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Lots of news in crypto today, Gray Scale Investments filed publicly for an IPO. It's the latest crypto link company to test public markets under an administration more open to digital assets from one on crypto and bitcoin and bitcoin mining specifically joining us now and aam familiar to our audience. Eric Trump is the co founder and chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin. It's a publicly traded bitcoin mining and treasury company. It's got a market cap around four point
four billion dollars. The company started trading on the Nasdaq back on September third, when it merged with a microcap shares. It a high on September ninth. They're down around forty seven percent since then. Eric, of course, also the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He joins US from Florida. Eric, Good to have you on the program again. How are you guys?
Great to be on.
So if somebody wants exposure to bitcoin, why would they do that through American Bitcoin rather than just buying bitcoin out right on an exchange or even through an ETF.
Yeah, that's a great question. And maybe you go out and you buy bitcoin on ETF or you buy it an exchange. You kind of have one to one bitcoin. Right you go out and you buy one bitcoin, you're always going to have one bigcoin. Our entire ethos is increasing bigcoin per share right now, every day we're mining bitcoin, we're miney bitcoin at at roughly fifty percent of Spot prices a bitcoin, so roughly about fifty six thousand dollars
per bitcoin. That's what we're able to mine in. We're able to mind because we have the best facilities anywhere on Earth. We've got some of the cheapest energy anywhere on Earth. We do it in America, we do it in West Texas. Right now, our average costs to produce a bitcoin is roughly fifty six thousand dollars, and we're mining bitcoin twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
By doing that, you're able to increase bitcoin per share, right, and that's the ultimate metric that we chase every single day. How do you increase the amount of bitcoin you have per share you have of stock? And I think we can do that clearly. If you go buy on a one to one basis, you don't have that ability to do. And that's the one metric that we track every single day, and that's the one metric that we try and improve
every single day. And we've done all hung job, guys, I mean we you know, this public was founded on March thirteenth, I'm sorry, March thirty first, roughly five months later, five months and three days to be exact, we were listed on the NASDAC under ABTC.
We're less than three.
Months old having been listed, and we're already well sour past four thousand bitcoin that have either mined or that we've accumulated, making us the twenty fifth largest BTC public treasury company in the world, and we're climbing that ladder very quickly every single day. So I couldn't be more
proud of what we've been able to accomplish. And you know, everything they do said, I think you mentioned four billion dollar market cap and again, we've been listed for less than three months and growing, you know, growing by by, you know, kind of with lightning speed.
You mentioned the cheapest source of energy in mining that bitcoin. Last time we spoke back in September, we had a discussion about wind energy that that powers some of this mining. Is it still wind that's powering the mining operations for American bitcoin?
There's different sources, but certainly when there was a defunct wind farm, you know, the guys over at HOWT eight, which our sister company, were able to lock into incredibly cheap energy because frankly, it wasn't being utilized, because it wasn't being pumped at the grid and lock into a very cheap contract for a very long period of time. And so we've got unbelievable renewable energy that we're using to mine our our our bitcoin. But you can see a lot of other energy sources.
Come on.
I mean, we're on the the energy revolution in this country. I think you guys know that better than anybody. Look at oil, looking gas, you know, the policies are working. Look at these SMRs, look at you know kind of fusion reactions.
Well, well wait a minute, Eric, because SMRs, I mean we do know. We're on it every day, and these small modular reactors, none of them are up and running. And anybody we talk to you who understands the nuclear industry says it it'll take a few years to get them up and running.
You go, oh, guys, absolutely, don't. Don't think that I'm saying that they're up and running by by any means. What I'm saying is we're in the heyday, you know, of power and power exploration in this country right now. You have an administration that's held bent on on making sure you know, this country has incredibly cheap power.
Well, that's really interesting.
Let me just jump in there, because we've done a deep analysis into the cost of electricity in twenty twenty five. Electricity cost a pen far more on where you're located, and a lot of it has to do with the AI build out and the cost of those data centers and tapping into the networks. You talk about Texas, I'm curious what you're paying per megawat an hour in Houston right now. It's twenty five dollars. It has gone up a lot since twenty twenty. If you go back to
twenty twenty, it was seventeen dollars per hour. I mean, you know, those elections. I don't want to get political, but those elections. I mean part of it was electricity prices that people Americans have had enough.
Caroly, you can't be serious, and honestly, I don't want to argue on Bloomberg. It's not what I came here to do. I've got plenty of things to do in my daily life. You had the last administration that had the greatest war on energy that we've ever seen in the country. Right You had an administration that was literally shutting down oiling gas exploration daily.
They were shutting it down daily.
They were cutting every pipeline, they were stopping every pipeline from being built. I mean, which ones do you want me to name? I could go through a list of fifteen of them. In fact, it was Joe Biden's first executive order to shut down the Keystone Pipeline. They shut down all permitting, they shut down all transmission of oiling gas. There was a war on energy in this country the
likes of which you've never seen before. You know, we went from being energy independent under my father, where we're exporting energy to countries all around the world to being energy dependent under Joe don't even don't even try and say, you know that we're not seeking the lowest cost energies.
They had power plants that they were trying to build for a fifteen year period of time, nuclear power plants, and guess what at the end of them, Joe Biden's administration would turn them down and deny them the permits for nuclear energy. Right, my father is hell bent on making this country energy And the reason, hold on, please let me finish.
The reason he's hell bent on it is if you track.
GDP, any GDP growth around the world, and you directly correlate that with energy costs, they're one hundred percent correlated. The lower your energy costs are for production of energy, the higher your GDP costs are. We have to win the war on cryptocurrency, we have to win the war on AI. We have to win these for our national security. We have to win these because we're the United States of America and we're the number one superpower.
We must lead the way.
We need energy generation and my father is hell bent of getting that through every single form, whether it's an actual gas and we're drilling, remember the slow and we're drilling again and we're exploring again, Eric, and nuclear power plants are getting permits again, which was not happening other So please don't, please, please don't talk to me about affordability. When you had an administration, they did everything they could the cross energy prices for a four year period of time.
Eric, I respect your position and opinion on this, but I also will say that you know, the US is the largest oil producer that's out there. I want to go back to your company because on mining, we learned today that bitfarms it's one of the largest cryptocurrency miners. Set of plans to wind down those operations over the next two years, focus on providing infrastructure to generate power
for artificial intelligence applications. We continue to see that a growing list of bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI and high performance compute services as profit margin shrink due in part to those falling prices of the tokens are the digital tokens that.
Are out there?
Do you have any plans for American bitcoin to pivot away from bitcoin mining into artificial intelligence?
Now the exact opposite. We're only going to ramp up. We're going to ramp up every single day. I mean, Carol, you mentioned following prices. Let me just kind of hit on this one for you. You know, guess what biitcoin prices were exactly two years ago from today. I'll tell you because you would know, thirty six thousand, five hundred was the cost of a bigcoin two years ago. We are up one hundred and eighty percent in a twenty
four month period the spot price of BTC. It's probably the number one performing asset you know, of any asset.
And this is this coming.
From a guy who believes in hard assets, right. I mean, I run one of the great real estate portfolio is anywhere in the world. Cryptocurrency is absolutely on fire. Cryptocurrency is taking on the well.
Bitcoin is up this year by about five percent, the S and P is up fifteen percent, the Nazeq one hundreds up twenty percent, Gold is up plus this year.
No, I'm just saying, do.
You want to reverse hold on, Carol? Do you want do you want to reverse that? I mean, do you want to go back two years? You want to go back three years, you want to go back five years, you want to go back ten years. Prices to smartly have gone up on average of about seventy percent a year year over year for the last ten year period of time. All I'm saying is, if you invested in BTC two years ago, is probably the best investment you
could have made. If you made invested BTC five years ago, you know, you're sitting on.
Infinite amounts of money. Right.
BTC has been probably the highest performing asset of the last decade.
Right.
And now also with BTC comes volatility. With crypto comes volatility. Volatility is our friend. Volatility is something that should be harnessed, right, and and so I think Bitcoin is going to continue to massively overperform the you know the markets. Of course, you're going to have drawdowns, right, I mean every cycle
has drawdowns. You're seeing you were talking about in Navidia, you know in the intro click to to introducing me today and how they're down four percent to this one large companies on Earth, if not the largest company on Earth, Right, I mean, that's down four percent.
You're going to have draw downs and things. That's that's life.
Now.
Look at the historical performance of an asset, and nothing has compared to what Bitcoin is.
Totally understand markets, the ups and downs, and sometimes the downs are an indication of either even moving down further. Hey, one thing I want to ask you is, I think you're on with Bloomberg. Back in September, you owned about seven and a half percent of the company. Has that number change because it sounds I can hear your conviction. It sounds like it's a long term conviction when it comes to the digital world and bitcoin in particular.
So are you buying more shares?
That number has not changed at all.
I have every share that I started this company with, and I plan to for you know, a long time to come. I love it, I believe in it. I think the people that we're doing it with are the smartest people in the world. We've got some of the greatest energy contracts, We've got the most sophisticated facilities, and guys, what I'll tell you. You know, I spent a lot of time all over the world. I think you know that from our real estate projects.
Everywhere.
Everybody wants cryptocurrency, everybody believes in cryptocurrency. Everybody's tremendously worried about their respective governments, everybody's tremendously worried about their respective financial systems. Especially when you leave the United States, you know, people in so many countries around the world, they get paid, you know, they may as well burn that paycheck because of inflation. It absolutely kills them all of a sudden, you know kind of You know, bitcoin is digital gold.
People believe in it. It's a great asset. It's an asset that can't be inflated. It's an asset.
They'll only have twenty one million coins.
Ever, you know, if the price of gold ever went to forty thousand bucks an ounce, guys, I would tear down this building and I would find gold in the columns. I'd find gold in the concrete. Right, you're going to you're gonna you know, you're going to dig deeper, and you're going to go farther, and you're going to spend more money. You know, so you're never going to actually have caps supply. With bitcoin, you have cap supply. And I can tell you whether it's Asia, whether it's Middle East,
whether it's South America. You know, there is a longingness, you know, to treasury bitcoin, and you're seeing that from even some of the very biggest companies in the United States. They're putting it on their balance sheets in ways that they've never done before. Because they believe in digital assets and and they you know, they believe in the attributes of them, right, you know, and again, I'm a real estate guy.
I love assets.
But think about something that's you know, transferable twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
Think about something that lobal. Think about something that's easier to transport.
You do love assets, and you guys, your family is so entrenched obviously in real estate.
You think Trump, you think real estate.
But I'm just curious, if you had to choose between owning real estate or bitcoin, what.
Would it be both both?
No?
No, no, no, you have to choose. Come on, Eric, You're smart.
I grew up. I grew up when I was eleven years old on construction sites. Right.
I clearly love tangible assets and I believe in them, and I think bitcoin is is the greatest heage toward those tangible assets. You know that there is what I will tell you is, in any place other than the
United States, I would probably take cryptocurrency. I mean, imagine if you lived in one of various South American countries or one of you know, various you know, African kind of countries that have instability where government can come in at any time and steal your house, steal your piece of property, steal your hotel.
Right, you don't have a chance. You know, you don't.
You don't have that problem with bitcoin. You don't have that asset problem with either assets. That's you know, that's that's literally qualified on Ledger twenty four hours a day. So there's there's a real need for this asset class
around the world. And by the way, even in the United States, I mean, guys, I became one of the most debanked persons, you know people, you know American history, for having never done anything wrong, you know, operating great golf courses, operating great residential buildings, condominium associations, hotels, right, and all of that got pulled out from under me because my father happened to wear a hat.
I wasn't a politician, and I've never been politician. I've never worked for the government.
We're wearing a hat that said make America great again. All of a sudden, I start getting canceled left and right. You know the interesting thing about crypto, you know, technology, blockchain, pain technology, digital assets, digital wallets, can't cancel them, you can't take them away, right, And that's a few lifful thing and there's a flight to safety. There's a flight to safety that a lot of people in America have a harder time appreciating. Albeit when people see what happened
to us, they can appreciate more. But a lot of people around the world can really appreciate. I think if you lived in a lot of the Asian countries, you'd appreciate it. I think if you lived lived in a lot of places, and let me ask, just say here in Africa, you probably appreciate that.
Now I understand what you're saying. And I think, you know, we've been talking about cryptocurrencies for a long long time here at Bloomberg, and I think time will tell whether or not, Uh, this is something that becomes well entrenched within our financial system because at this point people are still buying things like stocks and bonds.
No, I do.
But what I wanted to ask you is, and I think it's something that we talked about in our planning call. Do you do you feel like, you know, Tim asked about, you know, maybe the advantage of you know, buying into your company versus maybe a micro strategy or something else.
Do you feel like you.
Guys do have an advantage because of your proximity to the White House. And I asked this full disclosure. When we talk about paramount's guidance, we say the same thing because we know that David Ellison certainly is looked upon favorably by the White House when it comes to maybe doing another acquisition. So do you think you have a little bit of an advantage?
Yeah, Carol, it's such a frustrating question.
Now, you know my advantage is are our advantage with American Bigcoin is we can mind bigcoin at fifty cents on the dollar roughly, you know, and we're mining bigcoin every single day any other And by the way, Michael is a very close friend of mine, and there's no person in the world you know, virtually that I respect more. He's an amazing human being, an incredible visionary and everything he's accomplished. Our advantage to mining bitcoin is every single day we mind a lot of bitcoin, and we do
so for fifty cents on the dollar. But wedn't even another commodity you can do that with right every other treasury company virtually out there, they have to go buy bitcoin at the spot price at bitcoin that day. I can effectively go out right now and mine bitcoin at
fifty percent of that number. I can also go out and I can acquire bitcoin and American bitcoin, can go out and acquire bitcoin at spot prices and guess what, as I do that, I can also yield manage down pricing, you know, based on the bigcoin that we mine each and every day. Obviously, the amount that you can mine is somewhat finite, even though our mining operations are growing on a daily basis. But that's a great advantage that
I believe we have. We can increase the amount of bitcoin for share of our shareholders, and we do, and that's why we're growing as quickly as we are.
So I clearly believe in our strategy. I'm really really proud that you.
Understand why you do.
Understand why we ask it, right, I mean full disclosure, like we try to be as so many.
So many of the questions here I've just been. I understand clearly where you stand, right but you know it's not snow shock to me. I understand why you're asking the question. I also understand that I have absolutely nothing to do with the federal government. I want nothing to
do with the federal government. I have no internactional with the federal government when it comes to crypto policy, I stay in my own damn lane, and my lane is operating the greatest hospitality company on Earth, an operating company that I truly believe in with every ounce of my heart and soul, which is what we're doing with bitcoin,
which again historically has been an incredible asset. He eric when I hear so when I hear questions about how you know somebody could possibly argue that that Biden had better energy policies for the United States than the Donald Trump, like like, give.
Me, give me a p I didn't argue that.
I just you know, we are we are a data driven company, and so I look at Databata apartment.
Give me, give me the data.
Give me one quantifiable metric where Joe Biden was a better energy president.
Donald Trump, you can't Well, they just can't.
Well, I will see.
Who president on the first day of his term cancel every pipeline, including the Keystone Xcel pipeline, which is why every gas pump in the United States of America had a little sticker on us saying I did that. And there's a picture of Joe Biden pointing to the price of gas. Please spare me this conversation. You've got some of the lowest gas prices in the history of our country.
They're coming down every single day. You've got an administration that are putting through permits for nuclear reactors like their pays, because we need it if we're going to be successful. Based on all the metrics site I gave you, no one can credibly tell me. You know, as these guys build the build wind farms in the middle of nowhere that aren't even plugged into the grid.
I mean, and I say that with all due respect Carrol.
Now I know, I know, and I don't want to argue.
I mean, but there's a reason that you know, WTI crewed is below sixty dollars a barrel. And you know, you know, the oil giants will talk and they'll say, listen.
We're only going to d.
We're only going to do it if it makes sense, if the if the price of oil goes up, because there is you know, balance sheets, there's going to be a cost of drilling and doing exploration, and they're not going to do it unless the price of oil, whether the demand is there, and as.
There is oiler do you think any of it has anything to do with the transportation of oil. Right when when you're shutting down pipelines every single day, you know what else is affecting price the fact that you can't move something that's naturally heavy, right, And that's what Joe Biden was doing.
It was the biggest It was the biggest.
War on oil and gas, all for the purpose of creating ev cars that the consumers around this country did not want to buy. I mean, how many billions of dollars did they spend building four charging stations in the middle of absolutely nowhere, you know, under Pete boudha Jed your transportation sectary, who is completely competent.
All right, I don't want I don't want to get too political, but anyway, listen, in five years, what do you hope your company is just to wrap up?
Where do where do you see?
It's its role?
Yeah, I'm glad we came back to this.
Thank you. I think we're gonna create one of the great bigcoin companies anywhere in America.
We're sending the ladder very quickly. I think I mentioned that.
You know we're under three months old, and you know we're a twenty fifth largest public bitcoin Treasury Company on all the lists, and we're sending that list very quickly. We just passed GEM and I very good friends of ours, the Winkle Losses, who you know, they actually invested in America Bitcoin and they're good friends of ours.
And it seems like every day we're kind of climbing another step up that ladder.
I think we're doing it well. I think we're doing which my disheart and soul. I think we're doing it here in the United States of America. I think that's film rapic to this country. And uh, you know, we need to lead the world in the financial you know, digital financial revolution. Bigcoin is clearly leading that charge right now based on based on market cap and uh and I'm very very proud of the company.
We're building and the speed of our growth right and I think we're going to I'm.
Sure all that financial execs too like this probably played into it, possibly as well as regulatory stuff when they were there at the White House. It's all coming at us. Hey, Eric, thank you so much, really appreciate it. We went around and around, and I'm glad we were able to cover a lot of ground. Eric Trump, co founder, chief strategy Officer of American Bitcoin in Executi, vice president of the Trump Organization, joining us there in Florida.
Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five e's during this listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
As you know, we've got to sell off on Wall Street traders bracing for a wave of economic releases after the US government shutdown ended.
It has driven those stocks and bonds lower.
A concern on whether the data that we ultimately get from the US government is they play catch up and then start to get back on schedule. Whether or not it clears the way for another cut by the US Central Bank, it's kind of in question right now.
Another thing in question is just what this economy looks like. So we're hearing from different companies, and we're hearing different things. The latest Verizon discussing plans to announce job cuts across the company next week. This according to people familiar with the plans, the move a major step in a transformation led by new CEO Dan Shulman. Nonetheless, Carol, it's another example of another big company cutting some jobs.
Yeah, exactly. And then you do have FED speakers out there. A Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco president Mary to Hilly said it's too soon to decide whether policymakers should lower interest rates in December.
Here's where we are.
Let's see what Elizabeth Renter has to say. She's senior economist over at nerd Wallet. She's with us from Durham, North Carolina. Hey Elizabeth, good to be talking with you once again. So what conviction, first of all, do you have in making calls on the US economy, on the US labor market, on inflation.
Hey, well, thanks for having me again.
You know, it's tough to make sense of what's going on in the economy right now because the access to data is so limited. We're looking at private data sources and trying to infer what the BLS would have said over the past several weeks.
And that's difficult. That's not to say it's brand new, right.
Myself and the FED and economists across the country have been looking at private data sources in addition to federal data sources for some time. We're just having to put more weight on them now than we would have.
I do think that just want to jump in.
What private data sources are the ones to you that are most important? What do you think tells the fullest story?
Yeah, well, I think when it comes to the labor market, there's several great private data sources. So the ADP is a reliable data source. But all of these private data sources have unique caveats. They're measuring slightly different things, and you need to take that into consideration. So ADP misses
government jobs entirely. They are more likely to overstate the number of jobs being added to the economy right now because they're not catching federal jobs for example, which we know is a big item this year, entirely in twenty twenty five.
Then you have a source like Revellio Labs.
They're another solid source of labor market data, but they're searching job profiles, professional profiles, so there may be a delay in their data because they're catching if you're open to work on LinkedIn for example. Putting all of these together takes a little more work than just looking at the jobs report every month, but I think that's what we have to do in.
The current environment.
All right, So labor market just quickly, how do you see it?
Solid but gradually cooling, which is I think in alignment with what FED share Pole said just a couple of weeks ago. You know, there is some weakness. Hiring is slow, but the unemployment rate, according to the Cleveland or the Chicago Fed now cast, remains in that four four and a half percent range, So not alarming. We are hearing a lot about layoffs in the headlines, but the headlines and what happens in practice or what would have been reflected in the BLS data are two different things.
All right.
Inflation, so I want to just point out. In an interview with MarketWatch published today, Cleveland FED President Beth Hammick said she's worried market participants might doubt the Fed's commitment to its two percent inflation target as the central bank continues to lower rates two percent that target and then where we are in terms of US inflation, how sticky it is as we get kind of closer to two percent but not quite there.
Well, I think we can so confidently say that inflation is high, it's above target, but it's not accelerating rapidly. So another source I look to for this one is the.
Cleveland FED now cast.
They compile data from commodity prices and other high frequency sources to estimate where the CPI would be, and it says that, you know, just that inflation is steadily high but not accelerating right now. I think expectations are in alignment, whether you're asking the FED or asking consumers.
Up in the short term is what people anticipate.
Right Inflation is going to remain above that target but then come down in the long term.
Can I just ask you, you know, I know, I understand that prices are not going up like they were a year, year and a half, two years ago. I get that, but they're also not going down. And I mean the reality of kind of what we're all paying for things?
Is this just it and that's just the way it is?
And why does it feel like we are still paying a lot for stuff? And is that a new reality that things are just costing more in today's society?
Well, I think there's several reasons for that right now this year, there are several sources of inflationary pressure, and we're seeing that we have seen that up until this point in the inflation data.
You know, the.
Impact of tariffs has kind of been trickling in, but also demand for services has kept services inflation high. I think also it's because we're all hyper attuned to it. You know, there's research out there that says after a period of high inflation, we're all going to be extra sensitive to inflation, and I think that also plays a role.
We're all we all have our eyes out for it, right, So, because inflation is higher than we'd like, it's going to be particularly paid in light of the recent high inflation period.
Elizabeth, I had an interesting conversation with somebody today about the Federal Reserve and just the idea of FED independence, and I'm curious about your view on this. Her argument to me was, we're starting to look at monetary policy in the United States that represents not necessarily monetary policy historically in the US, but one that's under more political
pressure than we've seen, at least in recent years. And to her, it's starting to look like something more out of the developing world, where Monterey policy is more politically influenced. I'm wondering your view on that.
I don't know if I would take that quite of a bleak look. I mean I believe the risk is there, you know. I think it was just earlier this week where bost It came out and said he plans on retiring next year, which opens up another seat on the FED. And the risk is always there that as an administration has undew influence on who is who takes a seat at those decision making tables, there could be more pressure than usual.
Do have pretty deep.
Faith in the independence of the FED and sort of the dedication to independent monetary policy that these people have in these positions, But I do think we have higher risks now than we did, say a couple of years ago.
Yeah, I mean, you know, part of I think confusion on maybe the part of investors when they're thinking about the data that's going to come and whether or not it provides conviction for another rate cut come December. The part of it is, I mean FED officials themselves are divided right on the best path ahead for interest rates due to high inflation and continued weakness in the labor market,
you know. So you know, it's a dual mandate that's tough when both parts of the mandate are tricky right now, right and maybe create some problems or would determine a different FED policy for each And you do wonder that debate and which voices are going to sound the loudest and perhaps have more swaite assuming feed your Jay Powells among them, But how we need to think about that in the next FED decision.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
So not only is the data pointing to the dual mandate sort of the two sides of the dual mandate being at odds, right, we still have high inflation and the labor market is cooling, but neither one of those things are sort.
Of at a tipping point.
Right. We're not seeing a skyrocketing unemployment rate, and inflation is not at target, but it's not alarmingly high.
So it makes sense that there's sort of more gray.
Area and people are going to fall on either side of these decisions a little bit more than they normally win.
But I think we got to go.
I think I do listen, there's a lot going on, and I guess as the data comes in ultimately, see, it is certainly an interesting time to be talking about the US economy, that is for sure.
Hey, Elizabeth, thank you so much. Elizabeth rent Or.
She's senior economist at Nerdwallet joining us from Durham at North Carolina.
Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five eas during Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch.
Us live on YouTube. We got another stock on our radar.
Yeah, another stock that's moving lower. In fact, there's a Disney down about eight percent. Shows that it's not so magical at least today in the Magic Kingdom shares the Wall Street our stands of the Walt Disney Company or either down the most into April. This is the company reported sales that fell short of Wall Street estimates and set a slate of big budget films, including the new Avatar picture Carol. Are going to weig on results for the first quarter of its new fiscal year.
Yeah, it's definitely played out in today's session. Hey, Disney CFO CHI financial Officer Hugh Johnston joined Bloomberg Television earlier. Today covered a variety of topics, including a succession plan for the current CEO, Bob Iker.
What the board is indicated is that will take place sometime during the first calendar quarter of twenty six. We report in in next February. Whether that'll be before or after, it'll be up to the board. But we should have it done by the end of March.
All right.
That again is Disney CFO Hugh Johnson. As he said, Disney expects to name a successor to Bob Iger by the end of March.
Keep in mind, Iger was there for a long time.
Named Bob or not one named Bob.
That's a good points, that's my question.
But it was Bob followed by Bob, followed by Bob.
But okay, Bob Iger there for a long time, considered kind of a mastermind in terms of CEOs and what he did with Disney. Then Bob Jpek came in and there was a lot of focus right on streaming and then things just.
Everybody about the succession last time Bob.
Iger came back exactly. Okay, So we'll see whether or not they have to be named Bob. Let's see what our get to bring. An ath On has to say. She's Bloomberg Intelligence senior media analyst. She's at BI headquarters in Princeton. We're going to talk succession in a moment, whether or not the next CEO Gita has to be named Bob. But more importantly, let's talk about the quarter that was and the outlook that is.
What do we need to know about earnings?
Yeah?
Quarter that was was fine. It was pretty much in line with expectations, Carol, I think what really has kind of spooked the street a little bit is guidance. Again, overall guidance for fiscal twenty twenty six seems to be okay. I think really what investors are having a hard time kind of wrapping their heads around is the fact that, you know, Fiscal one Q looks really soft, which means everything is going to get pushed to the back half
of fiscal twenty twenty six. And I think that's what's causing a lot of the nervousness that we're seeing today.
I want to go right to the successor. Disney board will name a successor to CEO Bob Iger.
Does it have to be named Bob?
Yeah?
I mean who's on the shortlist right now?
Yeah?
So, I mean the first big question, Tim was is this going to be an external candidate? Is there going to be an internal candidate? So it looks like initially when they started out, it was all for internal unit heads that were in the race. So we're talking ESPN's Jimmy Pittaro, we're talking Josh Tomorrow of the Parks, Dana Walden, and Alan Bergman from the Studio and Content division. It looks like that race has kind of now narrowed down
to two potential candidates. So we're looking at Dana Walden, who is a creative genius, and of course you have Josh Tomorrow, who is you know, who's headed Parks and as a Parks veteran, has an absolutely stellar track record there. So it's kind of going to come down to this internal question. Right, for Disney, the content is the start of everything. It is the source of everything, including you know, Parks.
Right.
The ip of Parks is all from the movies and all the other creatives that they have going on at film and TV. So again, which one is more important? The last time they had a Park's Guide that didn't go so well, so we'll have to wait and watch.
Yeah, you know, and right, they used to do things I remember like reporting on Disney Kidden like people would switch jobs, right the CFO with Parks, I think or something you know, as they were kind of like a CEO race, if you will, and let people kind of get another view of the company looking at Dana Walden, you know, coach chairman. Disney Entertainment does have a big portfolio.
Jimmy Kimmel when he spoke to Lucas Shaw earlier this year at Bloomberg's screen time, he was Jimmy Kimmel. That is incredibly complimentary of Dana Walden. Her name came up so much during that interview.
Yeah, that's a really good point. I didn't realize she Yeah, so she's done a lot of interesting things. Handmaid's Tale, Kardashians, only murders in the building.
So what does Disney need?
In your view?
You understand this space and kind of how media has continued to evolve in Disney's place within it, and Disney's not just media, but they are media content and kind of just putting it across their platforms.
What kind of CEO does Disney need?
They need somebody who can do everything right exactly is what Bob Iger has done. I mean, so these are some really big shoes to fill. I just wonder with kind of you know, obviously, Dana Walden really good at handling talent. You just brought up the Jimmy Kimmel controversy. I mean, you need to be able to have a lot of charisma, You need to be able to kind of work with a lot of these very very hard personalities in Hollywood. So I think Dana Walden definitely knows
her way around there. She obviously has a great reputation, a great track record. But at the same time, and you kind of look at the bread and butter of the business that is the parks business, and you have to kind of be an operations geek and an operations nerd to really get the day to day running at all of the parks, at all of the cruise ships, the vacation's properties, and of course Josh Tomorrow is the absolute superstar there. I really wonder whether they actually need
to have kind of a COSEO structure. I mean, we know Netflix has done that pretty successfully. Spotify is looking to do that starting in January, so you know, I think it could work. But then again, you know, it's also a recipe for disasters.
Hey, I love that. Maybe yeah, who knows, Well, maybe we'll find out just in a few months before we let you go in an environment where so many of these large media companies are shedding assets or combining to form new ones, are looking to buy more Disney's assets. Is it the right size right now? Does it need to shed any.
I don't think they need to shed anything, if at all something comes up. It's pretty much just the linear TV networks, but that is a smaller and smaller part of the business. As we kind of look at the portfolio, tim you just look at the theme parks business along with all of the cruises, and then you put streaming together. Just those two pieces of the business would be close about seventy to seventy five percent percent of earnings in twenty twenty fiscal twenty twenty six. So really those are
the big drivers in terms of earnings. I don't really think they need to shed anything, but of course the question is going to keep coming up whether they do need to kind of spin off their cable TV networks.
I love it that it's like though it comes down to like parks like being so important to the company. Hey, Gita, thank you, Thank you. Gita ringing Athon. She's senior media analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence.
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