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Hi everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast. It was a week defined by cross currents that included a closely watched US jobs report that came not on a Friday but on a Wednesday, and it did come in stronger than expected and it sent US treasure yields higher. We also had the AI scare trade rotating through and taking down sectors throughout the week.
Also always in the backdrop global alliances evolving and causing some unease for investors. You can check out all of this on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg dot com. As for US, this week, we focus on the demand for power and critical minerals, yes because of the AI data center boom, and also as the US looks to shore up at stockpiles on everything on that do you mining leaders partner up. We'll hear from the CEOs of United States Antimony Corporation, in America's Gold and Silver Corporation.
And on that surge and energy demand for AI and more might geothermal be part of the solution? More on the race to unlock reliable, carbon free power from beneath our feet with the CEO of SAGE Geosystems.
We're tapping into hot, dry rock. This is what that next generation geothermal is. So it's rock that has the heat, but it doesn't have that large body of water. And what that allows you to do is increase the geology that you can find that heat. So instead of the two percent, you're talking about fifty or sixty percent of the geothermal around the world.
And later on in our second hour, the CEO of ANGI on earnings and what it says about American spending or not spending on their homes.
We can tell you that last year, we've talked about this before, we saw a big disruption in April May. We saw things sort of get back to normal in the second half of the year, and I think in December there was some compression. And if you go out and you look at consumer confidence statistics like consumer confidence was down almost thirty percent year over year November December, and I think the early read was down twenty in January.
So we do see some signs that there's some shifts, nothing major, nothing scary, but we do see some shifts in homeowner behavior.
Also in our second hour, he was there at the dawn of cable. He led Viacom and co created MTV. Media industry veteran Tom Freston stops by to talk Unplugged, his new book on his adventures from MTV to Timbuk too. The idea that.
You know, you could compete with something like Vivo and YouTube where people could get any video they wanted on demand on the internet once the Internet was capable of really streaming video in full fours was you know, it was unattractive proposition. So you ended up with what you have today, which is a network Beriff of music whose name used to be Music Television.
Plus longevity tourism, social saunas and the boom and wearables. Our Bloomberg Pursuits team on the quest to live longer and what we give up along the way.
All of that to come. We begin with a company whose stock is one of the best performing in the S and P five hundred this year. Generak, the maker of home and industrial power systems, you know, things like generators, missed fourth quarter Wall Street estimates when it reported this past week, with both revenue and earnings per share lower.
Despite the soft numbers, it's stock actually rallied after the company forecast a twenty twenty six EPADU margin range with a midpoint above analyst consensus, driven by stronger demand from data centers and commercial customers breaking all down for us. The chairman, president and CEO of Generak, Aaron Yogfeld.
Yeah, so the back half of the year, we actually had a lot less outerge activity. So our residential business for portable generators, homestand by generators really depends heavily on mother nature, honestly to help us drive demand for those products. And so it was a very quiet back half of the year. The fourth quarter in particular, back half of the year was ninety percent lower in outage hours versus
the year before. So sometimes that happens, and you know, we guide based on kind of average outage activity, and we got a lot of blow active below outage activity in the quarter.
Well it's interesting, you know, So what gives you confidence around mid teen's growth when the weather has been the primary culprit for weak residential sales in twenty twenty five.
Yeah, so on the residential side, you know, obviously we think a return to normal outage environment that will happen. I mean, we will get ice storms again. We had one in January right with with the winter storm Fern. So we're off to a good start here this year, and so we feel like, you know, we're going to return to more normal kind of the outages and more normal patterns, if you will. We've got some pricing in there as well. You know, the consumer for our products
is pretty healthy still. You know, I think there's concerns about the consumer across the broader economy, but when your power goes out, you know, these are products that tend to become a priority for households. So you know, we're not very worried about about the consumer's health for at least for our category.
Yeah, Aaron, explain the consumer behavior here? Is it that a consumer without a generator goes through a power outage in the middle of winter or the middle of the summer and says I never want to experience this again. And you know, when they get power back, they call somebody to install a generator. Is that how it works?
You've got it right. And in fact, I would just point this out.
You know, winter outages tend to drive people to that point a lot faster than summer outages.
And when you have an outage in.
The summer, you know, maybe it's nice enough and temperate enough outside and open the windows and you can kind of push through and survive in the dark if you had to. Winter is a whole different ballgame if you lose your power in the winter time, especially if you live in the Northern States, or or in the case with Winterstorm Fern, even in the Southern States where you
had you know, just tremendously cold weather. You get pipes that freeze, you get a lot of damage in your home and a lot of things just you know, your home becomes unlivable.
There's kind of an SS moment there for Tim. It happened in no power during the conbot. Hey, what I want to ask you is investors are really noticing the forecast. You're twenty twenty six ebit a margin range. How much of what's going on the growth the magnitude is it all because of data centers.
Yeah, I mean, obviously largely. The headline here is our entry into the data center market.
We started shipping products, our first products in the fourth quarter, and we're ramping. We're going to scale this year. We're having some very meaningful conversations as we work towards a final contract negotiations with a number of hyperscale customers. And you know this is going to be for us. It's a generational opportunity. You know, the backup power that is
required by each data center site. I mean you can literally have hundreds of large gen sets sitting there waiting for outages to happen, and the project size that they're enormous, and the opportunity is equal to that.
Is this all about the large megawatt generators? Is it all about out that that's what the demand is for I want you to get into.
What is the AI play for you guys?
Yeah, for the most part, So there's for us, there's a direct day I play, which is, you know, you build a data center, you need to have backup power because even a second of downtime, there are you know, there are requirements there, commitments that they've made to their customers and their penalties and things that kick in if they can't supply information or the you know, the AI models different, you know, depending on what they've contracted that
data center out to do. Basically, they've got to have a continuous source of power, so they invest in backup generators for those facilities, and that's a product that we're new into and that's a huge opportunity. The indirect side of data centers is pretty interesting though, and as more data centers come online, you're going to see a lot more requirements for power. Right, demand is going to grow
for electricity. We have supply constraints in particular. You know, there are parts of the grid around the US like PJAM as an example up in the northeast. Yeah, now this is a major concern on very hot days, very cold days. Going forward, you're going to see more brownouts, more blackouts, and that's going to lead obviously to more opportunities for us in some of our core products like homestand by generators for homeowners and other generators for businesses and things like that.
So, okay, so we each have a million questions that we want to do.
You want to go back to resident Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the might be shopping for a generator.
But there's there's an interesting thing happening in some parts of the country. And you know, I don't want to get in the details of new laws in New York City, for example, but some places are you know years ago a few years ago argued that we want to just get rid of gas lines in general and don't want
fossil fuel hookups within new buildings. So new construction in some parts of the country doesn't have any gas How do you account for that with a product that you know you want to have connected to a continuous gas line.
Right, I mean, obviously you can use LP, right, so if you have an LP tank or a propane tank, that works just as fine. In fact, a lot of our installations in parts of the country like Florida, you know, homes down there don't have connections to, you know, a gas line because it's just it's untenable for them to
be able to put that infrastructure in. So you know what's interesting, like in policy driven areas like New York, when it comes to let's not have new net gas hookups, oddly enough, you can still have a propane gas hookup, So you know, those are the ways to kind.
Of navigate around some of those challenges.
And again, you're using it for an emergency, right, this is not a continuous used product, So you know, I think really cooler heads should prevail when it comes to certain policies like that. I mean, you want to make sure that homeowners, businesses have access to emergency backups solutions, right backup, power, backup, you know, batteries, things of that nature, and those are the things that I think we've got to be careful of when we do policy related things
like like you know, no net gas, new hookups. You sometimes there's unintended consequences of that and we've got to be careful about that.
Hey, Aaron, you guys have been expanding and earlier this year you talked about the acquisition of a new facility in Sussex, Wisconsin, and you are quoted in that release saying our commitment to aggressively invest in serving this booming segment off a generational, generational opportunity.
You've used that word.
Before, for generations with the potential of doubling our sales of C and I products in the next three to five years.
How confident are you on this?
Is it likely more on the conservative side or more on the optimistic side.
Yeah, it's interesting when we so we've been having these high quality conversations with data center co locators and hyper scale operators, and you know, there's obviously a massive.
Deficit of supply for backup power generation.
Today based on all of the things that are on the drawing board to go in the ground for new data center construction in the years ahead. So our entry into this market, you know, we came into the market, we thought there'd be some interest in the product, but we maybe undersize that and to be to be blunt, you know, we went ahead and we acquired a new
facility and with an eye towards doubling our capacity. We said on our third quarter call, we thought we had about five hundred million dollars of global capacity to serve.
The data center market.
We now have doubled that to over a billion dollars with the acquisition of that plant and some of the other investments we're making. This is a again we keep using that word generational, but it's true. You know sometimes in business, you know, you can be with a company like I have for over thirty years and maybe never see something as interesting as this in terms of opportunity, and I just it feels like one of those moments that we have got to go after this and you
see it. I mean, look, you see what other industries are dealing with HVAC. You're seeing other power companies and things that you know, the infrastructure needed to handle the data center boom that's on six hundred and fifty billion dollars right of hyper scale dollars that are going to go to work here on cap out capital expenditures in twenty twenty six.
They're going to go into things.
Like generators in HVAC equipment and cabling and all the things that make these centers real.
Aaron, we only have about thirty seconds left, but a lot to hit just in the last bit of time that we have with you. All the challenges of doing this in the United States, doing this domestically, finding labor for this the biggest challenge for you as you're running this business right now.
Absolutely the biggest challenge for us is, you know, the continuing shortage of labor. There's no question that you know, in terms of the number of people that are going into manufacturing from a career standpoint, that continues to be a real challenge. And of course now with trade policy being what it is, you know, there's a lot of things that are coming back on shore, which is great, but it just puts a lot more that much more pressure on, you know, the labor force.
It's the shame you're not optimistic.
Eron.
I try not to be. I try to be conservative.
Listen, we so appreciate it all the time. You always give us. Be well. Aaron Yetbel, He's Chairman Presidency of GENERAK.
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.
Hey, I want to talk a little bit about energy. So in October Bloomberg reported on how for the first time in the years the US futtle government at least every parcel of public land it's open for geothermal development and at record prices. On that. Just last month, Bloomberg's Michelle ma reporting that Ormont Technology is one of the
world's biggest geothermal energy developers. Co led a ninety seven million dollars series we funding around for a company that's tapping hot rocks to generate electricity.
Yeah, that startup, Sage Geosystems.
It is one of the companies leading the post to utilize innovative technology to really harness energy from the ground and meet surging power demand from artificial intelligence. You know from everything that we've talked about that this demand to build out AI data centers means a lot of powers needed, and whether it's going to be solar or nuclear or
carbon based, we needed all geothermal as well. So let's get more on the company for that, we do head to Houston, Texas and to Cindy Taff She's CEO of Sage Geosystems. She spent more than three decades in the oil and gas industry, including most recently as VP of Unconventional Wells and Logistics over at Shell. She's had teams around the globe. We are so delighted to have you here. We've been looking forward to having you on. Tell us a little bit about your company.
You no, thanks for having me on love talking about next generation geothermal. So, yeah, we founded Stage about five years ago. So, as you described, my background is oil and gas. My co founders, Levering and Lance Cook, their background is oil and gas. However, they spent their careers doing something a little bit different than I did. They are the scientists, the innovators, so they created a lot of very challenging technologies for the oil and gas industry.
And so we're using that knowledge of the subsurface and of our oil and gas background to advance what we're calling next generation geothermal, what the industry calls next generation geothermal.
Okay, so people think of geothermal, they think of the uh okay, I'm sorry to Bruce, my freshman year geology teacher, because I'm gonna butcher this a little bit. But they think of the h don't do it, don't do it, you know, the warm temperatures of the as you go further down when you drill, and using that heat water to generate steam.
Correct.
Yeah, Tim, So maybe just a brief overview.
She's like, yeah, I'll give you like a C minus, but I'll just take it from here. Then go ahead.
When most people think about geothermal, even myself when I'm still at Shell, you think about Iceland or the guys are in California, and so that's conventional geothermal. That's where you're drilling into a hot pocket or pool of water that's just below the surface. It's it's very convenient if you have a volcano or the ring of fire in your backyard, because that is the circumstances that you need for that very unicorn geology to find the conventional geothermal.
So the challenge is that it represents only about two percent of the geothermal around the world. What Sage is doing, and there's other companies of course in the industry, is we're tapping into hot, dry rock. This is what that next generation geothermal is. So it's rock that has the heat, but it doesn't have that large body of water. And what that allows you to do is increase the geology that you can find that heat. So instead of the two percent, you're talking about fifty or sixty percent of
the geothermal around the world. And the only reason why it's not one hundred percent is because in some areas like eastern US, the heat is there, but it's very deep and just not economic to drill for.
Hey, my understanding is we've seen Alphabet's Google Meta platforms among the data center operators who have actually ink deals with geothermal companies to provide the power. Meta is a partner with you guys tell us about that partnership and what does inking a deal mean, like, are they pooning up money? Are they helping you in development? And I'm also curious how much power can geothermal ultimately provide and how long does it take to kind of ramp up?
Yeah, so no great questions. So, yes, we have a term sheet with Meta, so we are going to be that will become a virtual PPA. So we'll be building geothermal into the vicinity of one of their data centers, but we'll be putting it on the same grid that they're taking power off of, so that gives us flexibility on location and it's but it's still a virtual PPA.
Yeah, power purchase agreement.
Yeah, sorry, virtual power purchase agreement. That's exactly right. So we like the flexibility of not having to necessarily put the power in the backyard of the data centers, although into the future that seems to be probably the solution that we're all headed for, so that you don't congest the grid. And so that's what our agreement with Meta is. Now to your other question, what is the resource? What's
the size of the resource. So when we talk about conventional geothermal, again, those large pools of hot water just below the surface, you're talking about forty gigawatts, but if you can expand it to this, you know, hot dry rock, you're talking about between five and seven terrawas and this isn't the lower forty eight US only. So if you do that around the world, you know that the resource potential is huge.
So I'm curious about sort of these these PPAs that you have and why we're not necessarily hearing as much from the government about this type of energy development versus natural gas. And of course nuclear geothermal doesn't seem to get a lot of.
Love, a lot more love as of late. So well, one thing I will say is geothermal has always been supported by both sides of the aisle. The current administration, especially with Chris Wright as the Energy Secretary. He is very familiar not only with conventional geothermal, but with next generation geothermal and the resource growth that you can have in that area. And you've seen geothermal in a couple of the Executive orders. It's actually very well supported in
the One Big Beautiful Bill. So you know, I think geothermal is coming into a huge momentum, supported you know, supported by not only the last administration, but also very much by this administration.
We're talking tout Cindy Taffski's chief executive officer of SAGE Geosystems. Joining us from Houston, Texas are Bloomberg ne Ef folks who track all things energy, have noted that the primary downside of geothermal energy include high upfront capital costs, long project development timelines, and potential seismic risks. So earthquakes from drilling, can you address those?
Yeah?
So it is an infrastructure, you know projects, So yes, upfront capital costs are are large. Just like a lot of infrastructure projects. Timelines can be longer. I mean, you know, if you want to invest, say in a software, you know you're going to know in six months whether that software is going to be successful. In an infrastructure project, it's going to be two or three years until you know that that is successful. As far as earthquakes, yeah, I'd actually like to talk about that, And so it
really depends on how you're operating in the subsurface. So the earthquake and tremors that you have seen from say the oil and gas industry or other industries, is when they're pumping water continuously or any type of fluid into the subsurface and it will find its way to natural faults and fractures that are connected to what they call the basement rock. It'll lubricate those fractures and make those fractures slide or slip, and that's what results in the earthquake.
What we're doing with we are using fractures to harvest the heat because in a matter of a week you can create very large surface contact areas with those fractures. But the way we're operating our is we're putting water into that fracture, but then we're taking it out. We're putting it in and we're taking it out, and so we're not pumping volume upon volume into that that subsurface, meaning that we're not going to we have we have a less less likelihood of connecting to these natural faults
which would result in the earthquake. So I think the the risk at least for the way we operate our fractures at SAGE is a lot lower than what you're seeing in the oil and gas industry, in particular in the disposal of water, which is a waste product for the oil and gas.
Oh okay, so that's what I want to talk about. As Carol always says, there's there's no such thing as a free lunch. And you know, coming from the American West and growing up in drought stricken California, I'm curious about where you can do this where there is an abundance of water, so you're you're not actually using that natural resource.
Yeah, Tam, it's a great question. We do need water. We I will say that the water needed for our operations less than a coal plant. It's less than a combined cycle natural gas. And that's because we are reusing the water. We're putting it into the subsurface to harvest the heat or absorb the heat, and then we're using it as a carrier to bring that heat to surface, and then we turn around and we pump it back into the subsurface. And so in our geothermal applications, that
water stays in a pressurized system. So the losses are what we've measured is less than two percent. So you don't have to use a lot of makeup water because you're not losing a lot of water to the production of the energy. So we do need upfront water volumes, but again those losses being less than two percent, the makeup water is very immaterial.
Hey, Sinny just got about thirty seconds I mean, ultimately it comes down to we saw this with solar and wind, cost comparisons between that alternative energy and existing forms of energy, and also the financial viability. So where does geothermal fit in? Does it have a way to go before it can be like, oh, well this makes sense financially.
Yeah, Carol, I think we are. We're when the solar we're fifteen years ago right now, ten to twelve cents a kill a wa hour if you're above scale, that can be driven down to six to seven cents of kill a ona hour at scale.
Cool stuff, Stay in touch. Love this, Love this.
Cindy Taft, chief executive Officer of Stage Geosystems, joining us from Houston, Texas.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car Play 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.
Well.
You might recall earlier this month Bloomberg exclusively reporting out that President Trump was set to launch a strategic critical mineral stockpile with twelve billion dollars in seed money, all in a bid to insulate manufacturers from supply shocks as the US works to slash its reliance on Chinese rare earths and other metals. Meantime, you see a lot of companies doing deal in the space time.
Yeah, I'm at the shares of America's Gold and Silver Corporation rally it as much as eight percent this after the miners said it would partner with United States Antimony to construct and operate an antimony processing plan and IDAH host some details here and then we're going to get to the conversation. Facility will be fifty one percent owned by America's Golden Silver and forty nine percent owned by US Antimony. It'll be located in the Silver Valley in Idaho.
All right, So let's get to it. Great to have with US.
Gary Evans, chairman and CEO of United States Antimony Corporation. It's a one point one billion dollar market cap minor, producer and seller of antimony products. It's based in Montana. Stock is up sixty six percent year to date, about twenty one percent of the float.
Short also with US as Paul.
Andre Hewitt, he is chairman and CEO of the two point six billion dollar market cap precious metal miner based in Ontario, Canada. It is America's gold and silver corporation. That company shares are up about sixty one percent year to date. Gary and Paul both joining out us here in studio.
Welcome, Welcome, welcome.
Tell us about this joint venture, the financial aspects, how it actually logistically works down, and what it means in terms of critical minerals in the US and just kind of elsewhere.
So whoever wants to pick it up.
Yeah, I'll just start. So, look, this joint venture. We've been working on it actually not that long, to be very honest. Actually Gary and I were talking about it. We met about a month ago. We one month ago we met, both teams assembled at the Mind Sight in Idaho. His executive team, my executive team. We were signing documents late last night with our legal teams, both of us, at ten thirty at night, finalizing this and this is
a transformational deal. Actually, this allows us to supply a product antimony to the US from the beginning right to the end. So us Gary's the expert in the antimony world, we're the experts in the mining world. And what we have is a mine, the Galanina Mine in Idaho. Right now, we've got about three hundred and thirty employees. Just bought a second mine in Idaho. We closed it in December, so we bought the original one, transferred the whole management team,
and made some big upgrades in capital. What we're doing is revolutionizing this mine. This mine's been around for a long time and it's it produces five critical minerals, So we produce silver, copper, antimony, lead, and then a small amount of gold, but they're all five critical minerals, which
is very very important. This deal is very important to US and US miners and to the US as a whole because we need fifty million pounds of antimony per annum and we're not even close to producing it, not yet. So this will allow us to start chewing away and getting some of that antimony produced domestically.
So Paul andre Hugh had given us the America's Gold and Silver Corporation view. Gary Evans, come on back in here and talk about why this deal made sense for you. At US antimony.
As you know, we're the only two we have the only two smelters for antimony in North America, So Montana and Mexico. And currently we're getting most of our supply from foreign sources and get it from the country of Chad, Peru, Bolivia, Australia, Chile, Mexico, and we are looking for homegrown antimony. We are already processing Paul's antimony through another facility up in Canada. We receive that and we can make antimony trisul fight out of it. So the idea of when we met a
month ago, met our two management teams got together. We immediately said, look, this is an easy answer. We'll put our new technology we developed in Bolivia. Last year we made the first commercial grade antimony hydromet facility and now we receive one hundred and fifty tons a month of antimony from that facility.
We can duplicate that in the United States.
So we have the technology, we have the patents, we have the license for North America and Australia. He has a land, he has a supply. So it was a marriage made in heaven.
So why weren't you processing here in the US.
Well, we are processing, but it's using foreign supplies. So he has domestic supplies which the country doesn't have.
This new so the processing facility that you're going to be building. Yes, give us timeline. When is it going to be running up at commercials?
Great question.
He fortunately has all the permanent so we needed right. Okay, so we were in the construction engineering phase. Now we should start within ninety days. It be done in a year.
Wow, So in a year. Yeah, it's up in functioning.
Yeah.
If you think about the last one, sorry to interrupt, the last one that was built in the US was built in nineteen forty two at that same area in Silver Valley, and it took six months to build it during World War Two that was actually built. Gary's team just built one in six months in Bolivia. So these
are not massive facilities, but they're very important. So we will once we get the Once we get the engineering stages and everything done and we start construction, it'll go pretty quick from that time.
Carol mentioned Project Vault earlier this month, Bloomberg exclusively reporting out that President Trump set to launch a strategic critical mineral stockpile with twelve billion dollars in seed money. Gary, have you been in touch with the White House the administration at all about this? How much antimony do you expect the stockpile will hold well.
We currently have a contract with a DLA, which is an Apartment of War, for two hundred and forty five million dollars to deliver antimony.
Ingots, which is like a goal bar.
There's an antimony bar's cereal stamp to put it on a pallette. We shrink, rep it and we send it to the government. It's strictly for inventory for all the subcontractors of the government. Could be Boying Northland, could be General Motors. They need antimony to make their products. So we are the stockpiler for the government, and we're the
only approved company. In fact, when it went out to gub dot com, it said the United States Antimony Corporation is the only company capable of bidding on this contract. And so the fact that we've been around fifty something years we can do this. And so now we can take America's gold Silver's antimony through our new hydromet process and do the same thing.
Have you talked to the White House just in the last few months about.
This, Well, General Jack Kean, I don't know if you know who he is. He's on our board of directors and so he's been very helpful. We've already won the DLA contract. We have a Department of War grant coming with our now new joint venture, we'll find a new white paper with an Apartment of War.
We filed a.
Grant requested Apartment of Energy for forty five million dollars January fifteenth. So we are constantly in the mixed seeking capital to help grow the center price.
We're talking with Gary Evans, chairman and CEO of US Antimony, and Paul Andrehwitt at CEO at America's Gold and Silver Corporation.
Without the US support and backing, would this be happening.
Yeah, Look, there's no doubt what's happening now is changing things for us, and it's opening guards this.
Project, financially changing it, making it well.
We're going to be one of the first group, Carol actually putting in submitting this white paper for capital.
Okay, and nobody's done that yet.
Okay, we're the first, so which is really important. And I was just at the White House. In fact, I've met with a couple of Senators, governor, congressman, and it's very clear that this this project vault this it creates a floor. It allows us to not have that volatility
that we're up against. You know, we've got to prepare ourselves for if China is going to dump a whole bunch of antimony on the market, We've got to be able to protect that pricing for us, like people like us who are producing it domestically.
Well, let's go there, because you know, you also have the US reaching agreements with the European Union to PanAm Mexico to cooperate on securing critical minerals used in various industries. So they have committed to creating price floors. What kind of price floor is needed for antimony? What would be the ballpark the price that kind of would shield you from China oversaturating the market.
I think something in the twenty dollars per pound range would be a great price floor. Different Texas. You got to understand, China has one hundred year plant. We've been sitting behind the eight ball for twenty five years watching China go all over the world, take over countries, take over minds, and they drove the antimony price down to such a level it drove everybody out of business. And
fortunately our company stayed alive, only one that did stay alive. Yeah, and now we're reaping the benefit of having these refineries up and running.
Hey, Paul, you have lived all over the world. You've done this all over the world. We're a big part of the conversation is the US reliance on China. Yeah, and I'm just curious what you're seeing because the US and China still haven't reached an agreement when it comes to export control licenses for rare earths and permanent magnets are are is any export any antimony being exported from China to US consumers that's not military related and carry Feel free to jump in here too.
Yeah.
I mean I could probably answer this pretty well because we monitored daily. China cut off all antimony exports in every country in the world, including the United States in September twenty four. People think, oh, it's got to do with Trump's tariffs. This was during the Biden administration. This happened, Well, guess what China's biggest mind called the tweakle star of mind in China depleted last June of twenty four. So September,
three months later, they stopped all exports. Now are we seeing antimony dripping into the market in the black market? Probably some coming from Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, but China has actually arrested twenty some odd people. They don't want antimony going to the free world. Why we all needed in military, you can't fire a bullet without antimony, Laser guided missiles, night vision cameras, not vision, binoculars. I mean, it's in
everything you can imagine in the military. And so our administration fortunately has taken the lead and saying we've got to fix the critical mental problem.
And it is fixable, but it's gonna take some time, and it's going to take a lot of money.
And the one thing that I heard coming out of the White House, Tim was very clear one of the messages I was talking about as well, we need fifty million pounds and we're going to be able to help make that solution. But it was very clear to me leaving the White House that we have to also think about our allies. And honestly, I never thought about as the CEO of America's Golden Silver.
I thought, but go.
There because there's so much conflict.
It feels like even with the US and it's traditional allies that have been there for a long time, you're saying we can't do that. We've got to be cooperating.
You're absolutely right, Carol. Look it was very crystal clear, and it was made very clear to me. Change your pitch, even as the CEO of America's gold and Silver. Change your story, because you don't just need fifty million pounds for the US, you need another eighty percent on top of that for our allies who we have to make sure in NATO that we protect along the way, which honestly, for me, I didn't understand that completely, and don't I
think a lot of people don't understand it. Never mind, the fifty million pounds we consume per year, our allies is another forty million pounds, so we've got a deficit here. China's been so far ahead, Like Gary says, we're starting to help this situation significantly by this JV.
Which goes back to national security.
Can't just think about your own backyard, You've got to think about your allies as well. Gentlemen, Please stay in touch, let us know how things are going. Gary Evans, CEO of US Antimony Corporation. Paul Andre Hewitt, he is CEO of America's Golden Silver Corporation. You are listening and watching Bloomberg Business Week Daily.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily 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 plenty.
Heay in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including the media mogul who oversaw MTV at its peak. Now reflecting on his life of adventures, from bartending his way across the Americas to building a TV network in Afghanistan. Tom Freston joins us in Just a.
Bit plus a wellness treet in Sardinia, Italy, the hot truth about saunas and getting buzzed with less alcohol. It's all in the Wellness section of Bloomberg Pursuits. We ask is it all worth it?
Hey?
First up this hour, homeowners are feeling the squeeze, and so is the platform that connects them with home improvement contractors.
Angie, the online portal for home improvement, reported fourth quarter earnings this past week that missed analyst expectations. Revenue fell ten percent to roughly two hundred and forty one million dollars. The company expects another decline during the current quarter. That also sent shares plunging over twenty percent on Wednesday following that report.
Even so, Angie CEO Jeff Kip expects positive revenue growth this year, especially as he sees millennial spending an average of fourteen thousand dollars per household on home improvement projects.
Jeff joined us to talk about the quarter, the outlook, and how his company is using AI.
Our numbers were actually in line with our guidance in revenue and above our guidance, and EBITDA the analysts set their own numbers, and so that's I think where the disconnects.
Our stock's very sensitive to that small cap and I think that's what's striving.
And I think they're also looking at our forward outlook and seeing it's not as strong as maybe they'd hoped given our riff. The EBITDAH estimates moved up post riff without any new guidance, and we previously had a number of around one hundred and fifty. I think the thing that's important to note is that our cappax estimate is lower than what we gave on the last call, so we're actually a little bit improved overall. But I think that's the kind of sum on why people are looking at it unhappily.
Jeff. Service request decreasing four percent, leads decreasing nine percent year over year in the fourth quarter of the year. Proprietary service requests, though increasing fifteen percent year over year. Proprietary leads increase twenty five percent year over year. Explain the difference between those two metrics and why you saw service requests and leads decreasing.
So fundamentally, our network business is third party affiliates who bring homeowners through a not our experience and match to our pros at the end of their experience. The proprietary experience means that homeowners come through an experience we can control.
Okay, so I just want to do Yeah, sorry, I just want to jump in. So that basically would be like googling a home services provider and getting to Angie through through that, or getting to a home services professional through that, versus going to Angie's website and booking through that. Is that the difference is that the distinction It.
Would mean either going to a affiliate who's site who tells homeowners they can find pros for them, either through Google or direct and the homeowner getting connected to our pros because the affiliate does not have pros.
Okay okay, is this typically search based.
Typically they get to both of us through search more than through other kitles, although Angie has a stronger brand, so we have a lot more direct traffic. The fundamental change is that we used to have a much higher proportion. If you look at this, we're going to have given up over two hundred and fifty million of revenue from these network partners year over year. We made a switch at the beginning of the year, which is we no longer auto match homeowners to pros. Their only match when
the homeowner affirmatively chooses the pro. So that's the experience we believe is right. When we did this, it xed out a lot of those network partners as traffic. So we made a conscious decision to bring down the network channel and invest in what we believe is a much better experience through our proprietary channels. So what you're looking at is really strong growth in our proprietary business and
expected coming down in the network business. And our whole discussion was at the very beginning of the year, we guided to minus twelve to minus sixteen. We came in at minus thirteen. We said we were going to grow in twenty twenty six. We still believe we're going to grow in twenty twenty six as we inflect off of this big cut we took in the network traffic. We're actually feeling pretty positive about it because if you look at our homeowner NPS, it's up over thirty percent over
the last couple of years. Our pro churn is down thirty percent over the last couple of years, and we see real success within the ecosystem.
We're speaking with Jeff kip CEO of Angie, joining us from Indianapolis this afternoon. So a AI, if people are getting to you know, for years it's all been all about search engine optimization and connecting people who are, you know,
googling or searching for something. What if you're using like, you know, our colleague Matt Miller's boiler is on the fritz, his wife is like using chat GPT to try to to try to fix it and then ultimately in some era that could connect her to some sort of home services.
Pro right, So we are actively working with multiple LLM providers. We just announced a deal with Amazon's Alexa several weeks ago.
We have an app submitted to another major player.
We're working with a third major player to integrate, and we have other talks going on. So we're actually excited about the presence of llms who haven't fully developed their ad product or their ecosystem because they will actually diversify our channels. We're heavily dependent on Google right now, so having more players where homeowners.
Go to do search and discovery is good for us.
And we've built the technology to offer our pros on those sites or pick up the conversation from the LLM if that seems better. So we like this and we think this will help us.
You know, I want to go back to what you said in terms of I guess, you know, trying to improve the customer experience, and I'm just looking at some other metrics here that you guys said. I think in your release that you acquired professionals. You acquired professionals FEIL twenty seven percent to twenty thousand in the quarter, while average monthly active pros fell twenty three percent to one
hundred and eleven thousand. It sounds to me just like in terms of the matching, you're letting the customer decide that this is about maybe weeding out, reading out some professionals that maybe weren't up to snuff. Is that what's going on? Like you're trying to I'm trying to understand a little bit.
So there's two factors involved.
One is we did actually go through and remove all of the pros below three and a half stars, okay last year.
I think.
Secondly, we were actually highly scaled in our salesforce and acquiring somewhat unprofitability, unprofitably for multiple years, and so we're comparing to a base of pros that was acquired somewhat unprofitably, and we've really reduced If you looked across our releases, what you'd see is we've almost doubled the value creation through our salesforce while reducing the number. And so what you're seeing is basically comparisons to classes who probably shouldn't
have been acquired. And then we have trimmed it some as well.
All right, makes sense? Makes sense? All right?
So the outlook, how do you describe it? My understanding is, you know, you guys are looking to return to growth I think in terms of revenue correct, yes, going forward? So do you get that based on everything that you've done so far. There are other initiatives that you want to put into place.
So I think there's two or three things. One is you'll note in the release said January stabilized. Yeah, so we're stable in January. We're being a little more conservative and saying minus one to three, minus one to minus three in the first quarter, and then we think we will be flatish in the second quarter and grow in
the second half of the year. The biggest thing that needs to happen is we need to finish getting through this network traffic coming down so that we actually have a compare where we no longer have that in there, and we get to the second half of the year where that's flattened out and we're growing. So it's a little bit optical and it's a little bit strategic what we did with our traffic, and I think people had hoped we talked about growing in the first quarter, we're
now not going to do it. Yeah, our product roadmap got a little disrupted by the reduction in force, but we're still on track with where we were planning to be.
Jeff, I just want to as Carol mentioned, we're gonna you know, we're looking at the economy from a lot of different angles right now. And one way we can do that is by understanding what people are spending on in terms of their homes. Is it discretionary or is it like a leaky roof and they got to get it fixed. So what can you tell us about what you're seeing across the Engie network?
So two or three things.
I'll just start by saying, we don't see much of a shift between discretionary and nondiscretionary. We're more two thirds more than two thirds non discretionary, and we don't really see that move a lot, even at different times where there's higher economic inflection like April SA this year. What we have seen over the last couple of months is a bit of a mixed down in job size and so then revenue per job for us.
So we do see that.
We can tell you that last year, we've talked about this before, we saw a big disruption in April May. We saw things sort of get back to normal in the second half of the year, and I think in December there was some compression. And if you go out and you look at consumer confidence statistics, like the University Michigan which does it monthly, consumer confidence was down almost thirty percent year over year in November December, and I think the earlier read was down twenty in January. So
we do see some signs that there's some shifts. Nothing major, nothing scary, but we do see some shifts in homeowner behavior.
That's interesting.
I have a crazy question, Oh, are these folks who do work thinking about like buy now, pay later?
I mean, can they do they do things on installments? Is that part of the process.
Definitely?
Yeah, definitely, particularly our larger, more sophisticated pros really think about their financing packages and how they sell them.
So that's definitely an element for a lot of pros.
Is there an uptick in that in terms of people like accessing that and able to do to get projects done?
Talking when I talk to our pros, I think they find that they can close the job and get the job done easier with it.
I don't know about volume.
We don't.
We don't sell that or offer that on our platform directly.
Jeff just got about thirty seconds left here. Are there enough professionals of this kind to do projects? Because we constantly talk about shortages when it's contractors, electricians and the like.
So it's been a long term secular trend of pressure on particularly the skilled trades, we continue to see it. We talk to and partner with major distributors who talk about the central fact in their businesses. You're losing more businesses and more skilled professionals than you're adding every year. So I think the long term trend is still against it.
Now.
Yeah, some people are starting to go into it. My son got out of college and went into construction. So here we go, kids, Let's go.
Hey, listen, Always appreciate you stopping by Jeff Bewill, Jeff Kip, CEO of Angie, joining us.
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, Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
It is the media story that keeps on giving, and this past week, activist investor and Cora Holdings revealed a two hundred million dollar steak in Warner Brothers Discovery and urged the board of the company to reject Netflix's offer and reconsider paramount Sky Dance's competing bid, adding a new plot twist to one of Hollywood's biggest takeover battles. That story still developing as we put our show to bed.
The latest on the pursuit of Warner Brothers coming out after We caught up with someone who really knows the industry, having served as CEO of Viacom and head of Paramount
Pictures through its heyday in the nineties. He's got to tell all the book all about his adventures, from hitchhiking through a pre Taliban Afghanistan, using a drug smuggler to get closed from Asia to New York City tariff free, to almost getting kidnapped in the Sahara desert with Jimmy Buffett, to getting unceremoniously canned by Sumner Redstone, Tom Frest and Carol. He has seen a lot.
Yeah, he certainly ass He's co founder of MTV, a co founder and the former CEO of Viacom. He's also principal of the consulting and investment firm Firefly three, and the author of a new book which we want to talk to him about. It is entitled Unplugged Adventures from MTV to Tim Buckt. It came out back in November. He joins us from California. Tom's so great to have you here with us.
How are you.
I'm good, Carol, Hello to you and I Tim.
I have to be here.
It's great to have you here. And there's so much we want to talk about.
We do want to just start off with the media industry because it just feels like it's at a moment in time.
So I thought you were going to start with Beavis in No, I'm not.
But we'll get there. We'll get there into so much more.
I'm just thinking about what you witnessed, you know, at the beginning, the dawn of really the cable industry and the build out of it. It's now being very much dismantled, dismantled for our host of reasons, some networks being sold for scraps, you know, the headlines. How do you see this dismantling, Tom continue to play out?
Well, I mean we had during my era, the eighties and the nineties, so the early two thousands, sort of the cable TV revolution, which morphed into the digital revolution and streaming and all that, where people really got to watch whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted on whatever device,
and now we're moving into the AI revolution. So the media industry is in a constant state of flux, always sort of you know, you know, influenced greatly by technology, and you know, it's hard to say where it's going to go, but we're gonna see more consolidation amongst the legacy media companies, that's for sure. There's a few deals in place right now, as you know.
Yeah, well, speaking of those deals, the fate of Warner Brothers Discovery David Zaslov mentioned in your book a few times. Do you have a view on whether that company should go to Netflix or Paramounts Guidance.
I think it's a better fit, and you know, you hate to see another movie studios sort of disappear in a form of consolidation, and Warner Brothers is like the king of you know, the most treasured studio of all. But of the two alternatives, I think the Netflix one is more interesting and Bod's better for people in the business and boats better for consumers. In the case of a Paramount you really have two legacy companies merging together. They talk about nine billion dollars worth of cost savings,
and that means more people on the Street. It's not that interesting of a combination as taking someone like Netflix, which is a sort of a quasi digital company, and marrying that with Warner Brothers seems to be seems to be a better fit if you were to ask me, which you just did, what.
About you know, and a lot of your book goes into your relationship with some of the Redstone. We're going to get to some of that in a minute. What do you think he would think about today with what's going on at Paramounts guide Ence. You describe him as being just so obsessed with the company stock price and always trying to buy more shares. You describe him as always being on the phone with his stockbrooker at the time,
because that's how it worked at the time. What do you think he would think of of what's happening at Paramounts Guidance.
Well, I think he'd be sad. He'd be sad to see what became of his the empire that he, you know, was a major force in creating, and how the values deteriorated, and how how Viacom sort of missed the moment, if you will, they missed a moment in the digital transition. You just compare it to Disney, which spent say they doubled down on their content creative abilities. They spent sixteen billion dollars buying Pixar and Lucasfilm and Marble, which made
them a little more invincible. On the other hand, Viacom spent sixteen billion dollars on stock buybacks, which you know was great if you were casting in stock options, but not so good for the long term viability of the company.
Hey, you know on that, you know, I think about MTV. You know, you were one of the people who got this, you know, up and running and for such a long time it was just so much a part of our kind of cultural fabric, and then went from music to you know, dealing with political issues and really the issues of our time, if you will, and became an important place for even politicians to show up at during campaigns. Having said that, you know, it is you know, reduced
drastically and dramatically. I don't know what is it like to see that, And I wonder, if you know today, could it be created today or could it be in some other form?
Well, you know, it's sort of like looking back and seeing your old high school on fire. Yeah, it's they haven't really put any money or effort into MTV for I don't know, fifteen years or so. I think all the music people who were there left. They even saw the music television off the bottom of the logo, and it became sort of a repository for grade B reality shows, well off its original mission. I do think that MTV could be reinvented in a digital format to be a
more interesting curator of music. These days, music is still a huge category and there's a huge amount of listening going on, so it's crazy not to think that MTV couldn't recapture some corner of the music business. I mean, on one hand, you have a lot of consumers. You're sort of tired of the algorithmally programmed streaming services and so forth. So I mean, I don't think it's a layup,
but it's certainly worth it. It's a brand with worldwide recognition, and I do know that they're working on that at Paramount with Jeff Shell and David Ellison.
Well, well, you know, Tom, I think about you know your book in this journey, right, and then you know the create so many journeys if you will, which is really fun to go through. But I'm wondering a thirty five year old Tom Freston today, would you create MTV or something against the platforms that we have, or would you do something different when it comes to media and content.
That's a good question. You know, the media world is so different right now. I mean my default is sort of media and entertainment, so I'd be interested. It's harder to carve out of harder to carve out a place right now. I mean, I think the closer you get the talent and content creation, the better off you would be. The days of the mono culture where you had. The rise of MTV is a really important gatekeeper. Those are gone, So I'm in the lucky position. I'm not having to
worry about working in the business right now. In that particular business, I find it more interesting, sort of on the fringes for myself.
We're speaking with Tom Freston. He's the author of Unplugged Adventures from MTV to Tim Buck two. He's a co founder of MTV. Tom on that I was surprised when I was reading the books, as like an elder millennial, I grew up with MTV, so it totally everything you wrote about made a lot of sense I remember all the shows that launched on MTV and on Comedy Central two. You mentioned, though a few minutes ago, this kind of common refrain that we had about MTV even in the nineties,
which is it doesn't show music videos anymore. What I was surprised to find was how strategic of a decision and how important of a decision that was, and what she found sort of early on in showing music one music video after another, and why that didn't necessarily keep viewers for extended periods of time. Explain how that transformation started and why it did become a place that wasn't just music videos.
Well, when music videos sort of hit, I mean they were really kind of revolutionary. People hadn't really seen anything like that six or seven years in. I mean, a bloom was a little off the rose. That's not to say that the music videos weren't good, but a new device had come along technology wise, called the remote control, which was maybe the biggest disruptor of all that little soap bar sized device, and people would check out after three minutes or so if they didn't like the next
video that was coming on. We thought, though that we still we wanted to stay close to music. It brought us so much. But we thought maybe we could be a bigger place, in a more reliable place, and less reliant to the peaks and valleys of the music industry if we created our own programming that was about some of the things that the music was about about. You know, I'm talking about fashion and movies and you know, beef
beefing up our news area. We thought we could take say, ten percent of our one hundred and sixty eight hours a week and devoted to non music programming or stuff that related to the popular culture, and we could have a sounder and a bigger business. And that turned out to be the case. Now, the problem was that these
shows would get higher ratings than music hours. So gradually over time, and like I'm talking now the last ten or fifteen years, there was a decision to just get out of the music business entirely because the idea that you know, you could compete with something like Vivo and YouTube Tube where people could get any video they wanted on demand on the internet once the Internet was capable of really streaming video in full force, was you know,
it was an unattractive proposition. So you ended up with what you have today, which is a network be rift of music whose name used to be music television. That's not to say that, as I said earlier, that it couldn't be reimagined for digital in a way that they could make a business out of it using a digital on demand technology. So it was a strategic move to get into non music programming. And I would also say that the creative cadre that we had at work always
wanted to stretch out and do new things. So we came up with new formats like the Real World, or we would find young animators and bring them into the fold and do shows like Beavis and Butthead that we thought had their same attitude as MTV. But it wasn't necessarily music, you know, made of the bigger plays.
We think about, I mean, how much of TV today is reality TV? And I put quotation marks around it, and you know Real World you write about it in the book. I mean, you guys were a pioneer when it comes to reality television, which so dominates the landscape. Tom and I think about The Apprentice, and we think about how many have said what it did for Donald Trump, who at the time was not actually doing well in business, and the image it actually projected, not my view, but
what a lot of other people say. And I just think, how do you think about Real World, the beginning of reality TV?
And do you feel in some way.
Responsible for the creation of what that is today and helping create a path for Donald Trump?
Like, how do you think of it?
I know the question. I know that question. Look, we started, you know, we started the Real World because we couldn't afford writers. We just wanted to do a soap opera. So in the end we said, forget writers. We were good at post production. Let's put seven or eight people in a law oft and tape them and then make it into episodes. That became this new low cost form of programming. And then we did Celebrity Reality Show with
the Osborns. O were the first two real reality shows, and it was very attractive to the networks as their business model began to deteriorate. They could make shows that people wanted to see at a much lower price. And yes, it led to like Naked and Afraid, The Bachelor, and worst of all, or maybe best of all in some people's mind, The Apprentice. It brought us the new President of the United States. So I don't feel responsible necessarily
for that. But there is a through line that when television programming became less scripted and more real.
You know, And it's funny I think about. You know, we've got a world where everyone can be a content creator, and we have a man in the White House, our president, who's very good at creating content for better or worse, people can make the debate, is it free speech at its fullest when you think about the ability for anybody and everybody with their phone that can make content or is it kind of a reveal of mankind at its worst.
I'm just curious how you think about this.
Well, it's a reveal of mankind at it's best and its worst. I mean, it's true. Everybody is their own like individual broadcaster. They can create content, share it, comment on other people's content, people comment on yours. I mean, that's really been the social media revolution. It's really been a whole new paradigm for media. And yeah, it can be very disappointing at times to see what people do
and come up with and what they say. And you know, that's a much larger issue owing to a larger discussion for which I don't know there's a solution but yes, all the guardrails and program standards and things that we used to enjoy and adhere to in the eighties and nineties, they've all vanished.
Tom. You know, you're known for a creator as at MTV, But I do want to talk a little bit about Comedy Central too. I was struck with sort of the creative process of coming up with this idea for Comedy Central, the potential competition that you were going to get from HBO at a certain point, and the staying power of some of the programs on there, including The Daily Show,
the Colbert Rapport, and notably South Park. Today, I mean the idea that a South Park could be as relevant in some you know, in some cases in twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six as it was in the mid nineties. I think could be surprising to a lot of people. Talk a little bit about how, you know, within ten minutes you guys came up with this idea for Comedy Central, and how you landed Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
Well, I was having a staff meeting I was in the early nineties, and someone slipped me a piece of papers at HBO's announcing they're going to have a comedy channel, and they were at the time the big players. I mean they were on PayTV. They had Robin Williams and George Carlin, they did all these big common specialists. Oh, they're getting into our business, and that they're going to start with a comedy channel. They'll do a music channel and a kids channel, kind of eroding our Nickelodeon an
MTV business. So we decided in that meeting, like, let's announce our own comedy channel. We didn't really have a comedy channel or even an idea for one, but we thought we announced we could be in every news article that was ever written about theirs, and you know, so we kind of announced that we were doing one. We came up with a format quickly, which was sort of TV comedy and extension what our Nicked Night brand was, and so that was how we got into the business.
We had a war with HBO for a couple of years and then we ended up merging and forming Comedy Central. And the thing that really pushed Comedy Central into public consciousness was South Park. And south Park was a cartoon that started as a one of the guys at MTV found Matt and Trey and had him do a little six minute thing for as a Christmas card he sent out to his friends and it got wide acclaim and
then we saw him. We said, well, let's make a TV series out of this, and we've done it and now it's like no Christmas card in history has ever paid off like South Park. I think they're in their twenty fifth or twenty sixth season and those guys are geniuses. The other thing I'd say about Comedy Central is it's interesting to me we always had a great eye for
new and emerging talent. And if you look at the amount of people who started their television career on Comedy Central, Bill Mahrer, Jimmy Kimmel, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Samantha b Matt and Treye, Dave Chappelle, all of these people, most of whom have gone on to bigger lives outside of Comedy Central. There's sort of the front line of the Trump resistance today, a role that was filled, like in
the Richard Nixon era, largely by musicians. And you know, you have to be really proud to see how you know, with our ear to the ground, we were able to give all these people their television stars very satisfying. Comedy Central had a more cultural cachet than I think any of our networks, and outside of Lauren Michaels and Saturday Night Live, I don't know of any other entity that's been able to discover and cultivate as much comedic talent.
So we already know we want like another sixty minutes with you, and I know you've talked with our producer and I think you're going to come back and talk with us because we would like to continue this conversation.
Can we barely scratch the surface?
I mean, I have to say the way the book is written, and you talk about your travels all around the world, and we've been in the newsroom talking about like Afghanistan, which I think so many people have one view of what that is about. And you remind us, you know, an incredible land people, and we want to get into it because we want to talk soft power with you and so much more so I hope we can truly get you back here real soon and continue this conversation.
Well I'd love to do that.
We'll stay in radio contact, called to come in the studio. This has been fun week.
We really enjoyed it. Tom By We'll have a great weekend.
He is Tom, Carol.
Thanks to yeah TH's uston the book is Unplugged Adventures from MTV to Tim buck to and we are going to continue that conversation. It's really been a great read for us, so we really appreciate Tom's time.
Today 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.
It's time for Bloomberg Pursuits and this week deep dive into something we're all chasing, more years, better years. It's all about Tim the quest to live a longer life.
But it's got to be kind of a.
Good one too, and yet what if along the way we give up pieces of ourselves. It's the cover story of Bloomberg Pursuits for the February issue of Bloomberg, a Business Week magazine, And this one it really spoke to me, Carol.
Yeah, I know it did, did I think to all of us? With us as deputy editor of Bloomberg Pursuits, he is just an ocean joining us here in studio Nicole Torres, Managing editor for Bloomberg Pursuits. She's out there in Wales, which I'm wondering if she's already like in the Pursuit of longevity. Guys, it's so great to have you here with us. Let me start off Pursuits. The Quest to Live Longer Pursuits is so well known for
its wellness coverage. Justin kick it off with us, tell us about how you guys were thinking about it this time around.
You know, it's no stranger to anyone. It's a booming industry. I mean, so many things can be considered well in this yet some estimates put it at over a trillion dollars. You know, that includes obviously vacations and but you know, other things down to what we would call self care, like you know, getting her nails done, things like that, massages.
But we're more interested in the longevity aspects, so living longer currently in the US and around the world, the idea is to do like biohacking and hackier routines and focus on technology. And you know, one of the stories in this section is about health trackers and and but our main story, the one we talk about is blue zones and these are areas in the world where historically people have been living longer, you know, over one hundred years.
There's a guy, Damn Mute, and her has popularized this.
People have been talking about these blue zones for a long time and you know, it's how you eat, how you live, having a community like it's become a real thing.
Yeah, and so, and there's that tourism around it. I mean, so we sent a writer, Alice rob to one in Sardinia. So she actually came to us with the idea because she was just on her computer doing the lonely freelance life and an ad popped up for one and she realized that, you know, when she looked out the window her neighbor, that's the first person she had seen kind of all day.
Oh my god. Well, that actually gets us to a really important part of what wellness is. And Nicole, I want to bring you in because here in the US, in recent years, so much of the idea of wellness has really focused and sort of emanated from this idea of the you know bro podcasters like the Andrew Huberman's, the Joe Rogans, And it's the idea of making sure you're getting the creatine and you're jumping into cold Plunge and you're talking, you're you know, going into saunas and stuff.
But what my big takeaway Nicole from this was it has so much to do with who you're around and the relationships that you have.
Yeah, completely, I think that was what I found so interesting in Alice's peace there. Like, I think that is true for wellness overall. But when it comes to something like longevity, it seems there are really two distinct ways
to go about it. And the way we talk about in the US, the way that is kind of all over the airwaves when it comes to like broke culture, is to just double down on yourself and to go on these really expensive longevity retreats where you're sitting alone in a room getting all kinds of medical tests done on yourself. You know, you're like looking at the quality of various organs. You are just everything is very personalized to you, and you're thinking about what supplements to take,
You're thinking about your exercise routine. Everything is super individualized. And Alice wanted to know if Blue Zones really held up as a place that can speak to and actually like improve longevity because so much of what we hear about longevity is this really high tech, very medicalized types of approaches. And what she found was in these blue zones, the focus is not really on living longer, it really
is on living better. And I think what she discovers and what she hears from a lot of her sources, is living a good and high quality life where you're surrounded by a lot of people and you are social and you have connections that often leads to a longer life than being totally isolated on your own, even if you are focusing on you know how strong all of your individual cells are.
And unfortunately, Carol, the demographics here in the United States are just showing us that increasingly people are sort of moving inward, and especially elderly people are living alone.
Listen, I hear about it all the time, having had one elderly like making sure that there was activity around him, and you know, because it gets much much harder, and it's I think what's really also said justin, you know and come on back in is this idea of it used to be families. I think about several generations in a household.
Now it's almost like a feather in your cap if you get a degree and then you move to another country to work and you're far away from your your family.
Yeah, no, that's very true. I mean in certain circles, especially among high earners like there, it is a point of pride to be mobile and to have a you know, quote unquote world citizenship versus you know, really setting down roots in one place. And it's a major problem. And you know, especially in the US with older Americans, you know, one and four adults older than sixty live on their own.
About there's a pole from the National there's a national poll on healthy aging where more than one in three fell isolated. Half of Americans lack fewer than four close friends.
So god, there was there was a statistic about.
A twenty twenty three survey found that twenty six percent of Americans ate every meal alone the previous day, an increase of more than fifty percent from two decades ago. In twenty twenty three, in the.
UK, twenty percent of households don't even own a dining table. I have to like, I don't know how you are too, because you've got little.
Kids and you guys, I don't know, but it was like I grew up like dinner time everybody got together like it didn't matter where you were, and we did that, I know with our daughter as well.
Yeah, we're trying to do that. Working until the evening is challenging when kids want to eat early. But maybe this is a good segue to meeting people in different environments, like at a sauna and the rise of sauna, which is a story in the Bloomberg Pursuit section. Nicole, come on back in here, because here in the US we're talking a lot about sauna's bathhouses. It's not just a
US trend. This is happening in the UK as well, but there's like hundreds of years of history of this in the Nordic world too.
Yeah.
Absolutely, So this piece that we did is all about how bath houses are booming primarily in the US and UK, and that's notable because in the US and in the UK there has not historically been like really strong bathing cultures like there have been in the rest of the world, and so people who are opening all of these saunas and bath houses now are really talking about how this
is a new idea that's thousands of years old. And one line in the story that I really loved was how in the US and like, I'm America and even though I live in the UK now, the writer talks about how if they're the closest thing to a bathing culture that America Americans get is the shower. It's not like happening a long time in the bath like we
might do in whales or something. So it was a really interesting like cultural comparison, and I think that speaks to a lot of readers who are discovering a boom in new saunas opening in cities like London and in New York. We talk about dozens that are opening in these cities and we kind of look into why, and the reasons are really there. There are so many reasons
for why that we kind of spoke about earlier. But I guess the through line here that ties to this overall conversation on finding community and trying to tackle loneliness is it's really nice to just go to a space, a so called third space that's not home and it's not work, but it's somewhere where you can go and be around other people and you can connect with other people, and it's nice to be in one of these places where it's not actually that difficult. You don't need to
worry about making small talk. You can just go into a sauna and say it's what I didn't realize.
And it's become a thing.
I've heard more people in New York talking about it. But the people who come in and they do the waving of the air, and I'm like, when someone told me, I'm like, that's not real, but apparently it is right there. It's like, I guess essential oils that are getting like.
Spread called off us. And so you sit in a sauna for a determ amount of time. They'll play music and somebody waves using it tell the hot air at you, and it is actually like makes your head like get buzzy.
It's kind of wild.
Say you like it?
You do?
I get?
And it adds what we talk about bathing cultures around the world. There's often like a spiritual angle that is missing, and so far, you know, bath houses in the US are really leaning into that bro culture about class and optimization and you've got to you know, sit in and do a cold plunge and it's going to raise your dopamine and all these various health benefits. Where at the end of the day, as Nicole said, it's about being around people. You know, when you think of traditional Sounic cultures,
it really is about the intimacy of strangers. And often it's like it's not about wearing a swimsuit or optimizing. It's about just like being amongst fellow people.
I have to say, one of the most fun things I've ever done was in tou loom. And it was a sweat lodge and you're in this thing and it's small and it's super hot, and they keep throwing things on the flame.
Oh it's rough, it.
Was, but it was incredible. It was it was really really cool.
Hey, before we go, just real quickly, I'm Nicole, come on back in on the story about how or rings and apple watches affect our mental health.
I've had both.
Tim has his orr ring on as we speak. Just a quick quick thought on this one, because yeah, man, we're like obsessed with these wearables.
No.
So that story came about with the writer who just got aware it just got an orror ring, I think for her birthday, and she was just talking to me about it and she was like talking about how it was just stressing her out. She was starting to track her data in it on a daily basis. When she never used to. She was looking on her app in real time to see that her stress level was rising from that was like, you know, it was sensed in
her or ring. And so I told her that she should write about that and also try to find other people who might be having similar experiences, because wearables have really surged over the last however many years. Like almost everyone I know has an Apple watch that tracks their data and tells them how many steps they need to take. We have ORR rings, We have all kinds of different things we wear that track our movements and our heart rates,
all sorts of stuff. And while this has become so ubiquitous, I think it is really important for us to question, like what happens as a result. We're getting so much data, now, how are we using that data? How is it actually making us feel? Are these wearables that promise to make us well and more healthy are they actually working? There's a lot of evidence that they are, but I don't think we pay enough attention to how a lot of
this data can needlessly stress us out. And that's what the piece really focuses on.
Bottom line, The only thing I want to add is, like, you know, staying well, living longer, it costs money, so there is certainly a distinction of people tapping into all of this.
Guys, this is so great.
We could go on, but we've unfortunately got a wrap, but a really incredible section again from you guys, when it comes to wellness in this big quest that everybody's.
On to live a lot longer.
That was just an Ocean, deputy editor for Bloomberg Pursuits and Nicole Torres, Managing editor for Bloomberg Pursuits. It's the Pursuits cover story of the February issue of Bloomberg at BusinessWeek Magazine. It's out on newsstands now, online at Bloomberg dot com and always on the Bloomberg terminal.
And that wraps up our weekend edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us.
I'm tim Stennebeck and I'm Carol Masser.
Have a good and safe weekend. Everyone, check out a sauna, maybe a spot, or just go out for a long walk with people you love.
That will probably feel really good.
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