September 19, 2025 • 20 mins
Watch Scarlet and Paul LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF.
Bloomberg Intelligence hosted by Paul Sweeney and Norah Mulinda
- Drew Reading, Bloomberg Intelligence U.S Homebuilding Analyst discusses Lennar Corp.'s forecast for quarterly home orders missing analysts' estimates due to affordability concerns and the wavering job market. The company projected 20,000 to 21,000 contracts for its fiscal fourth quarter, with analysts expecting 21,047.
-Matthew Schettenhelm, Bloomberg Intelligence Media Litigation Analyst, on Nexstar and Sinclair likely keeping their critical push for deregulation on track at the Federal Communications Commission after they promptly followed FCC Chair Brendan Carr's prodding to stop carrying "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on their local broadcast TV stations in response to comments the late-night host made about Charlie Kirk's death.
- James Walker, CEO and Board Member at Nano Nuclear Energy, on adopting nuclear reactors in the UK
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am
easterne on Apple, Coarclay, and Android Auto with the Bloomberg
Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts,
or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Let's switch gears to the housing market. Lenar, one of
the big home builders out there, reported some numbers. We're
going to break that down and get a better sense
of what's happening out there in the US housing market.
To do that, we check with Drew Reddink. He covers
all the housing stuff for Bloomberg Intelligence. He's safely asconced
down there in Princeton, New Jersey. You forgot that there's
a train into New York City from Princeton, but we'll
(00:44):
get to that later. Drew, talk to us about Leonar.
What did you hear from our folks there.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, it was a pretty tough quarter for Lenar. Orders
were actually pretty solid there of twelve percent from last year.
But what management said is that they can see continued
pressure in the house market and that they had increased
their use of sales incentives to drive traffic and demand.
Now for a little bit of context last quarter, and
we'll wait to see how three Q ultimately shapes out.
(01:10):
But last quarter, incentives represented thirteen percent of the average
selling price at home. By comparison, in a normal market
that's about five to six percent, and some of the
most important markets Florida, Texas, it's as high as seventeen
to eighteen percent. So you could see, you know, just
the extent of how much they're having incentivized to drive
(01:30):
traffic through the doors, and we saw that ultimately play
out in the results. Their average order price is down
about twelve percent, and their guidance for next year, I
excuse me for four Q was a little soft on
the orders and delivery side of the business. Now, if
Lenard comes out and tells us that they intentionally pull
are intentionally pulling back on deliveries because they think they
(01:51):
could capture some margin upside, I think that could be
well received. But at the same time, their four Q
margin guide is still weaker than ex So they did
say they have some optimism with rates coming down in
the FED cutting rates, but we'll be listening on the
call to see if that's actually materializing.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
So, Drew, do you see this as isolated to Lenar
or a broader theme here in the housing market. I mean,
of course, we have luxury home builder Toll Brothers reporting
about a month ago today.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah, so Lenar is a little bit of a different
animal within the public space. You have to remember, they're
primarily focused on driving higher sales volumes, and what they've
said consistently over the last couple of years is that
they're willing to sacrifice gross margin to drive volumes. So
when you see a weakness in demand for Lenar, you're
going to see it show up primarily in their gross margin.
(02:42):
That being said, the issues that they're facing are really
across the spectrum. I mean, no builder can get away
from the fact that affordability continues to hover near the
lowest levels of all time. I think that the recent
pullback in rates will help a little bit, but in
terms of it being you know, the silver bowl for
the broader housing market and getting us back to normalized
(03:02):
levels of demand, you know, I think I think there's
other factors at play that prevent that from happening immediately.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
So drew rates remain incredibly high, especially for the average
home buyers. So what do you make of the fact
that the S one to five home The index at
tract home builders is up thirteen percent.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
You're today, Yeah, great question.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
And if you look at how the stocks have behaved
really since mid June, they're up over thirty percent, and
that was really the stocks moving in anticipation of rates
coming down. In the FED cutting rates, you could also
see that and how mortgage rates have responded. They moved
up ahead of the rate cut, and if you look
at where rates are today, actually they're up twenty five
basis points since the FED cut. It's kind of reminiscent
(03:43):
of the last time they cut when rates, you know,
rallied pretty low ahead of the rate cut and then
after that actually came in, you saw rates move back higher.
So I certainly think that, you know, builder stocks are
always going to react to rates. The group right now
is trading at about one point nine times book. There's
an old rule of thumb in the industry that you
buy the builders at one one times, you sell them
(04:06):
at two times. Certainly, there have been cases where they've
traded outside those ranges over the last twenty years or so,
but what has been pretty consistent is that once they
get to that kind of two point two to and
a quarter times book, there has been resistance from evaluation perspective,
so it's something to keep an eye on.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Drew talk to us about the existing home market today.
How's that is? Are people that are sitting on their homes?
Are they any incentive to get out?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah? Great question. I mean, the existing home market is
still pretty much frozen. Volumes are twenty to twenty five
percent below what would be considered normal, And you're right,
the incentive just isn't there. You have, you know, fifty
to seventy five percent of mortgages are below four and
a half percent, So even as the headline rate comes
down to six and a quarter, we're still talking about
(04:55):
a pretty big delta. When you layer on top of
that that, you know, it's not just the rate they're
trading in, but home prices are up fifty percent from
twenty nineteen. So when you look at the total cost
of ownership, factoring in property taxes and higher insurance costs,
that monthly payment is significantly higher.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
I mean, so, I mean, I'm going to speak for
the normal lenders of the world, the Sebastians of the world.
How are young people getting into the ownership these days?
You get about thirty second Street to fix this problem
for us.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah, a great question, and afraid to kick. Can't be
fixed that quick. But what we're actually seeing is a
significant shift towards the rental market. If you look at
household formations over the last quarter, household growth was exclusively
driven by renner occupied units. So it has become increasingly challenging,
and we see that the rental market has been the beneficiary.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I don't know, man, I mean, Sebastian Nora. I feel
for you, guys. I don't know how the young folks
today take forever are going to do it. If you're
reading a home building analyst of Bloomberg Intelligence, thanks so
much for joining us. He's down there in Prince of
New Jersey again, Leonora fill the effects of kind of
a little bit of a tougher market at their rates
come down a little bit, but they're still, you know,
higher than a lot of people want them to be.
(06:07):
And still these new homebuilders have to, you know, supply
a lot of incentives just to get people into the homes.
So we'll stay on top of that. Stay with us.
More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarclay, and Android Auto
with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you
get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
So obviously some big news out there in Hollywood. ABC
pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show, I guess indefinitely. I'm not sure
what that means over some content that some folks found objectionable.
And this feature the chairman of the FCC, the Federal
Communications Commission, which is responsible for licensing television stations across
the country, mister Brendan Carr playing a pretty big role,
(07:00):
getting the support also of President Trump. Let's see how
this plays out from a regultary perspective. Matthew Shechittenhelm, He's
immediate litigation analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Matt talk to us
about the role that the FCC and the chairman, mister Carr,
are playing in what appears to be, I guess a
free speech issue with the ABC television network.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Yeah, that's right, Paul Win.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
When you saw Brendan Carr go on that podcast the
other day, he was stressing the FCC's role as the
regulator of the broadcast TV stations that are all across
the country that have to get a license to carry
their content, and the law says that they have to
act in the public interest. And Brendan Carr has been
(07:43):
taking a very aggressive approach to the meaning of what
is in the public interest. We have a long history
under that provision of the law goes back.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
To Nixon, the Reagan era.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
Historically, the FCC used to look at whether broadcasters were
being fair or not and whether they were being balanced.
They've largely gotten out of that business. Brendan Carr seems
to be reinvigorating the push to get into broadcast content
decisions that you know, and and so this was a
threat to Disney that this is this is potentially a
(08:17):
distortion of the news by broadcasting these comments on on
on Jimmy Kimmel's show that sort of triggered action first
from smaller companies Next Star and Sinclair, and then Disney
followed along.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
So, I know you mentioned that the FCC likely couldn't
have found a news distortion violation by Disney or any
of the other broadcasters based specifically on Kimmel's comments. Do
you mind expanding a bit there?
Speaker 6 (08:44):
Yeah, so I'm really skeptical that that would have gone anywhere.
That the FCC's news distortion rule is extremely narrow. First
of all, it applies to news. Uh, there's there's a
direct FCC decision that says, look, we're not going to
apply this to an entertainment program. And then even with
respect to news, it's very limited to the FCC needs
(09:08):
to see evidence that management of the station knew what
it was saying was false and ran the story anyway. Otherwise,
the FCC has said, look, we need to get out
of the way of editorial decisions, leave breathing room for
news to do their job. That's historically been the approach,
and Brendan Carr is working against that precedent. What this
(09:29):
was really about, though, is these companies need to stay
in the good graces of the FCC. It's not so
much the threat that the FCC is going to win
on a case like this. These companies need the FCC
to finish a couple rulemakings that are deregulating the whole sector,
and so if the FCC asked them to do something,
they have a strong incentive to do it because they
(09:51):
want other actions from this FCC that will help their business.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Does that partially explain to some degree the actions from
Next Star, which is one of the largest owners of
TV stations in the country, and they have a pending
acquisition of Tegna, which is a TV broadcasting company that's
in front of the FCC.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
Right now, that's exactly right.
Speaker 6 (10:10):
And so that's a six billion dollar deal, and it
depends on the FCC easing a rule.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
Right now, there's an.
Speaker 6 (10:17):
FCC rule on the book that says you can only
reach about thirty nine percent of US households. This deal
would reach seventy percent or eighty percent of US households.
They need the FCC not only to approve the deal,
but to scrap that rule first.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
If they don't do that, the deal's going nowhere.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
And so when Brendan Carr goes on this podcast and
says local stations, would you please do this? You saw
an almost immediate response from Next Star and Sinclair, followed
by a thank you from Brendan Carr.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
I mean, what's the likelihood of this deal being approved?
I mean, of course that would be massive to have
that amount of way ownership there.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
Yeah, all signals are that this deregulation will move ahead
at the FCC. This has been a priority for Republicans
in FCC circles for a long time, and I think
it will advance. There is a very difficult legal question
looming as to whether the FCC can change that thirty
nine percent cap. There's a strong argument on the other
(11:19):
side that Congress must do it, and I think we're
going to have a tough court fight on exactly that issue.
I think the FCC probably can win that fight, but
it might depend on what court ends up hearing it,
what set of three judges ends up hearing it first.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
All right, Matt, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate
it as always. Matt Chuttenholm, he's media litigation analyst. He's
kind of really the litigation and the regulatory guye that
we chat with when it comes to all things related
to the media and the regulation of the media. And
clearly this is a big issue for the ABC Television network,
for Walt Disney in general, and of course other parties
(11:55):
involved there, whether it be next to our Sinclaarence, some others.
So we'll keep an eye on that, but it's certainly
a big news, a big piece of news in the
TV business. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming
up after this.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarclay, and Android Auto
with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you
get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
All my personal take on energy and where we get
energy going forward is I think we're just gonna need
pretty much everything. If fossil fuels, guess oil and gas,
the renewable stuff, the water, the wind, whatever, I think
we're gonna need at all, and that includes nuclear as well.
And I've been really fascinated by some of the new
technologies in the nuclear I don't think we're talking about
(12:47):
building a new three mile island or anything. But James Walker.
He's the CEO and board member of a company called
Nano Nuclear Energy. It is a publica traded company on Nasdaq.
NNE is the ticker. He'sat there in Salt Lake Sea,
the Utah, which I've been to a million times, but
quite frankly, I just go to the airport and then
I hop in a car and drive up to one.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Of the ski resorts.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
That's my asied that's ideal assault. Like, James, thanks so
much for joining us here. Talk to us about your
company and kind of this whole technology around micro reactors.
Talk to us of what that technology is and is
it a thing.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
Sure, it's it's definitely a thing. It's it should be
the next big thing because there's a there's a big
sort of energy bottleneck coming in the country. There's huge
energy demands reindustrialization, electrification, but also significant demands from the
tech industry. They need gigawatts and gigawats of power and
they need that a lot of the time to be
off grid, to be co located with them and need
(13:42):
to be output power consistently over decades, and like that's
put them in bed with nuclear and that's it's kind
of why there's this hot space at the moment in
the nuclear industry and you're seeing so much investment go
into it. The new the US is trying to build
back nuclear infrastructure as fast as it can just to
enable this sort of massive scale up of new clear power.
So our company is obviously involved in that. We make
(14:04):
advanced reactor systems. They're lots smaller than the conventional ones.
But the idea here is that you can. You can
maduce these things and sort of roll them out like
products and deploy them and assemble them and output power anywhere.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, all these big names seem to
be going nuclear. And in your own words, it seems
as though we're in the middle of a nuclear renaissance.
What do you make of this, in particular in regards
to the tech sector.
Speaker 7 (14:30):
Well, I would say this is a pretty unprecedented time.
Like previously with nuclear, everyone always thought of renaissance was
coming with it because theoretically it should be the cheapest
and easiest form of power in the world, but it
never really came. But what's happened now is that it's say,
for instance, if you're a big data center, if you
are the Googles or the Microsoft's of the world, you
(14:51):
need you need a lot of power. But even if
you were to have all the gas and coal that
you needed or with anything like that, you would still
need to massively upgrade the national grid to a point
where it could begin outputting the power that you require,
and the infrastructure of costs that will be involved upgrading
the grid might be five trillion dollars something like that.
(15:12):
So they're not in the business of doing that, but
they need the power. So with a with nuclear you
don't need to be on the grid. You could be
off grid and you could just build a reactor wherever
you want and use a micro grid and then outlay
the power through that system to a data center or
an AI center, anything like that. So the tech industry
has sort of settled on this as the solution, the
(15:32):
long term solution. And then in the interim, you know,
they'll yield do anything. It'll be geothermal, they'll use gas'll
they'll use wind and solar as much as they can.
But like in their long term strategy, they realize that
for what they actually need, the large scale of it,
nuclear is gonna have to be a major component, if
not the largest, component of that solution.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
All right, your company, Nano nuclear Energy, it's got a
market cap of one point eight billion. Stock is up
three hundred percent of the trailing twelve months. It's up
seventy three percent year to dat, it's up thirteen percent today.
I think you sold some technology to somebody. I go
to your P and L. You don't have a nickel
of revenue. What is going on with your stock? Explain
to me what the investment theme is out there in
the marketplace for your company.
Speaker 7 (16:13):
It's it's the same with every advanced reactor company at
the moment, they're all in the same boat. We're all
building things. But the reason why Nano has particular interest
is that we have construction projects already scheduled. We have
a big project. They've been building the first the US's
first microrector at the University of Illinois, and we actually
should be building Canada's first microrector at the same time
(16:34):
up at Chalk River on Canadian Nuclear Laboratory land. So
there's huge interest in what we're doing, and so we're
getting an enormous amount of support. And what the institutional
investment is doing now is that they're hedging their bets.
They know that nuclear is going to take off, and
now they're beginning to bet on companies. And there's already
a sort of a convergence of you know, in a
(16:56):
hot sector, you'll have twenty companies come out of the woodwork,
but already they're sort of being squeezed down to a
handful of leading companies and we're one of them. And
that's why you're seeing like this huge market interest in
US because it's it's positioning. Everyone's positioning themselves for essentially
the future.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Well, we definitely touched on your stock performance. Here, tell
me what sets you apart from your competitors though.
Speaker 7 (17:20):
So, I mean, we've kept things very simple. We know
that the technology we're utilizing is going to work. High
temperature gas reactors have been used for decades. All we're
doing is scaling them down. But on top of that,
we're actually utilizing a special form of fuel which eliminates
the necessity the necessity to have all these redundant safety
(17:42):
systems you can co locate with. If it was a
data center in AI, you could be pressed right up
against them. You could even be sited in the middle
of a population center. There's no risk to anybody around
you because the reactor has no chance of having a meltdown,
and conventional civil nuclear power plant can. So it's a
very different kind of tech and so and already more
(18:06):
novel techs I think having a bit of a struggle, whereas,
for instance, high temperature gas reactors that utilize try so
that seems to be almost the most popular model amongst
developers at the moment. And so we've got that, but
our key One of our better strategies is that we've
made a reactor as big as you can possibly make
it and still move all the components by road, and
(18:27):
that means we will be able to have factory level
processes that just continuously manufacture these things. We can ship
everything by road, assemble it there, and then we don't
need to have big construction as big construction projects at
the site itself with individual licensing processes. So we're simplifying
things as much as we possibly can. That's why we've
(18:48):
proven to be pretty popular.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I'm just looking at kind of what's moving your stock here.
I know that you guys recently signed a letter of
intent for the proposed sale of its odin low pressure
currant micro designed to Cambridge adam Or, a UK based
company talked to us about that deal.
Speaker 7 (19:03):
So that we were streamlining the company. We have a
reactor called the Kronos reactor. That's our that's our flagship product.
That's the one we'll be building at University of Illinois
and at Chalk River in Canada. And the other reactors
that we were developing, like the low Key reactor and
the Zeus reactor, they were also high temperature gas reactors.
So the Odium reactor, it's a fantastic system, but we
(19:26):
we let the team, the technical team take that on
to develop themselves so we can concentrate fully on that
Kronos reactor, so that that streamlining of the organization is
obviously very important. We're scaling up very quickly, but we're
going to need, you know, ninety five percent of our
technical personnel working on this Kronos reactor. And when you're
focused like that and building, you know, it does have
(19:48):
a positive market influence.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
All right. James A is a former investment banker. I
would say take advantage of the stock price and sell
some stock, but I see you have been selling stock periodically,
so good for you. Good source of capital here. James Walker,
CEO on board matter of a Nano Nuclear Energy. It
is a puply traded company NNE. I'm kind of one
of those folks to say, I think nuclear has got
to be part of the energy solution because all I
hear from these data centers, there are gonna be tons
(20:12):
and tons of energy going forward, and I guess nuclear
is going to be a part of that to some extent.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
This is the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast available on Apple Spotify,
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Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am
easterne on Apple, Coarclay, and Android Auto with the Bloomberg
Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts,
or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Let's switch gears to the housing market. Lenar, one of
the big home builders out there, reported some numbers. We're
going to break that down and get a better sense
of what's happening out there in the US housing market.
To do that, we check with Drew Reddink. He covers
all the housing stuff for Bloomberg Intelligence. He's safely asconced
down there in Princeton, New Jersey. You forgot that there's
a train into New York City from Princeton, but we'll
(00:44):
get to that later. Drew, talk to us about Leonar.
What did you hear from our folks there.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, it was a pretty tough quarter for Lenar. Orders
were actually pretty solid there of twelve percent from last year.
But what management said is that they can see continued
pressure in the house market and that they had increased
their use of sales incentives to drive traffic and demand.
Now for a little bit of context last quarter, and
we'll wait to see how three Q ultimately shapes out.
(01:10):
But last quarter, incentives represented thirteen percent of the average
selling price at home. By comparison, in a normal market
that's about five to six percent, and some of the
most important markets Florida, Texas, it's as high as seventeen
to eighteen percent. So you could see, you know, just
the extent of how much they're having incentivized to drive
(01:30):
traffic through the doors, and we saw that ultimately play
out in the results. Their average order price is down
about twelve percent, and their guidance for next year, I
excuse me for four Q was a little soft on
the orders and delivery side of the business. Now, if
Lenard comes out and tells us that they intentionally pull
are intentionally pulling back on deliveries because they think they
(01:51):
could capture some margin upside, I think that could be
well received. But at the same time, their four Q
margin guide is still weaker than ex So they did
say they have some optimism with rates coming down in
the FED cutting rates, but we'll be listening on the
call to see if that's actually materializing.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
So, Drew, do you see this as isolated to Lenar
or a broader theme here in the housing market. I mean,
of course, we have luxury home builder Toll Brothers reporting
about a month ago today.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah, so Lenar is a little bit of a different
animal within the public space. You have to remember, they're
primarily focused on driving higher sales volumes, and what they've
said consistently over the last couple of years is that
they're willing to sacrifice gross margin to drive volumes. So
when you see a weakness in demand for Lenar, you're
going to see it show up primarily in their gross margin.
(02:42):
That being said, the issues that they're facing are really
across the spectrum. I mean, no builder can get away
from the fact that affordability continues to hover near the
lowest levels of all time. I think that the recent
pullback in rates will help a little bit, but in
terms of it being you know, the silver bowl for
the broader housing market and getting us back to normalized
(03:02):
levels of demand, you know, I think I think there's
other factors at play that prevent that from happening immediately.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
So drew rates remain incredibly high, especially for the average
home buyers. So what do you make of the fact
that the S one to five home The index at
tract home builders is up thirteen percent.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
You're today, Yeah, great question.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
And if you look at how the stocks have behaved
really since mid June, they're up over thirty percent, and
that was really the stocks moving in anticipation of rates
coming down. In the FED cutting rates, you could also
see that and how mortgage rates have responded. They moved
up ahead of the rate cut, and if you look
at where rates are today, actually they're up twenty five
basis points since the FED cut. It's kind of reminiscent
(03:43):
of the last time they cut when rates, you know,
rallied pretty low ahead of the rate cut and then
after that actually came in, you saw rates move back higher.
So I certainly think that, you know, builder stocks are
always going to react to rates. The group right now
is trading at about one point nine times book. There's
an old rule of thumb in the industry that you
buy the builders at one one times, you sell them
(04:06):
at two times. Certainly, there have been cases where they've
traded outside those ranges over the last twenty years or so,
but what has been pretty consistent is that once they
get to that kind of two point two to and
a quarter times book, there has been resistance from evaluation perspective,
so it's something to keep an eye on.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Drew talk to us about the existing home market today.
How's that is? Are people that are sitting on their homes?
Are they any incentive to get out?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah? Great question. I mean, the existing home market is
still pretty much frozen. Volumes are twenty to twenty five
percent below what would be considered normal, And you're right,
the incentive just isn't there. You have, you know, fifty
to seventy five percent of mortgages are below four and
a half percent, So even as the headline rate comes
down to six and a quarter, we're still talking about
(04:55):
a pretty big delta. When you layer on top of
that that, you know, it's not just the rate they're
trading in, but home prices are up fifty percent from
twenty nineteen. So when you look at the total cost
of ownership, factoring in property taxes and higher insurance costs,
that monthly payment is significantly higher.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
I mean, so, I mean, I'm going to speak for
the normal lenders of the world, the Sebastians of the world.
How are young people getting into the ownership these days?
You get about thirty second Street to fix this problem
for us.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah, a great question, and afraid to kick. Can't be
fixed that quick. But what we're actually seeing is a
significant shift towards the rental market. If you look at
household formations over the last quarter, household growth was exclusively
driven by renner occupied units. So it has become increasingly challenging,
and we see that the rental market has been the beneficiary.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I don't know, man, I mean, Sebastian Nora. I feel
for you, guys. I don't know how the young folks
today take forever are going to do it. If you're
reading a home building analyst of Bloomberg Intelligence, thanks so
much for joining us. He's down there in Prince of
New Jersey again, Leonora fill the effects of kind of
a little bit of a tougher market at their rates
come down a little bit, but they're still, you know,
higher than a lot of people want them to be.
(06:07):
And still these new homebuilders have to, you know, supply
a lot of incentives just to get people into the homes.
So we'll stay on top of that. Stay with us.
More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarclay, and Android Auto
with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you
get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
So obviously some big news out there in Hollywood. ABC
pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show, I guess indefinitely. I'm not sure
what that means over some content that some folks found objectionable.
And this feature the chairman of the FCC, the Federal
Communications Commission, which is responsible for licensing television stations across
the country, mister Brendan Carr playing a pretty big role,
(07:00):
getting the support also of President Trump. Let's see how
this plays out from a regultary perspective. Matthew Shechittenhelm, He's
immediate litigation analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Matt talk to us
about the role that the FCC and the chairman, mister Carr,
are playing in what appears to be, I guess a
free speech issue with the ABC television network.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Yeah, that's right, Paul Win.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
When you saw Brendan Carr go on that podcast the
other day, he was stressing the FCC's role as the
regulator of the broadcast TV stations that are all across
the country that have to get a license to carry
their content, and the law says that they have to
act in the public interest. And Brendan Carr has been
(07:43):
taking a very aggressive approach to the meaning of what
is in the public interest. We have a long history
under that provision of the law goes back.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
To Nixon, the Reagan era.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
Historically, the FCC used to look at whether broadcasters were
being fair or not and whether they were being balanced.
They've largely gotten out of that business. Brendan Carr seems
to be reinvigorating the push to get into broadcast content
decisions that you know, and and so this was a
threat to Disney that this is this is potentially a
(08:17):
distortion of the news by broadcasting these comments on on
on Jimmy Kimmel's show that sort of triggered action first
from smaller companies Next Star and Sinclair, and then Disney
followed along.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
So, I know you mentioned that the FCC likely couldn't
have found a news distortion violation by Disney or any
of the other broadcasters based specifically on Kimmel's comments. Do
you mind expanding a bit there?
Speaker 6 (08:44):
Yeah, so I'm really skeptical that that would have gone anywhere.
That the FCC's news distortion rule is extremely narrow. First
of all, it applies to news. Uh, there's there's a
direct FCC decision that says, look, we're not going to
apply this to an entertainment program. And then even with
respect to news, it's very limited to the FCC needs
(09:08):
to see evidence that management of the station knew what
it was saying was false and ran the story anyway. Otherwise,
the FCC has said, look, we need to get out
of the way of editorial decisions, leave breathing room for
news to do their job. That's historically been the approach,
and Brendan Carr is working against that precedent. What this
(09:29):
was really about, though, is these companies need to stay
in the good graces of the FCC. It's not so
much the threat that the FCC is going to win
on a case like this. These companies need the FCC
to finish a couple rulemakings that are deregulating the whole sector,
and so if the FCC asked them to do something,
they have a strong incentive to do it because they
(09:51):
want other actions from this FCC that will help their business.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Does that partially explain to some degree the actions from
Next Star, which is one of the largest owners of
TV stations in the country, and they have a pending
acquisition of Tegna, which is a TV broadcasting company that's
in front of the FCC.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
Right now, that's exactly right.
Speaker 6 (10:10):
And so that's a six billion dollar deal, and it
depends on the FCC easing a rule.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
Right now, there's an.
Speaker 6 (10:17):
FCC rule on the book that says you can only
reach about thirty nine percent of US households. This deal
would reach seventy percent or eighty percent of US households.
They need the FCC not only to approve the deal,
but to scrap that rule first.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
If they don't do that, the deal's going nowhere.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
And so when Brendan Carr goes on this podcast and
says local stations, would you please do this? You saw
an almost immediate response from Next Star and Sinclair, followed
by a thank you from Brendan Carr.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
I mean, what's the likelihood of this deal being approved?
I mean, of course that would be massive to have
that amount of way ownership there.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
Yeah, all signals are that this deregulation will move ahead
at the FCC. This has been a priority for Republicans
in FCC circles for a long time, and I think
it will advance. There is a very difficult legal question
looming as to whether the FCC can change that thirty
nine percent cap. There's a strong argument on the other
(11:19):
side that Congress must do it, and I think we're
going to have a tough court fight on exactly that issue.
I think the FCC probably can win that fight, but
it might depend on what court ends up hearing it,
what set of three judges ends up hearing it first.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
All right, Matt, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate
it as always. Matt Chuttenholm, he's media litigation analyst. He's
kind of really the litigation and the regulatory guye that
we chat with when it comes to all things related
to the media and the regulation of the media. And
clearly this is a big issue for the ABC Television network,
for Walt Disney in general, and of course other parties
(11:55):
involved there, whether it be next to our Sinclaarence, some others.
So we'll keep an eye on that, but it's certainly
a big news, a big piece of news in the
TV business. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming
up after this.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarclay, and Android Auto
with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you
get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
All my personal take on energy and where we get
energy going forward is I think we're just gonna need
pretty much everything. If fossil fuels, guess oil and gas,
the renewable stuff, the water, the wind, whatever, I think
we're gonna need at all, and that includes nuclear as well.
And I've been really fascinated by some of the new
technologies in the nuclear I don't think we're talking about
(12:47):
building a new three mile island or anything. But James Walker.
He's the CEO and board member of a company called
Nano Nuclear Energy. It is a publica traded company on Nasdaq.
NNE is the ticker. He'sat there in Salt Lake Sea,
the Utah, which I've been to a million times, but
quite frankly, I just go to the airport and then
I hop in a car and drive up to one.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Of the ski resorts.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
That's my asied that's ideal assault. Like, James, thanks so
much for joining us here. Talk to us about your
company and kind of this whole technology around micro reactors.
Talk to us of what that technology is and is
it a thing.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
Sure, it's it's definitely a thing. It's it should be
the next big thing because there's a there's a big
sort of energy bottleneck coming in the country. There's huge
energy demands reindustrialization, electrification, but also significant demands from the
tech industry. They need gigawatts and gigawats of power and
they need that a lot of the time to be
off grid, to be co located with them and need
(13:42):
to be output power consistently over decades, and like that's
put them in bed with nuclear and that's it's kind
of why there's this hot space at the moment in
the nuclear industry and you're seeing so much investment go
into it. The new the US is trying to build
back nuclear infrastructure as fast as it can just to
enable this sort of massive scale up of new clear power.
So our company is obviously involved in that. We make
(14:04):
advanced reactor systems. They're lots smaller than the conventional ones.
But the idea here is that you can. You can
maduce these things and sort of roll them out like
products and deploy them and assemble them and output power anywhere.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, all these big names seem to
be going nuclear. And in your own words, it seems
as though we're in the middle of a nuclear renaissance.
What do you make of this, in particular in regards
to the tech sector.
Speaker 7 (14:30):
Well, I would say this is a pretty unprecedented time.
Like previously with nuclear, everyone always thought of renaissance was
coming with it because theoretically it should be the cheapest
and easiest form of power in the world, but it
never really came. But what's happened now is that it's say,
for instance, if you're a big data center, if you
are the Googles or the Microsoft's of the world, you
(14:51):
need you need a lot of power. But even if
you were to have all the gas and coal that
you needed or with anything like that, you would still
need to massively upgrade the national grid to a point
where it could begin outputting the power that you require,
and the infrastructure of costs that will be involved upgrading
the grid might be five trillion dollars something like that.
(15:12):
So they're not in the business of doing that, but
they need the power. So with a with nuclear you
don't need to be on the grid. You could be
off grid and you could just build a reactor wherever
you want and use a micro grid and then outlay
the power through that system to a data center or
an AI center, anything like that. So the tech industry
has sort of settled on this as the solution, the
(15:32):
long term solution. And then in the interim, you know,
they'll yield do anything. It'll be geothermal, they'll use gas'll
they'll use wind and solar as much as they can.
But like in their long term strategy, they realize that
for what they actually need, the large scale of it,
nuclear is gonna have to be a major component, if
not the largest, component of that solution.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
All right, your company, Nano nuclear Energy, it's got a
market cap of one point eight billion. Stock is up
three hundred percent of the trailing twelve months. It's up
seventy three percent year to dat, it's up thirteen percent today.
I think you sold some technology to somebody. I go
to your P and L. You don't have a nickel
of revenue. What is going on with your stock? Explain
to me what the investment theme is out there in
the marketplace for your company.
Speaker 7 (16:13):
It's it's the same with every advanced reactor company at
the moment, they're all in the same boat. We're all
building things. But the reason why Nano has particular interest
is that we have construction projects already scheduled. We have
a big project. They've been building the first the US's
first microrector at the University of Illinois, and we actually
should be building Canada's first microrector at the same time
(16:34):
up at Chalk River on Canadian Nuclear Laboratory land. So
there's huge interest in what we're doing, and so we're
getting an enormous amount of support. And what the institutional
investment is doing now is that they're hedging their bets.
They know that nuclear is going to take off, and
now they're beginning to bet on companies. And there's already
a sort of a convergence of you know, in a
(16:56):
hot sector, you'll have twenty companies come out of the woodwork,
but already they're sort of being squeezed down to a
handful of leading companies and we're one of them. And
that's why you're seeing like this huge market interest in
US because it's it's positioning. Everyone's positioning themselves for essentially
the future.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Well, we definitely touched on your stock performance. Here, tell
me what sets you apart from your competitors though.
Speaker 7 (17:20):
So, I mean, we've kept things very simple. We know
that the technology we're utilizing is going to work. High
temperature gas reactors have been used for decades. All we're
doing is scaling them down. But on top of that,
we're actually utilizing a special form of fuel which eliminates
the necessity the necessity to have all these redundant safety
(17:42):
systems you can co locate with. If it was a
data center in AI, you could be pressed right up
against them. You could even be sited in the middle
of a population center. There's no risk to anybody around
you because the reactor has no chance of having a meltdown,
and conventional civil nuclear power plant can. So it's a
very different kind of tech and so and already more
(18:06):
novel techs I think having a bit of a struggle, whereas,
for instance, high temperature gas reactors that utilize try so
that seems to be almost the most popular model amongst
developers at the moment. And so we've got that, but
our key One of our better strategies is that we've
made a reactor as big as you can possibly make
it and still move all the components by road, and
(18:27):
that means we will be able to have factory level
processes that just continuously manufacture these things. We can ship
everything by road, assemble it there, and then we don't
need to have big construction as big construction projects at
the site itself with individual licensing processes. So we're simplifying
things as much as we possibly can. That's why we've
(18:48):
proven to be pretty popular.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I'm just looking at kind of what's moving your stock here.
I know that you guys recently signed a letter of
intent for the proposed sale of its odin low pressure
currant micro designed to Cambridge adam Or, a UK based
company talked to us about that deal.
Speaker 7 (19:03):
So that we were streamlining the company. We have a
reactor called the Kronos reactor. That's our that's our flagship product.
That's the one we'll be building at University of Illinois
and at Chalk River in Canada. And the other reactors
that we were developing, like the low Key reactor and
the Zeus reactor, they were also high temperature gas reactors.
So the Odium reactor, it's a fantastic system, but we
(19:26):
we let the team, the technical team take that on
to develop themselves so we can concentrate fully on that
Kronos reactor, so that that streamlining of the organization is
obviously very important. We're scaling up very quickly, but we're
going to need, you know, ninety five percent of our
technical personnel working on this Kronos reactor. And when you're
focused like that and building, you know, it does have
(19:48):
a positive market influence.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
All right. James A is a former investment banker. I
would say take advantage of the stock price and sell
some stock, but I see you have been selling stock periodically,
so good for you. Good source of capital here. James Walker,
CEO on board matter of a Nano Nuclear Energy. It
is a puply traded company NNE. I'm kind of one
of those folks to say, I think nuclear has got
to be part of the energy solution because all I
hear from these data centers, there are gonna be tons
(20:12):
and tons of energy going forward, and I guess nuclear
is going to be a part of that to some extent.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
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