This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stanovk. We're here every day bringing you the latest news from the world to business and finance, plus technology, politics, economics, all partnising the power of Business Week reporters and editors, not to mention our journalists and analyst in more than one twenty countries. You can download Bloomberg Business Week and iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot Com.
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. Among the COVID headlines, Maderna saying it's COVID night teen vaccine showed a strong immune response in younger children in a late stage clinical tribal So that's paving really the way for submission to regulators for clearance in those age six to under twelve. That's something, Timmy, you've really been focusing on. Yeah, I certainly haven't even
kids who are younger than that, that's the question. Also, some more good news, US COVID hospitalizations dropped to the lowest since July one, which is some great news considering where we were for much of the September month, September and the early part of this month. It's a good trend line that we like to hear about. Dr William Hazeltine is back with us. Cherman and president of Access
Health International. It's a nonprofit think tank uh They are on a mission to improve access to high quality and affordable health care for people everywhere. He has found in more than a dozen biotech companies, including Human Genome Sciences. He is an author uh CV PTSD, COVID related post traumatic stress disorder, What it is and what to do about it? And many more articles and books. He joins us once again on the phone from Connecticut. Doctor how Hazeltine,
Nice to have you back with us. Um Among the COVID headlines that are out there in terms of working towards getting kids vaccinated, the mix and match the trend lined, what is it that you think is of most importance? Well, the most important it is for people to be vaccinated, and the second most important is to make sure that if you're in a region where you think you might get infected, to make sure you take all precautions. That
means mass ware, and I means avoiding crowds. So there are stale parts of the US where that's important and uh, it's important to follow those uh bad advice. And if you have had two shots and it's more than six months, it's probably time to get to third. Everybody, everybody, did you get your third? I certainly did. Okay, I remember you months ago saying I'm going to mark my calendar when it's six months, I'm going for I'm just doing some math on my fingers right now. Think I'm that
six months, five months. But I jumped a gun a little bit. But you're right, and I'm very happy I did. Hey, Dr Hazel teen, Uh since we last spoke, since you were last on our show, there there has been a lot of developments, not just with COVID but for treatments as well. We did learn that Murk is looking for emergency use authorization for its COVID nineteen pill, and you wrote earlier this month that there are concerns around that
approval process. Share with us you're thinking, because I think to a lot of people this was seen as really great news. Well, it's great news that drugs are coming along in there are three or four, actually about five in clinical development um. This drug will never up here is an interesting drug. By the way it works, it works differently from all others. It causes the virus to mutate itself to death. Mutate itself to death. Now there are several concerns. The number one concern is will you
mutate sorryscope to something worse than it is. That is a real danger, and it exceeds all other dangers of the kind of resistance or side effects that might arise, because if you make a virus worse than it is, it affects all of humanity. This riers is bad enough. We don't want somebody taking a small dose by accident of the drug and mutating it so it doesn't die, but it just gets worse. So and he said, I don't. I think the FDA is going to be very, very
cautious in their approval of this drug. Moreover, I spent years working on DNA damage at its repair and muta genesis. This is a genotoxic drug which causes mutations in human genes and could cause birth effects. And one of the interesting things about the clinical trials is they told people who are in the clinical trial either not to have sex or only do it with very strong birth controls because they were worried about that. So I think the FDA might approved this, but it's got to be for
a very narrow indication. For me, The danger is people saying, Oh, I'm going to take this drug to prevent me from getting infected. The FDA has to put a very clear message out that only those people with proven infection should take this drug and then for as shorter period as possible. Both their dangerous to themselves and the danger that they might create the worst virus. We don't want to have
to have another biox. It sounds to me like it might be for such narrow indications that it makes me wonder, do the risks that way, at least in your perspective, the risks that way um the benefits? You know. I haven't seen all the data, and the FDA will see
all the data. All I can say, from what I know, from what I've seen, and from reading the clinical protocols, that I would urge the FDA to be extraordinarily cautious with respect to their approval, and possibly to put a black box on the approval process, saying this can be harmful to women who are pregnant, It can have a
long term carcinogenic that's cancer causing effect. If you take it, and if you need to take it because it's the only thing available, fine, But you know, the other thing I'm aware of is your companies all over the world making tons of this drug, and the moment we get a partial approval from the FDA, I think this drug is going to go on and say out it's pretty much unregulated way around the world, and that could be very bad news for the creation of new variants. This
drug works by speeding up commutation rate. That's dangerous. Well, and I will say all right through. I think it was in earlier. This month's ad interim analysis found now increased incidents of adversive fence, but they said it still needs to be assessed in a much larger group of patients to properly determine its safety. So it does sound like something that many would argue needs more research and study.
Dr William Hasseltine, thank you so much, Chairman and President of Access Health International, joining us on the phone from Connecticut. You know, Tim, we talked about everything is happening in front of us, so it's just going to say that, right, some of it can be disarming, but you would assume regulators will continue to study. We're watching the process play out in front of us exactly. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week right here on Bloomberg. I love it when the most read stories by one of the good guys here at Bloomberg. We're talking about our own Eric Shatzker, He's a Bloomberg editor at large, and this story is we just can't stop talking about. It has to do with Hurts's order for a hundred thousand e v s. It pushed Tesla shares higher and the company's market cap
to one trillion. We're all talking about it. Eric Schatsker, is that are at large and he joins us now in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio, Eric one hundred thousand. Contextualize this number for US. A tenth of what Tesla produces, and yet it's equivalent to a tenth of Tesla's annual manufacturing capacity. And once these cars are delivered between now and the end of two thousand twenty two, it will be fully a fifth of Hurts is half million fleet
of cars and trucks. That's massive, So putting the numbers are big for sure, right and and it up ends so many different parts of the market. If you think about the rental car companies used to really write their fleets are often from the traditional auto manufacturers. Were completely right, but entirely from the traditional auto manufacturers. General Motors is the biggest supplier, Nissan is the number two supplier to Hurts.
Forward is the numbers three supplier. And furthermore, when these auto manufacturers were selling, they were typically selling cars that they weren't especially excited about making and often had sitting in the bookstore equivalent of a remainder lot. So the you know, the rental car companies would buy them at
massively discounted prices. There was a naturally an antagonistic relationship between the rental car company and the automaker, and this completely changes that equation because Hurts is buying these cars at close to list price, which brings the two companies much closer together, something akin to a partnership as opposed
to an adversarial relationship. Help us understand some logistics here, Eric, Because you have to charge these you do, and you have to think about rental cars, you gotta fill it up before you go back, or else you get you get digged um, how does the charging network work? And how does how does Hurts ensure someone that they're gonna be able to reliably charge it? Well? For starters, Hurts customers who rent Tesla's will have access to Tesla's network
of three thousand supercharging stations. So that helps a great deal because that's already made it possible for people to own Tesla's and to find an acceptable, viable substitute for the gas station. But Hurts is building its own network of chargers, and they'll be at Hurts locations, whether they be at the airport or somewhere in suburbia or even you know, downtown in an urban center like a New York City for example, And so Hurts customers will be
able to use those as well. Furthermore, did I say furthermore twice? Maybe there's a lot furthermore moreover? How's that um? Hurts is going to integrate Tesla's digital mobility technology with its own digital mobility technology in order to help customers get over the fear of range anxiety. The car will tell you what you have to do, as long as you tell the car where you're going. The car will
tell you how much you've got left. If you where the supercharging station is that you need to drop by for fifteen minutes to make sure that nobody has that crushing experience will being left down in the middle of the Mojave desert with no feel Furthermore, which is something you do want. No But I think about this story about the legitimization of Tesla and the legitimization of Hurts
like thinking about what they want to be in the future. Well, for sure, this gives you an idea that Tesla has big plans to become an even bigger evy manufacturer than it already is. It's the only company that can manufacture e vis at scale. And this is proof positive that Elon Musk had not just a vision, but a viable vision because Hurts can't buy from anybody else. And on the Hurt side, I think this shows you just how disrupted, if you like, an industry can be by people who
come in from the outside. Nighthead Capital the distress that Hedge Fund and Sertari is the private equity firm that specializes in travel, teamed up to buy Hurts out of bankruptcy for six billion dollars or that looks like a
good deal. Now. But they're the ones who came up with the ideas to do this, and I'm really excited to see what else they do, because they're clearly intent on shaking up the rental car industry, which is a competitive, highly commoditized industry and isn't really used to being shaken up. Hurts his twelve point six billion market cap as we speak. Wow, I know, right, so not too shavvy. I wonder when we look back on the history just in a couple of years of Tesla, if this is one of those moments.
And we talked to Dana Hole about this, who covers Tesla Bloomberg News. It's still you know, when you see a Tesla out in the wild, you're still like, oh, there's a Tesla, but there's a lot more on the road. And yeah, in California, it's not really a thing anymore. But does this get countrywide, Like, Okay, seeing a Tesla out, We're going to see a whole lot more Tesla's and it won't be a big deal anymore. Well, this is
ten percent of the annual manufacturing capacity of Tesla. But Tesla is adding factories in Austin, It's adding a factory in Europe, and so we're going to see on the basis of that alone, added capacity and more Tesla's and let's not forget this is not an exclusive deal. Hurts if it wants to can go and buy evs from other manufacturers to just aren't any to buy right now. But Rivian's coming, Lucid's coming, all the big European producers,
manufacturers are going to have their own. They're going to have their own here Ford, No, no, no, we should be talking about Detroit to of course, General Motors has a very viable, very viable EV strategy, but they're targeting different parts of the market. The Chevy Bolt is at the bottom, and Cadillac, where they're also doing some really exciting EV stuff, is at the top end, just like Lucid, and just like Rivan. There's nobody filling in the middle.
Volkswagen is probably going to be a big manufacturer in the middle because that's what Volkswagen does. You could anticipate the Toyota at some point is going to do something similar, but they are years behind. And that's the thing worth emphasizing again. Muskat division need to manufacture at scale. Why do you need to manufacture at scale? Because then you become the only guy on the block who can do a deal like this, which is what is playing out
to be. Continued. Eric Statsker, Editor at large up Bloomberg News. Check out his exclusive story on the Bloomberg I have to say, Tim, when I asked um our Ed Hammond about a week or so ago, when what I needed to talk about it my milk and panel and Global M and A. He said, well, record year, and how is that considering the backdrop? It was incredible advice. Yeah.
One thing that stuck out to me from this piece, and Ed Hammond is deals reporter at Bloomberg News, he joins us now here in New York City, and one thing that really stuck out to me was something in the first paragraph. The records set in two thousand seven. So let's talk numbers here. Four point one trillion this year would break the record set in two thousand seven for Global, for M and A by the end of
transactions to usually top five trillion dollars. Is this some sort of sign when when there's M and A like this, because we all know what happened after two thousand seven. Um, I'm sort of hesitant to draw parallels between oh, seven, and now in terms of using the M and A market is a reason to suggest that the wieldy are about to come out flok. Obviously, we are long into a market cycle that has you know, had the top
called many times. I was among those who thought M and A would probably haven't pronounced and a long time slow down after the pandemic or when we go into the pandemic, and as it turned out, it was you know, one and a half quarters that it kind of stopped for or slowed down for, and then it's roared back. We saw it come back very strongly in the second half of that momentum continued so far throughout this year. And as you say you were about to pass the IS,
I was in a seven record. We may indeed it passed it at some point today and well on track yet that quite trilling and by the end of the year, which an astonishing number, I mean in any circumstance, and
astonishing number. But when you look at all the the environmental factors going on in the background, and why you wouldn't want to do a deal right now, I think you know also well and what's interesting at and you really did like set up me so well But what's interesting too is you know these dealmakers that I talked to bankers over the city, at Deutsa and elsewhere, they said that in many ways, UM members of the C suite are getting kind of poked and product by their
board for not doing deals right now, talk to us about what you're hearing. Why these deals are getting done despite the backdrop of a pandemic and worries about the outlook and supply chain problems and so on. I think part of it is just the cost of a nursher is is also very high. Look obviously, doing a deal at any time carry some risk, and you know you can get it wrong and that can be consequential. As the CEO, you can do your borders or your job
stories aboard, you can be tossed out. But I think right now, with the amount of disruption is going on across industries and the sort of rapidity of change that almost their industry is going through, I think there are a real cost to not doing stuff and not growing. And you know, at the moment a lot of companies are matched out on organic growth and M and A is obviously a very quick and efficient way a lot of the time to to to sort of turbo charge
that growth in organically. In reporting this story, and you also looked at how investors react to companies that when a company does announce an acquisition, both to the company getting acquired and the one doing the acquiring. What did
you learn. It's a really interesting trend that we've seen to him where you have this, uh, this sort of anomaly in the market where shareholders are coming out when companies and ounced deals and saying, you know, this is something we do like, and they're reflecting that in the way the shares trade obviously quisitive companies and seeing shares trade up, which goes against almost very historical trends per virus.
The recent paper US interest deal that was talked about right before I came on, obviously that was slightly different where you saw papal trends down and trade down heavily on news and some extent we think that's why they've now pulled the plug on that particular deal. But yeah, investors again, look, they're they're happy to see companies going out, getting on the front foot and pulling whatever leavers they
can to achieve growth in this market. And I think it all comes back to the fact that we are seeing, you know, not reckless deals. We're not seeing companies go out and try and do very very large, complex, you know, sort of horizontal mergers. This is much more vanilla. Let's go out, let's do a deal that actually is in line with what we ever we want to do strategically from perhaps it gets it slightly quicker from A to
B than we would get their organic too. Well, how much of it, too, is pandemic related or pandemic push and where you know, trends, disruptions, digitization was happening, but it might have happened over the next three to five years, and all of a sudden it was like, Bam, it's happening now, and I've got to possibly do a deal and acquisition to put my business in the right place to embrace that. Yeah, And I think that that comes back to this issue of disruption and the speed at
which it's occurring now. And as you say, the pandemic sort of supercharged some of the activity. But you look at any industry now and they are all you know, if they're not tech industries that take enabled industries and so a lot of them. We've seen a lot of this already this year, are going and doing acquisitions that don't necessarily look like a sort of straightforward. You know,
an industrial company buying an industrial company. They're an industrial company buying a software company because they're realizing that actually, this is the way we're going to keep growing, and it's much easier to go out and buying something small that we can just tuck in then build our own capabilities in an area that perhaps is not where we have existent skills. How do spacts play into the boom
that we've seen over the last eighteen months. Well, look in terms of the sort of headlines and the amount of noise and interest they command their normals, but in terms of the actually dollar value, they're very, very tiny. You know, certainly if you look at the sort of the dollar value of the spacts themselves rather than the dollar value of the companies, they often reverse into as a minority holder you're talking, you know, it's it's it's
a minimus. But obviously trends they have been, you know, a driver of different kinds of activity. I'm sure you've seen some companies go out and do M and A because they were sort of worried about what might otherwise happened with the spect potentially buying a target that they were interested. So I think it's contributed, but certainly there is a quite serious dislocation between the amount of noise Spect have generated and the actual contribution they've had to
overall EM and ads here. So all right, if we end up with five trillion and then some this year, does that mean things necessarily slow down? Because I know from my panel they all seem gangbusters that it would continue into two. But what are you hearing? I mean, money is so cheap it's easy for they've also got a lot of you know, cash to play around with. Yeah, look, money is cheap, and that's often site is one of
the reasons we're seeing this this great market. What I would say to that is money has been cheap for a long time, and there have been fast going on that would would seem to dissuade people been doing M and A. So I don't think it just cheap money. I think there's a lot of momentum going through the M and A market at the moment. Some of that is obviously catch up after we had that slowdown during COVID, and I think some of that will continue into two.
The conversations we've been having. We had a common tax m A ban Cool on Bluemo TV this morning talking about the strength of the pipeline. They actually think it's stronger than the current market conditions we're seeing, which would suggest going into two, we're going to have a you know, a lot of deals backed up ready to go. Whether
it continues through two, sorry, who knows? Um. I think a lot of that will depend on on what we see, you know, in in sort of global affairs, what we see the domestic economy, but also obviously some of the sovereign risks that he just ten seconds, what derails this from continuing? The great question? Um, I would I thought COVID wouldn't It didn't I think? Look in rising interest rates is obviously gonna be the number one factors that will not business confidence and never m A all right,
gonna leave it there. I get your sleep, because you're gonna be busy. It sounds like when it comes to continued m and A flow. Ed Hammond he's our deals reporter Bloomberg News. Check them out at Ed Hammond New York on Twitter, and you can always find his stories on the Blomberg Terminline at Bloomberg dot Com. Get ready also shout out to add he, along with me Anna Baker, broke that Pinterest story last week. Yeah, I mean he's
very exactly all right. You're listening to Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovik on Bloomberg Radio. You are listening to Bloomberg Business Week and this story it is the Bloomberg Big Take today. It is about the world's top five polluters being responsible for six global emissions in China Loan. Though generating about the same amount of c O two as the next four countries combined, it's carbon output is
still rising every year. We'll get into where this state is coming from. Joining us right now is Andy Brown, editorial director oft Bloomberg New Economy. Here in our interactive Broker studio, climate change front and center with copy right. We're all focusing on what the world is doing to combat climate change. But if China is not part of it, so what Right at this point, you know, it almost
doesn't matter what the US does, what Europe does. The fate of the of the planet is in the hands of China and more specifically than that in the hands of a handful really just a few huge, ginormous state owned enterprises in cement in steel, and then in all of the industries that use cemented steels, so autos, machinery, real estate, infrastructure, and you know, we this this big take. We drilled into the numbers and and and by the way, they don't that they're not that transparent. So it took
a lot of dicking in. Our reporters did it with the Center of the Research on Energy and Clean Air, and the results are that you know, you take a company like for instance, Baw Wo Baw used to be called Bao Steel, big Shanhai steelmaker, biggest steelmaker in the whole country. It's emissions. It has a carbon footprint the size of Pakistan. You you take a subsidiary of Sinopeck.
So sino Peck is the big Chinese oil. May one of its subsidiaries, I think it's called a petroleum and chemical has a carbon footprint or had carbon emissions in two thousand and nineteen the size of Canada. And Canada, by the way, is an emissions heavyweight. It ranks number eleven in the world. I mean, these numbers are really astonished. It's the first time that that you know, anybody has
put the numbers against these companies. And and you know, people outside of China probably never heard of most of these, you know, So how do what these companies are doing aligne or not aligned with China's own goals when it comes to climate right, So, so we know what the overall target is ching paying. President Jumping has announced it that you know, common emissions are supposed to to net out is supposed to go to zero in by two
thousand and sixty. We're supposed to reach peak emissions carbon emissions by the end of this decade. But again, so much is going to depend on, you know, whether or not these company, these big companies can make a green transition.
They're very powerful, you know. I mean they have common emission, they have common footprint the size of country, but they also have you canomic output the size of whole countries, right, And they have powerful links into city governments, into provincial governments, and the people that run them have ministerial ranks. They are in a sense, you know, they are they are massive fiefdoms. I mean, you know, you mentioned President she and has promised to zero out emissions by twenties sixty, right,
which seems a long time away. Uh, if you look at what's happened to the climate today, Um, you know, how does he balance I mean, his own climate is not great, right and maybe you know, pushed back by his own citizens, But how does he bound balance growth in that economy? Right? There's going to keep to keep everybody happy, right and and avoid unrest with all so taking care of the climate, which is ultimately taking care
of the citizens and their health. That's exactly it. I mean. So, and that's really the story of where you have these long range, high level, pious targets of netting out carbon emissions. But what's going to happen in the near term, Well, we know what's happened in the near tern in China right now they're ramping up massively cold capacity to address
their energy crunch. Right, They're building coal fire power stations, the coal emissions that carbon emissions have a far from peaking, Like things are literally moving in the exact wrong direction, the exact opposite directions. So the rest of the world is going to have to make up for what China is now doing, and that seems rather unlikely too. So how do we app I think about so many of
the new economy conversations. You guys are looking at this from such a high level and bringing in people form all over the globe. So I don't know, how do we look at this, How do we go forward? What needs to happen? It's not all doom and gloom, right, So we need to balance this out a bit. So um Number one, the cost of renewable energy in China, that's wind and solar, is now cheaper than the cost of energy from fossil fuel. So that's a big positive.
China is a global leader in electric vehicles. China has something like eighty percent of all of the world's output of lithium ion batteries. Okay, so these are these are big positives. Plus plus, China is massively investing in some of these frontier technologies green hydrogen as an example, carbon capture and storage. And if China can master some of these technologies, it has the ability to scale them in a way that no other country on Earth can do.
It did precisely that, of course on elect cause, and is doing that now on on batteries and solar and wind. Is there the political will to do that? Ultimately because at the same time, right, there will be industries then
that are kind of taken out as a result. Right as these new alternatives commit very serious g G ping is very serious about reducing emissions, and in fact, that was one of the reasons they had an energy crunch this year, because you know, the provincial authorities are on district instructions to meet emissions targets, and some of them looked like they were overshooting. Um, so there is a
there is a serious commitment. The question, the question, the question really, as you say, is this trade off between emissions and GDP growth? Yeah, exactly, there's an uncomfortable period we're seeing it with the energy sector. Just generally we talk about this transition for the world, right from moving away from carbon fuels. I mean, based on this story, it doesn't even sound like China's in a transition. He doesn't. It isn't a long it's in a long term transition.
And as I say, the on the technology side, um, there are a lot of positives. All Right, we'll see if the Earth although has that many years left, Um, Andy Brow, I know, I don't mean to be so dismal. It's Monday, though I'm feeling the gloom, Andy Brown, Editorial director of Bloomberg New Economy in our interactor brokers, Andy, thank you as always so among our most read on the Bloomberg Today, no doubt about. In fact, there's a
flurry of stories. It's all about Facebook. Yes they report after the clothes today, and yes there are stories about the companies tim internal struggles when it comes to misinformation and attracting a younger audience. Well. Naomie Nicks is a social media reporter here at Bloomberg News. She's with us from the Bloomberg studio in Washington. Also joining us live from San Francisco as Kurt Wagner, Technology reporter for Bloomberg News.
We got a lot to get to with both of you. Naomi, I want to start with you because your story that Facebook privately worried about hate speech spawning violence was among the many that hit this morning as a result of of Facebook whistle blower Francis Hogan. Give us a broad overview of what we learned new about Facebook today. Yeah, I mean, I think Sophie book has you know, for years been talking about the power of its AI systems
to detect hate speech. It regularly releases these transparency reports that say that Facebook's uh you know, systems detect more than nine percent of the hate speech that it takes down off the platform form before a user reports it to the company. What these documents show though, is finally we have a sense of the total universe of hate speech that Facebook does and doesn't take action on overall. And what it suggests is that less than five percent
of the hate speech UH is addressed by Facebook. And so that's one of the many revelations. We've also seen some revelations about how Facebook prioritizes fighting hate in the Western world and leaves developing regions behind UM and to the extent that it's algorithm, the many the mechanisms that are promoting content and making it viral are actually part of the problem. M So, and if I feel like it gets to a bigger story, and Kurt, I want to bring you in, Kurt on this too, about the
transparency that the company kind of puts out there. That you may not agree with what they're doing on their platform about hate speech, but it's what we know and don't know, and the same thing has to And I feel like this speaks to as an investor I want to know the company I'm investing in, and this speaks to also their audience, which is crucial to future growth, and that has to do. Let's get to your story, Kurt, about the younger audience. The teenagers. I mean, they're not
into Facebook, are they now? And I don't think you would be surprised right to hear teens aren't really into Facebook. I wasn't either. What I think these documents really showed is that not only is it a probably more serious problem than we all anticipated, but it doesn't just stop at teens. It also extends now to kind of what they call young adults, so people in between eighteen and twenty nine years old. Um, we're seeing the teens used to kind of you know, maybe use Instagram and age
ump to Facebook. That's not happening as much anymore. We're seeing time spent, the number of messages, the number of posts that people create, all of that is going down. And I think if you're an investor, you know this is a huge, hugely important audience right for advertisers. It's it's obviously the next wave of Internet users that you imagine Facebook is going to lean on for its business, and you would want to know that, you know, things are heading in the wrong direction. And so I think
that's why this is such a troubling thing. And if you're a Facebook investor, you're probably not stoked to to hear that. Doesn't doesn't this get to the like material information right as an investor, like what you need to know?
It does, But at the same time, it does seem like Facebook investors aren't even that concerned today shares a Facebook even after this right right, well now they're up one point eight percent, and even in the last five days, which includes the period of time where we saw that really terrible news from pinterest for excuse me, from Snap with its earnings, they're only down about So now, I mean, what do you make of that? Well, I think it just speaks to the power of Facebook in this market
and the advertising business it's built, um. And I think it also speaks to the fact that perhaps investors are seeing, you know, this is just another one of its many political crises that the company has weathered in the past. But you know, in truth in actuality, regulators haven't really been able to put a you know, a dimmer on Facebook's growth despite years of controversies, and so you know.
Perhaps you know, that's what investors are seeing there. They're seeing this as more of a PR crisis than a true sort of business regulatory crisis. Well, and I do feel like we're getting to a point where we've got to as a company, they've got to figure out I mean hate speech. You guys write about it name you write it in your story with Lauren ed Or that conservatives and liberals often defined hate speech differently, like this gets into a tricky area, and we talked about this
often about you know, freedom of speech. But I also think about what you know, Kurt was saying that if I'm investing in this company for the future, I want to know that there's going to be a future audience. It's an advertising based model at least at this point, and if it's not going to be there in a few years, that might, Kurt, you know, impact whether or not I want to invest in this company. Yeah, of course.
And I think they've been able to mask this because the service is just so big, because they have so much growth in other markets and other age groups. Right, But I I think the future thing is really important, and it's not the kind of thing that's gonna happen overnight. Right, it might take years for this to materialize, but I think it's important that people understand the trajectory. Here. Hey, really quick, guys, we don't have a lot of time.
Ten seconds here, Naomi, what's a question you would ask on the call tonight? Well, I mean I think I would ask about the revelations around UM Kurt's story. Um, why has it not been more upfront about a true user breakdown for all of its apps by age and demographic? And does it plan to do at in the future? And Kurt, what about for you? Real quickly? How about what's the new name going to be? I love you guys?
UM so great, incredible reporting. There's so many incredible stories by Kurt, by Naomi, by our team at large when it comes to Facebook, and of course we get earnings after the closing bell today. I think I might ask those questions. No, I'm not on the call. No, but it's great, like they whittled it down. I mean, there's just so much is do they answer questions like that? Yeah? Exactly, And we'll Mark Zuckerberg be there. This is Bloomberg, Okay,
do you know who this is? Okay? So I have to say, in the early days of TV um, not early early, but the second iteration um. We used to play a lot of music in between our breaks when we were getting ready for a five am show, and one of our producers loved Rush indeed, so would play it all the time. New world man, right. Who would have thought that phrase could ever apply to Donald Trump? But here you go, here you go. You know, he creates this new media company. It's gonna set up the
social media and more. And he decides to make a deal with a special purpose acquisition company a k a. A stack a spack. I'll get it out. I was thinking more about sort of how you might describe the result of that deal, which is the headline in my chart, says Trump's meme World. I mean, it isn't just Digital World acquisition, which is the blank check company that's actually making also known as whack the whack because that's the
way back. Yeah, exactly, might be a sack. You have this software company called Funware, which actually did some work on the Trump reelection campaign last year. And you know, if you looked at the s two days of last week actually had a bigger gain and at one point at least than Digital World didn't and we were talking almost and then as it happens, there's a gentleman named
Patrick Orlando that runs Digital World. He's also the CEO of two other SPACs and so we've seen them, especially one of them, Benassary Capital uh take off starting on Friday, and then the other one is based out of China. We wrote about it. Young Hung International also up a bit on Friday. And there's one more uh mckea Capital, where he serves as a director, not CEO. But nonetheless, you even saw a bit of a game in that stock on Friday, So you know, why settle for one
meme stock when you can have five. So that's Donald Trump's meme world in a nutshell. And if you want to see this performance for yourself, folks, and get the names of those companies in an email, I'll get it. I'll get everything to you along with what I do going forward. And the email addressed for that is d Wilson at Bloomberg dot net. That's d Wilson at Bloomberg dot net. Right, So the dude behind all of these, that's the commonality, right, it's Mr Orlando who we talked
about on air. Um as we are as we are learning more about him and the work that he has done. Right, so presumably the Reddit traders or whoever are kind of looking at this and say, well, okay, if this one spac is doing this, what about his other SPACs? And hence you have You know, these moves isn't act when you're like walk into the door. Look well last week Thursday closed up three fifty six percent Friday of seven percent today. Yeah, but there you go. These things are voluable,
no question. And looking across the group, Flintware is actually down eighteen and a half. Look at that dwack chart. I mean it's just crazy. It's like straight line, like a lego. You can make this out of legos. It's just a straight line forever or several months, and then all of a sudden it's a straight curve up and then a little bit of tailing off right like you could do this. I gottn't even whack your chart for you. But it's my stock of the debt. What is it? Tim?
You actually mentioned it a few moments ago before we came on Air Backed Holdings Taker b k k T. This is a crypto impartment, Okay, cryptocurrency outfit that was taken public by the Intercontinental Exchange, who you know was the owner of the New York Stock Exchange. And uh, it was a spack deal. I'm goody good um. It was its back deal made in January and what wasn't completed until a week ago. And actually back shares fell the first four days after the deal happened. Rose on
Friday today. Well, they got a couple of things going on. They partnered with the financial company five Serve, and on top of that they have a deal with master Card. You put that all together, and the share have just taken off at the moment. Backed Holdings b A K KAT hence the two ks and the ticker symbol up A hundred and seventy one. Wow, this is a stock I saw moving significantly. I clicked into it in the Bloomberg terminal. Shares had been halted, news pending, and that
news after these agreements. It's another chart you can build with legos. I'm just saying, straight line, straight up. Wow, it's like, look at it. It's crazy. It was. It was below ten bucks for such a long time. All right, Dave Wilson, go get some water. Yeah, but you let me drive? Oh no, no, no, no, this is not a toy. Please, I'll do the ridings. I want to drive. It's a good question. This is the drive to the globe? Punk from me A well don radio alright, TikTok, everybody.
Just about ten and a half minutes left in today's trading session. What an interesting one because you know, the first few minutes of training today we were down. But we have rallied off of those loads and we've got some games here. Tim, Hello, Tesla, Hello, Tesla, hurts and a few other things. Let's get to it. Let's get to the drive to the closest Nattia level. She is senior US Equity Strategies over EBS Global Wealth Management with us on the phone from New York. Not Eve. Good
to have you here with Tim and myself. Uh, we're all in about earnings, getting ready to be all in on big tech earnings. What what's your make of what or what do you think about the earnings so far and what's to come perhaps from big tech? Yeah, you know, it's still early in the season, but we think results are coming in really strong. It's coming even better than
our initial above consensus expectations. Uh, we do express at the beat rate that we've seen so far for a team percent, much of that driven by financial We look for that to moderate. We are looking for earnings growth of this quarter of over thirty percent year over year UM. That would suggest a more roughly high single digit beat rate.
We do think that the sectors that are our best position right now to surprise on the upside our energy and as you said, but in parts of technology and as you should get a boost from the higher prices that we've seen grinding higher the last few weeks. And much of tech is more insulated from that supply Chaine disruption, like software and the cloud play, so that should help
boost tech earnings throughout the season. When you say tech, do you also mean companies that rely on advertising for revenue, because as we learned last week Nadia, the supply chain cannot even affect those companies as a result of companies like you know, consumer package good companies that don't want to advertise as much because they are experienced supply disruptions. Absolutely,
So that's in the communication services sector. Obviously, the questions around digital advertising, um, you know you don't have the goods to sell, then it's tougher to advertise those good. Um. That said, I would say the other verticals, those more every center of the pandemic, ones like we use your entertainment restaurants are coming back, so that should help offset any weakness that we're seeing in the goods vertical. Um, So we think that that will help UM some of
the other larger players in the digital advertising. So just help me out here. Did you say thirteen percent or beating but you expect that to moderate? Is that quarter to quarter? So thirteen percent beat rates so far? And so coming into the season, consensus expectations for earnings growth this quarter was around or so, and so we're seeing that come in much better than expected year over year. Now that's a moderation than what we saw in the
second quarter, but still very strong. Just given the old ball of context, that's earnings. What about revenues? I mean, it's the top line we really you know, focus on, because companies can't really muck with that too much. Exactly, you cannot generate, you cannot you know, engineer sales, right, um, But so SMT sales growths are really robust this quarter.
We're looking for fiftcent year over year growth or even better. UM, we think that you know that the point here is that demand remains really strong, and because that is the case, that should help on the margin side. I know margin has been an issue. We think that that sales what would allow that operating leverage to kick in as well, helping to offset some of those highest cost that UM companies are seeing. What has been concerning you that you've
heard from executives? I mean, for example, today we've heard from Kimberly Clark that it's been negatively impacted by significant inflation, supply chain disruptions that increase costs beyond what they anticipated, and they don't actually know when those things will be resolved. How concerning is that to you? That is something that
we're definitely watching. We think a lot of the costs that some of these companies are seeing are related to supply seeds to disruption, and we do think that that's transitory. It is taken a bit longer to resolve than we anticipated. We probably won't see a resolution of some of these issues until we get surround the two, but I will see.
The thing that we're watching most closely is on the labor cost side, because we know that that's stickier than some of those all more transitory inflational pressure, and I think that this is where price e power really comes in as well, and company's ability to pass along from
those speaking of cost consumers. Hey, now, you guys do a lot of research, and I do under you know, SNAP, if we look at it, it is down just before that disappointing earnings report where they talked about supply chain problems and how that's resulting in companies not putting up when it comes to advertising. Should we anticipate that we will see that with the other social media platforms as well?
You know, I think some of those issues are very company specific because I do think that the larger add players are better position. You know, one as I talked about earlier, those other verticals that I've been opening up those every cent. But I do think that that particular company also did fight, you know, some issues around the changes in privacy sets set in on some operating systems.
I think this is where scale comes into place. Some of those larger places have so much data on their users and that they're able to help curtel some of the impacts that are just need by changes and privacy um set ins, and so the innovation that continues to happen with those larger um digital advertised advertised platform um is will really will come to bear this week. Hey, Nadia, for the SP five, you continue to maintain June in December price targets. So June's uh, December two is five
thousand right now it's at forty five sixty two and change. Uh, what makes you revise those? It's all earning, you know, if Ernest continue to come in better than we expected to see if we're looking for forty year of year EPs, next year we're looking for ten percent, and so if we see Ernest continue to come in better than next
because that might proper to advise up our next year estimates. Also, I think the only thing that we're watching very closely is Washington on the tax side, because our number assume of four to five percentage points dragged from higher corporate taxis and now there's chatter that that might not even happen. So that could be a source of upside to our earnest expectations for next year. Good thing to point out. And then there's always COVID, which we have to remember
is always there in her backdrop. All right, Nadia, thank you so much. Nadia, Level level. Excuse me, senior equity Strategies at UBS Global Wealth Management joining us on the phone from New York City. 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 Bloomberg Global News m
