Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney, alongside my co host Matt Miller.
Every business day we bring you interviews from CEOs, market pros, and Bloomberg experts, along with essential market moving news.
Find the Bloomberg.
Markets Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. Greg Ebel joins us. He's the CEO of n Bridge Energy. It's in New York Stock Exchange listed company the tickers e n BE. The company reported some earnings today, So Greg, talk to us about thanks so much for joining us here. Talk to us about kind of what you guys reported with your latest earnings results and kind of what's the outlook you're telling the street these days.
Yeah, for sure, Matt, Paul, great to be with you again. And yeah, a very solid quarter both operationally and financially
for us, right across all of our business. You know, we saw record volumes and results on the liquid's business, our mainline pipeline system saw record volumes, our export facility record volumes, and so we beat obviously the street estimates for the quarter, which is great, and we confirmed that we would meet our goals for the full year, and we announced a little bit of tucky in m and A. You know, we bought some renewable offshore wind facilities that
we'd originally participated in in Germany, and then renewable natural gas facilities in the United States, all very long term contracts, you know, ten years or more, and all very consistent with that, you know, all of the above approach that I think the public wanted, investors want, and that actually creates a lot of value for us. We're pretty excited about the road ahead.
Why is I mean, the stock's up today, but why is it down thirteen percent year today? What's is it the underlying commodity that's a problem. Is it concerned about demand? What's holding the stock down?
You know what we have been in, very proudly so for decades, increase the dividend year after year, very utility like in that structure. And as you know, you guys pointed off just a few minutes ago, with interest rates that have been up, that impacts dividend paying stocks like ourselves. And as you've seen in the last call it four days, what we've seen forty to fifty sixty basis points coming in on the ten year You've seen the stocks that
pay dividends react. So it's not the commodity it's not energy demand we see up those we don't have commodity exposure. Really is that ten year interest rate side of things. So that's a macro factor that frankly, I can't do anything about. What we can do is make sure the company runs well, meets its earnings targets, and continues to build up both organic growth and some of these acquisitions.
Greg talk to us about again. You mentioned some of these acquisitions and the investments you make in renewables. Realistically, do you have a good handle on the types of returns you can get on renewables. Feels like maybe some of the shine is off that side of the energy business.
Well, it's a good point. I think investors are starting to figure out that they are. You know, renewables are all not built the same, right, So those that have long term contracts in other words, you know, ten fifteen year contracts with great counterparties, So larger utilities or big industrials, those are the ones you want to participate in because you know they've got a guarantee price set on that power. They've got a great investment, great customer that's taking that
power and you're going to get paid. Those that are kind of going in a merchant world and haven't got these things contracted or in jurisdictions where it's extremely difficult to build things, which is a lot of jurisdictions these days. I think you're seeing those entities being you know, a lot tougher to get the returns that the ones I previously talked about, which is why our renewable business, which we've actually been in for twenty years, is all about
that contracted business. So our European stuff, you know, our customers are folks like EDF Electricity de France or the government in Germany, and then here in the US, most of our customers would be utility like players. And even on the renewable natural gas tuck in that we had today, we have ten year contracts with the likes of BP and Shell. So I think and I think this is great for companies like Enbridge who have done it on a low risk basis that you're going to see differentiation.
Those that have actually structured their businesses to create good returns, double digit returns are going to be rewarded, while those that have gone more merchanty. I think that's going to be a tough slug for them.
Where do you see demand going for energy? I mean, as we see the jobs numbers miss and as we expect either a soft landing or a recession, I imagine demand slows down. Is that the case?
Yeah? You know, typically energy is a about two thirds of GDP, and another words, energy growth grows about two thirds of GDP. So if you thought GDP was going to be three percent, you get energy at two. That's one. Two. People don't shut off their lights and they don't turn off the gas in their house, even when you've you're in a recession. Where you see it is on some of the industrial love but most of our stuff is for ultimately residential players. So I don't see that has
a big impact. But remember we're building assets for ten twenty years. So virtually every report that you would see globally in the United States, we will be using more energy ten years from now than we use today, and particularly so in developing countries. You're going to see them continue to move up the economic food chain and that
always requires more energy. So some of our assets on the export side of things, whether it's our liquefied natural gas export facilities we're building on the West coast of Canada, or our oil export facility on the Gulf Coast of the United States, which is the largest in the US. You continue to see very good response there even through recession. So yeah, I think the demand comes down a bit, but it continues to grow.
So I saw you announced intentions of buy some utilities, I guess in Ohio, North Carolina, in Utah. I mean it's a big number, fourteen billion. What's the strategy and get in the utility business.
So we're you know, it's interesting, maybe a little bit of contrarian, but I think we're right on this. We've been in the utility business for a long time. We've got the largest gas utility in Canada. This will make us the largest gas utility in North America by volume, serving some seven million customers in jurisdictions that are really gas friendly. So they actually have banned the banned legislation if you will. They will not allow communities to ban
natural guests. They know how important it is for industrial growth. I think of what's going on in Ohio so much from a steam automotive refining perspective, gas is critical and then growth areas like North Carolina and Utah very favorable environment. So we saw that and it fits right into our given in paying low risk environment and gas continues to grow.
In fact, you contend des utilities, you will see their rate base or if you will, their customer setup and the assets that they use grow by a compound annual growth rate of eight percent through the end of the decade. So that was our strategy. You know, we had a selling a seller that was large and electric player that had to move out of that business for other reasons related to you know, its electricity business. That created an opportunity.
We were able to buy that as historic lows one point three times that base of the business, and so we were a big enough player we could buy all three. And that's really exciting for us as we move and close those in twenty twenty four and have them fully in the barn and ready to produce in twenty twenty five.
So I'm looking on the Bloomberg terminal, Greg and I see a dividend yield for you guys of you know, seven point six percent. I mean that is just huge. What is what's a dividend policy, you you kind of communicate to your shareholders.
Sure, so we pay out, and we've been paying a dividend for forever, and it's an important part of our equation. I think our compound annual title total shareholder return is about eleven percent since two thousand and then you go back to the sixties and you'd find it about a similar number. And the philosophy there is, as we build these low risk projects and we bring them in, we can pay out sixty to seventy percent of that cash
flow to investors through dividends. And so the higher yield right now is really driven by as we talked about the ten year, the ten year yield having an impact on that people will put their money in US treasuries versus some dividend paying stock. So I would expect that to come down. I use the stock to go as you see some softening on the yield side of things.
But that's sixty to seventy percent pay out, very comfortable for us, very much in line with our cash flow and allows us to retain enough cash to continue to invest in the business.
All right, Greg, thanks so much for taking some time, and you guys are busy today with your earnings Gregor Ebel. He is the CEO of n Bridge Energy e NB is the ticker and look over the last five years, compound and annual return about eight point five percent better than its benchmark index. So some solid returns there and this stocks up slightly here Today.
You're listening to the team Ken's are Live program Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Jay Hatfield joins us, one of those smart folks we like to chat with, CEO, founder and portfolio manager at Infrastructure Capital Advisors, and Jay, this has been a good week for risk assets here. I mean, I mean we've got yields pull and fifty basis points on the tenure. We got the stocks up five days in a row. What'd you make of the job sprint today? What are you making of this market right here that we've seen recently?
Thanks Paul Matt for having me on again. We put out a note on Tuesday because things were looking a little bit bleak last week. I'd have to say, because you'd have great earnings reports and terrible price reaction in the market as a whole, But we did some work on near term catalysts on bonds and we saw everything really lining up for rally. So so far we've been correct. And what we're really focused on is global growth, mostly in Europe, and nobody really ever reports on it, but
you can easily get it on the terminal. That's where we get it. The European data is just awful, yep. It's their inner recession, as we had predicted. Mild so far, but it's only going to get worse. The UCB raised rates twice during the quarter, so nothing better is happening yep. And if you look even today, the unemployment is rising in Spain and Germany, they'd have the final manufacturing pmis forty three, so that's bad. But also we had a
week PMI which lowered our Atlanta growth rate. And then the final point is that and we focus a lot on oil, is that it's not well discussed that gasoline prices came down ten percent in a month, so it's one hundred and twenty percent annualized. That's a little bit exaggeration, but still that's going to show up in not just
headline CPI, but more importantly core. And this is what the fedinis is and this is why they have all the nonsense from the seventies because of the real problem the seventies we had twelve hundred percent increase in oil prices. It bleeds through to core. So we're going to probably have cool CPI print in a couple of weeks and PPI definitely. And so this whole narrative that we're going
to like six percent bond yield should attenuate. I think said that we think the rate or really rally when the ECP starts cutting rates in the first half or even the first quarter of next year, so you.
Think they're gonna cut imminently. They do have a two handle on inflation, you know, I mean maybe because they're in a recession, or maybe because inflation was transitory ish. We were talking to Cam Harvey yesterday, you know that guy. He's a professor at Duke. Yeah, excellent, and he was making the point that you have been making for a while.
He said, look, it's ridiculous that this FED thinks inflation is still you know, three to four when you take out the rent equivalent, which is backwards looking in the wrong way to do it. We're under two and I immediately looked at your CPI dash R on Infrastructure Capital Advisers on your website, and you guys have one point three percent right now. So explain to us how you calculate that you use core CPI and then you take out the rent equivalent part and you put it in case Shiller.
Right, correct, You can even you can basically do it in your head, so.
Because not mia, you live it in your head.
But it's it's kind of nutty. But the CPI still is saying shelters seven point two percent when it's really it's actually going up a little bit to be fair, but it's not likely to skyrock. But but so just assumes zero case Schuller has been close to zero, so forty percent time seven is like three percent. So basically CPI is over Headline is overstated by three percent, and then it's only thirty three percent of core, so it's overstated. Core is overstated by about two point one percent.
So but the the so inflation isn't as bad as we think it is, is what you're saying. Still cumulatively, it sucks right for consumers, especially since.
We near extremes I don't still kill it.
I don't feel like wages of kept up certainly mind heaven and then growth though looked incredible backward looking right, four point nine percent in Q three, How does it look to you going forward? Because I feel like the consumer is getting hurt here, you know, and charging everything and missing payments.
Well, no doubt. We have a saying that the average consumer is not an economist. So what we mean by that is they don't really care about CPI, whether it's R or whatever, because that's for twelve months, but they do care about twenty four. So prices have still skyrocketed over twenty four And if your wages didn't go up, which is true for a lot of lower income consumers and you don't own a house, you're definitely under pressure.
And by the way, CPIR was much higher than core CPI for a while, correct, because I look back on the table and you guys were up at eleven twelve percent.
Yeah, this is why we say that FED is incompetent, because they just weren't even looking at any data, like you can go back and say, look at PPI is actually reported. It was at eleven when they said things were transitory. So they need to redo their entire framework, and you should. Everyone should go. Look at the way the CPI shelter is calculated. It's ridiculous. They only updated it one sixth every six months, so it's just designed
to be lagged. So the FED should for that, in fact that San Frisco, San Francisco Fed does correct for.
I just don't understand why they don't. I mean, for all the flack and Druckmiller gives Janney Yellen. She's a super genius, right, and she's an economist PhD.
Like she's not.
Now she's like a government you know, political uh, kind of a hack, but she was like a serious economist.
It's inexplicable. And I'm shocked that not on this program but other media outlets that everyone comes on and says, not the FED but other people that inflation's sticky, when it's just flat out not sticky. It's actually contained has been since July of last year.
Have we seen then peak rates?
We definitely there's not going to be another increase. And now for the first time we've been saying, I think for.
The federal fund rate, right, Yeah.
We've been saying for four or five months to Fed one increase rates, but they don't know it yet. Now they know it. Now they know it after this employment very cool, wages rising unemployment. So that's what they look at, even though that's a flawed leading indicator. So the Fed is clearly not going to raise. ECB's not going to raise, they're going to cut. But you know, all this really is going to start to impact because we're worried about
the liquidity, you know, trillion. That's the other data we look at that most people don't global monetary base or supply global liquidity really from central banks down a trillion over the last two quarters. So it's terrible. That's probably not going to turn around until next year when the
ECB is forced to cut. Because you know, that's a simple way to trade the market, right, It's like if the FED intervenes during the pandemic and says we're going to increase the monetary base by a gigantic amount, you get long. If they're sucking money. It's like taking five hundred dollars off free parking. You know, if you're playing Monopoly, all of a sudden, you know, if you put it on, then all of a sudden, everything's overinflated. And everything's go go.
You take it off and it's bad. So we're in the takeoff phase. But I think we overshot to five percent. We'll see if we keep rallying from here at four and a half. But next year we're confident we'll get below four. So we'll meet our five thousand target next year at least.
So you don't think like the bond vigilantes will come back and say, we're not going to finance this kind of deficit spending much long.
We think there's was this rate. That's a great question because we think there's way way too much focused on the US budget deficit because like I mean, I don't know.
Matt is concerned about it, so you can try to relay his concerns.
Well, I think it's terrible from the economic growth perspective because there's something called crowding out, So if the government spends money, it can't be invested in.
Well, if they spend nine hundred billion dollars next year servicing the debt, we're not going to have enough money to spend for the next pandemic.
No, it's a horrible it's a horrible, horrible thing, and it's a waste of capital. And it's terrible for economic growth, terrible for everyone. But it's not enough to drive global interest rates up one hundred basis points. That's my only point. At the margin, it's bad. Yeah, but keep in mind that our d strangely, if you look at the balance, he's actually still monetizing part of the debt because they're unwinding their short term borrowing. So it can't be true
that that's the key driver of global interest rates. It's bad, it's bad for it. It's a terrible economic policy. Obviously, the budget process is horrendous.
And for taxes, dude, because now every time someone wants to cut taxes, they're going to say, we can't afford to. We got to do entitlements, we got to pay for the military, we got to pay nine hundred billion dollars a service debt, so Miller and the rest of the middle class is going to have to pay half half.
No, it's horrendous policy. And in fact, you know, we're actually pretty bullish about China because they save forty five percent of their GDP. So savings and investment drives economic growth. That's all the only thing that does it. And that's just intuitively Obviously, if the government is reducing savings, we're going to have lower growth in the long run. So it is terrible, but just not enough to drive global rates to six seven eight percent. That's our main point.
We learned something again today, Yeah, we do every time comes in here. Jay Hatfell, thanks so much for joining us. Jays the CEO and founder and portfolio manager at Infrastructure Capital Advisors. He was a banker, he was I don't know, hedge year, a hedge fund due. He's a skier up at my favorite place, Squaw Valley, which I think they've renamed it something, but still Lake Tahoe. That whole area there is just awesome.
So have they that Squaw Valley was not cool squad?
Oh no, it's something different now, So I don't know.
You're listening to the tape cans are live program Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
So Sam Bankman free found guilty. Shocker, It took the jury like fifteen minutes a cup of coffee to convict this guy did. I'm not even sure they got their pizza.
Even the trial was felt like the trial was only like two weeks, but.
There's so much evidence. Many people turned against him, and he was like an open and shutcase.
No train.
But we have somebody here who's really into this business and has really read in as the kids say, Zeke Fox. He's an investigative reporter and it's also our author of the new book on crypto entitled Number Go Up. It was released in September twenty twenty three. He writes for Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
And it was used in the trial.
It was used in a trial. Explain that to me, Zeke, So how was your book used in this trial?
Here?
Hey, this was unbelievable. So, as you point out, they had so much evidence. All the top lieutenants were testifying against Sam, but then Sam decided to take the stand and tell his version of the story. Real unusual decision for Krimmel defendant, because then the prosecutor gets to cross examine you about anything you've ever said. And this prosecutor had no mercy. I felt like she was going for both she was going for bonus points. I think I
felt like she wanted to convict Sam. She's like, forget the witnesses, I'm going to convict you again right now. And so she was like, Sam, have you ever said anything about the relationship between Alameda Research, your hedge fund and your exchange FTX? Have you ever said maybe that Alameda Research didn't play by the rules on FTX? And Sam was like, I don't recall. And then the prosecutor, Danielle se Soon, was like, your honor, let me introduce, and then she pulled out a hard copy of number
go up, walked it over to the witness stand. The defense was like objection, objection that a little conference it was, it was admitted, and then for like honestly, for quite some time, she had Sam read different pages of the book and was like do you remember saying that now?
And he had to just say, I don't recall, because what's described in the book is this interview I had with him in November twenty twenty two, just before he got arrested, and he basically did not quite have his story straight, and he said a lot of stuff to
me that I think he regretted. So he couldn't really admit to saying those things now, and I think it looked terrible for him in the trial in front of the jury because when his lawyer was asking, you know, questions, he had a lot to say, but when the prosecutor brought up his other statements, he just had to stick with I don't recall that's rough.
Part of me feels sorry for the guy, because you know, I've done things wrong, and I know that feeling of regret.
But.
The size of the fraud and the crimes I would say alleged, but now I guess I can say committed, right since he's been proven guilty is just massive. What do you expect, Zeke at the sentencing. I was having a little debate over at the news desk a little bit earlier, and some of the people on the desk were like, well, Elizabeth Holmes only got eleven years, so maybe he gets fifteen. And then somebody else said, yeah, but Bernie Madeoff got like one hundred and fifty years.
So you know, where do you think Sam Bankman Freed falls in the pantheon of giant conmen?
So I mean, I think these sentences are determined by how much money you stole and maybe he'll be able to try his arguments again, which is that so he took this customer money and he went and gambled it. And he wanted to say in his defense that some of those bets worked out, And the judge at his at his trial said, that doesn't matter. You stole this money. If you stole the money, we don't care what you did with it after the crime is just a stealing
the money. But maybe when it comes to sentencing, he'll be able to say, hey, there's not actually eight billion dollars missing. You know, we've been able to find that, a bankruptcy court has been able to find, you know, four billion. Just sentenced me on the four billion, but even still four billions a lot. So he's looking at a at a bad sentence. I'd say maybe like twenty years. That's just my guess.
So wow, Hey see, I guess folks within the crypto space, I guess they're wondering at this point to what extent does the whole Sam Bankman freed scam, the you know, the FTX debaccle, how much does that negatively impact just the crypto space in general? Do you have any thoughts on that so.
I I'm hearing a lot of wishful thinking from the crypto people that this does not impact them, it doesn't reflect on their project. And I think it doesn't matter if your project had nothing to do with Sam Banks and Freed. If you start some new coin now and you go pitch it to regular people, they're gonna say, oh, crypto, isn't that how the guy with the curly hair stole everybody's money, and like they're not gonna want to invest, you know. So I think it is all the publicity
around this trial. It's horrible for crypto, and the crypto people would love to move on. But coming up next we've got Alex Mashinski of Celsius, who's also so another crypto guy accused of a massive fraud. And if it wasn't for Sam bankman Fried, I mean this one was really big too, he'd be like the big crypto villain. So maybe the bad publicity is they're not out of the woods yet. They're be getting morel even though the other day you've got another one. Every day is another one.
Gemini and Genesis, also the the winkle Vy and Barry, they're in deep trouble and you know, I wonder though, and you've been reporting on crypto for for so long, Zeke, that I feel like you know just as much about crypto as the biggest experts in it. Is it fair to lump it all into one ball? Can you put it all crypt on the same drawer? Because I've always felt that bitcoin is one thing and all of the other coins are another.
Yeah, so I've heard I've heard this argument. I do think bitcoin's a little different. I mean, we may have different opinions on this. I think the reason bitcoin is different is because this whole cult has developed around it, and people treat bitcoin almost as like a religion, and so it's gonna be tougher to we do that with the dollar change these people's minds.
That's how it goes with these things. You know, if we all believe, then it's valuable, and if we all don't believe, then it isn't.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, I would say the dollar is based on like more than belief. You know, it's like the official currency of our country. You know that we can use it to pay taxes. Everybody's always used it, all right.
So gold, so gold, right, gold is probably a better because why is this you know, yellow metal that we dig out of the earth valuable. I guess we use it for wedding rings and maybe like some of the foil that goes around the Moonlanders when NASA was doing that. But supply and demand, yeah, Bitcoin too, supply and demand.
I know, yeah, I don't know. I just feel like, you know, there's all of the these scams seem to happen with all of the other coins, and I just look at bitcoin and it's worth thirty five thousand dollars.
Hey, Zeke, thanks so much for joining us here. We gotta let you it up on the time, but thanks so much for joining us. Zeke Fox investigative reporter, and he say the author of the new book on crypto entitled Number Go Up, Check It Out, is released just in September of this year. Perfect timing for our friend Zeke on all things crypto. This is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the tape catch are live program Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the tune in app, Bloomberg dot com, and.
The Bloomberg Business App.
You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just say, Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
It is Friday is twelve twenty three pm on the Wall Street time. That means it's time for what is Matt Miller driving? Kinda Ella joins this actually does every time this week Bloomberg Business Week. Calm this, We're going to talk about the BMWA, Matt's love for superchargers, who doesn't and met, and Hannah's new podcast.
When somebody wrote this, So listen. Every week I do this segment to talk about the car I'm test driving this week, and every week I record a podcast with Hannah Elliott, who writes for Bloomberg Pursuits. So I figured, like chocolate and peanut butter, let's bring these two things together.
So podcast.
Our podcast is called Hot Pursuit Night, which is a play on you know, Hannah's unit, play on words. Hannah's unit is called Pursuits And the podcast comes out every Saturday morning and you can listen to it live on Bloomberg Radio, taped to live to tape on Bloomberg Radio. But I thought it would be cool to talk about these two big trucks together and they're very different. Obviously, I'm driving a Dodge Durango hell Casts. It's like a
family truckster, right, it's a grocery getter. And you know they start at forty thousand dollars in the base model, so very affordable. But if you put the hell Cat engine in, oh boy, and that's the only thing that matters to me. It's a supercharge six point two liters V eight, then it costs ninety four thousand dollars and actually can you can get the price up to one hundred and ten pretty fast. So I absolutely love the car. I love superchargers, I love V eights. Yeah, but it's
really all about the motor. It's not a terribly luxurious interior. The seats aren't super comfortable. I don't love the layout of the infotainment. It doesn't handle very well. I don't think the build quality is super high. It's just the supercharged motor that I care about, and I think for that it's it's pretty expensive, maybe too expensive. So but Hannah is driving like an ultra luxury truck, a BMWXM. Hannah, tell us about that.
So I've got a few points to your supercharger motor. This the BMWXM does have a V eight two. This is a twin turbov eight and it's also paired with an electric motor.
This is act a hybrid. It gets six or and forty four horse power.
So a little bit less than that Hellcat, but sort of comparable the Hellcat. Yeah, yeah, so close close, But I have to say the XIM costs a lot more more. It starts at about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars starting and.
It goes up from there.
I should mention they're going to come out with an even more powerful edition next month. So it's really it's fast, it's powerful, it's very expensive. Personally, I do not think it drives in the sophisticated way that we have come to expect from BMW's. It's a little bit inelegant, jerky. I found it extremely powerful, but not the greatest handling, not the greatest driving apparatus. And Matt, I think you've driven this one too, haven't you?
I haven't.
This is where I think is like the soup diversion of what I've got.
No, No, I've an X.
You X.
True, you have an X and this is the M version of the X. So actually it's kind of it's supposed to be the top of the line. But frankly, your car is probably drives much more, much smoother, much more sophisticated, much more elegant. And I know what Hannah talking about because I've driven this XM before. When I first took it out of the garage and Chelsea, I noticed that the the switch from electric to gas was
pretty jerky. And the thing is, I think the XM and the Durango Hellcat, both of them need to be driven in anger for them to work right. And I don't know if you've been able to really ring it out, Hannah, but when I finally took the XM up to Bear Mountain and ripped it around turns at much higher speeds than are recommended, then it started to shine. I liked
the anti roll bar. I like the suspension, but otherwise when you're being just like a rich person driving around, uh, there's no air suspension in that BMW, it just isn't nice, you know.
I have to say, I lived in New York for almost twenty years. I'm now in LA I'm trying to not drive in anger. I'm trying to move past that. And I love anger. Anger is my favorite emotion. But I'm trying to really, you know, these are my la years and I don't want to have to drive my BMW in anger to have fun with it. I should also say the XIM is huge. It's the same size as the X seven, but it only seats six people. The X seven is a seven passenger. The XM, I'm sorry,
it only seats five people. The X seven seats seven. Of course, this seats five, so it's big. It's matt I think you use the word brutalist for how it looks. I think it just looks a bit heavy handed.
So I like that. So when you tell me this is a seven passenger car that only seats five, my eyes light up, you know, because I'm six four ten pounds. I like that. That means there's more space. It's business class, that's what this car.
Yes, yeah, well there's a lot of space.
Yeah.
I think that's great. And I love the big grill. A lot of people would say it's ugly. On the XM, I would say it's book dish, which is a German word. It's powerful, you know, its presences can't be ignored. The Dodge Durango Hellcat, on the other hand, you can easily overlook that vehicle In fact, it feels much smaller in a lot of ways than my Challenger, which is only
a two door. It's definitely thinner. The seats are not big enough for my but you know, so, yeah, I think it's fairly small for an SUV, even though it's
a three row vehicle. I don't know who's going to buy that thing, but the prices having come down dramatically, I feel like in the long run, the both the BMW XM and the Durango Hellcat they're gonna depreciate like crazy, but the XM, certainly because you know, Hannah, the BMW I really want to buy and hopefully will at the begining of next year is a twenty twenty M seven sixty and they started at one sixty five MSRP, but now I'm finding them three years old with thirty thousand
miles for sixty five. So they've appreciated like mad and I feel like the XM would two except for they're not going to make very many.
No they're not, and I have to say even even fewer of this this XM label version coming and I know I mentioned that before, but they're really kind of pushing it, I think because they realized if this is supposed to be the most powerful bmwsuv ever made, and it is, they really need to like push a power even more because if you're getting beat by Dodge, that's not a good look, isn't No No.
And by the way, that brings up another point something that we spoke about on the podcast, and you said something where I was like, oh, now I get it. I've always wondered why Americans go to the supercharger, and I love a super childreacher. I think it's the best kind of forced induction. You get the power right at the very bottom of the rev range. And Europeans and Japanese have always gone to the turbochargers. I didn't know why, but you pointed out a pretty important reason. Hannah.
Yeah, I have a theory, and I think it's actually back to buy science. That really European roads and for instance, Japanese roads tend to be smaller, more curby. Obviously these are smaller spaces, while American roads are big, open highways great for driving drag races, you know, going fast and a straight line.
The turbo charger is best used on curby, windy roads.
I mean, it's amazing when you can feel the thrust of the boost kick in. That's when you really feel the value of it. You don't necessarily feel the value of a turbocharger when you're just on an open highway supercharger, maybe you do.
That's my theory.
I think she's right, she's on. A turbocharger is more sophisticated, you know, a supercharger. No, supercharger is just like a sledgehammer.
That's as American.
That's why I like it.
Yeah, it's right, it's pretty American, all right. The other thing that I wanted to just briefly touch on is F one. It's coming up. It's I know we still have another week, but tell us about you're going to go to Las Vegas.
Yes, I will be there.
I'm excited and slightly terrified at the same time. It's going to be a circus, which, of course, this is what we want from Los Angeles or from Las Vegas.
But it's going to be wild.
November eighteenth is the night of the Grand Prix race. Yesterday, it's a night race. I had It's a night race. It starts at ten pm local time. I think it might actually be a little bit cold. But yesterday I was talking to the head of Perelli Motorsport, who just of course won the contract to get to provide tires until twenty twenty seven. They're actually considering it to be a bit of a cold track. They're preparing the tires to be expecting a cold track. But all that to say,
you know, it's fifteen thousand dollars dinners Wild Parties. Of course, the sphere, this huge event space that you two has been performing at, is not It's going to be hosting some new musical guests during the Grand Prix, which is a big deal.
That's gonna be good stuff. And and thanks so much for joining us, Hanna Elliet Bloomberg Business weeklu is joining us to talk about cars.
Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller nineteen seventy three.
Then on Fall Sweeney I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio