Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / U.S Earnings, ISM Services Data
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- 0:01Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
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- 0:16Speaker 2: Michael halein, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior restaurant and food service analyst,
- 0:20Speaker 2: joins us Now. Michael McDonald's down the most in twenty
- 0:24Speaker 2: twenty two. What do you think of the quarter? What
- 0:26Speaker 2: was the big takeaway?
- 0:29Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a weaker quarter than most expected. For sure,
- 0:34Speaker 3: sales growth was kind of weak.
- 0:38Speaker 4: You know.
- 0:38Speaker 3: They cited the impact from the Israel Hamas war, and
- 0:42Speaker 3: obviously that hurt results in the Middle East, but also
- 0:45Speaker 3: in Muslim countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, and then also
- 0:50Speaker 3: countries like France that have a large Muslim population. It
- 0:55Speaker 3: may have impacted sales here in the US a bit
- 0:57Speaker 3: as well. There were some calls to boycott a brand
- 1:01Speaker 3: right after the start of the Israel Hamas war. Those
- 1:04Speaker 3: kind of went away in December. In January, however, so
- 1:09Speaker 3: there could have been a mild impact in the United
- 1:10Speaker 3: States as well. And then in terms of key takeaways
- 1:14Speaker 3: from the call, you know, they don't expect their developmental
- 1:18Speaker 3: markets where the Middle East is located to improve really
- 1:21Speaker 3: until the war ends. And they cited some consumer weakness
- 1:26Speaker 3: in the United States, which they have before, right, but
- 1:30Speaker 3: it seems like it may be spreading in terms of
- 1:32Speaker 3: you know, just low income consumer weakness. You know, it
- 1:36Speaker 3: sounds like their customers right now are managing their guest checks.
- 1:42Speaker 5: Hey, Mike, I'm just looking at the PGeo function on
- 1:45Speaker 5: the Bloomberg turbine. I see that roughly sixty percent of
- 1:47Speaker 5: the revenue comes from franchise operated stores in about forty
- 1:50Speaker 5: percent from company operating stores. How did they make that
- 1:54Speaker 5: decision about what when they go to a particular location,
- 1:56Speaker 5: whether the franchise or own it.
- 1:59Speaker 3: I think a big part of it is return on investment, right,
- 2:03Speaker 3: So if the returns on the investment are very strong,
- 2:05Speaker 3: they typically want to hold on to those stores or
- 2:08Speaker 3: develop stores. You know, they'll they'll do some store development
- 2:11Speaker 3: in the United States and in their more established markets,
- 2:16Speaker 3: but it's going to be a small percentage of what
- 2:18Speaker 3: they're doing going forward. You know, most of their growth
- 2:21Speaker 3: is going to be you know, done by their strong
- 2:23Speaker 3: franchise partners, particularly particularly in China and some of these
- 2:28Speaker 3: other very fast growing markets talk.
- 2:30Speaker 2: About the input part of the situation in terms of
- 2:33Speaker 2: their costs, in terms of their labor and all that
- 2:37Speaker 2: kind of good stuff.
- 2:39Speaker 3: Yeah, so come on, you know, inflation is easing for
- 2:43Speaker 3: them this year, but it's still probably higher than normal.
- 2:49Speaker 2: They're looking at cows, man cows.
- 2:52Speaker 3: That's part of it, for sure. Beef and dairy costs
- 2:55Speaker 3: are expected to be higher this year. So but they're
- 2:58Speaker 3: looking at a you know, low single digit commodity inflation
- 3:01Speaker 3: in the United States and abroad. Abroad had you know,
- 3:04Speaker 3: Europe had very high inflation last year, and that that's
- 3:07Speaker 3: gonna settle down a bit. Labor inflation is going to
- 3:11Speaker 3: be continue to be, you know higher, and a big
- 3:16Speaker 3: chunk of a big part of that here is you know, uh,
- 3:19Speaker 3: in the US, you know, their California April first puts
- 3:23Speaker 3: in the twenty dollars minimum wage for fast food workers,
- 3:26Speaker 3: and so that's going to impact some of their stores,
- 3:28Speaker 3: primarily their franchisees. However, so so they're still seeing you know,
- 3:34Speaker 3: higher inflation than you know, we had in the twenty
- 3:38Speaker 3: teens for sure.
- 3:39Speaker 5: Hey, Mike, I look at the stock and you know
- 3:41Speaker 5: I need to pay a twenty two twenty three times
- 3:43Speaker 5: earnings for this stock. What am I really getting? Is
- 3:46Speaker 5: it something more than GDP top line growth? What's really
- 3:49Speaker 5: the call behind this kind of stock?
- 3:53Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, with their global growth, they should They're gonna
- 3:56Speaker 3: probably grow higher quicker than GDP. Know, what you're buying
- 4:01Speaker 3: with a franchise business is you know, pretty pretty stable
- 4:06Speaker 3: and predictable earnings growth, free cash flow growth. There's not
- 4:11Speaker 3: a lot of operating leverage in the model, and so
- 4:15Speaker 3: they're asset light and so they can lever the business
- 4:17Speaker 3: up and return cash to shareholders pretty aggressively. So it's
- 4:21Speaker 3: definitely an attractive model, especially one with the strong top
- 4:25Speaker 3: line growth like McDonald's has. And they they're also you know,
- 4:29Speaker 3: most investors can consider them slightly insulated against a recession
- 4:33Speaker 3: in slower economic times, and a big part of that
- 4:36Speaker 3: is that the is the value that they offer. During
- 4:39Speaker 3: the Great Recession, they outperformed the quick service industry pretty significantly,
- 4:44Speaker 3: acquired a lot of market share during that time, and
- 4:47Speaker 3: so investors feel there's some safety investing in McDonald's versus
- 4:51Speaker 3: some of the other restaurant chains out there.
- 4:53Speaker 2: But Mike, that confuses me with what you said about
- 4:55Speaker 2: customers watching their checks and their items and what they're buying,
- 4:59Speaker 2: because you would think if things are hard and people
- 5:01Speaker 2: are struggling, that you would get more value and people
- 5:03Speaker 2: would go to McDonald's. But you were mentioning how in
- 5:06Speaker 2: general people are watching their money more so they're not
- 5:09Speaker 2: How does that kind of square?
- 5:11Speaker 3: Yeah, So what we've seen is a lot of traffic
- 5:14Speaker 3: deterioration over the last couple of years because price increases
- 5:17Speaker 3: have been so aggressive and people's spending is being pinched.
- 5:21Speaker 1: Right.
- 5:22Speaker 3: But the thing about quick service, you know, they're in
- 5:25Speaker 3: the lower end of the market, right, and so they'll
- 5:28Speaker 3: see during an economic slowdown, they'll see higher and middle
- 5:32Speaker 3: income consumers kind of fall into their bucket. They'll try
- 5:35Speaker 3: they'll spend less at higher cost full service occasions, and
- 5:39Speaker 3: they'll visit McDonald's more often, whereas a lot of the
- 5:43Speaker 3: low income consumers will kind of fall out of that
- 5:45Speaker 3: bucket and decide to opt for the grocery store more often. So, uh,
- 5:49Speaker 3: they'll lose some traffic on the low end, but they'll
- 5:52Speaker 3: they'll probably gain some with some of the middle and
- 5:55Speaker 3: upper income consumers.
- 5:56Speaker 5: So, like, who's really their competition these When I was
- 6:00Speaker 5: a kid, it was Burger King and Wendy's, but now
- 6:02Speaker 5: there's so much more out there.
- 6:04Speaker 6: How do you kind of slice it?
- 6:07Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the restaurant business, man. It's it's so fragmented.
- 6:10Speaker 3: There's there's competition every may everywhere, man, you know, to
- 6:14Speaker 3: your point, convenience stores, grocery stores, food trucks, you know,
- 6:19Speaker 3: you name it. Still, primarily their biggest competition are the
- 6:22Speaker 3: fast food restaurants that are located closer closest to them.
- 6:26Speaker 3: So it depends on the market. You know, California, Jack
- 6:30Speaker 3: in the Box is number two, you know, on the
- 6:33Speaker 3: East Coast, Yeah, you know, Burger King is number two,
- 6:36Speaker 3: and in most markets, i'd say in the United States,
- 6:38Speaker 3: Wendy's obviously is a big competitor of theirs, but also
- 6:41Speaker 3: you know, places like Chipotle and shake Shack, you know,
- 6:46Speaker 3: are also all competing for restaurant dollars with McDonald's. But
- 6:50Speaker 3: you know, we don't look too closely at market share
- 6:53Speaker 3: in this business because it is so fragmented. And you know,
- 6:58Speaker 3: I don't really like total addressable more getting restaurants because
- 7:01Speaker 3: nobody's gonna eat at McDonald's three times a day, seven
- 7:03Speaker 3: days a week, you know, so.
- 7:05Speaker 2: That who's there documentary that doing that?
- 7:08Speaker 3: There was Yeah, yes there, we gotta.
- 7:11Speaker 2: Leave it there. Mike, thanks a lot. Mike Calin, Bloomberg
- 7:13Speaker 2: Intelligence senior restaurant and food service analysts, joining us.
- 7:17Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
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- 7:33Speaker 6: Es Day Lauder.
- 7:34Speaker 5: The stocks of thirteen percent today, that's the short term
- 7:37Speaker 5: pop well, and I guess some cost cuts. We'll get
- 7:39Speaker 5: to that with our next guest. Down forty two percent
- 7:41Speaker 5: on a trailing twelve month basis. That's the longer term
- 7:43Speaker 5: story I want to dig into as well, and we
- 7:45Speaker 5: can do it all with one Deborah Aichin. She is
- 7:49Speaker 5: the senior Luxury analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. She joins us
- 7:54Speaker 5: from London via zoom You want to talk luxury, you
- 7:58Speaker 5: want to talk high street shopping, talk to Debacon.
- 8:01Speaker 6: So deb let's.
- 8:01Speaker 5: Start with s day Lauder today. Good day for the company.
- 8:04Speaker 5: Stocks up thirteen percent today. What's driving the stock today?
- 8:08Speaker 4: Absolutely, it's all about well, let's let's say having really
- 8:16Speaker 4: impacted negatively with several earnings with earnings down grades and
- 8:21Speaker 4: misses over the last six seven quarters, the company positively
- 8:26Speaker 4: positively surprised. It met its organic sales decline of eight percent,
- 8:31Speaker 4: not a growth, and its EPs came in slightly better,
- 8:35Speaker 4: so down twenty percent. But the big thing is the
- 8:40Speaker 4: restructure program. So it already has a restructure program in
- 8:43Speaker 4: play that didn't seem to be deep enough, wide enough,
- 8:47Speaker 4: and have enough detail to it. And now they've raised
- 8:50Speaker 4: five hundred to seven hundred million of cost on a
- 8:53Speaker 4: deeper restructure program to bring up to one point four
- 8:57Speaker 4: billion through twenty five and twenty six, mostly twenty five
- 9:02Speaker 4: or majority twenty five weighted, so with the expectation. So
- 9:07Speaker 4: that's kind of like four hundred million extra on what
- 9:09Speaker 4: they were expecting before in terms of operating profitability.
- 9:13Speaker 2: What was the problem that they had to fix by
- 9:15Speaker 2: doing that? Like, why is it so hard to be
- 9:17Speaker 2: s day Ladder? I thought everyone would pay a million
- 9:19Speaker 2: dollars for perfect skin, not talking my book or anything.
- 9:23Speaker 1: Right.
- 9:23Speaker 4: The big thing over the last couple of years that
- 9:25Speaker 4: we've seen We've always known that Estill order a very
- 9:29Speaker 4: premium product, and it did so well for so many years,
- 9:32Speaker 4: but it had very high exposure in Asia. So we
- 9:34Speaker 4: ended up a couple of years ago with a stuffed retail,
- 9:39Speaker 4: duty free travel retail area across China and some parts
- 9:44Speaker 4: of Asia, which were exacerbated by South Korea also in
- 9:47Speaker 4: the issues there with the Dae Goose shopper and what
- 9:50Speaker 4: we found, and we'd always been saying, you know, there's
- 9:52Speaker 4: supply side, the way that they organized themselves, the logistics.
- 9:56Speaker 4: They didn't have the hubs in place in Asia to
- 9:58Speaker 4: do as much as they were doing, so they were
- 10:00Speaker 4: caught short or caught overstuffed, so they had far too
- 10:03Speaker 4: much in trade and that has taken a long long
- 10:06Speaker 4: time to temper down and start to normalize. And we
- 10:09Speaker 4: should return overall to growth this next quarter.
- 10:13Speaker 6: And dead let's stay with the China stories.
- 10:15Speaker 5: I know from talking to you over the years and
- 10:16Speaker 5: reading your research, the China consumer is just critical for
- 10:21Speaker 5: luxury shopping.
- 10:23Speaker 6: Can you give us a sense because.
- 10:24Speaker 5: I don't want to walk down Madison Avenue or Fifth Avenue.
- 10:27Speaker 5: I see all the European tourists back, they're back in,
- 10:30Speaker 5: you know, in size, not so much with the Chinese.
- 10:34Speaker 6: What's going on there?
- 10:36Speaker 4: The big thing. We very late in getting visas through
- 10:40Speaker 4: the reopening of you as we thought from the beginning
- 10:44Speaker 4: of last year reopening of travel, but the viewers that
- 10:48Speaker 4: travel internationally won't come back until the second half the year.
- 10:52Speaker 4: And we are starting to hear some of those luxury
- 10:54Speaker 4: companies sane. We're seeing more Chinese, more Asian customers in
- 10:58Speaker 4: our stores back home. There's a lot more spent in
- 11:02Speaker 4: flights are fuller. The surveys that we're doing are saying
- 11:06Speaker 4: that they will travel, but a lot of that travel
- 11:07Speaker 4: so far has been across Asia.
- 11:10Speaker 2: But what's interesting is that not all are created equal.
- 11:13Speaker 2: I feel like you can Jerry pick a couple of
- 11:15Speaker 2: luxury stocks that have been somewhat immune and I'm just
- 11:19Speaker 2: wondering what those are. And I still and in the
- 11:23Speaker 2: skincare world too, like what is that immune skincare high
- 11:27Speaker 2: end product? That doesn't matter, We're all buying it anyway.
- 11:31Speaker 4: I think that you know there are there's some huge
- 11:34Speaker 4: numbers in terms of some of the brands within the
- 11:38Speaker 4: portfolio doing extremely well, lots of the brands of double
- 11:41Speaker 4: digit but it's that trade that draws down. When you
- 11:44Speaker 4: look at the Europe number for Estill order that's where
- 11:48Speaker 4: they stock travel retail, that's where it sits in its
- 11:50Speaker 4: P and L, and it's down minus fourteen. But actually
- 11:53Speaker 4: Europe underline is flat and it's the same for the
- 11:55Speaker 4: North American market. Within that there are brands like the
- 11:58Speaker 4: Ordinary and and several of the higher end brands doing
- 12:03Speaker 4: very very well up double digit. And it's the same
- 12:05Speaker 4: across if I think about the way that actually luxury
- 12:09Speaker 4: and you know Lorel aside Loreal is doing phenomenally well
- 12:13Speaker 4: with a high base of its product in what a
- 12:15Speaker 4: classes as Lorel looks. But let's go to some of
- 12:18Speaker 4: the luxury companies and the way that LVMH and others
- 12:21Speaker 4: are building sizeable scale in perfume and cosmetics. That's for
- 12:26Speaker 4: growth of six to eight percent per year and very
- 12:29Speaker 4: strong margin. So there are a lot of brands out
- 12:31Speaker 4: there doing very very well. But in particular what has
- 12:36Speaker 4: happened is and stockpicking, cherry picking. It's about the brands
- 12:40Speaker 4: who've had the portfolio that hasn't had so much Asia
- 12:44Speaker 4: travel retail or where it's really been able to manage that.
- 12:47Speaker 4: Because even if I think about LVMH within its selective
- 12:50Speaker 4: retail and it hous dfs due to free stores and Sophora,
- 12:55Speaker 4: and at one point last year they were both down
- 12:57Speaker 4: and they've now fully recovered. We're starting to see if
- 12:59Speaker 4: the US some robust numbers coming through even from that
- 13:03Speaker 4: aspirational end across the luxury across brands. It's getting a
- 13:06Speaker 4: little better, but it's going to take time.
- 13:09Speaker 6: And that's John Talker with the aspirational spend.
- 13:11Speaker 2: Do you invest in your face.
- 13:13Speaker 6: Other than maximum No? No, I invest in my face
- 13:19Speaker 6: maximum strength.
- 13:20Speaker 5: You know, sunblock is basically the only thing for this
- 13:22Speaker 5: Irish American.
- 13:23Speaker 2: Okay, but that's a really good thing. I mean, you're
- 13:25Speaker 2: doing something, you know. I was just thinking that the
- 13:28Speaker 2: only thing that I will not buy on sale is
- 13:30Speaker 2: my skincare. Skincare because you just it never goes on sale.
- 13:33Speaker 2: If you find something that works for you, you're sick
- 13:36Speaker 2: with a certain aged woman who does media and on TV,
- 13:40Speaker 2: like I will pay for it. Then that's I mean,
- 13:42Speaker 2: I'm not wrong, deb right.
- 13:45Speaker 4: The other thing that you do is you actually, without realizing,
- 13:47Speaker 4: you trade up and right right now at the moment,
- 13:50Speaker 4: there are some youngsters who are under twenty who were
- 13:52Speaker 4: already moving into antih and the market is trying to
- 13:55Speaker 4: stop that so as you get older, you're trading up.
- 13:59Speaker 4: My story, which I think car relate to Paula Wellbach,
- 14:01Speaker 4: was late in the autumn. I was in England and
- 14:05Speaker 4: Cambridge and there were three Chinese consumers who couldn't get
- 14:09Speaker 4: product from La Prairie very high end skincare product which
- 14:13Speaker 4: is under the House of Biased Off. It's bigcause brand
- 14:16Speaker 4: b Niveia, and they were there spending over three thousand
- 14:20Speaker 4: pounds on a little gift pack. Each of La Prairie
- 14:24Speaker 4: very high end eye product was way up of my
- 14:27Speaker 4: price range.
- 14:28Speaker 2: And these names, these real companies, What is this?
- 14:31Speaker 6: I just used Irish spring and a wash cloth.
- 14:35Speaker 2: Kind of the lebable hurts my soul, invest in your face?
- 14:40Speaker 2: This is this is a strong takeaway from that.
- 14:42Speaker 5: How are the luxury stock? What's what's kind of the
- 14:44Speaker 5: luxury call here? I look at the FA function for
- 14:46Speaker 5: es Day latter and it looks like for your the
- 14:48Speaker 5: fiscal twenty twenty five, the June of twenty five year,
- 14:51Speaker 5: the street's looking for a big pickup in revenue and
- 14:54Speaker 5: profitability for Esday latter.
- 14:55Speaker 6: What's behind that?
- 14:57Speaker 4: That's that's all about that inventory. The to put that
- 15:01Speaker 4: inventory in Asia into context, it's dragged down skincare in
- 15:05Speaker 4: this quarter organic cells minus ten percent. It's dragged down
- 15:09Speaker 4: Europe to minus fourteen, where underlying Europe was flat because
- 15:13Speaker 4: it stores that travel retail. So it's about that inventory normalizing,
- 15:17Speaker 4: and they're saying that that has happened right now at
- 15:19Speaker 4: the end of two Q, so we head into three
- 15:22Speaker 4: Q with normalized level and so therefore if that is
- 15:25Speaker 4: the case, then it's better manage. We should start to
- 15:27Speaker 4: see double digit growth coming from there. And if we
- 15:31Speaker 4: were looking underlying without that area, then we saw mid
- 15:34Speaker 4: single digit growth. So that's what that's about. And then
- 15:37Speaker 4: also on top of this new restructuring program and with
- 15:40Speaker 4: some of those benefits to come through twenty five, we've
- 15:42Speaker 4: been playing around on MODL on the calculator and what
- 15:45Speaker 4: we see there is around an expectation of twelve to
- 15:48Speaker 4: thirteen percent uplift to that twenty twenty five operating profit
- 15:52Speaker 4: to hopefully come through one consensus.
- 15:55Speaker 2: Hey, deb really appreciate it. Thank you so so much.
- 15:57Speaker 2: Debora Aig and Bloomberg Intelligence. I've seen industry analyst so
- 16:00Speaker 2: just releases the question at the end of the day
- 16:02Speaker 2: when it's trying to wind up coming back and traveling
- 16:04Speaker 2: and like that we're back to that trade, which was
- 16:06Speaker 2: the trade last last year at this exact same time.
- 16:09Speaker 2: And do we buy it this time? Do you think
- 16:11Speaker 2: it's really.
- 16:12Speaker 5: Boy, I don't know. I think so now they're back
- 16:14Speaker 5: to that. We heard from the mccow and Singapore gaming companies.
- 16:17Speaker 5: The Chinese travelers are there.
- 16:19Speaker 6: Okay, let's go.
- 16:19Speaker 5: A little bit further now so they can get the
- 16:21Speaker 5: visas and the flights, uh to come to Europe and
- 16:25Speaker 5: to come to the US. Because again Fifth Avenue talked
- 16:28Speaker 5: to merchants on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue.
- 16:30Speaker 6: And they're just they're waiting for that.
- 16:31Speaker 5: They thought it would be a twenty yeah, you know
- 16:33Speaker 5: this year. I mean at twenty three event was not so,
- 16:36Speaker 5: but they're I'm.
- 16:37Speaker 2: Going to see Paul like strolling down Fifth Avenue, like
- 16:39Speaker 2: going into stores.
- 16:40Speaker 5: Like like I was into my Mega store getting some
- 16:43Speaker 5: work on my watch, and I did ask that question,
- 16:45Speaker 5: and I typed a deb acon right away, say here's
- 16:48Speaker 5: some feedback from the store on fith Avenue coming starting
- 16:52Speaker 5: to come back a little bit, starting to come back
- 16:53Speaker 5: a little bit over the last three or four months.
- 16:56Speaker 5: So but you know, they're just not taking over the
- 16:58Speaker 5: city in the same time. Yeah, yeah, traffic they.
- 17:01Speaker 6: Did in some of these luxury shopping areas.
- 17:04Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 17:08Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android
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- 17:18Speaker 1: just say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 17:22Speaker 5: So Alex and I were talking earlier this morning at
- 17:25Speaker 5: you know, around ten am Wall Street time. ISM released
- 17:28Speaker 5: us some really good services data, So let's get right
- 17:30Speaker 5: to that with Anthony Nieves. He's the chair of the
- 17:32Speaker 5: ISM Services Business Committee. He joins us at via zoom.
- 17:36Speaker 5: So Anthony again, the ISM Services Index came in at
- 17:40Speaker 5: fifty three point four. That's the headline. Consensus was fifty
- 17:43Speaker 5: two in the last period. Is fifty point six. Big
- 17:46Speaker 5: jump there? Can you walk us through that?
- 17:50Speaker 7: Certainly when you look at the composite index, it was
- 17:54Speaker 7: driven by new orders increasing two point two percentage points
- 17:58Speaker 7: from the fifty two point eight to fifty five point zero,
- 18:01Speaker 7: and employment rebounded nicely. We contracted last month in December
- 18:07Speaker 7: was attributed to the pullback. The pullback was attributed to
- 18:10Speaker 7: the fact that the cycle time of hiring with the
- 18:13Speaker 7: holidays and vacations and whatnot, and that rebounded nicely to
- 18:17Speaker 7: fifty point five, up significantly six point seven percentage points.
- 18:21Speaker 2: Hey Anthony, great to see you. We love this data.
- 18:24Speaker 2: I love the ins and analysis from it. It wasn't
- 18:27Speaker 2: like all sunshine and rainbows though. Walk us through sort
- 18:29Speaker 2: of what areas of services did well, what area of
- 18:32Speaker 2: services may be still contracting.
- 18:36Speaker 7: That's a great question. And you look at the composite
- 18:38Speaker 7: index and also prices were increasing seven point three percentage
- 18:44Speaker 7: points fifty six point seven up to sixty four. Food
- 18:48Speaker 7: prices still remain very strong. That I feel has impacted
- 18:53Speaker 7: the FED. Looking at interest rate cuts, our respondents are
- 18:57Speaker 7: telling us that they'd love to see continued cuts in
- 19:01Speaker 7: the interest rates. But the bright side of that, there's
- 19:04Speaker 7: capital spending, new projects of being released. When you look
- 19:08Speaker 7: at the top five industries that contribute to GDP, overall,
- 19:13Speaker 7: real estate rental and leasing is still contracting. The increases
- 19:18Speaker 7: coming from professional, scientific, technical services as well as healthcare
- 19:22Speaker 7: social assistance very strong this month.
- 19:25Speaker 5: So I mean the services is seventy percent of our economy.
- 19:30Speaker 6: I mean I can't.
- 19:31Speaker 5: See a GDP contraction scenario coming out of you know,
- 19:35Speaker 5: we get data like this.
- 19:36Speaker 6: I mean, are you guys at ism or what's your
- 19:38Speaker 6: economic call here?
- 19:41Speaker 7: When we look at this monthly report coupled with the
- 19:45Speaker 7: semi annual forecast, what our respondents indicated to us that
- 19:48Speaker 7: the first half, especially in services wasn't going to be
- 19:51Speaker 7: that robust, but the second half was going to be better.
- 19:54Speaker 7: I feel we're slightly ahead of the trend. And to
- 19:57Speaker 7: your point about GDP growth, think what was it three
- 20:01Speaker 7: point three percent last year? When we look at the
- 20:04Speaker 7: composite index this month annualized, it's at one point five.
- 20:08Speaker 7: And if we see the second half as they indicated
- 20:11Speaker 7: to us, being stronger, we'll have this incremental growth continue.
- 20:16Speaker 7: It'll be a good story for the services sector.
- 20:19Speaker 2: So when we jump to the prices paid, though, I
- 20:21Speaker 2: mean it's pretty staggering, jumped the most since twenty twelve.
- 20:24Speaker 2: Was this a supply story or a demand story because
- 20:28Speaker 2: we have seen a lot of supply chain snarls, et cetera.
- 20:32Speaker 7: Well, we definitely see that it's a demand issue, especially
- 20:37Speaker 7: with new orders. Even though it looks like, you know,
- 20:39Speaker 7: it's fifty five, it's middling as far as the growth
- 20:43Speaker 7: two point two percentage points up in the fifty two
- 20:45Speaker 7: point eight, but definitely it has some constraint on transportation,
- 20:51Speaker 7: and that was indicated to us by our respondents. They
- 20:53Speaker 7: said that there's challenges with the Suez Canal with the
- 20:57Speaker 7: conflict over in the Red Sea, as well as the
- 21:00Speaker 7: Panama Canal. We're seeing the capacity has reduced to less
- 21:04Speaker 7: than half of what it was based on the issues
- 21:07Speaker 7: with being able to fill up the locks with the
- 21:09Speaker 7: water shortage over there.
- 21:12Speaker 5: Interesting, all right, So what are you looking for going
- 21:14Speaker 5: forward here? Just to kind of get a sense of
- 21:17Speaker 5: the consumer. Is it the labor market? Is that the
- 21:19Speaker 5: primary driver here or what else kind of from your perspective,
- 21:22Speaker 5: influences the consumer?
- 21:25Speaker 7: Well, you know, the labor market and employment you look
- 21:27Speaker 7: at it a fifty point five. That's a really interesting
- 21:31Speaker 7: story there. It continues the same trend and pattern that
- 21:34Speaker 7: we've seen. Certain industries they're still going through job cuts,
- 21:38Speaker 7: whereas others are finding competitiveness in the marketplace and trying
- 21:42Speaker 7: to recruit and hire applicable workers. But overall, it's really
- 21:47Speaker 7: coming down to where is it driven from, and right
- 21:50Speaker 7: now it seems to be those two industries that I
- 21:53Speaker 7: mentioned previously, professional scientific, technical services, as well as the
- 21:57Speaker 7: healthcare and socialists.
- 21:59Speaker 2: Before you go, Anthony, before we let you go, is
- 22:02Speaker 2: this an economy that has the risk of actually running
- 22:05Speaker 2: hotter if you're just looking at the responding data here?
- 22:10Speaker 7: Not really, because looking at it at the fifty three
- 22:14Speaker 7: point four, it's not over. It's not in any rook
- 22:18Speaker 7: of overheating at this point.
- 22:20Speaker 2: Hey, Anthony, really great to get your perspective. Thank you
- 22:22Speaker 2: so much. Interested in goldilocks, I mean the end of
- 22:25Speaker 2: the day, like, hey, prices paid a little bit, but
- 22:27Speaker 2: this is definitely a goldilocks story, Anthony Navis. He joins
- 22:30Speaker 2: us chair of the Ism Services Business Committee. It's really
- 22:32Speaker 2: nice to get the details of the big data.
- 22:34Speaker 1: Points at you're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch
- 22:39Speaker 1: us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play
- 22:43Speaker 1: and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can
- 22:46Speaker 1: also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New
- 22:49Speaker 1: York station just say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 22:55Speaker 2: Is the ISM Services index really solid? Price is paid,
- 22:58Speaker 2: really solid? Employment higher, new orders higher? So let's get
- 23:02Speaker 2: the breakdown here on what this all means. Danielle de
- 23:05Speaker 2: Martino Booth, the CEO and chief strategist of QI Research. Danielle,
- 23:09Speaker 2: what do you make of this economy? I mean, it's
- 23:13Speaker 2: really hard to see any kind of slowing. It's really
- 23:16Speaker 2: hard to see sort of where that's going to come from.
- 23:19Speaker 8: What's your take, Well, I think of all of the
- 23:24Speaker 8: of all of the indicators that we've seen in the
- 23:26Speaker 8: last few days, where it's going to come from part
- 23:30Speaker 8: is the most apparent at this juncture.
- 23:33Speaker 4: You know.
- 23:34Speaker 8: One of the things that we noticed when the ISM
- 23:36Speaker 8: Services report came out in December was that the employment
- 23:40Speaker 8: component had dropped to forty three and change. We went, oh,
- 23:43Speaker 8: my gosh, that's absolutely the worst we've ever seen.
- 23:45Speaker 9: Hurse.
- 23:45Speaker 8: This morning it rebounded back above the fifty line that
- 23:50Speaker 8: separates expansion and contraction. All good and well, you say, right, well,
- 23:55Speaker 8: you look under the hood. ISM Services covers eighteen industries.
- 24:00Speaker 8: In November, there were ten that had rising employment. In
- 24:04Speaker 8: December there were seven of those eighteen with rising employment
- 24:09Speaker 8: in seven sectors. In January there were three. And so
- 24:13Speaker 8: I think we have to be very careful with the
- 24:16Speaker 8: data about getting too excited about any one headline, you know,
- 24:21Speaker 8: One of the things that came out on Friday in
- 24:23Speaker 8: the employment report was that the headline employment had increased
- 24:26Speaker 8: by three hundred and twenty five thousand. You peel the
- 24:29Speaker 8: onion back a layer and you find out then since
- 24:32Speaker 8: the month of February, since February, we have been at
- 24:34Speaker 8: a single full time job created in the United States.
- 24:38Speaker 8: In fact, it's been negative ninety seven thousand since then.
- 24:40Speaker 8: So the reason I think markets are a little bit
- 24:44Speaker 8: schizophrenic is because you have to keep looking left and
- 24:48Speaker 8: right or you're gonna get run over.
- 24:50Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 24:50Speaker 5: One of the many reasons I like Kevin Danielle on
- 24:52Speaker 5: the show because I like to just take the headline
- 24:55Speaker 5: number and run with it. She doesn't do that. She
- 24:57Speaker 5: doesn't allow me to do that. She says, I got
- 24:59Speaker 5: to peel back lets and onions and things like that. So, Danielle,
- 25:02Speaker 5: I think if I kind of read your very good
- 25:06Speaker 5: social media profile, you're not in the soft landing camp,
- 25:10Speaker 5: are you.
- 25:10Speaker 6: What's your call here?
- 25:12Speaker 5: I sense you're more cautious and you think the market
- 25:15Speaker 5: should be more cautious.
- 25:17Speaker 8: Yeah, I do think the market should be more cautious.
- 25:20Speaker 8: We have we have several sign posts that show that
- 25:23Speaker 8: October is probably when the National Bureau of Economic Research
- 25:28Speaker 8: is going to go back and backdate the recession. We
- 25:32Speaker 8: actually have one of their main indicators that they follow UH,
- 25:36Speaker 8: which is income X transfers ex Government transfers, adjust it
- 25:42Speaker 8: for inflation. That's negative. If you if you look at
- 25:46Speaker 8: in adoption production, one of the huge arbiters of recession for
- 25:49Speaker 8: the nb ER, it also UH is negative. And in
- 25:53Speaker 8: fact we're starting to see problematic inventory build in autos.
- 25:57Speaker 8: We had that we had at auto sales come in
- 25:59Speaker 8: at fifth teen point zero million seasonally adjusted annualized rate
- 26:04Speaker 8: they were expected to commit at fifteen point seven. That
- 26:06Speaker 8: was a quiet report that kind of went by the
- 26:09Speaker 8: wayside last Thursday. So there are so many revisions going on.
- 26:14Speaker 8: Goldman SAX did a huge report at the end of
- 26:17Speaker 8: the year that said every single month of retail sales
- 26:20Speaker 8: in twenty twenty three had been revised downwards and that
- 26:23Speaker 8: retail sales were flat on the year. I think we're
- 26:26Speaker 8: having such an issue with statisticians in Washington, DC because
- 26:31Speaker 8: so many of their seasonal analysis modeling is based off
- 26:35Speaker 8: of and includes the pre pandemic era. So the time
- 26:40Speaker 8: the dust settles are like, oh, wait, wait, now that
- 26:42Speaker 8: we've got everything in or maybe we've got the smallest
- 26:45Speaker 8: sample size in the history of say the non farm
- 26:48Speaker 8: payroll survey. Once we get all of the data in hand,
- 26:52Speaker 8: we were incorrect, We're going to go back and revise
- 26:54Speaker 8: that down.
- 26:55Speaker 2: That's a lot of Danielle. This makes your job difficult,
- 26:59Speaker 2: our job difficult, and the Fed's job even more difficult.
- 27:02Speaker 2: So we're now looking at a little over four cuts
- 27:05Speaker 2: priced in for this year. What do you think is legit,
- 27:09Speaker 2: particularly with all this uncertainty and revisions that you're talking about,
- 27:11Speaker 2: and when would it start.
- 27:14Speaker 8: Well, had it not been for the very strong tone
- 27:17Speaker 8: that Chair j. Powell voiced on sixty minutes last night,
- 27:22Speaker 8: I would be more in the camp of saying if
- 27:25Speaker 8: they do start to cut rates, they will do so
- 27:28Speaker 8: at every meeting beginning in May, so May, June, July,
- 27:32Speaker 8: and September. But Chair Powell seems so adamant in communicating
- 27:37Speaker 8: that he will be the apolitical FED chair. He will
- 27:41Speaker 8: be nonpartisan, he will not be viewed as being political.
- 27:46Speaker 8: In an election year, it's a toss up fifty to
- 27:48Speaker 8: fifty whether or not the Fed historically has cut rates
- 27:52Speaker 8: or raised rates. May taken any action in the FMC
- 27:56Speaker 8: that immediately precedes the election. That would be the September,
- 27:59Speaker 8: the eighth, eighteenth FOMC. I wouldn't be surprised to see
- 28:04Speaker 8: three rate cuts May, June, and July and then a pause.
- 28:09Speaker 6: Interesting.
- 28:09Speaker 5: So, from your perspective, Danielle, the data you look at,
- 28:12Speaker 5: which is not necessarily the data that lay people like
- 28:15Speaker 5: me look at, which is basically how much does it
- 28:17Speaker 5: cost to fill up my car with gas? Is inflation
- 28:20Speaker 5: whipped in this country or no?
- 28:23Speaker 8: You know, it's interesting you asked that question because recently
- 28:28Speaker 8: true inflation truflation, which a bunch of bond traders introduced
- 28:32Speaker 8: to me. They actually gave me the raw data. We
- 28:34Speaker 8: ran a quick correlation. It's got a point ninety seven
- 28:37Speaker 8: correlation with headline inflation, the headline CPI. Two times ago,
- 28:42Speaker 8: true inflation hopped down underneath the FEDS two percent target.
- 28:46Speaker 8: I said, well, what happened there? And it was mostly
- 28:48Speaker 8: led by hotels. It was one sector. Last week it
- 28:51Speaker 8: dropped down to one point four one point four percent YEP,
- 28:56Speaker 8: And so I reached out to the founders of trueflation,
- 28:58Speaker 8: I said, what gives what was that huge swing factor?
- 29:00Speaker 8: Did I miss it did I fill up at the
- 29:02Speaker 8: gas tank for a lot less and they said no, Danielle,
- 29:05Speaker 8: ten out of twelve categories had appreciably large declines, meaning
- 29:11Speaker 8: the disinflation that was a one off here or there
- 29:16Speaker 8: has become extremely widespread. If you've got ten out of
- 29:19Speaker 8: your twelve major categories more than three hundred million real
- 29:23Speaker 8: time prices feed this monster model per day, with again
- 29:28Speaker 8: a ninety seven percent correlation with headline CPI. I think
- 29:32Speaker 8: that Pal's bigger impediment going into the second half of
- 29:38Speaker 8: twenty twenty four might be larger rate cuts than he
- 29:42Speaker 8: anticipates or would like, if inflation's coming down as quickly
- 29:47Speaker 8: as it is.
- 29:47Speaker 5: All right, Danielle, thank you so much for joining us.
- 29:49Speaker 5: We always appreciate getting your input. Danielle di Martino Booth.
- 29:52Speaker 5: She's the CEO and chief strategist at QI Research, joining
- 29:56Speaker 5: us via Zoom from Big d Dallas, Texas. She was
- 29:59Speaker 5: on the Fed Dallas fed down there years past. A
- 30:03Speaker 5: great perspective there. We appreciate chatting with her.
- 30:07Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 30:11Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android
- 30:15Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen
- 30:18Speaker 1: live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station,
- 30:21Speaker 1: Just say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 30:26Speaker 5: Just talk about the real company out there, Element Solutions.
- 30:31Speaker 5: Ben Glicklich joins us. He's the CEO of Element Solutions.
- 30:34Speaker 5: He joins us live here on our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio.
- 30:37Speaker 5: We appreciate you're based done in Fort Lauderdale in Miami.
- 30:40Speaker 1: Nice.
- 30:40Speaker 2: Why are you here?
- 30:41Speaker 6: Yeah, well in Miami because everybody's is it going crazy
- 30:44Speaker 6: down there?
- 30:45Speaker 4: What is it?
- 30:45Speaker 6: I mean, is it just nuts with all these people
- 30:47Speaker 6: coming down.
- 30:47Speaker 9: There's a ton of energy.
- 30:48Speaker 6: It's a great place to live and work.
- 30:51Speaker 9: For better or worse. I'm on the road three months,
- 30:53Speaker 9: three weeks out of the month because the business is
- 30:55Speaker 9: very global.
- 30:56Speaker 2: Just for background. Paul wants to be there, like he
- 30:57Speaker 2: wants to move to Florida. He wants to do the
- 30:59Speaker 2: show from there.
- 31:00Speaker 6: Exactly. I talked to us about Elements Solutions. I know
- 31:03Speaker 6: you guys are in. Just tell us about your company,
- 31:05Speaker 6: what you do, and then we'll go from there.
- 31:07Speaker 4: Great. So.
- 31:07Speaker 9: Element Solutions is a provider of chemical technology that enables
- 31:11Speaker 9: high performance applications so our materials and process solutions are
- 31:15Speaker 9: used in manufacturing high value products from semiconductors to smartphones
- 31:19Speaker 9: to high performance autom So.
- 31:21Speaker 5: Your customers are technology companies primarily.
- 31:23Speaker 9: So our customers are technology supply chains. Technology supply we're
- 31:27Speaker 9: we're selling to printed circuit board manufacturers, semiconductor manufacturers, it's
- 31:31Speaker 9: very fragmented below the original equipment manufacturers that make the
- 31:34Speaker 9: smartphones in the cars. So we're a critical enabler of
- 31:38Speaker 9: their technologies, but we're not selling directly to them.
- 31:40Speaker 2: So you're not making like plastic for the end user
- 31:44Speaker 2: kind of thing either, because usually, like what I love
- 31:46Speaker 2: about chemicals is that is that really closed early cycle
- 31:49Speaker 2: read on the global economy, right, like what air Products
- 31:51Speaker 2: is doing when relationship telling me about China, that's not you, guys.
- 31:54Speaker 9: So we're selling critical components that enable performance of high
- 32:00Speaker 9: value products. So we do have a read on what
- 32:04Speaker 9: the next generation smartphone is going to look like. We
- 32:07Speaker 9: have a read on trends in automotive and other electronics
- 32:10Speaker 9: and markets.
- 32:11Speaker 6: How did you find yourself to this business. It's a
- 32:14Speaker 6: fantastic business.
- 32:17Speaker 5: I'll take your word for it, but I mean it's
- 32:18Speaker 5: not something I would have thought about just off.
- 32:20Speaker 6: You have to been dropped in there somehow.
- 32:23Speaker 9: So better lucky than good, I would say. I partnered
- 32:26Speaker 9: with our chairman, Sir Martin Franklin, who's been very successful
- 32:29Speaker 9: building multiple different businesses, and together through acquisitions, we've built
- 32:33Speaker 9: this portfolio of market leading companies.
- 32:36Speaker 5: Doesn't when I think chemical company, I don't think South Beach, true,
- 32:40Speaker 5: I think like Cleveland, What are you doing in South Beach?
- 32:43Speaker 7: Not that?
- 32:44Speaker 6: Or Miami? What's no reason not to be there? Everybody
- 32:46Speaker 6: else is.
- 32:47Speaker 9: So we are there because it's as good of a
- 32:51Speaker 9: place as any, and our business is very dispersed. We
- 32:53Speaker 9: have one hundred and sixty locations in over thirty countries,
- 32:56Speaker 9: more than sixty manufacturing sites, and so my job is
- 32:59Speaker 9: to make sure that our folks are working on the
- 33:01Speaker 9: right things with the right incentives. And so I'm traveling
- 33:04Speaker 9: as chief cheerleader to visit our people all over the
- 33:07Speaker 9: world most of my time, and coming home to Florida
- 33:11Speaker 9: is in such.
- 33:11Speaker 6: A bet that's not a bad thing.
- 33:12Speaker 5: And so public and traded company EESI is the ticker
- 33:15Speaker 5: for those playing at home, it's up. I guess it's
- 33:18Speaker 5: got a market cap about five and a quarter billion,
- 33:20Speaker 5: dollars on a trailing twelve month basis up at about two percent,
- 33:23Speaker 5: and you're to date off about six percent. What's the
- 33:25Speaker 5: message you bring to your shareholders? You're in New York,
- 33:27Speaker 5: I'm sure you're seeing some shareholders as well. What's the
- 33:30Speaker 5: message for your company?
- 33:32Speaker 9: So this business has come off of a difficult demand
- 33:35Speaker 9: environment in twenty twenty three, Electronics markets drew down significantly,
- 33:40Speaker 9: the global industrial economy stuttered a little bit. And as
- 33:44Speaker 9: we enter twenty twenty four, we manage twenty three well,
- 33:47Speaker 9: preserve profits, made some great capital allocation decisions to position
- 33:51Speaker 9: the business well for growth, and our end markets are
- 33:53Speaker 9: getting better. Semiconductor markets are improving, Electronics markets are improving,
- 33:57Speaker 9: So we're well positioned for you know, several years here
- 34:00Speaker 9: of above cycle above cycle average growth.
- 34:04Speaker 2: Is that an inventory thing or is it an end
- 34:06Speaker 2: user demand thing? I mean just restocking inventory At this point.
- 34:09Speaker 6: It's an end user demand thing.
- 34:11Speaker 9: We did have a drawdown of channel inventories post COVID.
- 34:14Speaker 9: There was a bullwhip effect. Electronics were overbought by the
- 34:18Speaker 9: supply chain in twenty twenty one into twenty twenty two.
- 34:20Speaker 9: There was a big inventory clearance in twenty twenty three,
- 34:23Speaker 9: and now we're starting to see semiconductor production increase. We're
- 34:27Speaker 9: starting to see new smartphone models gaining traction. Our story
- 34:31Speaker 9: is not just one of units, it's content per unit,
- 34:34Speaker 9: and so the more technically challenging, the more robust the application,
- 34:37Speaker 9: the more value for a company like ours. And so
- 34:40Speaker 9: we're going to grow over and above units through the cycle,
- 34:44Speaker 9: and unit growth is poised to recover nicely here.
- 34:46Speaker 5: So I'm just looking at the FA function on the
- 34:49Speaker 5: Bloomberg terminal financial analysis. It looks like the street's got
- 34:51Speaker 5: kind of mid single digit kind of revenue growth over
- 34:54Speaker 5: the next several years, mid teens EPs growth. So it
- 34:56Speaker 5: some operating leverage in your business model? Is is that
- 35:00Speaker 5: what you're telling investors to buy or do you also say, hey,
- 35:03Speaker 5: this is also a fragmented business and if we see
- 35:05Speaker 5: things out there to buy to maybe goose our growth rate,
- 35:08Speaker 5: we'll do that.
- 35:09Speaker 6: How do you think about that?
- 35:09Speaker 9: So the answer is yes, in the first instance, the
- 35:12Speaker 9: business's asset light. It generates incredibly strong cash flows. So
- 35:15Speaker 9: our moat isn't in manufacturing process, it's in technology and people,
- 35:21Speaker 9: and so we don't have to invest a lot of
- 35:22Speaker 9: capital in order to drive the business's growth, and then
- 35:24Speaker 9: we're able to find very interesting things to do with
- 35:27Speaker 9: that strong cash flow. So we've been very inquisitive in
- 35:29Speaker 9: our history, and we doubled our adjuster learnings per share
- 35:32Speaker 9: in our first three years as a public company. We
- 35:34Speaker 9: set a goal to do that in five years. We
- 35:35Speaker 9: set another goal to double it again in five years,
- 35:37Speaker 9: and we're in the middle of that process right now.
- 35:39Speaker 9: The goal is to compound EPs in the teens.
- 35:42Speaker 2: So what about the what about the input side? Like
- 35:46Speaker 2: it sounds like you're trying to run pretty lean, but
- 35:48Speaker 2: we still definitely see inflation kind of all around. Any
- 35:51Speaker 2: kind of manufacturing is going to get hit by that.
- 35:53Speaker 2: And I appreciate that you're sort of on a different scale,
- 35:56Speaker 2: But what do you see.
- 35:57Speaker 9: So we've had inflation over the past several years, started
- 36:00Speaker 9: to stem big inflation, and logitition copper to stop a
- 36:05Speaker 9: little bit of both. So logistics have plateaued. They're starting
- 36:08Speaker 9: to come in a little bit. But with some of
- 36:10Speaker 9: the disruptions in global supply chains, we're starting to see
- 36:12Speaker 9: a bit of pressure there. Raw material price inflation has
- 36:15Speaker 9: slowed down. We're starting actually to see some deflation. As
- 36:19Speaker 9: a company we're able to take price from customers when
- 36:22Speaker 9: our costs increase and typically able to hold that and
- 36:26Speaker 9: so margins have gotten better in the back half of
- 36:28Speaker 9: twenty twenty three and we expect that to continue in
- 36:30Speaker 9: twenty twenty four.
- 36:32Speaker 5: So you recently acquired a company, a new science, a
- 36:36Speaker 5: new copper science company.
- 36:38Speaker 6: What is that?
- 36:39Speaker 9: So this is a really exciting opportunity. There aren't big
- 36:43Speaker 9: step change breakthroughs in material science in our markets. What
- 36:47Speaker 9: used to work typically works with small modifications. Okay, we
- 36:50Speaker 9: acquired a business called Couprion that has a product called
- 36:53Speaker 9: active copper, which is nano particular copper. That is a
- 36:57Speaker 9: new mechanism to enable next generation electronics. If you think
- 37:01Speaker 9: about your smartphone, it's computing power is getting greater through
- 37:04Speaker 9: smaller lines on the circuit board and smaller holes connecting
- 37:08Speaker 9: the layers of the circuit board, and conventional material science
- 37:11Speaker 9: struggles to deal with those technical challenges. Coupriyon is a
- 37:16Speaker 9: solution for that. So it's got huge potential. We've got
- 37:19Speaker 9: great customer engagement. It's a very very exciting story, not
- 37:23Speaker 9: just for our company, but for our customers.
- 37:25Speaker 2: In a broader sense. The smartphone trough like the electronics
- 37:29Speaker 2: trough you were mentioning, sort of we had a lot
- 37:31Speaker 2: of buying and then that came down during the pandemic.
- 37:33Speaker 2: Now and then we're sort of have we troughed? Are
- 37:35Speaker 2: we going to see a meaningful acceleration over the next say,
- 37:38Speaker 2: eighteen months? So yeah, cause it is Paul going to
- 37:41Speaker 2: buy a new phone. That's twelve physicists, I'm an eleven. Yeah,
- 37:45Speaker 2: it's fine, okay, so speak to me about.
- 37:48Speaker 9: Yeah, there's so the smartphone mark we call the bottom
- 37:53Speaker 9: in broader electronics in the second quarter, and we saw
- 37:56Speaker 9: recovery in the back half. The slope of that recovery
- 37:59Speaker 9: is uncertain, but the long term legs of increased technical
- 38:04Speaker 9: requirements for electronics are very very long running, and the
- 38:08Speaker 9: smartphone replacement cycle has extended, and smartphone saturation of the
- 38:12Speaker 9: market is getting there. We troth from a unit's perspective,
- 38:16Speaker 9: in twenty twenty three, we'll see unit growth in twenty
- 38:17Speaker 9: twenty four, we expect that, but we're starting to gear
- 38:20Speaker 9: up for.
- 38:20Speaker 6: The next thing.
- 38:21Speaker 9: The next thing is enabled by AI, right, so more
- 38:24Speaker 9: computing power proliferating around the edge of the network has
- 38:27Speaker 9: very very high technical demands and We're not capacitated by
- 38:33Speaker 9: the number of people on Earth when it comes to AI, right,
- 38:36Speaker 9: the number of smartphones is kind of driven by the
- 38:38Speaker 9: number of people walking around AI. You know, Industrial automation
- 38:42Speaker 9: is not capped by that, and as we get autonomous
- 38:45Speaker 9: factories and autonomous cars, there's just more and more application
- 38:49Speaker 9: space for high performance electronics, which is great for our company.
- 38:53Speaker 6: Thirty seconds, who you compete with?
- 38:55Speaker 9: We've got great competitors, but diverse competitors. We're the only
- 39:01Speaker 9: company in our market that can speak to the breadth
- 39:03Speaker 9: of electronics applications that that we have in our portfolio.
- 39:07Speaker 9: So we compete a bit with DuPont. We compete with
- 39:09Speaker 9: a company called at Tech that's part of MKAS Group.
- 39:12Speaker 9: We've got local competitors and markets like Japan and China.
- 39:15Speaker 9: It's a competitive market, but our ability to provide value
- 39:19Speaker 9: to customers through materials compatibility and a broad product offering
- 39:23Speaker 9: is unrivaled.
- 39:24Speaker 6: See I was trying to figure out how he got
- 39:26Speaker 6: to where he is now. I figured it out and
- 39:29Speaker 6: investment banking to private equity. Then he says, screw this,
- 39:32Speaker 6: I'm going to go and do it myself.
- 39:34Speaker 5: And he went to like a real industry and get
- 39:36Speaker 5: a real job that makes stuff.
- 39:37Speaker 6: I've seen that route before. A lot of success.
- 39:39Speaker 2: Industry is really fun.
- 39:41Speaker 6: Yeah, really like I'm not just going to bank these people.
- 39:43Speaker 6: I'm gonna go do it.
- 39:44Speaker 5: Ben Glicklich, CEO of Element Solutions, appreciate you coming in
- 39:48Speaker 5: here into our studio. It's a fascinating company. Never would
- 39:51Speaker 5: have thought about it. I learned something new today Element Solutions.
- 39:53Speaker 5: You need all the chemical stuff for the tech and
- 39:55Speaker 5: the chips and all that kind.
- 39:56Speaker 6: Of stuff, and there are people that do that for
- 39:58Speaker 6: a living. That's good.
- 40:00Speaker 4: Up.
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