Facebook Changes Name to Meta

You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on Bloomberg Radio, or watch us on YouTube search Bloomberg Clovel News. Alright, bunch of headlines when it comes to COVID. Today's City Bank. Uh, Tim, you pointed this out just before we got going today, requiring all use employees to be vaccinated against COVID as a condition of their employment, citing new orders from President Biden. I think that we're going to start seeing more and

more of this from the big companies. Also Florida suing the Biden administration over vaccine mandates for federal contractors. This is the latest in a wave of Republican pushbacks against the President's orders to fight off the pandemic Closer to home where we are in New York City, the city saying it will temporarily outlaw days off for sanitation workers as needed ahead of an anticipated employee shortage stemming from a vaccine mandate is going into effect next week. We

talked about supply chains. The U. S. Government has bought an additial fifty million doses of the fiser beyond bion Tech vaccine, and a push to secure supply for kids. All right, let's get to it. The Dr Anna Durban, Professor of International Health, Director of the Center for Immunization Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, Founder, Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Dr Durban on the phone once again from Baltimore. Dr Durbin, Nice to have you back here on Bloomberg Radio. It's all about kids. Uh, what do you make of the progress so far? I think it's really excellent. I mean, I think it's it's good news that we're we have a vaccine that um will likely get approval from the CDC and their meeting next week. As we saw it was shown to be safe and efficacious. Uh, and the

FDA approved the use of the vaccine and kids. It is a lower os um which I think is important to know because these kids are much smaller and don't need as much vaccine as adults, and that means that the side effects are are you know, less severing kids, which is good news. Dr Durban I was at the doctor yesterday. I was talking to a woman there who is a healthcare worker. She we're talking about our family. She said that her kids are over the age of five,

and I said, that's great. They can get the vaccines very soon. And she said, I'm not going to get it for them now. I'm going to hold off on it. What would you say to parents who want to hold off and wait for more information. Well, what I would say is this, we know that, um, you know, the group now that's probably most susceptible to COVID is kids younger than twelve because they haven't had a vaccine available. We know that the virus can infect kids. We know

that they can become symptomatic. It's true they aren't hospitalized to the high degree that particularly older adults are, but we do see severe disease in kids. We see multisystem inflammatory syndrome in kids. We see kids who are hospitalized to go to the i c U and we don't really understand why. You know, it's some kids may be

affected more than others. Um I would try to reassure her that there is a lot of safety data of the vaccine, that we these vaccines have been studied in young kids, that the safety profile looks excellent, and that we can prevent again, we can prevent more transmission of the virus when kids are vaccinated when they're in schools. UM. It just provides greater safety for the population. The more people that we get vaccinated. So there's a headline, we've

got a story on the Bloomberg. Vaccinated people also spread the delta variant. This is according to a year long study. So we're talking about people inoculated against COVID nineteen are just as likely to spread the delta variant of the virus to contacts in their household as those who have not had shots as according to some new research. It was a study a year long study people in the UK with mild COVID nineteam and scientists an that their

peak viral load was similar regardless of vaccination status. According to paper published today in the Lancet Infectious Diseases Medical Journal. People are going to see the see that it probably sees on and say, see, I don't need to get the vaccine. Help us here. Yeah, So I think there's a couple of really important things to keep in mind when we look at PCR. When we look at at you know, measurements of the virus by PCR, it doesn't tell you whether that virus is a live or debt.

It just tells you that there's pieces of the virus. We do know from studies that people who are vaccinated shed the virus for a shorter period of time, so they transmit the virus for a shorter period of time, and they actually transmit less live virus than people who are unvaccinated. It is true that vaccinated people can transmit the virus. We steam break Dr Durban forgive me just because we have been nuts and I know our audiences

nuts about this. But Facebook is rebranding their company. The name change will be a m et A Facebook changing its name to Meta m E t A. We're gonna get back to that in just a moment um. But again it's something that we know our audience has been waiting for. We were expecting that name change as a host that event out there at Facebook headquarters. We're gonna get back to it in just a moment. Forgive me,

Dr Durbin, please finish your thought. No no, I was just going to say, we you know, it's true that their breakthrough infections and vaccinated people, but we know that vaccinated people, even though they can shed the virus to transmit the virus, it's for a shorter period of time and it does provide protection. Um. The other thing that I would say is that how much virus shoes shed also is dependent on how ill you are, and we

know that vaccines reduced the severity of illness incredibly. You know, people hospitalized now are unvaccinated, so there are a lot of factors that go into it. Their studies that have shown that vaccinated people are less likely to effect family members who are unvaccinated. So, um, you know, just having recovery of the virus by PCR isn't the whole story. And we know from multiple studies that vaccination reduces transmission.

Dr Drvin, thank you so much, as always, over JOHNS. Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health, on the phone from Baltimore. All right, we've got it. The name change for Facebook. It is Meta M E T A. And this obviously plays into the new focus, or a big focus at the company, the metaverse. Let's get to Tom Giles. He's Bloomberg Technology executive editor, joining us from our Bloomberg got San Francisco bureau. Tom, We've got it. Yeah, they finally

they finally unveiled the new name. As you said, it's Meta. Um. This is really about Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the executives at Facebook trying to rebrand, reimagine, get you to think about Facebook in a different way. UM. It's really emphasizing their planned multibillion dollar bet on the metaverse. This is this immersive world. UM. Think of it as a three D worldwide web that they want to be

at the ground level of creating. UM, and they want you to think about their company as really a pioneer in this space. Um. They just spent an hour talking about the new hardware and software and other tools that they're created to give users the opportunity to immerse themselves in this thing called the metaverse, and they just chuckle. There. I did was a fascinating study of of kind of

what they're what they're thinking about. It was really a trip inside the heads of Mark Zuckerberg and the other executives there um. And they're taking it very seriously and it's a big, bold and risky bet that they're taking. They're going to spend billions of dollars over the next five to ten years to build this out. How do they monetize this? I mean, I was watching part of

this presentation as I was prepared for our programs. Tim, You're so silly monetization, But that's what investors care about, and first you got to get the eyeballs right. Well, I gotta tell you, even after watching that, I like life as it is and don't necessarily want to live in the metaverse or any time in the metaverse. How do they convince us to do that? And how do they make money doing it right? That's going to be

a big challenge. So to answer your first question about the monetization, they are talking about all kinds of tools that you are going to be able to use. Spend a lot of time talking about e commerce. So you know, we've seen lots of big tech companies Amazon comes to mind, that have been able to monetize the way you buy and sell stuff, you know, virtually. Um, that's one thing they're also gaming. Um. They talked about Grand Theft Auto being one of the games that they're going to sell.

And certainly as you look at wearing headsets, immersing yourself in these worlds, whether it's through a VR Virtual reality experience or an a R experience, you can imagine that there's going to be advertising sales. They didn't talk a lot about that, um, but I think that they will find ways to absolutely monetize this, although you know, and probably not right at the outset. Hey, Tom, I'm struck by something that I saw Shinali Bask, our colleague on

Bloomberg TV right now, just tweet. She said that Zuckerberg said, from now on, we're going to be metaverse first, not Facebook first. It really makes me think back to when Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook was going to be a mobile first company, and it emerged that he was making everybody only use their phones to access Facebook to build

a mobile product. Fast forward where we are now. This is a company that is that really succeeded when it came to mobile and really surprised investors by by holding onto that. Yeah. Remember, and you know, at the time of their I p O, one of the things that really tripped them up for those first scary several months of their publicly tried but after their debut was that they hadn't mastered mobile. But as you said, that's something

that they really tackled. They got us all, uh or all their users or many of their users to experience Facebook on the smartphone, and now they want to kind of move beyond that, and they want to be what's what's interesting about, you know, kind of making you think

about Facebook differently. Facebook's name has really been the brand has really been tarnished by all of the things that we and others have been writing about for weeks and months and years, which is the preponderance of harmful content, whether it's hate speech, whether it's dis or disc or misinformation, um anti vax um, conspiracy theories. The list goes on and on and on the ways that Facebook has become a place that we associate with a lack of safety

and a lack of protection. They want to start kind of over um and this is how they're going to do it. Right. Hey, you know, Mark Zuckerberg putting out a letter I'm just reading through it as as I wrote no original founders letter quote. We don't build services to make money. We make money to build better services. It's interesting, though, Tom, it comes at a time, just quickly twenty seconds as you say, this company is being

looked at very very closely for its impact negatively on society. Absolutely, and you have a lot of lawmakers out there really taking a jaundice view of Facebook and the things that they say. Um, the stock is up, interestingly, so somebody likes what he's selling right now. Well, it could have been Facebook two point oh, that wouldn't have been so good. Tom Giles, you are amazing. Thank you for breaking it down and just making sense when it comes to Facebook's history.

We're gonna talk and continue this conversation on Facebook's new name. It's meta at Level. Will be joining us from Menlo Park. He's on the ground there at Facebook headquarters. You're listening to Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. I must read in the new shoe Bloomberg Business Week

by pri and Non and Mark Bergen. It's about a company called Go Guardian, the leading developer of ed text software educational tech software, and I guessed him to be fair, to be transparent. It's really about kind of educational surveillance software. That's right, Big teacher is watching spyware business sneaks into schools. Joe Weber is editor at Bloomberg Business Week. He's with us in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. Pre Ada's venture

capital reporter for Bloomberg News. She joins us from San Francisco. Joel, What is the software Go Guardian? So it's it's one of a few that have become incredibly popular, uh, since the beginning of the pandemic, where you know, if you had a kid and the kid was in school maybe or not in school, but at home. Um, there was just this proliferation of devices all of a sudden. So so kids had iPads and laptops in a way that

maybe they didn't always have before. And if it came from a school, if it was a you know, the Department of Education issued thing, chances are the school wanted to make sure that he could keep an eye on what the kid was doing. And now these companies have really boomed. Go guardian is the one that pre uh dug into for the story. Uh and yeah, what what do you think a kid is looking at during the school other than school? Right? Well, you know if you

have gil guard Yeah, that's right. Uh So it also raises all kinds of privacy issues. So so pre what did you learn as you dug into this uh story? That's right? So the pandemic, I mean every school that hadn't given kids, um a laptop or a tablet of some sort, so many schools were forced to gross these

things into kids's hands. And when they did that, they wanted to make sure they could ensure that kids weren't searching for I guess for our radio listeners all say problematic stuff on their school computers right when they're giving them access to the internet. So administrators at schools principles teachers we spoke with for this story, they all love this.

Teachers say that even in the classroom when they're not you know, remote, now that they're back, it helps them when they want kids to look at maybe a worksheet of some sort, or have an exam open that's online, which is much easier to grade for them, um, And then they can make sure that the kid only has the certain tabs open that they have said are okay during class. So a math teacher can block YouTube, for example,

during their class. If they see a kid open another tab with a game or something like that, they can close out that tab immediately for them from their own computer at their desk. And teachers think that this is a way to like, you know, actually be able to focus on teaching, right if you can block all the other stuff that, you know, the kid can't access anything else in their computer. Kind of sounds like the Bloomberg firewalls just putting it out there. Um, but we understand

why we have a lot of information to protect here. Um. The schools decide, though, right what to block on kids computers. The schools decide what to block on kids as computers. But the interesting thing is that the schools can also decide to turn on a feature that allows them too. If the kids logged into their school account on a personal computer at home, go Guardian can still continue tracking, monitoring, et cetera while the kid has logged into that school account. Now,

not every school turns this on. Go Guardian wouldn't give us a bigger on how many schools that they're involved with have turned this on. But there was protests in Montclair, New Jersey over this um and parents wondered, you know, where does the tracking end then if if this can happen on a personal device preta. One thing that you explore in the piece is just about the role of computers in school because for your Silicon Valley and even Mark Zuckerberg in Newark almost a decade ago, wanted to

help connect classrooms. And I'm wondering what you learned and what you can tell us about the role of computers in school. Did they reach a turning point during the

pandemic because of remote learning? That's right. So what struck me about companies like go Guardian is how much scale they've been able to achieve the far right, just how many schools across the country they reach and how many students across the country reach Go Guardian, for example, they're one of the biggest companies that makes these kind of tracking tools and their reach is a potential twenty three

million and students or more. Entire states have signed up, like Delaware and West Virginia, giving access to all the schools in their states, which means the school can decide whether or not they want to use these tools. But um, you know, New York City has signed up large school district in the country. So that's what struck us as as quite different from a lot of the other efforts in education technology. Right. I mean, a bunch of Googlers

started a company called Old School a couple of years back. Um, it ended up shutting down the schools it started. The schools had like three D printers and and all this fancy high tech stuff. But then they got out of the business spout bring of schools and they only even had you know, not that many, nothing at this scale. And the Zuckerberg New Work relationship that was that was just new Work, right, It wasn't UM across the country.

So so this really struck us as something that you know, even though the pandemic UM really gave them a big boost in popularity, it doesn't seem like this kind of monitoring technology is going away. Um now that things are are back in person and they have achieved just a much larger base of users across the country. I gotta say it seems pretty basic to put a little firewall on an education device and limit what kids might be able to access and give some teachers ability to see

what they're looking at. What are the numbers? Like, how lucrative of a business idea is this? Go Guardian UM They themselves charge about five dollars per student per product at a school or school district on that's more than the school lunch I think they've got. They've got multiple

products going on too. There's like a you know, a whole host of tools for teachers, specifically a host of tools for administrators, UM, a host of tools to kind of assigned devices to different kids and like track where they are. So it's depended on how they set up you know, the service, but you have five dollars per student at minimum, right, So okay, the most one of the one of the most uh searched for things that out when students are on Go Guardian is how do

you get around Go Guardian? How do you get around it? You know? So actually we asked a company about this and you're like, hey, you know we heard that kids kids do constantly search like how to get around your tech and and their engineers watch those videos too, and if they see something, they you know, close it up. But it's not something they seem to be that worried

about they think they've got things pretty locked down. I just think it's funny on a day where we just had Facebook getting a new name Meta because we know they're focusing on the metaverse and that actually with Go Guardian, there is a penalty box, right kind of, I guess a virtual one that they can that kids can be put in. And I just think you can see a melding of the metaverse, right the kids are put in like a penalty metaverse. Remembering the kids I went to

school with who were in that box. Now you know, like they probably are still in it. You know, it's just crazy, like how it's all gonna meil together? Um? Is this a company that's going to probably go public at sometime just quickly? You know. Earlier this year they raised two million dollars put their valuation at over a billion dollars. So given the recent fundraising, who knows right that they have a lot of money right now at least sixth band unbelievable, Um and fascinating and deep dive.

There's so much to this story. Thank you so much, really appreciate Bloomberg News Venture Capital reporter Priya and Non joining us on the phone. From San Francisco on with Bloomberg business Week at or Joel Webber, what do you think of Meta? Uh? Roofline in the magazine coming out now? That shift yesterday is Facebook's meta pivot. I feel like I should be in the gambling universe. I just go

ahead of the curve man. All right, everybody, we gotta run um Joe Weber, thank you so much, Business Week editor, of course, and check out that new issue. It is on newsstands on the Bloomberg and at business Week dot com. You're listening to Bloomberg business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. So it's official, uh, Meta formerly known as Facebook the artist formerly known as Facebook? Are you gonna keep calling it Facebook? Are you gonna

start calling from three? Technically, it's still trading right under Facebook. It doesn't start trading under the new ticker until December one, So I guess it's going to be kind of one of those Google slash alphabet like you know that confusion that we went through initially when they made the name change. Well, that's what I'm wondering. Unfortunately, now Ed Lovelow is joining US. He's West Coast corresponding at Bloomberg News. He's on site

from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California. I believe he's a one hacker away in front of what was until today a famous Facebook like sign thumbs up that you're seeing on YouTube right now. But now the sign has changed. Ed when did they When did they pull the cover off that brand new sign that you're standing in front of nine seconds well to Mark Zuckerberg announced it nine

and it was amazing. Over my shoulder, you know, they're standing there, had this temporary canvas over it, and whoosh, they just pull the canvas off. The sign is that famous sign everyone knows, right for our radio audience as well, with the thumbs up like symbol, and it's changed now to this meta symbol. But what you guys were discussing

in the intro is the most important part. What changes, And really this is a change in name only, no change to Facebook's corporate structure and no change to the names of his properties. Right Facebook, the website and apps stays the same. What's that? The same? Instagram the same, And many had speculated that they might form a new entity restructure with a holding company like Alphabet did, but that wasn't the case. So what's the significance of this?

Is this a company just like when they were late to mobile but quickly pivoted to mobile? Um? Is this a company realizing the future is going to be different going forward and we're gonna pivot now and we're gonna, you know, telegraph that very clearly to the world. What are we as investors? The stats up three percent and now as we did see a kick up on this news, what are we supposed to take away from the set?

To be fair, Zuckerberg and other executives have been talking about the metaverse for some time, about how for Facebook, the metaverseus the future where we interact with one another virtually, not just for simply gaming. But during his presentation, Zuckerberg talks about e commerce, about conducting business eatings through virtual and augmented reality using the Oculus headsets. He talks about healthcare using the Oculus headset, exercising in virtual spaces with

other imagine a Peloton class that is virtual. I can't quite get my head around that. But what has been made so clear about the Facebook equity story in the prior court in the court had just gone this week. In the prior courter is its vulnerability to those Apple iOS changes, and by extension, it's dependence on ad revenues.

And they we know that they bought Instagram, we know that they bought what bought, whatsopp but they've found it hard to monetize those And really this is face Zackerberg saying this is the first big step for us towards the future where we monetize through our virtual reality investment in Oculus, which is two thousand fourteen. It also has made me think a lot over the last Go ahead, girl, Now you know what I'm thinking. Now, I'm I'm like

watching the video that Mark Zuckerberg put out here. And at a time where we are talking about the world needing greater transparency, we're now talking about creating, you know, an alt reality that could mask so much. And so I guess I'm trying to get my head around it. Just call me a purist, what can I say? Well, one of the big big points that Facebook stressed was that privacy is going to be central to this right.

They said that there will be the same parental controls, the same privacy policies in Horizon, the Apple platform that the metaverse will exist in or you know what I mean, but also that there will be no substantive changes to data to use a data, how they handle it. I

think there's a big questions. One hypothesis put forward by Wall Street is that if Facebook had gone further and had done a holding company where each individual business unit was separate and isolated, it might have given them some reprieve or insulation from antitrust interest right from regulators. But they didn't do that, And really, likes of Reid Hoffman have raised this question. Right, this doesn't change anything from

Facebook's existing problems. Right. What I was going to say is, almost twenty years ago to the day, Philip Morris in the US changed its name to Altria, and they did that partly to associate the name of the company from cigarettes and from the danger that cigarettes have caused the world and the and the the US. And I'm wondering if this changes anything for regulators or makes them makes

them think at all differently about the company. Yeah, I don't have the answer to that, and I know that's a bit of a cop out, but you know, as I said, it's a change in name. Only you know Zuckerberg and Nick Klegg, who's the vice president of corporate affairs, you know, the former British Deputy Prime minister, just stress that, look, we are aware of the criticisms that people level at Facebook.

Zuckerberg actually said there's no good time for Facebook to set out its plan for the future because people will raise questions about what it's doing with its present issues. But he said there's no time like the present. You know that they acknowledge all of the criticism around content moderation,

about the safety of the platform for children. But at the end of the day, as they said, this is about diversifying, moving away from the ad platform that we know, the core blue Facebook dot com platform, to a future where people engage differently with one another. Well, and to be fair, we are now having a very different conversation about face Book slash Meta right now because we're talking about the name change and then the focus of the company.

And if I look at Wall Street, you know, investors are cool. More than of the analysts that cover it put a by rating fifty. One of the analysts that we survey here at Bloomberg have a by rating eight holds three cells. I mean overwhelmingly like investors seem to be okay about all of it. Ed, we're talking about a company that is going to record a hundred and eighteen billion dollars in fiscal twenty one according to estimates, that regularly post top and bottom line growth that is

in the very high double digits. There was disappointment in this quarter. Why because we saw the brunt of the impact from the Apple privacy tracking changes. Right, that was clear, and there was commentary about it on the call. But at the end of the day, this is an incredibly high margin business that is setting out the future where it's not dependent on that high margin business. It's going into other areas that it's confident that can generate revenue.

One real quick one, Zuckerberg said, by the end of the decade, the metaverse may each a billion people, one billion, but it will generate in the region of hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. That gives you a sense of scale. Right, It's going to be a long long time before this is the core of the business, but it's the first big step to diversify. Just very very briefly, twenty seconds, how do they monetize the metaverse? Two ways?

Hardware Oculus brand new headset announced today. High end, expensive, high level of functionality, second wave services. Think about video games, roadblocks, Minecraft, you buy things within the game, and that's in zeed what Facebook wants to do. But it wants to do e commerce. It wants to do business to business interactions, meeting, so you don't take an airplane. And as I said,

healthcare was a really interesting take for me. Another headline crossing from that event Meta unifying payments financial services under Facebook's Novie brand. That was a brand name I think created back in for kind of the digital wallet, uh that they created. Um, ever, will be careful get off that highway. We're worried about you outside Facebook slash Meta headquarters. You're listening to Blueberg Radio. Bro. Yeah, but you let me drive? Oh no, no, no no, this is not

a toy. All right, please, I'll goodridevels. I want to drive. It's a good question. Good drive. This is the drive to the globe down on Bluemberg Radio. All right, just about ten and a half minutes left from the end of trading on this Thursday, this Friday's Eve and bouncing around. But it looks like we're take a little bit of a lake up here on those major equity averages near our highs of the day, certainly on the SNP and

the Nastac Nastac once again the app performer. This whole week is about those big tech names, and then include some of the results we're gonna get after the closing bell. We have Amazon with Apple what am I missing? Not really call themselves tech with the online or there is an app apps the app is huge and there will be a lot of questions about the app. Well. Someone who knows about all these brands is our next guest, Eric Clark, his portfolio manager at Rational Dynamic Brands Fund.

His fund, by the way, continued to be just about all of its peers over the last five years, up on average annually, putting his fund in the nine percent according to Bloomberg Data. He's back with us on the phone from San Diego. By the way. Top holdings in the fund include Alphabet and Apple, which, as we said, report after uh no, Apple reports after the close. Google already reported Google already earlier this week. Trying to keep it straight. Um, yeah, exactly, Eric, How are you? I'm great?

How are you? Carol? Doing well? Doing well? So let's talk about Um. First of all, can we just go to a tweet because you put out a tweet and you tweeted about the name change of Facebook to meta and you said, what happens in a few years when we all realized we actually like being outside and enjoying real life. Um, what happens? Do you have some thoughts

about this one? Well, you know, probably about three years ago, I was constantly saying, you know, in my opinion, Facebook has a real brand problem, and it stems from a lot of their business practices, etcetera. So I mean, on one hand, it's good to see them finally addressed that

that's an issue. You know, they've told people in their earnings release that they're going to spend like ten billion dollars on the development of this metaverse through Capex, and so, you know, a brand name change focused on the future driver of growth. Is that that's logical and it makes a lot of sense. I'm just skeptical about what the metaverse looks like and what kind of revenue can be generated.

And you know, my cynical nature even from my tweet that could that's great If I go in the metaverse, Am I going to be advertised to death there too, So when the real world and on the betaverse, I don't know. I don't love Facebook in general, so I'm probably not the best guy, you know, to opine on the positive parts of Facebook. Do you do you hold any Facebook? We do not know. It's been a it's been a good trade for us. We traded it, you know, Uh,

I don't know. I I put a a little note to my team saying, hey, you know, we're about eight percent of the way from the trillion dollar mark, and be shocking if we didn't kiss that level, just like Tesla did the other day. And when that happens, If that happens, we're out. And that's what we did, and we haven't been back since. You know, what's interesting to staying on Facebook is the idea that the company is

going all in on this. They're saying, hey, we are we believe in that this is the future so much we're changing our name. What if it doesn't work, what if we don't want to be in that metaverse? Like you said, I I think I think that it certainly changes the risk profile of the business. And you know

that's okay, you know, that's their decision to make. I just it's such an unknown, and I do see there's some real value in the metaverse or work and for business, it's already there with gaming, and there's a there's social commerce happening inside of gaming already. So in some way it's just an extension of that. But the other part of that, what that actually looks like, what the demographic of people that are going to be in the metaverse is clearly i'm'm fifty three, I'm you know, call me

a dinosaur. I like the real world. I like the smell, touch, and and taste. I don't know that you're gonna be able to overcome that in the metaverse though. This is clearly a next generation demographic story. And you know, we'll have to just see how they how they build this thing.

And they're certainly they've gone all in from a CAPEX perspective, Well, if I go all dystopian on everybody, if if we continue on this trajectory, when it comes to our environment and climate, we will be allowed to be outside and so a metaverse no, I'm sorry, but if you think about it, that we might need to be inside and that all we will have our metaversees, uh in terms of safety, So there you have it. Sorry, dark day, I'm not that out of this world. There are parts

where you don't want to be outside because of pollution. Alright, so okay, Eric, let's let's get away from the Eric. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, um you do own Amazon, They're going to be a report after the closes. We're gonna be all over. We want to see what's going on with e commerce? You know, might the web Amazon web services, uh take care of any weakness within the e commerce part of their business? What are you expecting? What is it that you like and continue to like about this

company in this brand? Well, I mean the stock in general hasn't really done much for the last twelve months. I don't love any stock that goes hot into a print. But you know, overall, the things largely underperformed because they're in their spending mode and when you know, when they spend their hiring you know, some an absurd amount of workers with with higher pay. So certainly one side of the business is going to be you know, higher and spend,

so a lot of big expenses. But you know the history of Amazon is when we spend for a period of time, then we reap the benefits of that spend in forward quarters, So you know, I don't really know one quarter to the next, but I'm sure AWS is probably going to be strong. The trends on that side of the business will be good, maybe to offset some of the the capex and the spending that's happening on the other side of the business. But you know, I love the business, I love the brand, So it's just

a buy on dip for me. It's just it's been a top holding, and you know, you don't love it that it hasn't performed real well for for a year or so, but it tends to do that. It ramps up and then it tends to consolidate for a while, and then it ramps up again. Do you love both the e commerce? Do you love the Amazon Web services? Do you love all the business? Just quickly, yeah, I love it all. I love it all. I mean, it serves different markets, and you know, if you're a small business,

you hate Amazon. But the reality has served a purpose and we all love it even more after after cope, so we're that much more loyal to the business and and their logistics is no joke. Okay, just thirty seconds left. Eric Apple, also one of your top holdings. They're reporting after the bell too. What are you looking for? Yeah, I mean could see some softness because of the supply issues. I mean, demand is not a problem for for their products,

in particularly the iPhone thirteen. It's just hard to come by, So any any misses that come today will just be made up when they have some supply. So any dips on that one, I'll be aggressive and BUYO to any dips You'll be buying. So any dips on that or Amazon, you'll be buying correct. All right, good to know. Um, really love it. Thank you so much, really appreciate it.

In front of follow your tweets as well. Eric Eric Clark excuse me, portfolio manager of the Rational Dynamic Brands Fund, top performer in the past five years, joining us on the phone from San Diego. 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. Sarah to Bloomberg Global News