Meta Provides Earnings Relief, Palantir CEO Interview

Let's talk about it. Meta surging after earnings relief, plans to buy back shares, the company focusing on efficiency, were digging into the short term cost cuts and the long term goals as it also wins quarter approval to buy VR startup within plus my exclusive conversation with Palenteer CEO Alex carp who has some pointed words for shareholders and potential new hires and crypto hackers. Still more money than ever before. In two that's as Cathy Woods ARC doubles

down on it's one million dollar talget for bitcoin. First, I want to go straight to our bloome bag report to Alex Brinka, who has all the key takeaways from metas Zarnings addicts, what were the top lines? I mean, the biggest thing here with this stock bub I think is going to be the cost cutting. Meta has had some kind of shaky ground with investors over the last twelve months because of how much they say they're spending on things like this far flung vision of the virtual

reality metaverse. Well, they have come back to earth, it seems, and actually lower their expectations for three for their costs to about eighty nine to billion dollars and expenses for the year. I think the icing on the cake on that that's probably exciting investors is the addition of forty

billion dollars to their share a purchase plan. Again. Metas stock sold off the most ever, the most free year ever in two It's recovered a little bit, certainly more today, but adding a little bit to that buy back has certainly got folks excited now in terms of the broader market and what we might also see from Alphabet tomorrow. I'm looking at the top line staments for the first quarter for revenue, they're projecting at twenty six to twenty

eight and a half billion dollars. That basically straddles the average analyst expectations. So I think there might be some clues under the hood here that the general malaise in the ad market is leveling off similar to what we heard from Snap yesterday. But as the earnings call gets started here, I'm sure that there'll be questions on both costs metaverse aspirations and where that revenue stabilization is coming from. And I'm sure competition with a company that you focus

a lot in on, which is TikTok. So it is notable that we're getting that by that push up in the shares, but we're still half of where we are in the value of Meta stock from this time last year anything in terms of where their market share is looking all their own cannibalization with the fact that they're you know, discounting giving cheap ads on reels for example, exactly that that is that reels narrative is one that was really big last earning cycle, and I'm sure they'll

get questions now. Reels is their answer to TikTok. It's short form videos that served up to you based on an algorithm. It's really dicky, and users are liking it, and they've shown some kind of strides and getting users on board and spending more time there. The problem is it doesn't make as much money for them as other places where they could serve ads on Facebook and Instagram. So last earning cycle three months ago they said this will be a twelve to eighteen month process until they

can close that gap a hundred percent. I'm sure folks are looking to get an answer on the progress on that front. Hey, Alex, As you wrote in the top live blog, investors have been laser focused on spending. But the number that caught my eyes this two billion Facebook core platform use it based seventy million growth from the same time last year. How surprising is that It's a

bit surprising. Remember, Facebook has been around for what almost two decades now, so to see a rise of seventy million users and actually clear that benchmark of two billion people using Facebook every day is an interesting little number for a platform that's been around for a while. They've been making changes to Facebook. They've been bringing in things like reels. It seems like they're listening to what users are liking from perhaps other platforms and bringing that into

their legacy app. So I'm sure that they will be bragging about that mark. Zuckerberg was in the statement in the release about that and also about what he's calling which is the Year of Efficiency. So those two things definitely seem to be the top two that they are selling to investors as they let out these earnings today. Alex breenca just the perfect summation of all that we've just got in the last hour or so. Let's get

even more of a deep dive for you. Debra Ajo Williamson is with US Principle Analyst have written insider Intelligence, and you were looking at the daily active users of Facebook as well and the engagement. It's interesting both snap on Facebook well met to the parent company showing people are still coming to their platforms that adding eyeballs, but

what about the actual revenues about the ads that being bought. Yeah, well, I mean it is a good sign, just to say right straight out, it is a good sign that both daily active users and monthly active users for a platform like Facebook that is you know, quite quite old in social network to terms, is still gaining right So there, really you have to take that is as an important sign.

Um that said that, you know, I'm pretty confident that the gains are mostly going to be outside of the core advertising markets, which would be the United States and Europe. Um and and that is where Meta has been able to for a long time now generate a significant portion of revenue be able to charge more for advertising, uh, sophisticated advertisers. And so I think where you're seeing the dichotomy here is UM and this is true for staff

as well. Is that because the growth is in areas where there is UM you know, where underdeveloped markets or um you know, underdeveloped advertising businesses. Uh, that is impacting the the overall revenue picture for the company. Wells also to be put into perspective, which I know you highlight time and time again. I mean, this is an enormous

amount of revenue. This company is pulling in thirty two billion on a quartity basis, more than a hundred and sixteen on an annual But revenue is down and it's been down for three straight. Court is now absolutely and you know, if we pull back to look at the full year, uh, you know, as we expected, Meta closed the year with its first year over year decline in AD revenue. But the downturn was slightly less than we thought,

about one percent versus are expected two percent decline. Uh. But you know that's that's not actually a good sign when you think and pull back to one which was a year when worldwide AD revenue grew nearly thirty seven percent.

So we are we've seen a huge swing in the performance of this company, partially because of external factors like the worldwide economy, the changes that Apple made to its privacy that affect the effectiveness and the efficiency of the advertising, but also I mean it's true that I think when you think about where Mark Zuckerberg has been focusing his

time and attention, it's been on the metaverse. And I think to some extent last year he took his eye off of the ball of the fact that Facebook and Instagram are the two biggest worldwide social platforms and there's still room to grow. And I think that was something that I think they're trying to rectify now going into well, he called three year of efficiency, which sounds very much like something shareholders have wanted to hear for some time.

The other thing shareholders like to hear, Deborah, is buy backs and more of them, Meta boosting their buy back authorization by forty billion. We're sharing on the screen, Uh, this chart? Is this just Meta buying its own dip? Yes?

So this is an area because insider intelligence focuses mostly on looking at revenue and usage metrics, UM I can't specifically comment on that, but I think anything just bottom line that Meta is doing to you know, to improve its its profitability, to reduce expenses, to you know, to counteract this sort of revenue shortfall is going to be good for the company. Deborrah Williamson, thank you so much for joining us principal analysts and insider intelligence, and the

other story we can't get away from. Open ai introducing a twenty dollar per month subscription for a premium version of chat GPT. Chat GPT Plus will offer access to the chat pot even during peak times, with faster responses to type queries and early access to new features. Open Ai is eagerly trying to find viable business models to cover the high cost of running its products, including of course, the multimillion billion dollar I should say deal with Microsoft.

Shares of Pelaton absolutely soaring as the company reported improved cash flow and a narrower net loss in the last quarter. CEO Barry McCarthy saying, the questions about the viability of the business they put to bed? Have they joining us now? Shretter Cajuria, director of Internet Pretty Research, ever care should are they put to bed? Is extinction behind us? I

think so first, Paul, thanks for having me. I think if a question is not about extinction anymore, I guess the question is whether this is going to be an epic comeback, which is what Barry said in his in his letter, I call it a very very spractical comeback right now with the free dash blows that they posted, excluding some of the one supplier related costs, what is becoming increasingly clear is that this business is self sustainable on a free dash bow basis, which is what their

number one priority was. Board remains unclear is what how should you think about growth for this company? You mentioned comeback. We asked our own audience if they felt that this was evidence of the Peloton come back. These are the results. Pretty overwhelming. No, not convince sixty six of respondents. I guess what is it that the consumer feels right now for Peloton? But how do we assess the user base

and the growth potential based on the bullish commentary? For management, there's certainly a very good fall line for those who own the device. The NBA score remains very high. Uh, the usage and engagement with the product remains very robust, and the retention grades are intrinsically very high. For this business when we compare them to some of the other subscription based businesses. What is unclear is how many more of these UH Internet connected home fitness equipment can they

sell in the market. What is the actual growth rate? How fast is the industry blowing? And can Felton grow faster than the overall industry? Are we tapping out of the market opportunity or is it is this something that can grow in the double digital thrate. The juries are well, sorry to interrupted. I was going to say the jury

is out. As I look across the cell side reaction, I guess the concern is we we believe Barry McCarthy in the near term, we don't yet have any evidence of what the growth story two or three years from now. That seems to be the skepticism out there. That's exactly right. So what is in their control was cutting down costs, headcount reduction, variabilizing the cost from fixed costs of variable costs, as well as UH inventory management, better inventory demand management,

and all that they have done. And it's in the past and they've done a great job since very came on board. What is not in their control is really driving demand. How much of a balance will they need to do with marketing spend to drive this incremental demand

uh and also maintain positive recshual profitability. And what is also what is unclear among those who are not very happy with Peloton is the recent shift in outsourcing their customer service and so they experience that customers used to have is not the same in terms of expecting the you know, the the customer service that they have been as well as the delivery expectations of the equipment. Yeah,

you've got to build your own. I'm I'm interested. Therefore, in what they now need to prioritize and execute on. Is it more important than these partnerships like the exporting goods Amazon that they work out, or is it about self investment ensuring that they are updating the act as they need to, that they are improving customer services they need to. It will be a blend of bolt Uh.

It is very clear that customer service needs to be better than what it has been at the US and best, but increasingly important is the incremental user base that they will get. So the key growth drivers that they will benefit from our not only the distribution partners that you called out and increasing those who include include more retailers,

but also international markets. They launched tread in Australia they could expand into different countries as well as product category expansion and what they call fitnesses and service product which is really the rental program, as well as certified creon which is if you own some cells that you want to sell that and that drives. Essentially, they are trying to make it easy for an average customer do do

buy this relatively more expensive equipment right? They also relied, of course on promotions and holiday season sales thanks to Schwetter Cajurior Director of Internet Equity Research at Evercred. Now coming up some of my exclusive conversation with Palenteers CEO Alex Carp That is always come next, a fascinating combative conversation. This is Bloomberg Palentier, the at times mysterious data analysis

software firm, is making more commercial deals. It's a change of strategy for a company that's thrived in chaos, winning government and military contracts from the pandemic and war in Ukraine. I sat down for an exclusive interview with Palans CEO Alex Carp and asked him how vestors should view him his view on Silicon Valley and global text perspective on Palenteer. Take listen, we are a company whose most important purpose is to power the West to to even higher heights

in the commercial and in the government context. And we've done this in any terror in the kinds of the pandemic, and the context of war, in the context of data protection. And you really can't do that if you're going to also transfer those technologies indirectly directly your adversaries, and we've never done it. You're talking on stage about how your public company and you have a responsibility to your shareholders.

And at times in the last twenty years, shareholders have complained to you like why are you doing this it's loss making or why are you not doing that? And we talked about your strategy. Investors haven't really cheered it. If you clearly go off the share price performance, what is your message to them today about the dealers are announcing honest for that. So we are a company that

has a primary mission. The primary mission is to make the West stronger and better whatever that mission has secondarily led to to see one percent Tager over twenty years, thirty five percent Kager in the US government and the share price is the thing is I think a little bit of a red herring because all teck us down. I don't think our shares have been any more punished than anyone else's. So if you are an investor and you want to go long on transforming our country and

our allies, you have a home appound here. I have never ever, ever wavered from that statement. And if you don't want to invest in us because of that, you shouldn't. And if you're invest in us thinking I'm gonna change, you're making a mistake. You we lay our cards on the table. There is nothing besides transparency, or we haven't. When we went to the Ukraine, I didn't ask them can you pay us? I said here's the product. If I had gone to standard investor be like, well, you

can't do this until they pay you. When we started off in America on the pandemic and in Britain, we said, look, we can help. This is the primary mission of our company. And I think where I'm very aligned with investors is they're hearing the truth. I'm not saying, hey, we might change this prosop policy. We might do crazy deals in adversarial countries, we might put the other missions ahead of

our point. No. And by the way, I tell the most important investors that every day Palntarians, and I tell our retail investors, whom I revere that every time I go on TV. And you know when you're buying, when you buy a pounder in a spirit of transparency. You yourself has sold stock regularly since the lockoff expiry in one um, in the full, in the fairness of full transparency. In the last year or so, I've only sold for tax reasons. There's been no financial sales. I'm grateful to

be here with you in Palo Alto. I'm surprised to be here with you in Palo Alto. You've you've talked about monoculture in Silicon Valley. You moved the company to Colorado, and you've not come back often in the last three years because the Silicon Valley is obviously failed in this mission to produce technology that's useful and that the useful

for the world. It makes it a better place. And we were I think the first reasonably large company to leave, and now I'm very happy to come back and say, look, you know on occasion, you know, our position is a position we're proud of. And be surrounded again by people who disagree with me. There are many wokes engineers I think those are words you've used, that have lost their jobs recently at some tech giants. I know that you're looking at growth. Are you open to hiring those engineers?

Do not join parent here if you're not willing to support the US militaryans allies. You can have, by the way, any political opinion you want, as long as that's not a question for you. If it is a question for you, do not punt here is not your home. Unapologetic, uncompromising. You know, he knows where he stands. He is completely

comfortable with palenters offering to government, to security services. And that was just a small glimpse of a man that many in Silicon Valley of shunned because he has shunned them. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology and Caroline had in New York and to end New and San Francisco and the tech sector really getting lift off today, unsurprisingly from the macro strands from the FED. Yeah yeah, And I think I'm saying this is kind of the first big post

FED rally since July. And I go straight to one chart, which is now DA futures jump, two year yield goes down. It is a snapshot of the story, and we have one of the great Bloomberg minds joining us at the moment who can get into this. But my point is very simple. Twenty five basis point hike and a warning from pal that while they're making progress on inflation, they still foresee hikes to come. So for the market, it's

about when does the policy pivot come. But in the context of tech, you ask the question, higher rates discount the present value of future profits, and that is why we look so closely at the relationship between yields and the NASA one NAZAC futures. In this case. You talked about bitcoin earlier, but let's just talk about risk assets. It was a pretty broadly I'm looking at them as that one, but also more speculative corners of the market, so the Arc Innovation ETA and also the Goldman Sachs

Nonprofitable Tech Index. In other words, these stocks that trade at high wall extreme multiples, high multiples some relief for them because they have also been the most downtrodden corners of the market through this hiking cycle. And now we start to look at there's some more positive future, and that includes bitcoin, which, let's be honest, carry you and I both said earlier it's a risk asset inflation hedge not so much. Not yet, let's get into all of it.

We're really pleased to say back two days in a row is about Lee's with us, and really you were racing yourself for the technology reaction to this macro story. First, let's dig into the tech starres and the rally on upwards. This is because they've been the most beaten up of late. Yes and Ed had a great summary, making my job a lot easier, but a lot of textures really extended their gains even hitting session highs. You have the legs of neda Amazon alphabet all soaring north of two because,

let's face it, they were pummeled last year. They don't really like rising interest rates because that's not good for them, that's not good for their projected profits. So now it's welcome used they're happy, they celebrated it, they cheered it. As Ed mentioned, nastag is up two percent and it's probably just going to be the start for them. And today, of course, of Meta, I'm sure you're covered it. Also postmarket, they're trading well because of sales speed and Rosie outlooks.

So maybe it's the start of a new regime. As some people have said. On a daylight today, there's two places I go, fed go on the Bloomberg term and all just to get a sense of where we sit

with rates in this country. But then I go to bitcoin, and you heard us talking about it bitcoin the risk asset reaction is that a fair moved by me to make it kind of is because so bitcoin, for some reason dip a little bit around two thirty when power were starting to speak, but since then it's soared four percent. Last I checked before I walked over here, it was it paired some of its games, but still up around

point three. So a lot of the people said that, you know, this is like bitcoin is behaving like a texture. So it's obviously rising as well. But I talked about this yesterday. Arcane Research said that it's going to be a bad month for a bitcoin because the FEDS path is still unclear, Like, yes, we got a downshift today only twenty five bibs, but then are we going to pause? Are we gonna pivot? So it still remains to be seen, but there are still some people who are very bullish

on bitcoin. I mean, it's worth remembering that quite often the moves we see precisely after the FED announcement and press conference are completely undone the next day, so we wait, we watch for tomorrow's at price action. But longer term, the bulls are still very bullish about bitcoin. I mean, we're gonna sell past twenty three thousand, according to one particular e t F queen. Yes, so twenty three thousand

is where we're at today. But according to the e t F queen named Kathy Would, we're going to hit one one million in the next decade, which is really just seven years from now, and she said several reasons, But then that's four thousand two higher from where we are today, and one million is the base is the bull case one point forty eight to be exactly, I don't want to get it wrong. Her bear case is two hundred fifty eight thousand, and her base case is

six two. So regardless of whether it's the bull, the base or the bear, it's just kind of hard to imagine how we will get there, especially if you look at where we are today. But this isn't the first time she said the one million targets. She's been reiterating it in the past. She said is in November when bitcoin was her bring fifteen thousand. So if there's one thing I admire about Kathy, but it's how she sticks to her guns. I mean a lot of people love her,

a lot of people dislike her. But if anything, she's really a woman of conviction. I would say, all right, Bloomberg's Isabel A a very busy day for you in the cross Set team, and we still have a bit of a cycle to go. Now, sticking with crypto, thieves saw a record three point eight billion, yes billion worth of cryptocurrency in two that according to Chain Analysis Research, nearly half of it was from North Korea alone. Bloomberg's Jeff Stone has been writing about this data and this

report and joins us. Now it's interesting because two stories, right, a terrible year for crypto markets, but also a very bad year for those that had cryptocurrencies stolen. Essentially, that's right, and also a bad year for the people who are stealing them in some ways if you use that logic, ed, this is a huge number. One point seven billion of that three point eight billion is stolen by North Korean hackers. We know it's the same group, according to the United

States government that previously breached Sony years ago. If a lot of your viewers will remember that and tried to steal upwards of a billion dollars from Bangladesh's central bank years ago too. So this is a busy hacking group really focusing on the same area that a lot of investors are too. Why why are they doing it? It

pays It helps them get around UH sanctions. You know, the United Nations and the US obviously have come out very forced against North Korea over the past few generations, and cryptocurrency is harder to track, is easier to hide, and most importantly, it's easy to steal. If you think back at the way that U S intelligence agencies would have assessed that North Korea was selling counterfeit cigarettes or using other means to get around sanctions. UM, this is

the latest iteration of that. Hey, Jeff, we talked a lot about UM North Korea uh it's role in this. What about the other side of the table. What is the US government, for example, doing to prevent theft like this? The US is scrambling to educate companies and investors and Americans about the risk involved here. UM. This group has has really bullied UM cybersecurity defenders for a really long time.

So what the Treasury Department, for instance, is doing is releasing bulletins and advising crypto companies and crypto adjacent companies about the risk of hiring North Koreans who are posing as none North Koreans in order to either gather intelligence or work on projects or steal information for young next anything that can be made safer. Protect your password, be smart about which services you're using. Watch Bloomberg well said, I love a little bit about Tease Bloomberg Jesston. It's

a fascinating story. One of the most word on the terminal and indeed on dot com. So thanks are coming on and talking all about it. I mean, while we've got so much more to delve into intermn of earnings, we've got the software maker diner Trace topping estimates, boosting full your earnings outlook, we're going to be speaking with the CEO, Rick McConnell back in a minute now. Chairs of diner Trace jumped after the company posted better than

expected financial results but crucially also guidance. Dina Trace provides software which helps companies monitor they can shooting systems and identify performance issues with a keen focus on AI solutions. AI of course it is. We're joining us now. Rick McConnell, CEO of Diana Trace biggest jump to the shares I think since March of and you give strong guidance, which in this market is important for you. Was this about pricing that you were able to win? Was it about

advantage over competition in terms of what you're offering. Talks to us through what's driving that ability to give strong guidance? Well ed, Thanks so much for having me. It really is about the market for digital transformation overall, and then observe ability our market which is around a fifty billion dollar space specifically, and if you put those two elements together, you have a huge array of customers that are moving their workloads the cloud and as that happens, they need

software that delivers answers and intelligent automation. You talked about AI earlier, Intelligent automation from data that enables them to have the Broadway situational awareness to run their software environments. I'm curious about competition and whether you're kind of winning share or even displacing existing cloud platforms. We had Bill mcdermotot on the show the other day of Service Now. I know that Service now has kind of been moving into this observe ability space. Talk to us about how

you're faring in that regard. Well, we're very synergistic with Service now deployments. A good number of our customers would have service now deployed, they still need the observe ability expertise that we provide through our AI OPS platform to enable their environments to work perfectly, which is what we strive to do. And so that's that's what we typically

see the Service Now Generally. The biggest competitor that we have is do it yourself d Y and that is where customers today are using homegrown tools, open source a variety of other solutions to create dashboards. A dashboard to your red, yellow, green, is your software working? What it doesn't tell you is where the problem is and how to fix it. And again that's what we can do at a very granular level within your I T ecosystem.

Let's talk about Davis. Let's talk about the AI power behind Dina trace And what's interesting is you go to the meta earning statement and they're talking about their powers and AI we're all talking about chat, GBT and open AI. How are you managing with talent at the moment, making sure that you've got the right people, They're secure, they're not suddenly being tempted away at great enormous expense to

other companies that wanted on artificial intelligence. We do a lot of our R and D out of Austria, actually European general. This is where the company was founded. And while we have people all over the globe, that's really our hub for R and D and it is a fabulous community of developers that we've built over the course of well more than a decade to create the AI

ops engine. And Davis that you you talk about your line and talk to us a little bit of out, you're also speaking very much to your investor base, it feels like in the quotes in your press release, So talking about investing thoughtfully, about managing a business prudently, about ensuring that you've got growth and profitability, is that still very much what you need amid these macro hidwins, you have to keep talking about the bottom line and the

profitability the margins. I think this this is an environment as as you are report on almost daily at this point probably daily that growth at our cost is sort of done. The good news is we have always managed Dina Trace with a balance of top line and bottom line growth, and the result of that is we see mid twenties overall. The our our growth and mid twenties profitability in terms are our pretty margin and high twenties

and pre cash flow. This is a model that investors want today because it shows the cash flow generation capabilities of the company and push us forward, go deep tech for us, and go into the artificial intelligence vision that you have right now. Because you all, as you say, strategically investing, where do you invest how do you envision in the next five ten years? For Time and Trace, a few areas of major investment. One is around automation. Automation.

Automation you can imagine how companies are doing I T operations and keeping their software working today. It's with an army of people sitting in front of a sea of glass screens looking at dashboards trying to figure out is it working, is it not working? If it's not working, how to fix it. So automation is one of those areas of focus. Secondly, focusing on big data and big data analytics and doing that in real time with no reindexing, no rehydration of data stores to make it fast, scalable,

UH super performing. And thirdly, it is around application security, which is yet another area that benefits benefits substantially from being integrated deeply into your observe ability platforms. So those three areas are areas of key focus for on our D perspective. Rick, I'm gonna be a bit more direct

with you and ask the same question Caroline did. I'm looking at how much cash you've got on your balance sheet and you talk in the commentary Caroline cited from your owning statement, are you going to hire people or do layoffs? And are you going to do M and are not planning on any layoffs? The good news is based on the model that we've got ed, we've been able to modulate the hiring to manage to that model, and so we feel very good about we are where

we are, and we're continuing to grow headcounts accordingly. In terms of in terms of other areas organic in organic, we'll continue to expand the company is as we see fit UH in an M and A area. We can expand in that fashion as well with smaller tech tuk ins to accelerate root maps. Rick, it's great to catch up with you. Thank you so much for your time,

make mcconmoms you Dina traces in a long day. As a things came out at six thirty a m. Eastern impression growth was primarily driven by the Asia, Pacific and Rest of World regions. The year over year decline in pricing was primarily driven by strong impression growth, especially from lower monetizing surfaces and regions, lower advertiser demand, and foreign

currency depreciation. While overall pricing remains under pressure from these factors, we have continued to make improvements to our ads targeting and measurement that we believe are driving more conversions and better returns for advertisers seasonally. The CFO of Meta and It's notable that Marks lack about really trying to hit home on the point of efficiency again on the call, is really talking about how they've entered a somewhat different phase.

They say of the company, they grew so quickly for the like first eighteen years of the company's growth. This is very hard to really crank on efficiency while you're growing that quickly. Nest also though, and talk about where they are growing in the longer term, and it's towards a metaverse vision. It's towards perhaps well acquisitions in that field.

And they got their first victory, didn't they The Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge has denied the FTC's request to block metas plan to buy virtual reality start up within Unlimited. But the judge also did prevent Meta from closing that deal until the agency decides whether to appeal. Let's get to near leet Nylon. Who joins us more from Washington And really extraordinary the fact that well Nina

Kahn getting pushed back in this way. Many felt that perhaps this has really her trying to be aggressive and it's denied. Yes, that that was a little bit surprising. The FTC can still appeal. Um, they have until probably next week to decide that. The judge gave them a one week extension on blocking the deal until then and has called hearing next Tuesday. UM, so we'll we'll have a little bit more than about whether they're going to keep pushing to block the steel or sort of let

it through. Um. But this was sort of the big first quote last for leader car FTC. You know, she came into her role, UM, saying that the agency needs to be much more aggressive block a lot more mergers. They had filed a lawsuit against this one, and they also have the pending one against Microsoft Activision, so UM, it'll be interesting to see whether this one has any impact on that one as well. Lea terrific reporting blue Bug sources telling us essentially about this sealed decision from

the San Jose courts. And as you characterize it right, you can either see it as a win for Meta or a loss Felina Kahn. But there is an opportunity here to appeal. So what are the chances that that happens and that it is successful. Well, there's actually a couple options for the FTC here. One thing that they could do is appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of

Appeals in California Um. This judge is ruling directly um, and then the Ninth Circuit would rule on whether Meta could go forward with the seal or um whether it remains blocked. The other option is the FTC could let Meta close there us and then go into its administrative court, and then there would be a longer trial focused on the deal, and at the end of that if the FTC wins, it could ask um Matta to sell this off. That's not too unlike what they're doing now with Meta

over the Instagram and WhatsApp deals. So UM they have a couple options for how they want to go forward. The third option, of course, would be sort of just to drop the lawsuit altogether and you know, let Meta move forward with UM closing the steel next week. Over to you, FTC, Leon Island. It's great reporting. Thank you so much for bringing us that, and let's dig in.

I mean, many had questioned the overall focus of the chain name in change, the focus on twenty thirties when you eventually get profitability from these investments in reality labs, in acquisitions such as within ed. But the here and the now, the investors are liking this focus in the near term on efficiency. This is the year of efficiency, and that's it. The slogan for Meta is secured first

earnings report. It's absolutely brilliant. It's interesting because of course he's being asked about generative AI on the call, right, and he says, I'm equally as excited as everyone else, but not at the expense of efficiency. This is a very dull Mark Zuckerberg. We've come into three week I mean learned lessons. There were some investors pushing hard. They wanted to see a pull back in terms of capital spending.

And look, maybe we will see more job cuts. There's talking about that middle management that still perhaps is under a lot of focus in terms of the effectiveness of having that. Really, this doesn't look like a fascinating overall call is to and I wonder if this share price reaction holds into tomorrow. Yeah, we'll have to wait and see,

you know, analysts, night's sleep on it. We'll see that does it With this addition of Bloomberg Technology, of course, tons and tons and tons of tech earnings Thursday and unpack at all and don't forget a lot to wrap up on our podcast. Check it out Spotify, I Heart or an Apple podcast wherever you get your podcast. This is Bloomberg