Facebook Reinstates Trump, Senate Takes on TikTok

Tesla one of them accelerating cost reduction plans as profit it tops analysts estimates class The Senate takes up a bill to band TikTok nationwide after dozens of universities take action to block the Chinese owned app, and the space company rocket Lab lifts off from the Virginia Space Area

as its first US lawn. Could has become a SpaceX, a small payloads earnings continuous, and Tesla as the one we've been waiting for, partly because there are so many headlines all the time, but partly because this is a global company with global vision of what's happening with the consumer. Tests up a lot of emphasis that it's China plants where a lot of the problems were yet comes straight to after ours reaction, we bounced around and market wasn't

really sure what to make of it. Top and bottom line be I go straight to fourth quarter adjusted EPs a dollar nineteen cents to share because slightly above expectations. The big takeaway, I suppose beyond that is Tesla committing to this compounded annual growth rate of fifty saying they'll do around one point eight million units in production. Three. Let's get straight to Bloomberg. Shawn o'caine over in Austin, Texas,

Sean give us the main takeaways from this earnings print. Well, I think one of the big things is that we realize there's maybe a little bit of it hit to the margins, but I think not as much as people are expecting. You know, it's obviously not a kind of margin growth that Tesla has been working with over the last couple of quarters. But we have to remember that their biggest cuts that they've made to their bracing game

after a Q four. So I think there's going to be a lot more of the margin story to be told when we get to the next earnings call. So from this one, I think one of the big things we're looking at, is is really just you know, how how much inventory they left the year with sixteen days of inventory, the most that they've had since exiting a year. And and yeah, those troubles that they had in China,

Shanna came, thank you for the breakdown. We've just got some breaking news coming from another key technology platform, you'll know it Meta Platforms making its decision ending the suspension

of Trump's accounts. Well, we understand they were stand reinstating Trump's Facebook and Instagram and accounts after two years of course of being banned from the platforms says it's ending the suspension of Trump's accounts across Instagram and indeed across Facebook, following, of course, what happened on January six and Capitol Hill back into twenty one. We'll have more of that a

little bit later in the show. And indeed Digital World that position shares are falling three postmarket in reaction to that. But let's get back to the story of the day.

When it comes to Tesla and of course the numbers that we got out from the company and profit meeting Tashchini, we please to say Art director of Investment Analysis and Institutional Strategies, is with us, and of course your bullish, your bullish on Tesla in the long term, in the hair and the now, the production focus is there the demand to meet it? Well, you're absolutely right, you know, our our focus is over the five year forecast. UM. You know, Telsa's our top position in our r k

q E t f UM. But so in terms of you know this this production goal, UM, you know they did mention. I think if you go back to they they're still on track over you know, a number of years to meet their compound and your growth rate. I think that the fears of UM, you know, margin and demand troubles are pretty overblown. You know our research we've used right slat of forecast UM Tesla's gross margins over time and basically for every cumult of doubling in production,

you get a corresponding reduction in price. We also know that they're unveiling a new vehicle platform which is should be roughly half the cost of the Model three and Y. I think that could be a custom built autonomous vehicle that's gonna help margins. It's gonna give a huge bump to margins in the long term, because I think autonomous platforms could have really attractive margin structures and recurring revenue

associated with them. Um. And then you know the last thing all hat is like the main story here is that evs are growing. Right, So evs as a category grew sixty percent year every year, while gas powered cars were down like seven percent. So that's where Tesla is. I'd i'd be worried about traditional autos if anything. Are you're worried in any way about the impact of Elon Musk himself on demand for test is going forward? Is in any way that being shown up in the demand erosion? Yeah.

Elon Musk has always been a pretty controversial figure. Um. You know, I'd say, at a minimum, what what do we have to to go buy? Its really Tesla's results, Um, you know, against the Tesla alone in the fourth quarter, we know, groove sales by every year, while in that same quarter global auto sales were down roughly eight So that's what we have to go off of. Um. You know,

he's a he's a cult figure. I think he's really the person to drive the company towards reaching that full self driving goal, um, where you can actually launch an autonomous ride hill platform. Um. You know, so we're happy that he's committed to Tesla and sticking on for that. TSH. I want to bring some some more information, I suppose to our audience about what you were talking about in

the shareholder deck. Tesla's talking about its next generation vehicle platform under development, additional details to be shared at the invested day March the first three I think that's what you were saying about your You suspect that that is some form of fully autonomous vehicle for the future. I wanted being it back to the here and now again because a lot of what Tesla hinted at was the

problems of or were largely China related. It basically talked about the production issues largely being centered on the Shanghai plant. You look at margins where they came in, you look around the narrative on a SPS average selling price. We went to our audience, okay, and we said, did those price cuts in North America, Europe, China push you to

consider buying a Tesla? These are the results pretty clear, although I would point out they changed over the course of the day, you know, with with a good number of ballots casts. I suppose yes, testers global price cuts have tempted at least our audience to buy affordability. Is Tesla too expensive right now for a consumer? You know? I think so, first of all, and I'm glad you

showed that chart. One of the things that we learned is that since the price cuts, um, you know, lead times have actually extended a bit, so we do not you know, we're already getting sort of initial indications of demand here. We also know that the price cuts made more vehicles eligible tax credits. Of course, we don't actually model text credits in our analysis. We think evs are the solution longer term compared to gas powered cars, regardless

of regulation. UM. So you know, I again, I think really that that's the picture here, Um that electric vehicles are taking share, Tesla's the market leader. Um, they're just invested in in additional capacity. Um. You know, they're at a single digit low percentage points of total auto sales. So I think there's still Tesla is um and evs against still single digit percentage of total auto sales as well. So I think you know that there's room to grow

on both of those. We've got a lot of questions on Twitter for you from our audience as well, most of them related to testas energy business. What did we learn about the energy business going forward? Will it be more of a star? Yeah, so they did highlight the energy business recently and again with that UM factory expansion. They talked how you know they've they've they've seen some good growth in that business overall. All, like our our model is mostly focused on vehicles, we think that they

should UM. Well, you know, Tesla Energy does offer a really interesting proposition to consumers, and actually we've done some work to show that energy storage combined with bitcoin mining can offer a great proposition to even use um make more use of renewable sources. But you know that aside, what should you focus on for Tesla UM? In our opinion, it's electric vehicles and autonomy. Those are the two main stories here that I'd watch over the next five years. Yeah,

it's really quickly. Gen month Sor of Loot points out that they guided to around one point eight million vehicles four twenty three, which, if you track a fifty percent compound annual growth rate, doesn't make any sense based on last year's number. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, so last year, um, you know, year over year, yet it does fall short of that fifty But if you go back to UM, you'd still be coming in over that a few year period, uh, with the growth rate.

So I think that's what they meant in their press release. Of course, I'm sure a lot of people will harp on that figure. UM, But again, I think longer term, the story is electric vehicles are here to stay, and I'd be really worried if I was Forward or the other traditional auto manufacturers were the majority of their installed based in the vehicles that they sell or gas powered cars,

which we see declining. UM, that's not going away. And by the way, they don't have a great autonomous solution either. They killed that project. So I think that's where the concern should be focused here on the traditional auto market. Actually, the other question from our audience for you is what does Zelon Musk have to say on March the first, the invested day to convince us of that future that goes beyond Tesla just being a car company. Well, like I said, I mean, I'm excited to hear more about

the autonomous vehicle. They had said that they would mass produce a purpose stilt autonomous car in war UM. We think that this could totally change Tesla's business model. You know, our price target for six split adjusted is around fift dollars per share. I think over sixty of Tesla's enterprise value, you know, could be attributable to that autonomous ride hill platform. I think it'll have attractive software like margins. It will become a recurring revenue stream as opposed to you know,

one off vehicle sales that we see today. It's gonna totally change the game and their way ahead. And we see that they have nearly a billion miles driven in full self driving data. They have millions of cars on the road collecting data. Um, that's much more than competitors. Director of Investment Analysis and Institutional Strategies Tasha KINI very good to catch up. Thank you for your quick reactions. That tests the print. Meanwhile, another big story that's just broken,

IBM has announced job coups. The company will lay off about one point five percent of its worldwide workforce, which amounts to roughly four thousand jobs. You see the share reaction in after hours their IBM also released earnings, delivering an upbeat forecast in the wake of its restructuring plans. Carrect interesting, We're going to talk about restructuring a certain businesses a little bit more now because more earnings from

more slim down. A T and T CEO John Stanky is gonna be joining us for peace to say from San Francisco Bloomberg, We're going to talk earnings a little bit more because A T and t s reaction to them positive over the trading day, and this is as they add customers, even though perhaps three cash flow forecast miss some anest expectations. Want to dig into what is a slimmer perhaps lean a mina A T and T with none other than it's CEO John Stanky. We're joyfully

welcoming him to the show. Six and a half percent higher on the day. John, just talk to us about what you think the investor base heard and liked. Is it the fact that you're adding these customers. Is it that you're able to share some of the costs going forward. Well, thanks for having me in, and I think what we're seeing maybe today is kind of a continued story and

accumulation of the last several quarters. Obviously to your opening, we've been focusing the business to be much more adept in the communications space, and we started that work in earnest about two and a half years ago, two years ago, and completed the Warner Media transaction early part of last year, and I think investors were stepping back and asking is this the right place to go and are they going

to be able to execute around it? And I think what you've seen over the last couple of quarters, in particular in the third and fourth quarter, where we continue to grow the business, we continue to pick up the customer base, and now we're seeing the profitability and cash accretion back into the business as we've made those investments and managed to run the business better. I think they're starting to gain confidence in that and rightly so. And you know, we intend to kind of stay focused on

that and keep moving forward with that strategy. Invest is confident. What about consumers at the moment? John, You've got a great bird's eye perspective on how much consumers want to be spending? Can you pass on costs? What does the macro get like? Well, you know, we do have a we have a broad scale of consumers at every end of the socioeconomic stream, and I think there's probably you know, a couple of different stories in this. Clearly the low

end of the consumer basis stressed a bit more. Um we tend to see that exhibit in them taking a little bit more time to pay their bill, or to call in and ask for arrangements to pay their bill, or possibly recharge a little less frequently if they're a prepaid subscriber. But it's not that they aren't buying the service,

and it's not that they aren't paying. They're trying to manage it within an overall stressed environment where I think they're making other choices on more discretionary items that they're moving out and just trying to balance their overall their overall obligations. At the top to the market, it's still really strong. Um you know, we're coming off a good volume year. I think it will temper a little bit as we move into this year, but it's still going

to be pretty healthy. And it's just indicative of how ingrained in life I think the products and service as we sell our Hey, John, I want to jump on that. You know, the cell side reaction or that conclusion seems to be your prioritizing financial growth over subscribe a grave Yet in the fourth quarter you added what six d and fifty six thousand new phone subscribe as strong growth in the fiber optic business. They right, Is it a

case of financial growth? Subscribe a grateful Can you achieve both? It's it's both, and um, I actually probably would not agree with that conclusion. And we will share a creative this year in the industry and both wireless and in our fixed broad dawn business, and so um you know, we are growing not only share, but we're growing profitability and it's coming from getting the right customers the right way.

And we think we've done a really good job of tuning our offers into the right segments where we've been under penetrated to be able to gain that share. And we've been working really hard on restructuring our business and our constructure, and we can do both at the same time, and I think as a result of that, we can drive profitability growth at the same time that we're able to grow the business at the top one. Hey, John, we're a technology show. We pride ourselves and talking about technology.

But I gotta I gotta put the hard questions to you as well. So I ask it like this, how much visibility have you really got through the end of the year. Is it that five G continues to drive this growth? People buying new handsets, is the consumer strong or actually you being a bit conservative here because you don't know what's going to happen. Well, you know, Visibility in general, I would say over the last two years has probably been a bit more challenge given the environment

we're in. But I'd take it at two levels. There's the visibility on the geopolitical side, which I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm better than people who do that every day for a living. I mean, I don't know when somebody who leads a large country somewhere around the globe is going to do something really silly or stupid that could have a big impact not only on a T and T but literally every for profit enterprise around the globe that I have no visibility

to or any better visibility than anybody else. But the visibility on how the economy is performing, I think we have reasonable visibility. I think we've been pretty conservative in our assumptions. Moving into three, I would point back to our performance in two is a point Inflation clearly peaked

last year. We were hit by that. Um we were able to navigate through that through a lot of good management techniques, combination of managing our cost structure as well as and sure we were driving the right value into our consumer base. UM, I don't think we're going to see an environment that's probably more dynamic than what we saw last year. We'll have new challenges to work through, but this is a management team that's shown itself to be pretty adaptable and pretty agile and being able to

adjust to those things. And I feel our assumptions on our guidance or are consistent with what we can do there. It feels like you're getting creative to John. Of course, you're focused on the good things the investors want to see, dividends, debt payment, of course, after what had been a lot of building up of debt over M and A and now the unwinding of that. I'm interested in how you're doing joint ventures. I was interested, for example, in the

black Rock Giggle Power deal. And the way that you're going to be offering fiber. Is this about ensuring that you're spreading the risk as you still continue to invest

in the fiber plan. It's a combination of things. Certainly, it's a dynamic of taking a new investment thesis that frankly is probably not well proven in the market today, and sharing some of that risk as we prove it in and I'm trying to be responsive to share owners and ensure that as we consume capital and invested, that they can gain confidence that we can do that wisely. And I think we've done a really good job of that in our traditional lines of business over the last

couple of years. Since this is a new approach um, what I've told the street and what I want to do here is make sure that as we put the first tranche of investment and that we can come back and show them that we can do this right and earn a very competitive return with it. And to the extent that we do that, and when we do that, will of course put our foot on the accelerator and go a little bit faster and do a little bit more. And this allows us to do it with a partner.

It allows us to offload some of the risks during that proven period, so that I think it keeps everybody comfortable on the continue income production capabilities of the existing business while trying to find a new vector for growth. A new vector for growth. Everyone said five G is it the way we're all going to have connected devices? Where industry is going to connect is it here in here and now, John, Well, it's not here, and it's

full maturity. And I think what I would first say is we shouldn't underestimate what I will call the meat and potatoes aspect of investing in the new five G spectrum, in the new five G equipment, which allowed for more capacity on wireless networks, and what wireless operators have done with that compath City is have have individuals move into new devices and buy up on more robust plans with

higher value, and that's driven our poos up. And without that capacity and without that increased performance, that wouldn't have

taken place. But that's not the be all end all the five G. The beyond all the five G is the capabilities that brings in to enable what you were talking about before I came on the show, which is things like autonomous vehicles, so that if Tesla decides to bring a vehicle to market and they need to have persistent, high quality connectivity everywhere that vehicle goes, that's when five G is really going to shine. And the networks are just getting now to the point where they're more ubiquitous

and scaled enough to do those types of things. And I do believe that will open up new revenue streams, all right, A T and T C I, John Stanky, I'm glad you've been watching the show in that coverage of Test. It will get you on in another ninety days time and see how you're doing. It's finally come out. Meta has indeed announced its decision to reinstate former President Trump. On course, Instagram and Facebook most cut WADNA joined us now to discuss and we knew it's what Trump wanted,

that's right, Yeah, And we kind of expected. I think this is what Facebook was going to do too, because what we said and what they had said was they needed to basically figure out is there still a heightened risk of you know, violence in this case, right, That's why he was suspended on after January six, and you know it's been two years, right, so I think they it would have been hard for them to come up

with a good reason to keep him off. Instead, they're bringing him back and saying if he has more violations, he'll be suspended again quite quickly. Right. And they also said it will end in the coming weeks, extends to Facebook and Instagram. You know, I thought we knew this was coming, right, Yeah, it's it's not unexpected, especially with what we saw from Twitter. Right, He's been back on Twitter or could be back on Twitter for the last

couple of months. He has not yet tweeted, So I think the big question now is when will we actually hear from him? Right? Facebook was very helpful for him during the election. He has a huge base there. I imagine he'll be back on Facebook and I don't know how quickly. Yeah. Interesting, and of course the digital world acquisition shares we're falling on the back of businesses, obviously

a new social media for Aye that they've been making himself. Ultimately, will we see better criticized, of course, but they're going to be criticized either direction. All Right, Tesla is making more cars than they can sell. They're doing whatever they can to sell cars, and customers haven't responded that enthusiastically yet. Tesla is running into kind of a buzz saw of issues, many of which have nothing to do with Elon Musk. You've got interest rates going up, which makes its cars

more expensive. You have problems in China, which is one of its biggest markets, and you have competition from rival automakers. You know, Ford is bringing out these cars that weren't around a few years ago that are really competitive. Customers are starting to take a second look at other brands. But really, there's this other problem. Musk desperately wants to

be considered funny. And it is this desire, which we see play out every day on Musk's Twitter account, that may be starting to hurt Musk's most important asset, his own reputation. At the end of the last quarter in December, the company started frantically cutting prices, and you might think maybe they would have, you know, an epic quarter as must predicted. In fact, they did not meet expectations that sent the stock down further, kind of creating a sense

of failure and disarray. You're starting to see investors, analysts, even some people who are big fans of Tesla and big fans of Musk say something that would have almost been unthinkable a couple of years ago, which is that Musk needs to step back. He needs to either find a way to spend less time on Twitter, or, if he's committed to Twitter, to spend less time with Tesla.

And it was absolutely fascinating read that Max Chafkin and Dana Hall had on the Blue Business Week Today front cover basically just brutal and analysis of how he's not that funny ultimately, but his decision to try and get these laughs has almost eroded some value of Elon Musk. Interesting Tasha Kearney, of course from ARCS saying at the moment that isn't an issue for Tesla going forward, things that ultimately the CEO is still a benefit rather than

a hindrance. But I thought it was a great quote in this story that just basically said, look, you're not going to boast about you buying a Tesla anymore. And they're saying somewhere between basic and cringe if we're going to be saying that you're about the other side of the argument is that this is all part of Musk's master plan, you know, the focus all on him, free advertising, free discussion around although he bought Twitter fort four billion dollars.

But you know what I mean, and you look at the regularly true fightings and Tesla say it's time and time again Elon Musk is central central to our future success. You know, we talk about key Man risk, they're intertwined Tesla and Elon Musk story. Now, speaking of Twitter, a new Twitter whistle blower has told Congress that the company continued to violate privacy and data security protections even after Musks takeover. Bloomberg's Emily burn Baum is in d C.

Give us the details of what this whistle blower is claiming. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Um. So, this new twittle Twitter whistle blower um, A lot of his allegations focus on this program internally, a Twitter called god Mode, which allowed any Twitter employee to access any Twitter users account, either to delete tweets or to access or to tweet themselves. Um And essentially, the whistleblower says, the FTC should really look into this because the company is flagrantly violating its

consent to cry. Indeed, your story says a companie was shared with the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC is, say our members of Congress. Ultimately, where does this get taken? Emily? So? The FTC already opened an inquiry into Twitter's privacy practices last year after a different Twitter whistleblower came forward. So that was Peter zako Um also known as Mudge and the hacking community. UM. He was Twitter's head of privacy and he came out. You know,

there was a congressional hearing. He said there are horrible security and privacy violations across this platform. So the FTC had already opened that investigation um and they have just broadened it UM and this is probably going to be the next thing that investigators are looking at as they seek to UM find the company. The question still goes

on about regulation across the board. Emily urn bound there on all focused on Twitter, But let's turn our attention to the other key social media player that has taken markets chef from a lot of these players and edits TikTok. And we get again focused from Congress on whether or not they want to ban TikTok outright. Liver of course been a Republican senator, Joshally tweeting that he will present

a bill to ban the popular app nationwide. Now, of course we're already getting little tick bits, aren't we, in terms of what the Texas University is driving ensure that they confront run any sort of federal action here, but it really is building it's specific action of how well in this case that the Texas governor statewide is trying to remove access to TikTok I've got a question when we get into it about actually who's really under pressure

here because state level, right, what we're all waiting on is a federal level response to this story. Yeah, let's get to it. Let's ask some more questions. Let's get Alex Bronco, who of course covers this company. So in debt Alex, I guess slightly unsurprising that the bagging of the drum keeps on coming. It keeps coming in Josh Holly has been one of the loudest bangers of that drum.

This newest bill is actually one of two that are now starting to flot around in Congress, with Josh Holly tweeting that he believes that TikTok, because it's own by Chinese company, is a quote back door into American lives. He's worried about potential data sharing to the Chinese government, so he is putting this bill through. Now, you talked about pressure. There's obviously pressure here on TikTok, but there's also pressure on this kind of national security review that's

been going on for years under the Biden administration. You'll note whether it's the Texas governor or Josh Holly, the Senator there are a lot of Republicans were being very loud about TikTok. It does seem like the Democrats are being a little bit quier, perhaps because Biden's Biden's administration is the one who is kind of doing this in

depth national security review of TikTok. It seems that they are kind of waiting and deferring to that process to come to a conclusion before they pile on or speak really publicly about what they think should happen with TikTok at large. Well, in TikTok's response was to say, okay, we reach a deal with Oracle where we have us use a day to house the hon Oracle servers, which are domiciled in the United States. So access to use the data was the worry. It seems like that's even

the concern anymore. It goes deeper than that, And this conversation shifted and we started talking about it um on this show before it shifted in Congress. Tiktop speed is basically decided by an algorithm. Everybody's feed is different. It's personalized. That concerned that there could be some influence on that feed or influence on the most influential creators on TikTok that that could actually be um the the idea that's

coming front and center. You'll remember the last time we talked really big about influence on social media when it had a big impact in the political sphere. Uh, the very first time. It was kind of in sixteen around the election. I know, were eighteen months out from the next to gust presidential election. But as you know, Congress gets its feed on the ground, this new Congress gets

feed on the ground. I'm sure they are thinking about how a bad actor, or if they see China as a bad actor, how they might be able to influence the feed of an app that's becoming stickier and stickier with folks spending more time on it in American particular, alex It's an interesting global story as well, isn't it? And I'm not sure how much you can speak to it. But of course India took its first step spanned it Europe.

It's interestingly considering the amount of European regulation the front runs the US, they really haven't been as focused on TikTok as the United States has. From this perspective, when we do have division among Democrats Republicans, are they going to come together over this. Do you think whether they come together formally, It seems like at least their voices are coming together. In the past few weeks, Europe did

start to turn an eye to TikTok. You saw the European regulators who are talking a lot about the new data security acts that's coming it down this year in Europe, basically going to TikTok CEO saying, look, we're not happy with your content moderation as it stands today. If if if these new acts came in place today and not in September, the company might be in a little bit of hot water when it comes to EU data security laws.

So it seems like whether or not they formally come together and follow India's lead and banning it, or if it just seems to be kind of a really heated moment where folks are taking notice of TikTok, the voices are getting louder. You tend to be has tended to

be a bit stricter with its data privacy laws. We know that Congress could be a little bit of a tough place to navigate when it comes to bill so perhaps the US will be a step behind, But it does seem like across the globe, TikTok has eyes on it from all of kind of the right people for consumer protection and some of the wrong people. If you're in the seat of the company, Bloomberg's Atles Brink are just terrific reporting on all things TikTok, not just today,

but over the course of course of a week. Tomorrow timely FCC Commissioner Brendan car will join us here on Bloomberg Technology Live to talk all things TikTok in an exclusive interview. One Caroline that we've been waiting a little while for now I can't wait for that. Meanwhile, let's turn our attention to crypto for a moment, because well, the bancrupt lender Genesis is working to get some money back from the man that is known as Bitcoin Jesus.

Now overall, Genesis says rogervert owes them more than a twenty million dollars, alleging that he failed to settle options transactions that expired in December. There on early Backer, of course, a bitcoin said on Twitter that he has the funds to pay Gensis, but this is a breach of their agreement. Now coming up, should we go to space a major rocket launch in the United States and it wasn't SpaceX, this is Bloomberg salesforce. You might have seen a sprinkling

of celebrity around this company. Maybe it's Matthew McConaughey and an ad maybe it's Will I Am performing a drill force. They're big marketing event. What about giving actual corporate advice?

That's for some of the reporting. Is that them, him and the many of the CEO of this massive software company depending on celebrities for some pretty high level corporate discussions have a question for many an activist investor now, and there's three involved in the stock re member, is is the CEO distracted and is he really being focused on profit where he should be? And of course this is some reporting coming out of the Financial Times. No one they were what they call him celeb schmoozing CEO.

But it is interesting that at least one or two people they spoke to have been really caught off guard by them coming out of the celebrities coming out of quite high level conversations. So mart Benioff has lost two co CEOs in the last few years. We're talking about two pretty well known celebrities having major influence in the company.

Can I take you back now that you're here in San Francisco to two thousand and sixteen, when that Salesforce Towers first built, and at the time, bear with me, there was stories and reports in the media about a a zen Master living with Mark Benioff in his house, Master Hahn, Vietnamese Buddhist monk, and when he was building Salesforce Tower, apparently he took under advisement what these Buddist monks had to say about building the ultimate space for

employee relaxation. It's all I'm saying is he has a track record of seeking guidance from those not normally associated with the world of tech. Well said. And maybe I think there was a lot of coverage at the time about all the Salesforce Tower actually sinking, rather than sayings that was all the narratives blaming that exactly. But what's so interesting is that these activists that come on boarders like questioning this behavior. Ultimately, I thought it was interesting,

real questioning his philanthropy. I've never heard many and investor really questioned the deep phil agendas of his voice association with this city in particular. Yeah, exactly, I can understand worries about a distraction by bringing in the wrong celebrity

for technological advice. Whill I am. I know he has a gadgetal too, but I don't know how much he knows about Sorry sales, But ultimately I do think it's notable that I wouldn't want to see him being distracted from philanthropy personally for the focus on profitable But you know, we talked this week about dream Force, the expense of

dream Force and what it is. You know, it's a CRM, right, but salesforces this brand that everyone knows and clearly there's been a benefit for it for that now investing guy, isn't he right? But investors now saying Okay, get this under control. Yeah, profits first. Maybe it's a I don't think it's a Budhist mantra, writes a mantra coming from activists.

Unionization in tech is a global discussion, and Amazon workers in Coventry in the UK took part in a part of a historic strike, disrupting the e commerce chance operations for the first time in that nation. Zzie Burden has more from that. We're in Coventry in the English Midlands, where Amazon workers are striking for the first time in the UK. You can see the GMB union behind me has set up camp at the entrance to the warehouse and it's stopping workers on their way in asking if

they want to join the strike join the union. So far about three hundred workers are expected to have joined at least and it's all about pay. They're asking for a fifty percent raise five zero to fifteen pounds an hour. This roise isn't going to impact how Amazon Amazon does business. What it will do is actually start to bring some of that money that Amazon generates back into the economy. Now, Amazon has its own problems. It's having to deal with

people adjusting back to their pre pandemic spending habits. It's already said that it's going to cut about eighteen thousand jobs across its branches around the world. That's about one percent of its total workforce, the biggest call in it's near thirty year history. And here in the UK it's closing three warehouses, opening two more. But it's adding to discontent.

This is a company that is hostile to unions. This is a company that doesn't take health and safety seriously, and this is a company that simply as something its workers in our Now, what's also significant about this strike is it shows that the discontent has spread beyond the public sector to the private sector. No longer is it just the chaos across travel, healthcare, teaching, the civil service.

Now it's the private sector to It gives new meaning to the warnings about a wage price spiral, because if Amazon were to high its prices in response to covering this bigger wage bill, it would add surely to the inflation problems that the UK is facing. Bimbos Lozzie Burden there now from down on Earth to up in space. Rocket Lab had its first US launch last night. You can see it there on your screen and I'm delighted to say. The CEO of the company, Pezebec, joins us

now on the phone. He's on the move. One question from our Alreudien for you. How many launches are going to come from the United States this year, Peter here, So thanks very much for somewhere between four and six, and we're probably about fifteen launches in total between our global launch sites. There was a moment where we see on our screens launched successful. We're waiting. It's tense, it's scary. Are the satellite is going to deploy Peter, and they deployed.

How traumatic was that for you in the moment, Well, I knew what was going on. For not very traumatic at all. We have ground stations placed around the world UM, and one of the ground stations went offline, as they do occasionally, was one in Australia, so there was probably a snake called around it and tied it up or something like that. But twenty minutes later we had another part of another ground station UM and we had contact with the vehicle over Africa. So we're all. We're all happy.

But for those watching you probably wondering what was going on, but you all successful and happy to see uh hundred and cooky purpose customer on all. But it's a quite an emotional right for an investor as well, because the stock soared and he was pointing it out pre market. It was up, up, up and away and then seems to sort of crash back down to Earth. I'm interested

as to what you think happened to the stock market reaction. Look, I mean with within the space fictor especially, but I mean in general, there's very little correlation, frustratingly between a bench. So you know, we went to the moon, last year Vanessa and a varioustoric mission and in you know, the stock didn't really change either. So I think in this the current market, there's very very kind of little or

or oblique influences on the stock price. But you know, we just continued to execute and in ultimately, you know, the market will catch up. Hey, Peter, how tight is capacity right now? Industry wide related demark to demand? If you did more launches, would you be able to fill the three hundred kilogram payload quota? Yeah? Look, I mean were the dominant force in the small dedicated launch globally right now? And um, you know, I think I think we we we fly the vast majority of everything there.

We're the you know, the real capacity crunch is around about in the five twenty seven time frame, where they're about on medium size launch and that's why we're developing the Neutron launch vehicle, which of the significantly larger launch. Good to meet them, Peter on that. I've got a lot of questions on Twitter when they found out you were coming on when is Neutron going to be ready? And does it just render Electron obsolete? You know, So Neutron will be on the pad in four and Noah doesn't.

Electron service are a very important small satellite dedicated market, so it certainly doesn't make an obsolute rocket lad founder and CEO Peter bag just an astonishing achievement, you know, bearing in mind how dominant spaces in this industry Carrow, and they did it their first US launch. What about this net? You were telling me all of so helicopter with nets that sometimes catch another time, but they want it to be reusable. They're going to catch the booster

with a helicopter midair. They haven't quite got there yet. We'll get him back on to talk about it. Let's do that meanwhile. Of course that does it for this edition a Bloomberg Technology. But you have got to stay tuned for tomorrow Thursday. Commissioner Brendan Carr, don't forget a lot to recaps and check out our podcast wherever you get your podcast, I Heeart Radio, Spotify, Apple. It's been a busy week. Layoffs continue, earnings continue, and we will

be across everything out of the technology sector. This is Bloomberg