Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Alphabet Plans Record Spending in Race to Win AI Customers
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
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- 0:24Speaker 2: Let's go back to big tech, because we can't stay
- 0:26Speaker 2: away from them for too long. We have one more
- 0:29Speaker 2: mags have a name reporting today. Amazon will be reporting.
- 0:32Speaker 2: Alphabet reported yesterday. And I want to go back to
- 0:35Speaker 2: that CAPEX number which just blew people's minds. One hundred
- 0:38Speaker 2: and eighty five billion dollars all full of your capex,
- 0:41Speaker 2: much much higher than what was anticipated. Man Deep Singh
- 0:44Speaker 2: is our go to guy for all things tech. He's
- 0:47Speaker 2: our global tech research head here at Bloomberg Intelligence and
- 0:49Speaker 2: joins us now.
- 0:50Speaker 3: One trader called it alphabets mic drop.
- 0:53Speaker 2: Capex highlights the have versus havenots and AI capabilities, commitments
- 0:57Speaker 2: and balance sheet. Once upon a time, spending on you know,
- 1:02Speaker 2: your future growth was a good thing. But now any
- 1:05Speaker 2: kind of CAPEX commitment bigger than what people anticipated as
- 1:09Speaker 2: seen as negative.
- 1:10Speaker 4: Well, I think in this case the market is thinking
- 1:13Speaker 4: what comes next. So for twenty twenty six. Yeah, they've
- 1:17Speaker 4: guided two hundred and eighty five billion dollars. I mean,
- 1:21Speaker 4: chances are the growth rates are going to decelerate from
- 1:24Speaker 4: this point on. So twenty twenty six will be the
- 1:27Speaker 4: peak capex for a lot of these companies, Especially in
- 1:30Speaker 4: terms of growth rates. You're not going to see you know,
- 1:33Speaker 4: fifty sixty percent growth in capex going forward.
- 1:36Speaker 5: From these numbers.
- 1:37Speaker 4: So that's a given, and that's why you know the
- 1:39Speaker 4: market will be anticipatory in that sense in terms of
- 1:43Speaker 4: how that capex growth is going to pan out from
- 1:45Speaker 4: this point on, because you know, for some of the
- 1:48Speaker 4: chip makers, their growth is directly correlated to capex growth
- 1:54Speaker 4: of the hyperscaler So yes, this year is going to
- 1:57Speaker 4: look phenomenal, but as you look past this year, you
- 2:00Speaker 4: will see deceleration. The point about I think Alphabet is
- 2:05Speaker 4: really how is it reflected in their numbers? And to
- 2:08Speaker 4: my mind, they've already seen a two hundred basis point
- 2:12Speaker 4: growth in their overall top line. So they were growing,
- 2:15Speaker 4: you know, fourteen to sixteen percent. Now they are growing
- 2:18Speaker 4: eighteen percent. And so for a business with four hundred
- 2:21Speaker 4: billion dollars in run rate, two hundred basis points is
- 2:25Speaker 4: like almost that's Romney eight billion, you know, So that's
- 2:28Speaker 4: the ROI on all this capex. Is that eight to
- 2:31Speaker 4: ten billion dollar left in top line that they're seeing
- 2:34Speaker 4: across search and cloud and cloud numbers were just monster
- 2:38Speaker 4: when it comes to what they had did last nine Yeah.
- 2:41Speaker 5: So is this AI spending?
- 2:44Speaker 6: Is it one time in nature or does this suggest
- 2:48Speaker 6: a higher level of ongoing capex question?
- 2:53Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, we know the public cloud businesses
- 2:57Speaker 4: were a data center of heavy in the sense you
- 3:02Speaker 4: had to replace your server gear every five years. So
- 3:06Speaker 4: there is a depreciation aspect to AI as well. And
- 3:11Speaker 4: the fact that Alphabet has built this enterprise business which
- 3:15Speaker 4: is almost a seventy billion dollar rund rate out of
- 3:17Speaker 4: there four hundred billion. Now it's phenomenal because that cloud
- 3:22Speaker 4: business is going to accelerate. So what we saw last
- 3:25Speaker 4: night forty eight percent. I won't be surprised if they
- 3:29Speaker 4: grow cloud over fifty percent for the next four quarters,
- 3:34Speaker 4: simply because a lot of that data center capacity that
- 3:37Speaker 4: they've been building will come online. They'll be renting a
- 3:40Speaker 4: lot of that, and they're very well taking share at
- 3:44Speaker 4: this point. Given the numbers we have seen so far
- 3:46Speaker 4: between Azure and Google Cloud. Google Cloud grew ten percent
- 3:51Speaker 4: more than Azure, and it probably grew more than twenty percent.
- 3:55Speaker 4: I mean, even if Amazon has a great quarter tonight,
- 3:58Speaker 4: they probably won't print more more than twenty five percent.
- 4:01Speaker 4: So there you go. You probably are seeing Shure shift
- 4:04Speaker 4: and it sounds like a.
- 4:05Speaker 2: Behind a weakness called I mean, clearly, Alphabet is the
- 4:08Speaker 2: big winner among the mag seven names when it comes
- 4:10Speaker 2: to AI, up sixty five percent over the past twelve months,
- 4:14Speaker 2: much better than Microsoft.
- 4:15Speaker 3: Which is down in that period.
- 4:17Speaker 2: So did this set of results justify that kind of
- 4:20Speaker 2: price action?
- 4:21Speaker 4: Yes, the market did anticipate that. And look, there was
- 4:25Speaker 4: a lot of bearishness around what chat ChiPT could do
- 4:29Speaker 4: to Alphabet's core search business. I mean, search grew seventeen
- 4:33Speaker 4: percent talking about ROI on spend. It's reflected not only
- 4:38Speaker 4: in cloud but also in core search, where the number
- 4:42Speaker 4: of clicks grew six percent. Who would have thought, you know,
- 4:45Speaker 4: Alphabet clicks going up when chatchipt has nine hundred million
- 4:50Speaker 4: monthly actives. I would have imagined pricing would hold steady
- 4:54Speaker 4: for Alphabet, but not clicks growth. How are the impressions
- 4:57Speaker 4: and clicks growing? It's unfathomable, you know, in Alphabet's case,
- 5:03Speaker 4: and partly it has to do with the success of Gemini.
- 5:06Speaker 4: That's seven hundred and fifty million standalone app users. Those
- 5:11Speaker 4: are people who are going directly to Gemini beyond.
- 5:14Speaker 6: Just using how I use it, which is when I
- 5:16Speaker 6: go to Google. Yeah, first thing that comes up is
- 5:18Speaker 6: often Gemini. That's my answer.
- 5:20Speaker 5: I'm done. Yeah, But there's people separately go to a
- 5:22Speaker 5: Gemini app.
- 5:23Speaker 4: And they are engaging for a lot longer that So
- 5:25Speaker 4: it's under which is people monetizing that they're I mean,
- 5:29Speaker 4: they're monetizing using subscriptions, and what they're saying is we
- 5:32Speaker 4: will not roll out ads anytime soon. Let Opening Eye
- 5:36Speaker 4: do it because that's going to interfere with the experience
- 5:39Speaker 4: that people have. So we'll monetize with subscriptions, and they're
- 5:42Speaker 4: bundling subscription Stay with us.
- 5:45Speaker 5: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 5:51Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 5:55Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Corplay and Android
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- 6:01Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 6:05Speaker 2: I've been looking at the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which tracks
- 6:09Speaker 2: chip companies, and it's had a brutal couple of days.
- 6:11Speaker 2: It's rebounded today off a one month low. But you
- 6:15Speaker 2: look inside the index and Qualcomm is the biggest loser
- 6:19Speaker 2: in that group, down more than seven percent at the moment.
- 6:22Speaker 2: Kunjohn Sabani is our senior analyst on semiconductors, and Kunjohn,
- 6:26Speaker 2: when you look at Qualcom's results, Qualcomm is primarily making
- 6:30Speaker 2: chips for smartphones and this forecast that it gave is
- 6:34Speaker 2: not so great. What does that tell us? Is that
- 6:36Speaker 2: more a case of, you know, supply chain issues or
- 6:39Speaker 2: is there just not so much demand for new smartphones?
- 6:43Speaker 7: No, it's nothing to do with demand. There's two factors here.
- 6:45Speaker 7: One for Qualcomm, this year was a unique year where
- 6:49Speaker 7: most of their Android handset makers, so think of Samsung,
- 6:53Speaker 7: think of Jaumi, Opo, Vivo, launched their phones earlier than
- 6:57Speaker 7: they used to. So remember the handsut businesses are very
- 7:00Speaker 7: seasonal business, so you have up quarters when the phone
- 7:02Speaker 7: chart launched and really down quarters. So in the nutshell,
- 7:05Speaker 7: a lot of that revenue was sort of pulled ahead
- 7:08Speaker 7: of time. That's why what you saw is they beat
- 7:10Speaker 7: so strongly in the current quarter. So the flip part
- 7:13Speaker 7: of that is the next quarter, which is a tropt quarter,
- 7:16Speaker 7: is going to be even a word straff on top
- 7:18Speaker 7: of that. What's happening is as we are all aware
- 7:20Speaker 7: of the memory crunch happening because of HBM memory and
- 7:23Speaker 7: data centers and the rising memory costs, that's freaking out
- 7:27Speaker 7: the Chinese OEMs, which Qualcomm is now really disproposately exposed
- 7:32Speaker 7: to compared to all other hands at SEMIS. So the
- 7:34Speaker 7: guys like Apple and Samsung are probably doing fine. They
- 7:38Speaker 7: have their ability to get access to memory and procure
- 7:41Speaker 7: memory ahead of time, but the smaller players are not
- 7:43Speaker 7: as sophisticated. So those players are freaking out and they
- 7:46Speaker 7: basically have decided, we're going to stop ordering a lot
- 7:49Speaker 7: more chips and we're going to clear out what we
- 7:51Speaker 7: have in our inventory. And that's why what we're seeing
- 7:53Speaker 7: is basically the memory impacting Qualcom's guidance.
- 7:56Speaker 6: All right, So we step back from some of the
- 7:59Speaker 6: chip makers and they're earning something at am D and
- 8:01Speaker 6: that's soft again today Qualcom here, what are some of
- 8:05Speaker 6: the takeaways from an interships perspective are you chatting about
- 8:09Speaker 6: with clients?
- 8:11Speaker 7: Yeah, so you mean you know, the sort of the
- 8:13Speaker 7: software meltdown is trying to the fever is spreading in
- 8:16Speaker 7: a little bit into semis. I would not say as
- 8:19Speaker 7: broad strokes this earning season. What we're seeing is if
- 8:22Speaker 7: companies didn't come out and blow the quarter out of
- 8:25Speaker 7: the quarter, of the results and for their outlook, they're
- 8:28Speaker 7: basically getting punished. A lot of that has to also remember,
- 8:31Speaker 7: taking to context, a lot of these companies in the
- 8:34Speaker 7: last six to seven months have seen significant rallies because
- 8:37Speaker 7: a lot of good expectations, especially for the AI names
- 8:40Speaker 7: like AMD being priced in. So the market is now
- 8:43Speaker 7: in the mood where if you're not showing me real excitement,
- 8:46Speaker 7: you're sort of being ready for a little bit of
- 8:49Speaker 7: a pullback, right.
- 8:50Speaker 2: They call it a show me kind of market environment.
- 8:53Speaker 2: So our colleagues will be speaking with the CEO of Qualcom,
- 8:57Speaker 2: Christiano Aman, how would you grate his performance so far?
- 9:01Speaker 7: Con John, Well, look, he's doing everything right. It's just
- 9:05Speaker 7: the company is in a tough spot. Investors have been
- 9:08Speaker 7: wanting them to diversify away from handsets for many years now,
- 9:12Speaker 7: and since he's been the CEO, that's what his primary
- 9:15Speaker 7: objective has been. They're making good stries on the auto
- 9:18Speaker 7: and IoT. In fact, both of those segments had much
- 9:21Speaker 7: better than expected results and outlook.
- 9:23Speaker 4: But when you still think.
- 9:24Speaker 7: About the company now, even three four years down the road,
- 9:27Speaker 7: it's still majority significantly a handset revenue company. So until
- 9:33Speaker 7: the revenue exposure of hand sets doesn't get to at
- 9:36Speaker 7: least fifty percent or lower, I think that sort of
- 9:39Speaker 7: had been on the company. Impact from handsets is going
- 9:42Speaker 7: to continue, and I think Ristiana just has to keep
- 9:44Speaker 7: doing what he's doing and write this out.
- 9:47Speaker 6: So John, I know most of or much of the
- 9:50Speaker 6: selling in the tech spaces, in the software space, not
- 9:53Speaker 6: in your chip sector. But when you talk to investors,
- 9:56Speaker 6: we talk to clients, what's their mood over the last
- 9:59Speaker 6: week or so, Like they're just kind of selling in
- 10:02Speaker 6: a panic, selling because hey, I've got it such a
- 10:05Speaker 6: big gain, I've taken something off the table. My fundamental
- 10:08Speaker 6: view of AI is change. What's the tone.
- 10:11Speaker 7: I don't think the fundamental view has changed. I think
- 10:13Speaker 7: a couple of things. Once you said, if whatever is
- 10:15Speaker 7: happening in the other sectors will impact this sector as well, right,
- 10:19Speaker 7: because there is some definitely that risk of profit taking. Also,
- 10:23Speaker 7: remember getting into this year a lot of investors in
- 10:26Speaker 7: my sector are trying to reposition their books, right, they're revaluating.
- 10:30Speaker 4: Last year in.
- 10:30Speaker 7: Semis was like, look, everything was doing great. AI is
- 10:33Speaker 7: helping everyone. I think now it's becoming a more of
- 10:35Speaker 7: a stock pickers market in the sector, where people are
- 10:38Speaker 7: really focusing deep and thinking which guys are going to
- 10:41Speaker 7: be the real winners and let's focus on them, but
- 10:44Speaker 7: let's get off or at least take some profit off
- 10:47Speaker 7: the other folks which don't seem to be the top
- 10:49Speaker 7: number and one and two in the areas that they're playing.
- 10:52Speaker 2: You mentioned earlier how Christian among the CEO, is trying
- 10:56Speaker 2: to diversify Qualcom to not rely so much on smart
- 11:00Speaker 2: makers as its main line of business as it tries
- 11:03Speaker 2: to get into the AI data center business. And you
- 11:07Speaker 2: make chips that would compete with Nvidia, what kind of
- 11:10Speaker 2: capex do you anticipate Quacom will have to commit to.
- 11:15Speaker 7: Yeah, so Quacam predominantly is a fabulous semi company, so
- 11:18Speaker 7: they don't have or would not have a significant capex
- 11:22Speaker 7: like you hear from other AI hyperscalers. They would have
- 11:25Speaker 7: to commit to significant opex, which is R and D dollars.
- 11:28Speaker 7: If They are going into a new line of business
- 11:30Speaker 7: where they need to develop newer chips, newer programs. They
- 11:33Speaker 7: have acquired a company recently to do this, so they
- 11:36Speaker 7: have spent some capital there and I think they will
- 11:38Speaker 7: have to really boost of their R and D, which
- 11:40Speaker 7: is their opecs spending to compete with the likes of
- 11:43Speaker 7: in media.
- 11:44Speaker 5: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 11:51Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us Live
- 11:55Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
- 11:58Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberginess app. Listen on demand wherever you
- 12:02Speaker 1: get your podcasts, or what's us Live on YouTube.
- 12:05Speaker 6: Lots of earnings coming out across the tape this week.
- 12:07Speaker 6: One of the busier weeks out there. One of the
- 12:09Speaker 6: names is Peloton or they can just not seem to
- 12:13Speaker 6: get any positive momentum going in that business. It kind
- 12:16Speaker 6: of for me at least, I'm like, does this company
- 12:19Speaker 6: need to be public? You know, it seems like they
- 12:20Speaker 6: should maybe be a private company.
- 12:22Speaker 3: But what did everyone call it the most expensive code rack.
- 12:25Speaker 6: Cot rap That's right exactly, Keith, it wrong enough, and
- 12:27Speaker 6: she covers Peloton as well as all of the media
- 12:30Speaker 6: and entertainment names for Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 12:33Speaker 5: What's the story this time, Keitha. With Peloton, they just
- 12:35Speaker 5: reported some results.
- 12:38Speaker 8: Yeah, Paul, So they had their biggest product refresh ever
- 12:42Speaker 8: in their history last fall. They had this huge price
- 12:45Speaker 8: increase that they implemented across all of their subscription offerings.
- 12:49Speaker 8: And even with all that and the benefit of a
- 12:52Speaker 8: holiday quarter, they basically disappointed on the sales number. And
- 12:56Speaker 8: you know, you have them kind of making all of
- 12:58Speaker 8: these making all of these cost efficiencies, You have a
- 13:01Speaker 8: lot of cost cuts. They are definitely making good progress
- 13:04Speaker 8: when it comes to profit, but boy, the top line
- 13:07Speaker 8: is just not moving and that's really causing a lot
- 13:10Speaker 8: of fear among investors.
- 13:12Speaker 2: And we always introduce U Gita as our media and
- 13:15Speaker 2: entertainment analysts here Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 13:18Speaker 3: Peloton makes exercise.
- 13:20Speaker 2: Bikes, but for a while it was trying to frame
- 13:23Speaker 2: itself as a media company. Much how reliant is it
- 13:28Speaker 2: on that software on the media side of its business?
- 13:32Speaker 8: Oh, it absolutely depends on the content, Scarlett. It is
- 13:35Speaker 8: the content that gave it it's cult following that you know,
- 13:39Speaker 8: gives it all of those sticky, affluent customers. The problem
- 13:42Speaker 8: for Peloton, right now is they're just not able to
- 13:45Speaker 8: move the needle. And yeah, you have all of these
- 13:47Speaker 8: new features that they're adding. I mean, you know you
- 13:50Speaker 8: have all of these AI powered features they're calling they've
- 13:52Speaker 8: added it to their entire product lineup. You know, they're
- 13:55Speaker 8: allowing you to kind of integrate all of your health
- 13:57Speaker 8: data from like garment and you know, basically making it
- 14:01Speaker 8: really really comfortable for the user. But those are all
- 14:04Speaker 8: really just incremental, they are not transformational. And basically the
- 14:09Speaker 8: company just coming out and saying that, you know, the
- 14:11Speaker 8: the upgrade cycle that they were expecting from the existing
- 14:14Speaker 8: customers just hasn't happened. So you know, it's You're absolutely
- 14:19Speaker 8: right that this is a content company in many ways
- 14:21Speaker 8: because you know, it relies on the content, but it
- 14:23Speaker 8: also needs the sales of its hardware to happen in
- 14:27Speaker 8: order for people to get access to that content, and
- 14:29Speaker 8: that just is not taking off.
- 14:32Speaker 2: Have you ever used a peloton before? We have in
- 14:34Speaker 2: our house, and do you follow any of the Karen from.
- 14:38Speaker 6: The Jersey Shore rides that every single day bides the
- 14:41Speaker 6: bike and the treadmill thing in our home.
- 14:46Speaker 5: You can't hide them. We don't have a basement. If
- 14:48Speaker 5: you can now take a forty five dollars pill from
- 14:50Speaker 5: him and hers? Why would you need a bit more?
- 14:53Speaker 6: So you need to keep tone up when you're losing weight,
- 14:55Speaker 6: and so they do the weight program.
- 14:56Speaker 5: So we use it. We haven't we use it, but
- 14:58Speaker 5: we're they're just not monetizing.
- 15:00Speaker 1: Uh.
- 15:00Speaker 6: Sokeitha real quickly, this is almost a time now at
- 15:03Speaker 6: one point nine billion market cap are people calling for
- 15:06Speaker 6: this company to go private to be sold? I mean
- 15:09Speaker 6: it doesn't seem to work as a publicly traded company.
- 15:12Speaker 8: Yeah, it doesn't fall. And you know, there's been so
- 15:15Speaker 8: much of chatter about whether an Apple or an Amazon
- 15:17Speaker 8: should buy this company. Nothing of course, has materialized. There's
- 15:21Speaker 8: also been you know, constant rumors about private equity maybe
- 15:23Speaker 8: kind of coming in milking it for whatever free cash
- 15:26Speaker 8: flow they can get. But again it's nobody really knows
- 15:29Speaker 8: what's going to happen here, all.
- 15:31Speaker 5: Right, So I guess I just don't know.
- 15:33Speaker 6: You know, what's interesting because some of the trainers they
- 15:35Speaker 6: have huge followings on social media and they're and they're
- 15:38Speaker 6: selling stuff all like crazy. So Keitha, does does Peloton
- 15:41Speaker 6: get any of the you know, the their employees, you know,
- 15:45Speaker 6: social media side hustle revenue at all.
- 15:49Speaker 8: No, not really. I mean it's it's just I guess
- 15:52Speaker 8: it's good for the brand.
- 15:54Speaker 3: But that's about it.
- 15:57Speaker 5: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up.
- 16:03Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 16:07Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am. He's done on Apple, Coarclay, and
- 16:10Speaker 1: Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand
- 16:13Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 16:18Speaker 6: Another area of movement is in the world of luxury Stually,
- 16:21Speaker 6: a lotter put out some results.
- 16:22Speaker 5: Market doesn't like it. The stocks down twenty two percent.
- 16:25Speaker 8: Here.
- 16:25Speaker 6: Let's check in with deb Ak and she covers all
- 16:27Speaker 6: the luxury good companies for Bloomberg Intelligence. She's based in
- 16:30Speaker 6: our London office. Boy, what did Esday Lauder have to
- 16:34Speaker 6: say here that so spooked the market?
- 16:36Speaker 9: Deb I think that, you know, we're if we think
- 16:42Speaker 9: about two years where they've been turning around the US
- 16:46Speaker 9: and all of a sudden for the Americas, they came
- 16:48Speaker 9: in flat with the US doing a little bit better,
- 16:51Speaker 9: but the Latin side pulling somewhatern results and the expectation
- 16:56Speaker 9: for Q three and Q four is quite subdued. A
- 17:01Speaker 9: four Q to come.
- 17:01Speaker 3: So this is their two key report where.
- 17:03Speaker 9: Actually they beat on the top line, they beat a
- 17:06Speaker 9: little bit on margin, then they raise their EPs, but
- 17:09Speaker 9: it all kinds of sits EPs. It's mid or four
- 17:13Speaker 9: cents below mid consensus ranger on EPs. So although it
- 17:18Speaker 9: was a beat, it wasn't transformational. And so we have
- 17:22Speaker 9: yet we have the Americas. We have also the fact
- 17:25Speaker 9: that Europe is a little bit kind of stabilized, subdued.
- 17:29Speaker 9: And then when you think about the China market, which
- 17:32Speaker 9: was one of their big transition markets, they are expecting
- 17:35Speaker 9: for the second half mid single digit growth. I've had
- 17:38Speaker 9: some good mid growth in the first half, but you
- 17:42Speaker 9: still have a big issue with travel retail. So when
- 17:46Speaker 9: you consider North America and what's happening with department stores
- 17:50Speaker 9: and then transitioning there to about thirty percent of the
- 17:53Speaker 9: portfolio overall ninto more multi and then you have some
- 17:57Speaker 9: retailers in travel retail out of China actually changeovers in retailers,
- 18:02Speaker 9: which is conflicting and causing issues with their supply chains.
- 18:07Speaker 9: It isn't an easy story for the next few months ahead.
- 18:10Speaker 9: And the stock rallied massively ahead of results or thirty
- 18:13Speaker 9: percent over the three months.
- 18:15Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you expand that to over the past
- 18:17Speaker 2: twelve months, the stock had served eighty percent more than
- 18:19Speaker 2: eighty percent. So there is a lot, a lot built
- 18:22Speaker 2: into optimism here with this new CEO is the worst
- 18:27Speaker 2: then behind the company dev I mean, given what we heard,
- 18:30Speaker 2: sure the results were not good enough to keep the
- 18:32Speaker 2: stock moving higher. But have you know, have the restructuring
- 18:35Speaker 2: costs really been priced in and it's done your skies ahead?
- 18:40Speaker 9: I think so, yes, but I don't think it's going
- 18:42Speaker 9: to be as quick as some expected. If we think
- 18:44Speaker 9: about the market overall, the beauty market and what the
- 18:48Speaker 9: CEOs said and he reiterated it, they're looking for about
- 18:52Speaker 9: three percent growth in the beauty market this year, and
- 18:56Speaker 9: others such as Laurel will say that the market should
- 18:59Speaker 9: grow around four plus. And that's because they Laurel and
- 19:03Speaker 9: some others have a higher exposure into high end fragrances,
- 19:07Speaker 9: which are faster growth versus steal order. But aside from that,
- 19:12Speaker 9: you probably get that. You know, the idea from Steludo
- 19:15Speaker 9: for the full year is not to three percent on
- 19:20Speaker 9: constant currency, and they're hoping to get to the top
- 19:23Speaker 9: end of that. But that would mean that they're kind
- 19:26Speaker 9: of running a little bit behind the market still, but
- 19:28Speaker 9: that's because they have high travel retail and not so
- 19:31Speaker 9: much exposure as appeers on the fragrance side. So where
- 19:35Speaker 9: valuation sits right now, it's built in expectation that this
- 19:39Speaker 9: one point two to one point six billion restructuring costs
- 19:42Speaker 9: which is on track, does come through and that everything
- 19:45Speaker 9: cleans up through fiscal twenty seven. The company is shifting
- 19:49Speaker 9: to annual estimates only, which I think the US market
- 19:52Speaker 9: in particular won't like guidance only, you know, to try
- 19:56Speaker 9: and prevent volatility, but when it isn't a clear road ahead,
- 20:00Speaker 9: that's often needed to be able to really understand quarter
- 20:03Speaker 9: by quarter what's happening. So I think there are pros
- 20:06Speaker 9: and cons to this company overall, and I can understand
- 20:10Speaker 9: why it's down today.
- 20:12Speaker 6: What is este later saying about the market in China
- 20:15Speaker 6: and what are they saying about Chinese consumers in general?
- 20:18Speaker 6: Are where are they shopping? Are they coming to Europe?
- 20:20Speaker 6: Are they coming to the US? Are they staying in
- 20:22Speaker 6: Japan and China?
- 20:25Speaker 9: Japan, no, China. South Korea has taking some share and
- 20:30Speaker 9: some kind of domestic move out of China there's a
- 20:34Speaker 9: little bit of transition into Europe, but overall the way
- 20:38Speaker 9: that esther Lord used to account for their travel retail
- 20:41Speaker 9: in Europe and they shifted it, so it's separated with
- 20:44Speaker 9: China separate and then Asia, and within Asia you have
- 20:47Speaker 9: the travel retail business, so it's very clear what's happening
- 20:51Speaker 9: over there. So China is picking up, it's mid single
- 20:54Speaker 9: digit growth, but it's still down where it was versus
- 20:57Speaker 9: two years ago. There's still a lot of repaired to do,
- 21:01Speaker 9: and that's you know, the story from so many of
- 21:04Speaker 9: these companies. But certainly for still Auder and I think
- 21:08Speaker 9: we'll feel a bit of this pain. Also for Laurel,
- 21:11Speaker 9: they have high exposure to travel retail in China and
- 21:14Speaker 9: that isn't coming back. He Nan is solid, Macau not
- 21:17Speaker 9: so much. The Chinese aren't shopping in Japan, partly because
- 21:22Speaker 9: they're asked to shop at home and because there were
- 21:25Speaker 9: big comps from one or two years ago. And particularly
- 21:28Speaker 9: for ESDA Lauder two in Americas, they've already done so
- 21:32Speaker 9: much with third parties, which I should mention on digital
- 21:36Speaker 9: with Amazon and others, and they're going to be comping
- 21:39Speaker 9: against that as well, So it makes it hard there.
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