This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. Late last month, though you might have noticed that Toro, the digital stock broker delaying it's ten point four billion dollars back listing. We'll get into that for an update on the business here at Milk, and let's bring in Yoni Ascia. Did
I say it right? I'm trying to co founder and CEO of Toro, the company, pointing out it is the world's largest trading network right here at Milk and normally based in Israel, but doing a little bit of traveling now that the world is opening up. How are you very good? Very good? Excited to being away for first and twenty five years. Really yeah. I used to spend here a lot as a kid, but I have I haven't been here for a while. A lot of things have changed a little bit. Well, I'm just just here.
Let's talk about Toro and what's been going on. We're gonna get into um your listing, but in the meantime,
talk about the business and the growth. What are you seeing. Well, we've seen explosive growth over the past eighteen months, really starting as we talked about before, with with the beginning of the pyndemic, just at inflection point in the rise of retail investors, with a whole new generation across the world, millennials realizing that they want to invest in the markets, whether it's stock markets, whether it's US stock markets, or
whether it's crypto markets, just increased interest all around the world. We founded the company in two thousand seven with a vision of opening the global markets for everyone to trade investment as simpler and transparent way. And up until twenty twenty, beginning of twenty twenty, we had about twelve million registered users and since then we added more than eleven a new million registered users by the end of the first half one, so basically we double the company, more than
double the company. So twenty three million registered users worldwide grew by five point six million mergisitry users the first six month this year, after growing about five million registered
users the entire of last year. We've so we've grown significantly our business and we've seen the shift for the first crypto rally in two thousand and seventeen, we've seen our business grow rapidly from sixty million dollar commission to three million dollars from two thousand and sixteen, really driven by the first Crypto Rally, and then we saw Crypto Winter, and then Crypto Winter we sort of drove, We drove our customers who came to it Toro to trade back
then you know, x rap Etherium to diversify into equities through the social network where they can actually see what other people are trading and see each other's performance and copy the most successful investors. And and then we saw Crypto Winter shifted the business into equities and commission free stock trading worldwide, and then started this year with Crypto Rally two point which is just an amazing rally. Only I hear what you're saying and imagine some of our
listeners are thinking of themselves. Wait a second. This is a similar story as to what propelled robin Hood to the public markets in a relatively short time into such massive growth in RWY one. But we are seeing that robin had chairs are down more partly due to some softness with company referred to as seasonality earlier this year. Are you seeing any of that decline in activity, any of that seasonality that we heard from robin Hood so sensitive to the fact that during the word process of
transforming from a private company to a public company. I can only share companies data relevant for the first six month which we published, which were very good. We did update the markets that Q three, and this is something you can look at exchange data. So equities have been software in Q three if you look just an exchange data, options data, volumes and equities and volatility have gone down
generally in the markets. Uh. And now we're seeing obviously crypto rally two point oh the longest crypto rally in crypto history in Q four, sort of returning with a roar, so hoping to see Bitcoin reach all time high. Already peaked and touched actually market cap all time high over the last forty eight hours. So very interesting to see what's happening in crypto in Q four. You who are you competing against? Is it robin Hood? Is it all
of the online trading platforms, even the establishment? Who is it? So the way we see it, and again we're very global and uh, we have our businesses Europe, US, Asia, Latin America, Middle East were regulated across the world and in every single country. What we see is the discount brokerage one point was very much consolidated by the local banks. So here you know schwab Bot t D Morgan Stanley bought e Trade and we see the same in Germany
and Italy and Spain, in the UK everywhere. But who were really competing in against is those super apps, right, apps like Toro, who are attractive to a new audience, new customers, customers that are beginning their trading activity are looking for new tools for ways to engage and learn, how to trade the markets, how to participate in the markets, and a lot of great company needs just expending the
audience and expending the markets. You know, you mentioned that you're in the process of transitioning from a private company to a public company. Is it's still going to happen in the fourth quarter. We are currently expecting the de spec process in Q four and very excited about this transition at a ten point four billion dollar valuations. Still with Betty Cohen's back fintech acquisition. Yes, yes, f TCV, f d c V, it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen
in Q four, currently in progress. I think could you derail it? You know, I come from capital markets. There's always probabilities of something happening somewhere sometime, but bitcoin is also here to stay. One last question twenty seconds here. Is it a younger demo that definitely is using the platform? Is that who it is? Or is it it's younger demo versus the incumbents? For sure the media and agenty tour is thirty four versus sixty plus and some of
the incumbents stay in touch. We want to talk with you, especially when you go through um your growing public in the fourth quarter. Yoni, thank you so much, Thank you very much. He is co found or CEO of E Tour Road joining us here at the Milk and Institute Global Conference. Uh. Fascinating right in terms of the growth, really fascinating you on you've got to come visit us in New York too, Yes, alright, November. We're gonna hold
you do it. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week Carl Master, Tim Stanovic and this is Bloomberg. Well, earlier today we spoke with Bridgewater Associate Sustainability co c i O Karen Carneal Tambore at the Milk and Global Conference, and this excerpt. Karen told us all about how investors are increasingly more interested in having portfolios aligned with E s G. Check
it out. The revolution that I feel like has occurred is that a few years ago, a very very small subset investors really wanted to talk about this issue, and now predominant number of investors say, I care about this issue. My stakehold does care about this issue. I want my capital aligned. Now, what does it mean? How do you measure it? How do you actually do it at a whole portfolio level. That's evolving very quickly, from very nasons
to developing very quickly. And one of the biggest shifts you're seeing is, you know, people went from kind of knock caring about it, to let's do it with like a tiny part of my portfolio, have a couple of really awesome projects to write about my annual report, to wait a minute, if this actually matters. It matters at a whole portfolio level. I need to see a top down across all the asset classes. Think about my strategic acid allocation? How do you think about measuring it? So
we are a systematic fund. We do everything systematically. So when I started approaching this issue with my team, we were sort of saying, we have to find a way to systematically measure it, and I think the systemization matters even more here than in other issues because you have so much personal opinions. You don't want to rely on you know, someone in the morning saying I think this
company is good, I think it's bad. So we basically try to build a process that goes through thousands of securities around the world and assesses their alignment to the United Nations s TGS. What is the connection that you found between that measure and returns? I think the most valuable way for investors to think about it is that there's sort of two dimensions or even three dimensions you
want to think about investing. There's the part that's just about returns, where all you need to do is look at what's happening in the world right now, with the energy crisis, with what's happening in fiscal policy, to say, clearly, if my job as an investor is to imagine what's going to happen in the world relevant to what's priced in, I can't ignore these issues. It's obviously causing big changes and assets and so on and so forth, and going
to drive our broad outlook. There's the risk side, which is you know, typical risk controls are not walking figured to think about what if we have a bad climate outcome or a fast climate transition. But then you have this third dimension, which is just impact saying, yeah, I could maybe find ways to make money that are unaligned with this, but I actually want my money aligned with this. Beyond just thinking about returns. I want to be contributing
to these issues. Karen, tim and I talk all this time that you know, here we are going through quarterly earnings and you know we're looking at margins, top, bottom line, all these different metrics, like we get this right and and investors get this. Shouldn't there be some kind of E S G metric? How do we find a way to let the companies make that transition that might have a financial impact. Does the SEC need to come up with symmetrics that says every quarter, we want to know revenues,
we want to know earnings. But we also went into the E S G metric and that's gonna matter. Well, I think E S G is a really broad universe and every environmental or social issue this is going to develop. But let me take the one that's furthest along, which is carbon. Because you have this world where basically every government in the world has said I want to find a way to transition my economy to have net zero emissions.
And now there's a very clear path of for every company you can actually say, well, what are they responsible for? What are their emissions? And if you take seriously that governments through time will find a way to transition and put the policies in place, whether it's incentives or taxes or whatnot, companies that don't do it are going to have a problem. And so with carbon I think we have the clear path of this is literally what needs to be measured. I think most companies know they're gonna
be forced to report their carbon footprint. They're going to be forced to report it in different ways. There's a couple of different templates that have been created out there of what that reporting is like, and it's giving investors a very clear roadmap between kind of government commitments, this is what we want the economy to do, to specific company reports of whether or not they're aligned with that, what's the penalty then ultimately, well just look at the
amount of capital all around the world that shifting. Investors are pretty clearly saying that they want to be aligned with putting their capital towards where we'll be aligned with an zero transition. How many people have made a commitment saying I want my portfolio to be net zero, but they'll give up some performance because of that. Well, with you're a large institution and you have a multi decade commitment to being aligned with a zero, that's a bindyconstraint.
You don't really have any choice. You've got to go meet that commitment, alright. That was Karen Carnel Tambor. She is the co c i O for sustainability of our Bridgewater Associates. We caught up with her here at the Milk and Institute Global Conference. Keep in mind, folks, we know this. You know this. We talk about it sustainable investment. It is growing assets, in fact, up to thirty five point three trillion dollars globally last year, amid mounting concerns
about societal inequities and climate change. We're seeing him so much money go into this area. I go, we see a lot of money going into it. But I go back to the question that you and I ask over and over again about metrics and about you know what moves Netflix is stock tomorrow? Is it Netflix's comments about s G it's Netflix's comments about subscribers in the most recent quarter and how they're thinking about this current quarter.
And I got what she said about you know, being carbon neutral, right or net neutral in terms of what governments are requiring companies to do. But I do feel like that I wonder if the metrics need to be amped up a little bit and what do those metrics look like? Yeah, exactly, because there a standardization of them, exactly. But it's definitely an investment area, she said. People are talking about it and dealing with it a lot more
than they ever were. Are You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week watching us on YouTube, and this is Bloomberg Radio Carol Masterton Stanovich live at the Milk and Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills here and on the West Coast. We've got a really great guest to wrap up our first day here. His company founded in eighteen and they are leveraging software, a software first approach, if you will, when it comes to how we manufacture things. We're talking
about industrial automation. We're so delighted to have with us. Bright Machines CEO and co founder Amar haunts Ball. He's with us here at Milk and welcome to bloomberg Is this week. Thank you for having me, so tell us about what you're doing. I'm fascinating because increasingly we know so much in our world has been automated. You're taking it to another level. Yeah. We What we do is
we build autonomous assembly lines. So you think of autonomous cars, you can imagine them, you know, kind of driving themselves. So we're doing kind of the same idea but applying it to building products. So we call ourselves bright Machines because we're giving eyes and brains to machines and using that intelligence, if you will, to create these, uh, what used to be labor centric assembly lines and replacing them
with entirely machine powered, software powered ways of assembling products. MA, if you look at any product, the ones that are surrounding us right now, it's kind of like if you imagine the imagine all the piece parts of these products. They're made by machines, but they're assembled by humans. And we're changing that so that they're even assembled by humans
assembled by machines, so the entire process is automated. What are some examples of processes that you've been able to automate that until you showed up at bright machines or created bright machines, were processes that companies require people for. I would say assembly in particular. So you think of the look at the products surrounding us. So you think think of the network infrastructure that's connecting our computers to
the internet. You think of the the the electric vehicles, all the components that go in them, all those pieces. So let's take a piece of network infrastructure. You look at a modern day router um Assembling that router used to be done by hand in a place like China or Mexico. That's the thing that we have replaced using our autonomous assembly lines or robots and other machines are basically putting all the pieces in place and building network boxes.
And we're doing that. I think that's what was kind of surprising, kind of reading in for this, so that I think I had thought so much was already automated. Give us you are snaps out of what you see. I mean, the reality is less than eight percent of
the assembly lines in the world are automated. And you see all you know, robots moving around for forty years, but the reality has been that to set up these systems takes so much time and cost so much and requires the level of expertise that only you know, the big automotive or the big aerospace companies that have lots of money and a five year product cycles have been able to automate. You look at the you know, any kitchen appliance in your house that's not automated because it
takes too long to configure or cost too much. I say, bullet that I used to make my shape a good example. Really it's not automated. It's again the like you look at that bullet. Pieces of the steel and the plastic are made by machines, but they're all assembled by hand.
And that's the kind of thing that when you you know, and and you bring it, you bring technology like arts to bear, you can you know, assemble that using a modern When ultimately we reached the point where humans are replaced on automation, you knew we were going to there, then it creates a massive it's a transformational shift when it comes to labor market. It's something we talked about
earlier with David hunted Piga. Right, you know, this is the type of thing that that can actually prevent inflation from getting out of control exactly. But yeah, when does that happen? And what is what is the massive shifts? So let me give you three parts of the ends. First of all, this kind of high level of automation has happened in other industries, and bank banks are a
great example. When a t m S came, it didn't result in like unemployment for all the people that you know, you automated the most repetitive and kind of mind taxing
um work. And that's what's happening in manufacturing. If you think about people, and this is it's not meant to be dystopian, but when you go into factories today, there are robots everywhere, but the robots are humans, and you'd see humans in factories doing the same operation a hundred thousand times literally in a screws you know, for screws into a box and screw like that is my numbing work, right, And so that's the kind of thing that the systems
like us replaces. But you're right, when we do that, there is somebody that's affected. But what we've seen our customers do is that this they look at automation as an augmentation exercise that they're increasing the ability of a single person to do multiple, you know, more work, or have them do more valuable work like better customer service, to better engineering, do better design. And that's what I think will happen. It will take definitely you go through
a curve where people need to be retrained. But on the other side of it, it's a much better experience for everybody. But it's safe to say that they're going to be people who are doing that repetitive work today that we won't need those jobs in the future, right And in fact, I would say one of the things that you see today is there are unfilled manufacturing jobs around the world for that very reason. Some people don't
want those jobs. In the United States, there's four manufacturing jobs that are open that are unfilled because it's actually hard to find either they require a very high level of skill or the kind of skill they requires, So basically people don't want those you're hearing in the background, those people who don't want those jobs, they're getting ready for another event here. No, but it is interesting, So it's to me, it's it makes such sense, like why
wouldn't everybody just automate everything? Why aren't people Is it expensive? Yeah, it's I would say up until now, you know, I think it's been daunting to to automate, and it's always been a from an expense perspective, from a time perspective, and that you know, when companies like Artists shows up and changes the economics of automation, I think people get
more ready. The other thing that has happened is there has been a perfect storm in the last two years between the pandemic, between tariff wars and then a little bit of security concerns that have really accelerated people's interest in automation. How do you future proof these assembly lines? If the customer makes a big purchase, it's a good point that automates it. How do they know two years from now it's gonna be so good? So glad you
asked that questions. Software is a secret sauce because what we do through software is make our lines programmable so effectively. Since our our secret sources, we use software to configure and run these machines. That software can be used to modify the same line to build a different product. So it's so we can upgrade. The software doesn't impact the hardware. The existing hardware if you completely change the product, let's say you're building your bullet and now you're going to
build a network rowder. Yes, you need to change the end of armed grippers and some of the feeding systems. But if you're you know, you're upgrading the bullet or you're doing a second model of that, then you don't need to do this. So you're gonna go public this year. That is the plan. We announced ours transaction, yeah and uh seventeenth of May or a SPAC merger, and we're
in the process of these packing. We filed our s for today and you know, when the SEC gives us to go ahead, then we shall be a public company. Come back and talk to us. Well, we would love to continue this conversation. Lamar, thank you, my pleasure. Thanks for having Lamar Puntsball. He is Bright Machines CEO and co founder with us here at Milkine. We did it. One day down, one day, two more to go, two more to go. We've got I'm going to talk with
Kathy Wood. We're going to hear a lot more conversations. They're all coming out. Have a good night, everybody,