker 9: size that of businesses. That's over ten percent of their
- 13:16Speaker 9: overall assets under management. And they also talked about even
- 13:20Speaker 9: slightly larger amount of the similar kind of deals in
- 13:23Speaker 9: the pipeline to expand in that space. So they're really
- 13:27Speaker 9: supporting that growth.
- 13:28Speaker 2: Paul, what's the story for black Zone and raising capital.
- 13:32Speaker 2: Do they have all the capital they need or is
- 13:34Speaker 2: this one of those Are they always in the market
- 13:36Speaker 2: raising capital.
- 13:37Speaker 9: I think they're always in the market. It really depends
- 13:39Speaker 9: on what kind of vehicles. Sometimes there's a flegship fond,
- 13:42Speaker 9: sometimes there's a new products, but given their size, they're
- 13:45Speaker 9: really usually in the market with both types of products. So,
- 13:48Speaker 9: for example, if you look at the b CRAD, it
- 13:51Speaker 9: did get some inflows, but obviously because of the redemption,
- 13:54Speaker 9: they got some outflows, but credit was credited. Insurance was
- 13:57Speaker 9: still the biggest segment of their growth in terms of
- 14:00Speaker 9: the inflows. They raised a ten billion dollar opportunistic credit
- 14:04Speaker 9: fond during the quarter they closed it, So there's a
- 14:07Speaker 9: lot of activity going on outside of the risk back
- 14:10Speaker 9: pockets that we hear about.
- 14:12Speaker 6: Is there a weakling here in these results? I know
- 14:14Speaker 6: you mentioned the credit and insurance arm and how that
- 14:17Speaker 6: still drew inflows, but earnings in that business dropped twenty
- 14:21Speaker 6: six percent.
- 14:23Speaker 9: They did, but I don't think necessarily it's a weakling.
- 14:27Speaker 9: So there's still some of that is driven by performance
- 14:30Speaker 9: piece they did have to and they didn't. We're very
- 14:33Speaker 9: explicit about it because people are always concerned about valuations.
- 14:36Speaker 9: They did mention that they were lowered the valuations in
- 14:40Speaker 9: some liquid credit that had a negative return during the quarter.
- 14:44Speaker 9: So that's more normal in terms of what we see
- 14:46Speaker 9: in the public markets, and they're responding to it. Probably
- 14:49Speaker 9: not at that scale that we've see in the public markets,
- 14:53Speaker 9: but it's there. So there is some pressure, but overall
- 14:57Speaker 9: there's still a reasonable growth.
- 15:00Speaker 2: Stockdown four percent today, down about twenty percent year to date.
- 15:04Speaker 2: Is Blackstone getting caught up in just the overall market
- 15:07Speaker 2: concern as it relates to private credit?
- 15:09Speaker 8: I think so.
- 15:10Speaker 9: I think it's a matter of convincing the investors about
- 15:14Speaker 9: the breadth and all the other businesses that are working,
- 15:17Speaker 9: and the fact that the credit quality generally is holding
- 15:21Speaker 9: up reasonably well. The companies that they're invested in and
- 15:24Speaker 9: including the software partner businesses, they do it okay, So
- 15:29Speaker 9: it will take a few quarters to convince the market
- 15:31Speaker 9: to come around. So if we'll look at the be Read,
- 15:34Speaker 9: there are the retail funds that they manage, a large
- 15:37Speaker 9: fund going back several years. It took them a few
- 15:41Speaker 9: quarters to work through those concerns. So we might see
- 15:44Speaker 9: some more pressure coming into view even later on possibly,
- 15:48Speaker 9: but the investors will come to realize the bigger picture.
- 15:52Speaker 4: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 15:58Speaker 1: You're listening to the bloom Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 16:02Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
- 16:05Speaker 1: Auto with the Blueberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
- 16:09Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 16:13Speaker 6: Jet fuel prices have been rising and it's been really
- 16:15Speaker 6: bad for these airlines, which as far as I know,
- 16:18Speaker 6: don't hedge.
- 16:19Speaker 4: There are oil costs at all.
- 16:20Speaker 6: They used to, right, but they don't anymore unless you
- 16:23Speaker 6: have a refinery, right.
- 16:24Speaker 4: Delta has that, right.
- 16:25Speaker 3: That's pretty cool.
- 16:26Speaker 4: All right, Let's bring in George Ferguson.
- 16:27Speaker 6: He is our senior aerospace defense and an airlines analyst,
- 16:31Speaker 6: and George American Airlines just reported. But I mean, for
- 16:34Speaker 6: all these airlines, the story is the fuel bill. The
- 16:37Speaker 6: fuel bill is surging.
- 16:39Speaker 4: For them and it is having an impact on their
- 16:41Speaker 4: bottom line.
- 16:42Speaker 8: Yeah, definitely. Right.
- 16:43Speaker 10: The name of the game right now in airline land
- 16:47Speaker 10: is I need to increase fares. I think it's you know,
- 16:51Speaker 10: they're roughly going to have to get up into the
- 16:54Speaker 10: high teens to twenty percent rise in order to cover
- 16:58Speaker 10: my increased fuel prices. Is one of the big challenges too,
- 17:02Speaker 10: is as they you know, they need fares to rise,
- 17:05Speaker 10: so they have to start to cut some capacity so
- 17:07Speaker 10: they can they can get supply and demand back in balance.
- 17:11Speaker 10: As they cut capacity, their costs go up, right, because
- 17:15Speaker 10: there's a there's economies to scale, and so they start
- 17:18Speaker 10: to get mid single digit and higher increases in cost
- 17:22Speaker 10: per available seat mile as they trim their capacity growth.
- 17:25Speaker 10: So it's a it's a real push pull kind of
- 17:29Speaker 10: challenge here, and American came out and they hit it
- 17:31Speaker 10: squarely with hey, we're not really going to adjust capacity
- 17:34Speaker 10: very much in two Q, and we think we can
- 17:37Speaker 10: get fair increases to compensate for a lot of it,
- 17:40Speaker 10: but not all of it.
- 17:42Speaker 2: What are the airlines saying about demand here? I mean,
- 17:45Speaker 2: because I think airlines have some pretty good visibility people
- 17:48Speaker 2: booking trips into the summer, maybe even longer, more longer
- 17:50Speaker 2: term than that. How are they seen demand?
- 17:53Speaker 10: Yeah, so, I mean I would say that across the board,
- 17:58Speaker 10: you know, they've all sort of said demand was was
- 18:00Speaker 10: very strong going into.
- 18:04Speaker 8: You know, sort of the end of one Q into
- 18:06Speaker 8: the summer travel season this year. So it sounds like
- 18:08Speaker 8: the setup had been pretty good.
- 18:11Speaker 10: And again now it's a function of the demand looks
- 18:14Speaker 10: like it's still largely there, although they clearly wouldn't be
- 18:18Speaker 10: cutting capacity if it was there and just would take
- 18:21Speaker 10: a big price increase in fares. So a lot of
- 18:26Speaker 10: them are and I shouldn't say cutting capacity, they're trimming
- 18:29Speaker 10: growth plans, especially the big full service carriers, because I mean,
- 18:34Speaker 10: to me, that tells me that they can't get they
- 18:37Speaker 10: can't push through the full price increase they need. And
- 18:41Speaker 10: a lot of them are talking about the cadence of
- 18:44Speaker 10: getting that full recovery in fares to compensate for higher
- 18:48Speaker 10: fuel prices, and they're kind of telling us that. You know,
- 18:52Speaker 10: we heard from United that by the end of the year,
- 18:54Speaker 10: by four Q they thought they'd be fully compensated. American
- 18:57Speaker 10: told us they thought they would almost be fully competent
- 19:00Speaker 10: stated by the end of four Q.
- 19:02Speaker 8: So you can see a cadence here.
- 19:03Speaker 10: Where's going to take them a bunch of the year
- 19:05Speaker 10: to really drive through that those higher ticket prices and
- 19:09Speaker 10: get back the increased fuel prices if they stay here.
- 19:13Speaker 10: If fuel prices stay here.
- 19:14Speaker 6: Well, we know demand also looks very good because consumers
- 19:17Speaker 6: are booking their flights for this summer and maybe for
- 19:19Speaker 6: the holidays that they know they're going to be going away,
- 19:22Speaker 6: knowing full well that fares are going up, up, up.
- 19:24Speaker 6: I mean, that's been kind of a steady drumbeat of
- 19:26Speaker 6: the newsflow for companies sending employees to go do business
- 19:31Speaker 6: in other parts of the world and country that kind
- 19:34Speaker 6: of ends up being something you book maybe a month out.
- 19:37Speaker 4: What does corporate travel look like? What do we learn
- 19:40Speaker 4: from the airlines about that?
- 19:42Speaker 10: Again, the commentary we're hearing right now is that corporate
- 19:44Speaker 10: travel is continuing to recover, it was doing well, is
- 19:49Speaker 10: doing well, you know, and so from a demand perspective,
- 19:54Speaker 10: we're hearing good things. But agree with you on that,
- 19:57Speaker 10: Scarlett that I think that you know you're going to
- 19:59Speaker 10: have to some degree that people that absolutely want to
- 20:02Speaker 10: go or have to go, rushing to book here. Right,
- 20:06Speaker 10: we know the airlines haven't booked out their entire schedule
- 20:09Speaker 10: for the summer and into the fall. Against summer, we're
- 20:13Speaker 10: coming into vacation season. It's traditionally a very leisure focused
- 20:17Speaker 10: season and again one of their strongest. So this fuel
- 20:22Speaker 10: spike comes at a good time for them to pass
- 20:25Speaker 10: through some of those increases It's going to be more
- 20:28Speaker 10: interesting to see what happens as we get into four
- 20:30Speaker 10: Q and one queue of next year if these fuel
- 20:33Speaker 10: prices remain high. And yeah, I don't think we have
- 20:35Speaker 10: the full story of corporate, but they're telling us in
- 20:37Speaker 10: earnings corporate looks good, but like you said, it's a
- 20:42Speaker 10: shorter booking window on corporate.
- 20:43Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
- 20:48Speaker 1: and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each weekday,
- 20:52Speaker 1: ten am to noon Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the
- 20:56Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You
- 21:00Speaker 1: can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and
- 21:03Speaker 1: always on the Bloomberg terminal