Corporate Leadership, Markets, and Nonprofits (Podcast)

because that's what you do um in Japanese business. But I feel underdressed now because it's a Thursday just we're a flannel shirt. But thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure having in. Let me turn on your mic there. UM. We have so many questions and we're so uh excited that you came in. UM. Nissan is a business that's been doing really well uh lately, not only because of the popularity of the cars, um, but also because of the weakness of the yen. I wonder what you plan

to do with the extra profits that you're making. It seems like you're in a great position to invest well. First of all, thank you for having me here. It's my pleasure to be in this radio. Uh. You talked about the extent where it has been benefiting financially on our our profit which is true at the short term, but we also need to be aware that our cost in terms of raw material is increasing at the level even higher than the exchange rate gains, so that is

kind of making that the situation of the profitability. On top of that, we do have a good performance in our company in terms of about sales mix and how we're making that good product to the customer to give the good value to the customer. That is making up financial outlook which we announced in last month to be a little bit more positive. Beside, we're speaking with Makoto Cheeta,

CEO and President of Nissan Motor Corporation. Mr. Cheetah. One of the unique things about your company, about the Nichean Motor Corporation is the relationship with Rena and the ownership cross ownership with renew Can you talk to us about the state of that today and how that may change

going forward. Yeah, what we are discussing with our partners how we can make the alliance to the next stage to be more competitive and knowing that the identification is one of the next la for the automotive industry we are facing everywhere in the world and how we can maximize the asset that we built under the Alliance father to be competitive, and that is what we are in

discussion with our partner every day. We have a bank of TV screens here and you can see half of them are full of President Biden right now meeting with French President Emmanuel McCrone. One of the things um that they are reportedly going to talk about is the Inflation Reduction Act, which a lot of people in Europe and I imagine um in Japan as well think unfairly benefits

US carmakers. What's your take on the Inflation Reduction Act and the credits that seem um to be only for made in US, not only vehicle rolls assembled in US vehicles, but also vehicles with a certain amount of US sourced parts. Well, what I can say at this moment is that, of course, the electification in the US has become more visible done right in the two or three years ago, which is

making us more future opportunity. We already have declare ourselves to be farther invest for the electification in the US at the level of the five hundred million dollar and that we are considering additional two hundred fifty million dollar in order to make identified strategy and to be accepted the customer for our value of the Nissan in the future. So this is what we're trying to do. Um I l A. Yes, it's a challenging in the short term,

but there could be the opportunity in the future. How we father to press ourselves here in the United States of our presence, Mr. Treat As you probably know as you travel around America that Americans like their pickup trucks and from an electric vehicle perspective, my census, if you don't have an electric pickup truck, you don't have really a market position in the US. Talk to us about niche on and how maybe they think about that part of the market. Yeah, we're looking towards the two thousand

thirty to introduce electified vehicle of twenty three models. Out of that fifteen our evs and we have a lot of plan. And then when you talk about the US, as you mentioned that the pickup is very important segment that we have to glow in the future. Yeah, we are looking at further we have a title and we have middle sized pickup as well, and we did like to have our value to be father to recognize by

the customer. And when we talk about electified vehicle, we are planning a lot of things here in the US. And one of the things that I did would like to take this occasion to highlight is that we do have our new technology challenging today on the battery called a S S B ALSOLD state battery and this is to be introduced in first in Japan as a propilot

plant in two twenty four. Then we were looking for this commercially and this battery specification would allow or enable more frexibility of the size of the car to be electric. So this is what we are challenging as a Nissan as we have been working for the electified vehicle or electric car. As one of the pioneer started was a Leap with a sudden ten and we do have a thirty years over experience of this battery chemistry in our company. I wonder what my favorite car clearly is Godzilla? Right.

The g t r um is legendary, you know, said to be um produced by the motor. Only four people are allowed to assemble the motor in Japan. Is that true? What's the what are the plans for Godzilla can? Are you gonna make it into a hybrid? Is there is there a new electric Godzilla coming that I can talk about the future product yet, But what I can say about it is that the how Nistan father to make

the eniche people's life. This is our corporate purpose and then Nissan is making fun this sports car like a GDR as you mentioned, and to down to the electric car that we have. I love the Z as well, especially in yellow. It's a great My first car as a Z nice and I do like to have a sports car to be father to deliver to the customer. And we have to think about what kind of the future power train or we have to consider for this kind of sports card as well. Mr Cheated China, talk

to us about your position in China. What you think the future China is. That's certainly a big issue here in the United States. Well, China. I think it's still the big market that we are. The media or ems are experimentally doing the business case and it will continue as you see in the scale of the market. But I see the world now it's going to be more on the maybe the right way of saying English. I'm not so sure about fragmented okay especially the elxification. Each

country has a different speed and customers acceptance. And what is important for us is how we can design ourselves towards to that. What is for you as what is for your what is what China? What is what Japan? And that's going to be a challenging for the next five to ten years. That's the reason why we have announced sumption to Southern thirty and we're going to do

out the more detailed plan on the e respective. Mark Okayo Cheetah, a CEO and president of Nissan Motor Company, joining us live in our Bloomberg in Erector Brooker Studio. We really appreciate you taking time to speak with us and learn about what's the latest with the Nissan Motor Corporation. So I put in DAL Drones Industrials Index Space m o V for movers, and I find that costs, I mean the salesforce accounts for a hundred and twelve points of the four point decline in the Dow Jones Industrial

So I need to go. It's literally been decimated. So a lot of people think decimated is reduced to one tenth, but actually it's yes, exactly, So you're using the correct Okay, Man Deep Singh senior technology annels for Bloomberg Intelligence. We got them both here in the studio on right, What how do you guys divide it? I don't rock, what do you cover that Man Deep doesn't? And vice versa? The Internet names Okay, I don't know. I just they

do it all their tech. I just throw tech, hardware, software, Internet, I just throw them eat at each very different. Yes, and and that's what you'll see sales force versus All right, let's go a salesforce on that's your name. We'll assign the blame to you. What happened to them because they were just ripping it for so long? Yeah, so it's falling in the same category of you know, macro yt

spending slow down. Now. I think the stock reaction would have been less worse if work they didn't announce spectacular results the day before UM. And so that's one culprit. The second is that co CEO Brett Taylor decides to leave and start you know, it's gonna most likely start a new company. I think that puts a little bit of haziness at the top. There have been a few CEOs or co CEOs that have left in the last

few years. So it really people want to figure out is what's Mark Bennehoff going to do when it comes to leadership on the top. So I think both both those factors are weighing on sales force today. But in general, we've seen a lot of bad news or not good news out of these software companies over the last few days. Right, CrowdStrike was not good. I didn't think, um that we're gonna see gains in Snowflake, but it's now turned around

in the market. Nonetheless, the outlook isn't great. You know, are people spending less on these services they see they are all old spending services less on some of these services. But remember one thing, it's also question of valuation and how much estimates have been reduced. So every stock is different, every company is different. In areas where they have been estimates have been cut down quite a bit, they are not responding, you know, from a stock point of view

as bad. In some places where it's not been cut down, people are surprised by what happened. You know, stock reaction is bad. Crowds right is a great example. Salesforce is a great example. Over there, a man deep we have the I think just only a silicon you're only doing Silicon Valley. H Elon Musk tweeting out that he was at the Apple campus in Cupertino, California. Rewind First, he tweeted out that he was going to war with Apple. Yes, he said, you know what, they threatened to take us

out of the app store. They charge us thirty it's a monopoly they're abusing, and when we choose to go to war. Then he went to the Cupertino campus and he was like, oh, we're great friends. Well, so a couple of things they're one is I don't think he realized that if they pivot to a subscription model, Apple will be taking a thirty percent cut. Remember Twitter was all advertising. With advertising, you're monetizing the time span through by showing ads. You don't have to pay Apple anything.

With subscription, it's very different because if people sign up for a subscription on the phone, Apple is taking a thirty percent cut. So as he pivoted to subscriptions, I think he realized that Apple will be taking a cut, and he complained about the take rades, which Epic has done before, and a number of other companies, gaming companies that rely on a subscription model on the phone. They talk about, you know how Apple has a very high

take rate and and so does Android and Google. But the advertising side was much more cleaner in terms of paying to Apple. But now he realizes, right, and he eats his chest and he talks a big game, and then somehow he ends up at Apple's headquarters and Tim Cook just quietly puts him in his place because there is no way out of it. And that's what a number of gaming companies have realized. That power off Apple's platform,

that is the biggest distribution channel out there. Even if they charge the high take rades, you have no option right now but to pay for it. And you can't build your own phone or you know, launch a service outside of this is what Anora was. I was having this discussion with Anorag yesterday and I said, you know what he's gonna I thought Musk would take this to Republicans and they would raise a free speech problem and

they would move some legislation through Congress. And Anorag was like, nope, no, I mean no, no, it's not that I think it's a very simple thing. If Tim Cooks tells him you want a business, turn it out, I'll help you do it. What what is the you know? I think that's a much more easier way to fix it. We'll figure it out a way. You just don't put X amount of content there, will make sure we advertise mode. And I think that's a it's a more logical and a more

friendly approach to fix things. It's a more silicon value way to go. I mean they're also zen out there, um, unlike you two guys. All right, so we got on Ron and we got man deep sing uh. They cover all this tech stuff for bloombergin. Who does hardware? By the way, like if I need a hardware call, who do I go to? What is hardware? Like the computer stuff? Let me make one comment is you know the chip companies are missing so much talking about estimate cuts, software misses.

Our s like slave in comparison to the misses. So that's one thing to be mindful of. When you said snowflake missed, okay, compare it to an N video or an E M D miss Alright, a lot of good tech stuff here. We can do it all day long. I don't know. I was definitely dialed in yesterday to the sand Bank Freed interview Andrew Ross Sorkin at the deal Book conference yesterday. I thought Andrew did an excellent job from a really weird topic, I guess, but I

was riveted. But it's the first time I've seen Sam bankman Free speak, so you know, I'm not sure what to compare to, but it's certainly a key, key issue

in this whole crypto space here. So any massa who's part of the team here, she's an investing reporter Bloomberg News, but she's part of this team here Bloomberg News that's done an extraordinary job covering all things crypto and kind of how this whole space is evolving and some of the real big stumbles were seeing out there, including ft X and any massive joins us here in our studio. Any what did you make of Sam bankman Fried's interview yesterday? Testimony?

You want to say, I felt like I was just about to say testimony, But you know, his interview, Well, there was a lot of hype around this interview because he had been on the program to speak at the deal Book conference long before the blow up in f t X, so people were watching very closely and wondering if he was going to appear at all, and he did. So that was a moment when he actually appeared on the screen. As far as what he actually said in

the interview, he didn't give. He answered a lot of questions, but he didn't give a lot of answers, if you know what I mean. He verry consciously, I would surmise, kept this profile of kind of looking like downcast eyes, bowing his head, saying I screwed up. I was the CEO, I'm responsible. So he said a lot of that sort of thing. He didn't give a lot of answers um and did his typical deflecting as far as what actually

went down, which probably was to be expected. He clearly didn't want to incriminate himself, and Andrew really wanted to incriminate him, and he kept using the term co mingling, as if that's just a daily term we throw around.

But um, I thought I came away with a pretty clear picture of if you take Sam Bankman free at his word of what happened, it seemed like Alameda, which you know, he says he was trying to distance himself from had massive margin positions all over town, and after the collapse of Terror Luna, they just shifted those margin positions onto F t X, right because they were called everywhere else and they had nowhere else to go. Um. The part that's hard to believe if that's what happened,

is that he had no idea that that was happening. Yeah, I mean, I would say, you have to take everything he says. He's he's a very slippery personality, and exactly so all the disclaimers that you just mentioned, Um, he I just I think it's hard to take anything that he says at face value. Some of the things he said were demonstrably false. But to your point, he was a owner we know from the bankruptcy filings of Alameda, So to say that he didn't know what the positions were,

I would treat that with a lot of skepticism. The thing, Yeah, The other thing is he lived there in the Bahamas with the the heads of Alameda. So again, like you're living in an apartment in an environment together with these people. Just to say that you had no idea seems um, seems hard to believe to me. It did seem like, um, they were living it up down there. I mean every employee who came down like got a house and a car and they were all allowed to two worth of

free food. How can you two hundred door dash a day like that would be difficult even for me and I eat a lot um. So definitely there were no controls, right. But um, it seems like even now he's operating without control, why would he do this? Wouldn't his lawyers tell him not to? His parents are lawyers, right? So Andrew did ask him at one point, dear lawyers know you're doing this. What do they say? And Sam said something like they very much are not on board with me doing this.

And again, who knows if that's true or false. It does seem to be a bit of an image. The lawyer in the world will be okay with even a bad lawyer, but his parents are like Stanford professor, good lawyer. It's it's hard, it's hard. It's really hard to fathom why they would why they would let him get out

there on the record. Um. To your point about the freewheeling culture that they had in the Bahamas, Andrew did ask him about that, and Sam insisted again use all the grains of salt you like with us, he said, the only drug use we had was prescription drug use. I use drugs like you know, medication for focus and things like that. But but there wasn't any crazy partying. All we did was like playboard games when we partied. So that was a funny moment. And again I think

you kind of have to raise an eyebrow. So you know, it's been several weeks here and we're talking billions, maybe tens of billions of dollars here, uh, and customer losses. What's the next step from a legal perspective of a police perspective. I mean, he's just sitting down there in the Bahamas. I want to know if anyone's gonna go down there and grab him right, good question. Either the d O J or Russian mafia, yeah, or an angry customer. I mean it's it's hard to know what could happen, Um.

But there was an emotional moment in the interview where um Andrew read out a message that user of f t X had sent to him, basically asking like ask Sam, like where did my money go? Like? I trusted him and he betrayed my trust as he betrayed the trust of so many people. And it's a hundred percent true that.

I think people who loaded money onto that platform and believed him are absolutely reeling over the scale the magnitude of the losses that they probably incurred, because it doesn't look very good um that that you'll see that very much money recovered at all in this bankruptcy. It's pretty clear where the money went, right. Alameda borrowed all the money from f t X, gave f t X worthless collateral, then lost all the money, and the collateral is now

worth nothing. That's right. The problem really comes back to being able to There are a lot of problems, but one of them is that, uh, the that ability to borrow endlessly um, you know, real real dollars and like real value against um invented tokens that are just conjured out of thin air UM. And then and then the privileges that Alamide absolutely had UM that were specific to Alamade on f t X UM and and obscured to

the rest of them. It's amazing that Sam Bankman freed this super genius from m I T had such um an inability to remember exact numbers, right, He's like, yeah, we had like a hundred million of margin. Maybe it was two hundred million. Your investments in Sequoia, what was like a couple hundred million? I think I can't remember. Like he didn't know even ballpark figures closest to the nearest million, right, or he didn't want to show that

he knew. It's it's really hard to get him inside his head, but he does a lot of that, just pulling estimates out of the air um and it can be hard to I still don't know what the reckoning is here. I mean, I don't think it doesn't look good for I mean it doesn't look I think that one thing is like it looks horrible for US regulators to an extent that this kind of went on as long as it did so. I mean there's a lot

of talk about, certainly from angry customers. There's a lot of talk like we want to see SPF and his cronies in jail. I don't know this is at the early stages. I think of a long, longer play here in any Messa and her reporting colleagues will continue to report on that. For us, we appreciate that any massa

investing reporter. What I've got a Barry rid Hults. He's the founder of rid Hult's Wealth Management host of Masters in Business, Barry, we love talking to you about markets, but i'd love to just I'm not sure if you saw Sam Bankman freed yesterday, but if you did, I'd love to get your thoughts because that was certainly unique

theater for those in the markets. He's a professional liar, and as a somebody who evaluates um ambiguous information constantly, I found it tremendously useful to just avoid listening to people with that sort of history. Uh. You know, this looked really negative for crypto for a while, but the parallels are burning made off. This guy is just a thief. I don't care what his model was. Once you dip into client cash, I don't care if you're borrowing it

with the best of intentions, that's it. You're a felon. You go to jail. Although right now I think he would be lucky if he makes it to jail in one piece. I have to imagine there are a lot of angry people who would be very happy to spend a hundred thousand dollars making his life as miserable as he's made their life. Yeah, so you don't buy the

kind of innocent. We were all down there being outru risks and spending tons of money playing board games and not paying attention to the books, when all of a sudden we realize coops or eight billion dollars in the whole rests ips. Loquatur is a phrase they teach in law school, which means the thing speaks for itself. Here is client deposits. You reached into client deposits. Sorry, you go to jail that this this is not you know, I think everybody deserves their days and talk because it

seems like this is black and white. It seems like, yeah, it seems like it is black and white, and it seems like he's gonna go to jail for the rest of his life no matter what. Why Why is he talking instead of, you know, trying to put together a defense. So when people are on these self destructive spirals, and clearly he has been in one for a while, even as he has deceived many of the most sophisticated institutional investors out there, um and his parents. Apparently he's a

con man. Listen, The whole thing behind Khan Man is that Khan stands for confidence. He is so self assured and so brilliant that he wins them over and they place misplace their confidence in him. And look, you know, I've been on the fiduciary side of the street for well over a decade. I've been arguing that all of Wall Street should put their client's best interests first. None of that applies here. This person allegedly reached into client

accounts and took that money. I don't know how much more debate is necessary, um and again, everybody deserves their day in court. But dear lord, I don't know how else to describe that other than this isn't a business model failure, This isn't a research error. This guy is a criminal. It's I feel like we should have some kind of disclaimer just for you and me. Right, so, allegedly don't have any evidence that he's broken a lot other than the fact and billions of clients dollars have disappeared.

Hold that little factory to say, I just want to keep myself out of trouble. Bear, what's the barry? What does this mean? If anything? For the cryptospace writ large so you know it in a perverse way, If this isn't a business model failure, and this turns out to be full blown theft. It's kind of like Bernie made off in hedge funds. Oh wait, this doesn't mean hedge funds are bad. It means that Jerk was a thief and one of the greatest thiefs of all time until

Sam came along. Sam and Bernie will go down in history as two of the most accomplished. Um well, they both got caught. You know, here's the difference. When Ernie made Off admitted to his son's that he was stealing client money that day he was in head. That's kind of what we can I don't know. Do we not have extradition charge? I don't know. I've been asking this, but we'll figure it out, all right, Barry, thank you

so much. We appreciate your comments. They're making a very clear Barry Ridholt's host of Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Today is World AIDS Day, so we thought it's a good time to kind of get the latest on what's going on. I mean, the world's obviously just coming out of this pandemic and you need to kind of refocus on some of the other issues out there, and we

want to do that right here. We can do with Jennifer Lotito, ce OO and president of the firm by the name of RED R. E. D. Jennifer, thanks so much for joining us here. You know, again, the world's just kind of coming out on the other side of this global pandemic um and it's probably time to refocus on some of the issues that were there before the pandemic, like AIDS. I love for you to give us kind of a summary of kind of where we are in our fight against AIDS. Yeah, thank you so much for

having me. Well, you're exactly right. We need to uh you know, AIDS like COVID may not be in the headlines every day, but it needs to be. And the reason for that is because over twelve thousand people every week are dying from a treatable and preventable disease. So today, as we mark World AIDS Day, we need to think about the forty million people whose lives have been lost, but also the fact that there is treatment available, but we need to get that treatment everywhere it's needed, and

that's what RED is helping to do. So what is the problem with getting people this treatment? Is it a cost issue? Yeah, you know, like so many other things, it's it's a resource issue, it's a cost you know. Thankfully we've got organizations like the Global Fund, which is who we provide funding to. They are getting treatment on the ground where it's needed the most in Sub Saharan Africa. But they need more, They need more resources. But in

addition to that, they need people to care. And the way they do that is through red We work with the biggest companies in the world. We give people products to buy. When you do that, money from those companies goes to help buy those pills, that treatment and make

sure that we are ending this disease for good. And they are some of the most it must be the most recognizable, uh or one of the most recognizable charities, right because you have so many products, but they're not I mean they're good products, they're not you know, just randomly picked. It looks like you do a lot of work trying to find the best things to put your name on. How do you do that, well, it's it is carefully curated. We want products and brands and leaders

who believe in this fight. And so we're really excited because you know, today, being world they say we have the ability to tell people and tell the world about how they can give back during this holiday season. To your point, these are not just great, beautiful products that are well designed, they are products that are actually saving lives. So if you look at something like the temperature controlled Ember mugs, which are fantastic, a lavoid air purifier, there's

a new collection from Prime mark. I mean, these are incredible products, but they are actually life saving and so you need to get to Amazon dot com, slash red and check them all out. Jennifer, can you just let us know or give us the latest on what the treatments are for AIDS? What's what is the protocol? How how you know how difficult is it is is it to treat? Or how easy is it to treat? And where are we today? Absolutely? I will, I will full disclosure.

I am not a medical doctor. I am an activist at a marketer. But yeah, there is one pill a day in Sub Saharan Africa costs about twenty cents a day. Um. The interesting thing that many people may not know is that when you take that pill, now granted you need to take that pill every day, it suppresses the viral load in your system so that you are not sick, you're able to live a full and healthy life. Um. But not only that, you don't pass it on to

your partner. And if your HIV positive mother or a pregnant woman, you will very high chances you will not pass it onto your unborn child. So that's really that is incredible progress, UM. But we need to make sure everybody is on that treatment. We also need to make sure everybody is getting tested. So for brands like that are out there like Roch and Mark, people are getting tested, They're getting the treatment that they need. And you know,

that's the way we're going to end this disease. We know how to do it, we just need the resources to get there. And so how are you doing with UH with the marketing side of things, with the with the collection or fundraising side of things, what are your goals and where are you? Yeah? Absolutely we are. We're doing great. We would love to have more partners join us in this fight. We are very focused on talking about where the AIDS fight is right now and we

are seeing it hit marginalized communities. So if you are a person of color or an l g B t Q or or young girl UH in Sub Saharan Africa especially, you are going to be more vulnerable to diseasease to the disease. So from a marketing standpoint, we want to make sure of people understand that is an injustice that we need to write and we can do that through our efforts by providing treatment and UH and prevention programs. And that's exactly what RENDS doing. We always want to

do more. We want more products. We have over a hundred and thirty products, but we'd love to do more. We'd love more brands to join us. And that's exactly what we're focused on. And Jennifer, just the pandemic. It's affected everybody individually. It's affected communities, it's affected uh, you know, economies. How's it affected kind of the the fight against AIDS from your perspective, Yeah, so when you go to you

know this, this shouldn't be too tough to imagine. I think, you know, I live here in New York City, when when COVID hit here, we saw the impact it had on our health system. That's the same in Sub Saharan Africa. The good news is many of the programs that had been put in place by our partners at the Global Fund were able to respond more quickly and nimbly when COVID arrived so many of the HIV programs that were in place, but but we've now lost ground and we've

got to keep that prom breast going. You know, you can just imagine if you're somebody who's on HIV treatment, you need to go into the clinic, you need to get your pills. If you're worried about getting COVID, you may not do that. We saw the impact on healthcare workers. That's no different there. These are all part of this health system that we need to make sure we're strengthening because there will be another pandemic. We need to be

prepared for it. All right, good stuff, Jennifer Latito, thank you so much for joining us. Jennifer's the CEO and president of Red Spelled r e D. Just getting the latest on AIDS. It is World Age Day, so getting a little kind of an update. They're still still a grave issue out there in the global community. But the good news is obviously after years and years and decades of scientific study, there are very effective treatments out there,

and that's the good news. So the folks are read continuing to do the good work in raising awareness, raising funding for the issue. Go by their stuff go by their stuff. Let's get right to our next guest, Charles Meyer Sees the CEO of equine Equinox is a NASTAC traded stock. E q i X is a symbol to put into your Bloomberg professional terminals. It's a really real estate investment trust. Those guys throw off lots of cash, lots of dividends. This company, though, does it with like

data centers, so it's got a real tech spin to it. Charles, thanks so much for joining us here in studio. Talk to us about Equinox. What's talk? Just give us a thirty seconds on what your company does, what where, where your focuses and kind of what are the opportunities for you guys going forward. Sure, thanks for having me. Yuh So, Equinics is the really the largest provider data centers around the world. We operate two data centers seventy one markets

twenty nine countries around the world. And you know, the genesis story of the company and the name even Equinox is, you know, is Equitable Internet Exchange. That's sort of where the name is derived from. And uh, you know, we've built the set of data centers that really provide interconnection between the major players in the digital ecosystem and that's really are our sort of special role in the in

the data center space. So we've seen, um, just in the last few days a number of reports that some big tech companies, including data centers, are seeing less demand. Is that what you're seeing as well? We're not. We're seeing a strong demand signal from the market right now.

I think that um, you know, we uh, we we're seeing customers very committed to digital transformation as a means of driving competitive advantage and in fact, in a in a in an environment where there's a lot of belt tightening, I think doing you know, doing more with less, so to speak. Um, I think digital transformation is a major element of that. And they're using cloud and other things to think differently about I T and and we play an important role and then helping them think through that.

So we're seeing a very strong demand right now. Sept under dollar stock price. You gotta split this thing. What's what's your thing? I'm an old stock analyst. How do you think about that? We just we don't have a lot of retail uh you know, demanded um is the reality, and so uh you know, it hasn't been something area focus for US, something we've we've occasionally looked at and probably will you know, continue to do so, but it hasn't been a strong, strong reason just because we don't

have a lot of retail demand. How global are you and and what's the breakdown look like regionally? Extremely global. We operate in seventy one markets in twenty nine countries around the world. We're more than fifty outside the US. UM. So yeah, you know, it's interesting because we've been running into a pretty stiff currency headwind in that regard for a while. UM. I think we may see that warm turn as we see interest rates peak. But it's um,

we're very, very global business for sure. I think. I know I've always said when I come back in the next life, I want to come back as a real m and a banker. You guys are very active, you guys being the industry, you're very active. Here, talk just about kind of the next five years, how much of your growth is kind of organic and maybe what that organic growth rate might look like versus what you might

get on the equator. Yeah, I mean, we're we're running you know, we're about a seven point to five billion dollar company. That's what our guide for this year implies UM and growing at you know, ten to eleven percent, so still a pretty nice growth rate on a pretty large installed base UM and so our organic owth is very strong. That's our top priority in terms of our allocation of capital. But I will say, and as you noted, we've been extremely successful in M and A and UH.

We continue to believe that extending the geographic reach of the footprint as a priority, and and we'll look to M and A as a as a tool in that toolbox. Will be very disciplined in that, as we always are, but I expect that we're gonna use some of our balance sheet firepower in that regard. I mean, and you know, previous months you must have in years you must have

had a ton of competition there. But I wonder as rates go up, if you have a strong balance sheet and cash to spend, you must be finding yourselves as some of the only bidder. Sometimes well you know, it's still I will say, there's the demand for these assets still is vigorous with the private players. Private equity players

are very active in the space. But I do think that you know, times like this, the challenging macro is when I think market leaders often have a chance to extend their lead, and so I think we're gonna position ourselves to do that again. We'll we'll be disciplined, but I believe will be have that opportunity. What's your company? You know, I'm just looking here, and when we have CEOs come in here, oftentimes we asked them kind of

how did the pandemic impact your company? You've got close to twelve thousand employees, uh, your companies based in Silicon Valley. How's the pandemic change your business from your company our own operations. Yeah, that's a lot of employees too, it is,

but a huge chunk of those our frontline employees. And so they were in the data center still, you know, and so we still have an element of our business where and to their credit, I think they did an extraordinary job of rising to the occasion, navigating a lot of difficulties in terms of being there with all the you know, all the processes and protections that come with throughing that in the in the form of the pandemic and dealing with customers through that. Um. But then you know,

our other a lot of other elements of our staff. UM, we did go you know, virtual Um, but you know it was funny because we're a huge partner to provider to people like Zoom. In fact, as Zoom scaled their infrastructure, you know, Eric you wanted Zoom said, hey, couldn't have done it without Equinix, And we were very appreciative of them as a customer. And but you know, we we

were very successful in that. I will tell you that I'm pushing for us to get back to a you know, a hybrid model that because I believe in the power of human connection and and the importance of that and innovation, and so you know, we, like many others, I think, will will end up in a in a hybrid state. But in terms of your employees right now, you hiring

rather than layoffs. We are for sure, Um we are, you know in in here I qualified that a little bit in saying that, Um, you know we're We're not. We're also, like others, being very prudent in a in an environment that has some challenging macro factors. And so I think G and A, for example, we're gonna really try to be very flat and find automation and process efficiencies to drive improvements and and keep our head count

as flat as possible there. But given the demand signal we're seeing, we're hiring on our go to market side and salespeople, quota bearing headcount, etcetera. And um, you know, and and also since our platform is expanding, that means new people on the ground, technicians in the data centers, etcetera. And so those are areas that were how are they? How are those technicians? You know? That's really uh, it's uh,

it's harder than uh than we'd like. Sometimes I'll tell you that it's well, you're not the only ones, right, I mean, that's a story for those who are hiring right now. It's hard to find the qualified people, that's right. That's right, And I think they are. You know, it really depends on the job category. I just think, you know, I know, you're we're seeing some of these tech laughs and these kind of things, but I think they are

oftentimes not in those high demand roles, right. They're not software engineers, they're not technicians, they're not and those continue to be very competitive. So going forward here, I mean, is there any diversification you need? Are you focusing on kind of the core data centers, which seems to be an inherently strong growth story. Yeah, I think we're in a very great spot. I don't think we need diversification

to really new areas. But I will say, you know, we've we've made a big investment what we call our digital services business, which is what people are really looking for with you know, the value proposition we deliver global reach.

We talked about that access to these digital ecosystems we cultivate and curate ecosystems inside of our facilities for people to interconnect to clouds and networks and as a service providers and all these They really get that um, this interconnection platform that we have and a track record of service excellence. But what we are finding is that people

want to consume that value proposition in different ways. They want it more as a service, more on demand, more software enabled, and so you know, I think our diverse fasification is coming in evolving our our value proposition in those ways. So are you competing then with a WS and Microsoft Not really. It's I would say that you know, as you look at mostly if you go to any large enterprise CEO or even CEOs of service providers who are saying, how are we building our infrastructure hybrid and

multi cloud is really the architectural choice. They absolutely are. In fact, are those are your biggest customers. Amazon Web Services and Goo. The hyper scalers are significant customers of ours because they actually use our infrastructure oftentimes to place network nodes. They're on ramps to their clouds, often live in our facilities. We have about shared and then we have a sort of JV business where we build large

scale data centers for them. We do that through a JV that we have with UH with the Sovereign wealthone to Singapore g I c um and UH guy yeah and so uh and so that's so they are big customers, but most customers are ending up or they're saying, look, I'm gonna I may put the even the super majority of my workloads in the public cloud over time. But there's a variety of things that they need, and they want private infrastructure that's proximate to the cloud, and they

want it geographically distributed. And so that's where we really come in as being able to you know, support them as they move to hybrid and multi cloud and security. Just give us kind of how you've used security of data in the cloud. More and more is going into the cloud, I know that's a concern for people. It is, but I think that, you know, I think the techno anology is out there to make that, you know, to address those challenges. We're going to increasingly zero trust environment. Um.

I think, um, you know, companies are using it right. Things. We have a lot of customers that are delivering security applications and services as part of the ecosystem that lives inside platform equinics and so and making those kind of things available and allowing them to integrate with cloud services. That's a key part of our value problem. All right, Charles, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Fascinating stuff. Charles Myers, uh, CEO of Equinox. That's asta

trade of stock. E q i X is a the ticker to put into your Bloomberg terminal, a reap, but really focusing on the text based the cloud business, and we know that is a big business. The stock has ripped up also the last couple of months. Right, it's five hundred uh in the middle of October and now you're back up at over seven. Really strong earnings, I think,

strong demand profile and you know, good execution. I think you know that people are are reading into that in terms of what the what the future right look look all right, cho It's great stuff. We appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews of Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller three. On Fall Sweeney, I'm on Twitter at

pt Sweeney Before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio