Engine Explosion Spurring Boeing 777 Groundings

You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on Bloomberg Radio, or watch us on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. Everyone's talking about those new findings in the UK that how the COVID I ten vaccines are providing a high level of protection against infection and illness after a single dose. I mean, there's implications of this, there are, but it's great news that you know. Look, this is happening in real time. We've talked about this

a lot totally. These vaccines are used under emergency use authorization. It means they haven't been tested in the same way that all vaccines are usually tested over a year's long period. So we are learning things now that we didn't know yet write the data sets continue to come out, So let's get into it with Dr Sandro Galleia. He's back with Ustina, professor at Boston University School of Public Health, author of the upcoming book The Contagion Next Time that

is due out in the fall. Dr Galia is so nice to have you back with us. Um, how are you. I'm wel Carol, thank you for having me to hear from you again. Well, it's great to hear from you as well. So tell us about this news out of the UK, and I think there's you know what this might mean in terms of asymptomatic infection and you know, transmission of COVID. I mean, these are things that are that are coming out. Tell us about the significance of this or what you see maybe as a significance. Yeah,

this vaccine has been consistently remarkable, really vaccine news. I mean we have we shouldn't forget as a world that we have achieved something extraordinary in terms of vaccines available

in such a short period of time. The latest news shows that the single dose of the vaccine is highly efficacious in terms of preventing symptomatic COVID, but also I'll get to in a second, preventing severe COVID and really makes a difference, right because we have been we have been accounting for vaccination rates assuming that everybody is getting two vaccines. But if we can have a lot of people getting one vaccine, that will allow us to do

things much faster. On the Fiser vaccine front, news also came out that the Fiser vaccine can be kept in a regular freezer, doesn't have to be a minus a DE freezer, which from a supply chain point of view makes a big difference. So this really creates opportunities for national governments to stretch the vaccine much further then we have done so far, because of course, as you know, our limitation has been the manufacturing that we have not been able to manufacture and provide as many vaccines as

we need to vaccinate everybody as quickly as possible. So this is really all good. And you also Carrel mentioned the variance and the data are that this vaccine appears to be explicacious as well against the UK variant. Now there's still some questions about the South African variant, but

this is all this is all positive know. So much of the early data that we see come from countries using the visor BioNTech vaccine, But we don't see many of these early results showing what's going on with the MODERNA vaccine, which is the vaccine that so many Americans have been getting. Should we expect that we'd see similar results because they're both MR and A vaccines, I think so. I think I think you can for a variet of reasons.

One is the very similar mechanism, as you say, and and the data that we do have actually showed that the two words very similarly. We didn't talk in the first round about severe COVID. So what's the most amazing thing about these vaccines is that they have essentially reduced severe COVID dramatically, even much more dramatic than a sinmtematic COVID. And ultimately that's what we want, right, Ultimately we do

not want COVID to be severe. So all the vaccine trials out there, there really has not been a single death from COVID in anybody who receives vaccine. And that's in all the five vaccines that have been whose trials, factory trials, and they're so far so all these vaccines really are highly effective against reducing what we want them to reduce, which is severe COVID, right, And that's what it ultimately is about. Do you have um confidence by

spring by summer that we will have her immunity. Well, confidence is a tough thing to come by and things like that these days, I think, I think the best models out there, including the cdseas on models, suggests that we are will be getting towards towards enough immunity that essentially reduces rapid transmission. Of avoiding the term herd immunity because it's become bit of a loaded term um by

by summer. Now, whether or not that means by the end of spring, beginning of summer, or by the middle of summer, late summer, I think that's very hard to say. I think the big caveat that everybody says, when you think about this, and all the good models say correctly that that assumes the transmissibility of the virus as it is now, which means it doesn't take into account if any of the variants take over and they're much more transmissible,

because of course that changes the whole formula. You were hesitant about using the word herd immunity. Tell me why well, I think that term, like many other terms, as we've discussed on the show before, has become politicized. It has somehow. I mean, it's a term that has been used in um infectiously epitemology for a long time simply to mean they wouldn't have a population where there are not enough people who are susceptible to the disease that it stops transmission.

But the terms has acquired these political undertones of well, are we letting people get the disease intentionally, which obviously is not what it means. And all it means is you don't have enough people who are susceptible and the virus stops transmitting. Hey, Dr galia Um. Look, these vaccines have been out for for more than two months at least here in the US. More and more people are

getting vaccinated. Don't you think that people can start to act differently after they've been vaccinated, given how affective these vaccines are. Yeah, that's an excellent question, and this has been I think controversial lately. You know, I think what we're seeing is a lag in our guidance and in our systems that are have been put in place to protect us with the reality of a post vaccination world.

And and we've seen some some more and more people writing, well, you know, if people are vaccinated, is it not reasonable that whence you're vaccine you can expect to re enter the world much more fully? The four answer is yes absolutely. The short answer is yes absolutely. The problem is the problem. The problem is that we don't have enough people vaccinated yet to be able to say defectively. All right, I'm gonna leave it there. Thank you so much, really appreciate it.

Dr Sandra Gala doing at the Boston University School of Public Health joining us on the phone from Boston. That was an important point you made. It's a big question that so many of my friends have right now. Right it's like our parents are getting vaccinated, when are we going to be able to see them? When can our kids see their grandparents? Well, and this concern about can you get the vaccine but still transmit COVID, it's a key. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg

Quick Takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. This story it is still among Burg Business Week, or I should say this is still among the most read on the Bloomberg terminal and it's by Bloomberg business Week future writer and New York Times bestselling author Ashley Vance. He wrote this story. He's also host of Hello World and author of Elon Musk, Tesla SpaceX, and The Quest for a Fantastic Future. He's

on the phone from Palo Alto, California. He joins us along with Bloomberg business Week nitor Joel Weber, And it's about this twenty seven year old who actually, you know, living at home with your parents, Joel can be a good thing. Yeah, And and Ashley, um, I thought, did this amazing job explaining about this twenty seven year old who became a COVID nineteen data superstar. And actually, why don't you just take us away here? What's his story

and what's so significant amount? What do you what he's done? Yeah, I mean, this is an interesting story that kind of pulled me back to the early days of the pandemic. But there's a data scientist. His name is Yu Yangu and like you mentioned, he was twenty six at the time. He's twenty seven now. But you know, if you go back to March in April, we were getting all these these forecasts for how bad COVID might end up being.

And there was Imperial College in London that was putting out a prominent forecast, and h M E which is an institute based in Seattle. And these these forecasts were all over the place. One group said, you know, the US alone might see two million deaths by the summer. H M said fifty thousand deaths, and the pandemic was

going to wind down quickly. And so there's this kid, all these models and the figures all over the place, and he decided to get into forecasting death on his own, and he turned out to have pretty much the most accurate forecast all the way up through about November. All right, So Ashley, how did good do it? What? What were his data points? I mean, this is a guy who understands algorithms and analytic modelings. Yeah, there's kind of two

things to it. I mean one is he looked at the models who were out there and he said, these even though these people were sessionals and he had no background in this field at all, he said, you know, they're putting too many things in their models. So I'm going to keep mind really simple. I Am just going to look at the death figures being reported by governments.

And then predict future deaths from that. And then he had a skill at machine learning software and basically AI algorithms, and so he applied that to his figures, that to constantly tune them over time. When the real death figures would arrive, he would compare that to his poecast and so he kept tuning his model. So he kind of kept it simple in some ways, but then added this new sophistication that some other people were not using. What

can we learn about modeling here? Considering that there were so many professional organizations actually got that that didn't get this right, but this then twenty six year old was able to do this much more accurately. Yeah, I mean, I guess there are a couple of things I picked up from my interviews. You know. One is that I was surprised that sort of this field wasn't, you know, already dialed in, and that there was are like tried and true things that we we knew you could go to.

And and so you know, his argument and the argument that some other people made to me is that is that academics, professors, people at some of these institutes, they tend to try and make their models more sophisticated and nuanced by adding complexity because they're kind of trying to show off and do something new that their peers aren't doing. And so, you know, he went the simple route. I was like, no, this is this is actually how you

get closer to the truth. And the other thing is that, you know, we've seen over time that the individual models really do not work as well as taking models together, blending them and then looking at what that blended model tells you. And so, you know, a big takeaway was the next time there's a health crisis, you don't want

to play too much stock. Maybe in these these individual models that come out in the first week or two weeks of a crisis, you hopefully we'd be in a better situation where there's there's numerous models right from the get go that we can kind of blend together and get something closer to the truth. So what what's Goog doing now? And what what does he uh? What does he think he'll crack next? It seems like you know this kind of modeling, Uh, you know, you go work

at a hedge fund and make billions of dollars? Is that? What is that in the store? Well, this was the funny I mean it's the interesting part of the story. I mean, he was, he was in fight it, he was doing trading forecast, and then right right when the parademics start, right before it started, he had decided to do a start up with the buddy. He was going to get into sports analytics. He was pretty kg about

telling me exactly what it was. It sounded like some sort of like maybe sports betting thing or something like that. And then you know, he volunteered his time during these death forecasts and and has been sucked into the public health world. And now he's he's getting recruited by um all kinds of folks, and I think he's kind of like changed the course of his life. I think he

wants to get into public health now. He's he's sort of he's kind of averse to all the politics of the money that didn't He just wants to be a pure, pure data driven guy. Well, but what actually has happened to his data sets now, because from what I understand from your story, kind of stopped right yeah, when he stopped the deaf forecast around October November, because everybody's numbers started to kind of coalesce around a pretty similar place. Now,

he's forecasting basically kind of herd immunity. He's looking at the vaccination rate, the you know, how many people have actually caught COVID. He thinks a lot more people have caught it than than sort of the official numbers reports. And so he's trying to model out kind of where

we might end up. And so for the US, you know, her immunity is kind of like a sort of a vague nobody knows exactly what the right number is on that, but you know, he has us in the U asked about six of the population would either have the vaccine or have already caught um the virus and be approaching something like her immunity by June. All right, well, time stamp it. Yeah, it's impressive. Was he living in the parents basement? That's what we all We just want to

know when he did this. Yeah, he was. He was in Santa Clara's I live out here in Silicon Valley. We don't really have basements, but it's definitely a living room, like a side room. Um, and yeah, so he was staying with his parents during there. In the bulk he's moved and moved to New York. Well, we look forward to see what more on that next chapter. Ashley, Thank

you so much. Ashley Vance features writer Bloomberg Business Week on the phone from Palo Alto, along with Joe Webber, editor of Bloomberg buses this week on the remote access from Brooklyn. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. All right, you are listening to Bloomberg Business Week. It's brought to you by SEI, with an operating platform designed to support

all major asset classes, diverse strategies, and investment vehicles. SEI is redefining wealth management. Learn more at se i C dot com slash I m s. Well, there are Tim a couple of provocative columns on China to tell you about today. One about China's plan for cashless society and the goal and implications of such. That's something to come, and then something that's already here, China's massive and impressive infrastructure and how it's really time for the US to

get worked up about it. I love these columns. Thought provoking and let's get into it with Bloomberg New Economy Editorial director Andy Brown. He writes about both a he is on the phone in our New York City Bureau. Andy. I know you're just around the corner, one floor down, but we're all socially distancing. Great columns, And I have to say, these two stories remind me in many ways how China is way ahead of the US and the

rest of the world on so much already exactly. I mean, these blackouts in Texas illustrate the perless state of US infrastructure. And it's it's not just the power grid, it's the transportation network. It's highways, it's railways, it's airports, it's telecommunications networks, and and and in all these areas, one can't help but compare and contrust with China, which is which is streets ahead? I mean, this is this is a national This has risen to the level I think of a

national security threat for the United States. I mean it goes to the heart of economic competitiveness, military readiness, climate change, resilience, innovation capacity. Um, you know, you you've got a situation now where China has rolled out a five G network in America hasn't really got started, and it's giving China a jump on all of the industries of the future from smart cities, advanced manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, and so on

and so forth. This is the way to compete with as Joe Biden is trying to say, is we need to invest in infrastructure or China is going to come and eat a lunch. And actually, an area after area, China has already eaten America's lunch. So what's the way to do this? In Washington where at this point many Republicans will not even acknowledge that there was a free and fair election that elected Joe Biden. What I'm saying is there's not broad agreement across the challenges that America

faces or perhaps the solutions to those challenges. Well, I guess what I'm saying is is the first step is to recognize the threat um you know, and and America has been here before. You know, back in nineteen fifty seven, there was this spot Nik moment right where Russia launches this satellite that you know, that that around around around

the Earth. And suddenly the Eisenhower administration freaks out and realizes that Russia is leaving America behind when it comes to space, and he invests, he launches NASA, he makes massive investments in science and technology, which ultimately give rise to Silicon Valley and spawned the likes of Facebook and Google,

and and and so on. The danger now, as Eric Schmidt pointed out in a in a in a piece just the other day in the Financial Times, you know, is that the next tech giants and the products and the services that they produce are not going to be American. They're going to be Chinese. Right. And of course, Eric Schmidt, the former chief of Google, andy, you know what, why aren't we scared enough as Americans in terms of how

advanced China is getting on a lot of things. And they are very clear about their mission, their long term planning to be much more advanced on a lot of sophisticated areas and industries. It's it's a really good question. And and and maybe it's because there wasn't this one big dramatic event, like you know, the launch of Spotnik that this has really crept up on on America. I mean, I lived there for for more than twenty years, and and so this happened. I mean, the build out of

their high speed rail network was phenomenal. I mean they now have the most extensive high speed network in the world. In fact, it's it's longer than the rest of the world's network combined. And by the way, it's about to double a game by two thousand and and and and thirty five. And all of this was accomplished in a decade. You know, I mean, Joe Biden was was talking to senators the other day and was saying, you know, we we need to pay attention to to China's railway network.

You know, well, yes, you know. He's He's a guy that used to travel every day on a train track, Joe between Delaware and Washington, d C. It took him ninety minutes. If it sat on a similar lengths Traine, it was about a hundred miles hundred miles in China. You do that in half the time. You do it

minutes and and and it works like clockwork. Hey, Andy, I was in Changhai a couple of years ago with graduate school classmates, and we were there on a school trip and some classmates of mine went to buy something in the mall that was close to our hotel. They had cash and credit cards, they couldn't buy something because they didn't hadn't downloaded the app that so many people in China used to actually pay for something so they end up coming back empty handed. What's China doing by

eliminating cash? Right? So? Well, yeah, exactly. So for a long time, basically there was no need uh to carry cash at all when I when I would go out in Shanghai. I mean, it didn't tell to me to get to take notes. I mean you, of course you it's everything is swiping your bar code, whatever, whatever it is you're you're you're buying. What they're now doing is launching and in a digital currency. They're going to do away with notes all together. And China invented the banknote,

by the way, about fifteen hundred years ago. It was one of the things that Marco Polo marveled about when he traveled to China in the thirteenth century. They're going to get rid of notes, are going to get rid of coins. It's going to be a digital currency. And not, by the way, at the bitcoin that that we we've been hearing about today. I mean, this is this is

not your distributed ledger, your anonymous transaction. This is a central bank issued currency which is going to give the central absolute visibility into every transaction in China, every donation, every trade. The state is going to be in your wallet. This's this big brother like you've never had it before. It's fascinating. And what's interesting is I feel like China always wants to be much more part of kind of the system, but I feel like this will seclude them potentially. Andy,

and just got about twenty five seconds. Yeah, they wanted they of course, they want to displace the dollar. They want to have a global currency. Nobody wants to use a digital currency overseas with with with the knowledge that the Chinese state has absolute visibility as eyes on it, I don't think so. I mean, so it'll work in China, but the internationally highly doubtful. It's fascinating. I want to do more on this. I love this story, and uh Andy,

thank you so much. Really appreciate at it. Andy Brown he is Bloomberg New Economy Editorial Director. Check out his columns on The Bloomberg and at Bloomberg dot Com. We have to talk more about this one because I think, um, that's a big deal. Yeah, it's a huge deal. That kind of access by the government is amazing. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes.

Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. Tim, I have to say when I read this story over the weekend, the pictures, I had to look at them several times for it to register about what had happened. Everybody saw that video. I feel like at this point of the engine on the Boeing Triple seven on fire just minutes after taking off from Denver International Airport, right and then pieces of it just in someone's yard, like it was just crazy. So let's get into it and find out what's the

latest and what's going on. Let's get the latest from Julie Johnson Aerospace Report at Bloomberg News joining us from Chicago. And I want to mention that Boeing shares I know we're hired earlier. And I'll take a look at the trade raytheon though was seeing some pressure raytheon of course, the owner of Pratt and Whitney, Julie, good to have

you here. So where are we on this story. Well, the investigators are starting, you know, to dig into the root causes of this and the Triple seven jets around the world, and there weren't that many of them that had this particular engine on them are are all grounded right now, and crews are taking a close look at the engines to see if there are other cracking issues. How long do you anticipate some type of investigation such

as this lasts. When will there be some sort of answer as to the cause of this engine failure and other scares in the past. Oh, you know, that's that's really good question. And these um, you know, these investigations

tend to take a long time. Uh. The f A is just super thorough about you know, examining causes and and you know I should just add that right now, it's very early on UM so it it looks bad because there have been a couple of very similar incidents with this engine and these really old, very early Triple seven models. UM. But yeah, it's early days, early days, So stay tuned. Basically, I mean, what are we waiting

for now, Like what happens next? Well, I think, um, you know, we'll we'll have to see, um, you know, we'll have to wait for more details to come out from the f A A and from Pratt and Whitney, which is you know, the raytheon Um subsidiary that made the engines and um, and so I don't know if you you know how how deep you got into the

rabbit hole with us. I. You know, I spent a huge chunk of my weekend on Twitter looking at you know, photos and videos, and what became apparent very early on was that two fan blades had broken off, and Um, so I think the FAA is going to take a really long, hard look at the way that these blades are inspected, and um and so Pratt and you know, mechanics around the world need to get into, you know, the grain of the metal to look for very early

signs of fatigue that aren't visible to the human eye. They use ultrasonic tools for this. It has been a very bad few years for Boeing, to to put it mildly, with the seven thirty seven Max disaster the subsequent grounding of those planes. Um, what does this mean for Boeing given that it's actually a relatively small number of planes that are affected and seems to be less of an issue with the plane and more of an issue with

the Pratt and Whitney engine. Yes, and I think that's one of the reason that's why we saw Boeing sell off this morning, and then the market sort of take a little bit of a you know, a deep breath and so right now, I mean, this does not help Bowing. This really this is not great for their reputations that

the optics are horrendous. But in terms of financial liability, at this moment, it doesn't look like this is going to be an issue for Boeing and UM we're you know, we're talking a very small percentage of the global fleet that's affected. And for Pratt, I've seen estimates that maybe you know, it's a few few cents of earnings potentially clipped. I mean, but bottom line, Julie and I should just update.

Boeing had traded up about one it's now down about one point four percent, and shares of raytheon owner of pret and Whitney or down just under one percent. Um Who ultimately is responsible though? Is it United and the Air Force for checking on the planes? I'm just trying to figure out where the fault might lie. Yeah, and that's going to be a great question for the you know, for the F A A and N T S B

as well. Now, I'm I don't know if you'll remember, but back in another United jet was on its way to Hawaii and had just that, you know, as engine explode on the wing, and um, and so the root cause looks to have been quite similar to what happened on Saturday, and Pratt at that point was was asked by the f A to go in and inspect all of the fan blades um on this particular type of engine. And so in very short order, um, we had a japan Airlines jet have an engine failure in December that

was like this in the United plane on Saturday. So so um, I think the f A is going to be taking a close look at how Pratt but measure the damage. All right, We appreciate it, Julie, Thank you so much. Julie Johnson, Aerospace report at Bloomberg News on the phone from Chicago's I mentioned bowing down about one point four percent, raytheon down just under one percent? Is it? Well? What? Well,

you know, it's it's so interesting. These planes are designed to fly on one engine, but as Alan Levin told us on Quick Take earlier today, not when it's the aerodynamics change so so significantly. Yeah, exactly, I'm bro Mac Journal. Yeah but you let me drive? Oh no, no, no, no, who's going to drug home? Please? I'll do the riding gravel. Lets me. I want to drive, Just drive baby the question trying. This is the drive to the Globe community. Thanks,

we'll dry up. Ja Don on Bloomberg Radio. All right, folks, just spent eleven minutes left in today's trading session. Let's get to the drive to the close. James chock Mark is back with US, partner and portfolio analyst. He focuses on tech Stox. He knows this area so well at the asset management firm Clockwise Capital, joining us on the phone from Miami. So is it warm in Miami? It's a bit chilly today about Come on? That really hurts. You're a former New Yorker, you know you gotta miss

the February. Yeah, I don't know what winter is like. We had snow earlier. I'll be back. I'll be back, all right. So, um, how are you and how do you think the technology areas doing? We saw a little bit of a pullback, some concerns once again, valuation talk. How do you see it? However? Priced? Are we uh? Slightly? Um? You know, we anticipated you know, somewhat of a five to ten percent pulled back. Um, you know going in

the recent kind of lows that we've seen. So we have been raising cash, you know, in our fund to take advantage of any pullbacks that we do see. Because right now, if you look at the border markets trading about twenty three times earnings fore, you know, which is a little lofty by historical standards, but kind of the way we look at the border tech sector, you know, we still want to be heavily invested because these companies have market opportunities far bigger than we ever had before.

They don't have the barriers on geography, on infrastructure and ability to reach consumers, and and those bigger opportunities should yield bigger returns as we look out over the next couple of years. So we're going to be tactical and surgical and opportunistic on pullbacks. On the names was like, when do you think there will be a pullback, James? And and once there is one and you can deploy that cash, where is it going to go? Well, we're already seeing it, right, I mean, the nastack was what

down two percent today to an after percent? You know, that's not a little you know, So I think we're chipping away at it. I don't. We don't think it's going to be a prolonged one um because of the fact that or it's going to be any degree of severity with what we saw last year because of the

fact that you know, these are real companies with real learnings. Yes, some of the valuations are high, but at the same time, you know, these are the fastest growing companies that we've seen and you can grow into their evaluation and on the relatively quick uh period we think and as far as where we're putting our money kind of we put it in three buckets. One is what is the absolutely

essential infrastructure? Those are companies like Amazon and Apple. What are the fastest growing companies that are leveraging the cloud and that infrastructure. You know, that's company like syntech, like Square and a firm you also like the companies more established ones like Nvidia. And then you have third bucket, which is which are the legacy companies that can benefit from added productivity and they're manufacturing and and really taking

advantage of right sizing. The companies after COVID. You know, those are companies like llpool. It's world Pool, mhm, world Pool. So it's it's not a traditional you know, tech stock um, but you know what we're looking for in that third bucket is company the legacy companies that have the opportunity to improve their productivity through improving their manufacturing crepibility and also coming out of COVID in a much better margin

profile than Fire. Well, it's interesting because we actually talked to the World Pool CEO a few months ago, and you know, we talked a lot about consumer habits and how you know, his thinking is like, listen, things are not going to change. Consumers are not going to change what they've been doing for the last year overnight and maybe not forever, you know, in terms of the focus

on home and so on and so forth. So um, it was interesting, and I wonder how much of that goes into your thinking about some of the names that you want to invest in right now. A lot, because I mean, we really think that we will not go

back to the way things work. And that's the way kind of we're looking at the world right now because what companies have noticed is and and and employees and people in general have noticed that life does go on without having to go into the office every single day, and and businesses are able to move forward and able to do so in a much more um profitable manner. You know, when you don't have to say, is on office space and whatnot and being able to hire people

from around the country. Um, if you're not limited to geography and and um kind of fixed costs, you know, you can still continue to grow your business and potentially even get more productivity out of your people since you don't have to commute and things of that nature. So, you know, we think that we will not go back

to the way things were. So which companies will allow you, uh to help as a company as an individual to better navigate this this new life, you know, coming out of the pandemic, And we certainly think about businesses that we invest in that way. Hey, James, what do you think of of Snap the company hitting a hundred billion dollars in market value? It's doubled in in four months. I know this is a company that you followed very closely for years. What do you think of how it's

doing right now? It's remarkable. I mean, they've they've come such a long way. And then you know, initially I came out positive on the company when I was on the cuth side giving recommendations on these docks, but um, you know, it took a while for them to gain their traction and obviously you had Facebook company with them, but at the end of the day, the whole case behind it, and including companies like Interest and whatnot, but UM, the case behind it was that you can there's two

ways to monetize that advertising. You know, you can either go super broad with a lot of users and do a lot of campaigns like that, or you can have a niche product with a very very higher engagement rate and monetize investments. And that was the direction that's Snap went. And you know, they have a they have a good user base of grown a user based and and covid has also benefited UM then UM from that standpoint, and because of the R O I s and are improving

on the tech platform at platforms. You know that that's a company that has certainly sezed on the opportunity that they originally had. Following the I P O I got two questions and I only have time for once. I'm just gonna go with it. We've got the twileto CFO coming on later on. This stock has been on a tear this year last year. Thirty seconds, what would you

ask him? UM? I would ask him on the let's see on the kind of the analytics and then the customer relationship management fronts kind of you know, they made some acquisitions to boost UH in that regard beyond just their communication capabilities, but also how do I improve the productivity in house? UM, and for for the companies that are their customers and being able to interact with their customers and be smarter about how they interact with the

customers before. How are they helping their customers leverage the data? Cool stuff. UM, I'll tell you the next question, the second question next time. When you come back, you gotta come back. James, stay warm, enjoy. James Chock Mock partner and technology analyst O our Clockwise Capital, on the phone from a seventy degrees warmy Bommy with Miami. I'm a

little bitter. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com, and you can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube. Search to Bloomberg Global News