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about waste management that's coming up. Let's get to Charlie Pellett in the newsroom now he's got a Bloomberg business flash, and I thank you, Kathleen, thank you. Pim Thedal. The smpnz dack very close to the worst level of the day, twenty nine minutes to go ahead of the clothes, stick around and find out which way markets are going right now though decidedly negative. Tone SMP down twenty a drop
of one percent. Down indust reels down to sevent to drop there of one point two percent, as stackdown fifty four a drop of one point one percent. We are brought to you by National Realty returns on cash in rented real estate. Find them at n r I, a dot net. Apple leading an afternoon sell off in technology, overshadowing corporate deals and strong results from Facebook. Apple is down three point two percent now, Facebook surging seven percent after the bell we hear from Amazon dot Com. It
shares now lower by five point five percent. Commercial real estate services companies cbr E Group beating estimates. Bob Slenttech is cbr ES CEO. He was interviewed today on Bloomberg Television. It was a good quarter for us around the world. Across our product lines. We had good growth, double digit growth, and all those services profit lines and in all our regions. Um The thing that I think drove it was good solid,
really state fundamentals, probably better than people realizing. Fundamentals are rental rates and occupancies. But also something that was really important for us as we took market share in the majority of the markets that we're in and across our product lines. The US economy expanded in the first quarter at the slowest pace in two years, as American consumers reigned in spending and companies tightened their belts in response to weak global financial conditions. On a plunge in oil prices.
Crude oil up today by thirty six cents forty five sixty nine on West Texas Intermediate, a gain of eight tenths of one percent. We've got gold of seventeen sixty a gain of one point four percent. And now let's take a look at some of the other stories making news. Thank you Charlie from the Bloomberg Newsroom. I'm Ramie in essent cio. This news update is brought to you by the Jeep Grand Cherokee, the most awarded suv ever. The Grand Jeriche continues to raise the bar with its luxurious
interior and legendary four by four capability drive. When at your low call Jeep dealer today, Americans who get their health insurance through President Obama's Affordable Care Act will likely be shelling out more money next year. Many insurers say the last coverage has been a financial drain for them, and there's been a wave of insurers already seeking premium increases. What does former House Speaker John Bayner think of Ted Cruz. Well, for one thing, he calls the Texas Senator quote lucifer
in the flesh. Byner adds that he can get along with almost everyone, but that he's never worked with a quote more miserable s ob in his life. Authorities say of Baltimore police officer shot and wounded a thirteen year old boy who refused to drop a replica of a semi automatic pistol. That team is expected to survive. Here's Police Commissioner Kevin Davis. It's a replica from the automatic pistol. And I looked at it myself today. I stood right over top of it. I put my own eyes on it.
It's an absolute identical replica semi automatic pistol. Those police officers had no way of knowing that it was not, in fact, an actual firearm. And last winner's East Coast blizzard has set another record in New York, while a record in Newark was deleted. The changes were prompted by questions about the accuracy of snowfall measurements. Noah says the twenty six point eight inch total reported for New York Central Park will be changed to twenty seven point five inches,
an all time record. Global news twenty four hours a day, powered by our journalists in more than one news bureaus around the world. From the Bloomberg Newsroom, I'm Rami and a censio Charlie, and we thank you and again recapping SMP down twenty points, a drop of one percent, down in dust rols down two points, drop of one I'm Charlie Peloton. That's a Bloomberg Business flash. This is taking Stock with Kathleen Hayes and Prim Fox on Bloomberg Radio.
When people talk about garbage, they usually talk about something they just want to get rid of and throw out. When they talk about garbage at Waste Management, they talk about something that is very, very off. Well. In fact, this company based in Houston operations across North America, posted better than expected results for its first quarter, aided by better pricing and increased volume. We're joined now from Houston by David Steiner. He's the president and CEO of Waste Management.
Thank you for joining us, David, Thanks for having me so uh in a nutshell? What what is driving your growth and your results? Yeah, you know, so when we look at what we're doing, it's all driven by the customer um. You know, this is the first time we've had positive volume since two thousand and twelve, and that's because we're trying to provide the best customer service to the twenty one million customers that we provide cut service
to throughout the United States. This quarter it showed with the most positive volume we've seen since two thousand and twelve. But we did that without giving up price. And when you can get price and volume on this this fixed asset base that we have is when you really start generating cash, and we just did. We did just that this quarter. Um generating more cash and we've generated in
a quarter in in four years. What is the relationship between waste Management's business and trends in the housing industry? And I know you answered this today in terms of geographic diversity. Yeah, it's a great question. And you know, when you think about it, every time a subdivision is built, we put a can out when they build the house, and then we get a new residential customer because there's
a new house created. And then you've got to create a lot of commercial businesses around that gas station's dry cleaners, restaurants, And so every time a subdivision is built, we really get a three for one pop to our volumes. We get a residential customer, we get a roll off customer, and we get a commercial customer. And so as we've seen housing bounced back since the last recession. Um, we've
seen our volumes get better and better and better. Finally this quarter turning positive about six months earlier than we expected. So when you talk about customer service, you're to me in a space that is kind of generic. Right. A lot of people collect garbage, a lot of people have landfills and do recycling. How do you how do you use customer service to differentiate differentiate you from the competition and creates just solid quarter? Yea. You know, I always
say we're sort of like the cable business. Um, every week we all get a mailer saying we can reduce your price for cable, but we don't take it because we're gonna have to sit at our house for a couple hours when they come and fix it, and then they might have to come again to install it. And you really don't want to spend the time until the cable starts going out, and once it starts going out, you look for another provider. And that's basically what's going
on in our industry. You know, if you provide that great service, your customers generally don't want to switch. And so that's why customer service is so important to not only getting a new customer, but retaining that customer. Can you tell us about strength and specific areas of the country such as the South and I'm thinking of Florida,
the Gulf Coast and even California. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, after the last downturn in two thousand nine, we really saw the Midwest and the East Coast leading our company. And that was unusual because because obviously the Sun Belt has generally led the economy, but because the housing downturn drove the recession in two thousand and nine, we saw better volumes up north. Now we've seen it normalized where the Sun Belts actually doing better, but the North and
the Midwest continues to be strong. We just see it even stronger down in the Sun Belt. I just have to ask you a question about you. You enjoy books on quantum physics, and uh, you also enjoy model trains. Wow? Does quantum thinking about that help you think about waste? I'm gonna tell you a little story about that, because
um that happens to be on my Wickpitia page. And I read that, and I said, I truly do like quantum physics, and I read the books, but but I don't know where the model trains came from and my kids I didn't even know I had a Wickpitia page. And my kids said, oh no, our friends go onto your Wickpedia page and put strange things on. Did you really drive this dow bony and you were when you were a kid? No, I never drove us. Okay, you heard it here. You heard it here, sports fans. He
does not does not get into model trains. I just want to ask a little bit about capital investment. I know you've been spending money. Tell us about something called leech eight. I know this is water that has percolated through a solid or leached out of some of the constituents.
What is leach shape and how does that affect your business? Yeah, so, any fluid that comes out of our landfills is classified as lee chap, and you know it's it's generally fairly benign, but you want to treat it before you put it
back into the water system. And what happened to us this year is that we got an extraordinary amount of leach ape because of the heavy rains and then um generally it goes to a water treatment facility, and one of the regional water treatment facilities in the mid Atlantic actually had too much water, so they quit taking lead chap, so we had to transport it all the way up the East coast, and so our transportation costs went up by about our leech a costs went up by about
fourteen million dollars. And so what we're gonna do is start building our own water treatment plants so that we can have our destiny in our own hands. Thank you very much. David Steiner is the chief executive of a Waste of Management. Shares of wait Management today are up three and a half percent. You're listening to Taking Stock n BIRK radio. Up next, I'll look at the stock market one day after the FED in the Bank of Japan and on a day when GDP was pretty weak. This is the MC radio