Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Oracle Slides by Most Since January on Mounting AI Spending
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
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- 0:23Speaker 2: Oracle taking it on the chin today. You know, they
- 0:27Speaker 2: put us a big revenue numbers. I thought, I mean
- 0:29Speaker 2: thirty percent here, sixty percent here, but not enough for
- 0:32Speaker 2: the street. And same time with Jack up your capex,
- 0:34Speaker 2: and I think the street gets a little bit nervous
- 0:36Speaker 2: about that. So this dock is trading down pretty big.
- 0:38Speaker 2: Second with anarag Rana, he covers all the technology spased
- 0:42Speaker 2: in your technis for Bloomberg Intelligence. So on our why
- 0:45Speaker 2: do you think Oracle's selling offs so much today?
- 0:50Speaker 3: So there are a few things to keep in mind.
- 0:52Speaker 3: You know, the number one thing is cloud infrastructure growth.
- 0:55Speaker 3: Consensus was sixty nine percent, decame at sixty six. I
- 0:59Speaker 3: know it's a very big number. However, in the cloud world,
- 1:02Speaker 3: missing by even one percentage point is not good. So
- 1:05Speaker 3: that's first thing. But you know, there's a very logical
- 1:08Speaker 3: reason about it. Everybody can see the backlock, so it's
- 1:10Speaker 3: not as if they don't have a business there, but
- 1:12Speaker 3: converting that backlog into sales is an issue. Everybody knows
- 1:15Speaker 3: that there is a capacity constraints out there, whether it's
- 1:18Speaker 3: data center, whether it's networking, et cetera. Power is a
- 1:20Speaker 3: very big issue, for example. So that's one area of it.
- 1:23Speaker 3: But although I would say the management did not harp
- 1:25Speaker 3: on it as much as we would wanted them to be,
- 1:28Speaker 3: that to explain why the growth can improve going forward.
- 1:32Speaker 3: So that's one factor. But I think the biggest question
- 1:34Speaker 3: is something that we had discussed earlier. Also is everybody
- 1:37Speaker 3: is questioning that out of their big backlock, which is
- 1:39Speaker 3: over five hundred billion right now, three hundred plus billion
- 1:43Speaker 3: of that comes from open ai. Now open ai currently
- 1:46Speaker 3: or the order book is from open Ai. By the
- 1:49Speaker 3: end of this year, open ai will have a revenue
- 1:51Speaker 3: round it off about twenty billion. So everybody is saying that, okay,
- 1:54Speaker 3: well tell me, if you have revenue of twenty billion,
- 1:58Speaker 3: how are you going to spend three hundred billion just
- 1:59Speaker 3: with Oracle. So there's a big question mark. But then
- 2:02Speaker 3: your question is, well, why didn't this happened when they
- 2:04Speaker 3: first announced it? Well, their bottle was at the top
- 2:07Speaker 3: at that point, and right now Google's Gemini has caught up,
- 2:10Speaker 3: so people don't know what will Openaize future look like
- 2:13Speaker 3: two years from now, three years from now, and so forth.
- 2:16Speaker 3: So there are multiple factors that are going into this equation.
- 2:19Speaker 3: And not to mention something, you just remarked that capex
- 2:22Speaker 3: is going to go up by fifteen billion, So thirty
- 2:25Speaker 3: five billion going to fifty billion. So it's a big, big,
- 2:29Speaker 3: you know, change across four or five different vectors that
- 2:32Speaker 3: are having an impact on the stock.
- 2:34Speaker 4: So the cloud strategy of Oracle continues to evolve. What
- 2:38Speaker 4: is the next major inflection point for you when you
- 2:40Speaker 4: see these cloud companies really move towards more AI driven efforts.
- 2:47Speaker 3: So the big thing is that five hundred billion a
- 2:49Speaker 3: backlock needs to bleed into revenue. For that, they need
- 2:52Speaker 3: to open new data center. But even to open new
- 2:55Speaker 3: data center, they need more cash. So the big catalyst
- 2:58Speaker 3: for them is they need go out. Most likely they
- 3:01Speaker 3: need to create a special purpose vehicle where they can
- 3:04Speaker 3: raise funds with the help of private equity investors, private
- 3:08Speaker 3: credit and basically you know, keep that off Oracles balance
- 3:12Speaker 3: sheet and that will help pacify the fears that they
- 3:15Speaker 3: actually have the way, a way to finance this big
- 3:18Speaker 3: order book that they have.
- 3:21Speaker 2: All right, look, well you mentioned open Ai. Can you
- 3:23Speaker 2: refresh my memory? Because I have no idea where do
- 3:26Speaker 2: they get their money that they like? Where are they
- 3:28Speaker 2: getting the money? I don't do all this stuff.
- 3:32Speaker 3: So the single biggest is the consumer app right now,
- 3:34Speaker 3: That's where most of the money is coming in because
- 3:37Speaker 3: you know, if you want the best model, you're going
- 3:39Speaker 3: to pay twenty dollars a month. I mean, you can
- 3:41Speaker 3: get the free version of it. But that's one area.
- 3:43Speaker 3: They have over nine hundred million users right now, but
- 3:45Speaker 3: only a small portion of them are paying customers. So
- 3:48Speaker 3: that's one. Second is if you as a company, let's
- 3:51Speaker 3: say you're you know, let's call a hypothetical bank, and
- 3:54Speaker 3: you're creating a chat pot which needs intelligence or a
- 3:58Speaker 3: large language model, You're going to use APIs from open Ai,
- 4:02Speaker 3: and that gets embedded intelligence into whatever system that you're creating,
- 4:06Speaker 3: your chatboard that becomes smarter. They get paid from that.
- 4:09Speaker 3: So those are the two I think big elements or
- 4:12Speaker 3: the big sources of revenue for them. And there is
- 4:15Speaker 3: a huge you could say, looking ahead, all the enterprises
- 4:20Speaker 3: around the world will have some intelligence into their core applications,
- 4:23Speaker 3: and they're going to use model from somebody, whether it's Google,
- 4:26Speaker 3: whether it's Anthropic, whether it's open AI.
- 4:29Speaker 4: How are you thinking of the leadership in this company?
- 4:31Speaker 4: How will the company's direction be affected down the line.
- 4:35Speaker 3: I think they really need to talk a little bit
- 4:37Speaker 3: about their expansion plans. I think this concept of you know,
- 4:41Speaker 3: he went out and talked about I'm going to spend
- 4:43Speaker 3: a trillion dollars in data centers. Then he went to
- 4:46Speaker 3: the government and say, well, is there a backstop to
- 4:48Speaker 3: this needs a little bit more clear on its expansion strategy,
- 4:51Speaker 3: because if he goes out and say, you know what,
- 4:54Speaker 3: I don't, I'm not spending a trillion dollars maybe one
- 4:56Speaker 3: hundred two hundred million or so. I think they needs
- 4:58Speaker 3: to tone down that rhetoric a little bit. But I
- 5:00Speaker 3: mean otherwise or he has to show a lot of
- 5:03Speaker 3: revenue growth over the next one years to one year
- 5:06Speaker 3: to pacify this particular uncertainty that has cropped up.
- 5:10Speaker 2: Right now and around thirty seconds left, this is Oracle
- 5:12Speaker 2: News kind of highlight the risk of some of these
- 5:14Speaker 2: circular deals.
- 5:17Speaker 3: See, I think it's not so much the circular deal
- 5:19Speaker 3: when it comes to the entire space. But there is
- 5:22Speaker 3: a question mark between what Opening is doing along with
- 5:26Speaker 3: Oracle and an Nvidia. So it's this three people for
- 5:30Speaker 3: this particular aspect of it that people are questioning whether
- 5:33Speaker 3: this is going to lead any issues. Whether it's Microsoft
- 5:36Speaker 3: and AWS and Google. I'm not concerned about those three.
- 5:40Speaker 5: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 5:46Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
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- 6:00Speaker 2: Isabelle sitting in for Scarlet Fu and Paul Sweeney Life
- 6:03Speaker 2: here on our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio streaming live on YouTube.
- 6:07Speaker 5: We're still waiting to see what's going to happen.
- 6:09Speaker 2: With Warner Brothers Discovery. We're talking about a ninety billion
- 6:11Speaker 2: dollar enterprise value m and a trade going to hit
- 6:14Speaker 2: the tape. But we've got two suitors out there, and
- 6:17Speaker 2: I'm not sure what the sello wants to do.
- 6:18Speaker 6: Here.
- 6:18Speaker 2: Ethan Roung and Nathan joints that she's a US media
- 6:21Speaker 2: analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. I guess the only new thing
- 6:24Speaker 2: I saw was President Donald Trump kind of weighing in here,
- 6:27Speaker 2: and he says, hey, whoever buys this thing, you got
- 6:29Speaker 2: to sell CNN or something like that.
- 6:33Speaker 5: What do you make of that?
- 6:33Speaker 2: I mean, CNN is like not even really relevant to
- 6:36Speaker 2: the entire company, is it not?
- 6:39Speaker 6: Really? But I think obviously Donald Trump has a huge
- 6:43Speaker 6: history with CNN, has despised the network always, so you know,
- 6:49Speaker 6: naturally he's kind of laying down this condition. But what
- 6:51Speaker 6: we think is it obviously complicates the deal a little
- 6:55Speaker 6: bit for Netflix. Remember Netflix is only buying the streaming
- 6:59Speaker 6: and studio portion of Warner Brothers Discovery, So obviously if
- 7:02Speaker 6: they are going to go with Netflix, you know, the
- 7:05Speaker 6: WBD team will have to find some way of offloading CNN,
- 7:10Speaker 6: which I'm not so sure how it's going to do that.
- 7:12Speaker 6: It obviously complicates the process with Paramount. That's not going
- 7:16Speaker 6: to be a problem because Paramount is buying the whole
- 7:19Speaker 6: company that includes the studio, the streaming platform, as well
- 7:22Speaker 6: as the TV network's business.
- 7:26Speaker 4: Talk to us why this deal is so polarizing. To
- 7:28Speaker 4: Paul's point, the President made a comment. Actress Jane Fonda
- 7:32Speaker 4: spoke out against a Netflix deal. Y. Both policymakers from
- 7:37Speaker 4: both aisles are also making comments. We will discuss that
- 7:42Speaker 4: comment later. I'm also interested, But Giza, why is it
- 7:45Speaker 4: so divisive?
- 7:48Speaker 6: It is divisive because this really will change or reshape
- 7:52Speaker 6: the whole media landscape. Isabelle, So, I think majority of
- 7:56Speaker 6: the content community, you know, writers, actors, talent, they're really
- 8:00Speaker 6: worried that if Netflix gets a hold of Warner Brothers
- 8:04Speaker 6: Discovery Studio, it kind of totally changes things, right, It
- 8:08Speaker 6: could potentially disrupt the theatrical model as we know it.
- 8:12Speaker 6: You know, all of the legacy media revenue streams are
- 8:16Speaker 6: at risk. It could potentially reduce output. Licensing from one
- 8:21Speaker 6: of the studios could be completely folded into Netflix's operation.
- 8:24Speaker 6: So there are obviously a lot of very many different risks,
- 8:28Speaker 6: very tangible risks that you know, could materialize in case
- 8:33Speaker 6: Netflix goes after or they're already after, in case they
- 8:36Speaker 6: win the Warner Brothers Studio asset. Now with paramount, I
- 8:40Speaker 6: think people generally see that more of a status quore,
- 8:43Speaker 6: just a continuation there. You know, they've obviously committed to
- 8:46Speaker 6: keeping the studio. We know David Ellison loves movies. He's
- 8:49Speaker 6: made a huge commitment to increase theatrical output. So I
- 8:52Speaker 6: don't think people necessarily view that deal as that much
- 8:55Speaker 6: more disruptive than the Netflix deal. The other political you
- 9:00Speaker 6: know issue there is obviously with CNN again, that's definitely
- 9:04Speaker 6: very polarizing considering you know, it's it's always kind of
- 9:09Speaker 6: been a little bit of an anti Trump kind of platform. Again,
- 9:13Speaker 6: everybody has a view on this deal from many different angles.
- 9:17Speaker 6: I would say it's about.
- 9:18Speaker 2: Hey, Keith, I've been reading some of the research from
- 9:20Speaker 2: your colleague Stephen Flynn is a credit analyst for Bloomberg
- 9:23Speaker 2: Intelligence looking at the media companies from the credit perspective.
- 9:26Speaker 2: Man if Paramount Wincessing, they're going to have a lot
- 9:29Speaker 2: of debt on their balance sheet, like a lot is
- 9:32Speaker 2: the equity folks, are they concerned about that?
- 9:36Speaker 6: So the way that Paramount has really framed this whole argument,
- 9:39Speaker 6: Paul is they're talking about a lot of synergies. Okay,
- 9:42Speaker 6: so they're talking about sixteen billion dollars in EBITDA. So
- 9:45Speaker 6: remember next year, paramounts Guida and standalone is going to
- 9:48Speaker 6: generate about three to three and a half billion dollars
- 9:50Speaker 6: in IBADA. If they do succeed in getting oneer Brothers Discovery,
- 9:54Speaker 6: they are promising about sixteen billion dollars in EBITDA, so
- 9:58Speaker 6: we're we're talking almost, you know, taking this fivefold, which
- 10:01Speaker 6: is why this DAL is so transformative. So yes, they
- 10:04Speaker 6: might have about eighty to ninety billion dollars in debt,
- 10:07Speaker 6: but their whole argument is that we can support it
- 10:10Speaker 6: just kind of given the amount of EBITDAD that we're
- 10:13Speaker 6: going to be generating free cash flow generator conversion from
- 10:16Speaker 6: ibadah is going to also be robust, So that's their
- 10:19Speaker 6: whole argument. Of course, I'm not so sure the street
- 10:21Speaker 6: is necessarily convinced because those synergy targets could be pretty aggressive.
- 10:26Speaker 5: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 10:33Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 10:36Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
- 10:39Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
- 10:43Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 10:47Speaker 7: One of the stock story's been following today's Eli Lilly
- 10:50Speaker 7: some Morgan news on some of their obesity work there.
- 10:53Speaker 7: The stocks up three point four percent today of thirty
- 10:56Speaker 7: three percent year to date.
- 10:57Speaker 8: I forgot.
- 10:57Speaker 2: This thing's got a monster market caply nine hundred and
- 11:01Speaker 2: seventy billion dollar market kept, so just extraordinary. There a
- 11:04Speaker 2: big winner.
- 11:05Speaker 5: Madison Muller, she is Bloomberg News reporter.
- 11:08Speaker 2: She's been following this space, Madison joints us here in
- 11:11Speaker 2: our studio, Madison, what's going on with Lily? Here? They
- 11:13Speaker 2: got some more good news today.
- 11:14Speaker 9: More good news for Lily. That's sort of been the
- 11:16Speaker 9: theme of the last year. I mean, Lily has really
- 11:18Speaker 9: surpassed its rival Novo Nordisk in terms of developing these
- 11:22Speaker 9: next generation weight loss drugs that can be potentially easier
- 11:25Speaker 9: to take, easier to manufacture, elicit more weight loss than
- 11:29Speaker 9: Wigovi and Zepbound, which are the shots that are currently
- 11:31Speaker 9: on the market. And so Lily has a shot or
- 11:34Speaker 9: a pill potentially coming next year. And then this shot
- 11:37Speaker 9: read a true Tide, which is a triple agonist. It
- 11:39Speaker 9: relies on three different hormones rather than just two or
- 11:43Speaker 9: one like GLP ones that we all know so well,
- 11:46Speaker 9: and so great results this morning for them, up to
- 11:49Speaker 9: twenty three percent weight loss in a study, which is
- 11:52Speaker 9: the most of really any of the shots that we've
- 11:54Speaker 9: seen yet.
- 11:55Speaker 5: I'm doing the math here twenty three. Wow, you make
- 11:59Speaker 5: John skinny again?
- 12:00Speaker 9: Yes, exactly right, I gues it's like it's a quarter
- 12:02Speaker 9: of someone's body weight almost.
- 12:04Speaker 5: It's pretty incredible.
- 12:05Speaker 2: Just give me unintended consequences there. I just feel like it.
- 12:08Speaker 5: I don't know it does.
- 12:10Speaker 4: In Madison story, it's said that participants on the highest
- 12:13Speaker 4: dose experience of more than sixty two percent reduction in
- 12:16Speaker 4: knee pain. And I feel like when people think of weight,
- 12:19Speaker 4: most of them associated with vanity or just looks, but
- 12:22Speaker 4: for others it could really mean health changes and lifestyle improvements, and.
- 12:27Speaker 9: Totally that's a really important part of this.
- 12:29Speaker 5: And the market.
- 12:29Speaker 4: In your story, also you say that it's expected to
- 12:31Speaker 4: hit one hundred billion dollars by twenty thirty.
- 12:34Speaker 9: Right, And a lot of that is exactly what you
- 12:36Speaker 9: were saying, that this is more than just I mean,
- 12:39Speaker 9: for some people, they are going out there and looking
- 12:41Speaker 9: to lose a couple of hoss. But in terms of
- 12:43Speaker 9: you know, reasons for why insurers should cover these drugs
- 12:46Speaker 9: and reasons why these drugs are expected to be such
- 12:48Speaker 9: a big market is because they are helping people with other,
- 12:51Speaker 9: you know, important health issues like heart disease, knee pain.
- 12:55Speaker 9: Lily's studying this drug in liver disease or kidney disease
- 12:58Speaker 9: and heart disease and all of these things that are
- 13:01Speaker 9: linked to weight loss. But there is also potentially some
- 13:04Speaker 9: weight loss independent reduction of inflammation and things like that.
- 13:07Speaker 9: So these drugs are working in pretty incredible ways. They're
- 13:10Speaker 9: also setting them now in addiction and things like alcohol
- 13:14Speaker 9: use disorder. So there's just so much here, and that
- 13:17Speaker 9: is a really important piece of this.
- 13:19Speaker 2: So I guess the end all be off for these
- 13:21Speaker 2: pharmaceutical companies asn't relate to this particular area. Is I
- 13:26Speaker 2: guess to get it into a form that more people
- 13:28Speaker 2: can use ipill, maybe reduce side effects, but most importantly
- 13:33Speaker 2: at an affordable cost. Is there an expectation that those
- 13:37Speaker 2: three things can happen at some point over the next
- 13:39Speaker 2: several years.
- 13:39Speaker 9: Yeah, and I mean they are starting to happen. That's
- 13:41Speaker 9: one of the things that Trump administration actually struck a
- 13:44Speaker 9: deal with Novo and Lily to lower the cost of
- 13:47Speaker 9: some of these medications beginning next year. There's also efforts
- 13:51Speaker 9: from the pharmaceutical companies themselves to lower the direct to
- 13:54Speaker 9: consumer cash pay prices so that people who don't have
- 13:57Speaker 9: insurance coverage for these drugs, which is still a lot
- 14:00Speaker 9: of people can get them metamore affordable price. So that's
- 14:03Speaker 9: brought down the costs from over one thousand dollars a
- 14:06Speaker 9: month to more like two hundred three hundred dollars a month,
- 14:09Speaker 9: and so there are some of those efforts. Part of
- 14:11Speaker 9: the Trump administration deal was also that the lowest dose
- 14:14Speaker 9: of the pills, which are expected to start rolling out
- 14:17Speaker 9: within the next couple of months next year, they'll start
- 14:20Speaker 9: at one hundred and fifty dollars a month. So that's
- 14:22Speaker 9: also pretty steep reduction from where the prices are at currently.
- 14:26Speaker 4: We see investors really cheer this move today. But how
- 14:29Speaker 4: high are the stakes is if they fail? Because it's
- 14:31Speaker 4: experimental and I'm not the expert on this, but it's still.
- 14:35Speaker 5: Experimental exactly, and the stakes are high.
- 14:37Speaker 9: And we've seen because the drugs that are currently on
- 14:40Speaker 9: the market with Goovi and Zebound are so good and
- 14:42Speaker 9: they work so well, that the stakes for developing next
- 14:46Speaker 9: generation drugs are higher. I mean, you have to get
- 14:49Speaker 9: more weight loss than the drugs that are currently on
- 14:51Speaker 9: the market. And at the same time, the safety risks
- 14:53Speaker 9: are really real. We don't want drugs that are going
- 14:56Speaker 9: to give someone even more health problems. I mean, of
- 14:58Speaker 9: course always, but the sort of risk benefit analysis with
- 15:01Speaker 9: weight loss drugs are different, and that's one of the
- 15:04Speaker 9: things that we begin to see too with some of
- 15:06Speaker 9: these next generation compounds. Amjin, for example, has a drug
- 15:10Speaker 9: that had really high rates of side effects. It's supposed
- 15:12Speaker 9: to be a once monthly drug, but investors haven't loved
- 15:15Speaker 9: that one because of the high rates of side effects.
- 15:18Speaker 9: In Lily's trial today, there were pretty high rates of
- 15:21Speaker 9: side effects as well. People were having some weird like
- 15:24Speaker 9: nerve pain tingling sensations and then the classic nausea, vomiting,
- 15:29Speaker 9: constipation that are seene with these drugs, and so that's
- 15:32Speaker 9: a really important piece to watch as well.
- 15:34Speaker 2: Thirty seconds and asking for a friend hair loss drugs
- 15:37Speaker 2: once that that's gonna be the next week.
- 15:38Speaker 9: I mean, they're kind of starting to be out there already.
- 15:41Speaker 9: A lot of these companies too, like Hymns and Hers
- 15:44Speaker 9: and a lot of these telehealth companies are really going
- 15:46Speaker 9: hard on the hair loss drugs.
- 15:48Speaker 4: Wow.
- 15:49Speaker 2: I mean I went to like had at dinner with
- 15:51Speaker 2: some of my high school buddies recently. It was grim.
- 15:53Speaker 5: It was grim. I mean, I'm just laying it out there.
- 15:56Speaker 4: They can go to Turkey, yes, or the hair loss
- 15:58Speaker 4: drugs they are gender neutral. Is that the right fra?
- 16:02Speaker 1: Yeah?
- 16:02Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
- 16:03Speaker 9: And there are some I mean Hymns and Hers has
- 16:05Speaker 9: some products that they've developed specifically for women and they
- 16:08Speaker 9: have different formulations like shampoo, whatever. So people are, you know,
- 16:12Speaker 9: more comfortable with different products.
- 16:15Speaker 5: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 16:22Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 16:26Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
- 16:29Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
- 16:33Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 16:36Speaker 5: Let's take a look.
- 16:37Speaker 2: One of the questions that I think the FED has,
- 16:40Speaker 2: I think investors have is how's the US consumer doing
- 16:43Speaker 2: out there?
- 16:44Speaker 5: And there's a lot of ways we try to get
- 16:45Speaker 5: to that.
- 16:46Speaker 2: We talked to Michael Halean he covers all the restaurants
- 16:48Speaker 2: for Bloomberg Intelligence to talk to analysts who cover different
- 16:52Speaker 2: parts of the economy and see how their companies are
- 16:55Speaker 2: kind of talking about the consumer. One of the folks
- 16:57Speaker 2: we like to talk to is Lindsay, Dutch consumer Hardlinei's
- 17:00Speaker 2: senior analysts for Bloomberg Intelligence think, you know, I think
- 17:03Speaker 2: companies like Best Buy, Dixboarding Goods, that kind of thing,
- 17:07Speaker 2: the hard lines, lindsay, talk to us about how your
- 17:10Speaker 2: stocks performed in twenty twenty five and what's the expectation
- 17:14Speaker 2: for twenty twenty six for some of those hardline rekillers.
- 17:17Speaker 8: Hi, Paul, thanks for having me. I think if you
- 17:20Speaker 8: look at, you know, the guidance for the rest of
- 17:23Speaker 8: the year, I think a lot of these big hardline
- 17:25Speaker 8: companies are baking in a lot of uncertainty with the consumer.
- 17:29Speaker 8: But the reality is that if we look back, you know,
- 17:32Speaker 8: to performance to date and results to date, results have
- 17:36Speaker 8: you know, largely been better than expected. And and a
- 17:39Speaker 8: lot of these retailers are sort of tracking to the
- 17:43Speaker 8: upper half of their guidance range for the year because
- 17:46Speaker 8: that consumer has stayed pretty pretty resilient. You know, we
- 17:49Speaker 8: see strength you know, continuing to come from that higher
- 17:52Speaker 8: income consumer, while the lower income might be you know,
- 17:55Speaker 8: continuing to pull back a little bit. And if you
- 17:57Speaker 8: think about companies like best Buy, All, Tom Williams, Sonoma,
- 18:01Speaker 8: Dick Spoarding Goods, you know they are bringing you know,
- 18:04Speaker 8: premium products, new products, exclusive products to that consumer, and
- 18:08Speaker 8: the consumers are willing to pay up for that.
- 18:12Speaker 4: What was the one trend that shocked you this year?
- 18:14Speaker 4: Now that you look.
- 18:14Speaker 8: Back, I think a lot of the trends have been
- 18:17Speaker 8: a continuation of what we've been seeing. I think, you know,
- 18:21Speaker 8: if we go back to late twenty twenty two, that
- 18:24Speaker 8: is when the first pullback in that discretionary spend has been.
- 18:28Speaker 8: But this is the first year that we've seen more newness,
- 18:32Speaker 8: and newness is really a key driver to getting consumers
- 18:37Speaker 8: in the store and to fueling transactions. So the best
- 18:40Speaker 8: retailers are getting both transaction and ticket growth. But I
- 18:45Speaker 8: think those innovation pipelines that maybe we're you know, settled
- 18:49Speaker 8: down a bit during COVID, they've picked up again and
- 18:53Speaker 8: bringing more newness is driving those transactions.
- 18:56Speaker 2: How promotional do you think retailers will be in twenty
- 19:00Speaker 2: twenty six to kind of drive the consumer to the
- 19:03Speaker 2: store or to the mouse to click.
- 19:07Speaker 8: So promotions are very important to bring shoppers to the store,
- 19:12Speaker 8: you know, especially for someone like a best Buy. You know,
- 19:15Speaker 8: promotions are very key, especially around holiday. We have seen
- 19:19Speaker 8: that promotions are about flat, you know, in twenty five
- 19:22Speaker 8: versus twenty four, and I would sort of expect a
- 19:25Speaker 8: continuation of that in twenty six unless we see a
- 19:29Speaker 8: huge spike in demand, in which case the retailers might
- 19:31Speaker 8: be able to pull back on that promotional lever a
- 19:34Speaker 8: little bit. But this year so far it's been about flat.
- 19:38Speaker 8: You do see companies like a William's Sonoma very select promotions.
- 19:42Speaker 8: This has been a strategy coming out of COVID. They
- 19:45Speaker 8: sort of have stuck with it. They're even sticking with it,
- 19:48Speaker 8: you know, through this season going into next year. Pottery
- 19:51Speaker 8: Barn was a big focus for them. You know, they
- 19:54Speaker 8: need a rebound in that brand and growth is slowly
- 19:57Speaker 8: coming back, but they are staying steadfast and keeping those
- 20:00Speaker 8: promotions very limited.
- 20:03Speaker 4: I was going through your notes and then I read
- 20:04Speaker 4: that many retailers are resuming or accelerating brick and mortar
- 20:08Speaker 4: expansion plants because this leads to installing online sales. And
- 20:12Speaker 4: that's just kind of the reverse trend that I was expecting.
- 20:14Speaker 4: But you made a point that gen Z shows a
- 20:16Speaker 4: strong preference for in person shopping. Can you talk to
- 20:19Speaker 4: us more about that and how each generation is different.
- 20:23Speaker 8: Sure, Yeah, in store shopping is definitely back and just
- 20:28Speaker 8: meeting the consumer where they are. So retailers, I think
- 20:32Speaker 8: are more focused on all channels, whether it's said whether
- 20:37Speaker 8: they have an app, they're online site, their brick and
- 20:39Speaker 8: mortar stores, but brick and mortar as a whole. You know,
- 20:43Speaker 8: we are seeing more openings than closings, and that has
- 20:46Speaker 8: been a trend for the past couple of years. But
- 20:49Speaker 8: when we think about sort of the retail real estate market,
- 20:51Speaker 8: the demand has been solid coming out of COVID and
- 20:54Speaker 8: so vacancy is starting to get low and there's really
- 20:57Speaker 8: no new properties being built. So these retailer was looking
- 21:00Speaker 8: to expand, which is great for their businesses. You know,
- 21:04Speaker 8: they really have to work hard to do so and
- 21:06Speaker 8: find good space to open stores because there's just not
- 21:09Speaker 8: that much of it. But best Buy has talked about
- 21:12Speaker 8: gen Z's preference for in store shopping, so has Alta
- 21:15Speaker 8: Beauty and and so we're definitely seeing that across the board,
- 21:20Speaker 8: but especially that younger generation.
- 21:22Speaker 2: There's plenty of retail space on Lexinton Avenue and fifty
- 21:24Speaker 2: eighth streetment. Lindsay John from The Highlands rights in and
- 21:28Speaker 2: you want to ask about the beauty segment Atlantic Islands.
- 21:31Speaker 5: Atlantic stones confuse the two the Atlantic Islands, Alta Beauty,
- 21:35Speaker 5: ELF Beauty. So for how how does that category look for.
- 21:38Speaker 2: Twenty twenty six.
- 21:40Speaker 8: So demand has showed a strengthening sort of in the
- 21:44Speaker 8: back half of twenty five. I think that momentum can
- 21:48Speaker 8: continue into twenty six. I think for Alta in particular,
- 21:51Speaker 8: they have done a great job, you know, bringing elevating
- 21:55Speaker 8: their assortment and bringing on exclusives and that has really
- 21:58Speaker 8: helped them. Comps are going to get tougher next year
- 22:02Speaker 8: and they need to continue to drive growth and I
- 22:05Speaker 8: think for them, you know, leaning into their salon services
- 22:08Speaker 8: could be a key way to do that. Leaning into
- 22:10Speaker 8: wellness is a key way to do that. There's multiple
- 22:13Speaker 8: levers that they can pull. The categories that are showing
- 22:17Speaker 8: the most strength is really fragrance and skincare, and we
- 22:21Speaker 8: would expect that demand to continue into next year.
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