UnitedHealth Executive Fatally Shot

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Thank you everyone, there's cool press confidence. Thank you for a right.

That was a press briefing from one police Applaza in Lower Manhattan. Poice Commissioner Jessica Tish, Chief of Department at Jeffrey Madra, and Chief of Detective Joseph Kenny providing an update regarding the hom side often Manhattan, the United Health executive. Let's get some more reporting on this with Miles Miller. He's managing editor for Bloomberg News. Miles, anything in that press conference strike you as of note here still obviously very very early in the investigation.

Yeah, you know, this is a really interesting investigation. They have a suspect who is able to flee on a city bike after shooting an executive in Midtown Manhattan in full view of plenty of people. Midtown Manhattan, of course, flooded with people around the time this happened, just before

So, Miles, you have extensive work having worked with the NYPD when you worked in local news, you also led communications strategy.

For the FDN.

Y tell me about the process inside the NYPD when something like this happens.

Yeah, So the first thing that the nypds did was search Arcis cameras, so that is the NYPD's network of cameras throughout Manhattan, and from those cameras they were able to pull that photo of the suspects standing in a shooter stamps and aiming at the executive at Brian Thompson.

So that's the first step.

The second step is going to be working with those partners like City Bike to figure out where we wound up going number one, number two, to figure out where that suspect is, and then also trying to trace every step. They put all of these videos that they take the suspect from the moment it happened to him getting a Central Park. They put it together on an app called Patentizer, and they're able to figure out just exactly where that person wound up and how to continue doing the investigation.

All right, Myles, thank you so much for that. We appreciate your reporting. Miles Miller, Managing editor, Bloomberg News in this unfolding story, extraordinary fluid, very early stages. But we did get some comments from leadership of the NYPD that again they are working all angles as you can imagine, right.

And United Health Group obviously has many different subsidiaries, and Brian Thompson is the CEO of one of them, so he was the CEO of United Health.

They also have financial services.

They have a Medicare division, community division, and employer division, so he headed one of those divisions for the overall United Health Group and Bloomberg News will be keeping you updated on any headlines as they cross. And we heard also that the tree lighting ceremony today, the whole event starts at seven pm, and that will go on as expected with a much heavier police presence as well as ununiformed detectives.

Yeah.

I mean, I think one thing New York has shown over and over again is the resilience of the city and its people. And we move on, you know, as most folks tried to do as well.

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Eleven thirty, Let's check in with Steve Miller, who he's the chair of the ISM Services PMI, Steve, thanks so much for joining us here. I'm looking at the ISM Services Index came in at fifty two point one. The consensus was fifty five point seven.

Here.

What are we seeing on the services side of the US economy here?

Now, I think this month's number is a solid number.

It's on trend. If you look past the last two months. I had a couple of interviews that I was in over the last two months. I mentioned just as likely those blips in new orders and business activity as well as supplier deliveries could have been the result of the port strike, people getting ready risk management around port strike and hurricanes, and those seem to be off trend. This one seems to be right on trend and continues to reinforce slow to moderate growth in the services sector.

So the market is taking a little bit of different view.

If I just look at the front end of the yield curve, you're seeing a bin to the BUN market yields a little lower, the dollar is dropping, and the S and P.

Is off its highs.

And I say that because it seems like the market is taking it as more weakness. Is that how you're describing it, like continued weaker services grinding.

Lower or some sort of like, yeah, it's fine.

I think for the next six months. To me, it looks fine.

It's a trend of about fifty two percent, which is which is a solid number, although lower than it's been.

In previous years.

I think more of the concern is when you look at the summertime, which in non COVID years has been anywhere from half a percentage point up to six percentage points down from where it is in the September to November timeframe.

So I think in the near term it looks solid.

I'd be you know, there there's so many variables out there on tariffs and interest rate changes and that type of thing, fedrarate changes. I think, you know, I think the summertime is more of the question mark.

All right, Steve, thank you so much with that. Steve Miller, he's the chairman of IM. That's the Institute for Supply and Management on Zoom from Aledo, Texas. How about that.

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Salesforce dot com big tech company reporting big earnings last night, stock up nine and a half percent at a hitting an all time high market cap just below three hundred and fifty billion dollars. One of the real winners here stocks up thirty eight percent year today. Let's break down some of those numbers on rog Rana joins us the freshly shaved on a rock rana, Thank goodness, shave that thing off. Technolog Jannel's Bloomberg intelligence from.

The technial them, I don't recoonize them.

He looks like a professional now makes some years younger from that tech hub of Chicago, Illinois. Ana Rod talk to us about Salesforce dot com. They seem to really put up some good numbers. What is this street like about it?

I think when you really peel the numbers on sales and backlog, they were pretty much in line. But I think what is really happening and something that we highlighted during a preview w some notes that we wrote earlier in October, they released a new product, Collegent Force, which

So to this point, if Salesforce are doing this well without agent Force materially contributing to its bottom line, like I mean, what kind of upside do we really have and when do they read sort of full tilt on that.

Yeah, I think I would agree with you on that because you know, people are buying into that without seeing the results.

And I think this is.

Truly what we have seen a lot in the software space is people really figured out which are the companies that will benefit in the long run, and a lot of that, you could say, value realization happens sooner, you know, when the revenue realization is so perhaps down the road there will be a time when the software space may not see evaluation uptake, but the sales growth will go up. But you know, one of the things you have to think about it when former Salesforce point of view, they

All right, So what is what's getting the market all excited?

Here?

This this this AI product? What is their AI product and what is it supposed to do? Because I actually moderated a panel with the Salesforce executive and I forgot everything he told me, So think about it.

I actually have a very interesting demonstration if you go to YouTube and look at their Dreamforce and demo, it was actually pretty interesting because they did Sacks Fifth Avenue. So think about it this way, Paul, you you buy. You know, the presenter bought a jacket from saxs Fifth Avenue, didn't like the size or something, just went to the chatpot and say can you find me a different size?

Some numbers on that, like how much is that going to do for them in terms of revenue? And how much do they charge for like that chatbot? So say like that chatbot works for me for two minutes, what's the translation of money?

So the pricing starts at two dollars per conversation. Now the question is what does that mean. So when you look at you know, a person calling AD and D or Hoverizon, that call could cost as much as ten to fifteen dollars. If it's a quasi mix of an automated chat pot and a customer service person, you know, that call could be seven dollars eight dollars per conversation.

All right, So this company's got like thirty nine to forty percent EBITDA margin. Pretty much all of that goes down to the free cash flow line. What do they do with their cash right now?

They're buying back years. I'm sorry, Paul, but that's exactly what most software companies do when they have it.

Now.

Think about it this way. Just one and a half two years ago, this was almost ten percentage points lower because they were spending even more on sales and marketing. The big story for Salesforce in the last one and a half years has been a real improvement in margins and as of today, compared to let's say March of twenty twenty three, it's up ten percentage points. That's big if you look at from any you know, financial metric.

All right, An, I really appreciate it, really good stuff. I'm if you give me a chatbot that can actually do something that when I call City Bank doesn't take me an hour.

I'm gay. I'm down for that.

All right, enter a ground on Bloomberg Intelligence Technology and I was joining us.

It has not worked for me yet. It hasn't worked for me.

Call for customer service. It freaks me out when I don't get a live.

Yeah, and I keep saying my name and they're like, I don't understand you. Please talk to a real good boy.

That's unders. Yeah.

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We love talking about commercial real estate all around this country. Because it's such a dynamic business and it's undergone a tremendous amount of change, particularly resulting from the pandemic, as this industry tries to continue its recovery and reinvention. And we love talking to some good, smart people about that. We got that today. Liz Hart, she's at over at Newmark. She's the president of Leasing for North America, and that's US and Canada. Abigail Deulttle Joints is too. She's our

In this country? We really see twenty four five is the year the real estate gets redefined. We're five years post of the pandemic. We're putting that all behind us.

Now.

People have experimented with different ways to view commercial real estate and now it's really about setting the value and creating the value going forward.

So across key.

Urban markets, particularly in New York and San Francisco. We're seeing demand that we haven't seen in five years, which is a really good thing to see because that demand will start to create future value in those assets.

What kind of demand? What are you hearing in terms of demand?

I think the most active segments of the market are still financial services across the country. Also, technology has a very strong and growing portion of demand, so we're seeing both of that.

So relative to Newmark, let's back up for a moment, publicly traded company, one of the top real estate advisory firms in the country. Lots of different businesses. What's the main business and in terms of this thesis about twenty twenty five being the reset, what are the data points that you're seeing.

Well, we've certainly created a purposeful kit of different parts that will come together to drive our business forward. So we're number one in capital markets across the country. As you're looking at what's going to happen in the debt markets and what's happening with the debt that will be maturing in the next year, there will be an onslaught of capital markets activity that will happen across the country and that will really.

Reset the value.

And that mixed with tenant demand is what's going to drive the business forward. So we think the services business is going to have really spectacular years in twenty five and twenty six.

So in terms of being the top capital markets, that means you're actually doing these financings because we keep hearing and talking about this let's call it one trillion to one point five trillion dollar wall of maturity is coming, but there's been some extent and pretend.

So you'll be very much involved in that activity.

Yes, we have an incredibly active debt market team right now and they've traded a billion dollars just in REZI to or C the office to RESI conversions alone in the last couple of months. So we're seeing that turn on. So we're last year it was a lot of hey, what are we going to do next? It's starting to hit trades and then actually move forward, and we think that's really optimistic for.

The year ahead.

Where the part within commercial real estate, where's the growth, where's the opportunity? Because I still feel like in office we I'm not sure maybe we're starting to form a bottom, but we haven't seen a ton of activity, but I know there are other parts that are working.

Yeah, I mean, I think the opportunity is trophy has been talked about a lot, so we know there's opportunity in trophy. But right below that, there's a category that's being repositioned right now towards having more amenities and being better space. That definitely is a segment of the market that we think there's a lot of opportunity, particularly in places like Seattle, San Francisco, Boston where you do see the demand picking up at such a large level. So

Well, I was going to say, I've heard that the convergence there isn't as easy as it may sound. That it's a lot more complicated, particularly like windows and like central air and like moving walls and stuff.

It's physically very complicated, which is why you don't see it happening on even a larger part. But what's interesting is we started tinkering this more and more post pandemic, and there's some very notable projects that will set the blueprint going forward that are delivering this year, including twenty five water in New York City. So we really see this as being something that will pick up.

As our markets correspondent. Also with this real estate beat, I of course took a look at Newmark Stark because we don't talk to a lot of real estate folks who are around publicly trading companies, or at least that's not something that I've been in my coverage so much so far over the last year year and a half.

But it's really interesting.

So you went public in twenty seven and then up and then down, and then up and then down about sixty five percent on the real estate downturn, but then up almost two hundred percent off of that bottom into today, still a little bit below your record high, but it tells me that some of those smart investors out there are seeing something similar to what you're talking about in twenty twenty five being redefined. You have a sense for why people are gobbling up your stock like this.

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's certainly a sentiment in the market that the markets are improving. But also Newmark has a very big strategy focused on top talent, and that's something that's very differentiated from a lot of

Say I'm out in Middle America, I'm a developer. I want to put up a multifamily. Whatever is my bank and lend me the money. Where am I going to get the capital for that?

These days? It depends on the situation. So it's obviously very unique on every single asset. But we are seeing debt and equity enter the market again because now that we have enough data points to know where the market is, people know how to price things right. I think the uncertainty of yesterday is now behind us and it's really about moving forward. That doesn't mean every project will pencil. It doesn't mean that every project will be at the

Where are the problem points still?

I mean the debt that's maturing is still the problem point, because that's when the value is changing. And so there's

So with that standoff, like we use that example, who caved, was that was the situation.

Actually, interestingly enough, neither caved and the tenant went somewhere else and created the value for someone else, right, And then I guess that's there's this saying and commercial real estate that the best amenity is a well capitalized landlord, and you know that's probably going to continue to be true in twenty five, twenty six and for the next several years as this readjustment happens. But the fact that the demand is in the market does mean there's a lot of opportunity.

Are we seeing equity people come in and say, at this value, I'm ready to put in equity into this building and lender, you're just going to have to work something out, and the lenders are willing to work something out certainly. I mean, because the lender at the end of the day will have to take a haircut the original equity. We're going to get a take take acrecut.

There's a lot of smart money out there, and a lot of it is coming in places like San Francisco'd be a great example of that right where you can trade down and get something that will go for the next generation to create value.

So this is certainly a news heavy cycle and year President elect Trump going to be taking office in January. What's the effect I've been dying to know what's the effect.

Going to be on real estate?

You know, if rates go higher but less regulation, what is the buzz out there?

Yeah, I think commercial real estate largely sees. You know, Trump is being pro growth, as many people do, and so that's a positive for our industry. But I think for commercial real estate, what also matters, in addition to the national election is what's happening at the local level.

You know. Regulation wise, there are some that said that in this election year that the regulation on regional banks was relatively laxed because of the presidential cycle, but that it could come on. Do you see any problems with the regional banks in the coming year, any kind of a crisis of sorts similar to the Silicon Valley situation last year.

I think that the large crisis point is behind us, because now people are willing to realize that the values have changed and that we're moving forward. But certainly there could be some bumpiness in the next twenty four months.

You just moved to New York City. I did from San Francisco. I did give us the expert view and just San Francisco, I mean, where are we has bottom. Is it coming back? What's driving it, what's good, what's bad?

I would say never bet again San Francisco. It's a very resilient economy. It has been since the gold Rush. As you know, it is coming back. I think if you look at Market Street. Market Street's the big thoroughfare in San Francisco. Two years ago, everyone said Market Street's dead, it's never coming back, you know, write it off. Well, what's happened in the last twelve months, and the city anchored it because they're coming back to the office five

So, speaking of San Francisco, Amy Price, president of Vigo, joined us maybe about two months ago or so, and she's one of the well known voices people in the commercial real estate space, and she said that she believes this.

Fourth quarter is the bottom.

She called it definitively from her view in about fifteen seconds or so.

Do you agree, Yes, I agree completely, She's right there.

You go appreciate that, all right, both, thank you very much, really appreciate that. Liz Hart Newmark, President of North America, Lisa, we very much appreciate it. Definitely come back, Thanks so much. Abigail Doolittle joining us from Bloomberg.

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