Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Single best idea and off of yesterday's program, which was just wonderful of people working, Eric and the team working on the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean and all of that. We tried to shift back to the markets into the economy much more today. Just a stellar set of guests program. Note. I really want to shout out David Gurris the Big Take yesterday. Look for that at Bloomberg Podcasts. It is a show
that's gotten rave reviews on Israel, on Iran. It was with our Nick Wattams and Company and Ethan Brown are our Tel Aviv bureau chief. I really can't say enough about the response mister Gurrs had off of The Big Take yesterday. Our response today was to speak about the Shreek Kamar is legendary. He's out of Los Angeles, iconic with TCW and others before that, closely associated with Mike
Milkin's say the Milkan Institute. Shriek Kamar is adamant that we've got to get back to foundational theories of another time and place and even suggests with this persistent inflation, not we will, but we could see a rate increase he wants to go back to his mentor and PhD advisor at Columbia years ago, John Taylor, now at Stanford University. Shrek Kamar on the Taylor rule, You have.
To go back to the pre pandemic long ago nineteen ninety's approach to Taylor rule, and it was first proposed Tom in nineteen ninety three. Janet Yellen, who was then in San Francisco, said she hopes that it can be adopted soon and thirty years later, there is no problem Chris toward it. It you need the tailored rule back. It is a very flexible formula taking into account whether your growth is above or below target, your inflation is above or below target, and based on that, should you be
increasing a lowering interest rate. You put the formula out, you publish it in newspapers, speak about it on Bloomberg, and I will know what's going to happen to interest rate.
Shi Kamara with one thought there and of course closely associated now with Stanford University in the Hoover Institution, one of the things we really tried to do today was stay on the markets. In the markets be course had a deep draw down. I'm kidding. Vis got out to
a nineteen not twenty level. I guess that's some recent angst in the market, as you'd expect with all this going on in politics, and yes, some real earnings angst as well off of JP Morgan, Coben, Sachs, old Morgan Stanley, Bank of America less so thanks to Kennlean, CFRA was brilliant on Bank of America. He made real clear he thought this whole thing with subpar but Bank of America clearly having the ability to bounce back in future quarters.
But so there we are into earning season, and of course what everybody's waiting for is tech, and tech to me is Apple. I know Microsoft comes out as well. May second will be Apple earnings. And it's good to catch up Gene Monster deep Water, and I went to you know something conventional, not China, not product, not iPhone, not goggles like Andrew Murphy, War's working with gene Mounster. I went back to use of cash. Munster went through the math of their free cash flow.
They generate about one hundred billion in operating income, and so this is about a three hundred and fifty four hundred billion dollar revenue company. They'll probably do about ninety five billion. This year free cash flow will be around fifty five billion, So this is still a machine. When it comes to and I want to I think I bury the lead relative to that data point about their
free cash flow is revenue growth. If you take what it will be in the March quarter, what they're going to report in a few weeks here, revenue growth over the past eight quarters has been down, will be down zero point four percent on average. So they continue to drive that kind of fifty billion plus free cash flow despite revenue being flat. I think it speaks to the strength of the business model that they have.
I've been harping on this. It's maybe my theme for the year, which is there's a complete growth fixation within the financial media. It's about growing earnings, growing revenues, growing this, growing units, how many clicks do they have, how many iPods are they sold? Etc. And the iPhones, I should say. And the reality is a lot of companies and CFOs are less focused on growth at any cost and are looking at profit. In the profit model of something like Apple,
just as one example, is just absolutely stunning. There's no other way to put it. It's one of the focuses that we have at Bloomberg surveillance is that we're always looking at the Bloomberg FA screen, the financial analysis screen, and we're saying, okay, growthy, growthy, growthy and all that, but what does the profit look like? How do they come down the income statement? What is free cash flow
look horizontally? Pro tip. One of the great things I'm doing now this is not original, is I look at where they were in twenty nineteen and now where they are four years out, in five years out, in two thousand and twenty four, five years out will be you know, in two quarters, three quarters or so, and you'd be amazed how you can glean out industries such as banking or Yeah, there's been a free cashal lift, but not
as much as you think. In these juggernauts with these high multiples, these big tech companies that are putting it on every quarter. We're having a lot of fun with this. It's single best idea, It's just two ideas. We have a committee, you know, we argue. I mean we at one meeting went forty five minutes to try to decide which two we would pick to put in the single best idea. But today it's Shree Komar and it's Gina Munster. Just as simple as that. It's a single best idea.
Of course, listen to us out on Apple car Play, download the Bloomberg Business app, It's free on YouTube. All I can say is you search Bloomberg podcasts and you get on the live chat, and we never know what people are going to talk about. Jess Menton's like play satisfaction. So we played the Rolling Stones, Otis Redding and other worthies today. Okay, fine, and then everybody's all of a sudden about the NBA. Think I'd Damien Sassauer bailed me out with chick chat on the NBA. So this is
single best idea from Bloomberg. Surveillance would remain with the Mason