Spotify User Growth, Paramount’s Enhanced Offer

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg Tech is live from coast to coast with Caroline Hide in New York and Ed Lovelow in sent Francesco.

This is Bloomberg Tech coming up. Spotify added a record number of users last quarter thanks to its end of year wrapped campaign, shares search plus.

Paramount enhances its bid for Warner Brothers Discovery, offering billions to cover termination debt, refinancing and ticking fees.

Details this hour.

And Runway CEO Chris thebau Valezuela joins us to talk about the new funding round that values the company at five point three billion dollars.

From private markets to the public market. Look on the benchmarks, nothing that exciting.

We're holding on too.

Gains just eking out twenty three points in the green and the NASTAQ one hundred. But you go underneath a herd ed and rotation continues. But this time is the hardware that gets sold off.

The software is being bought for a third straight day.

Software really up about nine percent as we buy back into that beaten up sector. But we're looking also to what the macro picture is painting. We have got retail sales that come in less than have been expected. What does that mean for a FED cut? What does it mean for equities? What does mean for crypto? Because let's face it, that is where the movement's happening today. Bigoin not by one point six percent, look at Eth down almost another five percent. As we still question what's sort

I'm looking at Spotify and shares are absolutely surging. A record number of subscribers added last quarter, taking the total to seven hundred and fifty one million dollars. Later in the show, we'll get to it where Bloomberg's actually Carmen. But it was all about the end of year rat and I know as a team we all exchanged our raps. The stock was on track for its best day over up almost twenty percent, now on track for its figures

Character It certainly is tell you else's strength. The bond market.

We're not looking at shares of Alphabet, but really I want you to focus on its debt because it's bond offerings keep coming and after the US dollar debt sale, raised twenty billion dollars yesterday, it was upsized.

The company is now selling over eleven.

Billion more in Sterling and Swiss frank denominated bonds. And that's super rare one hundred year note we told you about yesterday while it was oversubscribed and then some almost ten times according to sources. Let's talk about it with Robert Schiffman from Blue Meg Intelligence. In less than twenty four hours, they've raised thirty two billion dollars basically on the debt markets. Let's just focus in on what that one hundred year debt signals about the confidence people have in this company.

Well, I think what the bond market is telling us is that AI bubble talks are so twenty twenty five. But the concerns that, at least from the creditors perspective, is not anything near what it is from inequity standpoint. The reality, though, is what is the benefit of a one hundred year bond? To me, it's just a trophy. It's going to be put on the shelf of pension funds and insurance companies. They're going to hold it to maturity.

Snacks, Robert.

The macro point is that they're doing interesting things with capital, the bigger picture, to fund CAPEX, right, to grow AI infrastructure at scale. I always read your memo every morning, and you revise constantly the kind of trajectory. What are the latest numbers that you see going over the next decade.

Yeah, you know, it sort of becomes monopoly money, the type of spending that we're seeing. I mean, we're now projecting over four trillion dollars of cumulative hyperscaler spend through twenty thirty. You can afford a lot of that from operating cash flow. However, how do you supplement it? You supplement it with really cheap bonds. And the way that you can do that is you start off with balance

There is some pushback in the market that yes, it's a trophy on a pension fund's desk, maybe it's a trophy on Alphabet's CFO and treasurer's desk if they sell one hundred year bonds, but also signals at the top of the market. Look, we go back to when the last time a tech company did this, it was Motroller back in the nineties, and people are trying to make this serchon that may be Motrola was at the peak

Yeah, listen, I think you know what's going to be the top. We can never call the top. Let me tell you something though, I think there's more bonds to come. We still have Microsoft, we still have Meta, we still probably have Amazon.

But would they do one hundred Yeah, you know what.

They might, and they also might do a lot of other incremental currencies like we talked about yesterday. I'm actually surprised they stayed out of the euromarket. I think there's a big, deep demand there is. Every portfolio manager that we are talking to is talking about having excess cash on hand, and everyone is looking at the same compressed yields. There is a bid for a yield. It is not going away anytime soon. So if we hit the top

Robert Schiffman from Bloomberg Intelligence bonds are fun, thank you very much. The software sector may have a chance to rebound we're so closely tracking what's happening in software right now. According to JP Morgan Strategists, fears of AI disruption may be overblown and the current bearish sentiment is a quote overshoot at this time. That views echoed by Lauren Webster, Managing Director of Investment Banking for Technology at Piper Sandler.

Delighted to say that, she.

Joins us, Now, I mean this is a day by day thing. Looking at some of the trading and action in the moment, I see a lot of green in the software space. But I say every day, one market session a market does not make just go a bit deeper on your thesis and why you're a bit more calm here.

Absolutely, So, I think where we are is in sort of this phase of forming, storming, norming in the market and the give and take between AI innovation and software stocks, and so you're seeing a lot of volatility disruption each time there is a new product release from an AI innovator. Yet this broader realization that enterprise software is here for good. You can't rip it out tomorrow, and this is a

We are canvassing a wide and diverse range of views and what's happening in software. Earlier today, we spoke to the Golden and Sax CEO David Solomon.

Here's what he thinks.

We have software exposure, but I'd say it's insignificant the scale of our overall platform, but it's certainly something that we're monitoring. I think the narrative over the last week has been a little bit too broad and will be as losers and plenty of companies pilot do just find.

Sell off too broad.

It sounds like you and mister Solomon agree that maybe what we've seen in the last seven to ten days a little overdone.

Certainly, with that said, though, I would if I was running a business in the software sector today, I would be taking a hard look, spending time with customers understanding how they're using AI in place of the products that I offer, where I should be embedding it, and certainly planning for the next decade. Will transition towards more AI infrastructure tooling. But yes, as I said, nothing is getting ripped out tomorrow, and this is a much longer transition period.

Lauren, what data do you look to as to what might be being ripped out? What is a point of offering rather than a platform that's into more deeply within a business.

Yeah, certainly looking at those that have been disrupted most by recent product launches from whether it be anthropic or others. Workflow tooling is a place at risk. Certainly, there are elements within the legal sector that some of the newer announcements are starting to displace. There are, however, bright spots like cybersecurities one where I spend a lot of time and certainly you need cybersecurity capabilities to even implement some

Go there a little bit more, because that was clearly the read across from some of this capital expenditure spend that we saw last week and now so I mean extraordinary numbers coming from the hyperscalers, and then of course people thought, well, time to be long, energy, time to be long the chips that go inside these data centers.

Is that still the right play, feelin.

Absolutely?

So.

The money is not pulling out of the market and sitting on the sidelines. It truly is going into a lot of the infrastructure opportunity what is often called the physical AI play, where it is energy networking. I mean, we're even seeing physical security around data centers getting another lock, and so there's a significant opportunity in that infrastructure and elsewhere that is, you know, irl are in the physical world.

What I'm trying to understand is why the story has changed for lots of investors.

You know, if you.

Think back to when we started closing closely tracking capital expenditures, people wanted to see the software revenues. On the other side, they wanted to see revenue top line growth that directly resulted from AI investment. Right think about the core to gone a name like Salesforce. They posted really good numbers, but the anxiet is still there despite the evidence. It's backward looking that people are willing to pay for.

That AI era of software. Why is that?

Look, there's a broad realization that you're going to have to invest ahead of ahead of the real realization of the opportunity, the real realization of the profits. And so that's why you're seeing a lot of these hyperscalers poor tremendous capital, hundreds of billions into their capex infrastructure associated with AI. And there will be support for others across the software ecosystem as long as there is also that customer enterprise customer journey narrative going with it as well.

Yeah, that enterprise evidence is right is what we're looking for. I can to ask you one of my favorite questions, given with still early in the year, what happens in the rest of twenty twenty six with a software sector.

Yeah, I'm going to go back to where I started, which is really this forming norming storming. You have a lot of AI forming right now, and I will tell you we are not we are not at the end of that formation. There are going to be gives and takes,

Non Webster wait to have you back on the show.

Thank you very much. Indeed, Pype Sandler, we appreciate it. Coming up.

Spotify reporting record user growth in its fourth quarter. What's to discuss next? We're in these earnings, but what are you looking at?

Just a very quick look at TSMC's US listed shares there are almost two percent one point percent, but trading at a record high. The shares in Taiwan overnight traded at record highs. The revenue jump thirty seven percent in January. Same story, AI spending marches on. TSMC dominates the market for chip manufacturing.

This is bloomboag tech.

It's checking on a Spotify shares having a strong day up fifteen percent at one point, having their biggest move on record after the company reported well record use a growth in that fiscal fourth quarter. And eight hundred and

Yeah, and I think that was a lot of what this call was today is just addressing concerns that AI, specifically AI music startups might I mean these are supposed launch this year, so people are concerned they are people going to start using AI degenerate songs and then listen to those songs on other platforms, or are they going to keep coming to Spotify? And today the co CEOs were saying, we think they'll keep coming to Spotify.

So the stock at one point was up on track for its bigges jump. Ever it's now up fifteen and a half percent, I think, contract for its biggest jump in seven almost eight years. You write about in the report the impact of Rapped for those although I don't imagine there's many that don't know what that is, Ashley, just explain it. But like, why was that such a big factor.

So Rapped is their annual interactive viral marketing campaign where people share their music and podcasts that they listen to the most this year and every year. It is just a moment on the Internet. People tend to activate their service to participate in RAP, so they always expect to see a boost. But I believe on the call today they said this was their biggest Rapped ever, So we can really see the results of that marketing campaign.

But are people advertising more with Spotify?

Are they able to drive revenues not just by having more of us tune in and unearth our Spotify account every end of year.

So this is the one part of the earnings today that was a little bit gloomy. The ad supported revenue actually dropped year over year, and this has been a part of the business that people are really wondering, when are we going to see you start making more money from advertising, Which is also an important question because when we're talking about them adding users, these are ad supported users. Subscribers grew as well, but if you're going to keep adding ad supported users, you also.

Want to see the revenue in that department go up as well.

Bloomberg's actually coming on Spotify, Thank you very much. Power Amount is trying to sweeten it's Warner Brothers bid the media giants, saying it will cover a two point eight billion dollar termination fee that Warner Bros. Would pay Netflix if it terminates and already agreed upon deal. Bloombok's Lucashaw, who leads the screen Time team, it's with us. This was interesting, right, So the headline's here and it's a wheatner an improvement on their deal. But actually the specifics

Yeah, so they are addressing and they being Paramount. Two of the concerns that Warner Brothers has had about their deal. One is this question of the breakup thee Right, So, Warner Brothers has been had been debating between two main offers between Netflix and Paramount. They pick Netflix, but if they walk away from Netflix to you know, re engage with Paramount, they have to pay Netflix a bunch of money.

To your point, they still haven't.

Actually raised the thirty dollars a share offer. This does increase the total net value of the bid, and so we're waiting to see what the Warner Brothers board has to say about it.

What credence to investors give at the moment. Lucas to that this would pass through regulators more easily. This whole ticking fee the idea that if it goes past the quarter expected, they get a chunk of change in return. If it's delayed, I mean that really just speaks to the bravado here.

Yeah.

Well, Paramount has been adamant all along that it stands a better chance of getting its deal approved, which on its face makes some sense. Netflix is a much larger company, a more powerful company. It's the number one player in streaming.

Lucas both sides trying to plead their case. There's been a lot of recent reporting from US and what's also happening kind of in the background. There's obviously been an interest from Washington DC. What else do we need to know about how this is going from a regulatory perspective, or at least interest from government as well.

I don't know.

Right we've had Paramount shareholders or we've had kind of Paramount and David Allison lobbying people in DC and Europe. We've had Netflix going ahead of the Senate last week. President Trump had said he'll be involved, and he said he's not involved. What we do know, just as a as a kind of basic set of facts, is that the DOJ is looking into both cases and has yet to say whether or not it's going to challenge either of them.

In terms of timing, Is there anything pressuring? Is there any date, any number, any any time frame that we look to for the.

Next Yeah, the next big one is the shareholder vote. Really, we're expecting Warner Brothers to arrange a vote of its shareholders sometime probably in mid to late March, kind of at the latest early April. That's something of a deadline for Paramount because they need to convince a bunch of

Deal for sure, we appreciate you on the story. Meanwhile, coming up, we're going to talk about how storied VC firm and recent Prowitz is helping drive the Trump administration's AI approach us.

Next, this is brettly bed Tech.

It's time now for Talking tech and first up Stripe. It's arranging a tender offer that would value the company at one hundred and forty billion dollars now. According to sources, that marks a roughly thirty billion dollar increase from the most recent valuation in last year. The move is being seen as a sign that the mighty fintech may continue to delay.

As initial public offerings.

Plus, Cadence Design Systems is introducing a new AI tool designed to speed up semiconductor development. Now the company's new Chipstack AI.

Superagent, and it will act as as a system to.

Engineers helping with design debugging blueprint generation look. The move comes as a tech industry really grapples with the surgeon chip demand and ongoing labor shortages and Ali Baba. While it's pushing further into robotics. The company has debuted a new AI model called Rinbrain, designed to give robots in more advanced understanding of their surroundings. With the release Ali Baba takes on AI leaders such as Google and Nvidia and what have you got?

Okay, So Andrews and Horowitz has become one of the most influential voices shaping the Trump administration's AI policies. Sources say the venture firm is often the first outside call the top White House officials and senior Republican congressional aids make when weighing moves that could affect tech companies AI plans.

And like a lot of this.

Reporting CARO is coming from current and former White House officials. There are things that are clearly in plain sight, right. So Shriram Krishnan, who is a senior AI policy advisor to the President, is a former and recent Horowitz partner, but he was in London, and there's reporting in there about you know, David Sachs, who is from the world of bench capital in Silicon Valley, is close to the president and wants to hear out industry.

And Injurcent has.

Scale, has scale, it has money to put into super PACs. We see what they did with the crypto fair Shake in the way that they've then retargeted in the AI spectrum. But what's also interesting is one of the lines in the story says they de facto have a veto really over certain AI policies.

Now they push back on that.

In particular, the named lobbyist for A sixteen Z says, Look, the only person who's got AI veto is President Trump himself.

Yeah.

Yeah, the President makes policy back. You know, as we've reported, he often gets handed the docs, reads them himself and says good call. Coming up on the program, Runway CEO Chris abou Venezuela will be with us to talk about the startup's latest funding round at a five point three billion dollar valuation. It is halftime in that conversation is coming up next.

This is Bloomberg Tech.

Welcome back to bloom bed Tech. Let's check in on the markets that actually giving away some of their gains we had earlier in the session. We're now unchanged on the NASAK one hundred. We're trying to digest the retail data that we got which was weaker than expected. But what does that mean in terms of the FED and its ability to cut rates more broadly? But also where

Games of Spotify.

I might add it has been crushed leading up to these numbers, so we're still down on the ear In terms of a one year basis, We're up fifteen percent, almost a record move on their shares after their addition to monthly average users. Really eclipsed expectations. Snap gets an upgrade EREC. It's really seeing that you could be buying

Us now is Bloomberg Aquities reporter Rhyme Vasselica, who I don't know how he does it, but he's across the entire lot. Let's start with that with the earnings part, because that's probably more common to some of the bigger movers right across the markets this morning, Spotify, Data Dog, what are the trends we're seeing and what's the action in the moment telling.

You, hey, good morning, thanks for having me. So a lot of these companies have gotten beaten down, as you mentioned, but they did a lot to reassure investors about some of the bigger concerns that are facing them. So in Spotify's case, they give a very strong outlook for their user growth. They gave a very strong outlook for their margins, both of which helped to address key concern that people have been having. Spotify, I think us up by biggest day.

That's it, isn't it. That's the read across it's how much is AI going to be eating any of these companies launches? And absolutely it must be the desire of the executives right now to push back and to show real operating margin growth and in particular real revenue. I mean Data Dog was up twenty nine percent for their last quarter, just gone.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Now I will say that the not all of the results have been strong. So yesterday we got results from the company called Monday dot Com that's not fell twenty percent. I think that one wasn't strong enough to help ease some of these concerns how to persisted around it. But Data Dog is the one that I feel like you hear a lot of people talking about when you look at the overall software weakness, this is one name that gets singled out repeatedly as one that was sort of

Something to cheer about, bost Ryan for Stelika, thank you very much. Just go to the private markets. In the world of startups, AI start at Runway hit a five point three billion dollar valuation after the company ciniched a new round of funding, raising three hundred and fifteen million dollars.

It is I'm thinking for and having me hear it is.

I think it's a reality of where the thegnologies heading or where the models are. We've sent There's a little bit with language models, but now I think world models are basically eating research and eating AI. It's kind of clear that the next round tier of what we expect to see progress and all more valities will come from video and from models that are going to understand and simulate the world.

And so a lot of what we're doing with this new.

Funding is to basically double down on that vision and that mission, which I think we've been first to market and many other parts of AI, including of course video generation. But now it feels like more present than ever. Then world models will start really unlocking the next stage of AI progress.

You may be a little beaten down by by this story and line of questioning the capital is for compute, or it's for talent, or it's for both, and give us a sense of what that environment is right now.

Yeah, it's true for both.

I mean, the growth of the company seems from how we allocate these resources effectively. And look, we've been very focused and very efficient company, spending what we've raised in putting it into compute, into training some of the world best data models out there, and hiring we're for the impact that we've had as a company and for the

Come the kind of customers you serve?

Christ about who is that? Then?

As we still typecast you as an AI video generation company, but you're not. You're a robotics company, you're an avatar company, you're a world company.

So who do you serve?

Yeah, of course that's a good question.

So look, I think it's important to understand how AI has progressed and language models are basically describing reality. World models are simulating the world. And when you stimulate the world, you can start tackling many different kind of industries.

So the question of.

Like, wo AI models will help advertising, marketing, Hollywood media, I think the question is answered and the answer is yes. It's kind of a pretty obvious yes to these days. And so we're the best company and the best kind of like solution for marketers, media, Hollywood entertainment. We've been doing this for quite some time and so I think we're won there and going to continue to grow.

There's a lot of expansion that we have to do in the industry there.

Now the models can simulate the world, So we started to simulate not only media and entertainment, but we started to simulate how the world works, and that is effectively very valuable for robotics, for physically a I for ave and so another way of thinking about it is we have some of the best tools to create media and videos for humans to watch. We now started to create videos and media for robots to watch, and that for those robots to learn from that data, which is fascinating.

It is fascinating. It also has different impacts on different people, and when you say it helps an industry, that's kind of in the eye of the beholder. Chris Well, talk to us about how you think about as a leader of your business, the implications this has for the labor market, for what it means more broadly for humans watching content that wasn't made by people and the reality of them.

Yeah.

Look, that's a question that we've tried to grapple for a long time in terms of how do we make sure that companies and industries react accordingly to what's coming that's happening. And I think my take, after seeing the industry for quite some times, I think the industry's are

I think that we've solely realized that that's the case.

At the same time, we've seen more jobs being put out there with new descriptions on things that even a year ago would have been unthinkable of. And I think that reaction is now becoming obvious, notably for media, for Hollywood, for for gaming companies, and for many other industries.

Even for software engineers. I think it's kind of pretty obviously.

Day is where you start to see that you can automate and simplify a lot of the entry like level tasks and jobs, and so that's where I think we will continue to see growth industry wise.

Meet and Entertainment Chris about.

We find that that there's a lot of interest in Runway right as a company, how the models are being deployed and used commercialization. This was a big round. The valuation is interesting. A lot of the questions we get for you about your future and whether you plan to go public, So I'd ask you to kind of be candid about that, the benefits and negatives of being a public company, and why you might consider doing that.

It's not something we're not consider at some point. I think right now, given the breath and research innovation that we conduct at the company, I think we're in a much better position thinking about being private for a bit more time. I think there's tradeoffs as being a public company in terms of how you report, how you think about your growth, the kind of things that you need

Chase Well, briefly, I so of asked you about whether the employee base in companies already. Am I as a human ready to digest the wall of AI made content and discern what's real and what's not.

Yeah, you know, that's that's an interesting question. I actually will I actually will kind of flip the assumption there.

I would start to assume when I will suggest everyone probably starts to assume that most of the content that you see how is going to be generated, and in that case, what we should be kind of water marketing and protecting isn't necessarily the generated content is the real content. It's the content that we've seen and we've recorded from a camera. And then inverts a little bit of the problem because yes, more content will start becoming the norm.

I think the world is adjusting to that.

There's definitely a culture on social adjustment, period, but from what I've seen, I think it's happening faster there before, and just to be period because it's going to get even even more crezy.

Christopher Valenzuela Runway CEO, it's great to have you back.

We appreciate it, of course, thank you.

Grayce coming up ahead of a landmark addiction trial. Meta run thousands of commercials to promote its safety work with teens.

Details on that. Next, this is a blue neg.

Tech Instagram owner.

Meta paid for thousands of TV commercials that promoted its safety with teens, all ahead of a landmark case examining whether the company intentionally designed products to hook children. Bloombers Kirk Wagner, who leads our coverage of matters here with us. This is about timing and proximity to two events.

But what do we need to know in our reporting?

Yeah, so the trial is sort of the backdrop of this whole thing that started yesterday in Los Angeles.

As you point out, the.

Allegations here are that Meta and YouTube and others have created these products to addict young people, you know, the infinite scrolling, the algorithms, things like that. And so these advertisements that Meta has been running for a while, but really in earnest since November, promote their team accounts and all of the stuff they're doing to try and help and combat this issue with teenagers. And so again timing is interesting here. They're trying to sort of set this

Now in the story talks of tech Oversite Project executive director Sasha Howeth really talking about this as being an influence play, but in many ways, to take the other side, it's meant to.

Be an influence play for parents.

For kids to understand that these tools are there for them to use, right.

Exactly.

And you know, you think about if you're Meta and you're sitting here going, Okay, there's going to be this landmark trial, and in fact, there's going to be trials for Meta around child safety and tea and safety throughout the year. And so if you think about there's this steady drumbeat of headlines and news and coverage about that issue, you certainly want to have your viewpoint.

Out there as well.

And so I think that's why we see them promoting these teen accounts, which they were all about about two years ago, and really trying, to your point, Caroline, show parents that, hey, all these things you're reading in the press, like we are addressing them with these safety settings that we've put in place as well.

And most Kurt Wagner, we thank you.

We're going to talk more about that story in a moment, but first then you've got some breaking news.

Yeah.

My understanding is that Tesla has promoted Joe Ward, who is the vice president leading the emir Region operations, to basically run sales, service and delivery globally. All those teams around the world are now reporting into him. We don't know that much about Joe Ward. I think he started at Tesla as an intern and quite a long time ago, has kind of closed climbed up the ranks and been

Yeah, yeah, AA sales they've been tough of late. Now let's just return to our original conversation, because, as mentioned, it's not just Meta that's currently under scrutiny over safety, particularly for teens. Other tech giants think Google when it's YouTube of facing lawsuits as well over the addictive nature of social media.

Let's get more on all of this.

Eric Goldman, he's a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and co director of the school at Center for High Tech Law. Eric, as I mentioned, it's Meta, it's Google, it's also Snap and TikTok facing legal focus throughout the year.

Correct.

Yeah, there's a trial taking place right now in Los Angeles putting all four of them on trial. There's also a federal key since putting them on trial in June, and there are lawsuits against all of them throughout the country. In parallel with that.

The argument at its core from some of these so called victims are that these tools and these platforms were designed to hook teams young brains in particular, and keep them coming back for more. Eric, is that the understanding you have, what legal credence? What fight do they have to fight here?

So the basic argument for the planet is, as you described, that the sites were designed to intentionally addict users, and that the services are therefore liable for the harms that resulted from that addiction. There's a lot of questions about that. For example, we have to ask what does it even mean to be quote addicted to a social media service. There aren't medical or psychological definitions of that. But I just have to talk about whether or not the services

Let's get Meta's response to these lawsuits in questions, right, the company says that they don't reflect reality. The evidence will show a company deeply and responsibly confronting tough questions concerning research, listening to parents, academics and safety experts, etc. That's the company's reaction. Actually, what's happening in response to the wider issue is you see state by state, different laws being enacted that are consistent with the complaints of

I think you need to be careful about using the term solution because in order for us to talk about that, we have to be very precise about exactly what problem we're trying to fix. There are a lot of problems in our society, a lot of problems plaguing kids, and there are also problems of over responding to the content on line that looks a lot like censorship, and so when we talk about solutions, we can't do that without

Professor.

In the course of proceedings throughout the trials, those that are kind of trying to come to a decision in them, those presiding over the case, to what degree do they have expertise in the technicalities behind this?

So ideally the jury doesn't have any direct expertise they're bringing in. The idea is that that's not what they're being asked to do. They're going to be presented with evidence from experts that have been chosen by the parties, and they're supposed to to sift through that evidence, discuss it, evaluated, and try to say which they find more convincing. So in that sense, I think it's even better for us

Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University School of Law, thank you very much for your time. Now coming up on the show, Lift's earnings are out later today, We're going to preview see what to expect that's next.

This is Boomberg Tech.

Lift earnings. They're out after the bell today and less than a week after rival Uber kind of disappointed investors with its profit outlook. Let's talk about what we can expect from with bluem Meg's gig economy reports and Natalie Land, we are expecting pretty healthy growth bookings right for the fiscal court.

To just gone yes. If Uber's earning towards any guide. They posted pretty strong for Q and Lyft is also expected to post pretty strong growth there, one of the strongest growths we've seen in nearly two years.

Natalie Uber used its earnings to position itself structurally and from a personnel perspective for its robotaxi era. You know, we've spent a lot of time with Lyft, who plan to do the same. Right, what do we expect them to communicate in earnings in that respect?

Lyft is going to row out avs in a couple of cities this year, as they announced last year. Those are Dallas in Nashville. So we might hear some of their royal plans today and also hear them talk about how their you know, fleet operations units subsidiary flags Drive might help with that.

And Dave Richard and the team of late have really got the memo that they need to go global. They've been making m and a. How is that speaking to the growth opportunity here?

So the fourth quarter would be the first full quarter where they take into account the European business Free Now, which is the taxi app in Europe that they acquired last year, so they might get a boost there. And they've also acquired this chauffeuring business which is like this high end rides type which could also vote well for the bottom line.

Did Lift to actually do anything in the Court of Natalie that you kind of think might give them a little bit of a boost. Is there anything that they've already announced so we think they'll show traction on So.

Last year was a big year for their silver product, which is aimed at elderly users. They simplified their app interface for users, so there could be a boost in rider base there. There also boosts a lot of their partnerships. In November, they announced a partnership with United Air letting people earn miles if they'd connect their accounts with Lift, so that might attract more businesses there on airport rides too.

How are they in terms of scale versus I mean, at the moment analysts really like the stop fifteen of them say by only two say sell? But is it a lightful like comparison here? Are they always going to be the second film?

Yeah? Like lifts business is you know thirty or twenty to thirty percent market share in the US, and they they're just starting with their global expansion compared to Uber, which is already in more than you know, thirty countries, and so there's still a lot of catch up there. But we know Lyft is on track with their three year targets too.

Bloomberg's natally lunk thank you very much.

I mean the earnings in the moment carries Spotify on track for their best day in about seven years. Thirty eight million subscribers added called it gone seven hundred and fifty one million total. It was all about the unwrapped my average age thirty seven year old listener.

Apparently, I think I pipped you to the post with a thirty two year old listener, but I thank my kids for that.

That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Tech.

Check out the pod. You know where to find it.

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