Lyft's Record Plunge and Focus on the Super Bowl

big game come Sunday. Let's talk about all of it because coming up at a record plunge for Lift, the ride sharing giant sees shares plummet as it loses market share to competitor Uber or how that lates for you, and using automated intelligence to combat automated intelligence will speak to the CEO or of Seeker on how his company's technology is fighting the growing problem of misinformation in general.

Tid Ai plus a countdown to the Super Bowl, from tickets to better things to advertising, will run through what to expect and even what to order when you're watching the big game this Sunday, is it Califlat All that and so much more coming up, Let's have a quick check or what's happening in the market. We are on a down day again, it is all about the MACO. It's more about the Federal Reserve. It's all about Therefore, tech stocks falling as boring costs rise, we yields up

seven basis points in the tenure nazdac Off. Once again, we're seeing the Vixen next just stabilizing around twenty, but volatility is elevated as we think that these swirling movements in stocks are likely to prevail. Let's kick in on and show you what it meant for the week, and as that one was under pressure. In fact, is the worst week for this particular benchmark since December. So this year, yeah, I think. I mean seeing a similar story in individual names.

It's about what happened Friday and then what happened in the week. You look at like a name like Tesla down five percent Friday, but actually finishing higher on the week by almost four percent. Alphabet continuing slide, more bodies decline of half a percentage point, but actually it's worst weeks since November, believe it or not. Caroline down for a third consecutive straight straight day. First that's happened since

early December. So the market's really seizing onto those mishaps around its barred AI offering Spotify interesting up three point six percent. Dig into this in the show later on about Value Act taking a stake, supporting the strategy around cost cuts, and then of course Lift. I've got a different chart for you on Lift that that tells the story A picture paints a thousand words. Mr. Director, Give me my terminal chart, because this is the biggest drop on record for Lift. You can see the size and

scope of the reaction from investors. I want to get more straightaway on Lift with Bloomberg's Jackie Daviloss, who covers all things gig economy and ride sharing in Washington. Jackie, what was the reaction to this plunge? Wall Street is very unhappy and you saw it in just the massive wave of downgrades a near day after the results yesterday, you had about eight major banks looking at the stock and saying, we don't know if it's worth as much

as it was. Among those, you have JP Morgan basically saying, you know, we don't know if the right share rebound is really lifting all boats and Lift is missing out. You had Morgan Stanley looking at the slim profit margins that come from cutting those prices, and among them. One of the most pessimistic takes was from Bank of America,

which lowered its price target to about ten dollars. That's massive considering the company I poed around the seventies um and they said, you know, we don't know if the growth outlook is here anymore, considering you're having to lower prices to get those consumers back. But there is one bright spot, which is uh, if there's anything to bring back some investor faith, it's what is it going to take to get some of those costs down even further

and put more earnings back into investors pockets. So the company mentioned they were willing to look at additional cost cuts. Investors are waiting to see what those are going to be interesting. I'm gonna play Devil's Avoca and let's look at the silver linings a bit more. His a company that's saying we had the highest school to revenue in the history. There's a company is trying to say they had twenty point four million riders overall active riders. That's

a new record. People are coming back and doing rides, sharing more often. Oh what about some of the narrative around the fact that we're getting more driver supply. Ultimately, are they able in any way to fight back to such a remarkable market move. You think that that's a good thing that drivers are coming back to the plaqueform. The problem last year was that there weren't enough and

that meant higher prices. But it's an interesting dynamic because those higher prices helped Lift revenue and profit for both companies. But the disadvantage that Lift has here is that it's solely relying on a ride shur business. It doesn't have delivery the way Uber does. And so when you think about some of the supply and writer demand dynamics coming into play again and seeing less of those higher fares get into the revenue line, they have to find another

way to grow. Jackie, I always appreciate Caroline silver Lying. I appreciate her every day playing devil's advocate. Let me bring us crashing back to reality and bring up this chart, and let's talk about market share, because you and I look really closely at the reality of this market share situation, and is it fair that Lift is becoming an even more distant second place to Uber. It's looking that way, and you know, when we think about where the two

companies were at the beginning of the pandemic. Uber really hadn't grown out its food delivery business the way it hasn't just the last year. So I think the future for Lift is looking a little bit bleak. It's looking at its membership product to kind of tap some more customers get that retention up um, but so far that market share just keeps ticking down. And so we'll have to see what other tricks it has in his pockets, because investors are are waiting to see some more of

those active writer's return. Bloombo's Jackie Davila was very busy week for you, very big contrast between Uber and Lift in their earnings prints and let's turn from right sharing two e vs. Tesla has hired a new legal chief after years of turn over. In a post on LinkedIn, Brandon Erhardt revealed he's assumed the role of Tesla's general

counsel and corporate secretary after departing from Dish. The move comes after Musk tweeted last year that the company was quote building a hard core litigation department where we directly initiate and execute lawsuits and Caroline, speaking of Tesla in our weekly Twitter spaces earlier, we had our special guest speaker who had some choice words for Elon Musks. Take listen. I think it's crucially important to be able to take criticism, and this is something that over the years I realized

with Elon. You know he's very thin skin and so thin skinned is Elon Musk that Ross gerber told you and I that he is going to make an activist play for Tesla's board. I think activism is the thing to be watching, isn't it. We're about to talk about it when it comes to Spotify as well. But what's so interesting with Ross GERBERO is he, in many ways have been saying that I've been out there talking about Tesla because the company itself won't talk about itself because

they don't have a marketing play. They don't really go out there to the main mainstream media as they call it. He wants to change that. He wants to have changed from within. He wants to try and get a board seat. Fascinating what the reaction will be because ultimately he's a Tesla ball. It's not as though he's wanting completely rip up the script here. Yeah, I had to crunch the data. He has four dred and forty thousand shares or so at Gerber Kawasaki. That's zero point zero one percent of

the float, right, so tiny player. But he told us he has the support and pledge of the single biggest individual shareholder, and he dropped some names on the institutional side as well, So if he gets momentum, let's see. But there was a lot of criticism and skepticism on Twitter at least when that news came out. So great to have these guests joining us on Twitter spaces. Come

join us next Friday. Meanwhile, oh, let's turn to a story that we've been following all week, and wil Kracken has settled that SEC and will pay thirty million dollars amid allegations that broke the agency's rules with its crypto assets taking products. Now earlier, Bloomberg caught up with the SEC itself the chat again. Just take a listen. The significance is there's a business model in crypto whereby these

um i'll call them storefronts. There their intermediaries. They asked the public and they solicit the public for their funds their crypto, and they said we'll give you a return, and they might call it lending in this case, it was called staking as a service and we'll give you four eight percent or even twenty one percent returns. And there in lies the issue. They were doing this without the proper disclosure, and the investing public gets to decide

what risks they want to take. And these key questions was Cracked in or others that do this? Were they taking those tokens and doing what they're saying on their website? Are they lending them trading against um running other business models? Uh? And so the disclosure is critical for the investing public. So what my understanding is now, Cracking can no longer do this domestically in the United States for US citizens unless I guess they register as a security. Does that

break the business model? Do you understand it? Does that mean they can't be in that business? Or can they just come back and say, oh, can ell a register will make the disclosures you want, it's it's I'll make it more generic. These storefronts, these crypto exchanges, crypto lending platforms, crypto staking as the service, they need to come into

compliance and they are generally non compliant right now. The investing public is not only at risk by the speculative nature of crypto, but their at risk of ending up in line at a bankruptcy court because a lot of these platforms are doing things they're not disclosing. So to answer your question, yes, firms can come into compliance time tested roles, register they're off for rings and propperily disclosed the risk and what they're doing with your fines behind

the scenes, and that would be a compliant field. In this case, crack and chose they didn't want to after this in the US and we settled sec J Gargans earlier with our own David Weston. Meanwhile, well, let's talk about President Joe Biden. He's ordering the Pentagon to shoot down we understood an object spotted at forty thou feet

over Alaska. Less than a week of course, after fighter jets targeted an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon that across the US and provoked a national uproar, the US has also sanctioned six firms linked to Chinese aerospace programs, including airships and balloons. Like, any technology definitely has its limitation, So we actually like anything that you implement, you know, its limitations.

Navan CEO Aerial Cohen. Yesterday, they're saying look, they know that the AI that that company is implemented in their business, it isn't perfect, and that they still need to rely on real people from time to time. And let's talk a little bit more about imperfection. Let's talk about the rush into artificial intelligence and indeed the risks there if whether it's ethical, whether it's ultimately security wise too pleased

to welcome to the show. Patcondo, founder CEO of search engine and information evaluation provider Seeker, and first and foremost, your company basically uses artificial intelligence itself to analyze articles out there and provide well an analysis of how misleading, how factually correct they are. Just talk to us about chat gybt or other generative AI models and chatbots. How

much could they feed dissemination disinformation? So they're going to create an explosion of content, which is the which is the objective here is by having it widely distributed and present in every application that we use. The whole idea is to create as much content as possible, and then of course they've got the compute resources behind that in their cloud to service that content. So it becomes almost a perfect engine. The more content, the more, the more usage,

the more income is generated. So it's no surprise that they've introduced it at this time as their earnings begin to you know, flag a bit. This is yet a new way to to drive the earnings process. To take the other side, like, companies are also deeply excited by the productivity these sorts of innovations can bring. How artificial intelligence generative AI can really help fuel for the growth not just for their own companies, but for us, all

for for economies, for people, for companies, for productivity. But talk to us therefore about what they could put in place to make sure that these movements are safe. We know open AI uses machines and humans to monitor content. What could they do pack well, you know, without transparency, there's no trust. And what we've seen today is there's a lack of transparency on the web and that's been growing over the last you know, four or five years.

And so now we have something like a generative AI which is going to produce you know, even orders of magnitude content. So what needs to be put in place is what's been put in place over time, which our rating systems and a rating system can help gave a quality incredibility of the content that's being created, and with that you get the trust, and with the trust, you'll get use and you'll be able to yet again generate kind of another evolution in the use of this kind

of capability. Right this week, UH seemed to sum up this conversation. Right, you had the risk with Alphabet on the on the one hand, and the sort of euphoria with Microsoft on the other. And what it took was a demo video from Google which demonstrated its barred AI giving an inaccurate reading, and the stocks had its worst week since November. This moment in time now, in your opinion,

which was the bigger moment for artficial intelligence? What came out of Microsoft or what we see on the screen right now, which is the market reaction to Google's inaccuracy? It's problem. Well, I think everybody that that is a you know, users digital products online know that trust is an issue. And I think both companies have proven that by pushing something to market without having trust behind it or transparency is going to create more confusion and more

concerned than it is benefit. Now, over time that can be ameliorated, but now they've got to actually defend something that had they set it out with the transparency and a measurement scheme on quality. They may not have been in this particular situation. Does open aies technology make Microsoft's thing more competitive in the search market, I would say it will at least maintain their position um Google. On the other hand, Google both have taken a different approach.

Microsoft has approached it by introducing a conversational platform, but Google is actually approaching it by producing next generation of a search platform. And the difference here is the size of the data that's used, the source of the data, and the depth. And until we know both, it's very hard to tell. Let's talk about where else some sort of rails of the road could come in, and many would argue that's government's role. Department Commerce is released version

one point of AI Risk Management Framework. We also know that the White House is released end of last year. I believe it was a framework for an AI Bill of rights, which some companies are pushing back on. Is there enough coming from an administration perspective here to have oversight to ensure that AI is built appropriately. I think in most democracies people are not interested in over regulation

by the government. I think the source is going to be private companies, and I think giving those private companies visibility to their solutions is really what has to happen. I don't think it should come from government. Seek a founder and CEO Pat Condo. Thank you. Let's talk about artificial intelligence, some of the euphoria around it and people who want to get in on the action. Sound Ventures. It's the LA based firm from actor Ashton Kushcher. He's

discussing raising a fund dedicated to AI investments. It's all according to a source. It may target around two on a million dollars for the vehicle, though the terms haven't yet been finalized and can still change. Other firms raising or planning to raise capital dedicated to artificial and intelligence include Radical Ventures, Air Street Capital, and Conviction Partners. So

the ED coming up. For some, it's a dream come true being able to immerse yourself Caroline in the world of Harry Potter with a new game out today, but there's some controversy around it too. Will unpack it all next. This is Bloomberg. Harry Potter fans, a who lot of them, and many of long wish to inhabit, or at least visit Hogwarts Castle. Now it's possible with a new video game Hogwarts Legacy, which offers the most convincing recreation yet,

but the culture wars surrounding the game arraging two. Let's bring in Jason Schreyer for more on this and just talk to us first and foremost about the cultural side of it. J k Rowling has by many even widely perceived to make transphobic comments dating back to eighteen. It's left many quandering whether they buy the game or not. Right, Yeah,

this game has been controversial from the start. It was actually announced just a few months after J. K Rowland became open about her views on transgender people, and as a result, people started from the get go talking about Boycott's talking about not playing the game. How if you play the game or buy the game, you're supporting somebody whose views are seen by a lot of people to

be transphobic. Um, somebody who has spoken out against legislation in Scotland that would make it easier for people to change their genders on their birth certificates, and a whole bunch of other stuff. So yes, i'mlike unlike the books of old the Harry Potter books, which I think came out and we're just blockbuster launches and and fans are lining up at midnight. This comes with a little bit more controversy. Well, look, this video game is seizing a

big moment. You know, everyone's talking about it. You point out in the Business of video Games shout out game on newsletter from you, which I love reading that. Whatever you think about it, it's well reviewed. It's got people looking at the game itself. Yeah. What's interesting is in the past, um, the Harry Potter games were usually these movie tie in games that were rushed out, kind of um slap dash games that were put together to just make the release of the film, and they follow the

same story as each of the films. This is completely original. It's set a hundred years before the books even took place. It's this high end game unlike any other Harry Potter game we've seen, and that is one of the reasons it's getting such high reviews. It's it's a game unlike it's a game we haven't seen before. We haven't seen

a recreation of Hogwarts Castle. This detailed before and very inclusive details within some of that game as well, which in your Great Reporter you sort of say, almost as if they're really trying to combat to a significant amount any cultural that could envelop them. To your point, Jason, like when they are interweaving this sort of inclusion and they are making hospitable for many a young person to come and play. When it's a game that's good, is it really good? Is it going to attract people no

matter what? Because it feels like the sales have been pretty grate. Yeah. I mean sales are great first and foremost because of Harry Potter. There are some games that are critically claimed but don't sell the kind of the critical mass that this is reaching. Um that said, yes to your point about inclusion, it's really interesting, especially in

the way gave j. K. Rowling's views. And I won't get into everything because it would take us so many hours to unpack all of that criticism that's been held about the Harry Potter series in general and minorities and race and anti Semiti tropes and all that other stuff. But this game feels like it's trying to be extremely welcoming.

The character creator. For example, when you start a new character in the game, when you that's the who you play as in the game, um, you can create one that has a voice and a body tape that is completely independent from their dormitory choice of male and female.

So you can create a pretty trans friendly character, which is really a unique thing and something that is very refreshing and I think would be welcome by a lot of people if not for all the baggage that the series author has has come with Bloomberg's Jason Stria, thank you so much. If you don't do subcribe, subscribe to the game on newsletter that Jason and his team put out. Welcome actively Bog Technology. I'm Carlin Hide in New York

and I oh i medst in San Francisco. It's a Friday vibe, and it's a Friday vibe because it's about to be a big Sunday vibe to the super Bowl and it's going viral. Fanjul expecting record bets on this platform on Sunday. CEO Amy Host spoke to Bloomberg Markets earlier. Take listen. We're projecting seventeen million bets on the platform, which is more than double what we would have seen

last year. There's three new states online this year, but it's also it's our biggest acquisition moment of the year. We'll probably bring half a million new users onto the platform leading up to and on the day of, and it's a great opportunity they get to you know, you bet on hundreds of different player props. So it's, um, it's going to be an exciting day for fans. Maybe good morning, get this guy. Is it going to be profitable for you? Is it going to be a good

day for you? How does this snack up in terms of the bottom line? Oh, listen, it's going to be a big day, and you know, it all depends on the outcome of the game. I think the most important thing is consumers bet based on the narrative that they want to see, and I think you know what you're seeing is right now. The money is definitely flowing to the Philadelphia Eagles. So apologies of your Chiefs fan, um, but what's what's most exciting is the player props. Right

of our bets will contain these one player prop. We think thirty of our bets will be the same game parlay, and so that's exciting, right. You can you can bet on the fact that the Kelsey brothers will both score touchdown. Uh, you know the correct score. Everyone. There's thirty thousand bets on the Eagles beating the Chiefs thirty four. So there's just so many different bets you can you can choose from. Then if hopefully it's a consumer friendly day. But I mean, Amy,

how big are those parlay bets gonna be? Um in terms of the volume and also the profitability? Then for you guys, um their huge I mean, listen, same game parlay has been a big advantage for fansl were owned by our our parent company, Flutter Entertainment, and this is a product that we brought over from Australia and other parts of the world. We were the first to market and so for us, it's a much higher percentage of our overall mix. It's driven a big structural margin advantage

for us UM. But it's also why I think sports betting has really taken off. It's you know, when you're invested in a player or a certain parlay, it makes the game that much more exciting, even if the games blow up. May you mentioned a moment ago that this is gonna be a big day for you in terms of customer acquisition. What if the cost of acquisition for those customers? I mean, listen, what one of the things that's really driven Sandul success is we've been way more

efficient in how we drive customers to the platform. Right, we have a massive scale advantage in the US where we've got a fort share of the market, but we've we've been able to be about more efficient in bringing customers onto the platform. You know, a big part of that has been the head start we had with our fantasy sports business, but we've also had a level of discipline. So you know, your acquisition costs are obviously going to vary depending on the events, and this is an important event.

This is an important event for us. Are you still thinking to profitability by the end of this year? Could it be sooner later? What are the factors? Yeah, we feel very confident about our path to profitability. For three we were the first operator at least US operator to be profitable and que two of this year, fundamentals of our business are looking very strong, and so we remained

very confident about full your profitability this year. Hm. That was Fan Jewels CEO Amy how then has continued the conversation Bloomberg Senior Executive editor, head of Global Tech coverage Brad Stone and Brad you were writing this week in one of our Bloomberg Tech Daily newsletters that this could be the biggest weekend for the U s betting industry and history. But the story is a tech one. It's

about online and it's about the apps. That's right, ed, I mean, the single most bet upon sporting event in US history, and it's setting all kinds of records. You know, for a number of reasons. Since two thousand and eighteen, sports betting has been legal in the US. That was a Supreme Court decision. Um, you've had these, as Amy House said, these fantasy apps like Vanduel and DraftKings pivoting into the sports betting business, and then thirty three states

legalizing it. Now Here in California, we can't get in on the action. Voters turned down a ballot proposition last November. But recently, in states like Ohio and Massachusetts and Indiana, sports betting is legal and people are embracing it. And then why when a how's that being pushed about? Profitability's talking it up, but the shap price of hers of competitors, I mean, so under pressia, why is everyone sort of taking a step back to think, oh, maybe this hasn't

been quite the well wind success we expected. Well, I mean, Caroline, you turn on a football game and you see JB. Smooth, the comedian advertising for Caesars, and the Manning Brothers Um actually Manning Brothers also advertising for Caesar's. Jamie Fox, Bet mgm Um Fan Duel and DraftKings are everywhere. It's it's it's the competition, and this has been a gold rush. As Amy House said, there is a scramble, particularly around

the Super Bowl to acquire new users. It basically mirrors what's happened in the tech industry at large, you know, discarding notions of profitability, trying to acquire new customers, marketing, spending, hiring, and now you know, with the recession and all this competition, investors are looking for profitability and that's why we've seen some of the stock prices come down. I am a fair Weather forty nine is fan, and so I'm still going to my Super Bowl party this Sunday with very

little interest or anything to share about. I don't have a horse in this race. But my friends are talking about Parlay's and I have no idea what they're talking about. What is it that they're talking about. Well, first of all, Ed, I have to say, my my mother is from Philadelphia. We have a lot of family so I'm going with the Eagles and and Jalen Hurts on Sunday. But you're right, this thing called Parley's Amy Amy how mentioned it is such a big phenomenon right now. I think FanDuel saying

of all the bets will be on Parley's. And think about that as a lottery ticket. You're betting on a number of things to happen, and if they all do, then you win. So let's say you can bet the Chief sold win. Patrick Mahomes all will pass for over three hundred yards. Um, they're you know, they're they're they're tight end at Parvis Kelsey will catch a touchdown that would be called like a three leg par lay, I believe,

and if you hit that, you win. But as these bets get longer and more sophisticated, the odds get better in the potential payout increases. Brad, may the best team win for your household. Thank you, Blomberg, Head of Global

Tech coverage, Bradstone. Great to check in with him, and well let's continue the conversation because look, maybe it's not going to get too psyched about with team wins, but maybe he's gonna get into the ads or is I'm going to Rihanna, Well, we can talk about all of it, the advertising angle with Kevin Krim, his CEO and president of d O and Entertainment Data Oracle. It's a platform

measuring predictive behavior, is driven by convergent TV advertising. So Kevin, first and foremost, we're just gonna bring you a pole from our own audience who went to them to toilet to aslet What are you caring about the Super Bowl? Are you caring about the actual game, the actual play,

or are you caring about the ads? Actually about said, yeah, actually they really care about the adverts, which is pretty a lot when actually less than of saying it's about the game with me on Rihanna, But talk to us about why we care about the ads so much? Why do people on Twitter? I think that it's all about the ads on Sunday this is a special event in

American culture. It brings together a much broader demographic than you see in a normal NFL game, And frankly, it's the largest audience that TV attracts all year by a law large margin. So what you get is a diverse audience, and you know, the advertising industry realizes that they can reach more people in one short moment than any other time of the year, so they bring out their best creative ideas and so that comes together and and shows that the ads can be as entertaining as that as

the action in the game. Now, of course, my mind goes back to last year, and quite often people would say, perhaps this is the canary in the coal mine. The people who spend the biggest actually end up being the companies you shouldn't be betting on in real life. Ultimately, it was Crypto. Crypto owned the space this time last year, and we know what's happened since that. For the industry group talk to us about who's going to be putting

money out there on some very expensive advertising spots. Well, Crypto's pain was sports bettings game this year in the NFL. So you know, I really think that the sports betting sites that you were featuring just just now, um, they will be major spenders in this game. You're gonna see

a lot from the beer and alcohol category. This is the first year in a long time where Annahezzer Bush didn't have the exclusive on the category, so you're seeing more competition there, and I think competition is one of the really interesting themes. This year, you're gonna see a big presence from the delivery competitors Uber Eats with its Uber one subscription and door Dash, and you know, both of those are indicative of some of the themes of what we see are the best performing ads in a

Super Bowl, like Caroline Kevin. My mind goes back to last year in a different I guess phenomenon is the right word. But there's one company I cover closely which does not advertise in traditional methods, which is Tesla, And yet following two Super Bowl Tesla shared data that they saw a massive surge in interest and orders because their competitors have put so much energy and money into advertising

at the Super Bowl. Is there anything you can speak to about that The indirect effects of all of this effort to get primetime splots on Super Bowl Sunday absolutely pull Star, the electric vehicle company, had the single best performing ad in our rankings last year. It generated the most engagement from consumers after that ad aired, and it was a powerful ad. It really took a swiming at Tesla. And what we see in the data is that consumers

first of all, love electric vehicles. They respond at a much higher rate on a per person basis than they do for gas powered regular vehicles, um across all of automotive advertising on TV year round, and so the automakers

responded with a flurry of EV ads last year. And what you do see in our data is that consumers do get confused occasionally and they'll search for a competitors brand when um, it's a different brand that's actually advertising and that certainly will have that sort of a rising tide lifts all boat's kind of effect for a whole category when you see that kind of um, big push

behind evs. Look, I know the nations excited for the Super Bowl, but we spent most of this year so far and pretty much and talking about the slowdown in the ad market, talking about uh, you know, advertisers pulling back and then the new players that are encroaching right in the world of streaming. How does that factor into this Sunday, Well, just on that subject of automakers, you're gonna see a lot fewer automobile ads than you would

have in many of the past years. Um, it's gonna be a market drop in in automotive advertising and a category like streaming, which is incredibly competitive right now, Um, you're gonna see a lot more streaming ads, um from basically every player in the marketplace. They will all be president in this game. Kevin Cram, CEO and president of DEO. Just great insight. You know you have to wait for the ads, right, you have to wait and see what

happens Sunday. But at least now and we'll look and you'll and you'll be able to see our rankings of the best performing ads early Monday morning on ad week dot com. So take a look at that, all right, well look out, thank you very much. Now, m Bergs learned that Fox has turned down offers of more than two billion dollars for its to be streaming service. That's more than four times what it paid for the business.

But Fox CEO Lucan Murdoch wants to keep to be as it continues to grow to be as a free, ad supported service, and it's free online TV that's bringing in the viewers these days. This is consumers, as we all know, migrate from traditional cable TV to a combination of subscription and free to watch services. Revenue at to Be, another ad based video on demand services, is expected to double to thirty billion dollars in the US that according to Digital TV research now coming up no rest for

the activist investors. Spotify is the latest target. There's one firm seats to support cost cutting measures at music streaming Giant. Will bring you the details next, this is Bloomberg. So Spotify as the latest company now to be targeted by an activist investor. It's Value Act. Capital Managements build a position we understand in the music streaming Giant, and it's supporting the company's plans to tighten down on spending and

become more efficient. For more on the news to help break it all putting magic Blanna Baker and I mean Value Act has been busy. They've already just taken aboard seat at Salesforce. In fact, activist investors in general have been pretty busy at the moment. Land It's true, it's been a busy week for activis investors. Though at Disney and Nelson's Helps is not doing a proxy find anymore, so we don't have to worry about that. But Value Act based in San Francisco, they're very involved in tech

right now. Mason more Fit gave a speech this morning at Columbia and New York and that's where if he revealed that they were now Spotify. He sat on boards like Microsoft you mentioned he's on salesforce and board. So right now we don't know how big their steak is or what exactly they're doing behind the scenes, but Spotify has been cutting park and they like that. Well, I guess that's my question. I know that they're looking at technology of late, but why Spotify? What is it about

defied that makes them a target. They're kind of already doing the things that many activist investors come in and push for. Well, they haven't had an activist before, so that's one thing that could be compelling that would attract an investor to try to shake things up. But Spotify, like many tech companies, expanded its headcoun during the pandemic by a lot, and they really saw their cost balloon

as they got further into podcasting and content. So it seems like there could be a lot of fat to trim here, and that is kind of what is attracting value act um. They've started to make some changes, but you know, there could always be more and we'll we'll see what happens with Spotify. It it's founder controlled the CEO is also the founder and that's always a bit complicated for activists. But Value Act has gone into companies before,

like the New York Times that also were controlled by families. Bannah. What was interesting about your scoop was the information was sort of coming from a speech the Value Acts the CEO, Mason Morten, had made at the Columbia University. And just tell me through how this usually unfolds because when used to read the story and you hear what he's saying about Spotify, it all seems really rather complimentary. What are usually the tax that they take? Did they tend to

go for the jungular? Do they tend to say, look, we're really aligning ourselves in the business here and we want to be a long time investors bloody blood, So I would say Value Act there. What they their strategy is usually to be friendlier to companies. It's sort of jargon, but they're known as constructivists, uh, instead of activists, which would be the normal term, and they like to ind

involved behind the scenes. So when Madson more fits out of Microsoft's board, maybe we didn't hear from him, but Microsoft made a lot of changes that you know, helped get it where it is today. So they are very behind the scenes, but they did make this publicly known in a speech today, so that was a bit surprising. You don't always see a new investor come out bring a speech. Usually it's a five. But there's so little detail right now on how big the stake is, so

we'll be we'll be looking for more detail. Those thee on a Baker terrific reporting once again, Happy Friday. Now turning to Expedia, the online travel name receiving a wave of analysts upgrades as the company sees a strong start to the year. Earlier, we heard from CEO Peter Kern, who explained how they've been able to buck the trend of tech layoffs. We actually did a lot during COVID and pre COVID to right size our business, so we

were way ahead of the curve. And while a lot of tech companies were adding quite aggressively during COVID, we were actually stable to down. So we're in a great place now. We've added a lot of technology capabilities and a lot of more people in engineering and product than we used to have, but in general we are we're in a really good spot and we're we're continuing invest in the product and our capabilities for the consumers, so

we don't expect to see any major downsizing. And on technology, I heard you everyone's talking about AII talk talking about personalization on your conference call, Peter. If if the story ahead is one where there could continue to be growth, where are you expecting to see that growth in three I know there's been a lot of focus on what happens in Asia, particularly with China's reopening. Yes, so it's

a couple of parts for US. There's definitely some geographical opportunities in Asia, but to a large extent, we've been rebuilding our whole technical platform for the last couple of years and rolling out our new marketing strategy in the US, which is really focused on long term customer retention, high value consumers and really working on retention, great products, sticky product,

great loyalty programs. And that's really been working in the US, and we are now starting to roll that out to more places UH and more brands as those capabilities expand and we get our technological transformation finished. So that's really going to drive our growth. But geographically, we expect the West to be strong, Asia to come back UH. And so far, notwithstanding all your commentary about the economies of

the world. Everything's been really strong and travel well, it feels like that's almost showed up in a way when it comes to the effects of pressures. In the fourth quarter, looks like your revenue took a four d base point hit due to just a really strong dollar. You're speaking about the geopolitical pressures. Is that something that you see continuing in the year ahead. Yeah, I don't think so.

I mean, obviously it does impact, you know, comps and comparing historical results to current results, but I think in general it hasn't been an issue. You know, pricing has been high. We've seen inflation and travel considerable inflation over the last several years, but those prices seem to be holding quite well, whether it's airfares or hotel rates, etcetera. And uh, the consumers seem to be more than willing to pay for it, so demand remains really strong, and uh,

I don't see much change coming from that. And I don't think you know, you may have some vectors impacted where certain travelers might want to might not want to come to the US, or or what ever, but we are very strong in the US and it's strong that our actually helps us on international travel. Expedia CEO P Deken there earlier on Bloomberg he's sounded pretty positive, optimistic, But look over the last couple of days, you've seen Expedia on the downside, off by more than nine percent.

Fact today having its worst day since May twenty two, So clearly still some concerns among those fourth quarter misses amid the weather. Let's talk tech layoffs right now, because they continue, and this time the fintech industry really being singled out at the moment where thousands are losing their jobs as companies cut costs for the first time. Just think about a firm, think about Upstart firing one in every five of their workers, and other firms have made

deeper cuts. If you pivot into the world of silicon Micron also cutting costs as this time in the C suite in fact, but they're one company booking back in the trend, and is it Apple. Look at this chart. During the industry's pandemic field hiring binge, Apple added fewer

employees than other big tech firms. Now, on top of that, the company generated far more revenue per new higher check out that overall, according to data compiled by Bloomberg So look at revenue per additional head count two and a half million for Apple. I mean, we know that they are just so profitable alphabet one and a quarter million per higher. But ultimately it is as signed that Apple

managed to weather this downturn a little bit better. Yeah, and you know, might McKie Bloomberg Economics correspondent always points out to me, look at the jobless claims number in these tech layoffs don't show up, partly because they may not have happened yet or they're finding new jobs pretty quick.

But the theme being lean and mean, that's the takeaway. Yeah, we continue to discuss this, I mean, Lena mean that does it for this addition of Bloomberg Technology, And don't forget our podcast wherever you get it recap this week on Spotify, iHeart and Apple. This is Bloomberg