Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - December 9th, 2022

edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Difficult week for markets with Treasury signaling the growing concern about a recession next year amid tightening monetary policy, and of course the Fed's final rate decision of two. It is scheduled for this coming Wednesday. Thankfully, this week's issue of the magazines at least a bit of good news for readers and listeners. Yeah, okay, you're happy. Hold about good news. It's the annual Good Business Issue.

It features subjects from tackling inequality to saving the planet with more sustainable practices. Take some optimism. Also in this week's issue, air Boss is making plans to take the lead from Boeing in the commercial aerospace duopoly. Plus, we'll hear from a series of executives in the travel and transportation industries, including both the CEO and CFL of Royal Caribbean as well as the president at Audi of America. We begin with a couple of stories in the Good

Business issue. This one among the most read on the Bloomberg this past week, how renowned Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld became an enemy of the Russian state simply by making a list. With more, we turned to Bloomberg Business Week contributor Rob Mandelbaum and senior editor Dimitri Cassedis, who starts

us off with who is Jeffrey Sonenfeld. He has the ear of many CEOs around the world and have been contacted if I'm not mistaken by some folks saying, you know, this is something we need to look at, is which what what companies are pulling out of Russia and what companies are staying behind and how do we how will

we make these distinctions? Right after Russia invaded Ukraine. Um so he got a little bit of play about this, But as we expanded our look at business school stories, he became somebody that I was focused on, and I thought, well, I'm curious to know what what jeff sannon Felt was up to. And I saw little snippets about some of this work, but nothing really that delve deeply into how this all became such a big list and became such a powerful list, And that is how he got onto

my radar with this. And then I contacted Rob, who has been a regular contributor to Business Week, and asked him that he would be interested in taking a closer look. And I think that from the first minute, we'll let Rob answer this, but I think he was intrigued given that there were certain aspects of the story that had not been covered at all out there and that really were very meaningful to again, like what is it that this list is really? What kind of power does it? Wiel?

So I will let Rob talk about that. The list itself was actually something that came from his sort of correspondence with c e O s. It wasn't something that

he started to do. It was something that they asked him to do because the were CEOs who had pulled out of Russia and they felt like the business media was conflating what they were doing, actually pulling out with you know, other companies that were sort of you know, sending thoughts and prayers to the Ukrainian people, but you know, counting their Russian roubles and that sort of thing and and so that's where the list started for him, was just sort of trying to figure out who was actually

leaving Russia and who was sort of making noise like they were leaving Russia but not really. It's pretty incredible because you know, sander Felt is certainly Professor soner Felt was certainly associated with the list as you write, But at the same time he's got a research assistant and then all of the volunteers who ended up helping with this list, So who actually worked on it and work

is working on it? Rob There were at one point up to forty two I think other people working on it, and many of them were undergrads at Yale and other schools. They were people like a guy I talked to named Frank Sokovowski, and he was a freshman at the time.

He was studying economics. He had actually heard about some of Sonenfeld's earlier work sort of organizing c e O s after election to sort of protest, you know, the overturning of the election, and he had heard about that even before he got to New Haven and resolved to work with Snenfeld and it find it happened that this was the project and you know he's from Poland, uh

and so very close to Ukraine. He ended up getting so involved with it that he reschedules his classes, you know, for the spring, some of them for the summer, so he could work on the list in the spring. And he recruited a bunch of other students at Yale and at other schools to work on the list for him. And a lot of those people were Poles who spoke not just Polish, but Russian, and that gave this team and you know, an inside edge, you know, able to

analyze Russian material that doesn't normally get translated. So how did he ultimately then become an enemy of the Russian state as a result. It's just where they so ticked

off that he was accumulating this list. Why he well, he had started with the list, but then he started doing some research and he had published research i think in late May indicating you know that if you were a company pulling out of Russia, you saw a benefit to your stock price or you paid less for debt, like there was a market reward for pulling out of Russia that you could sort of tie to the announcement that you were leaving Russia and he ended up on

a stop list. Uh, this was in June of people who weren't allowed to go to Russia. I don't think that bothered him too much, you know, I don't think he was planning to go to Russia any type of suit. They're about a thousand people on that list now. At the time there were far fewer. Bloomberg Business Week contributor Rob Mandelbaum and senior editor for the magazine Demitri Cassoni's with us. There the full story online on the terminal and in the Good Business issue. It's out on newsstands now.

All right, Tim, let's move to another one of this week's features. It's all about a one point one billion dollars startup net working group that is only for women executives. It's called Chief, and it's really a mechanism for women who are already on the other side of that glass ceiling to collaborate. It's got a lot of people listen to this. Chief has roughly twenty members Carol in sixty women on its wait list. That's thanks in large part to a COVID related pivot away from in person meetings.

Bloomberg News Managing Diversity reporter Jeff Green has the details. They started kind of playing around with the model and decided ultimately to just make it a national kind of virtual model UM and that made a huge difference for how the participation could could happen. And I mean the key thing here is that, in addition to being a large organization for a lot of people, it's focused on very small groups called core groups that have about ten members.

And that's why you have sixty people wanting to get in because they want to be part of these little groups, not necessarily the big group. I mean, the big group I'm sure is attractive to but everything I hear and I've spent some time with some of the members is this little group well, and I want to get into that because Jeff, I feel like when you're at a big conference and then you're invited to a special lunch or a breakout right where smaller members where you actually

face to face time with some really prominent people. One thing I want to ask you, though, is I feel like, Jeff, there are so many women only professional networks out there. It is that core group that makes this a little bit different, as well as being very senior people. Yeah, and it's not just random. I mean, these are curated groups of ten people that are all around the same level. This is not a mentor mentee relationship. This is meant

to be. These are people who will benefit as if they were all men on a board together in the same sort of way women in a boardroom, except coming from a whole bunch of different companies. And that is the key here is that it's it's curated. It's also moderated. There's a professional um who is there to kind of keep the conversation focused and help people to have sort of you know, topics to talk about and to keep things moving along. How did she not only survive the

endemic that's thrived during it. Well, I think part of the key was going virtual. I mean the idea that the people who I talked to in fact, who were in a I spent some time with three members of a core group over almost a year. We just kind of talked from time to time and while we were you know, they had never met I mean one of them in Philadelphia, two of them are in New York, but they had never met physically. They only meet on this call, and I mean from any hour of the night,

from any location. One member kind of left a dinner for her daughter's softball banquet, another would do it from Switzerland, and me, this was like a very important way to kind of focus on very important topics. So for those who are involved in it, you know, what do they feel like they're getting out of it? Well, I mean, for one, one of the people who we kind of featured,

she's a CFO of Novocure. There are no women other than her in the C suite, so she gets to be kind of in her own sort of specialized C suite with a whole bunch of other people who are at the same level and can talk about how what they bring to the table and how they would react to a specific situation. And they all so we'll have certain activities that they kind of bring in as conversation starters that give them something to kind of like different

ideas to test among themselves. Carol and I were at Stanford Graduate School of Business interviewed Mary Barra, and one of the questions that we asked her was, you know, she's the only female executive of the Big three automakers, And we asked for a question in the context of okay, business school has gotten more diverse in terms of gender, but we haven't seen that transit. Half men half women

getting their nbas, but we haven't seen that translate. So, Carol, I thought you asked a great question, which was, you know, what's the right conversation that we need to be having about this? And and my question for you, Jeff is is kind of similar to this. When do we start to see the organization that's happening sort of outside of the c suite here really translate into numbers that show that women are actually getting a foothold in some of

these biggest companies. Yeah. Well, part of the problem, and I've done some reporting on this, is the NBA's are not actually where they should be based on or the rest of the college education system. Is women still lag in the NBA's. It's only just recently we're starting to see parody. I think in the Business Week measure there were six schools that had parity or better. So that's still that is part of the problem is it's kind of built into the system. But I mean that is

the question. It's like, Okay, what's coming and when once you start to reach parody at the schools, how are you going to work that into the c suite? That. You know, people say it's a pipeline problem or whatever, but it's it's a prism problem. And I think that's what Chief is trying to basically solve, is finding all these people and putting them together so they can better leverage these opportunities. I mean, you really need to know that everyone is there. You need a bit of a

different rolodex. And that's what Chief is is. Basically, it's really big, diverse rolodex for women trying to figure out how to break into this system. That was Bloomberg News Managing Diversity reporter Jeff Green. Coming up, we touch on the end of an era for American industrial icon Boeing and explore plans by its European rival Airbus to take the global lead in commercial aviation. You're listening to Bloomberg

this week. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovik from Bloomberg Radio. Among the great business rivalries of our time is the duopoli of Airbus versus Boeing. Tim, you know this so well. You love planes. Those two essentially own the commercial aerospace industry. Each planemaker has a lineup of products that compete with one another. Airbus has answered to Bowing seven thirty seven family, for example, is that are twenty?

Then for the A three fifty, Bowing has got the seven. But that's about to change. Boeing recently revealed it won't design a new aircraft this decade, leaving it without a competitor to Airbus. A smaller A to twenty, and that narrow body design could be the next go to model in air travel. Bloomberg News aerospace reporter Julie Johnson writes about it in the business section of this week's issue of the magazine, What's the Fantastic Plane? I I've I've flown on it a couple of times as well, and

I'm a big fan. There's a window in one of the bathrooms that's like the one of the big highlights, right, yeah, I guess. So I'm just gonna warn you, Julie um Tim is really really into play. I know she knows I bother her all the time with like non work stuff, but we're picking flights to go places. He's like, well, you know what kind of plane that is? Anyway, So go ahead, tell us about your story and what you what you dug into. And by the way, Tim, I

approve of this behavior, thank you. Yeah. So so anyway, the product strategy gamesmanship is really fascinating between these two and as you hinted at, they've had you know, pretty much a fifty fifty do Appoli planemaking for years decades, and that started to change recently. Air Bus has taken control of the most important segment of the market, which is narrow bodies, with a plane that has called the three Neo that has just been a runaway sales success.

So air Bus is doing really well at the top of the market. And weeks after Boeing CEO basically said, look, we're just not doing a plane this decade, air bus is CEO told Bloomberg, Hey, well, funny enough, we are looking really closely at um a new member of the twenty family that would go right at the heart of Boeing's product lineup. Now just a little bit of history here, but air Bus got the A to twenty at a fire sale. I mean I think it was a dollar

or euro, I forget the currency from Bombardier. Um just it was really it was a pittance back in total fire sale. And when they picked up those first to A to twenty models. They also inherited really detail, detailed engineering designs for a third and largest member of the family called There and so that's the plane that air Bus is now talking up publicly. First of all, what does it mean for Boeing if they don't have a

comeback against it? So there are a couple of things going on, and basically this is a classic pincer move. Airbus has the top end of the most important market in aerospace narrow bodies with THEE and they would be coming back with a smaller plane that's targeted right at Boeing's best seller, which is the Max eight. So um, So Boeing doesn't have a comeback, that means, you know, they continue to bleed even more market share to air

Bus and it's not good. Julie, you mentioned the Max eight, So we got to go in on the seven seven Max and all the problems that Boeing has had. How much of Boeing's history of mismanagement with regard to the seven thirty seven Max and the way of the two crashes that killed hundreds of people a few years ago in the twenty month grounding of the plane, how much of that has to do with Boeing not coming up

with a competitor to this. Well, Boeing's got fifty seven billion in debt right now and that's a result of COVID and the Max crisis. They had just stopped building the Max um for a few months, but they were knocked out of sales for a long time. So anyway, the financial damage is going to be with Boeing for most of this decade, and that's a really big factor as to why they're you know, they're just not in

a position right now to do do a new plane. Um. But the Max eight has done really, really well in the market and I believe it's outsold the A three two, so that's the comparably sized Airbus model. So it's it's definitely a success in the marketplace. And right now Boeing's finances are writing on that plane. And the story that you guys report out says that that Max eight that sales restart um handed Bowing a victory over Airbus last

year the competition for the most aircraft orders. So, Julie, the back and forth, I feel like, you know, anybody who's been in this industry of covering business news business stories. You know, from year to year, it's like Boeing got this order, you know, Airbus got this order, and kind of the back and forth. But I do wonder is it potentially setting up for you know, Airbus to have a longer term advantage here or how do you see it?

You know, everything goes Airbus is way the They will dominate the market, not just this decade, but into the next decade as well. And so I think some people are really worried that, you know, Boeing might be facing sort of a slow slide into mediocrity. But then I've got to just throw out just a grain of salt here, because none of this is going to happen anytime soon.

Air Boss has got some huge issues of its own, and you know, its production system is a mass right now, so they're not in a position to take on a new plane. And if they pursue there, they're going to cannibalize one of their most profitable bowl models, which is the Neo. So it's risky for them as well. That was Bloomberg News aerospace reporter Julie Johnson. I have to say we had so much fun with her. I mean, you guys, you I know are so into planes in

a big way. She obviously is too well. Speaking of that, it was a huge weekend for planemakers. Tuesday night in ever Washington, the last seven ever assembled left Boeing's factory. The freighter is going to be used by the cargo carrier Atlas. There we did a feature over at Bloomberg Quick Take about the jets more than fifty year history and the way the airplane changed air travel forever. You can see that on our Twitter feed just use the

handle at quick Take. I think about so many movies right that they use that plane, like to show people going up up this dares right to the bar or whatever, and it's not going anywhere. I mean, it's hard to find a passenger airline. They're none in the US that actually fly it. But you know it's going to be used as cargo plans for years to come. All right,

good to know. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, from airplanes to automobiles, we'll hear from the CEO of car Parts dot Com and the president of Audi of America. As the paradigm in the global car business continues to shift, we continue to see more and more consumers wanted to go into electrification, and that's something where we well prepared. We're gonna invest also going for nineteen billion euros over the next few years to make sure that there's a

car electric car for every consumer out there. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg eleven Rio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one does San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius xm jem one team, and around the globe the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer

and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovian on Bloomberg Radio. All right, so, in our last segment we spoke about the changing competitive landscape in the skies between bog and Airbus. We now turn our attention to the changing rules of the road, the difference. There are a lot more players involved. Pretty much every automaker, from established companies to startups, is following

Tesla down the path of electrification. Bloomberg New Senior Markets reporter Katie Gratfield and I recently spoke with Daniel Weissland. He's the president of AUDI of America, and he says the luxury brand is more than ready for the transition. Over the last few years, we have learned how to manage COVID, We have learned how to manage supplied challenges, and we also manage economical challenges. UM. And as what we can see as for AUDI right now, we see

a high demand. Actually our demand is high us in the supply and especially for electric vehicles or consumers want to buy more and more electric vehicles. Well, that's what I want to dig into this sort of shift to EVS. What I was going to ask is with the inflation that we've seen throughout the economy, hottest inflation in a generation, do you think that that has it all slowed this timeline down when you think about you know, the average

American driver adopting EVS. Actually, I think it's is accelerating the way towards electrification. That's what we see at AUDI over the last few months. Uh, you know, with the introduction of the que for Eatron and the Audi que for each one sport back. Now we have the largest

but if any auto maker here in the industry. UM and the last months we had a seventy increase with our better electric vehicles last squart it was so again we continue to see more and more consumers wanted to go into electrification, and that's something where we well prepared. We're gonna invest also going forward, nineteen billion euros over the next few years to make sure that there's a car like trick Car for every consumer out of there.

Hey Daniel, what is the internal data tell you about your portion of vehicles that you sell will be evs by the year, Because according to Bloomberg any f only just over half of passenger cars sold in the US will be evs and that's by the year. And I don't know about you, but that seems kind of slow to me. Yeah, I expect that it's going to happen

the most much fast, especially in the premium segment. For Audi predict already in the next five years the tipping point that it was more better electric vehicles than internal combustion vehicles, and by twenties thirty the last majority will be better electric. Big. So let's talk about the supply chain here. It's something that we have been talking about four years on Bloomberg, specifically when it comes to chips

and what that has meant for automakers. But from your vantage point, I mean, where are we in the supply chain story? Has peaks supply chain already passed for your business? I I thinking forward, we still see some challenges in the whole supply chain around the globe, but I think they also managed to adopt according to our customer needs

and expectations. So for example, now we're trying to pre sell cars before they even arrived the country here and that helped us obviously to to fulfill the demand or certain extent um. And we managed this way also that certain challenges if the car is not in the country, Yeah, and we can still sell it even if it's outside of the country. What are you seeing as an entry

point for people when it comes to e vs? You said that premium end of the segment, and Audi is certainly a premium brand, But what do you see as the entry point in terms of dollars? Where how low could you go in terms of prise? So we started in twenty our Audi Eatron price point around eighty thousand dollars. Then last year we brought in the Audi Eatron g

t is electric car to the market. Yes, price point above hundred thousand, and now we use a que for eachron and the queue for each one squad where we brought down the entry price level below fifty thou dollars um and that's one thing that the retail price, but you also need to look at the cost of owning the car and with you know, with electric vehicles, it's a lot less than it is with internal combustion engine vehicles.

You know, the gas prices wherever you live have increased throughout the last few years, and with electric cars, obviously it's a lot cheaper to maintain and run those cars. That's a concern though to a lot of dealerships that make money by maintaining people's internal combustion engines and vehicles. What are the conversations that you guys are having with dealerships right now about how they need to be prepared

for a future that's electric. Our dealers are an essential part of our strategy and of our future and be discussing with our dealers constantly how we increase and improve our business. So actually it's welcome with a better electric vehicles because you know, they're very loyal those customers say, not going to any different you know, garage to to fix the car. And we should not forget we have so many non electric vehicles on the road which they

can maintain and and and make profits from. So we're not concerned about the future of this a would he actually be excited about the future because our business is going to grow. That was Out of America President Daniel weiss Land with me and Bloomberg's Katie Greifeld. Tim, you guys spoke a lot about supply chains. Our next guest is very much in tune with that integral Harry of the car market, to say the least. We're talking about

David Mignon, the CEO of car Parts dot Com. It's a publicly held small camp about three hundred million dollars in market. Camp stock is off about fifty so far. Here in The company provides access to literally hundreds of thousands of aftermarket automobile components online. It's an increasingly tough task when it comes to this environment. The consumer is getting pinched right at the gas bomb at the grocery

store with interest rates. So you know, it's an opportunity for companies like us to double down on efficiencies and double down on continuous improvement and figuring out a way how to pass on savings to the customers and give them a reason to shop with us. So when you are doubling down and thinking about where to conserve or not, are you guys bracing for a recession and might layoffs

be a part of that? You know, I think the environment is definitely changing and it's a good time to double down on you know, free cash flow, staying debt free, positive unit economics and really really go back to the fundamentals of serving the customer needs. So for us, it's been a laser focus on number one, customer experience and number two being fiscally conservative. So we've always been very

fistfully conservative, especially over the last three years. You know we have we're free cash flow positive, we're virtually debt free. But as we get into three which might be a recession, it's an opportunity to really double down on that. All right. So but as you double down, as you said, I mean, customers come first, you need people to make sure customers

come first. But if you are feeling the pressure, I mean, are all bets often meaning that if you need to cut costs, and if that means workers, that could happen Yeah, I don't think we're in that position. I think we've been in a good spot for the last three years.

We've been very disciplined about, you know, increasing headcount. Uh So right now we're in a good position, and we also have a ton of opportunities operationally to find deficiencies, not only on the marketing side, on the technology side, using data science, using continuous improvements. So i'd say, you know, for us at car parts dot Com, we're in a good spot. You guys offer hundreds of thousands of skiers give us a percentage. Though in the last couple of years,

in this supply chain crunches, prices have gone up. How much your costs have gone up on these parts? How much have you to raise prices for the consumer? Yeah, definitely, we've seen some pressure on the supply chain, not only in the cost of raw materials, but also inbound transportation and outbound transportation. So it's been across the board. Not unlike the other traditional retailers were brick and more retailers, it's been in the double digits. Now. Obviously, we have,

you know, what we think is a competitive advantage. We have a vertically integrated supply chain and We always try to pass on whatever savings we can get to the customer. But to your point point, yes, the last couple of years have been tough for the customer and it's been you know, double digits for sure, double digits. Like are we talking somewhere between ten and twenty over the last couple of years, so we could say teens, Yeah, we like to we like to zero in there, we do.

You're you're being a good player, David. Hey, what I am where? You know? As to mention lots of skews, lots of manufacturing, how has the geopolitical instabilities, the trade pushback, the pushbacks against globalization, how is that impacting you about where you want to manufacture everything. Yeah, that's a very good question and it's something that we've been thinking about for a very long time. Uh. You know, we source

parts globally. Now obviously there is a high concentration in you know, in Asia, and so we've been looking to diversify our supply chain and over the last couple of years we added some supply out of South America, out of Europe, and I think long term, as the business continues to grow, you know, we're always going to be sourcing parts from Asia, but there's opportunity in other places. So for us, we built we've actually made some investments

to build a global sourcing team. The main focus is quality, right, We're always looking for quality parts, but obviously the global geopolitical environment comes into play for sure. David, when you say Asia, do you mean China manufacturings in particular. Actually, a lot of what we source is from Taiwan. So you know, we carry about eighty tho skews individual skews in our supply chain and a lot of those come from Taiwan, which historically has been a very good partnership

for us. That's David Magnon, CEO of car Parts dot Com. He also mentioned Mexico as a procurement source, so will continue to watch how he and others are managing their supply lines. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week up decks. New York City's homebuyers and sellers are both trying to time the market and that's leading to a lot of frustration. Will explain on the other side. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Berg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg

Quick Takes, Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. So, US mortgage rates have fallen for a fourth week in a row. It's the longest such stretch of decline since May of nineteen. So a thirty year fixed mortgage easing to six point four in the weekending December two TIMP. That is the lowest since mid September, according to Mortgage Bankers Association data.

We got that data earlier in the week. Speaking of interest rates in real estate, we wanted to get an update on the home market in one of the highest priced big markets in the world. We're talking about New York City. Back with us as Barbara Fox, she's president of the Fox Residential Group. It's a small boutique brokerage firm that specializes in the sale upscale residential properties in Manhattan, and she says economic uncertainty is stalling transactions across the

big Apple. This is a glitch here between buyers and sellers. Buyers know that the market should be more favorable to them, and sellers haven't really gotten it yet. So that's that's what sort of ha happened in the market. So if sellers started to get it now, I think sellers maybe starting to get it but they haven't gotten it yet.

Here's what's tricky about this market is that we're in an environment wherein the Bank of Americas at O'Brian moynihan said this a few months ago in an interview with Bloomberg, that there's so many people in the US who have interest rates under four percent, even under three, that people who would traditionally move are are are willing to stay in their apartments because they don't want to go somewhere and then pay a higher interest rate. Yeah, well that's

very true. I mean, it makes sense. So how do you reconcile that with changing demographics, younger people who do want to buy their first home and not necessarily having that supply available. The only way to really justify it is to make prices comparable UM to the interest rate increases. And you know, when prices are lower UM, people like to be able to get a goodbye, and if they get a goodbye, then they can make it up. The interest rate being higher doesn't really matter to them so

much as long as the price is lower. So, Barbara, you know, I go to your website and I get lost. I go down a rabbit hole because I love real estate and just checking it out. But there's you know, it runs the gamut. What are the typical properties that are are moving right now? Give us an idea of price range. Who's buying? Is it cash deals? What is it? Let me start with what's not selling? Okay, all right? What's not selling? Our apartments that need work or properties

that need work. Renovation is very expensive now. It's slower than it ever was in terms of the supply chain issues. And it's just um, it's a more difficult process right now. And co ops in particular, which makes up a large percentage of our real estate stock. Co ops have to get approvals and the co op boards govern how many days you can work, and they make life difficult. So you maybe say, if somebody comes with a listing in the kitchen needs to be readown bathrooms, you're like, I

don't even take it. A lot of people do that. I mean I work with people every day that that you know, want something that's in that they can move into. They don't want to have to us someone who's a seller. Will you say, I don't want to take those properties as much? None? Okay, because we have we have ways

of making things look beautiful. I mean We take properties that need work and we have them staged and painted and cleaned, and they and they end up looking gorgeous and and when it comes down to what's needed, really less as needed than then they would have other than the buyers would have otherwise thought. That's Barbara Fox, president of the Fox Residential Group. For the full interview, check

out the Bloomberg Business Week podcast feed. And that wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanivik. Coming up in our next hour a group of executives from the travel, media and retail industries. We're gonna hear from both the CEO and CFO of Royal Caribbean, the heads of Active Where apparel makers Ron and Fiori,

as well as the CEO of Loop Media. It's a CEO palooza like that, It's always a CEO polooza for us, it really really is. Plus Miami's crypto diehards they are partying on in the wake of the ft X unraveling. This is personal for them what's happened. There are people who know Sam BigMan Fried who it's not just people whose balance sheets are affected by him. This is Bloomberg.

This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news as it happened. Sloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Plenty of head in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including an excerpt from the latest edition of Chief Future Officer. We'll get a double dose of c suite insights from

both the CEO and CFO Royal Caribbean. Plus we check in on the retail space with the heads of competing high end activewear apparel makers. We're talking about Ron and Viori and how Miami's Crypto Faithful are coping with the collapse of f TX the coup and I think, okay, it sounds like party party on first up this hour. He's an entrepreneur. He's co found of two companies, including the one he runs now, president of Asia Electronic Arts there for about seven years. Before that, he was president

of Asia Pacific over Walt Disney International. It was really nice to have back with us. John Narman. He's chairman, CEO, and co founder of Loop Media. It's a multi channel streaming platform. It's got a three million dollar market cap, so it's a small cap and it went public after an uplisting as part of a twelve million dollar underwritten public offering that happened back in September. We began by asking for his thoughts on the pain being felt across

the digital advertising space. Everybody's it's all doom and gloom, right, it's just falling apart, it's tanking. If you look at if you hear from Snap now, I don't agree with that. You're saying that. Now I'm not coming out strong like no, I'm coming out saying that's not entirely accurate. I think a certain segments if you look at advertising across the board, you got the traditional advertising, linear TV, outdoor, et cetera.

Now people are doing digital advertising. So yes, social media in that area, which has grown robustly, has taken a hit. But areas like connected television, your Rocus, the Warrior, Pluto's, et cetera, they're growing, digital out of home are also growing. Those are the two areas we play in. So I don't agree with this kind of blanket statement of it's just all bad. But would you agree with the blanket

statement that companies are tightening their belts. And when companies do tighten their belts, one of the first things to go is marketing money. I would agree with that, yes, but I also think they refocus it. So if you're people are going out again, you know, as we know and like a couple of years ago, even the past year, people are going out. It's a great captive audience. They're out for a good time, they're having a good time.

So targeting groups like that out home as opposed to just your mobile phone all the time is something that people are expanding into. How do you do that? So, like loop Media, we have a platform that's advertising supported. We're in any public venue as small as a pub to as large as university campus. So whether you're a dry cleaner, tattoo parlor, a CDB store, you name it. Uh, they have screens. So we create a network basically out

of home. Previously these are all kind of disconnected. You know, think about where homes where ten years goes cable and satellite, that's still where businesses are. They don't really have a streaming option, and that's what we're bringing to them. You don't go to a restaurant and watch a movie, and basically all streaming services or movies or TV series. If you're seven year old, you do, yes, you do right. Your parents give you, they say, watch this movie while

we have a nice peaceful dinner. Exactly, you go to a sports bar and they're constantly playing Caddyshack the whole time. There's nothing wrong with Wait, so help me understand so exactly what you're doing. So you're going into spaces that maybe typically did not have advertising before. Correct so previously. So in our world, we're not really about subscribers. That's the consumers. How many subscribers you have? For us, it's how many locations are you in. So we provide that

as ads supported for free. Coming out of the pandemic, people at all these costs to worry about labor, food, et cetera. The last thing they're worried about is spending money on a TV screen. But they didn't have that free option before. So in order to get that free content and digital signage, you need advertising to support it. Obviously, so people are moving part of their media mix into this digital out of home space, which you'll hear more and more of. What's the growth that you've seen? Give

me where were you pre pandemic versus pre pandemic? Where are you today? We're about three million dollars and acquired revenue. We were basically a startup, you know, we had bought a small company that provided music videos to out a home and this past year we've finished five million. We haven't released our fiscal however, the analyst estimate is around thirty million RUST and it's a big gap go from five to thirty you know last year. Yeah, so if you if you kind of look at that, that's yeah,

that's the type of growth that you're looking at. Which venues in particular are providing the biggest momentum for you guys? You mentioned restaurants. Do you tell me if I go to Danielle, you could go to Margaritaville Right down here at Tide Squarelle we talked, So if I go to Margaritaville, where am I going to see the screen at the bar? Your seat at the bar. You're going to see it in common areas You're going to see in the lobby.

You know, we're also in four in a thousand hotel rooms, so you know, we provide largely about of our business of bars and restaurants. The rest are just kind of other retail John tracking r o I. How do you tell clients what they get, what their return is? So for them, it's really a couple of things. One, it's about cost savings. So what used to cost them. They can actually earn a little bit of money because we

do provide a rewards program. So would you use our service, you keep the screens on, you have a chance to earn some cash. So that's a great thing for their balance sheet. Um. The second thing is really this the opportunity for them to engage the customers. And you know, when people are engaged, they stay longer and they spend more. So there are quite a few studies that actually show when that entertainment is good in house, people are sticking

around there. Well yeah, but we do have a trivia channel. So when you like, you know, you're at a bar with your best friend Joe or Jane, and they say, what the heck do you do? Yeah, so you stream videos your video streaming company into public spaces. So bars, rest you know, any time. So any company can do it. The company could do it, they just need to find us. We get them a loop player. They plug in the loop player. Previously you'd have these giant a v racks.

You know, you go to we we have dating yourself, but I thank you, But even I go to the yard house and a big Dell computer there and they're clung gy and horrible and expensive. And now you just plug and play like you do at home. Is the is the is what you plug in a hard drive or a you know, stored memory device or is it does it give wireless access? It's a little well it's an Android player. You're just plugging in the back like size of an Apple TV, so kind of a three

by three thing. Does it connect to a network or does it have a hard WiFi? You can also do Ethernet? And it does. It does cash content because in case WiFi goes down, you don't want to have be left without content. I want to go back to the question that I had before, because John, with all due respect, you didn't really answer it, but maybe I asked it in about in a bad way. Okay, but you know the content that you play in these out of home spaces.

It's supported by advertisers. Correct. What I want to know is how advertisers who work with you know they're getting eyeballs, know they're getting a return on their investment that they're making. So currently they basically put advertising in there to have the opportunity to be exposed to multiple people in the room. Think of it this way. When you're at home watching your movie, it's you one on one, so advertisers paying for that one on one. When you're out of home,

it's a multiplier. You could have fifteen people within the range of that. Now we're working with com Score to try to get some measurement in there. There's also third parties like geopath that measure people that are in They could cut basically through WiFi, can tell how many mobile phones are in the room. This is new. I mean, it's odd as it sounds. Everybody's been focused on consumer streaming. It's Roku, it's Pluto, it's Disney Plus, it's everyone there.

But out of home, those things don't play, they don't work. The content isn't right there, licensing isn't there. So we've kind of quietly gone about finding that world of tens of millions of screens, beautiful screens out there with tons of eyeballs, providing content that works. Music videos. We lead basically all fifty states national music video promotions. We're the biggest TV now that's right, all right, bring me my

loop or whatever. So I gotta gotta Yeah, that's it, so loop me in little You supply the hardware to we do, so we can do it with our own loop player, but we also wont we have a partner network. So for example, we're about seventeen thousand convenience store point of sales systems. Truly last model advertising. Think your in line, you got the little thing at the end and say itemizes your receipt. Boom, there's a Snickers commercial right there,

Snickers right here, impulse by. So it's really that last opportunity for the advertiser to grab that consumer when they're actually out making a purchase. So what does an add spot rock costs? That's CPMs very you know, they're kind of in between five to fifteen depending on the day. Yes, but then a multiplier, So what you can do without a home, if there's ten people in there, you can put that ten times multiplier in the advertiser pay for that our thanks to John Narman. He's the chairman, CEO

and co founder of the held company bloom Media. We had a lot of fun with him, kind of going back and forth right on the business model. He was really candid. I loved it. Yeah, me too. All right, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week coming up. We hit the High Seas with the executive team from Royal Caribbean. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol

Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovik from Bloomberg Radio. Well, this past week, JP Morgan downgraded Royal Caribbean to underweight from overweight, noting the cruising company's elevated leverage and this is a quote, the magnitude and timing of future capital commitments.

Those were some of JP Morgan's concerns. This is despite Royal caribbeans ten billion dollars of capital raises so far this year, the company's cash and debt positions, or something Carol recently talked about with both the Royal Caribbean CEO Jason Liberty and the CFO IF Tally Holtz, respectively. The latter conversation featured in Business Week Talks and this week's issue of the magazine, and both are part of the latest installment of Chief Future Officer. It aired on Bloomberg

TV just this past week. The conversation we covered a lot, but it begins, as so many do these days, about the pandemic and life after, which I put that question first to Royal Caribbean CEO Jason Liberty. All of a sudden, you know, the revenue just turns off. They did not teach this in business school, by the way, So you know it turns off, and you you have to figure out how you're going to ensure that the company has liquidity needs in order to be able to get to

the other side of it. No revenue at all, but you have costs and expensive that what you learned in the pandemic is that leadership really matters. For Royal Caribbean Cruises, the lesson was stark and clear. After generating almost two billion dollars an annual profit before COVID, the company lost more than five billion dollars in both At the end of longtime CEO Richard Fain stepped down after thirty three years,

handing the reins to CFO Jason liberty. What was it like that transition going from CFO to Yeah, we were still kind of coming out of the pandemic. We were still ramping up our fleet, ramping up our occupancy, and so we had to keep our eye on the ball on because historically we would bring about three ships up a year, and here we brought up sixty four ships. And it's a big change to herculean efforts helping the

new CEO meet those challenges. New CFO and if Holly Holt, who moved up from VP of Finance, I had hired him I think about six months before the pandemic. I was looking for somebody with with a lot of really strong work ethics, somebody who was strategic um, you know, somebody who understood how to get things done inside of an organization. And I saw those qualities and off Tolly. And he has done an exceptional job coming into the role. He hit the ground running. That dynamic in the C

suite has helped Royal Caribbeans come back maintain momentum. What's it like becoming CFO working for the individual who was CFO and is now CEO. I feel very fortunate because I have someone who has been in the job for many years. Is still with a company obviously as much more responsibly, but he understands what what I what what it means to be in my job. So what was that like for you having been in a CFO role

for so long? What did you expect of him? I rely on him very much to be my eyes and ears, my strategic partner. And I'm also very transparent with him in terms of what I'm thinking about and doing um and sometimes who sit there and did we really need to spend money on that? And also yeah, we really need to spend money on that. I'm a very direct person and I care and I feel that that's that's important for me to make sure that if I feel differently,

you know, at least we have a conversation. And you know many times I would I would I would think one way, and then he would point his point of view and it would make sense and I would say, you know what, You're right and and I get behind it. Advancing the company's long term mission through honest conversation. That's how n if tally Holt takes the CFO roll forward.

And maybe many years ago we was about making sure that the numbers are correct and everything is on time and and we report correctly, and I think evolved today into much more than that. You know, what is the strategy that we're going to embark on, What does that mean to the financial performance of the company, and how does how do we investor view dot Um. That's one aspect of it, and the other is just making sure that we are always on the poles with its full

fleet returning to the seas in. Royal Caribbean has enjoyed a financial rebound booking or robust and they've been accelerating every quarter. In November, the company announced the Trifecta Program, a three year initiative designed to exceed performance in key financial metrics by the end of Inside the industry, they're confident because there's bent up demand. People want to We have a hundred and thirty thousand people sailing with us right now as we talked, and they are spending more

than they did a month ago. They're spending more than they did a year ago. They're spending more than they did pre covid Um on travel experience. We know the ships that are coming in. These ships are huge money makers, very high yielding. Because of the inventory mix, there's more space for onboard revenue venues. They're very fuel efficient. Intent

to cruise is climbing. Whether or not that can be sustained, I think is a question to be answered, and there are a couple of different elements of that, the first being, UH, the economy. Do you get a little nervous with all the recession talk or another black swan who would have thought, right what happened the last couple of years. It's hard to plan for it right. So what we are focused on is to making sure that we have the best

business right, so the business is run well. We are obviously are focused on liquidity and and our our our financial metrics, and we want to fix the balance sheet. Fixing the balance sheet that's a heavy lift. Royal Caribbean is carrying nearly twenty four billion dollars in debt. Though it's paid down most of its short term obligations, the debt still looms large. It's a dark cloud over the

entire cruise industry. The valuations for the major cruise lines have gone down and UH, and the debt levels are very high, so they will have difficulties to to receive more debt and it might be very high interest rates. The debt that we took on. Half of it was in order for us to deal with UH not operating for those for those eighteen months and ramping our business

back up, staying a lot, that's right. Um. The other half of it was actually because we were growing and we were taking on new ships, and those new ships we get incredible export credit financing for and we've done a lot of refinancing and we do believe over the coming years we're gonna be in a much better place to do two things. One is de leverage and also improve our rating, and so that will also lower our

capital casts. Are you comfortable with that level of debt and being able to service it, well, we were not happy with it. We want to get Our goal is to get back to the balance sheet we had UM, which is an investment, great profile. We're back sailing UM occupancies were generating cash flow from operations, so you know, our goal is now to continue to grow Ibada, continue to grow the cash low so we can pay down the debt and bring the balance sheet back. This business

is very resilient. We always said that we wanted to have a balance sheet that could take a punch, and we proved that we had a balance sheet that could actually take a meteor um and so I think that's why you know, NOF is very focused. I'm very focused on getting back to a investment grade balance sheet. I'm getting back to an unencumbered balance sheet. You know that that sets us up for events as they as they as they come forward. Can Royal Caribbean perform its way

back to unencumbered financial stability. The cruise line generates about six revenue from sales of tickets. Most of the rest comes on board spending. At the moment, higher prices aren't holding down demand in either category. On the ticket pricing side as well as on onboard spend um you are pricing is up versus nineteen. We use nineteen as our reference point. Onboard experiences have really been become a much

more integral part of the experience. What we have seen in the past couple of years is that we we have a much more penetration of onboard board experiences for a guest. So people just want to consume more, They're willing to spend more and that's obviously much um. That helps the the yields and the revenues as well as the margin pre pandemic. Unalysts were impressed by Royal Caribbeans margin expansion. Operating margins double during Jason Liberty's first seven

years as CFO. The voyage ahead may not be a smooth especially if inflated costs eat into revenue gains. We've seen huge inflation costs on the on the food. However, you are supply chain teams have done really an exceptional job. So we do believe as which is what the basis of our Trifector program is moderate yields and good cost control.

And for us could cost control is is low single digit um change you over here Those are the voices of Royal Caribbean CEO Jason Liberty and CFO and F Tally Holtz, part of the newest episode of Bloomberg's Chief Future Officers series, and in there you also heard from some watchers of the cruise industry. You can check out

the whole show at Bloomberg dot com. Still to come on Bloomberg Business Week, A pair of competitors in the director consumer segment of the retail market, both founders and CEOs of their own companies, runs Nate Check It to

Fiori's Joe Kubla are up next. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the World, Bloomberg Eleve in Rio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one does San Francisco, Bloomberg nine to the country, Sirius XM Jomber one nine and around the globe the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg

Quick Takes. Tim Stenovian on Bloomberg Radio. A couple of great interviews coming up with a pair of executives and the activeware business. We're talking about roans, Nate check its and theories. Joe could La NATed last Joint Business Week back in August of That was when many of us were living in yoga pants. Well I wasn't you that's sweatpants. You know, I had some joggers, all kinds of comfy

at leisure close. Of course, Now the company he co founded is adapting to meet the changing needs of the consumer, with more people returning to the office. Bloomberg Market Senior editor Mike Reagan and I spoke with Nate just before Thanksgiving. We wanted to know how Ron is making the transition.

We make everything from underwear to outerwear, and we you know we we do activewear really really well, and that's what was selling during the pandemic was our activewear and our loungeware and then all of this out and you saw huge surges and kind of back to work clothing, but the styles that everybody wanted to wear was really comfortable, basically our commuter program. So Len say, your commuter shirt is like it's taking on the transparency. It's a killer. Yeah.

I mean I I just ran the London Marathon and it just to show what you can do. Yeah we did, um we did in two months. Yeah, in two months of two we sold as many commuter shirts as we did in all of I mean, the volume just increased. So the challenge for us from the supply chain standpoint was how do you keep up with the inventory mix of going from chasing hard after Actwaar loungewear to all of a sudden chasing down Italian button downs and you know,

Japanese knit stretched fabrics. So for us, it was it's been kind of the inventory planning in the mix in the different factory they're an uncomfortable, uncomfortable moment where you I mean, we couldn't keep We could not keep up with the demand in the beginning of this year on our commuter program. I mean people were buying it. You know, they weren't just buying one or two pairs of commuter pants or commuter shirts. They were buying eight to ten

and we could not keep up with a volume. Nate, I always wonder because you guys are director consumer, right, You've got your website we know well, but you also you're selling in bluemies, You're at Equinox like, you're also got retail outlets that so where is most of the selling going on? The majority of our sales is in our directed consumer channels. It's it's still, you know, the biggest channel by far as e coom. But our retail

is what's most exciting. Our retail has been growing this year, is going to grow another hundred and sixty percent next year. It'll be triple digits the next three years. So our our head of retail extra mind me, at some point it will be as big as our eCOM business. So what's the strategies for sort of bouncing the two out? I mean It's still a fairly limited number of retail locations, right, Is there a sort of a perfect number in your mind that that you don't want to there's definitely a

cap um. I don't think we know exactly what that cap is yet, but we're far from it. Every single store that we've opened is for wall profitable and is doing quite well. And the rationale is there. We've seen a significant rise in digital acquisition costs we can't keep up with. You know that we're not going to overspend

on media. We don't believe in losing money as a business, and so for us to go to the next level, we think we can acquire customers, do it profitably, and get this halo effect every time we open a retail store. So that's why we're leaning into retail aggressively. With all the geopolitical turmoil, the pushback against globalization, Um, we're still a global market. But I'm curious, have you changed your

supply chain at all over the years. We've had to diversify it a bit, you know, I think we had huge concentration risk, certainly in Southeast Asia, and that to your China specific in China a bit in China about thirty percent of our production was in China. It just real risk and so we've tried to move production as close to home as we realistically can without sacrificing quality. And um, we've you know, we've started to do a bit more in Vietnam, but Vietnam was a country that

was completely locked down during the pandemic multiple times. So, um, it's it's challenging and it continues to be a challenge. Do you manufacturing the US. We don't do manufacturing in the US really, you know, for the technical quality that we do, it's very very hard to find, um, the manufacturing in the US that we would want. And that was Rowan, co founder and CEO night Check. It's with

me and Mike Regan. We also talked about brick and mortar expansion, the critical holiday sales season, and tim increase competition from other brands like Vory and Joe Coudla runs the Southern California inspired activewear brand. This past week he told us that his company is firing on all cylinders at exactly the right time. Yeah, you know, going in we were cautiously optimistic. We've seen great trends in our

business this year. However, with all the discussion around promotion and you know, the inventory glut that existed at retail, we were a little worried or as a full price brand and we intended to stay full price through the holiday with minimizing promotions. But we've been really happy with performance. We came out and we exceeded our you know, kind of best case forecast for Black Friday that carried through Cyber Monday, and it's both online and in our store.

So you know, we've been very happy with performance thus far. Alright, so happy, but drilled down for us. So Black Friday Cyber Monday better than what you saw back in pre pandemic. Absolutely, you know, it's it's a little bit different this year.

Last year, we saw holiday shopping start earlier, as early as October, as you know, the message was, you know, their supply chain challenges, logistical infrastructure was going to be stressed, so get your holiday shopping done earlier, and that message really resonated, so we saw the trends start earlier. This year was a return to kind of pre pandemic um kind of seasonality in terms of holiday shopping cadence. So it really did start, you know, with that Black Friday

um weekend. All all things materially considered UM, but once it started, it has really come on strong. I mean, we're seeing data from the National Retail Federation that they're seeing, you know, really great growth. Adobe reported as well as shop if I reported great sales, and we're seeing the same thing here at Vioria. It's been a really encouraging holiday this far. What about discounting. You mentioned that you're

a full price brand. Have you discounted anything or did you have to discount anything in terms of what you see an inventory. We've heard a lot about companies that have excess inventory right now, what's your status? Yeah, you know, we definitely have a higher level of inventory than we've been sitting on in year's past. However, all things considered, we're in a really healthy place and so we have

maintained a full price business. Sure, we have a sale page on our website where we move a couple of things at the end of a season to that page, but as far as holiday promotions, we have stay full price. We've offered a gift with purchase UM for for customers who spend over a certain threshold, which has been received really well. UM, but that's always been our mantras to stay full price, and that's what we did this year as well. You're, you know, director consumer, you're also in retail.

Where's the bulk of it? Joe kind from just remind us is it basically online or no? Yeah, it's predominantly online. You know. We launched as a dt C brand, although we've opened thirteen stores this year, so we're gonna end there just shy of thirty stores around the country and one abroad in London. One of the stores you recently opened is here in New York City. How's it doing. It's off to an incredible start. Give us some numbers I wish I could share, but it's exceeding all of

our expectations. You know, we came into the into New York knowing we had a strong eCOM customer there, but it's emerged as one of our top three stores in the country. Um and and exceeding all of our expectations. I'm gonna put you on the spot here, Joe uh. We often times here you're a in comparison to a company like Lulu, Lemon or Nike, but also makes me think of an East Coast competitor Roan. We had Night Check. It's on our program just a couple of weeks ago.

How do you think of a competitor like Roan Do you see yourself competing in the same place in some respects, I think Nate and I both had a similar vision in terms of our launch to focus on men's first. UM. You know, we saw an open space there. We felt like, you know, the mail consumer was underserved in that market. UM. As we've you know, launched our businesses, we have very different aesthetics. You know, Viewory is based on the West coast.

You know, Nate and Rowan are based on the East coast. UM. And then you know, I would say that, you know, we've really evolved to a dual gender brand. Fifty of our business today comes from women's UM. It's a very strong and fast growing aspect of our business. But you know, we both compete in this kind of you know, Wake

that was created by Lulu Levin. You know, they were the first to kind of introduce um premium active in our in our category, and UM, you know, brands like FIORI have our own take clearly where we have a very differentiated proposition centered around our built to move in styled for life, philosophy. It's all about versatility. I think in a lot of respects Rown saw a similar opportunity back when they launched. That's Joe cood Love, the founder

and CEO at VIORI. All right, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up by the crypto scene is alive and well in Miami, even after the collapse of f t X, which had pledged to make it the US crypto capital. A dispatch from the Magic City is coming up next. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. As we wrap up our program, we want to bring to your attention one of the most

read stories on the Bloomberg from the week. That was Sam Bateman freed in his crypto exchange. F t X may have crashed and burned, and yet one city's digital asset Faithful are vowing to move forward with the disgrace company's plans to turned Miami into the U S crypto capital. Bloomberg Wealth Team reporter Amanda Gordon headed to Miami to

check it out. Well for one thing, Why is something most read, it's because people feel a need to understand and process something that's going on that they know is relevant. And for the community of people who are in blockchain, who are you know? This is very new compared to say, the Wall Street dinner that I went to in New York. Still partying in New York too, But in any case, they um this is personal for them what's happened. There are people who know Sam Bankman Freed who it's not

just people whose balance sheets are affected by him. There's an arena right there with FTX on it exactly. So I think what I learned in my travels is that Miami was a great place this past week for people in this field to get together and process what it what it means to them and their community, and to sort of defend the for with fervor, the optimism and excitement that they have for this actually being a really viable, important thing. It sounds like Amanda, so, was it awake

or was it like a think tank? Or we have to double down after a crisis and figure it out? What do you do it awake? You drink? Right? I think it is that weird amalgam of you know, no one's like, you know, like flippantly ignoring what happened, um, And they understand the seriousness. And I know, I said, I sound serious for someone who got to see Grimes

perform under Palm trees. Um. But it's like when I was talking about it with my co writer Phelippe Marcus, who's our new Miami bureau chief, super fun to pall around Miami with him, I said, it's laughing and crying that they're that they're doing. So that said, what about the hype of Miami as a crypto hub? And I think one thing I learned is that's a great place

to gather in process, like any conference right eight. Like I was at the Versace Mansion talking to a producer for Beyonce album who wants to do a record on the blockchain, and I was like, how did you get into that? He's like, well, it's someone an entrepreneur on the blockchain that I met at Davos. But it's like a part of a circuit, like with milk in and so on, and a lot of interesting people to meet and to follow. That was Bloomberg Wealth Team reporter Amanda Gordon.

Check out her full story online and on the Bloomberg Terminal, a really fun story and Carol, there's some great visuals in there too. Visuals. I mean she found F t X T shirts and garbage bags. She actually brought it in and you can find that on our twitter feed because we took some pictures. We were like, what do you have F d X T shirt? She promises she's not going to sell it on She's putting it in an a vault, giving it as a gift. I think

you're right. She A'm not going to say who it's too, because it's one of our colleagues and I don't want him to, you know, I wanted to be surprised top secret. And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. A big thanks to Katie Greifeld and Mike Reagan for their how up over the last couple of weeks. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanovik. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday. It starts at

two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch your daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News and check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can find that at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. Bloomberg Business Week is available on newsstands now, at Bloomberg dot com and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. You can also see me on Bloomberg Quicktake available at bloomberg dot com, slash Qt, and streaming

platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV, and more. Have a great weekend everyone, Stay safe. This is Bloomberg