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Hi, everyone, welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast. Well, this week records for US doocs inflation prints too, one that caused investors to more definitively price in a FED rate cut in September, and then a second one that
dialed those expectations back. And then yes, of course, geopolitics, including a meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Bloomberg News breaking the story late Thursday that the Trump administration is in talks with Intel to take a stake in the company in what would be a huge push to boost domestic chip making manufacturing. This is all according to people familiar with the plan. For the latest on this Bloomberg exclusive, head to the Bloomberg and to
Bloomberg dot Com. You also find there the cover story of the upcoming Bloomberg BusinessWeek issue, which is particularly prescient.
More on that in a moment.
Plus retail with Dana Telsey and concerns about critical minerals with the head of a mining company. Also an AI surge for bloom Energy, both of those stocks soaring this year. Later on, We're going to head to the Pebble Beach Concord des elegance, Oh that to come. We begin with this week's release of the cover story in the upcoming
new issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. It features US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, who talked to Bloomberg Treasury reporter Dan Flatley and Bloomberg's Eric Shatzker about growing up in South Carolina, working for George Soros and Stanley Drunken Miller and his path two the Trump White House and to not being head of the FED. Our interview with both reporters can be found on our podcast feed.
Well after the cover story was published, the Treasury Secretary stop by Bloomberg Headquarters in Studios this past week, joining surveillances Jonathan Farrow and Anne Marie Hordern to talk about everything chips, government data. He also suggested the federal reserves benchmark ought to be at least one hundred and fifty basis points lower than it is right now.
What if the BLS data had been the higher quality and we'd had those numbers, Jonathan, So if we'd seen those numbers in May in June, I suspect we could have had rate cuts in June and July. So that tells me that there's a very good chance of a fifty basis point rate cut. And I think President Trump is very good at giving these nicknames. And I think the reason that the Jay Powell gets a nickname too late is because he wants to go into a series
of rate hikes. He's not willing. He's not Alan Greenspan, who was very forward thinking. They try to be more data driven, which I think is a mistake because I think we are going back into an economy like we had in the nineties, So you know, it's just very old fashioned thinking. But I do think we could go into a series of rate cuts here, starting with a fifty basis point rate cut in September.
A fifty basis rate cut in September, does that signal that the economy, though, is not.
Doing well, that signals that there's an adjustment and that the rates are too constrictive.
If you look at any model, that the.
We should probably be one hundred and fifty one hundred and seventy five basis points lower. So I think the committee needs to step back. I think probably one of the most politicized governors just went off the board and that she was very, very political.
I believe that.
Was US Treasury Secretary Scott Besson with Bloomberg Jonathan Farrow and Anne Marie Hord during this past week. That complete conversation. They covered a lot. You can find it online at Bloomberg dot com and on the Bloomberg terminal.
As we mentioned earlier, Eric Shatzker, Bloomberg New Economy Editorial director and editor at large at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, was one of the co authors of the BusinessWeek cover story on Secretary Besson. So we asked Eric, along with Bloomberg International Economics and Policy correspondent Michael McKee, to do a debrief with us following Secretary Besons Bloomberg TV and radio interview.
Well, first and foremost, he is speaking on behalf of the president and trying to drive his agenda.
That is his job.
And the job of every cabinet secretary working for President Trump. In theory, it's the job of every cabinet secretary working for any president. But there has, it would appear, been room for a little more debate and disagreement in previous cabinets than there is in this cabinet. So that's number one, right.
It's a salesmanship job. He's out there advancing President's objectives, president's policies, and as we've seen, he's also a tool, if you will, for the President's negotiating style or even the manner in which he shapes public opinion, which is to drive people to extremes and then ultimately pull them back a little bit.
That was a big takeaway that I had, Eric from the cover story that you wrote with Dan was the risk tolerance for President Trump and the way that the Treasury Secretary talked about President Trump's risk tolerance with regard to being higher than his being higher than his a hedge fund manager who spent years taking on big bets, working with George Soros and others. And that's the whole idea behind the tariff negotiating strategy.
To a degree, Sure's there's clearly there are clearly differences in the way you manage risk as a hedge fund manager who has a fiduciary obligation to clients, and the way you think about risk and reward and making bets on outcomes as the president of the United States or as a policymaker in cabinet. And there's no doubt that in Scott Besson's mind, Donald Trump has a higher risk tolerance.
But it's a risk tolerance. Again.
I don't want to put words in his mouth, but as explained to us with a purpose. In other words, let's see how far I can push people so I know where their limits are, and then I can pull it back to something that they're comfortable with, but only comfortable with because they felt what it was like to be scared.
So is he taking a risk? Mike?
I want to bring into what he said. He talked about the FED working off of data that's not of higher quality. Is he taking a risk in that?
He?
I don't know what he's looking for.
Like we all think the US data, the world thinks the US data is the gold standard.
Until Friday, we thought that.
Now the narrative is that, wait, this data is lumpy, this date is not good right, it needs.
He said we should have had that cuts in June in July, which.
Is the other Trump thing is throw so much stuff out there that you confuse people and you get people to think that the truth is not the truth. I mean, these are the gold standard data around the world, and while they are somewhat less scientifically valid than they were because the response rates have gone down, they are still extraordinarily accurate.
Revisions are a part of it.
So this is I mean, it's truly an effort. The whole BLS firing thing is an effort to confuse Americans about what's going on with the data so that when the data look bad, Trump can blame the data rather than his policies. So for Scott Bessen, he has to go along with that, but what he wants from the Fed doesn't comport with the way the FED is looking at it.
He also made reference to Alan Greenspan. He said he's not willing meaning Fed Shair J.
Powell.
He's not Alan Greenspan, who was very forward thinking. They're trying to be more data driven, which I think is a mistake because I think we are going back into an economy like we had in the nineties. We heard that, Mike first and then Eric. I mean, we've all been around since green Span, all of us. There's a lot been written about perhaps the actions that Alan Greenspan took as FED chair in the lead up to the Great Financial Crisis, the mortgage meltdown.
Is that a good reference point, Mike.
For the USB That's an interesting question.
I don't think most people listening these days anymore really remember a whole lot about the green Span years or green SPAN's role in it, other than those of us who were very closely tied to it. But he did in the nineteen nineties suggest that inflation was going to be low because productivity was picking up because of personal computers, and that was the thing that got him the fame
and the lionization in Washington and on Wall Street. And then of course he had the oops of no, there's not going to be a housing crisis, and so, yeah, I don't know if it's a good comparison or not. The one thing you can say is that Greenspan, unlike his successors, was very forceful and basically kind of ran the FED in the direction that he wanted it to go, which is not something that Jay Pile does, and it wasn't the way Ben Bernanki or Janet Yellin are Eric.
Are you given the reporting that you and Dan Flatley did, the folks that you spoke to within the Treasury Secretary's orbit, they seem to express a little surprise that he has not just joined the Trump administration, but that his views seem so in line with the president's views right now.
How do you explain that? In two ways?
The first is, there's no question that Scott Bessant's point of view and the things that he says to back it up have evolved over the course of the past at the very least seven months since he became Treasure Secretary, and even before that as.
Of last year.
I remember interviewing him a little more than a year ago, and he was talking then about the sense or sensibility of a ten percent global tariff, and he was also then talking about the goal of getting detch GDP ratio.
Down, you know, as far as the federal debt.
Is concerned, and also the percentage of you know, the size of the deficit, the annual deficit relative to GDP as a goal of under three percent, and by the end of the president's term, the fiscal discipline has sort of gone out the window for the time being with
the one big Beautiful bill. Besten will tell you that if the bill is successful, and he believes it will be in deregulating the you know, American industry and thus you know, supercharging some kind of domestic manufacturing renaissance, then you know you'll get a change in the relationship between the numerator and denominator. And in fact, yes, deficits will start to follows a percentage of GDP over time. So he hasn't totally walked that back. On the subject of tariffs.
He now talks about how the president's maximum pressure strategy is what has allowed the United States to achieve these deals on paper with countries like Japan, for example, in South Korea and others. And we'll see if those terms stick and exactly how these novel terms unfold in the wave of real, real substance of agreements. But and again this is not to sort of come out in his defense,
that's not our job. But I would point out that at the moment, the global terrorf rate is fourteen percent, right, it's not that far off of ten percent. I mean, I mean four percentage points is forty percent higher than ten percent, but it's not twenty five percent, and it's not thirty nine percent, which is of course what the Swiss appear to be headed for at the moment. So it's sifted, but it hasn't shifted to an extreme place, if that makes any sense. Does that helped to answer
the question? And of course that IA would just say that yes. The reason that people around Scott Bessen are surprised by the fact that he has come out that he's in the administration and that he went out for President Trump in the first place on the campaign trail and fundraising for him.
Is because they thought that he was a little closer to.
Who they think of themselves as, which is a Reagan Republican. And the truth of the matter, as we demonstrated in our reporting, is that even over the past ten or fifteen years, he has held different points of view, he just hasn't shared them with everybody.
We're speaking right now with Bloomberg New Economy Editorial director and editor at large of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Eric Shatsker, along with Bloomberg BusinessWeek or Bloomberg TV and Radio, International Economics and Policy correspondent Michael McKay.
You know, speaking of productivity, just a quick headline. Apple planning to come back in artificial intelligence with new devices including robots, a smart speaker with a display, and home security cameras. According to folks in the know, this may be a little bit of what some say, maybe.
Does it do the dishes?
Not yet?
Not yet, ai fed chair.
But exactly Okay, we only have a few minutes left here.
And I guess every time I listen to Scott Bessont, I think about someone who understands the importance of an independent FED, understands the role of the US Central Bank in the world. Do you feel, like Mike, that he understands that and that if it gets a bit wonky or gets very political, that there will be market implications, not just US market implications, but global market importations.
I think Besson knows that very well.
I mean, he's not dumb.
He rail around the president with that.
Well, no, there are.
No guardrails around this president anymore. He can he can tell him all he wants, but there is only one leader and the sider in chief. That leader does not care about Uh well, he may care about a market collapse, but he doesn't care that, you know, the FED is independent.
He believes he's the boss to that end.
Is it rare for the Secretary of Treasury to actually weigh in on interest rate policy from that position?
Of course it is. It hasn't been done in decades. I mean, we got officially into the government, doesn't The executive branch doesn't comment on the FED during the Clinton administration under Bob Rubin, and it's been that way pretty much ever since.
US Trump.
But this is not the usual presidency. This is Donald Trump's presidency, and it is completely different from anything we have seen before.
Eric, forgive thirty five seconds, Scott besn't passed on being FED chair, right, that's at least what we've reported. Do you think he understands the importance of an independent FED, how important it is globally.
Yes, he talks about it being a jewel box.
And by the way, the reason he passed on being a FED chair is because he finds the job that he's got now.
Way more interesting out of the irs.
I think he thinks of the job of Federal was chairm and particularly if all you all you're really really supposed to be doing is setting interest rates as relatively speaking, very one dimensional.
Great stuff, guys, Thank you so much, so appreciate.
Eric Schatsker, Editorial Director Bloomberg New Economy, editor at Large for Bloomberg Business Week, Michael McKee, International Economics and Policy correspondent at Bloomberg TV. Check out the full Bessant interview Secretary Vesson.
It's on the Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch US live on YouTube.
We got a lot of economic news this week. Reads on US inflation, one perceived as better.
One not so much.
We also got some data on factories, and we got to check on the all important US consumer and retail sales.
I was out that day. I was not shopping. I was not contributing to the economy. I guess I was contributing thanks to you on vacation. Yeah. I'm always contributing to the economy, to be honest, Carol, you and Mlikerfeo caught up with someone who's been analyzing the retail space for a long time. She's just a real legend within the industry. She broke down the data. She looked more broadly at what's hot and what's not among the nation's retailers.
Let's ask Dana Telsea. She knows retail like no other.
She has founder, CEO and chief Research officer of Telsey Advisory Group. She's with us in New York City. Dana, thank you so much for joining us on this Friday. When CEOs are talking about the economy, do they always kind of talk about it or do you feel like we're seeing more momentum around some of those earnings releases about concerns about the consumer and the economy.
Thank you for having me, and yes, I agree with your take. You're definitely hearing more commentary that continues to be increasing quarter to quarter about the uncertainty of the economy. What you've heard from CEOs this week, in a little bit last week, and we'll have a lot more next week, is that spending and sales since the end of the June quarter has improved and it's increased. Some of this may be because the pull forward of sales given the
price increases from tariffs, are not yet fully there. And you've also heard the volatility for example, maybe like April and May was week, but then June and July picked up, And is the new normal going to be volatility and then improvement, volatility and then improvement. The lack of consistency makes it difficult for sea level executives to plan their businesses and give guidance.
But help us understand. I mean, it's been a couple months since Liberation Day, we've been dealing with tariffs. Is all of this uncertainty still linked to consumers just looking at tariff's businesses looking at tariffs and still not understanding exactly how those are going to affect their businesses.
Well, there's a couple things. First of all, what you see companies do is they're diversifying their sourcing, and as they're diversifying their sourcing, many of them pulled out of China. One other place is the teriff rate rate went higher than China, and as some of them are bringing back their sourcing to China. Second thing is we do a
tracker of eighty items each week that we price. We've been doing this since April sixteenth, and one of the things you're seeing is our pricing and they're iconic goods, whether Levi's five oh one, gene or Barbie doll. You've been seeing prices begin to go up, certainly on footwear. We've seen that and we expect to continue to increase going forward. You had Amazon Prime Day this year four days instead of two days, and the first two days
versus last year, we're up double digits. So consumers are taking advantage of deals that they may think they're getting now coupled with newness and product like closed toed Birkenstocks, where they're buying some of the new items that they wouldn't have had before and we're just introduced that's capturing the interest of a younger consumer. So there's a mix of things that are going on to create this dynamic of what's happening to Dana.
So the retail sales numbers, again, it's an interesting number, and it could be that people are just paying higher prices for everything. Would you say in a nutshell with if you kind of roll in? The US consumer sentiment feelings down for the first time since April.
They're concerned about inflation.
Consumers are that the consumer, the US consumer is largely cautious.
Yes, they are. They are more discerning and cautious consumer. They're more selective in their spending, and you're seeing it whether it's in restaurants, you're seeing it in some travel, and you're seeing it in the purchase of goods. More to come this upcoming week given that target Walmart all reporting the results an esday later, so more to come and dissecting what it looks like.
Dana, I have to get your thoughts on the Tapestry earnings that we saw just earlier this week. What did you make of kind of that divergence in their two businesses. The Coach brand has been so popular with gen Z it feels like everyone wants to buy a Coach bag now, but the Kate's Pade brand really pulling back.
Just walk us through high level thoughts.
There on what you made at the concernings.
When you think of Tapestry, it's a portfolio company with two brands, Like you said, Coach and also Kate Spade. The Coach brand up double digits, the Coach brand seeing average unit retail selling prices increase, capturing more new customers, and going from strength to strength by adding items in their collections that allow them to have a consistent and sustainable business model. These Kate Spade brand is only fifteen
percent of sales. More of their goods are sold in the United States, making them more impactful to tariffs, and that was definitely one of the headwinds and they have to set the transformation. The surprise was they lost money in the quarter. There's a reset going on. It's taking
longer than expected. You're going to have this upcoming fiscal year where you're going to need to see stabilization markers of what the brand is while they also try to lean into the Coach playbook and utilize some of those learnings to update and improve Kate Spade. More to come, but eighty five percent of the business as coach and that's growing all right.
In terms of earnings. Just one last question thirty seconds. What's the big one next week?
It's going to be Walmart and Target. Is Target going to talk about a successor? Is Walmart still seeing growth in food? And they seem to be the market share gainer at Walmart?
All right, got to leave it there, Dana, Thank you so much.
Dana Telsey, CEO and Chief Research Officer of Telsey Advisory Group joining us in New York City.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch US live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch US live on YouTube.
Well, we've been talking a lot about rare earth minerals as of late, and some of the US companies that are manufacturing.
The White House too, has been talking a lot about this.
Yeah, we've talked recently to the CEOs of MP Materials and USA Rare Earth. Those are among the biggest US rare earth mining companies in the US. But it's not just rare earth that matter to the US. And that brings us to one small cap miner with a roughly five hundred million dollar market.
Cap, the company United States Antimony, and though it's not a household name, it's in the crosshairs of US China tensions and the global race for key minerals.
We spoke with Gary Evans, chairman and CEO of United States Antimony Corporation, who joined us alongside Bloomberg News Economic Statecraft reporter Joe Doe, and during our conversation we noticed shares of the company we're rallying.
We're in the category of critical minerals. There's critical minerals and there's rare earth, and so the public needs to understand there's a significant distinction critical minerals. As an antimony producer, we're number one on the DLDS a critical mineral list. And the problem is there is no antimony today being mined in either the United States or Canada. It all has to come from international sources. We were all getting every country the world was getting most of their antimony
from China. China controls sixty five percent of world antimony or the raw or in the ground, and they control eighty five percent of the downstream processing, which is what we do.
So fortunately we're in a position of.
Having a smelter in Montana and one in Mexico, which makes us the only two operating smelters for antimony in North America. And therefore, as you said earlier, we're getting a lot of attention from the US government.
They want us to expand our operation.
I think I read a report in April we only have like a five percent supply in our stockpile. So we're trying to ramp up our business to meet this critical need. And as Joe said, there's no question that antimony is needed by the military. It's used predominantly, as he said, in bullets, but it's also used in laser guided missile, night vision cameras, night vision binoculars, and what have you. So it's a very necessary element for the.
Hey, Jojoe, come on back in here. We heard from Gary just now that the antimony mining is not done here in the US or in Canada. Is it possible to do it here in the US? Do we have the material to mine? And it's just not done for environmental reasons. It's not done because we don't have the mineral rights to it, or the companies none of the mineral rights to it. Like why has this been moved
to China? I understand from a processing perspective, why that's happened with rare earths, Yeah, but with a critical mineral like antimony, Why why is that not happening here?
Well, I mean, I think you go to deposits, you know, how good is the deposit and you can pull it out of the ground, and then who can process it? And this is a question that I have talked about now quite a bit with Gary over the last few months. And you know, Gary, I think I think your better
position to talk about that to an investor class. I mean, you know, you talked to your investors yesterday on your earnings call, and they asked you about the potential of beginning mining in the United States anytime soon, and you effectively told them, probably it's not going to happen any time soon. So where is kind of the upside here.
We've been working on acquiring leases in both Montana and Alaska. We've acquired close to thirty thousand acres of property in Alaska and we've taken over the mountain area where our smelter is. It used to be an area that we mined some twenty years ago. So it's coming right now. We're held up by permitting. We spiled permits in Alaska back in May. And so getting back to your question,
why isn't this being done? The EPA, the federal government, whether it be the Force Service, the BLM, native tribes, everybody tried to stop mining in the United States and unfortunately our laws allowed that. And that's why you see mining occurring all over the world except the US. It's coming back. There's no doubt this administration is very pro
mining and we have the resources. There's no question that we can meet the demand for the United States with just our Alaska properties, no doubt about that, and that's going to happen soon. I would think in the next thirty days we'll be able to bring our first loads of antimony truck from Alaska to our facility in Thompson Falls, Montana.
Garry, how would you describe the conversations now with members of the Trump administration with this government versus your conversations during the Biden administration. How are they different.
Well, we started talking to the Department of Defense back last September. This is right when China banned all antimony sales to any country in the world. In course, our Department of Defense was getting all their antimony from China, so it raised a lot of red flags. And we've been negotiating various agreements and contracts with the Department Defense and the DLA since that period of time.
As we mentioned on.
The call yesterday, were very close we think to announcing some things. It's not done yet, but there's definitely a mindset change. Addressing your question from the Biden administration to the Trump administration, for instance, we'll have to respond to a request from the DoD and they say, can you have it to us by Friday, We give it to them Friday five o'clock and by eight thirty Monday morning.
We have a redline response. It's not very often you see the government working over the weekend, so there's no question. This is a high ticket item with our existing administration, and there's a fire been lit.
Gary.
Despite the fact that you're getting a lot more attention from the Trump administration and they seem to be speeding things up, I'd still ask what is the hold up? And I know this was a big question you got on the call yesterday with investors. They kind of seem to be saying, when are you going to get some sort of announcement from the government. What's going on?
We're in a period where contractual changes are being made. There was an open comment period respect to the DLA that ended actually yesterday afternoon. So I'm very confident we're near the finish line. But it has taken amount of time, and there's been a lot of reasons that I can't really talk about today for that delay, but we had we have to make sure that whatever contract or whatever agreement we signed with the government is beneficial to our shareholders.
In the first drafts were not and so we had to make sure that we negotiated as best we could to maximize the value for our shareholders, but also give the federal government a fair trade. You know, we're we're we pay taxes, we know, and so it was it was that was very necessary.
Forgive me if I miss this, But is the agreement that you might be working out with the government akin to what we saw with MP Materials, which has a four hundred million dollar equity investment by the Department of Defense into the company. And we know that MP Materials is certainly working specifically in the rare earth materials area.
So could it possibly be that the government DoD makes an equity investment in you guys as part of an agreement so that you can do what you need to in terms of ramping up either production or your facilities.
So obviously that's on the table. I think with us, as well as a lot of other companies, I think we're in a little bit unique position in that we have a four hundred and fifty million dollar market cap, we have our own cash, we have our own capital. We need more of a big brother than a huge
capital investment. Now, as we ramp up this year and do the things that we've told the public we plan on doing and the DoD I think there's a very good chance in twenty twenty six if we want to do another smelter, if we want to do another project. We also are involved in tungsten and cobalt other two other critical minerals, then those type of opportunities exist. But what we're negotiating today and have been for the last
eight months is something different. It's very positive for our company, but it's not a direct investment by the government.
Gary, I want to kind of bring people into what's at stake here, or at least what is being said is at stake. As you mentioned, the Chinese officials put an export control on antimony, which came well after the germanium and gallium that so many people talked about a couple years ago. Have you guys experienced any of these effects of export controls on antimony from China?
Yes, unfortunately we have.
We were acquiring material from a company out of Australia and we were taking that material their fifty five ton container loads to our smelter in Madero, Mexico, and that particular, this third load that we acquired was transloaded over in China in April and the Chinese customs confiscated our container, took it off the ship and held it for ninety days,
gave us no reason. All the paperwork was correct, it had been paid for, and we finally had to get the State Department in the White House involved for some reason. Finally they released it. It showed back up in Australia, did not come to us. They sent it back to Australia. Was arrived there about three or four days ago. It's currently ownership to Mexico.
Now.
So from now on, obviously, whoever we buy antimony from, we're in a putting in our contracts. They cannot stop in China because China did this. For whatever reason, we know this company used to sell antimony to China. Maybe they were mad the fact I said US antimony on it maybe was ticked them off. I don't know, but they definitely made a statement with what they did.
We're speaking with Gary Evans, chairman and CEO of United States Antimony Corps, also with US US Economic stake Craft reporter Joe Dell.
Gary a follow up on that, I mean, what does this, what does this really say, I like, should people actually be concerned? I mean, eventually your antimony is getting to you here at your Mexico location, Like, are are sounding too many alarm bells on this front?
I don't think so.
I really, I doubt in our lifetimes we'll ever see antimony coming out of China again. We know their largest minor was depleted last year. Ever, and so ever, I don't think we'll ever see antimony coming out of China. There is truly a worldwide shortage of this product. It is so difficult for us to find product. That's why we went and started mining it ourselves. There's just not any supply.
Presidents love to talk about energy independence, it doesn't matter if they're Democrats or Republicans. Do we get to a point where they can talk about antimony independence and we can get one percent of what the US needs from US supplies?
I have no doubt that we can meet all the needs of our government as well as our industrial customers from Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
We don't need to go anywhere else.
When When will we be able to do that in the next three to five years.
It's not going to happen overnight.
You know, in the last few years, you would have said Canada, United States, and Mexico and I have thought, okay, that could work. These countries can all work together. But over the last few months we've seen trade tensions flare, especially with our neighbors to the north and our neighbors to the south. How does that affect the way you look at the industry in your own business.
No question that. You know, Mexico has a new president. She's very anti mining. Fortunately the minds that we have in Mexico or grandfather, but you know, there needs to be greater collaboration.
Now.
The DD looks at Canada dislike it was in the United States. So any project we find up there, the DoD likes it and looks at it as a domiciled country.
Great is that as a separate country or because they want to take it over?
Well, you know the fifty first state, of course, is what I'm talking about now.
So you're saying relations between the two nations are comfortable, and despite what we have in the headlines, you're saying that they are working and cooperating because they understand they kind of need each other.
Yeah, Canada needs antimony just as bad as the United States needs antimony and Canada is a very pro mining country. So that's why we have a lot of activities like I mentioned in tungsten and cobalt in Canada Gary.
These conversations you have with defense officials, how dire are they indicating to you that the antimony shortage is for them?
When you see the announcements will be making, you'll understand it's pretty dire. We have the lowest we have the lowest amount of antimony supplies in the inventory for our government since World War Two. You got to remember we're funding Israel, we're funding Ukraine, and we've dwindled our supplies and at the same time China cut us off. So it's a double edged sword. People are waking up that hey, we have a problem.
So what does that mean for national defense? Like, what would your message be to viewers and listeners right now about how critical this mineral is.
It's a it's an extremely critical mineral. And there's there's you know, people that have tried to replicate antimony with other synthetic antimony and hasn't worked very well at all. In fact, it's three times expensive. I do think they'll be continued upward pressure on the price because we cannot meet we can't come close to meet our customer's demands. We're we're changing that. We have a substantial expansion going on in Montana that'll be done by the end of
the year. But you know, it's just going to take some time. It's not going to happen overnight. It's not like there's a huge pile of antimony sitting over here in some country waiting to go to market. It's all depleted, so we're having to find new areas to find the ore.
Gary, how long has the dwindling supply issue been going on for? And I'm just curious if you had conversations with the Bidy administration as well.
Well.
Because China was selling so much antimony around the world, nobody cared about it. China kept the price artificially low, less.
Than five dollars a pound.
Today the price is twenty five to twenty seven dollars a pound and probably going higher. I really believe we'll see fifty dollars a pound in the next year. So you know, the fact that we were so fact that we're so dependent upon China and had blindfolds on that all of a sudden, they cut it off had nothing to do with Trump coming in office. This happened last September, so it's been a year since they cut everybody off.
It's not just the United States.
They cut off every country in the world, the European Union, all other countries that were buying antimony. You can sell antimony to China when you get nothing back in return other than cash.
Gary, what's the biggest hurdle US antimony faces right now in getting more antimony production up and out the door.
If I had my permits right now in Alaska and in Montana, I'd have antimony in our smelters. I don't have those permits yet. And you know, we're doing everything we can to speed it along. There's people in Alaska that don't want to see mining, and the group called Save our Domes.
We've done pr work.
We're doing everything we can to a greeze the skids to make sure that people understand that.
We're we're trying to clean up.
This is antimony left on the ground the last one hundred years from gold miners in Alaska. We're picking it up, putting in super sacks, and bringing it to Montana. We're cleaning up the place and people are fighting that. So it's an education process that we've got a lot of pr we're doing, and we're obviously working with senators, House members, we're working with the President. We're working with a lot of people. You'll see some other news about that next week.
Gary, would would the Defense Department be your only customer?
We currently have seventeen industrial customers. We have one particular customer. It would take one hundred percent of our supply. So that gives you an idea. The industrial side is much greater than the Department of Defense. And that's you know, one thing in these contracts we're been working on. They've made sure that we don't take away the business from the industrial side. And that's why we're ramping up. Because the government needs a stockpile which they currently don't have.
And we're the only provider. There's nobody else.
It's China's us antimony and a smelter in Belgium.
That's it for the whole world.
All Right, We're gonna have to leave it there. I got to say, this is one of those interviews. I know Joe knows this.
Stuff, but I certainly take a lot away from it. Great, Gary, thank you so much Gary Evans, chairman CEO of US Antimony, joining us from our bureau in Dallas, and of course our in house expert on all things when it comes to mining, Bloomberg News Economic.
Statecraft reporter Jodoe.
By the way, shares of US antimony timp there up about one hundred and seventeen percent here to day.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple CarPlay and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just Say Alexa. Played Bloomberg eleven.
Thirty plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including a check on the New York City luxury real estate market, who's buying and who's paying in cash?
Plus the most stunning and rare ours from around the world are taking center stage at this year's Pebble Beach Concorde Elegance. We talk with the chairman, Sandra Button.
Firstep this hour. Green firms in the United States have found something of a lifeline in artificial intelligence after being bogged down by high interest rates, shrinking funding, and more recently, President Trump's sharp rollback of support.
Our Bloomberg New Energy Finance team recently pointed out that clean tech companies that have inked deals to support data centers have seen their stock sore this year, out performing the S and P five hundred. That includes the stock price of fuel cell provider Bloom Energy, which as we put our show to bed this week, nearly doubled so far this year and as a roughly ten billion dollar market cap.
And shares of Bloom Energy continue to rally big time again this week.
K R.
Shreeter is founder, chairman, and CEO bloom Energy. He joined Bloomberg's David Gore and me to discuss the impact of AI on its business and a lot more.
This is an amazing time yeah in human history where we have no seeing the need for power growth anywhere
close to what we are seeing today. Let me put it in perspective, the amount of power that the big hyperscalers are saying they need between now and twenty thirty is equal to all the power every single family home in the US put together would need about eighty five million single family homes Give or day all the power that they use is going to be needed in addition to the power we have today to just power the
AI data service. That's how large this opportunity is. And very clearly the old model of centralized power plants with transmission distribution simply cannot meet that demand in a timely fashion. That is the opportunity. And Bloom was purpose built to provide on site power for the digital revolution, and we are so happy to be in the right place at the right time.
Well, help us understand how the company works. And you mentioned that on site power, so what that looks like. Of course, there's been so much conversation recent months about perhaps the need to invest more in nuclear power or fortify the grid, bring more power plants online. How do you see your company as maybe not a substitution for that, but a compliment to the kind of growth and develop we're likely to see here in the power grid going forward.
I think we're going to need all forms of power in very large quantities going forward to meet our ratios like energy needs. However, in the short term, if you take five to ten years, natural gas to electricity is going to be the single largest contributor to this additionality, what Bloom does. It takes natural gas without burning it,
without combustin. We extract the chemical energy in it using a fuel cell and make electricity at the highest efficiency without air pollution, without noise in our generators because they have quiet, solid state and a very high reliability.
For those reasons, if you are in a.
Neighborhood that is going to have a data center, we are your best choice because we don't pollute your air, we don't use water, and we don't make any noise as we generate this reliable power, So you can have the economic advantage that a data center brings to the local community. At the same time, you're not compromising on your health.
So one thing I want to ask you, actually, our Will Wade does who really covers this space? And we were talking about you coming on and he said, well, wait a minute, let's talk about these fuel cells for data centers. Can fuel cells really work for this? What evidence have you guys seen that it does really work?
So, yeah, that's a great question. The issue is we are progressing so fast in our technology at ai speed that some people that have looked at fuel sales ten years ago and have that notion of who we are don't understand where we are today as a company. We already are powering more than half a gigawa worth of data center because our total installed capacity for data centers is more than half a gigawat. So we're not a concept. We are not a PowerPoint. We're actually producing power for
these data centers. And this year alone we have increased our capacity to one giga what a year, and we announced in our earnings call that by end of next year we can do two gigawards a year. That's two nuclear power plants worth of power coming out of our factory next year. And you know how long it takes to build a nuclear power plant and actually commission it.
So we are no longer a concept. We are a mature technology that is affordable and can compete with other technologies that don't have as good attributes as we do Strata.
I wonder if you could talk a bit about your business model. I know that you've announced deals with with other companies, most recently with Oracle, of course, the company that I know is building investing a lot in its data center infrastructure.
Could you.
Cares for you just give us a sense here sort of of what those deals look like. What that deal with Oracle is like and in particular.
Yeah, David, So our customers, here's what happens. Once we sign a deal with the customer, they either buy the capital equipment from us, and then they also sign up for a service contract. It's one hundred percent attached rate because we run those units for them and we maintain
that and we offer them the promise guarantee of performance. Now, if they don't buy the equipment as caadpex, we create a special purpose vehicle using financing and we simply sell them power like the utility world, except this is on site and highly reliable and clean. So either way, when we create a special purpose vehicle, that financial investor in that vehicle gives us the upfront money for our capital, and we also have an annuity revenue coming out of service.
So we have two streams of revenue if you want to think about it. Installed capital equipment that gets paid to us when we ship the equipment, a continuous service annuity over the tenure of the contract. That's how we make our money, irrespective of whether the customer actually buys the capital equipment or a third party buys the capital equipment and then charges the monthly rate from the customer.
Hey, kr Way, I'm curious.
I'm looking at one of my favorite functions on the bloom markets and supply chain function, and I'm looking at your customers. Your biggest is I think American Electric Power Company, but I'm also looking at Alphabet Microsoft. Do you know Yep, sound familiar. These are some of the hyperscalers. Tell me how they are amping up their business because they're the ones who are doing the massive, massive AI spend, but it looks like they're a very small part of your business.
I'm just curious about what's the conversations you're having with them. Are they ramping up to do more with you? That would be very telling.
Yes, the answer to your question is very simple. In the past, these hyperscalers would spend all their capital equipment just on building the data centers and they could simply pick up the phone and call the utility company and they would provide the power. No longer is that a reality because the utility does not have the amounts of
power that these hyperscalers need. So now electricity power, which is what ultimately the data center needs to monetize the data center, is a supply chain that comes from the common good called the utility. So they have to own that supply chain or they to procure from that supply Chaine, we are very much an integral part of that supply chain. And we are having conversations with all the hyperscalers today and you've seen the announcement rhetorical expect to see similar
things coming soon. Our American Electric Power contract was actually for AWS, which is another hyperscaler.
I wonder if you could situate your company and this industry in the moment that we're in. So we're coming out of an administration that was doing a lot to support or encourage the adoption of alternative energy. It's why to say this is administration that's not doing that. There's much less impulse to do that going forward. Here, What do you see here as the ideal role of government
in encouraging the adoption of technologies like yours? In other words, if you'd like to see fuel cell technology take off, be more widely adopted, what is the role of government in making that happen?
If any?
I think a simple role that they can play going forward is the US government, between the various government functions, the military and the intelligence, is the largest procurer of electricity to be able to purchase electricity from technologies that are made in America. We are made in America technology. No other country in the world has the technology that
we have. So they should embrace us, and they should give us an opportunity to serve the US government, the US military, and US intelligence and make us a really strong country.
Well there, I was also curious about. And I'm looking at your market cap. It's almost about nine point six billion dollars, and it is this excitement over AI. You know, there's all the money that's being spent care on the buildout, and I get that, but I'm just curious. And then there's going to be the maintenance and we might not need as many workers. And you know, we're all trying to get our head about around whether you know, the boom the bust part of maybe AI after the build out,
what is the business for you? Is it maintenance? Is it replacement values?
I'm just curious.
Oh, thank you for asking that question, Carol. The buildout is just a tip of the iceberg. Why would these large hyperscalers spend close to a trillion dollars worth of capex just this year alone. If all that they're going to do is that buildout that's the training data centers. The inference data centers will be at least an order of magnitude larger than these training data centers, which are the foundation building blocks every factory, every bank, every law firm.
They're going to have inference data centers close to the edge. And these edge data centers are going to be located where you all live, where people are, where equipment is, and in those congested cities, getting the additional power needed ten to twenty megawatts in every edge data center, which is an inference data center. We are ideally suited not just for the large data centers, but for these age data centers because we are non polluting, you're quiet, you're reliable,
and we can provide it on site very quickly. So we're super excited about what we think is a really secular phenomenon that's happening here that's going to last for a very long time to come. This is not just a build and bust cycle at all as far as see.
So would you say a long time? Are you saying decades or.
I'm just going to at least a couple of decades at least a couple of decades.
All right, good to know, we'll stay in touch.
Love to hear because you certainly have a front row seat in terms of this spend and what is going on.
Certainly all the power that's needed. It's just kind of astounding. Doctor K. R. Schweder.
He is founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of bloom Energy. The stock david up another nine percent in today's session, and it's really been on a tear this year, up about eighty four percent.
So so interesting to talk about these companies because we focus so much on the AI provide as we're making these chatbots and all the developments there, but as we were just discussing the apparatus that you need to make all of that work so huge, so sprawling, and I'm just fascinating every time I kind of learn what goes into that making all of this stuff run.
Right, Right, we just hear about that kind of the big hyper skelets, and they spend, but there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
Let's talk real estate, because our Bloomberg News team reported that Manhattan home sales in the second quarter were stronger than they've been in almost two years. Bo'sted by cash buyers who've been undeterred by the economic uncertainty created by President Trump's trade war. We got some numbers here. A little more than three thousand co op in condo purchases closed during the quarter. That's a seventeen percent chop from a year earlier. That's according to Miller Samuel and the
brokerage Doug Ellman. The median price of those transit actions one point two million dollars. That's up one point six percent.
I love this cash buyers, all right, So we're wondering what Louise Phillips Forbes isssing. She's a real estate broker with Brown Harris steven She's been in the industry for more than three decades. We love kind of picking her brain about what's going on. She's got close to six billion dollars in sales during her tenures. She's back with us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Hello, Hello, Kay Good to see you, guys, Good to see you.
So where are we give us a snapshot of the market right now?
You know, you just did that little snapshot of the quarter. I did a little snapshot from May and June for twenty twenty four compared to twenty twenty five, and there was a seventy two percent volume and price sales, so it went from one point four billion in sales to two point four billion, so of contrast and science almost and then you also had a twenty five percent on the number of transactions. So this is all four million
and above. And on an average of those two months in twenty twenty four they were eight point two million. This year they're eleven million. So you know, chaos is opportunity for many. And cash on those deals is ninety ninety percent. That's a lot. So it's kind of interesting. I mean, I talk to my bankers all the time, and.
They are busy.
They are busy, but on the lower end, and people are closing with cash and then they're pulling out you know, cash back.
Okay.
We spoke to Peter Auchen Bloom Auker Bloom, chief revenue officer at Centsion Jet the day that Flexjet announced this. Another private jet firm that owned by the same parent company announced this investment, and they basically said, we're seeing wealthy people from tech and crypto younger people from tech and crypto want private jets. We're seeing our demographic go younger, and we're seeing crypto.
Inn't surprise me.
Is that happening to you?
I think that the assets.
First of all, let's just kind of bring it down for one second and remember that the first time buyer today on an average is pushing forty years old. That's different from that millennial run that we had in the construction boom.
But even in New York, right in New York, Yeah.
Particularly in New York, to be honest, and I'm seeing more and more first time buyers that are purchasing that are having family members, multi generational family members like grandmothers, like instead of inheriting this, I'm giving it to you or I'll co purchase with you with the right to survive. So listen, creativity is We're in Mecca, so people are going to be creative to buy a piece of the rock. And I do think the you know, new money and
I've seen it. Watch the tech commitment from the first announcement of Google in two thousand and five with like forty eight employees morph to five hundred to twenty five hundred. And you see that we are now becoming a hub for tech. And as you run up against the housing issues that are in California, we're attractive. You know, we can get insurance for our apartments.
Do we stay attractive even if Zoron Mamdani wins the mayoral race?
You mean Robin Hood, I mean the Robin Hood rhetoric. I mean, listen, I know this person cares about New Yorkers. I believe that. I believe wholeheartedly that his intentions are stellar. But you know, the ideology around real estate is not a conversation.
It's action.
It's infrastructure, it's collaboration public private. And you know, we just crawled out of five years of COVID. We now have sixty four million last year in tourism. You know, the crime is down, you have people back in the office. So freezing rent is doing nothing, and it's it's also suggesting that landlords are all on their yachts doing nothing, and that they should be paying for the opportunity for
somebody else to be able to pay rent. But there's so many landlords that are just skinning by because they were postponed from allowing people who weren't paying rent.
So Louise, you know, Tim and I talk about this a lot, and I feel like when we have real estate discussions and the idea of providing affordable homes in kind of major cities where a lot of people work, so that you don't have individuals who are maybe not making that much money having to travel an hour or two.
I've in order to work.
So what's what's because I've been talking about this like my whole career.
Yeah, how you know, this industry, how do we do this so.
That there is affordable homes in the places where people are working.
I mean when I came into the business, they had something called four twenty one a's. There were certificates that when you improve a land, yeah there's an unimproved land. And remember Bloomberg, thank you twelve twelve years of you know, rezoning, you know probably forty percent of our land mass, which has helped that situation. And when you build in the
middle of I don't know. I mean they used to have these tax certificates that when developers would improve land, they would get a four to twenty one a tax abatement. It's a ten year abatement on your taxes, and then for that certificate they would then go and sell it for somebody to do affordable housing somewhere else that is not that has gone away.
Now was that affordable house though still in New York City? That yes, oh okay.
And by the way, you know, people would say, it's well, we don't want to just be in the Bronx and in you know, far parts of Brooklyn or Queens But honestly.
And nothing wrong with those parts. You want to admit, and you want a mixture.
And I just think that it has to be thoughtful and it has to be collaborative, and it can't be just somebody who isn't practically experiencing these things making rules up, like you know, the city councilmen that wants to have that has good intentions around broker fees, well, rentals as of June eleventh are up fifteen percent because they've just passed it all off to the consumer and so unintentional consequences when lawmakers don't want to collaborate with the industry
individuals as well as just regular people. If it's only politicians making these decisions and not working with their people.
I think there's always a concern though, that that the people who are renting don't have the voice and don't have a seat at the table.
But you know what I mean, So city is sixty eight percent, it's a city of renters.
Yeah. Yeah.
I want to get to know your clients a little bit and how they're different than they were let's say a year ago. The people who are selling real estate with you right now, why are they selling and where are they moving?
I mean a lot of it is life change, you know. But I'm I have people that have been contemplating selling since twenty twenty that are now selling because there's a lack of inventory. What their apartments were not worth in twenty twenty three are worth what they would like and they'll accept it. So, look, a lot of people are downsizing and staying in the city. They are people that are leaving. But that's that's that's a life decision. That is,
you know, a cycle of life. I mean, I have a lot of people coming back into the city because their grandkids and their kids are here. So who are my sellers? My sellers range from like a one bedroom for six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to and that's somebody who bought who now is leaving the city and loved owning her home and she's ready for a new
chapter in Colorado. And then you have a sixteen million dollar penthouse which is from one of my developers that will be coming on the market in September on the Upper West Side, and I just think there's just not enough inventory. Inventory is twenty one percent down, and that is the first time we've experienced that since COVID as well.
It's amazing because sometimes it feels like there's a ton of building and stuff going on. Hey, before you go, you've got a minute and a half left. Tell us about what you're seeing. In terms of international purchases.
They're coming, they're coming, and it's doubled since twenty twenty four, particularly the Chinese market. I mean, when you were dealing with strife in your government and the housing market in Beijing is kind of upside down.
I'm not familiar with.
That market particularly, but in all of the appointments that I've had, in all the various kindomniums, they are buying some of them are buying with the anticipation of their children in the future to be going to school here.
Where are they buying all over?
But new developments, particularly matt has always been in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island City. We were talking earlier about there are some developers that are leaning into the Asian market by accepting deposits that are in the Chinese You're on, yeah, and that is because they are They're being nimble. We have to be nimble. That's new, that's relatively new. There are two projects in particular, one is in Long Island City and this was news for me. You know, a couple of months ago.
Russian buyers gone.
Yeah, no, no quiet, quiet, coming back, quietly trying to acquire or displace, you know, place assets, but not as big as what we experienced when you had the eighty eight million fifteen Central Park West transactions like that, midas Que Yepes and you have also I think there I have had three different Korean transactions this year. I think they're quiet. French. I mean, I think people are trying to come here. There's there's you know, jargon around the Canadians not being happy and.
If President Trump go does away with a capital gains tax on house sales.
What would that mean? And just got twenty five just.
To remind everybody when Bush was in the house in twenty twelve and he reduced the capital gains to fuel our market went on fire in twelve and thirteen.
Just for that.
That was like the people that lived on Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue for four decades. Finally sold.
I can only imagine. Louise Phillips Forbes.
Always fun to check in with you be well, Be well Real estate broker Brown Harris Stevens joining us in our Bremberg Interactive Broker studio.
This is Bloomberk.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
This weekend wraps up the finale of Monterey Car Week, where the California Coast becomes the ultimate showroom for some of the world's most extraordinary automobiles and car enthusiasts.
It ends with their annual event, the Pebble Beach Concord Elegance. Sandra Button knows about this event pretty much better than anyone else. She's a longtime chair of the Pebble Beach concor She previews what makes this year's show so special and gives a look into the collector car market.
The collector car market is really celebrated on this one day a year at Pebble Beach when it's sort of like the Olympics of cars, and it's a whole symphony of different kinds of cars from you know, cars from the late eighteen eighties all the way to Formula one cars that were just raced this last season. So we really all things cars and everything in between. And of course you mentioned the beautiful cars from the thirties and the swoopy lines. Well, it's all going to be here.
So how does a car get invited to the show? Because is it that the car gets invited, not necessarily the owners.
It's all about the cars. And you know, because we have about two we have about two.
Hundred and fifty cars on the field, and if you own a car, that's really important. And let's say it's a part of our celebration this year. We're celebrating one hundred years of Chrysler. We have Invicta's, Moretti's believe it or not, one hundred years of the Rolls Royce Phantom, just that one mark of car. So if you own one of those cars and it's critical that we have it, that it's important to celebrate's.
That's one way to get invited.
Hey, I want to ask a little bit more too about you know, judging and how it all works. But I want to take a step back, Sandra, because this is something that has been around for a long time, started back in nineteen fifty and I'm just.
Curious why and how it came to be one of the most important prestigious car shows really in the world.
Something that I think is really cool about the Pebble Beach Concourse that we're actually very dynamically organic. The event started in nineteen fifty and to be honest, the Pebble Beach Concord was just a side show the Pebble Beach road races that started in nineteen fifty. They were the star event and after the road race is finished then it was kind of time to kick tires and take a look at cars. And in the very beginning at
Pebble Beach, the cars were brand new. They were sports cars from the fifties, and that kind of changed in nineteen fifty five when Phil Hill won with the Piercero with an actual, you know, antique car and not a brand new car. But Pebble Beach is all about celebrating everything automotive, racing, the style, even fashion.
So I'm glad you got to see it once. It was amazing. I have to see the whole event.
Just you're just driving around the area and there's parades through the streets and it's just really, really beautiful and really amazing.
Sandra, I'm curious how in general has the collector's market been right now, because typically it's been pretty volatile.
Well, I think you've mentioned it's been volatile. It's kind of like any art market. Of course, it has ups and downs. And I would say we're seeing some generational shift that a lot of the people that collected the cars from the twenties, thirties and forties are aging out of the hobby and we're getting newer collectors who are maybe looking for things that are more relative to their lifestyle or cars that they've seen on the road. So yeah,
there is that generational shift. There's also the challenge of getting these cars restored. Many of the people that have worked on the cars, they're aging out as well, and there aren't as many people joining the ranks of restorers. Hannah wrote a great article today about how a car gets ready for Pebble Beach, and you can see that, you know, there's not as many people joining that profession that are leaving. So it's a great it's a great job to look for right now.
Yeah, I agree with you.
It's in our weekend Day for Bloomberg and she says, you know, she writes, she says that jobs, and she talks about one individual in particular, are the most tedious in the classic car business, which by its very nature tends to tract a select few maniacally devoted artisans.
But we see that in general, like we talk about that, it's.
Just not something we've seen certainly happening here in the United States.
I love that you talked about though, a younger.
Generation, and it's another thing that we talk about, you know, who's going to be collecting in the future. What does a younger generation of collectors CEDRA mean for the winners of the concourse, could a nineteen or nineties car win? Like, how do how does that evolve and impact?
You're right, Younger cars, you know, that aren't as old, can be winning. And we have runners up to Best of Shows. So you know, we have two hundred cars on the field. There's maybe twenty eight classes, so you have to win your class to be eligible for Best of Show. And of those twenty eight cars usually boils down to three or four that are all really in contention for Best of Show. So we bring up those
runner up the nominees for Best of Show. And in the last few years, we've had postwar cars we've had Last year we had a preservation car that hadn't been restored that actually became our winner. But you're right, the breadth of the years of those cars is widening, and I think it is because of the younger collectors that have so much passion. I mean, they really want perfection
in their cars. They persevere through the restoration project process, which can take years, and they really want I think they're great stewards because they want the cars to be right for the future. So they dig into the history and they make sure that when they restore the car that they do right by it that they show the way that it was really built in the day.
We're talking with Sandra Button, chairman of the Pebble Beach Concorde de Elegance, joining us from Pebble Beach.
I am curious too about the theme this year.
My understanding is it you guys are marking seventy five years of Formula one racing, So talk to us about this theme, how you're going to be celebrating it, and why you chose to pick that theme.
Well, I think seventy five years is a pretty amazing you know, it's about the same age as the Pebble Beach Concord Elegance. But if you can think about we're going to be able to see the entire history of Formula one unfold before us, and we're also having a class of Grand Prix race cars that pre dated Formula One, so you're really going to be able to see the entire history of racing along the water at Pebble Beach.
That's Sandra Button, chairman of the Pebble Beach Concord de Elegance.
And Sandra came to us thanks to Bloomberg's Hannah Elliott, who's been right in the middle of all the action Tim at Pebble Beach.
She's walking the fairway, taking in the really cool rare cars, the crowds and the excitement. Of course, we're talking about our car expert, Bloomberg News auto columnist Hannah Elliott.
So this is a big year. It's the seventy fourth year of the Pebble Beach Concord Elegance. This year the they are celebrating seventy five years of Formula One. So the big thing on Sunday, which is when the main car show is is they're going to have thirty old vintage classic Formula one cars on the lawn, which I don't think we've seen a big group that significant of
F one cars ever. So that's really the emphasis. We had the opening tour of the Concore, which is where all of the cars that are going to be shown on Sunday must complete a drive down the Peninsula, down to Bigsur, across the bridge and then come back. And that is to prove that they are running driving cars. These aren't just you know, garage trailer queens. They can drive. I was fortunate enough to be able to drive in
that as well. I drove in a modern car. But that's actually the really big kickoff to what we can look forward to on Sunday. And then of course we've got auctions, which is a really big two selling similar you know, vintage and classic and collectible cars.
What's a lot going on. Tell us about the collector car market.
You know, you were kind enough to link us up with Sandra Button, chairman of the Pebble Beach Concord to Elegance, and we talked a lot about kind of the changing marketplace and maybe the interest or lack thereof, maybe among younger buyers.
But it's evolving. Tell us about the marketplace right now. It is evolving.
Historically, this has been really a celebration of pre war cars and cars from the fifties and sixties, and we are seeing that changing just because the people buying the cars are changing. It's coming into a new demographic, people who grew up with cars from the eighties and nineties and even the early two thousands, like Lamborghini, Kuntash's Ferrari F forties and f fifties. We're talking about that kind of era of car becoming more popular in the auctions
and that is a trickle down effect. Everywhere. So, for instance, back to the Concoor on Sunday, we have never seen a non pre war car win. But as Sandra kind of alluded to, I think we're moving toward that point and the whole market is following that. Of course, you've got the Duesenbergs and the Packards and all of these
really Rolls Royce's expensive multimillion dollar pre war cars. Those still exist, but there is a big up swell of these nineties and early two thousands Mercedes, Lamborghinis Ferraris that are really coming on strong, and I think that's where the market's going.
I love that these are considered classic cars. Nothing, you know, these are like cars. Yes, I do feel old, thank you very much. I mean these are cars that I was reading, you know, the scene on the cover of like Car and Driver and Road and Track when I was growing up. You know, my dad had descriptions to all of these things.
Completely and these things tend to go in thirty year cycles. So that is sort of the general rule of thumb. Whatever you grew up with the poster on your wall, yeah, thirty years later, maybe you can afford it.
Wait, so the car I actually grew up, they like Driftwood Estate station Wagon.
That was massive.
That's a It was massive. It was like it just went on forever and ever.
Yeah, called it the trade.
Hey, before we let you go, what who's going to work on these cars? You've got a great story out about the dwindling numbers of mechanics who work on classic cars. You have a classic.
Car, Yeah I do.
I've got an old Rolls Royce and the man who looks after it is in his eighties. And I'm not joking. And that gets to your question. The people who work on these old classic cars tend to be on the older side. You know, if you're talking to a teenager about spending hundreds of hours in a back room somewhere learning how to press metal, that doesn't necessarily sound as fun as some of the other job opportunities right now.
So there is a big gap between the people who look after the cars and trying to get younger people involved in this trade. There are some colleges like McPherson College which do have great restoration programs to teach younger people how to work on these cars, because at the end of the day, the love of the cars is going to stick around. The cars might change. We might go from pre war to Akontosh or a Gallardo, but it's still the car that needs to be worked on.
So there's a gap right now, but there is some slow growth toward trying to get younger people involved. It's like, if anyone thinks they want to learn a trade, this would be a good one to go into.
Our thanks to Hannah Elliott, Bloomberg News autocolumnist. Check out Hannah's podcast. She co hosts it with Matt Miller. It's called Hot Pursuit and in the episode they go into full detail of the cars that she saw it Cubble Beach. You can find it at Bloomberg dot com Slash Podcasts.
And that wraps up the weekend edition at Bloomberg business Week from Bloomberg Radio.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I'm Tim Stenober and I'm Carol Messer. Have a good and safe weekend everyone.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch US live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal