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Open ai is working on financial models that could one day replace the grunt works of junior bankers. Plus, President Trump announces a rare Earth's deal with Australia to counter China's dominance, and Warner Brothers Discovery says it has expanded a strategic review of the business to maximize shareholder value.
And that's where we started.
It was the breaking news of the morning that move markets Warner Brothers Discovery off session highs up nine percent. They are looking at a range of strategic options, including moving forward with the existing plan to split the business into cable TV and then studios and streaming option spin offs, selling some all of it. We will get a lot more on this story later in the program. It is the big move of the day. Another top story that
we are watching. Open ai is building out financial models that could one day replace the grunt work of junior bankers across the banking sector, with the help of a secretive project inside the startup. Let's get to Bloomberg's chief Wall Street correspondent Strida Nadaranjan. This is based on a document the Bloomberg's scene on Project Mercury and conversation with sources. What is project Mercury? What is it the open AI is working on here?
Good question ed.
According to our reporters in Dubai spoke to sources, a open AI got their hands on some document and the so called Project Mercury is effectively open AI hiring ex investment bankers as contractors, people who can help with the modeling to us who can help the AI with training it on how to write prompts, how to execute models, and how to make sure that they could get into a position where they can do some of the tasks that are currently performed by associates and analysts on live
deals such as financial modeling. Their work on PowerPoint presentations and Excel is something that takes up most of the work hours for a lot of these junior bankers. It's a lot of repetitive tasks. It's a lot of simple task and there is very little strategic work there and perhaps not even a whole lot of analytical work there. So if you could use technology to replace some of that. The hope is that you could free up some of these junior bankers to do some of the bigger picture stuff.
So it will need an evolution of their skill set, but also could put them into better use that would not leave them jaded early in their career.
Srere.
I know the team over at Liquidity are probably watching the show right now, worried about their audience as well. This is the origin of the please fix meme, right This is investment bankers, junior analysts who spend eighty or one hundred hours a week working in x sell on these types of tasks. You cover Wall Street inside and out. You know these people just explain earlier at the top
of the show, I say grunt work. Go deep into the grunt work that open AI wants to displace with custom financial models.
I mean, you have to think about when you're working in a live deal, what really are the requirements if you are dealing with the client, you want to come up with material with presentations, whether it is suggesting potential transactions, coming up with valuation models. Industry comps looking at the overall landscape out there that is effectively a lot of open source research that needs to be done. That is using a lot of your Excel skills and making sure
that you can do the modeling. That is inputting numbers again and again, replacing numbers, putting in new estimates, and coming up with figures that could outline various scenarios for your clients. That is stuff that you could argue that technology can do, can replace you in doing that, and can do it better. And that's where the real promise
here comes. But also remember, and this is something where you spoke about liquidity, but anyone who's followed this space for long knows that when you talk about junior banker workers about those eighty two hundred dollars work weeks, often that figure is magnified because bankers, once they finished their work, are waiting for hours on end, waiting for feedback from their managers, who then come back with immediate responses and fixes that you need to do, and there is a revision,
and you follow that cycle repeatedly till your manager is satisfied. So perhaps what you also need is an AI solution that can take care of that manager who will stop focusing on those very little, small font level changes and allow.
You to focus on big picture stuff.
An Open AI spokesperson said the company employs a range of experts to work generally or models that didn't really address our reporting specifically. Bloomberg Street, Madarajan, thank you very much. In other news, President Trump announced a rare earth steal with yesterday I aimed at countering China's dominance in the supply chain for critical metals. The move comes ahead of expected trade talks between the US and China, with the President expressing optimism about reaching a fair deal.
I expect we'll probably work out a very fair deal with President Jiev China, so most of you will be with us. It's going to be very exciting, and I think we're going to work out something that's good for both countries.
Bloomberg Senior Tech editor Mike Sheppard joins us from DC A fair deal go into what a fair deal is to the best of our knowledge and our reporting, and what happens next.
Well, the fair deal will be in the eye of the beholder, and the number one beholder here, of course, is President Donald Trump. And it's important to note that during that same conversation yesterday with reporters, he reiterated his threat of triple digit tariffs against Chinese goods if Beijing did not come with a satisfactory offer in his eyes. And we have seen the President and his advisors in recent days lay out some of their key points and
key sticking points in the negotiations. Of course, first and foremost is rare earth. It is something that has dominated the conversation for the past two weeks since China imposed export controls on these minerals that are so crucial to various points in the supply chains for autos, for consumer technology, and even defense materiel. Now ed what we're watching also, though,
is pressure in other areas. Yesterday we saw Jamison Greer, the US Trade representative, take aim at another area where China has tried to exert its influence over the supply chain, an area where it has an advantage, and that is shipping. And he warned that sanctions against US units of a South Korean company were are counter to these kinds of conversations.
The deal with Australia is being interpreted in DC at least as kind of a counter move to what China has been doing.
What's our reporting on.
That, well, it very much is a countermove. The the Trump administration is trying. This is the latest in a series of steps to try to break China's grip on the rare earth's market and reduce US dependence on China as a source of critical minerals. Now, this is a long term play, and the US has tried to put investments. It has already had three government moves to invest in
companies that specialize in rare earths. We saw one just a few weeks ago when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Washington and met with President Donald Trump the US, and that's a ten percent stake in a Canadian miner called Trilogy, and also the opening of a road. But this is a longer term play.
It will take a while.
Australia, though, is promising what it says is a faster pipeline to these rare earth elements. It says that it can provide thirty to forty out of the fifty critical minerals that the US has identified as being needed most. And it likes to refer to itself as the world's
periodic table and has all that expertise in mining. How quickly can be brought to beer and whether this functions, there's some sort of pressure in the trade negotiations between US Treasury Secretary Scott Besson and his Chinese counterpart later this week. Remains to be seen, but it is certainly something that the President will try to bring to his conversation with Shijimping, expected to take place next week.
Bloemberg's Mike Shepard, thank you very much. Let's bring in Rob Funnels, senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital, who argues the US needs to develop its rare f supply chain in the same way that it refall.
Energy supply chains.
Tortoise Capital has approximately nine billion dollars in assets under management, the focus energy and power infrastructure. So to start, Rob, your reaction to the deal that the President did with Australia on rare earths and what it signals to you more broadly about what they'll do in supply chain.
Yeah, Well, as you highlighted, so the supply chain is really important. You need more rare earth minerals to come to the US for consumer electronics and really just the evolution of everything including AI, and so the rarer supply chain needs to really develop, kind of like the energy supply chain is evolved. And if you think about the energy supply chain in the US. The US is the largest energy producer in the world. AI is going to
need a lot of electricity. The US has a lot of natural gas, and so that's a benefit, and that allows the US to maintain its AI dominates because of the natural gas and the ability to produce low cost electricity in the US. And that's just because of the supply chain for in the energy sector is very well developed. So where Earth needs to follow a similar fashion.
A big story on the Bloomberg Terminal today written by McCall calligue Common Rhinikey is titled AI Boom transforms utilities from haven to storing growth stocks, and we're looking at the idea that the utility sectors up more than forty percent, third best performing group in the s and P.
Five hundred.
This is, to an extent, your wheelhouse. You are trying to participate in what's happening in AI broadly through energy, infrastructure and production. When you make of that reporting, Rob.
I think it's very I think there's a lot of room to run if you just think about all these cool things that AI does and the fascinating things that AI does. Really the foundation of all of that are two things. It's data and it's electricity basically, and those are the foundational elements. And so it has taught us what we're doing is we're investing in the critical enablers basically and the infrastructure that enables all of these great
AI opportunities going forward. So there's a lot of investment opportunities and electricity, as you highlighted, we need a lot more electricity.
Basically.
The next decade is going to be the age of electricity. We think that electricity is going to become the new oil. The US is going to maintain and it's global AI dominance because of its ability to produce low cost electricity. So companies like in my backyard Eenergy, it's actually a classic example of what you're talking about. It's going to actually increase its growth rate by almost fifty percent because there's new AI data centers coming to Kansas City, Missouri,
where I happen to live. But this is happening all over the place. We even have bitcoin miners basically, and this is really the interesting part if you think about it, bitcoin miners are actually converting, transforming from being bitcoin miners to data center operators. Why well, because they have the electricity and the ability to simply transform their business and become really an entirely new business model, and then their
valuations are being uplifted as well. Companies like Riot Platforms, Wolf are Tero, Wolf are a couple of examples who of companies that have been doing this.
What you are trying to participate in tangibly, rob is the building of data centers or what will power them. But when I look at the portfolios that you manage and some of the ETF products, you've kind of broadened out to some of the names that we would more classically associate with servers.
Dell is an example.
What prompted you to make that move go beyond the energy thesis?
Well, we just think if you think about AI, AI is the future, right, AI is the future economy, so if electricity is.
The new oil.
But if you think about really what we're looking at is we don't think we think what's underrepresented investor portfolios is simply this the enablers, the infrastructure, the companies that are enabling all of this AI development. So what does that mean, Well, that means data storage devices, network switches.
Those are just a couple of examples electricity. Electricity generation are another couple of examples, cabling as well as servers, and so all of this underlying infrastructure is really really important. It's the foundation really for the future of AI, and it's these enablers that we think aren't represented in investor portfolios. So we created a product called the Tortoise AI Infrastructure Active ETF that really offers investors a way to invest in the active enablers.
Rob Bummel, Senior portfolio manager at Tours's Capital, thank you so much for joining us here on Bloomberg Tech. Now coming up, let's get back to that story. Warner Brothers Discovery says it's reassessing its strategic options as multiple parties are said to be so birkling the media giant. We have more on that next. This is Boomberg Tech. I told you at the top of the show. Shares of Warner Brothers Discovery are up significantly after the company revealed
it's expanding a strategic review of the business. The owner of CNN, HBO and the Warner Bros. Movie Studio had been planning to split into two companies anyway, but it's now considering a wider arrail of deal. Scenarios including sale and spin off options in light of quote unsolicited interests. Let's get to our media editor Felix Gillette. Some of
this we knew about, some of it not. So the point is is that Warner Brothers, Discovery It's board and leadership are recognizing that the market's putting some value in its different properties. Just go through each of the options that the board says that it's considering.
Yeah, I mean, I think now it's officially for sale. We knew that it was basically the was happening, but now the options they're looking at is. You know, earlier this year they announced this reorganization. They were going to set it up the company so that there was going to be the studios and the streaming business on the
one hand, separated from the legacy cable TV channels. Then you have you know, David Ellison from Paramount from Paramount Skydance jumping in and saying, oh, I'd like the whole thing before the split. And now they're saying, Okay, we have interest from other parties for potentially the whole thing,
potentially parts of it. In the meantime, we're going to go ahead with this reorganization as we soared through the different options, but you know, presumably there'll be a lot of interest in the studio streaming side, less so from the legacy cable TV channels.
Right, this jump of ten percent puts the stock on track for its best stays since early September, the stock of the entity known as Warner Brothers Discovery. That's a nice timeline. It shows us like the evolution of what is now Warner Brothers Discovery. There are media reports out there this morning Felix about the names that could be circling Weird reported Paramount Skuydeounce, but it's probably broadened that, right.
Yeah, I mean, I think the other names that are being tossed out there that analysts have mentioned Netflix, you know, Comcast potentially you know in Amazon and Apple. Anyone that has a streaming service has to take a look at this because you know, Warner Brothers Discovery has one of the biggest, richest libraries of IP and the planet. They've got Harry Potter, they've got the DC universe with Batman and the Superman. They've got you know, the Hobbit universe
with all the Lord of the Rings stuff. So that's just you know, some of the franchises. Everyone needs to take a look at this, and so there is to be interesting real.
Quick Netflix after the bell. What's the one thing we need to look out for.
I think look at the advertising numbers. You know, they've invested a lot in live events. They've had a very strong quarter in terms of engagement. Our franchises are really kicking in the high gear. They had Squid Game, they had you know, the most popular movie in their history with K Pop Demon Hunters. So look for that engagement. They won't be talking subscriber numbers. But I'd be very curious to see if the same thing about advertising growth.
All they've been saying to Wall Street is judge us by financial metrics.
Move on from subscribing numbers.
I don't know that we can Bloomberg's Felix to that, Thank you very much. Call Weave has no plans to bump up it's nine billion dollar bid to data Center provide a core scientific despite concerns and opposition from shareholders that the offer was too low. CEO Michael and Trader told Bloomberg's Tom Giles earlier in London, the price is fair.
We're very comfortable that the way that we have priced it is appropriate for us. If there's someone else that would like to step in, they can step in. But you know, we're excited, we think it makes sense. We continue to think it makes sense, and you know it will go to a vote, but you won't see us bump our price or increase our price.
Let's get the analysis.
Bloomberg Intelligence Senior techanalyst Aanar rag Rana. In July, when this bid came in, you wrote that it was prudent because of the share price performance of core Weave.
In August, you.
Wrote that actually they might have to think about upping the bid a bit because a pushback. On October thirtieth, shareholders are going to vote on it either way.
What's the current thesis, Sanaag.
Yeah, and I think you've given what the CEO is publicly saying. It doesn't look like they're going to up the offer, and so you know, I think this is probably going to end in probably a stalemate, unless the shareholders feel that gold Beab is the right place for them.
You know.
Having said that, if you look at the data center space, there is a lot of demand. So I don't think both parties will regret. You know, which other direction it goes frankly.
So Anraik help educate our audience. You said, the right place for them. What is it that core Scientific does differently from core Weave, which we call on this program neo cloud.
Yeah, so for colviv it's in the mean the simplest way is they're going to rent out GPUs for you to help with your computing needs. In the case of core Scientific, they're helping create those data centers. Then the core weav is going to put their GPUs inside. So it's a slightly different business, but at the end of the day, it's part of the same value chain. It's all getting funded by a lot of AI workloads that are out there. So both both companies have their own
space in the ecosystem. They do slightly different things.
Real quick, Anna Rag core Weave on the demand side and the supply side is doing a lot of deals.
Can they cope with all of this?
I think the biggest question is at what pace can people go out and create these data centers and install the GPUs and get their revenue out of it. We actually have so much now in terms of evidence of rbos or bookings coming in from multiple vendors. You know whether that's Microsoft Meta or open Aye. The problem is how do you go out and then delivered on it?
His researches must read on the Bloomberg terminal. Anaagrana of Bloomberg Intelligence, thank you very much. Meanwhile, Amazon says its cloud services have now been fully restored after a fifteen hour outage that impacted a variety of websites and apps, but its reputation has taken a hit. Bloomos Matt Day, who covers Amazon and AWS, joins us and that was, you know, the headline of your day to story today.
We've looked at how analysts have reacted to this. How severe was this outage compared to AWS historic outages for.
Example, So it looks like it's at least they're most significant in several years. We've got to go back to about twenty twenty one for one. That's even in the same ballpark. Fifteen hours is a lot like the TYPICALWS hiccup. You know, they'll announce something is on the fritz, you know, the a couple of stats updates later, maybe a couple hours later, things are back.
This this was a big one.
This took out their biggest data center region and took it out for most of the day throughout the US East Coast workday. This is a really big deal for company that prides itself on on uptime and reliability.
What was difficult in covering this in real time during the show yesterday was Amazon shares were higher, so you're like, okay, that's an interesting reaction of the market. But what helped us understand it was the scale of which AWS or the Internet relies on. AWS just explain their position in cloud computing and maybe by extension, why it was so severe and widespread.
Therefore, so Amazon basically invented the business of selling rented computing power. They are the largest actor in that space, something like a third of the market, and really just the Internet goes through their data centers, especially in Northern Virginia, right you know Apple streaming your phone bill. Sometimes I try to pay mine yesterday it was not down. So they're just a key hub for so much of capitalism, frankly, and if it's not them, it's one of their rivals like Microsoft or Google.
And over a two day basis, this tocks up four percent and a rag honor of Bloomberg Intelligence. Just on the show and in your story, you cite his research, which is that what could the potential reaction of customers be here to AWS. Maybe they'll look at spreading their workloads across different cloud providers.
You can see some hedging bets, which is the trend we've seen in recent years anyway, to be bor rather within companies, rather than relying on a single cloud provider. They might take a step back and move their business among the big guys. And that's definitely the risk for Amazon coming out of an event like we owed yesterday.
Bloomberg's Matt Day, who's visiting us in San Francisco from Seattle and has been all across the AWS outage. Thank you very much. Welcome back to Bloomberg Tech. Let's go to check in on defense tech stocks now. With both Northrop and Lockheed Martin out with their earnings results, Bloomberg TV's markets correspondent Norah Melinda joins us to break them down, and let's start with Northrop.
Well, and it seems as there are a lot of high expectations heading into this report. Now, the company did raise it's earning's forecast for the year, but what Wall Street is really parsing right now is the fact that it cut its full year sales guide to a range that was below the average analyst estimate, and so work is still continuing to accelerate at the company, specifically on
its sentinel missile program. But you are seeing people being quite critical right now, particularly about that cut to its full year guide.
Lockheed is maybe the bigger fish, and there are headlines coming out from the call.
What do we need to know?
Yes, lots of headlines flying here for Lockheed Martin. They did have better than expected earnings that they reported, but they did trim their free cash flow guide down a bit, and so that's what you are seeing a lot of people hinging on right now. The CEO did say that he sees the Golden Dome US missile defense project as a driver of future growth here, and he did say that the company has a record one hundred and seventy nine billion dollars in backlog. Lots of parts here.
All important things we've been tracking all year long. Bloombogs, Norm Melinda, thank you very much. Speaking of defense tech, German defense tech company Helsing was featured at the Bloomberg Tech Summit in London earlier today. The company's co CEO, Torsen Ray sat down with Bloomberg text Tom McKenzie and discussed remaining issues with the supply chain as well as a potential defense tech bubble.
Listen to this.
I think there's definitely a bubble right now, and the reason for it is what I said earlier in twenty twenty one, not a single EUROPEANBC in particular wanted to touch defense. Now everyone has moved into defense, and you know, including the crypto caravan that's moved from crypto now into defense and is trying to spend its money there.
Let's get to semiconductors. Texas Instruments is set to report third quarter results after the closing bell to day is and this way where the tariff uncertainty could cloud the company's outlook. Here with more Bloomberg Z and King, who leads coverage of the chip industry for US. It's a China story with Texas Instruments, a business where more analogue types of chips are in demand or they're not.
Yeah, I mean fundamentally, the numbers for this company are great on the way back, ten percent a quarter in
terms of revenue growth sounds pretty good. The concern, as you say, is what's going on whether some of that kind of rebound in orders is related to China and people getting ahead of what they see as increasing trade barriers and TI not being able to serve China, or you know the various you know things that are at play in terms of the variables, and so that's what's driving the sentiment around the stock.
Help the Bloomberg Tech audience understand the supply chain. We've talked a lot about how in the context of high performance compute GPUs that go in stage centers and on shoring effort, what's going on with Taiwan, But with those more analog type chips, is it the same story that it's a supply chain dependent on China or in an end market dependent on China.
At the moment, the supply chain is dependent upon Texas Instruments, right. This is a company that's in everything. If you've got an on and off switch on a device, there's going to be some form of Texas Instruments chip in there. The issue has come as as China has been restricted from going high end shift in terms of the digital products you just mentioned, has shifted its emphasis to try to make more kind of analog and embedded processing stuff,
which is a competitor. TI throw in trade tensions, and the concern is that China will try more and more to domesticate its own supply and that won't eventually be good for TI, says, don't worry about it. We understand how competitive this is. We'll just get better.
We've heard a lot from the President about AI chips, and a lot of those AI chip company CEOs have some influence in DC. Do this leaders at companies like Texas Instruments have the same influence and does the President think about them as much?
Well, all we can do is talk about what TI is doing. They are, in many senses, the perfect picture that Trump wants to have of the world, and that they're building factories in this country. They're building in Sherman, Texas, not too far from their headquarters. They've bought a plant in lehi and U which they're refitting, and they're saying, look, you know, we're investing in the US. So in that sense,
they're doing the right thing for this administration. Obviously, the economics of that will have to be seen and how they play out, but for now they're there.
Bimbos and King, thank you very much for a wider look at the tech sector. Beth kindig Iofund lead tech analyst joins us sin. Beth, you have come on this program many times and we have talked about Nvidia principally lead edge AI accelerators and GPUs. But as you listen there to Ian's preview of Texas instruments, how focused are you on that portion of the chip market more analogue semis that go into all manner of things we rely on each day.
It's great to see you again, Ed, you have it exactly right. I'm very, very hyper focused on the AI market. Therefore, the companies I track are a little bit different than the broader semiconductor industry. For example, we have Vertive Recording this week, we Anthhonol. Now those are both key suppliers into AI systems. Whether or not those suppliers will be confirmed, you know, for more and more orders, that's always a question, but ultimately they are key components within the AI systems
that in video shipping. I'm very excited to see initial reports around the health of the AI market, especially like you just spoke about, because some people believe it's an AI bubble.
The onshoring of the supply chain story focused on those bigger names at first, right, you know, in Video is very aggressive to point out all of its capital commitments to this nation and taking the first Arizona produced chips from TSMC.
That's been in the headlines.
But do you see evidence that there is opportunity for investors to invest into something being built out in America that goes beyond and Invidia.
Yes, I would say in general, you know, the onshoing process will take years. In terms of truly domesticating our domesticating our supply chains, that will take years. And that's not actually my central focus. My central focus could be best encapsulated by the fact that in Vidia they're having one of their biggest product moments ever, which is a huge statement. As you know, I've covered this stock very
closely for many years. They have Blackwell, Black Whele alter shipping, but they're moving from eight GPUs to seventy two GPUs and that's that piece that I'm explaining is a big moment for Nvidia. What that means is that the supply chain should erupt in the upcoming quarter and the next quarter because that complexity has just.
Gone up nine x.
So I'm very very focused there less on timing of onshoing this manufacturing right.
I'm going to be in Washington, DC next week for GtC DC, the second edition of the Year of GtC. When those kinds of events happen, how high is the bar for Nvidia to come out and say something on the product or technology side that moves the needle for investors.
Yeah, I guess I'll be a contrarian again and I will say, yeah, if Nvidia can give us more on Reuben, knowing that Blackwell but black Well Aulter shipping, they're shipping in volume, I'm very positioned for that.
Anything forward looking for in video.
At this point, let's just say we have this conversation this time next year. I would want to hear more about Reuben, which may actually come more in March.
The big news story, I suppose the last twenty four hours, beyond the ADWS outage, which I don't know how that impacted you, has been rares you know, the specific headline an American deal with Australia, which is kind of being interpreted as this countenance to what China is using as levers in the negotiation. How do you look at the markets in the moment and how they're reacting to rare earths and the news flow of the day.
I certainly would have loved to have owned some of those rare earth stocks.
Some are up, you know, almost four hundred percent this year.
Look, you know, China's using it as a bargaining chip in response to US restricting our excellent design companies. You know, these two economies have battled it out for decades. And so even though these these things are important to track, we are so interdependent at this time with China and other regions that you know, I don't think it's something
that you would exit AI stocks for. If anything, you know, I would just look at this as many global powers are concerned about how are we going to keep up the manufacturing because demand is so so high, demand is outstripping supply. That piece is much more important to me as an investor than all the little nuances as to how we get there and supply.
You use the phrase bargaining chip a pardon the pun on your behalf, But the calculus for people like David Sachs is that that is the negotiation rare effs on the China side in exchange for access to deprecated chips on the US side, and principally in Vidio deprecated chips. Right, do you have a better sense, bef of where that negotiation is heading.
I could see it being resolved favorably for both sides. You know, we've heard from in Nvidia's CEO that he would really.
Like to restore those relations.
So even if you take some of our industry leaders, they all want to see, you know, as much working together as possible.
Of course, is that reasonable.
I do think that geopolitically, AI will continue to be a point of tension. Is just so powerful in terms of what it can do for GDP, And I think it just goes back to that, which is because it's so powerful as to how it can grow GDP, it's a really the best investable opportunity of our lifetime. And that's the piece I would really focus on.
Bethkindg of Io fund, I always appreciate the deep analysis, Thank you very much. With no end to the US government shut down insights, some companies that are looking to go public are seizing an unusual opportunity. Guidance from the SEC lets them file less detailed paperwork and have those filings automatically declared effective after twenty days. I want to
get out to Bloomberg's IPO. Reporter Bailey Lipshaltz, this is the subject of the hashtag ECM watch column, which I am a religious reader of and if you're watching this, you also should subscribe. But it's really interesting. Like for me, I'm like, that sounds very spacky. Explain the mechanism here. You can file more limited paperwork and then it just kind of poop.
It just lingers ed.
And this is a route or strategy that we've seen a few companies that are on file publicly, something that you wouldn't do without kind of the path to going public well plotted out. So we saw these companies flip public thinking about in avon or beta technologies and basically
you're stuck kind of in a limbo. And so the way to work around that with this new sec guidance is you come up with the share price range that you're willing to accept and then market and you come up with a number of shares you want to sell, You file that publicly with Edgar through US regulators, and then twenty days from now it's effective and that would enable you to price your IPO and sell those shares, which is different than a so called delaying amendment, which
really allows companies to kind of have a complete hold on that process, which normally you would file, wait fifteen days for a seasoning period, then come out with a price range, meet with investors, and then sell it week later. This is a bit more difficult, but obviously a working strategy that we're seeing some companies use.
One of the cool points in the reporting is that wool Street has been surprised by this, like we're saying an unusually high number are able to go through in this shutdown. By the way, there you go hashtag ECM watch, don't miss it.
Just explain why this is a surprise.
It's a surprise because a lot of bankers and lawyers would want to run a tightly choreographed process. When you use this workaround, you're exposed to the market with the expected valuation and the expected IPO size.
For twenty days.
So that's not normal if bankers and lawyers don't really like having that over a seven day period.
So when you have a market that.
Is living truth social posts, a true social post, or press conference to press conference, or in the thick of earning season, if you're a company that's using this workaround. To go public, you're exposed to broader market risks, geopolitics and otherwise, and you're also exposed to earnings from your peers. So if you're looking to go public at a sixteen multiple and your peer group underperforms and drops a twenty percent, all of a sudden, your price looks a lot more
wonky than you would have expected. And it's also difficult to get investor attention in.
This is Bloomberg Tech. I think you mentioned Navon.
There are other tech names out there that are kind of call in the situation, just very quick case studies.
Yeah, Navon using a tight price range. They're expected a price later next week, towards the Halloween date. That'll be interesting type book. And then Beta Technology is a el evotal company using a broad range with Cornerstone, it's going to be a different one that a price a couple of days after that.
You've got to get it done by Halloween.
It's basically the biggest holiday of this part of the year for many people. Bloomberg's Bailey Lipschaltz, great job, Thank you very much. VM Software, owned by private equity firm Insight Partners, agreed to buy Security AI for about one point seventy three billion dollars in cash and stock, adding software that helps secure corporate data used in AI applications, make software for backing up and recovering data after ransomware attacks and other breaches, and it's looking to protect clients
from new threats posed by AI. The deals expected to close the first week of December. Okay, coming up, Touro CEO Andre Hadad joins us talk about the company's plan to attract drivers with a low commitment alternative to owning a car. That's next, This is Windberg tech car sharing marketplace. Touro is launching what it calls a low commitment alternative to car ownership carsoers. We be able to rent cars
for months of the time. But the program comes as US car sales remains strong despite tarris and economic uncertainty. There is a lot to discuss with Touro's CEO, Andre Hadad, who's here with us in San Francisco. Okay, let's just start by explaining the mechanism. How does this work?
So it's pretty simple.
You know you're if you've known Turo, you know that we offer car rentals now for many years. Typically our car rental trips were a few days at a time typically for travel. Now you can actually book a car for multiple months at a time, and you pay on a monthly basis, as if you're paying a monthly lease or a monthly financing repayment on a monthly basis. But there's no upfront commitment, so there's no money down, So money down, Yeah, there's no deposit, there's no commitment for
an extended period of time. You can sign up for one month and extend for another few months, or you can sign up for three months and extend or reduce.
But here's the disconnect Andre that it's I know it is a peer platform. In other words, the cars on Touro are owned either by individuals or as you and I have discussed, people that have made a business as having a small fleet of vehicles. How does that tension work of somebody saying, Okay, here's my car, I'm going to rent it out for a few months.
Well, there's a lot of people on tour as you mentioned, that are now professional hosts who are running a business on top of our platform, and they're really interested in getting maximum utilization for their vehicles, and they're also able to acquire vehicles from their neighbors and from their friends and from their family members. We call them co hosts,
so it's not just their own cars. Typically, these power hosts, as we call them, they have a few cars of their own, but they're actually fleet sizes much larger because they are co hosts for many other car owners who've given them their cars so that they can monetize them on their behalf. And so these hosts are looking for
ways to maximize their utilization. So they're very excited about the launch of monthly because it enables, you know, multi months of utilization and one trip instead of having lots of different trips on a month basically sets the price. Our hosts set the price, so we actually guide them to provide the most effective price. So we give them recommendations on pricing, and we find that many of our
hosts are following our recommendations. For this launch, we have dramatically lowered our monetization, so now our trip fees are down to zero on monthly trips, so.
We're submit for you.
Then in the long run, well, we're actually monetizing our trips only on the host side and with the sale of protection, so there are three ways we monetize our trips. We've got our trip fee, our protection fee, and then our host fees. We've kept the host fee, we've kept the protection fee, but we've zeroed out our trip fee because we want to make sure that these monthly rentals are as affordable as possible.
In the time that I've known you, you've always been directed by data and evidence. What do you see about the future of car ownership? The threat that I see to Toro has been what Tesla proposes to do right, operate a robotaxi fleet where Tesla owners can submit their car to anticipate in a row. It's actually fleet X. Essentially, there's a lot of car ownership questions.
A lot of car ownership questions. As you mentioned in the beginning of the show. While car sales are resilient, they're still down from their peak, and we've never recovered from the peak of twenty seventeen when we hit seventeen and a half million vehicles sold in the country. And
I believe that we've really reached peak car. You know, we're never going to go back to seventeen and a half or eighteen or larger numbers because people are looking at different ways to access cars, and we believe that Turo has a big role to play now that we've expanded our product offering to attack you know, much larger TAM. You know, the car ownership TAM is a trillion dollars, whereas the car rental TAM is only one hundred billion.
So we're pretty excited about this launch. Andre, you and I have a tradition.
It's where I ask you about IPO and given that circumstances have changed on over the last year, Yes, what's the latest thinking.
The latest thinking is, we still don't think it's the right time for us. You know, we're taking a lot of big decisions internally to retool some parts of the business. We're excited about this slanch, as I mentioned, we think it expands our opportunity much larger and much larger market. We think that's going to help accelerate our growth and profitability. So we look forward to be back and talking about the API at some point in time.
Well, I'll hold you to that commitment.
Andre Hadad turo Ceo, thank you very much for joining us. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech. The big story in the markets has been Warner Brothers Discovery the board coming out, saying they're looking at a range of strategic options, including sticking with an existing plan to split the business, maybe spinning something off, maybe considering a sale.
Bloomberg then reported that those circling include Netflix and Comcast, adding to the prior reporting that Paramounts Guidance was also thinking of a bid. When we broke that news in the last hour, it was Comcast shares that reacted more strongly. Netflix, of course, team reports earnings after the bell, so is treading water. For that reason, Warner Brothers Discovery on track for his biggest jump since early September. Don't forget check
out the podcast. Loads of you have been coming up to me all over the country saying that you listen to the show in the form of the pod, and you know where to find it online. iHeart Spotify and on Apple and of course on all the Bloomberg platforms. Much more to come this week. Stay with us. This is Bloomberg Tech.