Amazon Tries Prime Day … Again

Amazon goes after deal hungry shoppers. As retailers braced for a lackluster holiday season, the econmost Giant will hold a second Prime Day sale this October. In the fight back against inflation. And is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's your delivery falling from the sky. We talked a zipline about the drone startucks, new sound technology, the latest play to win over regulators. We'll get to that in

a moment, but first, Amazon's trying Prime Day again. The company is offering a two day early access sale on October eleventh and twelve, ahead of the holiday season. It's the first time it's done two Prime Day events in the same year. This as retailers across the world one of a slowdown in holiday shopping here to discuss Bloomberg's Spencer Soper Spencer, what's the play here from Amazon? Hey?

Why not? You know, try to slap Prime Day on it, Try to get people excited, Try to get a bunch of them to your to your site, so as much stuff as you can. They definitely got a lot of merchants dealing with an inventory blood like a lot of other a lot of other retailers, they want to move into quickly and they want to try to get people's money before somebody else does. So we've got this kind of race going on of Christmas creeping earlier and earlier

into the season. Was this a surprise that they would add a second Prime Day or did we know that it was in the works now? Really there were some reports about it about it happening. I think it was the precise day was really the the only the only news and that they're kind of rebranding it as uh as a Prime Early Access as as opposed to calling it Prime Day two because Prime Day two just doesn't sound fresh enough or something. You told us a little

bit about inventories. You know, I think a lot of the sellers on Amazon had to do this juggling acts right of supply chain crunch getting things in the last holiday season. A lot of that didn't turn up until the middle of this year. So what's the risk here for the sellers on on the Amazon platform. Well, the

risk is that they don't sell it, you know. So I think we're gonna see prices drop drop a lot on consumer goods, you know, on on nondiscretionary I'm sorry, on discretionary purchases, right, so, you know, and then and then they're trying to align with consumer case. A lot of things people want to past couple of years during the pandemic, they just don't want anymore. So, um, how do you entice somebody to buy that? If they don't want it, You've got to give him a great, great,

great deal. So you know that that's going to be the danger there, And a lot of these merchants anticipating taking taking haircuts on a lot of the even retooling, retooling their product line to try to try to align better with with what people are buying. Now, what's the mood music been from Andy Jasse and Amazon about the state of the global consumer, about the economic pain that

we're seeing around the world. They haven't given a whole lot of guidance on it or set a whole lot you know, they're still just trying to, uh, you know, promote their business, be the place to go for for deals, be the place to go for your holiday shopping, preach convenience, um, and just try to try to stand out, you know. So uh, you know, basically, it's just going to be a dog bite for every consumer dollar, and they want to They want to get everyone they can. I remember

the conversation you and I were having last year. I was in London at the time. But Black Friday, Cyber Monday. What does the second Prime Day event mean in terms of how consumers spend with those kind of other traditional holiday shopping periods. Yeah, we don't know. If they're kind of borrowing tomorrow's spending today. I think a lot of this is retailers just racing realizing that people are probably gonna be coming up against the edges of their spending

limits come to the holiday season. You know, it's like people are leaning on their credit cards to pay for things like food and fuel. You know, that's how they've been dealing with inflation. So come holiday season, they might not have a lot of room even on their credit cards, let alone money to spend. So I think they're just trying to lock those sales in while people still have

money hey spend. So what are we hearing from the retailers themselves to have their small businesses on the Amazon platform. I've just said there, they're not expecting the best holiday. You know. Again, they recognize as an inventory glut. They know that they're competing with against a lot a lot of other sellers, so they're gonna have to pay for advertising to stand out. Then they're gonna have to have, you know, good discounts to get buyers, to compel buyers

to buy. So they're not looking for a great holiday. Alright, spens a sofa, Thank you very much. Let's talk megacaps. Shares of Microsoft have dropped about year to date, almost double the decline Apple is seen in its stock, But research from Bloomberg Intelligence finds if you get the microscope out, Microsoft is outperforming the iPhone maker on almost every single financial metric and might be better positioned to survive a recession. Joining us to discuss is the author of that research.

Bloomberg Intelligence, senior tech analysts and a rag Rona anag What is the thesis here? So the pizzas is very simple. When you look at the tech space, software has been killed quite a bit over the last one year or I would say nine months because of rising grade, because it's one of the highest growth sectors. And you know, we think Microsoft has been punished unjustly compared to the likes of Apple, who has performed better than in the same frame. And our pieces is if you look at

the growth profile of Microsoft, it's better than Apple. If you look at the margin profile, it's better than Apple. And and finally, in most importantly, it is a lot less dependent or exposed to China than Apples. I think we have a bloom bag terminal a chart that shows us the twelve months price to earnings multiples on both Apple and Microsoft. Microstoft come down a little blow Apple

in recent trading sessions. Our investors just sort of more focused on Microsoft's near term, what it's doing right now what, rather than what it could do. See I think in both cases, the Microsoft has not disappointed anybody in the last time I would see quartered and then think if you go into the next quarter, also, you know they haven't realized their guidance. Now dollar is going to be an issue, so translation risk is there and which we

all know. But if you look at the constant guardency growth, we see no reason why Microsoft cannot grow twelve to fifty percent in constant guardency at least for the next two quarters. And even if we had a bad recession next year, you know, we still argue that it can grow north of ten percent in constant guardency. It has a very diverse portfolio of software prod from cloud to office to Windows and you know, a mixture of all

of this. Should let should you know, allow them to grow north of Temple sent silicior into that idea of being recession prof or at least better positions to weather a recession. You know, Microsoft and Apple do have different businesses. Why is Microsoft better positions and weather a recession than Apple? So we argue that enterprises are in a better position than consumers are now. In the case of Apple, you know, Apple consumers in most cases are rich people and they

will continue to buy Apple the iPhones. But if you look at a year, will be your growth comparison? You know, Apple's consensus if you just go by consensus for the next two years it's high single digits. If you look at Microsoft, it's going to be in low double didgets at least for that timeframe. So even without you know, diving deep into that, they can surprise on the upside

because of cloud or because of any other reason. And this is not even accounting for the Activision acquisition going through. Microsoft is better position because of its enterprise presence. There's one key market there were all zeroed in on right now, and that's China. Where does China fit into this idea that Microsoft may be better position right now in some

sense relative to Apple. So if you look at Apple, Apple is very exposed to the Greater China region and you know it generates over its revenue there, but more importantly from its supply chain. You know, bulk of the phones are assembled in that market. Any disruptions googlely because of you know, COVID reasons, are any to your political tensions, you know, Apple will love a hard time to fulfill

the demand for its products. While when you look at Microsoft, it does depend on China for its expansion of its cloud data centers, but other than that, it does not generate that much revenue away from from China or for that matter um you know is exposed to it either from a supply chain a lot less than what Apple is. We broke some news the other day here on Bloo Days Technology about Microsoft's confidence that this activision deal gets done,

and the market really seems to be paying attention. What was your read on that. I think this is going to be a very interesting acquisition for everybody in the tech cline because I think the journal consensus is that the regulators are going to be very tough on Microsoft, and which is partially the easy you see a massive price cap, but it's you know, I think every every couple of months we will see if there are no major, i say, hang ups from the regulators, you would see

that price cap closing. In fact, that I touch our sanalist thinks that the dealer is going to go through because of the nature of the deal rather than you know, the size of Microsoft all the size of the deal

Apple fundamental strong near term risk. Why did you write that? Yeah, I mean the reason we say that is because if you look at Apple for right now, their revenue comes from both to Europe and China, and those are two geographies, are two regions that are facing economic slowdown, right now in fact Europe, we think is things are probably going to get worse before, you know, in the near term,

before they get better. The second thing we want to point out is that the iPhone fourteen is not a moving leader, a needle move of four a Apple, just because the hardware design is still old and in most cases and the base model even the processor is a bit old, and like the next year's model is going

to be a big shift. When you look at the Apple's installed base of let's say eight hundred million I phone and with the refars cycle of about three points in seven million phones three point six years, you're gonna sell about two hundred twenty million phones. We don't see that needle changes. They see it as much, alright, man I agran A crunching the numbers of Bloomberg Intelligence, Thank

you very much. Sticking with Apple, the company has begun manufacturing it's new iPhone fourteen in India much sooner than expected. Production is weeks ahead of schedule after Fox con found the process. Surprisingly s Apple is expanding manufacturing a tensions in China, where most iPhones are made, escalate with the US.

At the same time, India has been keyed to make the country into a viable competitor to China in technology and production capabilities, and Apple's aggressive push into audio, specifically wireless headphones, has been one of the company's most successful bets. Bloomberg's Max Chafkin explains the controversial strategy around the AirPods

good Morning. For years, investors and fans of Apple have been waiting to see if the company's CEO, Tim Cook can release a product to match the success of the iPhone. But Apple's next big thing might be in your pocket already. I'm talking about these little things, AirPods. Third party estimates suggest Apple sold around a hundred twenty million pairs last year, taking in about twenty billion dollars. And the reason for their success also gets to the heart of why Apple

is so controversy. Partly it's a credit to the headphones themselves, but only partly. It's sort of easy to forget that when these were released, reviewers hated them. They didn't sound great, they got lost easily, they're not durable, they're environmentally questionable. But they had one thing going for them. They were easy to set up. With the iPhone. This wasn't in

an accident. It was the culmination of cook strategy to transform the phone from a one off product to an ecosystem of services like iCloud and accessories like the Apple Watch and AirPods. Non these extras really do much without the phone, and the phone doesn't work particularly well without them. Back in when Apple announced air pods, the company also made everybody else's headphones worse by getting rid of the audio jack on the iPhone. To use normal headphones, you

need an adapter. The company's VP of marketing said this was about one thing, courage, which okay, sure, but it was also about Apple's awesome market power that makes a company controversial Spotify, Epic Games, Tile and even Google. I'll say it abuses its power, but antitrust litigation will take years, and until then Apple can extract ever more money out of its fifteen years young cash cow the iPhone who needs the next big thing? Thanks to Max Chafkin for

that coming up. Remote working during the pandemic has left many New York office is empty. How the trend is part of a larger property dilemma in major cities across the world. This is Bloomberg. The rise of remote work during the pandemic has put New York City at this center of a global property dilemma, where multibillion dollar buildings sit vacant, leaving property owners in a buying Bloomberg's Natalie Wong has the details. Now, as you know, I'm visiting

from San Francisco. If I take a stroll down Third Avenue, there's far fewer workers going through revolving doors than there were, say four years ago, when I was last here. What's the story, right? And you see a lot of vacant storefronts as well. Um as you well know, a lot of workers are just not coming into the office, and companies are reducing their real estate footprint because of that, and those that are looking to expand are simply just

not looking at an office building on Third Avenue. You know, we're all still using tools like Zoom and teams, Microsoft teams. You know, there's a multiple options. But what are the landlords going to do to fix this? To get workers and companies back into the buildings themselves. A lot of

landlords all across the city are adding amenities. They're putting in hundreds of millions of dollars into their office building to add stuff like outdoor spaces, new lobbies and new elevators to entice new tenants and then hopefully those tenants will get their workers to come back in as well. As we're slowly starting to see happen across the city. It's a longstanding problem. Same in San Francisco. There's just not enough apartments an affordable price point. But there's a

lot of empty buildings. You just told me, how do we convert? And why is it so hard to convert those office buildings into residential That's a question that everyone's asking, you know. The reality is a lot of the midtown office buildings are so big and rectangular, and there's just so much dark spaces within those buildings that it's hard

to convert into livable residential areas. And on top of that, there's zoning restrictions with the city that doesn't allow for these types of UM renovations to be made, and there's no tax or financial incentives that are provided to landlords to embark on this super costly UM renovation. That's the building owners perspective. What are the tenants want? You know, what are they asking for? Tenants want the best in the newest places. They want to be near Grand Central Terminal,

they want to be near their peers. You know, private equity finance firms, mega big tech firms that are expanding on far west side of Manhattan, and they have a lot of options to choose from. So if they're going to choose between you know, a Third Avenue nineteen fifties building that has sort of been renovated but not really or look at Hudson Yards where there's new skyscrapers and landlords are providing incentives to get you to move in. They're going to choose the newer ones, right, This is

part of our Bloomberg Big take. Of course, what was the thing that surprised you most reporting this out? I think the thing that surprised me the most was really just how much this impacts everyone, not just landlords, but tenants and also the city. You know, the city has lost a lot of tax revenue due to the decline in the values of these office buildings, and it doesn't look like it's going to turn around anytime soon. All Right, Thank you to Bloomberg's Natalie wog This is Bloomberg Technology

im Ed Ludlow in New York. Let's get back to that market volatility. Major benchmarks like the NASA continue to fluctuate is economic uncertainty and monetary policy changes sper concern and that includes a hit to all corners of the technology universe, making this a tough environment for everyone from megacats to Silicon Valley startups. Let's bring Embrace Capital General partner Alfred Schwang, He's known as the v least CEOs CEO, Alfred,

what is your read on these markets right now? Well, and thank you for having me um At Raised Capital. We are seed in earliest invested in infrastructure companies like Data Breaks, Salana and ft x. So. When I saw Raised Capital founder sound Free, Sam Bank win Free in New York Lass Week, we talked about how the crypto market was in much worse shape in two thousand nineteen as it is compared to today when he first started

ft X. So. The growth stage and the late stage venture market may have been dampened obviously by the recent market crash, but we are seeing early stage deals thing very strong. I think because of a few reasons. Number one, seed funding is not tied revenue. Market slowdown has very little little impact to early stage founders. So when we inveus we look for a founder market it right right, So and mostly stage companies race eighteen twenty four months.

Our runway to find that fit. The soup number two I peel is not the only rather exiit anymore. I mean we look at the reason Adobe fig twenty billion dollar mega deal. We can see um the next two years it's going to be very strong and animaking. So that's the colical and three Francier capital investors are sitting on a hundred and sixty two billion dollars of cash for new investments. So these dry powders the driving energy to fine the best founder and a lot of early

stage deals. So what you're saying is not risk aversion like we see in the public markets, like we see in the later stages. Are you guys ready to spend, you're ready to deploy capital or are you sitting on the sidelines. No, no, We're definitely not sitting on the sideline.

We've been extremely active in investing. In fact um, if you look at the cycle posts a you two thousands post two thousands in name the very best you know, brick out company, we're invested soon after those crashes, really good companies and strong founders you know, bubble up to the top and then valuations are very rational, so you can make bets and be able to have drive large ownership much easier. So this is definitely a good time.

It talks about valuations being rational. There's hundreds of startups out there, potentially more with unicorn status, right, billion dollar valuations. What's the risk that we see those valuations come down, that there's a major repricing of startups of a certain size. Well, this happens in every cycle. So the lay stage deal obviously will be highly impacted by the equity market and where it's going, because that's where people thought liquidity would be.

But now we're also seeing, you know, going back to the Figma deal, twenty billion dollars in size, right, because any I P or could possibly drive for investors along the way. So I'm actually not concerned because tax always needed and we're about to see one major revolution of going the centralization through work free of the type of application that will we emerge in the next generation. So very good time. Indeed, they call you the Silicon Valley

CEOs CEO. You were an early investor in a lot of names we now know, right f tx Selana, you founded and took public be A Systems right, give me the founder's perspective. How hard is it right now to be a fledgling startup or a founder with an idea to sit in front of an investor and come away with some cash in your pocket. Well, without doubt, raising money is not quite like last year. And founder has to be willing on the game to be able to have a story about how they will be able to

generate revenue. So, thank goodness the world revenue and cash for matters a game, So we which a crucial thing or running wheel businesses. So and the other thing is, you know, runway and costs and expenses. We're seeing a slew of layoffs, mostly not because those companies cannot afford those people, but they're rethinking how to get the profitability and cash for positive. So those are things I think

it's good discipline that we should be seeing. Good see you driving great companies that will last a long long time. There's maryas I know that you have a keen interest in Web three, being when we talk about that in such big abstract terms, you know, what will big tech do when it comes to Web three? Will they do anything at all when it comes to Web three? Do you think investors are starting to lose a bit of patients there. Well, Um, web free is much more cyclical

than the regular market. So you look at the cycle. Web free is pacing on about three years because we saw the last crash in about two nineteen. We saw a crash in two thousand two. So we look at regular cycle, it's about eight to ten years. Web Free cycles about every three years. It's just showing the maturation of the technology is moving a lot faster than other cycles we've seen. You know, um, you know, look at it.

You know, you know, like Amazon Web Service to say, BS from Amazon controls over one foot of Western's world's internet infrastructure, right, that really is unheard of. You have such you know, large concentrated control of the Internet itself, and then you have the other two players you know following them combined, they control almost almost all of the Western Internet infrastructure itself. So decentralization of the Internet is

greatly needed. We are have been frustrated with centralized social media control. So the only way to solve is some of that have to be our technology. So this has to happened. Pay off it before I let you go, let me draw and your experience. You've been through the tech bubble, You've been through economic ups and downs. How does what we're saying now in the global economy compared to what you've seen before. Well, um, there were scarier times. So in the two thousand bubble, we're all super early

stage companies that were listed publicly and getting trashed. You know, when they don't make ownings and the market you don't have no escape because it's all publicly done. So when the rug got pulled on there was over in two thousands. It was the financial crisis. We weren't to make sure if our banking system was sound and was could be a continued Now this is very different, I believe. Obviously

we have major issue in the world. We have inflation, We have repidly rising interest rate which costs the market to be retreating to the level they are, and now a T bills generating four percent in a whole different world. So I think from that perspective, investment has to change. But from the tech perspective, we're gonna see insanely remarkable productive applications in the next three yewrself. It will be better than anything we've experience. It's gonna be a great

time ahead. Race Capital General partner Alfred Shwang, thank you now. Autonomous delivery drone startup zip Line has developed a new sound based technology to help its aircraft better identify other airspace users. The company hopes the new tech will convince regulators to open up the skies for more drone based deliveries. I took a trip to a Walmart in Northwest Arkansas where zip lines trialing the tech and caught up with CEO Kella Ronaldo. Is this about to become a more

common site? Zip Line thinks. So we're in the up Summit, and the up Summit is held in Bentonville, Arkansas. Let's talk about zip Line. What is zip line? Zip Line is providing teleportation as a serverse to countries, to companies and now directly to holmes. We started with medical products. Today we deliver many different things to primary care authorities hospitals. Whatever people need quickly can be delivered via an autonomous aircraft.

Zipline launched in Rwanda in sixteen. Since then the service has grown a lot. We actually initially launched just serving hospitals. Today we serve almost three thousand hospitals across Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria. Cotivar, Kenya, and now the United States. In Japan, I mean we've delivered one and a half million dozars of COVID nineteen vaccine,

five million dollars of traditional vaccine. We deliver the national blood supply of a couple of countries at this point fully autonomously, in a way that saves lives and saves countries money. Quotes to me how in Prentice that would actually work. Loading the drone and going from the tows

me through the whole process points. The vehicle launches from the distribution center, it's flying completely autonomously, making all of its own decisions, will fly to the GPS coordinates, deliver the package, and we use a really simple, basically parachute drop, which means that anybody can receive a delivery. You don't need any special infrastructure receive a delivery. Then the vehicle comes home lands, we can swap the battery and have

the plane back in the air two minutes later. Zip lines latest gambit is taking on the US retail an e commerce market large exip by three and three two one. So when the zip Line drone shoots off, the launcher is doing zero to sixty miles an hour in zero point eight seconds, and the battery on the drone means that it could travel two north care miles technically on paper, but they're limited to this one point four mile radius

because the f A have straight regulations on drones. Right, This is what the whole story is about using this technology in the real world. But this pilot in p Ridge, Northwest Arkansas. Here at the Walmart store. If you live within that one point four mile radius, you can order your hamburger helper, or your toothpaste or Q tips or an orange, whatever you need, and I'll deliver it to

your home to get regulators on board ziplines. Hoping a new sound based technology will give other air users more confidence. The skys full of drones a safe explain to me the basics of the technology. D A stands for to detect and avoid. And it's kind of a core problem for autonomy in the United States airspace right now. When you have a really busy airspace for autonomous vehicles, you must be able to guarantee two mile all clear hockey puck around the vehicles. And there really is no good

solution for that problem. We've tried using radar, we tried using lighter. We tried using cameras. Those systems are expensive, they're heavy, they're energy consumptive, and a lot of times they just plane don't work. Is Zipline is solving this problem using a microphone array. It's an extremely weird practical approach to this problem and one that we frankly thought was impossible four years ago as we started working on it. When you're flying through the air really fast, microphones are

picking up a lot of ambient noise. You're also having to manage the noise of your own propellers because the aircraft is make noises, it is flying, and you're listening for something that is somewhere within two miles of you.

The amazing thing is that by using really intricate, mechanical, enduring design different ways of this eyeing, this microphone array, and then combining that with like signal processing and neural nets that can listen to the sound that you're getting from the microphones, we can actually determine not only exactly where a vehicle is, but we can also determine the

exact megan model of that aircraft. We think that this technology is going to have a big impact on autonomy in the airspace is broadly not just for zip line. Will this new tech take zip line mainstream? Bloomberg any f analysis suggests the use of drones would only be economical in highly specialized or NIE situations like surveillance or mapping. Is delivery in the retail context the biggest market opportunity

for you. There's a global transformation coming in logistics, and that is away from these big, heavy, slow gas combustion vehicles toward light, fast, electric, autonomous. It's really our mission. Our exclusive focus is just on approximating teleportation as the company. As currencies around the world fluctuate, the sterling dropping to a record low against the dollar, there's widespread pessimism rocking markets. But cryptocurrencies during the quarter have performed well pretty well.

What does this mean? Bloomberg Sinali Bassett? Who else is here to explain the relative performance? I see volatility everywhere. I see volatility and crypto, but if you dig a little deeper, there is some out performance there. It's really interesting to watch how the last couple of months have gone, because even though there are a lot of folks in the market that are worried that crypto will break again,

below that seventeen thousand, five hundred mark. You still have the last quarters since the end of June, crypto doing pretty well overall. So if you look at a specific index that we look at, and this is an index of a hundred digital currencies tracked by Bloomberg, you're looking at the NBA as Crypto Compared Digital Assets one hundred index. It has added almost seven percent since then. That is pretty close to its second performer there, that is the

dollar at about eight percent. That gold even has fallen that time. So you're not looking at, of course, all of those classic risk haven's performing all that well here. Now there's some interesting questions here about whether that will continue on. Of course, crypto has fallen pretty meaningfully this year.

I don't want to make three months a trend, but it certainly is something that has not fallen below that lower bound that we saw earlier this year, and in the last three months at least has been a pretty stround perform. Not a trend necessarily, but we are looking for sort of the direction of travel. Sam Bankman Freed, somebody that you know well, has been tweeting, I think

we can bring it up here. Boy, with the world thinking differently about crypto price moves they measured if I think he means they measured it versus world currency baskets instead of just the US dollar. And I think that's a great point that he made. Because of over the weekend when saw these massive fluctuations in currencies across the world, you have the crypto crowd stand up and say what

does this mean for cryptocurrencies? And if you work in a live in a country where assets digital assets can be less volatile than your actual currency. You have people, for example in Argentina that have flocked to digital assets in a very meaningful way, even El Salvador. Even with that volatility, then what does the digital asset mean? It means a lot more than if you're living in a much state more stable nation. There is still some dissenting voices,

some of them louder than others. I'm thinking, of course, of Jamie Diamond, CEO JP Morgan. What did he have to say recently about bitcoin in patatular Yes, of course, if you're looking in the traditional finance world trade fire, you're looking at bitcoin as a decentralized Pondzi scheme is what Jamie Diamond told regulators and lawmakers last week. However, let's think about what crypto has done and what it

looks like. I wanted to point this out just as a you know, an exercise here, ed we had TIPS inflation protected bonds up. Why does that matter here in the stake of crypto. Crypto has long been you know, pitched as an inflation hedge, and I want to say, for the people who even say that if that as an inflation hedge has fallen apart, so has TIPS, which our inflation protected bonds, which was a hedge fund favorite

this year. So you do see both traditional finance and defy hitting a little bit of what do you call it a roadblock here in the narrative in terms of what crypto means for many people. Hey, very quick, we just had the merge. What's the next kind of calendar event that the crypto world looks too. Yeah, Well, it's funny that you mentioned the merge because Ethereum was a big part of that performance in that index in the last three months. But again, does that continue on into

what extent is that filtered into other assets? Do you see that same love and other proof of stake networks, things like Salana and the n f T World as we know, there are a lot of interesting things happening when you look at the ape community for example, and we've we've talked about it here the moon birds as well, So again the tangential assets to theoryum we're looking at all right, clean bugs and labasac thank you. Coming up

a delay in depositions. Both Elon Musk and Twitter CEO Parag pushed their pretail depositions before the October seventeen buyout trial. Will bring you the latest next this is Bloomberg. We're three weeks away from a court showdown between Elon Musk and Twitter. Starting October seventeenth, a Delaware Chance rejudge will decide whether the world's richest person has legitimate grounds to walk away from a deal to buy the social media

platform for four billion dollars. Monday was supposed to be a key moment in the lead up to the trial, but it didn't pan out that way. Joining us to discuss Bloomberg's Curt Wagner. So Curt Ellen and Parag was supposed to be deposed Monday. It didn't happen. What happened, Yeah, Both Ellen and Parague essentially are trying to reschedule their depositions here. Ellen was scheduled to be deposed in Delaware, Parague Agera Wall the City of Twitter was going to

do so here in San Francisco. And in both cases it seems like, um, you know, the timing isn't right, and and we're told or my understanding is that this is not super rare in a in a situation like this. But what makes it interesting, of course, and it is that we're three weeks away from this trial. The trial is three weeks from today, right, so there's only so many more days for them to push this thing before everyone has to sit down and share their side of

the story. I want to bring up this chart in my Bloomberg terminal, which I feel like I've looked at for years but probably just months. And he shows the spread right of the current share price versus four dollars twenty cents a share that Musque originally offered. And the idea is that, you know, as the spread closes and the current share price gets closer to that that offer price, the markets indicating that it thinks this deal will get done. Monday was weird when we got the news that the

depositions were delayed. The stocks shut up and very quickly came back down again. There was speculation, it seems in the market that we might be talking about settlement behind the scenes. It's not clear. What do you make of that? Yeah, well, obviously when two key players like this suddenly pushed their depositions, you know, as you pointed out, you could see people

jump to a conclusion here. Now, we have not heard anything about a settlement, and my guess would be that if there is a settlement, it will come much closer to the trial, because both sides want to figure out what information they can get from these depositions, right, I mean, they don't want to to come to a settlement without uncovering every rock here, and so I think because there are so many people that they still have to talk to,

it seems a little premature at this point. But as you point out, there are a lot of people who saw that news and probably thought this is interesting. Why are these two people pushing their depositions. Maybe there's something happening behind the scenes. Right, So the countdowns on three weeks ago. What happens next, Well, a lot more of of this type of stuff, a lot more behind the scenes lawyer work, right, These teams for both Musk and

Twitter are trying to position themselves. Um, you know, with the judge, there's going to be hearing tomorrow to even find out, you know, who can be deposed and who can't be. They're still fighting over stuff like that. So there's just a lot of jockeying for position at this point, right and and maybe there will be a settlement discussion at some point again as we get closer, But for now, I think both sides are just putting together their cases.

They're kind of in that free trial preparation stage. Hey, you're excited for our trip to Delaware. I am ecstatic. We're gonna have a great time. It's gonna be a busy week, but it will be fun, all right, Bloomberg's kut Wagner, Thank you very much. I'll see that. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology Tuesday, we have our invest chief futurist Brett Winton to share the latest on their investment strategy. Don't forget to check out

our podcasts. You can find it on the terminal as well as online on Apple, Spotify, and of course on iHeart Radio. This is Bloomberg