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This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Wee Weekend Podcast. This week and video earnings, more, talk about tariffs and onshoing and the latest read on US inflation. Not a busy week, it was a holiday shortened trading week. For the latest on all of it, head over to Bloomberg dot com.
With that as our backdrop, we share a bit of our Nvidia earnings reaction courtesy of our own at Ludlow after is sit down with Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong. The stock rallied after the report. More on that in just a moment.
Plus this hour. Why tariffs alone are not enough to reindustrialize America, so argues the CEO of Speculative Technologies, plus the small Asian nation pois to win nuclear energies nine trillion dollar comeback, and.
It's been six years since the murder of George Floyd? Have we seen any progress since that? The President of the Urban League stops by in our second hour with a reality check in interestingly enough, his thoughts on the US steal and Nippon Steele tie up all of.
That to come. We begin with what was probably safe to say the top tech, the top AI earnings, market, investment, and business story of the week all rolled into one, and by that we mean earnings from the world's largest semiconductor company and video. After the company's earnings call, CEO Jensen Wong sat down with Bloomberg Technology co hosted Ludlow to talk about the results. Bloomberg News senior semiconductor networking reporter Ian King joined us with more.
Ian, I just want to get a clear understanding from you about where exactly in video up for concern around China, because that was a big question moving in to their earnings, and then also with regard to the restrictions that have been placed on the company by the Trump administration with regard to the H twenty chip, Where did in video make up for this?
Yeah, I know you're asking the right question here and in many respects. It was a kind of a bizarre announcement and reaction. They said, look, things in China were worse than you thought, right, and are going to continue to be worse than you thought. We're going to lose eight billion dollars of revenue from China, so clearly, well, but why your earning is that bad then? And the answer was because everything else is good?
Right.
Networking came back that had been a slightly weak spot a quarter ago, the new Blackwell range based products getting more supply of that. Things are going a lot better. Their demand is really going very well. And they talked about the spread of their technology into the enterprise or robotics to automotive, but that was a bit more sort of longer term. The bottom line here is that the big spenders on this technology, the Microsoft's, the Amazons, are still.
Spending thank god, right for the hyperscalers Ian is it broadening out? Though? Beyond that, I think there was a lot of wondering about the Tier two companies, the sovereign play here, which provides potential, lots of potential maybe for in video going forward. Do we get anything on that?
Yeah, in a word, no, we got plenty of it. But it's not broadening out. Fifty percent of their data center business was still these so called hyperscalis. I mean, they talked a lot about it broadening out and finding
its way into other parts of the economy. And I guess you could say that, well, maybe enterprises, you know, the corporations, governments, service providers using more of the cloud services, that the use of AI is broadening, but in terms of the revenue makeup, that's still very solidly going to
these so called hyperscalers. And I think long term investors want to see that fifty percent ratio go considerably lower to have a real assurance that everybody's putting this gear in their own data centers and their own nationalized centers before they'll become more comfortable with the idea.
Yeah, I'm curious if, in your view, in Video's mote, when it comes to the technology that it has, is getting any more shallow right now, or if it's getting deeper. We did speak in our covery to some folks who reminded us that a company such as Alphabet's Google is creating their own technology that helps them rely less on a company such as in Video. How is in Video's moat right now, A.
Couple of ways to look at it. The numbers would indicate that nobody's even getting close, right, it's outgrowing everybody.
I mean, the revenue it gave up in China is more than the total revenue for AMD, which is purportedly its nearest competitor, right, so scale wise, I forget about it, right, But part of that interview, what Jensen said was, look, Huawei, which is the Chinese, you know, technology company that the US government has gone to great lengths to kind of lock out of the world, is fueling a chip now which is pretty much as good as our H two hundred. And you remember, up until earlier this year, H two
hundred was the best thing that Nvidia had. So he was cautioning that, you know, in our absence in China, is actually fueling competition there, and they are doing a lot better than you thought they were doing well.
So help me understand, because I thought when these headlines I try, I'm trying to understand they are saying that they're considering trying to design a new chip for the Chinese market. As we know, the administration has you know, kind of slowed Some are certainly the more sophisticated ships. At the same time, I'm you know, executives, from what we understand from the conference call at in VIDI are spending a lot of time reaching out to the government
to like lift some of these restrictions. So help me understand, does it sell like Nvidia expects that China will reopen or I don't know. I'm just trying to understand if that is going to be you know, more of a healthier revenue stream for them going forward.
Yeah, So that was a very you know that that's the right question that everybody is asking, and it was asked explicitly and implicitly in a number of ways on the conference call. What in Nvidia said was was, look, sure, we'd like to have another solution. We'd like to go back to doing what we did, which was find a way to get a chip that does not trigger these restrictions. But frankly, these restrictions are so stringent at this point,
is there a point in doing that. Is there a way that we can do this technically and have a chip in China which the Chinese want and doesn't raise the hore of our government And they thought they'd done that the H twenty and they thought that perhaps the Trump administration might take a different line to the Biden administration, but they didn't. They double down on that policy, and they said, no, you can't even have the H twenty, which is, you know, a weakling, younger brother of the
H two hundred we just talked about. So is there any point was part of what the question part of the answer that they gave.
In your view does maybe not in your view, but in the view of some of the folks you speak to when you're doing your reporting. Does a restrictions such as this actually help push China to develop its own technology?
I mean it already has done, right, I mean Jensen said that. I mean you could argue it's in his interest to create a scare that would persuade people to come to his point of view. But there's no denying that there are large scale deployments now of wildway tips.
Hey, real quickly before we go out there. Republican centater Jim Banks and Democrat Elizabeth Warren are demanding answers from Jensen, Wong and Video's plans to actually open up a research facility in Shanghai, and they are of course citing national security and economic security concerns. Should we be scratching our head on that considering the backdrop between US and China right now?
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to be rude about our competition, but they perhaps need to work a little bit harder on that one. This is already asked and answered. This is a new office, an office to help people to return to work. In Vidia has said publicly nothing to do with the research and design center, and so perhaps those politicians met to not read everything that they has written out there. Perhaps the want to check on the reporting.
That was Bloomberg New senior Semiconductor and networking reporter Ian King.
Okay, well, the street and many investors are still very bullish on Invidia. I mean, just check out what the share price did right after the earnings release. We also got the bear case from someone on the street. We're talking about Jay Goldberg, senior analyst covers semiconductors and electronics at Seaport Research Partners. He's the only analyst on the Bloomberg terminal who has a cell rating on Nvidia.
My take is that in Vidia the most scrutinized company in the planet. We all have a pretty good sense of what their numbers should look like this year, what their capacity is working backwards from that, there's not a lot of room left for upside, right, There's a few things here and there, but there's not much upside possible. But on the downside, there's still a lot of risks. There are a lot of things that could go wrong.
There's lots of problems with the supply chain. The fact that the keeper mentioning that Blackwell is ramping, that was in doubt for a while. There's just a lot of questions the company. It's a good company, it's well run. It's just gotten so big so quickly. I don't think they can keep this. The level of expectations beating that they've had for the last three years, that just can't keep going.
And I think the headwinds are continuing to mount.
In the earning statement, in video, CEO Jensen Wong saying global demand for Nvidia's AI infrastructure is incredibly strong. AI inferenced token generation has surged tenfold in just one year, and as AI agents become mainstream, the demand for AI computing will accelerate. Jay obviously sounds upbeat, but again, you know, this is where we want to have some numbers around things, the CFO saying sales of their H twenty products four point six billion for the first quarter of twenty twenty six.
Is there anything that could kind of make you say, well, wait a minute, maybe I need to say it's not a sell. Maybe there is something interesting here.
So I think the underlying question is what are we going to do with AI? Like there's a lot of excitement around AI, but it's still in very early stages, you know. I like to think of this as the Internet in the nineteen seventies. We knew it was something, but we didn't know what it would become. I think that's where we are with AI now, and I think it's going to take a few years for us to really as an industry figure out what the actual consumer
use cases and applications are. And in that process there's going to be some fits and starts, and I just don't think we can keep this momentum going forever. I know demand is good now now, but we start to look into next year. I think people are starting to ask good questions about what is the ROI and these massive GPU investments all the hyperscalers and the enterprises have made,
and I don't think we've seen those yet. I think what would sort of alter my belief is if somebody invents some incredible consumer application for AI that would radically accelerate things.
That was Jay Goldberg, senior analyst on Semiconductors and Electronics at Seaport Research Partners, once again, the only analyst on the terminal who's got a celerating on Nvidia and.
Sticking to it, at least sticking to it that far.
Hey, he likes being a contrariant, he told us.
Yeah, he had some really good thoughts kind of on AI more broadly too. All right, coming up, Why tariffs will not lead to an American manufacturing revival, so argues our next guest.
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This past weeks, i'm legal back and forth on President Trump's tariff push. The latest, as we put this week's Business Week to bed, was a federal appeals court that temporarily blocked a ruling that threatened to throw out the bulk of President Trump's tariff agenda, giving the White House hope to continue its efforts to rewrite the global trading order. Now for the latest head on over to Bloomberg dot
com as it continues to be a developing story. Now, keep in mind, part of the president's justification is to get more companies to produce in the United States, invest in the United States, and grow domestic manufacturing. And to be fair, Tim, we heard from a lot of companies global companies about investing in the US or at least plans to do so and ramp up their exposure here.
When you think about the history of American manufacturing, it was actually at its peak just ahead of the financial crisis. But as Dan Wang, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover History Lab, and Ben Reinhart, the CEO of the nonprofit in Industrial Research Labs Speculum Technologies, right in the June issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine, American industry has certainly seen better days, and it's never recovered to those levels.
They argue, though, that tariffs are not the solution to revitalizing the sector. Ben, you have a tariff free menu of policies that offer a sure path to revitalize in US manufacturing. You and Dan, right before we get there, explain for everybody what an industrial research lab is.
Well, so I like to describe it as we are.
We're a research lab in the sense that we are working on trying to create new technologies. We're not working on products, but at the same time, we're trying to do research that is not just trying to discover the secrets of the universe, but really.
Build useful technologies.
So that's sort of the line, like to think that we're walking where it's like we're doing stuff that doesn't make sense yet as a company, I wouldn't go to an investor and say, you can make a bunch of money, But we are nevertheless like trying to do things that.
Eventually will become useful. So thing the labs Xerox Park that sort of.
Work very cool, So sort of a skunk works type of thing, exactly pre product. Okay, you and Dan thought a lot about have been thinking a lot about tariffs and the way that the President has been trying to revitalize American manufacturing. His love for tariffs is no secret. We've known about it for many, many decades, but I think perhaps it caught some investors off guard back in April when he announced the reciprocal tariffs on so called Liberation Day, you argue that there are better ways to
revive manufacturing in the US. You say, we should look at what China has done.
Yeah, so there are two things in particular that they've done that. So they've done many things, some of them we don't think that we should copy. But there are two in particular that I think are particularly worth looking at.
One of them is inviting in for an investment. Right, so actually one of the ways that they built up their manufacturing is inviting in foreign companies and uh, you know, getting them to build factories there and sort of regardless of your position on uh stealing technology, you.
Still build up a workforce that knows how to build those.
Things and then can go and uh, you know, build that technology. So you can imagine inviting in Chinese companies even who have now technologies that that we don't have, and you then build up a workforce who knows how to, say, make bad batteries.
So that's one.
Two is like industrial zones, right, So so you're the most well known is Hinshen, but there are there are many others where they to a large extent, UH, the government took a very like hands hands off approach and just said like okay, like within this zone, you can basically do whatever you want.
There's there's a lot of nuance to that.
But right now we are it is extremely hard to build new UH new factories.
I do want to push back a little bit on this. My one experience in China back in twenty nineteen, before the pandemic, I went to Shanghai. I know it's a completely different place now, but one thing that struck me was when the plane landed, I looked out the window and it was the thick what I thought was the thickest fog. It turned out it was pollution. My throat
was sore the entire time I was there. We couldn't see out of our hotel room windows because we're on like the fifteenth floor, and the air was too clogged with pollution. As a result of some of the industrialization that we're talking about here, Do we really want that in the US?
I don't think it's an either or sort of thing. Modern A lot of modern manufacturing technologies no longer produce that sort of that sort of waste, and a lot of the manufacturing that we're talking about doesn't do that, and there are many many technologies for cleaning that up.
So you were seeing sort of the results of manufacturing technologies from like the fifties and sixties, and so we're saying, like, Okay, we're going to build technologies of the twenty first century, which have many few side effects.
Ben, I gotta say, what's really cool is our Steve Man of our Bloomberg Intelligence team and covers the auto sector, and one of the things he has said recently to us, because as we think about tiraffs and bringing manufacturing back home, he said, one thing that China learned. I mean by doing all that manufacturing, they actually developed some very sophisticated technology that is now helping them to kind of operate on a higher plane. And whether it's developed cart like
whatever have you. And I never thought about that. I guess I thought about bringing manufacturing back home. Do we really want to be making T shirts and sneakers? But that's not what it's about. It's about they've become very sophisticated with technology because of the automation and all of the manufacturing they've been doing.
Oh yeah, couldn't agree. More.
Manufacturing and new technology and research really go hand in hand. You can't have one without another, honestly, that's That's one of the reasons why I'm such a big proponent of manufacturing is because.
We always put that together.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like the best technologies, the best research comes from noticing a problem on an actual manufacturing line, right, Like going back to us being an industrial research labet, the point is to notice, oh, there's this actual, real problem in the world, and we need to do research to fix it.
I think it's pretty well so is President Trump bright in terms of encouraging companies outside the United States, even American companies to start investing more here.
Along that axis.
Yes, I think I will not unequivocally agree with with everything.
But encouraging for it. And as many have said to us, you know, there are commitments and then you'll see whether or not those commitments, which are often multi year commitments. And also you can't just build a factory overnight, right or a facility, but we'll see over time whether or not this actually happens.
Yeah, I think so.
I think that it would ideally be done with carrots and not sticks.
But yes, I think that.
The message, right, but maybe not the mode. Yeah exactly, is it at least your review?
Yeah, okay, So that's one way to be thinking about this study China. I want to talk a little bit about some other solutions that you have preserving the strengths that America already has. Talk a little bit about what you mean by that.
Yeah, So, you know, America has a lot of strengths that I feel like, like literally today we are uh, sort of throwing away right, Like we have this amazing ability to attract talent from all over the world.
And if the universities let them in.
Yeah exactly, and and the universities and in immigration right like, so historically.
In all seriousness, I'm not bringing that up facetiously, I'm saying that that is at risk right now given the different rules that we've seen.
Oh yeah exactly.
And so so our point is like, don't like, don't stop like that's that is really and that is a unique strength of ours, right, Like, China doesn't attract global talent in the same way that we do. And again in our our university and research system. Also, so you know, you've seen the all like the cuts to NSF and NIH and NASA and the list goes on. And you know, our research ecosystem is the envy of the world, and we shouldn't, you know, keep keep that the case.
What do you say to folks who say, listen, okay, you've got something like an IVY League that has an incredibly large endowment, So why does the government US government need to give them money to do R and D? So what's what's the argument to that? What you know, are you going to give it? Give it to you and maybe another organization that needs it. More like, what's the argument for continuing for federal money to go to some of these massive, well known institutions, academic institutions.
Yeah, so there's a lot of nuance that we can't get into here. I think that they're like rethinking where the money, like where government R and D money goes. Yeah, definitely another conversation for another time. But just like as things stand now, like the money should go to the best researchers, Like the best research is going to come for the best research.
Research is like very much a power law.
Distributed thing, and for better or for worse, the best researchers are at places like Harvard, and so that would be my argument for it.
Then what do you see the risks to US manufacturing or to the US economy if the United States continues with this tariff program?
I mean I see just like US manufacturing, like it's not going to necessarily make manufacturing better, right, Like, I
don't think it's actually going to achieve the aims. You see, because so many of the parts that people that manufacturers depend on are are coming from overseas and are being heavily tariffed, and so like you're already seeing like manufacturers of CNC machines getting completely hosed by by the tariffs, and so I just see like manufacturing as an industry being directly hurt by let alone helped.
Yeah, I think it's kind of you know, who knows where this goes, right ultimately, But I think like understanding the impact that immigrants are immigration and bringing folks in from other countries, whether it's in high skilled or low skilled jobs, like has an economic impact, right, and it pays off in many different ways or tends to absolutely.
I mean you just like I interact with a lot of researchers.
You look at who is getting stem PhDs, who's doing researching like hard science and technology, and it's the vast majority of people are are not from the US.
How do you think about all of this with something that is going to be obviously a big deal? And I'm thinking about artificial intelligence and I think about deep seek And when that news came out, we all were like, oh, you know, China is they're moving ahead?
Yeah, I think the argument is across all of it. Right, you want, like, ideally it would be great for some of the people who developed deep seat to want to come to the US and do work here, right, And again, you look at who is actually working at these AI companies and there's people from all across the world, Like I have friends there there, and like, you know, people who came up with a lot of the algorithms that
the US AI companies are using are not American. And so again this is just like example after example of our strength is our ability to pull in these talented people.
Thirty seconds. Are you optimistic or pessimistic that some of this stuff will be adopted?
I am I am pessimistic, but I am optimistic that that can change.
But if we don't get this right, big deal.
Big deal, meaning the.
US economy, meaning the US role in the world, or.
Yeah, I think all of the above.
I think that you could really see us, like honestly on some kind of like some kind of decline, some kind of like becoming like ming China or and after they close themselves off.
We're gonna leave it on that, though. I'm sure we'll come back to you. Definitely certainly something to get us all thinking. Ben rein Hart. He's Bloomberg Business Week contributing writer and see you have speculative technologies.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern up on Applecarplay 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.
All right, So we've talked a lot about the booming demand for electricity in the United States, power and the need to seek alternative sources of energy. One solution policymakers from both sides of the aisle continue to look at I feel like the world is all looking at it. We're talking about nuclear.
Bloomberg reported last year that then President Joe Biden laid out plans to triple nuclear power capacity by twenty fifty.
Then a few weeks.
Back, President Trumps signed an order meant to quadruple US nuclear capacity, with plans to get ten large reactors under construction by twenty thirty. Needless to say, the US is really trying to get its nuclear groove.
Back, and with that a surgeon demand for nuclear reactor equipment that stands to benefit one East Asian nation and folks, Nope, it's not China, not Japan, not Russia, but rather the small country.
Of South Korea. Writing all this for Bloomberg Business Week is Bloomberg News energy reporter Will Wade. He toured South Korea nuclear manufacturing plants while on assignment in Asia earlier this year. He joined me alongside Ami Grafeo.
Yeah, they sent me to Tokyo for three months. It was a job swap program at Bloomberg. I highly recommended if you get the opportunity. But I also did spend a week reporting all up and down South Korea to see their nuclear industry, and that's what we wrote about for this story.
Yeah, you wouldn't the team crunch the numbers so Bloomberg BusinessWeek analysis of the more than four hundred planned and proposed nuclear reactors around the world show that South Korea is positioned to win business with his as forty three percent of them. So it sets the country up you and the team right yes, to become one of the biggest exporters of atomic tech over the next decade. Why is South Korea doing this so well?
So?
The thing about South Korea is they built their first reactor in the seventies. They've got twenty six now. They just never stopped building them. They've been doing this for decades NonStop. I mean, you think about nuclear you probably think about the US because we invented it. We have more reactors here than anyone else.
We do we don't. Yeah, well for a little bit.
China is going to pass us probably by twenty thirty.
Wait more operating reacts. We're currently operating reactors. Wow.
Yeah.
And also you might think about France. It's the most nuclear powered country on Earth. They get like seventy percent of their power from electricity. But in the US the industry pretty much just stopped after three Mile Islands seventy nine. We lost that expertise of building power plants. France, similar story. After Chernobyl there was a lot of public opposition to nuclear power or they also kind of halted the industry for a while, and it's tough to come back once
you stop that. Meanwhile, Korea just kept building them and building them and building them. They only were building them in Korea, but they've got that expertise. They just never stopped the industry. And then about two thousand and nine they won this huge contract to do four reactors in the United Arab Emirates and they did it. They did it on time, they did it on budget. Meanwhile, here in the US we finally finished a new project last year.
It was like massively over budget, massively late. France just opened a new reactor last year, massively late, massively over budget. They're doing one in England, massively late, massively over budget. It's a theme. And meanwhile people are like, wait, who did that project in the UAE. Who pulled that off nicely? The South Koreans, So now they're getting a lot of attention. They just got awarded a contract last year in the Czech Republic. It's not finalized yet, so that it's not
a done, done deal. But when the Czechs looked around, They're all like, let's go with the Korean beas everyone thought the French were going to get the deal, but nope, they went with the Koreans because they've got this reputation for just doing it right these days.
So what we're mainly talking about most of the business is manufacturing the parts for reactors in South Korea and then they export them to other countries. No, also building plants that are stationed in South Korea.
That's another part of the whole thing we're talking about everything. They manufacture the parts in South Korea, they've got companies that build them wherever in Korea, in the UAE and the Czech Republic, they got their own homegrown design now, so it's really beginning to end. Everyone in Korea works together. They call it the Team Korea approach.
Do you think we're going to here in the US start using Team America?
Yeah?
Well, I mean if they can do it under budget and on time or on budget and on time and we can't, can we outsource this? Can companies in the US?
Are the Koreans to do it here?
Yeah?
Like how are they doing how are they doing projects for the Czech Republic. How are they doing projects for other countries?
You know, like the whole export industry for nuclear is a big thing. I mean, the Americans are trying to export American technology around the world, the French, everybody wants. It's not just a company selling things. It's a diplomatic thing. It's a decades long relationship with servicing and fueling. So it really is a diplomatic relationship to get into business
doing nuclear power for companies. So that's why, in fact, that's why we're starting to say less Russian and in other parts of the world they're a little reluctant to work with them, and the Korean they're kind of seems like more neutral.
I feel like I have to ask the next natural question would be about tariffs and potentially the United States is pushed towards deglobalization. Does that impact the nuclear supply chain at all? And is that an issue for South Korea?
Not as much.
It's not so much an issue when South Korea wants to do business with anyone, but the US. I did talk to a company there that's working on a project here and they told us, yeah, it's going to make that project in Michigan more expensive. It's going to make electricity more expensive for Michigan people because the parts are coming from Korea.
Emily was talking a little bit earlier about in this story the supply chain and this network effect of being able to effectively build these reactors in Korea. What allows the country to do this?
Like?
What are they doing right?
They collaborate really well and it starts at the top.
What do you attribute that to though? Is it organizational? Is it cultural? Is it based on a history of the way that companies have worked together.
I think it's I think it's kind of all of that. I think there's some cultural things. I think partly it's you know, they have these the chabels, these huge conglomerates that make everything like.
A Samsung for example, Samsung LG.
Hyundai actually is the company that I've talked to a couple of different units of Hyundai here, So they're used to sort of all being the same corporate umbrella, even if they're different companies, and there's not that many of them, so they've been working together for decades. I think it may be helped that it's a smaller country, it's easier to manage things.
The United States is quite large. It just did a transatlantic flight.
It was long.
You were actually in South Korea. How close did you get to the manufacturing plant?
Did you go to go inside? Yeah?
We went.
I went, you're not glowing, so that's a good sign.
Well, so I went to this factory in Changwan. It's this all the way down on the south that's near Busan, And we went to this factory. It's operated by a company called Douson, and they've got this thing is called a forging press where they take red hot chunks of glowing steel and just squid pound them into shape. And they use this to make the big reactor vessels for nuclear power plants, but they do everything else. I mean when I was there, they were making the propeller shaft
for a cargo ship. And it must have been like what like four feet wide and like maybe fifty meters long, and it was red hot, glowing steel like a thousand degrees. I could feel the heat from fifty feet away in another room through an observation glass.
Wow.
And they're just pressing on it with like hundreds of thousands of tons of pressure.
Well, I mentioned that you were in Japan for the last three months. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that. In the state of nuclear power in Japan. I think people at least you know, of a certain age might think of nuclear power in Japan and think immediately of Fukushima, But what is the state of nuclear power nuclear energy in the country.
So the story in like at starting after like twenty twelve, like right after the twenty eleven Fukushima disaster, was very simple, no nuclear power. They used to get about a third of their electricity from nuclear and after that disaster they shut all of it down, which was really kind of a problem for their electricity system. They've gradually been restarting them. I think they have about like fourteen up and running now. There's they're working toward restart some of the others. But
as you pointed out, there there's strong public opposition. It's and you know, here in America you get a lot of public opposition and nuclear power from some environmental activist groups. It's much stronger in Japan. And you know, they're the ones that'll say, hey, we've got a real reason to be concerned about this. It's not just theoretical in Japan, so people feel it very strongly. But you know what I met with some college kids there and they were
like super pro nuclear kids in Japan. They called themselves like nuclear youth advocates. I'm still working on a story about these guys, but they were just really enthusiastic, and I'm like, you know, not everyone in the country feels this way.
And they're like, oh, we know, we know. Are these kids like maybe they're twenty twenty one years old, so back in twenty eleven.
Right, they were like in grade school?
Yeah, remember it?
But okay, that's interesting.
Yeah, they were like, yeah, I remember when my dad put on the TV when that happened, he said, this is important. I'm like, okay, but I wanted to watch mi anime.
And then like, culturally in South Korea, did you feel like there was a stigma or there was Generally it was there was more acceptance, So.
Yeah, absolutely, energy.
Yeah, I mean Korea still gets I think this is like sixty percent of its power from fossil fuels, and Japan it's very heavily fossil fuel powered as well, so they're really conscious that if they need to get carbon emissions out of their power system, nuclear is one of their few options.
I look, will we're glad you're back. Sounds like you had an amazing trip. You didn't bring me any goodies, but that's okay. Sorry, that's okay next time. Next time, you're gone for three Minds product. The rest of my teammates them least he brought goodies, but they've been eating. Check out his story. He is Today's big take. It's on the Bloomberg Terminal. It's written along with Hesu Lee. It's all about the winner of nuclear's nine trillion dollar comeback.
It'll be South Korea. It's a Bloomberg exclusive. This Bloomberg BusinessWeek analysis. It's pretty awesome.
Check it out.
It's on the terminal and at Bloomberg dot Com.
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.
Lenny Ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including the CEO of Omaha steaks on the business of beef and serving up a sizzling romance novel to sell even.
More, Plus how about wine with that steak Our Bloomberg Pursuits team on building an all American wine cellar in the time of tariffs.
Also the movie with a fresh look at an age old conundrum, is it better to be with someone for love for money? It's all in Bloomberg Pursuit. First up this hour, though, we wanted to think about kind of where we are in time and how it's been five years since the killing of George Floyd that sparked widespread attention to systemic racism in the United States.
At first, many companies publicly pledged support for racial justice, but since then we've seen a pendulum swing on the way that companies talked publicly about this stuff. Mark Morial as president and CEO of the National Urban League, Mark joined us to discuss corporate racial equity, but first he weighed in on the tie up between US Steel and Nippon Steele.
We took a position against this transaction, and I think people should be reminded that both Biden and Trump during the election cycle oppose what, in his sent in effect, was an acquisition by Nippon Steel of US Steel. Cleveland Cliffs wanted to buy US Steel right, both Biden and Trump opposed it. On the theory that it would lead to the loss of American jobs, the fear being that
Nippon would close American plans transfer production to Japan. So now with this iteration, you asked the right question, is this a partnership or is that a public relations move? Is it still the original deal, which really was an acquisition, and what protections are going to be there. We took a position from a job's perspective.
So you were concerned about some of the black communities there right economic.
Places and steal and we're in a conversation where we're talking about manufacturing. So the real impact question is will this protect American steal jobs or will it potentially lead to the transfer production to Japan.
Well, I will say the President said that it would create at least seventy thousand jobs and AD fourteen billion to the US economy. But he has a hard time imagining that after investing fourteen billion dollars, then Nippon Steele without an additional fourteen billion dollars to the US economy.
And the question is are there any guarantees? And I think we all need to watch for the details understand the specific because those jobs and those communities have been heavily dependent on those types of.
Well, justic contextualize the seventy thousand not just a massive number of jobs, especially for the steel industry. US Steel only has twenty two thousand employees right now.
Yeah, and I hope it's not a lot of hype, you know, And I think that we owe it to look at the transaction and see what impacted or what guarantees are going to be there for American workers, and what are the guarantees that five years from now, there's not a decision made, a reversal and the jobs move
to Japan or they move abroad for some reason. So that's really what if you will, handcuffs and guardrails are going to be placed on this transaction till we see what they file, until we see what they promise, It's hard to know. But it's interesting that the President opposed it as a candidate. Biden opposed it as a candidate.
You need to pose it last year, and there was an American suitor for US Steel Cleveland, right, So there's a lot to unpack here, and I just you know, we work hard on the issue of jobs, and we're very focused on transactions, uh, to determine whether it's going to have a positive or negative impact on the communities we serve. Well, look, yeah, you switch, George Floyd, Wait.
I want I do want to in a minute.
I want to stay on.
On economic development and stay of jobs. Because as somebody who's been involved in government for so long, there of New Orleans serving in the Louisiana State Senate, you you understand this stuff when it comes to economic development. Take a big picture approach to what you view as the economic policy of the Trump administration and its effects on American jobs. Because the President and the administration would say, hey, we are imposing tariffs to protect US jobs.
I think a tariff approach without an industrial policy which says what specific industries are you trying to grow? It appears to be a scattershot approach designed to leverage some deals without any specificity. So we're talking about iPhones, automobiles, blue jeans, toys, what specific so I can buy. The selective use of tariffs, the selective use of trying to
rebuild an American industry. But you need an industrial or economic development policy that matches the tariffs in order to give certainty to American business and consumers.
So I am curious, you know, Mark, when the president putting pressure on a company like Apple to kind of increase its investment here. And we've talked a lot with our reporters who cover it and our team that covers it, that they say, you know, it's going to be a while before we can do it. That maybe there isn't the skill of the workers, the type of automation, so
on and so forth. But is that the kind of thing that you think would create jobs that would actually benefit black communities, middle class communities which we have just kind of carved out in a big way.
Look, we the outsourcing of jobs that took place in the eighties and the nineties to really Reagan era free trade policies, which will continued in the Bush and the Clinton era.
The Republicans Democrats.
Like communities, right, They did damage community. The benefit was cheaper goods on the consumer side, so there were some benefits, but it hurt. The issue today is what jobs are the jobs of the future. Is it rebuilding automobile component parts.
I would say that what people have not paid attention to is the disinvestment through the NIH cuts in biomedical research and technology, where we do have a bit of a competitive advantage where we do have, we ought to be pouring more investments into that.
What's the impact of that from your view, Well, the.
Impact of that is long term damaging because what happens is the scientists and the investments go abroad, and once they go abroad, just like manufacturing, you can't get them back. So our economic policy ought to be focused on where do we have a bit of some tailwinds and how can we grow it? But then on manufacturing. I agree with the notion that we are to try to rebuild manufacturing,
but we need to be more specific about it. If someone said I want to bring jobs to Detroit, Newark, Gary, New Orleans, Atlanta, I'm all for it, but I need some specificity as to how this policy is going to generate that type of response.
Are you getting time at the White House?
We've not been in any direct discussions with anyone in the administration, but as always, if it's about the benefit for the community, I'm open to discussions with anyone.
Is that different than other administrations? Do you typically have a direct line to the White House?
You know in the Clinton, the Bush, the Obama administrations, of Biden administrations, I think there was a much more candid, open working relationship with civil rights leaders, with African American leaders, and they were frank and candid, and they were not performative. You see I meetings. Many of these meetings took place without cameras, without press, without performance, without posturing. So I mean my view of meetings is I want to talk business. I don't want to play games.
What's interesting is that the communities that you represent at the National Urban League in the last election move further to the right for the most part. And I don't want to paint every.
Push and many didn't vote, and there was a cynicism about whether government can make a difference.
And why was that.
I think that people's objective economic conditions, the difficulty of COVID, the depression of wages, inflation, a whole host of factors, and the idea that politicians come and go and make promises and never keep them.
So how does the Democratic Party get these voters back.
It's going to be up to a specific candidate. I think people will rally around the right person. I don't know if it's so much about it a party. I think Trump right, Trump remade quote unquote the Republican Party. I think the Democratic Party is the Democratic Coalition is poised for a makeover. It's poised for a group of people who are gonna come and talk about how they're going to change and disrupt. But Bill a vision for the future.
So who are some names that I would on your mind?
Wouldn't I wouldn't offer any names now because right now the horses have not gotten out of the stable. So we got to see him on the practice track.
Was Kamala Harris the wrong candidate at the wrong time unless.
She was a good candidate. She was given a tough a tough lane to run in sixty to ninety days to get known amongst American people. Remember, she came within one point of defeating someone who was on their third run for president. So we got to remember there was no landslide, there was no mandate, but there was a victory for Donald Trump.
So I would love to say, speaking of victories, that we've made a lot of progress in the last five years. Considering the tragic killing of George Floyd and I think you know it was COVID. We were all home. We had a lot of conversations, really frank and real with CEOs and leaders about the importance and the racism that still is in this country, and blacks being targeted around the country, and just the injustices, and I feel like we've slip slided back. Tell me how you.
See five steps forward and three steps back on two issues we cover in this report. I encourage people to go to us a report out yes on policing. Many communities, many police departments, many cities supported by the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, made strides. We didn't pass a comprehensive federal law that George Floyd Law did not pass, but a hundred and eighty police officers were in fact convicted. Dozens of police departments ended up in agreements to reform themselves.
A number of states, like Maryland, passed statewide police reform measures. That was good. Now what's the obstacle. Now the current administration has walked in and said we're freezing all civil rights investigations, regardless of merit, regardless of the basis of those That puts headwinds into this effort to continue to do reform. On the other hand, there were these incredible commitments by many great American institutions, businesses, philanthropies, etc. And
now some are walking them back. And they're three categories. Those that have just abandoned them, some who've held firm and those that are making cosmetic changes because they know they need to be committed, but they're under the pressure of the administration which is using its regulatory power to force their hand.
Do you think which one do you think happened more. Do you think these are just cosmetic changes and they're committed to these so called DEI policies, or do you think they are actually making fundamental changes in moving away from them?
And American business to demonstrate a sense of courage. And the reason why that courage is important is to recognize the marketplace for both employees and customers of the future, which is becoming far more diverse, black, brown Asian women. That's the workplace of the future. But people today, if you look at DEE and I Diversity Equity and Inclusion Equal Opportunity, you poll it. The lowest polling numbers I've
seen in any any publicly available poll is fifty percent. See, the American people are not on the side of the loud anti voices. American business knows deep in their soul, they know and they understand, but they're they're being I think pressured, they're being intimidated, and I think that's just the reality of today.
We're squeeze for time twenty five seconds. Are you surprised by the fear of corporate leaders to speak out? And I apologize that it needs to be quick.
I am. But their exceptions Jamie Diamond, Roger Goodell, two people with whom I've spoken, and two people who've made important statements, And I think others should do the same thing.
Are you done with public service?
Never done with public service? So are you?
Is there a chance you would run for something else?
There's always a chance. But I love my job. I love what I do, But there's always a chance.
Like what Stay tuned, all right, TBD, We'll come back and tell us you can break it. Mark, thank you so much. He's, of course, president, chief executive officer of the National Urban League, joining us in studio. Mark, thank you.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern 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 one week ago.
Last weekend, it was Memorial Day weekend, considered to be the unofficial start official start.
I guess unofficial because June twenty first.
Okay, all right, all right, technical technical anyway, unofficial start to summer in the United States. With that, perhaps you were one of the millions of Americans who took that long weekend to celebrate with some outdoor activities, beach trips, or spend some time grilling up some steaks. Didn't you do that?
Tim?
I didn't. We didn't grill steaks. I was with a group of people who don't eat mammals. Interestingly enough, that's there, that's the way they think about it.
Okay, but Tim and I both like stakes.
So we had chicken. We had chicken. We had turkey burgers. There were a few impossible burgers for the actual vegetarians. I had a lot of chicken and turkey burgers. Though Nate Rampy hopes you were grilling in Omaha steak or several. He's president and CEO of the privately held company more than one hundred years old. The company is Nate joins Us from Omaha. Nate good to have you with us. It's good to have you on the program. We've been excited to speak to you about a range of topics.
I want to start just with the fact that you're privately held here more than a century old. We don't have a lot of numbers to go on. We are Bloomberg. We need some context here. What can you tell us about the business sales, what direction they've been going in. What can you share with us?
You bet? First off, in Omaha, we grill no matter the weather.
Okay, it's good to know.
Get that right out right out of the shoots. So we are one hundred and seven Almos, one hundred and eight years old, born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. We're pushing upwards past six hundred million in top line revenue, about two thousand employees, and we spike up to about six thousand during the holidays when when we provide America you know the best gift, which is Omaha steaks file Mignon.
So where is the beef coming from? Because on your website I noticed you do have a section sort of the higher end stuff that is imported from Japan. It seems like other than that, is it all from the United States?
It's actually wago, is not Our wagon is not important from Japan.
Actually we actually.
Call it wangus oh okay.
Which is largely in the United States.
Most of the wagu consumed is a is a is a sort of a hybrid between an angus and the wagon.
So forgive me, is it still considered wagu if it's not from Japan?
Oh yeah, yeah, for sure, just because of the of the breed. Uh you sort of enterbred that with the with the angus to get a more.
Americanized version of that.
But our beef comes from the heartland. I mean, I'm talking to you from Omaha, Nebraska. This is beef country. And you know, on the top of mind lately, you know, has been the topics of terrorists. And when you source all of your beef from the US right in the center of the country, you know you can have a competitive advantage in protecting your customers from the impacts of things like tearifs and Omaha steaks. Given the fact that
we're one hundred years old, is super vertically integrated. So from the sourcing of the raw material, through manufacturing, packaging, marketing it all the way through fulfillment and logistics. You know, we control that at every step in the in the process,
and that gives us a couple benefits. One is that customer experience can be very controlled and sure that we have an absolute fabulous experience from not just from first bite, but all the way backing up to you know, the shopping experience, the marketing experience, exploring what products you might want to enjoy, from Omaha steaks, all the way through to when that cooler shows up perfectly frozen with ice still in the package.
All right, Nan, I got to ask you because I feel like every time we go out for dinner you want to buy I'm using steak broadly, but there's obviously different kinds of cuts and so on and so forth. But it's expensive. You're talking thirty five, forty, fifty sixty. Why is it so expensive? And I was just looking, you know, beef prices have gone up again this year, are there up? So what's going on in the beef market.
Yeah, it's it's largely it's it's pretty simple, Carol. It's kind of supply and demand. So consumer demand has really kind of stayed strong despite you know, all what's happening around us in the macro environment.
Macroeconomic environment.
Cattle supply has dropped, in fact, will be about four million head lower in this year versus twenty twenty two, and thus, you know, price is sort of increasing. So you know, all those factors are really what's behind the price of meat increasing because you know, the cost of food has been increasing for quite some time. It's not just you know, kind of this you know, very recent event and going out to dinner when you told me,
you know, you go out for a steak. You know, I think if you think back to twenty twenty, you know, one of the things that we learned as a country is how great it was to have dinner at home with family, and that you know, when you do that, that doesn't mean that the experience or.
The quality has to drop, right, And.
What I'm arguing is that I can bring the quality and the guidance and the experience of the best steakhouse in America to your kitchen and you can do it without waiting in line, without driving, without tips, you know, without you know, maybe variable service, and you can be the hero in the kitchen as opposed to the steak.
Rate, as long as you don't overcook it, which has happened well, do you know it depends.
I mean, you know we say it a lotze totally.
Well, you know, to Carol's point, beef prices recently, just in the last few days, reached a record high in April. How much of your price has gone up over the last year.
Actually, we have held our price as static for about three years.
Uh.
And again we're doing that because we're able to control And I can't really overstate how important it is to control the controllables. I mean, you know, when you're operating a large business, things that come at you from the sides that cause impact to costs or ultimately what drive consumer price up. So we've been able to really control our controllables and offer that benefit to our customers.
Now there are.
Really, there really are a number of things that America can do to manage their costs of protein. It's like anything else in economics, you know, there's a trade down opportunity.
So if you were maybe used.
To having a Tuesday night flame, we've seen some Americans go.
To the Top Surloin. I happen to love the Top Surloin.
I think it's an underappreciated, maybe underloved steak, but it's a Tuesday night steak, it's beefy, it's it's you know, it's very healthy, more lean, and so there is a trade down happening there because protein really is an important component to our diet and is a key cornerstone in maintaining a healthy diet.
And so trading down is one of them.
Like I said, eating at home is another, you know, investing in products that you know have that high quality.
But still that experience at home can be a great one.
All right, First of all, quick, go ahead, I'd just say, full disclosure. We cook a lot at home, so it's not like I'm meeting out all the time. I'm just kind of blown away by the costs on menus. But the same thing even when we you know, pie, you know, it's just kind of expensive. Why are herds down? You said, four herds in the US are down by four million heads, lower than twenty twenty two.
Why is that?
Is there not the less number of factors?
Yeah, number of factors, Carol, things like drought, you know, the environment which the cattle are being raised certainly affects the size of the herd. But another phenomenon that's really interesting that I think you'll also find interesting is something called heifer retention. So when demand for beef is high, there is motivation to harvest the female animal as opposed to leverage that animal to generate more herd. And over
the last number of years that has been happening. And so as heifer retention drops, the number of calves entering the market or entering the environment drops as well, So the build of the herd doesn't really happen over time. And we've been dealing with that reduction over the last number of years, which is a contributing factor to supply.
Nay price Nate.
You also, it's not just it's known for stakes, but you guys also do chicken and pork, seafood, You do desserts, wine, gifts. Some of your seafood is imported from outside of the US. Correct, it is, yes, So how have you been you know, like Argentinian shrimp for example, how have you been able to control prices? There? You say, controlling the controllable is what's important. But how much are you getting hit with tariffs on that stuff?
There's a little bit of that there. I tell you.
One of the benefits you get from being a multi decade business is we have multi decade supplier relationships, and so you know, we can have conversations with them, and we can talk frankly about the fact that you know the Omaha Steaks and you know inter supplier name here. This is about the long term. We've been sourcing from you for twenty to thirty years. Help us overcome this blip, and a lot of times we find that our suppliers
will step up and help us keep those costs in check. Yeah, and largely, I think you know we've we've done a pretty good job. My team has done a fabulous job of anticipating the impact terror.
All Right, while we have you, can we talk about Nick and Kate or should I call it Nate?
Sure?
Tell us about Certified Tender. It was a romance novel. I believe it started as an April Fools Joe.
What are you talking about?
I have to tell you we were kind of reading there was a great article that kind of put it all together. We were reading some of it out loud in the newsroom. This seems like it was an idea that really took off. Just got about a minute or so left here. How successful did this turn out to be and how did it come about?
It was so fun. We've done April Fool's.
Events over the last number of years, but we had a super talented copywriter internally that agreed to take on writing certified tender. So it was literally written by a copywriter here at Omaha Steaks named Michael. And I don't know, if you have the opportunity to read it, you totally should. It's got some fun easter eggs in the book that talk about the history of Omaha Steak. It's you know, some of the names and some of the dates and things correlate with the history of the company, and it
just blew up. I mean, the book looks great, you know, the content and the creative it's just a neat, fun way to engage with our customers.
And I think, you know, it sort of speaks to.
The culture and the innovation and the desire to have Funma Stake.
How that meet Cute Collection because this was a promotional material for Meat Eat Meat Cute Collection ninety nine Bucks Date Night themed box filet Mignon fries cab Cabernet Sauvignon twenty seconds left here. How successful are those?
Hugely successful?
I mean, it's who doesn't want to have a date night. I mean, it's the perfect date night. You'll have some wine, have some great Omaha steaks. The filet that we provide our customers is unmatched. It's literally certified tender by the USTA. So it's about the most tender steak you can buy.
And then you curl up with a good book.
And that book just happens to be by the company that provided.
The station in the wine.
All right, come back, come back, We got to continue this conversation. Nate Rempy, President CE of Omaha Steaks.
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.
Building an all American wine cellar in the time of tariffs, an upcoming movie that puzzles through matchmaking math, and the Tony Award winning producer focused on improving the theater going experience right here in New York City.
It means we're talking Bloomberg Pursuits. We got pretty much our favorite person in the world with us right now. The editor of Bloomberg Pursuits, Chris rouser, Chris, it's a day. It's been a day, which is why I want to start with wine. And you should note that we don't even drink, but I think I need some wine right now. I love the concept here with the way you did this package, because the whole idea is we're in this really complicated tariff regime and it is affecting imports of
wine and spirits. So the challenge, if we're up for it, is to build an incredible wine cellar only based on American wines.
After we stop crying, yeah exactly.
So yeah, so we don't know where the tariffs are going to end up with European wines and luxury items. But when we were talking to Ellen McCoy, our wine columnist, she and I got into discussion about what is the root question actually, because when it comes to luxury items, things that you don't need that have tariffs on them, it's really Trump is asking you to consider whether you can meet all your desires just based on stuff that's
made in America. And okay, so let's follow that to the conclusion, can you make a great wine cellar just using American wines? The answer, you know, is that it depends Alan really believes in tear war and the joy of collecting wine really is related to having a wide variety of wines. Wines taste good because of the terear war, which is a combination of the soil and the ground and the environment and the hands that went into making it. That's what's beautiful about wine. It's not just a glass.
It's so much more than that. And to limit yourself to one country or one region really limits the possibilities for you. However, are there a lot of great winemakers in the United States.
Yes, Before we get into that, I think about tim like all the conversations that we've had with folks that have come on from around the world wine makers, and part of the things that we always get into it strikes me, Chris, is that how they make it, you know, how they talk about the earth. They talk about you know, regenerative farming, like doing things like it is such a big part. They talked about the impact of climate change.
So I totally get what you say that right. It makes a difference in terms of the wine that you ultimately get.
And there's so many different kinds of grapes. There's grapes that you've never heard of. The major grapes in the US are grapes that have been imported from the major collectible wines in France, basically France and Italy, and so you know, like Cabernet, Chardonnay, and.
There's so much more than that.
But Ellen does have a range of wines that she really believes are super investable from the US, from Chateau Montalana to Literai to Ridge Vineyards, which is sort of her number one.
What's the sort of geographical range in the United States, Because one point that her piece makes is that there's been a lot of growth in the West of the United States, even in the East here in New York State when it comes to wines that are being produced. Over the last few decades.
There has been a tremendous amount of growth in wine outside of California Oregon, the places that you sort of traditionally think of as American wine growing however, like even Texas actually as a big growing wine population. But the really like investment quality wines are still in California, in Oregon.
I mean, the seven US wines for a starter seller that she includes in this a lot of them are in California.
Still yeah, and you know, a lot of wine is about perception. It's like any kind of you know, alternative investment. It's about history, it's about reputation. And so the Chateau Montalina, for example, the chardonnay there is the one that won the famous nineteen seventy six Paris tasting where they put American wines up against French wines. And it's still dominant, but it will always be a legend because of that.
Not so expensive either, like relatively speaking.
Yeah, not so bad. Some of these are not you know, seventy five dollars ago summer.
Four fifty five.
Dollars not a flex. But I'm going to be telling you my husband and I just were talking about Opus one because it was like when we went to Napa, that was one of the places we visited and tasted. But we also, like many years before the child was born, like remember having this dinner and bottle and buying a bottle of opis and opus when it was so let.
Me get this straight. You had homemade French bread, creutons night with escargo, withes cargo, and you're talking about Opus one wines too.
Yeah, well, but sod like again, you know, pre kid, there was a lot of stuff that went on. Yeah, a very good bottle of one. So you're saying, we can do it. We can find stuff in America.
You could make a very strong seller that you will enjoy in love for years. Can you make a comprehensive one that really gets it all the joy of wine collecting?
No, you can't.
All right, can you find a relationship where you're in love? And there's also some money.
Involved and Pedro Pascal is in there as well.
Not a great segue, but there I went.
Let's talk a little bit about this new film from a twenty four that's highlighted in Pursuits.
Yeah.
So Selene Song is a director of Past Lives, which is a movie that a lot of people really loved, and for a twenty four she had this movie coming out in June called The Materialists. And before she was a director, she worked at a matchmaking service and she was really kind of blown away when she was young. She was sort of impressiable. She was blown away by how transactional people were when they were looking for mates. And it wasn't even really like I want someone tall,
or you know, I want someone nice. It was like, I want someone between sixty two and sixty three who has at least ten million dollars in the bank, you know, who does this kind of financialop. It was very specific, and you know, I think a lot of us don't realize that, like people, you know, when it comes to transactional matchmaking, like that's happening. You know, people can be really specific with what they want. And this movie gets into the idea of like, maybe that's not so bad.
So enter Pedro Pascal and Captain America. Yeah, two different ends of the spectrum when it comes to who they play in the film. Yes, exactly.
So.
The movie centers on Dakota Johnson who's working at a matchmaking service and she's very good at it. She has a string of marriages under her belt, and she has a couple of guys come into her life. One of them is her ex, who is Chris Evans, who is a struggling cater waiter and actor obviously looks like Captain America and.
Then checks off a few bucks.
It's yere.
And then Pedro Pascal wanders in her life and he's a billionaire who just wants to treat her extremely well and take her out to Oma Casse meals and have her sleep on footage sheets and she has, you know, somehow a hard time choosing between the checks.
A few blocks is there, And we should note it's not like a cut and dry sort of situation here. It's complicated. There's some nuance and there's also some historical precedence when it comes to the storytelling.
Yeah.
So a lot of times the movie value system in romantic comedies will reward following your heart, and that is often away from the rich person or you know, like in You've Got Mail, they sort of found a way to for Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks to end up together in spite of the money. And in this case Celine's song saying, you know what, that can be part of your decision. You can decide based on what your lifestyle is going to be like, and you know, it's
not necessarily a bad thing. It's just you can always go back into the marketplace it doesn't work out.
I love it because there's kind of a practical side to it, like, Okay, see what do we need? What do I want? What do I it's going to make and we all could probably you know, agree that a relationship is good for a couple of different reasons. Yeah, and so you need to kind of think about it. I love kind of the pragmatic aspect of this, right although I'm a romantic at heart, so I'm just gonna leave it there.
Hey, let's go from screen to stage. I love this feature that you have in Bloomberg Pursuits Chris about somebody who's really trying to reinvent the Broadway experience. Greg Noble tell us about him.
So.
Greg Noble is a producer who runs a company called Cview Productions, and it's partially owned by Sony, and it has done a lot of really big productions. So currently they have good Night and Good Luck, which is which stars George Clooney. Tickets are now like upwards of eight hundred dollars per sept because of dynamic pricing. It's up for like five Tony Awards on June eighth. So he's mastered kind of these big shows. You know, he's done.
He did Romeo and Juliette with Rachel Zegeler and Kit Connor, was like totally sold out. All gen Z wanted to go see it. But what he's doing next is he's actually building out a small theater where he's going to do small shows just like under three hundred seats. Tickets are going to be like seventy nine dollars, and he's going to start working on small shows to try to develop stuff that can go on to be bigger.
I don't understand how you can from a pricing perspective, if a traditional Broadway show that right now, yes it's the hot show at the moment, good Night and good Luck and George Clooney's in it, how can you go smaller but still have it be an affordable experience.
So it takes a lot of You mean, how does the producer go small way?
Yeah?
Yeah, So it's like how does that attract How does it attract shows if there are fewer people who are going to see it, Because as you note in the piece, this oftentimes is a money losing prospect for people who back these financially.
Yeah, if you invest in a Broadway show, you really only get like recouper get your money back about twenty percent of the time. So it's like not a good investment. But it costs a ton of money to go on Broadway because there's union costs which are quite high. The week two week running costs of a big show with a cast and a big creative crew, it can be quite a lot. And so they're capitalized at you know, ten twenty million dollars. A musical will be twenty million dollars.
A Good Night and Good Luck is ten million dollars. The first show at Studio Cview, which is Greg's new theater, is called Angry Allan. It's by a kind of lesser known playwright starring John Krasinski. It was capitalized for one point five million dollars. That's way less, and that means that's like a totally different scale of what you need to earn back. And there'll be you know, low price tickets and then there'll be tickets more of more than
three hundred dollars. And Greg believes that both of those audiences should be in one place.
I kind of love it, right, It's almost like an incubator, like, you know, right, just to play around with some stuff, but you see a celebrity. But I love the idea of a smaller format, right. It kind of is cozier.
Yeah.
And Greg's thing is, like you it's a bad experience to go to the theater, like everyone's in line it's probably raining. You get in there, they're kind of yelling at you to look through your bag and then they shove you like a glass of wine with this in a sippy cup, and so it's just feel great and you're spending so much money on it. And he so Greg's building out this like Q theater with a bar where he's going to stay late, open after shows.
Where's it going to be.
It's on forty third and eighth. Okay, yeah, it's right in your Times Square and it's just going to be like a vibe kind of place to hang out. It's an old theater, it was a theater, a nonprofit theater before where a lot of really cool shows have been.
Just something about this dude, because it sounds like since he's a kid, he's been like moving towards it.
I think that's the best story. When he was a little kid, one of his friends was diagnosed with terminal cancer and so he started a lemonade stand, selling lemonade to fundraise for research. And one day he was like a theater geek, like and his friends were. He was like, what if we start putting on shows and selling tickets to fundraise? And then they did it for years and years and they raised two hundred thousand dollars. These kids from like fourth grade.
It's amazing.
And that's how he was like, wait, I could be a producer. I could do this for my life.
And here he is. Yeah, good stuff. More details, so much details in this story. So highly recommend you check out this story by our own Chris Route and that is Chris Rouser.
He's the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits. Also our favorite guy.
Oh you guys.
Catch these stories on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg dot com slash BusinessWeek. Also in the June issue of BusinessWeek magazine that's out on news stands on June tenth.
I'm serious, Chris, like Tim and I are pretty cranky, Like as we kicked off our day today, you look in and we're like smiling and having fun.
You guys always make my week the whole week.
Well, thank you, thank you, and that reps ups the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio from Chris, me and Tim. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a good and safe weekend everyone.
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