Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
This is Bloomberg business Week Inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
Bowing also at risk of losing its investment grade credit rating is the Planemaker face is the prospect of a drawn out strike by workers that will further disrupt production and cash flow. Carol factory workers walking off the job for the first time in sixteen years. They halted manufacturing across the Seattle hub of Boeing after members of its largest union voted overwhelmingly to reject a contract offer and
go on strike. I gotta tell you, George Ferguson earlier this week when you were out Yep, he said, this negotiation is by no means over at this point.
All right, So that's why we wanted to check in once again with him. Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Aerospace, Defense and Airlines Alls George Ferguson does join us from New Jersey. George, First of all, we've been, you know, anticipating this, this strike long versus short How important is that?
So?
I think very important to Boeing. I'm sure the machinists as well, but the Boeing I think more so. Right, a long strike really, I think runs the risk of hurting the supply chain even more so, I think if boe gets into this strike, they have to really think about cash cash on their balance sheet. We think they're likely to burn three three and a half billion dollars where the cash in three q probably putting them close
to about nine billion dollars of cash in the balance sheet. Wow, that's about the bottom of I think what they need to run the company. And so I think, you know, if they don't get workers back on lines building airplanes, bringing cash in the door, they'll have to go. They'll definitely have to go to the capital markets. And then they got to figure out, right they want to go
to the debt markets. I think the rating aencies wouldn't like that for sure, right, that might push them into less than the investment great they do that.
Equity investors never liked being diluted.
So the cash position and some of those considerations mean, you know, Boeing's back is sort of really against the wall here.
Well, talk to us about this Moody's. This is about two hours ago or so. Moody says Boeing. Boeing's ratings maybe cut to junk with a company that already you just walked us through the Boeing balance sheet already stressed.
What would that mean if.
It was cut to junk, and especially if it sounds like it could need to tap the capital markets, debt markets in particular.
Yeah, So, I mean, I'm not the credit analyst ongoing, but I'll tell you that. You know, I've spent time in credit teams at Blackrock and such, so I don't know the exact spread they would get enough to go play around that, but it'll mean higher spreads, right, which
mean higher interest rates for raising money at Boeing. Plus, you get into this bad game where when a company goes less than investment grade, there are some funds that can't hold less than investment great paper, right, and sometimes they'll end up having to get that, you know, put that paper on the on the market. That doesn't help prices of the debt either. So two things I think they really want to be avoiding bone What.
About reputational damage here? We've talked a lot about financial damage, but what about reputational damage. I mean, at the end of the day, this is a I think it's fair to say a lot of people would call this a duopoly. George, Is the company at risk from a customer perspective at all? Or are these customers locked in because you know, Airbus is sold out of the A three twenty till the end of the decade.
Yeah, I think that makes it hard right for people to move, for customers to move, you know, and we continue to watch deliveries every single month and there's still a lot of core customers. We even looked at the expected deliveries till the end of the year, and it's core customers.
That are taking airplanes.
It's it's Ryanair at Southwest, United Airlines, it's Alaska, it's gall out of Brazil, it's COPA out of Panama, all good airlines.
I think going less than investment grade doesn't worry them.
They're I think they're just watching closely to see how stable Boeing is. If they can improve manufacturing, improved quality, I think that alone will keep them coming back to Boeing. Like you said, due to the long stretch for A three twenties due to the cost of changing airplane types in those fleets.
Lots of those fleets are are pure.
Fleets, so you save money on by the training and save money on your maintenance pools and things like that. But I mean, I think you know this is not a road that Boeing wants to keep going down. Clearly, right, when you go less than investment grade, it means risks are rising of a default.
US government probably don't see that, lees they don't want to see them. That's the challenge, right, is that you've got to stem in at some point.
I'm not sure if we've showed this already to viewers and for those folks are listening on radio as well, but Boeing's revenues, we've got a chart and it just shows how they have been declining right and moving lower, and I understand the reasons why. And we're bringing up the chart and you're seeing, you know, the last couple of quarters. This is not a trend line that you want to see. It's not a healthy trend line. What does it take to turn it around at this point?
Yeah, I mean, I think that they have in place what they need to turn it around, right, And that was after the Alaska door problem right there. Really needed to get the FAA comfortable that they were improving manufacturing, improving quality.
You know, they're going to.
Go in and buy Spirit Aerosystems, major supplier of the fuselage in the seven thirty seven.
And now I should step back and say, look, the seven thirty seven is right.
It's really I think the most critical component of this turnaround because that's the money maker, the profit generator at the company, and that's where they've had their problems, right and they've got a plan in place to go buy Spirit Aerosystems, and now it's a fun keeping that supply chain healthy enough and starting to increase, you know, the components they build, so Boeing can pull those into the factory, build more airplanes, push them out the door, and generate
revenue and cash flow. Going is sitting though on eighty five billion dollars in inventory right now, is taking from suppliers at a thirty one rate, and they're not delivering at a thirty one rate, and that becomes the problem too.
Hey, George, we only have like ten seconds left here, But back to the strike. What's the timeline that investor should understand here. How long do you think it'll take to get resolved?
You know, I really think this is going to be resolved in a couple of weeks to a month. I just don't see going able to let it go on much longer than that. I think they just have to increase the salary, you know, increases, and they're going to have to.
I think the union is going to want more guarantees on an airplane. The long to take the next seveneen seven.
Yeah, the CFO already talking about the goal of building thirty seven thirty seven Max jets a month by year and will take longer due to the workers strike, so we know that there's already some delays. George Ferguson, thank you, Thank you as always, have a great weekend.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us Live weekday afternoons from two to five pm. Easter Listen on Apple car Play and then brought auto with a Bloomberg Business app or wants us Live on YouTube.
In the United Airlines announcing a deal for SpaceX's Starlink to power it's in flight Wi Fi, becoming the first major US carrier to use the satellite system and giving the Elon Musk run company, a marquee customer. Now the telecom sector and how we stay connected. It really continues to evolve, gets disrupted. Which brings us to the tiny telecom company that wants to compete with SpaceX.
Check this out, everybody.
It has become one of the hottest stocks in the world this year after soaring from two dollars to nearly thirty dollars.
In just six months. So Tim, let's get to the interview.
It's up another thirteen percent as we speak today. Joining us from Boston, We've got Scott was Newski, president of the eight point one billion dollar market cap wireless telecom company AST Space Mobile, the company building a global cellular broadband network in space to operate directly with standard unmodified
mobile devices. Scott, Welcome to Bloomberg Business Week. Good to have you explain for the layperson how this technology works and how it's different from typical five G technology that they'd get from a typical wireless operator that sends them the signal on the ground.
Well, thank you for having us today.
Our technology is space based, it's in lower forbit and it functions as a sort of replacement for a seal tower on the ground. It uses today's wireless frequencies, today's cell phones, and it's backwards compatible with the five billion plus phones that we use today around the world.
So you are a user.
Our partners in the US are AT and T and Verizon. If you're a customer of one of them, have a plan with them. The phone in your pocket in the future will be able to access our satellite, our satellite network in space, and so we have the technology and the patents to make that work in a way that was never contemplated before because space is so far away.
But we have the technology in orbit.
We just launched five satellites this week, and the size of our satellites allow us connect to regular, small, low powered cell phones.
In your view, Scott, does this replace cell phone towers? Should companies like American Tower be concerned?
Well, that's an excellent question when we often get but American Tower is actually invested in US twice. So we are designed to supplement cellular networks on the ground. Because of physics, terrestrial networks will always be best served people that are nearby. Our towers in the sky are over five hundred miles away, so we.
Are a supplemental coverage.
When your phone is quiet and has no coverage or weak coverage, that's when we come in. And it makes a lot of sense for us because we have the able to cover half the country with.
Only one satellite at a time.
So it's a very efficient way for operators like ATMT and Verizon and the other forty five around the world that we have agreements with, who collectively have over two point eight billion subscribers. So we're really an extension of their networks, and we were designed from the beginning to complement their networks, work with their distinct technology and work with the phone in your pocket without even.
Million all right, so supplementing, complementing, But at some point couldn't be couldn't be that what you do be comprehensive. I mean, I think about Starlink, and they certainly look to seem to want to be comprehensive in terms of their capabilities. But I'm curious for you guys. You know, American Tower might be joining up with you guys just to be prepared for kind of what's next and what might be the future, rather than what they are doing currently.
Yeah, it's a really interesting question, and it gets back to what the cell company is and the tower companies have created over the last couple decades, which is an incredible network that covers most of the population. There are there are spots that are missed, but today's trestrial networks are very good, so so we'll never replace that.
It's just a question of physics.
Our satellites are the largest ever put into lower th orbit commercially, it's over seven hundred square foot each. We've been flying one for the last two years and we just launched five more yesterday. So we are going to be able to provide a lot of coverage from a from a satellite perspective.
What's a lot? What's a lot?
When you think about people who are using would need to tap into the service sixty seventy percent, what's a lot?
Well, we have the ability so you may be familiar with other satellite services. They're they're starting to pop up on phones today and those tend to be SOS, emergency, maybe some limited texting.
We've tested four.
G five G speeds to the phone over the last year and that was a big part of the technical demonstrations we did last year where our partners eighteen in Vota Phone in Europe and racketing in Japan, and so we've done over twenty megabits per second to the phone.
But this is a supplement.
Think about extra gigabytes to the phone, not your base package. Typically, this is an add on for when you're moving in and out of coverage as you live, work and travel, or importantly in the developing world. We have the ability to help really put a dent in the two point five billion people who don't have any cellular broadband access today. So it's really meant to be a supplement, but it is a large supplement, and that's why it's a cellular broadband network.
Scott, we said, do you want to compete with SpaceX, but you also rely on SpaceX. For example, yesterday you launched five commercial satellites a top a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket. Explain your relationship with SpaceX here, and remember SpaceX owns Starlink. So that's why we're talking about this.
That's right, And so what we're doing is very different from what Startling and others that this is historically done, which.
Is talking to a dish.
You know, we're standing up a brain new vertical within satellite telecommunications of going directly to the phone and it's all about working with the wireless carriers globally, so we're not a closed system. We work with today's standard phones, which have been standardized globally and are really incredible and
we all benefit from them every day. So we're standing up a new vertical within satellite telecommunications that really looks and feels like a wireless network and to get to orbit to build that network, we're actually we're actually vertically integrated.
We're based in Texas. We build our own satellites.
It's an incredible core competency of ours and very very important to building any lower orbit networks. So we build our satellites ourselves, and then in terms of launching that network, we plan to work with all the major launch providers globally.
What's the toughest part of what you are doing right now? Do you have enough capital to do what you need? Obviously, investors are pretty excited about what you're doing.
What's the difficulties now?
The unlock for us this year was really it really started.
In January when we announced investment from AT and T, Vota Phone and Google, and then we follow that up with investment by Verizon in May. And so for US we're publicly traded on the Nasdaq. We've raised over one point five billion. We feel very good about our capitalization to achieve our near term objectives, and so.
We feel good about capital.
We feel great about the technology, with the demonstrations we've done over the last two years with our in orbit satellite. Yeah, and for us, it's really a race against time. We're building our satellite network as fast as we can, and our partners are very excited and based on the hundreds of investors who traveled to watch our launch this week at five am in the morning, they're very excited as well.
I think there's a real strong latent demand for our service, and it comes from the fact that when our phone does not work, we feel very heavy.
In our pocket paste and so.
Super quick ten seconds. Do you go it alone? Is that the plan? Or would you be open to linking up with someone real quickly?
Well, we're already partnered with many wireless operators right age, So that's all we do is we need them.
All right, good, leave it there, look forward to future conversation. Scott Wazanouski, he's president, chief president of AST Space Mobile, joining us.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each weekdays starting at two pm Easter 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 Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
All right, we knew we had to do this story, no doubt about it. It is among the most read on the Bloomberg terminal. It's also because it's someone associated with former President Donald Trump and key and Trump's thoughts when it comes to crypto. All right, we couldn't say it enough. Today we want to get to the dirt bag of the internet. We are going to ask about that. That kind of name, if you will, is the reporter who's been looking into him, writing about him.
It is Zeke Fox.
He's Bloomberg News Financial investigations reporter, author of Number Go Up, Inside Crypto's wild Rise and Staggering Fall. So he follows the crypto world very closely. Zeke is with us in New York City.
All right, Zeke? Who is Chase Harrow or should we say Chase Hero, which is kind of it.
It is pronounced hero, even though he spells it with two rs and he's the man behind World Liberty Financial, which I mean, just this in itself is kind of shocking. This is a crypto startup that the Trumps are promoting just you know, a couple of months before the election, and Donald Trump is going to unveil all the details he promises in a live stream on Monday. So I decided to dig into this business partner. And like you said,
he calls himself the dirt bag of the Internet. And that's just the beginning of the story.
Just what every presidential candidate wants to be connected with, the dirt bag of the Internet.
Well, what do we know about Trump's connection to this? What role does he play in it? What role do his sons play in it? How connected is he to it?
So here's the story from what I've heard, is that Hero, who until recently was running a one hundred and forty nine dollars a month get rich Quick class and he's
a total unknown in the crypto world. But through a friend of Trump's, he got connected to the Trumps, and Hero had a defive venture called Doe Again just one of like countless crypto startups that seem to have failed to attract much Trading at All is a place to borrow and lend, but just only attracted a few million dollars before getting hacked, and Hero pitched them on starting a new venture that would be similar to DOE. But it's called World Liberty and I obtained a white paper
for it. The Donald Trumps is at the top of the list of the people involved. His sons, Donald Trump Junior and Eric are Web three ambassadors, and even Baron Trump, his eighteen year old son, who just started his freshman year at NYU, is listed as a defive visionary. So the Trump family seems to be, you know, deeply connected to this. But from what I've heard, it's a Hero and his longtime friend and business partner, Zachary Folkman, who used to be a teach pickup artist classes like how
to teach men how to hit on women. These are the brains of the operation.
I mean, I know we're having fun with this. I mean, but I feel like, you know, the crypto world like.
We have to be careful. We've seen, you know, when things can go astray. I mean, what do you I don't know the respected folks within the crypto world do they know this person, do they have views on this person.
Right, like crypto, this is in the industry where you know, it counts as like a innovative startup if you just sell coins with a picture of a dog or a cat on them or something like that. And even in this world crypto investor were like, we never heard of
this guy. This seems super dubious. They people were really excited because Donald Trump, who used to call bitcoin a scam, he changed his position and he said he's going to fire Gary Gensler, the SEC chairman, who's the enemy of the industry, and he's going to push for new regulations that will help crypto. So everybody liked that. And now they're like, ooh, you're gonna do your own coin.
No, this is a bad look.
That was the consensus of the dozen or so crypto investors that I talked to.
What are they actually be selling those zeke And when we look at Trump's history and business, obviously he's known for real estate, but there have been many failed businesses too, I mean Trump Airlines, Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trum Vodka, some of the casinos. Yes, no question there. We know what he was selling with those though that it was in the name. What is he actually selling with this project, So.
The details that he announces may change. But according to the white paper, this is going to be like a platform for borrowing and lending, and it's going to have its own token, also called World Liberty, I believe, and the token has some sort of use within the platform. But the way this works in crypto often is that the startup is basically an excuse to sell the token, and you're hoping that the celebrities associated with the project are famous and that people want to buy the token
because of that. And Trump certainly is very famous. And we have a great example. Trump has a stock on Trump Media and Technology that owns a social network called truth Social and the network has almost zero revenue, but the stock is worth something like three billion dollars. So you could see how you might want to replicate that formula in the in the crypto world.
So to kind of build on Tim's question, Zeke, I mean, is it right about making money for the Trump family? Is it about you know, it's an election year, right and the days are ticking down to the election outcome come November. Is it a way for Donald Trump to reach out to you a sector of the electorate that might find this interesting and engaging because he's going on podcasts that certainly maybe play to a certain audience.
Yes, I mean, if he's trying to do this as a way to reach out to the crypto world. From the feedback I'm getting, this was a mistake and what they said is it seems more like a cash grab.
And one crypto investor I spoke to said that it felt like almost Trump was asking for a favor in return after promising lighter regulations, and that's why, you know, experts that I talked to said that it's a conflict of interest for a presidential candidate or a future president to be promoting a private company in an industry where they have a big and how it's regulated.
Zeke, You've kind to join us at the perfect time because there's actually some breaking news around Trump Media and Technology. Take our DJT shares are halted for volatility after rising thirteen percent because as Donald Trump was giving remarks in California, he said he will not sell shares of Trump Media and Technology. There was concern that as the lock up
period expires next week, he would start unloading shares. He is the largest shareholder of the company, but he did say at a press conference, Carrol to reporters that he will not sell Trump Media Group shares. So it does show the power of the president to I mean, look or the former president excuse me, republican presidential candidate. What he says moves stocks, what he says can sell or cause people, you know, to buy yourself.
Well, absolutely, and we should point out that earlier in the week, right coming off of the debate, we saw the day after the debate shares of Trump Media and Technology down about ten percent, followed by the following day another three percent declined. So him coming in and saying I'm not selling, you know, providing some support, but nonetheless the stock is traded.
All right, So where do we go from here?
I mean, were you able to talk to Chase, were you able to get anything from the company about what they are doing, because it just feels like there's lots of questions, maybe not so much transparency.
Yeah, Chase did not give me an interview, and the company said that my story and my questions about it seemed to be pointing in a certain direction that they disagree with, and that time will show that this is truly an innovative platform. But I just look at what Chase himself has said in past videos about crypto. I mean, I can't even read most of this on the air, but he had said that regulators should kick people like him out of the industry. He said, you could sell
anything if the story's right. I mean, it just seems it's very surprising to me that Trump will be starting a venture with this guy so close through the election.
It is, it is a little puzzling given the timing. But you also write in the story about the former president's conversion to crypto believer over the last couple of years.
Yeah, so he in this was also shocking to me. In July, he flew to Nashville and gave a big speech at the Bitcoin Conference, and in this speech he repeated like the crypto industry's wish list of things, and he said fire Gary Gensler. He said he would establish a national strategic stockpile of bitcoins. I mean, it was a complete turnaround from what he thought about crypto before in the crypto industry. In return, or in response, held a fundraiser at this conference and raised what they said
was twenty five million dollars for his campaign. And you know, it sort of seemed like that was the that was the end of it, and then him and his son started promoting this world liberty and they're saying this is going to change the world of finance. It's going to take on the big banks. And that's why I decided to look into the background of the people involved see if they had the kind of experience that would let them do that, and it seems very doubtful.
All right, So Monday, just to wrap up thirty seconds here, So when the former president Donald Trump presents or makes some comments about this, what are you looking out for. What's kind of key that you think our audience should listen for.
Well, one thing I'll be watching for is is will they actually be selling a new coin. You can start a crypto app without it having its own coin, and so if it doesn't have its own coin, then it's less of a way to make quick money. If they are selling a new coin, I want to know the details of that coin, how it works, how people are going to buy it, because it also this model of initial coin offerings of selling new coins, this has gotten people into a lot of trouble with the SEC in
the past. So if he's going to go and do that. It could set up a conflict with Gary Gensler in the near future over his own venture.
All right, going to leave it there.
Unbelievable interesting stuff though great read, great read, as we said, among the most read zeg Fox Bloomberg News Financial investigations reporter. He's also author of Nember Go Up, Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. Joining us in New York City.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each weekday. He's starting at two pm Eastern on applecar 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 playing Bloomberg eleven.
What comes to mind, Carol when you hear evite.
Kids' birthday parties? Yeah, or just any kind of event.
I think a lot of people remember it as like the og in online invitations, before Facebook events, before paperless posts, there was Evite. The company traces its roots back to a different era in the Internet. Wow, we're talking nineteen ninety eight, Okay, a while ago. Here's some contexts. Mark Zuckerberg was barely a teenager then. Okay, the best selling single of the year, My Heart Will Go On by Selene Dee.
What with the Titanic?
I think so, yeah, that would make sense, right.
All right. It's changed hands though several times, right since then?
Yeah, I owned it, so did the John Malone founded Liberty Media, the company that has a huge stake in F one and Live Nation Entertainment. Now it's privately owned, and we got with us. The president of Evite, Onto Foe, joins us here on Bloomberg Business Week, Onto, how are you?
I'm good, how are you? I love that intro gave me a big smile hearing that.
Well, I do think that Evite is like kind of the way people use kleenex, you know, or kleenex to refer to a tissue. It's like the way you would describe the concept of receiving an invitation that is not in the traditional way. Help us understand, though, how the business has changed in the last twenty six years. I'm
a little confused. I know your folks told us that it recently celebrated its first profitable year, But I did find an article by the Chamber of Commerce that said, back a little after the pandemic in twenty twenty one, it had its first profitable year. Help us understand what's going on.
Yeah, so you mentioned earlier that has changed hands a couple of times and it's now private. So since we'd gone private, we made dramatic changes to Evite and that's when I.
Came on board. And to name a.
Few of the dramatic changes we did, the first of which was we have a now all female product leg team, which gives us a competitive edge. As Carol mentioned, you know most of our you there's our mom throwing kids' birthday parties.
So with a.
Female product led team, we're on the ground and we know what's happening.
We also rebuilt and.
Modernize our core invitation product a couple of years ago, and those two things combine is really what drove all the changes that are happening at evite. Our revenue growth on top of that profitability a couple of years ago kind of up profitability. But at this point you're talking about double digit markets in our profit line now. So that's what's really changed with ebit and we're so excited about what's happening.
How did you do it?
Because you guys have moved away from being an ad driven model, which is so much a part of the online universe. So what is the profitability model and what drives revenues?
We're now thinking about. The number one thesis we have is how can we be helpful to host? How can we just help the users throw their party and throw it well? And so with that thesis, we are now thinking about our from a user experience standpoint. In the past, you know, the past business model, we're thinking about AD revenue, and when you think about AD revenue, it's a little
bit contradictory to think about the user experience. And because you know, we're rethinking how our business model works, we are not prioritizing the host, and because we do that, the host is loving it. So now our number one driver of revenue is really from our premium experience. And the more we prioritize our hosts, the more we build features that she wants, the more profitable that we've become.
And it's really working out for us.
Tell me what a premium experience is when it comes to EVI, it's help me out here.
Yeah, a premium experience is about if you want to throw a kids thematic birthday party, we are going to help you set the vibe for that thematic birthday party, say the Princess birthday party.
We're going to give you.
Top of the line trending invitations. It'll come with match background stamps and stickers to wow you're a guest about what.
The theme is going to become.
Okay.
The second part of the Premium Experience is we're going to give you control and help you get more RSVPs. We all know when you invite guests to your party, a lot of them will look at your invitation but never respond. What we do with the Premium Experience is we've found out the optimal time to actually message your guests.
We keep on nagging them for you.
So you don't have to, and we have proven that with the Premium Experience, you actually get more guests because you're paying for this optimization and this customization of your entire event.
To you, Carol, do you ever throw parties and hope nobody comes?
Not for kids, No, not for kids. But I just think I have at it.
I have a friend who threw I probably shouldn't say this, but I have a friend who threw a big summer party one year for his birthday, and it was like the best thing ever and it was so fun, and he's like, I'm gonna do this every year. He did it again last summer and it barely started raining. And what he did was he sent out a note to everybody and said party's canceled to everybody. Okay, but then he said day on the day off because it started raining. But then he sent a note to like ten people
and was like, it's not actually canceled. I just didn't want to have a huge party. I just want you guys to show up.
Oh, funny, awesome.
He was a great party. Did you did you get the invitation to go back?
I did.
I got the invitation to come back. There was way too much food and booze because it was like supposed to be a party for a ton of people. Anyway, just in his side, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Yeah, unbelievable.
So remind us, So this change in your model remind us of get of the metrics. And you know we're Bloomberg and we say this all the time, but we do care. How has it moved the top line growth?
It has moved our top line group dramatically.
We are now more than fifty percent higher and revenue I could say we are the highest.
We have from a year ago from a year ago. What's that fifty percent jump from a year ago.
From two years ago, We're over one hundred percent. We're now at the highest level that we've ever been in our twenty six year history. And we are now double digit and profit profitability and we have never been that in.
Our twenty six year history.
And what's even more exciting I have to tell you, guys, is I think that we're just in the tip of the iceberg of where Evite can become. You guys have already mentioned that when you think of digital invitations, you think about Evite.
We are known for that space. And what we're trying to do now is think beyond.
Invitations of how we could actually be an ecosystem for all the planning needs.
Evite is so big that.
We have, you know, like the Knot, Like do you want to be like the Knot? In terms of planning events for people?
We want to be bigger than the not.
We can be where for any time you throw an event, we want to help you use all the tools that you normally would use elsewhere into our own ecosystem, from pre planning tools like if you want to question a group of guests that you want to invite, what's the best time to meet. We're going to build a tool to help you figure out how to do that. You could do your invitation with us. And what about during the party too, you want to message your guests, you
want to post photos. We recently built out this ecosystem with our first new product that's not invitation exactly related.
It's called Evite sign up sheets. Sign up sheets are for the events when you really need volunteers.
It's the fastest on the market right now, and it's completely free.
Okay, It's great for events like.
If you have kids in elementary school, you need volunteers to sign up for classroom activity, right this is a great part. It's great for sports when you need volunteers to bring snacks for the kids. And you know what's the most exciting part about this product that our team is super jazzed about. It's great for potlucks. Everybody throws them, we all love them. You need volunteers to bring dishes. But what we're noticing now is with the gen Z
generation before now rebrand. We want to rebrand potlucks for this gen Z TikTok generation because they're making it bematic.
All right, it's not just no, I have to ask you before we get because we're running out of time. Got thirty seconds. In a world where we talk so much about AI and the importance of data, it sounds like you guys are getting a lot of information and very segmented about people who are interested in very specific things. Is the data play part of the revenue play? And forgive me because we just have about twenty five seconds.
The data play is all about how do we use that data to help our host. So we have a lot of data about who'd you invite it in the past, whose viewture invitation? And who did it RSVP? Yet who else have you party with? That's how we think about our data is not to sell the information, but how do we become even more helpful to throw your naxt event?
All right?
Fun steps, All right, well, look forward to checking you with you again and the Poe she's president of EVI joining us from I Believe Manhattan Beach, California.
Sounds great.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week 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 play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Brother Marco Journal.
How about you let me drive?
Oh no, no, no no, alright please, I'll Travelsten.
I want to drive.
Good question, good time?
This is the drive to the globe dot com to me? I think well by on Bloomberg Radio.
All right, everybody, eighteen minutes left in today's trading session.
We are getting ready.
To us speedle Jae.
We are talking to one of the screenwriters later on, so we're kind of u hyped up on that.
Having said that, investors, you know, quite a bounce back after last week's selling. So let's see what Carol Schleife has to say.
She is back with us.
She's chief investment officer at Female Family Office, joining us from Minneapolis.
Good to have you back with us.
So, as we kidded with our Gina Martin Adams Carol earlier, you know, the market take it away last week and give it back this week. Having said that, we've got a big FED meeting, so I don't know, is there a clear strategy when it comes to the equity trade for you right now.
I think the clear strategy is this is similar one that's been involved for the last couple of years, and that's built durable portfolios that can dodge and we even respond to any sort of markets that we get, because while we had last week being rocky, in this week being good, back in the beginning of August, we had
Monday being bad and Tuesday being better. So building those portfolios though, that give us the opportunity to participate both in fixed income markets especially you've gotten paid nicely to be in those shorter term yields, but also to lean foot forward on growth because we do think that from an intermediate, longer term standpoint, a lot of investors are underestimating how beneficial for the economy rate cuts will be.
Carol, I'm going to ask you the same question I've been asking folks all day, because we're seeing what could end up being, depending on what how it's in the next fifteen minutes or so, a really good week for stocks, just a huge departure from what we saw last week for the S and P five hundred, the worst week going back to that regional banking crisis of twenty twenty three. What changed, What shifted?
I'm not sure anything macro shifted as much as you know. There really is just an adjustment and getting used to people are focusing more on the FED meeting next week or past earning season. You had, you know, depending on the camp here, and you had nice meetings from Apple on Monday. You had a very eventful week actually, all things considered, and I think most importantly one of the things that is shifting is you're seeing a broadening in
the markets and that's really helped. You're seeing it because it's not just the dower of the S and P leading, it's also and those in a concentration of the S and P. It's broadening out to the other four hundred and ninety three names, and especially in small cap as well.
Yeah, Rustles up about four percent this week, right, So you does the FED potentially change all of this next week?
I doubt the FED will change that.
You know, the early betting what everyone's been looking at now is it twenty five basis points? Is at fifty basis points? We really don't think in the context to the next six to twelve months, it matters. You've got a lot of things markets still have to deal with. This week's been good, but we've also got a lot of volatility potential because it's this spooky season after all, not this pumpkin spice season, but spooky season.
Where you've got.
It is just tcophobia. Friday the thirteenth today.
Yeah, exactly, but that's always been my lucky day. But the interesting thing is, though, is that you do have the potential for a lot of volatility. But we think once the Fed has the opportunity next week, and we would imagine they're going to be super careful in how they communicate that this is the start of a process.
And that's what businesses are waiting for. If you go back and think through the messages that the individual FED governors are saying and that they've come out with in the Beige book, those companies are sitting on the sidelines waiting to get started with some of that M and A and build outs and infrastructure build They've been waiting for two years because last year they were afraid that we were going to have recession, right and when that didn't come, now they've been waiting for why do I
I don't want to finance this week? If the fed's going to cut next week, but once a FED get some clarity on that, once we get through the elections, because theoretically two months from today, most of this stuff, most of what we don't know, should have some clarity in some direction, and the ve people to get on right.
We know the direction now, maybe the question is a little bit of how much in terms of the FED cut speed this week. Hey, by the way, Taylor Swift, I think thirteen is her lucky number as it is.
I believe it is. I think she does.
That's right, because it doesn't that have to do with Travis Kelsey's jersey too.
No, well, yeah, but I think thirteen has been her long number. It's been her favorite number for a long time.
Here, I thought we were talking maybe picked him in the conference Jersey.
But Friday afternoon, Friday afternoon.
This is great love. I had no idea about this.
She oh, she like really leases like she's very superstitious about a lot of stuff about when she releases things.
You know, I my daughter isn't so into tailor anymore, but she used to be. And so I got a lot of stuff.
Hey, some different events. Apple's been out with a lot of news and video this week. An earlier guest talking with our Abigail Doolittle talking about and video, like how maybe that really helped shift some of the sentiment and videos CEO Jensen Wong speaking at that Goldman Sachs conference this week and we saw and video.
It's really rallied.
I think something like fifteen percent this week. But talking about customers, you know, it's tough dealing with them because there's so much demand. They want more of their products and more of their chips.
I don't know, is there something in the tech narrative that's interesting for you.
I think the interesting thing in the tech narrative is, unlike the first when the Internet first launched in ninety five to two thousand, where you had a lot of companies that were creating a lot of headlines that didn't have revenues and earnings, a lot of the companies that are dealing with this now not only have revenues and earnings.
Spending is big. It needs to be big. We you know, there's been a lot of articles, especially in the last week or two, talking about how we have to rethink the whole tech pipeline in terms of where the processing gets done.
How we create the juice for that processing, and it's one of the reasons why, you know, the introduction on Monday. A lot of the AI processing has to happen on the computer on the phone, you know.
So there's a lot, a lot of reasons to be optimistic, not just about the buildout, but also about the use cases because many of these companies have been tabbling in it behind the scenes for over a decade and building those use cases out, and you're starting to see leverage in some of the most basic mundane tasks where AI go walks along as an assistant, doesn't necessarily take our jobs away, but makes it so that we can go to the next level and thought process in these day apps.
Carrol's I wanted to tell you both that our amazing team has been doing some research about the number thirteen and Taylor Swift, and I got some notes from our own Elizabeth Cedron, who said that who sent me a story that has Taylor Swift telling MTV years ago. She was born on the thirteenth. She turned thirteenth on Friday the thirteenth. Her first album went golden thirteen weeks. Her
first number one song had a thirteen second intro. Every time I've won an award, I've been seated in either the thirteenth seat, the thirteenth row, the thirteenth section, or row M, which is the thirteenth letter.
You guys, I'm a little upset with you swifties. Know this eighty nine is very importantly.
I didn't know this.
I'm sorry.
She is very you know, she's got numbers are a big thing in her world, like when she releases things and so on and so forth.
The morning. Does that mean we're teeing up a great rest of the year here September Friday, the thirteenth.
I don't know, you tell me, but.
We do hope.
So all right, well, certainly the bulls do.
The bears might think a little bit differently, but you know, we'll leave them for now.
Have a great weekend.
Caroshlife Chief Investment Officer would be my family office, joining us from Minneapolis.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you can 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