May 8, 2024 • 42 mins
Bloomberg's Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow break down earnings with the CEOs of Reddit and Lyft, and Shopify's President. Plus, we hear from Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai ahead of Google's I/O developer conference.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From Mark Hard We're Innovation of Money and Power Collie
in Silicon Valley, NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline
Hyde and Ed Ludlove.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm Caroline Hyde at Bloomberg's World headquarters in New York,
and I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
This is Bloomberg Technology coming up.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Full earnings coverage ahead, and we're going to be kicking
off the show with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Plus later this hour we'll turn to ride sharing and
sit down with the CEO of Lift, and.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
We'll hear from Alphabet CEO so No a pitchy ahead
of Google's developer conference. Io will break that down and
discuss so much more throughout this hour, But first we
turn our attention to what is happening more broadly on
the markets. Maybe we look at this risk asset of
choice to start bitcoin currently on the downside versus the
US dollar, or it really shows risk appetite is waning
at the moment. Ed, we've got a stronger dollar though,
(01:04):
and more broadly, we've seen kind of lackluster moves on
the benchmarks. More broadly, I wonder if the director can
bring up at the moment. What's happening when the Nasdaq
more broadly and tex stocks have been underwater a little
bit as we've pulled lower on some of the chip
names in particular. Look at the Nasdaq basically trading flat.
We're off by seven points. There's caution out there ahead
of maybe some bond auctions to come.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
We've seen the sell off in the bond market.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yields as we've been seeing on the tenure just up
about two three basis points. We've got a big flood
of money coming with a supply of tenure debt coming
on auction a little bit later.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
How will that be taken down supply goes up? Of course,
maybe a little bit of a sell off. But I'm
showing a light.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
And what's happening more broadly with the socks the Philadelphia
Semiconductor Index. Why is that lower when we've seen some
real ramifications from that news that broke yesterday all regarding
HUAWEIH once again limitations on the access to chips made
here in the United States by Intel by Qualcom. We
can dig into that story a little bit later, ed,
but I want to show that actually we're bouncing off
our loads when it comes to the socks. But what
(02:00):
if you've got on the micro perspective.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Well, in the first instance, earnings, there's going to be
a lot throughout the hour outside of earnings. But let's
start there with the tail of two ride sharing apps,
Uber and lyft Okay. Uber has a lot more to
it than ride sharing, but in its quarter there was
issues of seasonality. Regionally, it was a bit weaker and
the stock is down pretty significantly. Then you have the
little brother of ride sharing, Lyft, and its stock is higher.
(02:24):
It actually was pretty strong. You know. It wasn't just
that gross bookings, which is the industry standard metric, was
stronger than expected. They're also seeing kind of some bump
in activity for the riders themselves, not just rider growth,
but stickiness the amount they're using it. Then you have Rivian.
Rivian's a difficult one. It's not really about in the moment,
(02:44):
it's about the future. Later in the hour, we hear
again from the CEO Rjscarrange, and what I tried to
get from him was a sense of like, is this
really going to plan? Then there's Reddit redd its debut earnings.
We want to get to that stock and welcome our
Bloomberg TV and radio audiences worldwide. Read it out with
its first earnings report as a public company, shares markedly
(03:07):
higher seven percent. Let's bring in Reddit CEO Steve Huffman
and Steve the quarter gone forty eight cent top line growth.
You're doing well. The ad environment seems really good. But
I actually want to start with the next big thing,
and that seems to be the user economy. That seems
to be your focus. Tell me about the user economy strategy.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
So, good morning, thanks for having me.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
So, the user economy is the family of products and
features that we're building to facilitate transactions between users on
the platform, so user to user, gifting user to use
their subscription, user community, subscriptions, things like that. We think
(03:49):
there's a ton of potential here. One of our sayings
that Reddit is the only thing that scales with the
users is users. And so look, the ads business is
great and can scale pretty much infinitely from our point
of view, but we'd love to have another business model
to sit alongside it, and that's what the user economy.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Is, Steve alongside.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Also, the ad business that you say can infinitely scale
has been AI in the selling of data and licensing
to some of those big businesses that are creating large
language models based upon the data that you license, Google being.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
One of them.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
How infinite is that revenue stream? Because once the models
are trained, how necessary is it to keep on licensing.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
So I think there's a couple of ways to look
at this.
Speaker 6 (04:35):
First, the potential value here is I think quite large,
and between us and other folks in the market, we're
actually still developing that. You know, we're finding increasingly folks
coming to Reddit. And I think what we're seeing overall
big picture is in the AI era, where increasingly content
(04:56):
online is written by machines, there's this increasing premium content perspectives,
conversation that comes from real humans, and that's what Reddit provides.
So so far we've done one kind of major content
licensing deal with Google, but we're talking to others as well.
But your question about is is it a one time
(05:19):
thing or ongoing? I think what's really important here is
folks want real time access to up to date information,
conversation perspectives.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
Right.
Speaker 6 (05:29):
Imagine a search engine that stopped indexing in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5 (05:33):
It wouldn't be very helpful. And so I think that
real time feed is really important.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Steve, you took the interesting step to ask redditors and
particularly redditors who investors in the IPO, to submit questions,
and those some of which you answered on the call
and some of which you will follow up in video form.
We're showing one of them now, which is what is
the justification for having one billion dollars in working capital?
I want to take that question and apply it to AI.
(06:03):
You know, data licensing is a revenue generation tool for you.
But on the technology side, might we see some m
and A that answers that question from your redditor community,
but also helps us understand a bit more like what
are you guys going to do to increase competence to
increase the technology offering on AI?
Speaker 5 (06:20):
Sure, we'll look.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
Our first priority with the cash is to invest in
the business, so to continue to develop the core Reddit product,
the user economy, which we discussed, the developer platform, our
AI efforts, all of those things.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Our second priority would be M and A.
Speaker 6 (06:35):
And so you know, we're always I think looking in
the market for teams and technology that can really kind
of help advance our initiatives. And right as you allude to,
I think there's just a tremendous opportunity in AI in search,
both to make our core product better and potentially to
(06:57):
expand it as well.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Let's talk about expansion and particularly internationally, Steve, because there's
much talk about how you're basically translating able to bring
what is all the reviews, the content, the discussion groups,
not just to those that are writing and speaking in
the English language, but in French and European countries.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
How is this.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Likely to be enabled by AI but also add to
the scale of international growth.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Well, this is really exciting.
Speaker 6 (07:24):
Like, not that long ago, we didn't have the capability
of translating our content at human quality, but with today's
large language models, we can do that, and so we
can translate our what is today our mostly English corpus
into just about any language. And so we're doing that
(07:45):
in French right now and testing that in France, and
it's going very well, and so almost immediately French speakers
can see the entire Reddit corpus or consume their entire
redit corpus in English. And a lot of reddits content
is universal, right, it's just people talking about life. But
(08:07):
even the content that is maybe regionally specific to America,
I think it's still really interesting to read and vice versa.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
And so I'm really excited.
Speaker 6 (08:17):
At this idea that we can fulfill the promise of
the Internet, which is allow people around the world, in
different countries and different cultures to communicate in their native language.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
For our Bloomberg television and radio audience worldwide, we're speaking
to the Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and Steve things are
going well right now. It seems one of the technology
changes at the start of this year and even before that,
was that Google started applying its work in large language
models and AI to its search engine. And there is
(08:52):
a school of thoughts that Reddit was a beneficiary of
that that just within search, Reddit becomes more commonplace up
the results that are given. Can you give us any
sort of granularity on how that's helping you with growing
the redditor base and keeping the redditor base.
Speaker 5 (09:11):
Well, let's just take a step up for a second.
Speaker 6 (09:15):
Reddit has what people want, right, People have questions.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
They often go to Google with questions. Reddit has the
best answers on the Internet.
Speaker 6 (09:22):
They want advice, they want information, they want a sense
of community and belonging. These are the things that Reddit
provides and search engines like Google ten years ago, last year, today, tomorrow,
help people find that content on Reddit. They're looking for
those answers, they're looking for those communities they're looking for.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
And so I think I look at this as a
natural evolution.
Speaker 6 (09:49):
Search engines are getting smarter, they're getting better, they're getting
more effective, which means they're getting more effective at helping
users find what they're looking for on Reddit, which of
course benefits our platform and our business. And so I
think these are all I think welcome evolutions. But Reddit
(10:09):
it's been a net beneficiary of search for a long time,
and I expect that to continue.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
How much have you been a net beneficiary of going public, Steve?
How much did the IPO help draw people to the platform.
How much was it a pr event do you think
and actually boosted some of the community there.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
Well, look, I'm sure that's an aspect to it.
Speaker 6 (10:30):
You know, it's hard to say and that you know,
Reddit primarily grows through word of mouth anyway. You know,
we don't really do consumer marketing, and so I think
anytime we're in the news that helps in the IPO
with a lot of news. But look, the reason I
was most excited about the IPO is that we are
able to.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
Include our users as investors.
Speaker 6 (10:53):
Our users have this deep sense of ownership over Reddit,
right they create the communities, they create the culture, they
create all of the content, and for them to have
the opportunity to be actual owners. That was our dream
and that was one of the main reasons we went
public in the first place. So that's actually what I'm
most excited about.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Steve is a kind of returning founder. CEO of Date,
what's your one personal goal for this year, it's something
you want to achieve.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
Well, we mapped out two of them.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
We got the company public and I had my second kid,
and so for the rest of this year, I want
to deliver on some of the product initiatives that I've
been very excited about, so developer platform, the user economy,
the machine translation that we've discussed. These are all things
I think in the day to day building of Reddit
(11:44):
that I'm very excited about.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Steve, congrats, I'm the second kid. Reddit CEO, Steve Hoffman,
I try to have you with us.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Now, coming up, we'll hear from the Alphabet CEO Sin
of hitsheie his vision for the future of artificial intelligence
as next and.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
What are you watching.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
We continue with the earning story and we take a
look at shares of a firm lower again eight and
a half percent. It's really been a season of if
you don't beat expectations or your prior guidance, you go
down lower. Continued about product differentiation, continue discussion about the
rate environment with the firm as well, or continue the
earnings coverage. Much more ahead. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Let's talk open AI because it's developing a feature for
chatchbt that can search the web and cite sources and
its results according to a source.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Now, the future, we would all allow users.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
To ask chatchbt a question and receive answers that use
details from the web with citations to sources.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Just think Wikipedia entries and blog posts.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Now, this could potentially be competing head on with AI search,
Startle Perplexity, and of course Google Search. And speaking of which,
Google and Alphabet CEO so on a pitch I sat
down exclusively with blubgo Original's host Emily Tang to discuss
the future of search and accelerating work on Google's AI models.
Here's what he had to say on some of the
growing pains of Google searchers adaptation to the AI revolution.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
Anytime there's a transition, you get an explosion of new content,
and AI is going to do that. So for us,
we view this as the challenge, and I actually think
here there'll be people will struggle to do that right.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
So doing that well is what.
Speaker 7 (13:38):
Will define a high quality product, and I think it's
going to be the heart of what makes so successful.
Speaker 8 (13:43):
You make a ton of money on ads next to
the links generated by searchers if a chatbot is giving
you answers and not links, and maybe more answers in links.
Sometimes are we in the midst of an assault on
Google's business model.
Speaker 7 (13:56):
So we've always found people want choices, including in commercial area,
and that's a fundamental need and I think we've always
been able to balance it. As we are rolling out
Aiovius and Search, we've been experimenting with ads and the
data we see shows that those fundamental principles will hold
true during the space as well.
Speaker 8 (14:16):
The images that Gemini initially generated of Asian Nazis and
black Founding fathers, you said that was unacceptable.
Speaker 9 (14:24):
If you look at any pictures of the.
Speaker 8 (14:25):
Founding fathers, you're seeing old white men. People are calling
this Woki and it's not just happening here, It's happening
across the industry. How did the model generate something that
it never saw.
Speaker 7 (14:35):
We are a company which serves products uses around the world,
and there are generic questions. For example, people come and
say show me images of school teachers or doctors or nurses.
We have people asking discovery from Indonesia or the US.
How do you get it right for our global user base.
(14:56):
Obviously the mistake was that we over applied, including case
the spirit should have never applied.
Speaker 9 (15:04):
So that was the bug.
Speaker 7 (15:05):
And you know, you know, so we got it wrong.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
That was alphabet CEO Cunda Pinschai and Bloomberg Original's host
Emily Changi. You can catch the full interview from the
circuit tonight at six pm Eastern on Bloomberg Television.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Let's just check in on the shares of Shopify because
they're down the most on record US after the company
forecasts lower profit margins as I can induce to really
be boosting the marketing spend now. The comments company also
reported a surprise net loss in the first quarter after
the sale of its logistics business last year. Joining us
now to break down the results. Harley Finkelstein, Shopify president,
(15:50):
and Harley I remember speaking with Toby look At, the
CEO of the business once and he said that anytime
anyone talks about the share price in the office, while
everyone has to be bought donuts, I have a fee
that might be some downuts.
Speaker 9 (16:01):
To day specific specific.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, Harley, I mean, what what does it feel like
when you see the shares down that hard?
Speaker 9 (16:09):
Oh?
Speaker 10 (16:09):
I'm I mean we've always managed the business in a
long term way. What we actually and what you're seeing
at Shopify right now is we got came on the show. Actually,
I think it's wo to end about this new shape
of Shopify is unlocking our potential. We're helping all different
types of merchants take more and more of our products.
But let's just kind of break down. You know, how
the quarter went. I mean, we generate almost two billion
dollars of revenue. That was a twenty three percent year
(16:31):
a year. We had a billion dollars a gross profit
and very important in this particular macro environment, Carolyn. We
had free cashual of two hundred and thirty two million
dollars for the quarter. In fact, free cash margin doubled
from Q one of last year, so you're seeing I
think one of the best versions of Shopify with a
ton of opportunities, whether it's enterprise, physical, retail, international B
(16:52):
to B. We are very excited about about what we
did in Q one. We're very excited about the future
of this company.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Hally. The anxiety from investors about fitting margins, right, I
think we all set that as the baseline. One thing
you've been focused on is marketing, right, which accounts for
that in part? Give me some specifics. What kind of
marketing are you doing? And I think you've also said
it's going to pay off in about eighteen months time.
How do you know the marketing spend will pay off? Well?
Speaker 10 (17:20):
First of all, we think about marketing and the same
way we think about building products, build the best solutions,
build the best internal tools to drive decision through data,
and the results are evident.
Speaker 9 (17:31):
I'll go with them in a second.
Speaker 10 (17:32):
But one of the things that we really believe is
that shopi line needs to be agile and at times countercyclical.
When we see opportunities for us to take advantage and
gain more market share across any of our core products,
We're going to do that. But the key for us
is striking a balance between top line growth, operational leverage,
and profitability. And I think what differentiates Shopify from a
growth perspective or marketing perspective to user words is that
(17:54):
the way we interpret data, the way we experiment, actually
helps us to win.
Speaker 9 (17:58):
And we have multiple drivers of this growth.
Speaker 10 (18:00):
But the best proof I can give you is we
drove a nearly one hundred and thirty percent increase immersion
ADS within one of our key marketing channels, sure you know,
the one from Q four to Q one, while still
remaining squarely within our payback Guardrails. So when we see
the people that other companies are pulling back and we
think we can get a return on our AD spend,
that again is within Guardrails has the right CAC to
L two ratios that in twenty twenty five you will
(18:23):
see the growth from these efforts. We're going to take
those and back to sort of the question Caroline open with,
that's the reason why we don't really care about the
day to day stock fluctuation. We care about over the
long run, does a stock price reflect the real value
of the company. And Shopify is becoming the global retail company.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Next month, you're going to have a big event, and
I think I'm right in saying it's the first in
person event at least since before the pandemic twenty eighteen.
That is a marketing expense, but there must be a
reason for doing.
Speaker 9 (18:51):
It, certainly.
Speaker 10 (18:52):
I mean, we are thriving in this remote first environment
and we see immense value in getting people together as well.
So some at SHOPIAY Summit is accommodation of multiple events
that brings together our team, our partners, our top one
thousand developers from all all over the world. And you know,
we think that it's this remote first philosophy and working
(19:13):
model allows us to recruit the best of the brands
from all over the world. But a key component of
this digital bide design approach is also supplementing it with
a few real life events, and we have not done
We've not brought the entire company together in person, and
since like twenty eighteen, we think it's important to do so,
especially because we can also get our developers, our third
party developers in the room, explain to them all the
(19:34):
opportunities of how they should be building on Shopify. Then
they go back home and they and they continue their
businesses as well. So it's an important event for us,
and we're excited by the Shopfy summit, and.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I can imagine that it's important for morale, particularly after layoffs.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Holly, are layoffs done now?
Speaker 10 (19:48):
We have no plans to do any additional layoffs at
this point. What you are seeing, Caroline is this new
shape of Shopify. We have been able to grow top line,
We've been able to grow bottom line. We're making serious
investments in the future of our business now we're doing
so with a relatively flat headcount. In fact, if you
go back three quarters, headcount has not grown that much.
What matters to us is the talent density of the company,
(20:10):
and this is the best talent team, the best version
of Shopify I've seen in my fifteen years of being here.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
And you've talked about how this is. You're being countercyclical
right now. Just tell us how countercyclical. How many headwinds
are you experiencing in the world of the consumer right now?
Speaker 4 (20:25):
How reticent are they to shop?
Speaker 10 (20:28):
Yeah, I mean it's really important, obviously because the state
of the consumers as obviously, and the whole macro trend
is something that everyone's thinking about. First of all, we
see the consumer actually remaining quite resilient. What we do see,
in particular is that these consumers are buying from brands
they love and feel ineffinity to. And all those brands
think of the brands you love are all on Shopify.
But a new area of business are those less discretionary
(20:51):
brands like Nesley or Hines or bark Box or Figs
whose scrubs are in hospitals all over the country.
Speaker 9 (20:56):
Those are also using Shopify as well.
Speaker 10 (20:59):
And when you combine in our enterprise offering, Shopify point
a cell, which is the physical retail product we have,
plus B to B plus all these new merchant solutions
like audiences to help with ads, shop off a capital Shoppey,
which is the best can run accelerated check out. You're
beginning to see that all these on raps are going
to lead to serious growth in our future. And that's
the reason why the sentiment inside of Shopify right now
(21:21):
is incredibly optimistic.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Shop five President Harley Finkelstein, thank you, welcome back to
Bloomber Technology ed Lovelow in San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Aline hid right here in New Or let's check in
on these market said, because we're basically flat when you're
looking at the big benchmarks. I'm looking the na's that
one hundred on the day and a.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Little bit of a cautious tone. And look, we've had
four straight days of games. That has been a good run.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
But we're also trying to digest a macro picture that's
not giving us much. We're still looking at the FED
and some of the speakers coming from the federals.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
EV, but more some of the microheadwinds.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
When you think of well chip maker is trying to
sell into geopolitical headwinds. That's more of what we're boiling
down to on the day. When it comes to tech stocks,
I'm looking at the tenure yield. Though this is a
macro picture. This is one of sales. This is an
auction of tenure debt coming. I'm currently off by about
two basis points. When you're thinking of yields going higher,
prices falling. Bitcoin also on the lower side, resentiment a
little bit dower there or off by one point four percent.
(22:17):
Maybe that's also to do with a stronger US dollor
on the day, but also whether those ETF flows just
cooling down a little bit. Let's look at some of
the micro pictures that we want to shine a light
on though, and we just referenced it just before we
went to break. Tesla currently off by one point six percent.
Now we know that US prosecutors have been looking in
the way in which Tesla and Eilon Musk have discussed
self driving. Did they mislead investors? Do they mislead consumers?
(22:39):
But now the nuance is coming from a router's report
saying that maybe they're looking at them for securities fraud,
wire fraud. Potentially that's a router's report. We're off by
one point six percenters, we're just reminded of the US
prosecutor's investigation. Armholdings up by quarter of a percent. Now,
remember this is a company we were looking at this.
Its current valuation is ninety times future earnings. At the moment,
(23:01):
many wondering how they live up to this valuation on
the market. How we baked in too much from euphoria
around AI for this chip designer. Their earnings come after
the bell so tooos the Airbnb and look, we're looking
for bookings ultimately to be slowing, in fact flowing bookings
growth for Airbnb that will likely to have seen since
twenty twenty. That's what the market braces itself for or
a more than a percentage point ed.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
But what are you looking at.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Well, let's head out to DC and talk about TikTok,
after its China based parent, byte Dance made it clear
it won't comply with the new US law requiring it
to sell the video sharing app, saying quote that for
the first time in history, Congress is an acted a
law that subjects a single named speech platform to a
permanent nationwide band and bars every American from participating in
(23:46):
a unique online community with more than one billion people worldwide.
I want to bring in Bloombergs Chris Strome to break
it all down. It is not a surprise, right Chris.
The legal challenge, but the question to be considered by
the courts is whether or not this is an outright ban,
And I think the academic consensus is that that will
be something the court looks at closely.
Speaker 11 (24:08):
Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean TikTok is making a
few different arguments here. They're saying that, you know, the
the law that was signed in fringes on on on
the first Amendment, it represents an illegal taking, and uh,
you know, TikTok is saying that it's not feasible for
them to separate you know, TikTok us from the rest
(24:30):
of the TikTok you know global community. And so really
what TikTok has done here is they've just bought a
lot of time by filing this lawsuit, because there's no
way this is going to be resolved by next January.
There's going to be a long court battle, you know,
regardless of what happens, There's going to be appeals. It's
most likely going to go to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Okay, And this sort of time frame many feeling that
an expedited ruling isn't gonna come until say the fourth quarter,
then you have to look ahead to January when it
ultimately it might be then at least banned or at.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Least has to be sold.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
It feels as though the sentiment very much is is
that this isn't going to be a sales process, right.
Speaker 11 (25:10):
Bike Dances making it clear at this point that they
have no intention of divesting TikTok. They are gonna you know,
they're digging in for a prolonged legal battle and also
probably with the hopes of you know, a Trump administration
that might be more friendly to them, and so the
law says that they need to divest by next January
(25:31):
or there's going to be a ban in the United States.
The legal process won't be resolved by then. If they
get up to the point where the band is supposed
to go into effect, they'll most likely seek an emergency
in junction to prevent that band from going to and
going going to effect, and it'll most likely be granted.
And so, you know, we're long ways away from this
(25:54):
being resolved.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Chris, who are the players here? You just outline brilliant
the kind of short term and long term process. But
if Bike Dance has filed a legal challenge, who are
they challenging. Who's on the other side of the table.
Speaker 11 (26:09):
Yeah, it's interesting because they actually filed their lawsuit against
the Attorney General Meryrick Garland. And part of the reason
for that is because according to the law, DJs and
is charged with enforcing the law. And so you know,
in order to bring a legal lawsuit, they needed to find,
you know, a defendant that they were gonna that they
(26:31):
were going to sue, so they chose Meyork Garland. But really,
you know, they're they're challenging the law that Congress passed
that Biden signed and saying it's unconstitutional.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Amidst all of this, we have players weighing in whether
it's Steve monusan previous Treasury Sextuori sat down in David
Weston yesterday talking about how he's still hoping that he
might be able to get his hands on TikTok, perhaps
without the algorithm he'd rebuild it. Had Eric Schmid on
the show yesterday who had been interested in buying the US.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Version of TikTok.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
He backs away from that and actually says that this
is just more broadly should be regulated in the US
rather than banned. But Chris, I'm interested from a legal perspective,
can we read anything across from what happened in Montana?
Can we feel that sentiment will be on the side
from a First Amendment perspective, even if though we're hearing
from TikTok that they couldn't legally actually separate the businesses anyhow.
Speaker 11 (27:23):
Uh, there's gonna be a lot of support for TikTok's
It's already it's already coming, and it's gonna it's gonna
h span the political spectrum, the economic spectrum. You have
you know, people who advocate for free speech uh saying
that TikTok shouldn't be banned. You have people who are
(27:45):
saying that the government hasn't made u, you know, a
legitimate national security argument to try to ban TikTok. I
would expect that there's gonna be a lot of amicus
filings in this case, and then you have this statecases
that are playing out like you mentioned, and so you know,
for the foreseeable future, there's going to just be a
(28:06):
lot of litigation over this issue.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Blimbers Kristrom, thank you very much. Former US Treasury Secretary
Steve maninschen As Caroenline says, says he's still interested in
buying TikTok's US operations from its Chinese owner, Byte Dance,
but believes the social media app's critical video recommendation technology
could be replicated. Listen to this.
Speaker 12 (28:26):
Still very interested in buying it, and to the extent
they want to sell it or spin it off, we
very much want to pursue that. I support that Congress
passed the bill and it's now been signed into law.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
I will say this is had just.
Speaker 12 (28:39):
Incredible overwhelming support with the Republicans and Democrats. This may
be the only thing that everybody agrees on the fact
that it's on.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
One hundred and sixty million phones.
Speaker 12 (28:50):
I do think it's a security issue now.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
One of the other people who are at one point
reported to be interested in getting in on buying with
minution was Google or former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. We
spoke with him yesterday and he's actually non interested anymore.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Just take a listen.
Speaker 13 (29:07):
My personal view on this is you're better off regulating
than banning or a judicial action. All the big tech
companies are now in the hands of.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
The DOJ in various legal fights.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I would prefer to see.
Speaker 13 (29:20):
A regulatory regime that it sort of has the right
incentives and the right prohibitions for all of these things.
My own view of TikTok is that TikTok is not
really social media, it's really television, and that you can
regulate television by the equivalent of the equal time rule.
But somehow we're not having that conversation.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Let's get back to earnings and Rivian posting a wider
than expected adjusted loss in the first quarter. A break
down the results Rivian CEO R J. Scaringe.
Speaker 14 (29:49):
The challenge with this number is it's a false metric
and it just causes It just caused a lot of noise,
and so we'd like to rather focus on the product.
We're tears out from launch, and our goal is to
pete ramping production as quickly as possible so that people
don't have to wait as long as they had to
wait in the case of our R one products.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Oh, Jay, something I noticed is interesting in your filings
is the proportion of the R one generation that at
least versus ball seems to be going up. Could you
give us that proportion and is it a good thing
for Rivian right now in this environment where you're between
the two growth phases if more are one generations at.
Speaker 14 (30:29):
Least, Yeah, we don't disclose the split between sales and lease.
We now we've expanded least to offer that on R
one s as well, and we've added a number of
states that we offer leasing. Believe it's not thirty two states.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Now.
Speaker 14 (30:46):
The key to recognize is leasing does have an advantage
for electric vehicles and that any lease qualifies for the
seven thousand and five fron dollar attack credit, and so
that leads to disproportionately large number of leases relative to
an internal combustion engine vehicle given the benefits of that
of that credit.
Speaker 15 (31:07):
And I do want to talk a little bit about
what's going on with the factories because you shut down
some of the assembly lines to make component upgrades. If
you could just walk us through the math and sort
of the path board on how that gets through to
positive gross profit by the fourth quarter, that.
Speaker 8 (31:21):
Would be helpful.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
Yeah, we.
Speaker 14 (31:26):
Started production in late twenty twenty one, and this was
the first time, you know, walking through the plant that
there had been no vehicles on the lines. At the
start of April, the plant was really empty. We drained
out everything that we were producing with the largely original
supply chain and component design, made a large number of
(31:48):
changes to the plant, and then also had a number
of new suppliers come on board replacing existing suppliers and
the park designs and component designs, and that's going to
lead to a step change improvement in our structure, both
at the bill of materials level, but importantly also at
the what we call the conversion costs level, allowing the
plant to run more efficiently. And we did a similar
(32:10):
shutdown with our ED program, and that was something we
did at the beginning of twenty twenty three. We took
about thirty five percent bill of material cost out of
the vehicle with that shutdown, and the scale of change
we've made with our one here is very similar to that.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Great interview ed the Rivian CEO R J. Scarrange along
with Kitiger.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
I felt too.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Now coming up will be joined by Logitech CEO. I
like a favor about consumer tech and gaining on AI
so much more. That conversation you don't want to miss
as a blue meg technology.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
Let's talk Logitech.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
It's linking its products to guess what artificial intelligence in
a whole number of ways, like with new AI Promptu
software which will turn your Logitech keyboard your mouse. It's
basically a shortcut to chat YOUBT a priest and welcome
here in New York.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Ha a favor. Now for more.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
She's just finished our firste hundred days at Logitech, new
ceo coming via here and interested to hear about how
much how quickly you've had to evolve with AI. Was
it something that you already had in the locker, you
were already look.
Speaker 16 (33:19):
In this direction, or something that you were able to
be nimble on. Yeah, I think we have a very
nimble team. So a lot has happened, even in my
first one hundred days there, which has been fun. But
AI is definitely wanted a tailwinds so that we see for
our business going forward, along with some other things. Hybrid
work clearly is a tailwind for us as well as
gaming really mainstreaming and continuing to grow. But if I
(33:41):
look at AI, there's really three things we're doing. First
of all, like everyone else, it's helping internal productivity and
we're seeing, especially with our software engineers, some really good
productivity gains from using some of the new AI tools.
Then when we look at our products, two things into
software you just mentioned it. We just launched the new
Logy AI prompt builder, which is a shortcut to chat GPT.
(34:06):
You know, if you're a big user of chat GPT,
you have to go in and out, you're toggling between
what you're doing and chat GPT. This is a shortcut
so that you can stay in the flow, which is
really important for our heavy users again, the coders, and only.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Open a eyes chat GPT. What about the others?
Speaker 16 (34:21):
Okay for now, but I'm sure more will follow. We're
a company who really partners with everyone, so more will follow. Yeah,
And then what I'm probably most excited about is actually
in the video and audio space, where we've for actually
for quite a while, have been using these large data
models to really step change the quality of audio and videos.
(34:42):
So maybe two quick examples. In headphones, our latest generation
of headphones does two way noise cancelations. So let's say
we're on the phone, I'm at an airport, You're wearing
the headphone, and of course it's super annoying because you
know you're hearing not just my voice, but every announcement
at that airport. New headphones, our new headphones do two
(35:03):
way noise cancelation on both sides. So now it's smart
enough things to the model to recognize my voice, but
to tune out everything else that's going on around me,
which really really step changes audio quality.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
We love that.
Speaker 16 (35:17):
On the video side, we just launched this new video
conferencing tool for offices called Site. It's a camera that
you set in a large meeting room. I'm sure you've
been in meetings. There's twelve of you on one side,
one poor guy on the other side on the screen.
He's of course left out. This acts like a intelligent
producer in the room. It swivels around to focus on
(35:39):
the right person. But again also audio, it swivels to
you when you're speaking, but not when you're opening a
packet of crisps, which is quite important.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I'm afraid I did go away.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
No, really, I think we run out of time. But
what I was just going to say is like, gaming
still a thirty year business and as we reflected on,
it's really hard out there. Just ten seconds sum up
the environment.
Speaker 16 (36:02):
Yeah, we think gaming is a real tailwind for US.
Gaming was up eight percent for US in the last quarter.
We think the future of gaming is really great.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Log Tech CEO had like a favor. We wish I
had more time with you. Thank you for stopping by
while you're on your In New.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
York, ride sharing company Lift reported first quarter results and guidance.
The beat investors expectations really send me the shares of
the company higher. Joining us now is the Lift CEO
David Rischer on set in San Francisco. There was something
(36:37):
interesting that you said, which is you made improvement in
both rider retention and new riders, and you've made some
progress in Canada. But actually I wanted more specifics on
what you did to achieve that.
Speaker 17 (36:49):
Yeah, so I'd break it down like this. First of all,
it's good to be here. The second of all, I
break it down like this. First you got to get
the basics. Rate we call it ride shair perfection. That's
all a pricing rate, paying drivers right, picking you up fast,
our ETA is that's what we call how fast we
pick you up are faster they've been in four years.
So those are the basics. Once you do that, then
you can build on top of that. Then you can
(37:10):
do things like innovations around how fast can.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
We pick you up for the airport, for example.
Speaker 17 (37:14):
One of my favorite example, I think last time you
and I talked, we had just rolled out this on
time pickup promise, and now less than one point five
percent of people are being picked up so late that
we have to give them the one hundred bucks. So
after the basics, then you innovate, and then you partner
with other people. We've got great partnerships with Chase, with
Delta and others. You put all those things together and
it's a great combination. It's work really well.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Oh, let's go in on the B to B partnerships, David,
Because I know that you are mobility first, but you
look at Uber and instacart yesterday.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
What other partnerships do you have in mind?
Speaker 17 (37:45):
So I probably won't be able to speculate on new partnerships,
but I can tell you this. You know, I spent
in my prior career a lot of time in Africa.
And now you're asking where's this going, But the answer
is in a lot of countries in Africa, there's this
great expression, if you want to go fast, you go alone,
but if you want to go far, you go together.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
So you know, as I say.
Speaker 17 (38:04):
Delta Amazon as a partner, we pick up some of
the folks at distribution centers linked in as a partner,
we actually they overran their parking lot when people came
back to work, and so we help people get back
to work. Delta sky Miles, of course you can get
sky miles, but also we help move their flight crews around,
particularly in early morning hours. These are partnerships that they're
Chase with Sapphire. They're really deep partnerships. And when you
(38:26):
really go deep with someone, you know, it's almost like
a relationship. You can find all sorts of amazing things to do.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Those are the groups of people you're moving And as
you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about
how people move from me to be I want to
go back to ROBOTAXI. Tesla will show us a robo
tax in August, and your competitor Uber has this relationship
with Weimo. I don't think you have a formal relationship.
But if Tesla comes to market, you must be thinking
about that long term.
Speaker 17 (38:52):
Yes, but so first robotaxis or let's just say a
time of his vehicles are going to happen.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
There's no question here in San Francisco. They're happening. You
see them on the street. But we have to think
about it this way.
Speaker 17 (39:03):
For someone's got to make the tech, then someone's got
to build the car, then someone's got to own the car,
and someone's got to run the network. Right, these are
four different pieces of business that people have to do.
We run the network and it's a very expensive, very
expansive network that we run every single day, two million.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Rides a day.
Speaker 17 (39:19):
Now, if we need to incorporate and of course we
will autonomous vehicles into that, that's great, that's fantastic. It'll increase,
you know, supply, and increase the number of different ways.
But I don't really look at an initiative like theirs
and think it words me. I think that's really interesting.
It's going to maybe help expand the market. And I
would say for them, gosh, that's a lot to take
on at once, and so you know, we'll see, we'll
(39:39):
see how that goes.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
David, innovation was what you're just talking about. Would you
ever reconsider innovation in taking more than just people but
food but groceries.
Speaker 17 (39:51):
You know, our real focus is on moving people around
and in specific getting them out of their house. And
this is where I get a little philosophical. If you
read any of this of articles about kind of the
health of our nation. We talk a lot about sort
of political divide, but there's also just a tremendous amount
of loneliness and people staying at home too much and
being disconnected from their friends and their family.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
And so forth.
Speaker 17 (40:11):
So I'd say that really is going to be our focus.
It doesn't mean that, of course, we also get people
out on bikes, you know.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
I were just talking.
Speaker 17 (40:17):
You've got a great bike system in New York among
other places, so that's important as well. But I really
think getting people out and about is really our focus,
and then we can partner for other things to the
extent that is important to customers.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
David Our Bloomberg Intelligence, and this man Deep Singing and
I were going through your numbers and trying to see
if it proved you'd taken market share from Uber. Dara
kosh Rashahi is coming up next after we've gone off
on the next program with Bloomberg's Emily Chang. What's your
message for Dara in terms of whether he should be
looking over his shoulder in the progress you are making.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
You know, it's so funny.
Speaker 17 (40:48):
People love, of course, to talk about this sort of
head to head thing. I think our competition is people
staying at home. That's our competition. I want more people out,
I want them connecting.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
With other folks.
Speaker 17 (40:57):
I think it's just a much more interesting way to
run of business than to sort of always focus on
your competitor.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
You know.
Speaker 17 (41:02):
Look, they'll go through their ups and downs in their quarters.
So he's got a loom in his mind. It's fine
ask him about all the different things he's got in
his mind, and we're just going to focus on our
riders and drivers.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
On your mind.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Gen Z, women, corporate travelers, who's getting in your cars,
who's riding your bike?
Speaker 17 (41:19):
David, Well, so a lot of women are I'm glad
you brought that up. Of course, we have women plus Connect,
which I'm so so proud of. One of the great
quotes I heard from a friend recently is when he
said he was actually talking to his girlfriend and he said,
why do you like this women plus connect rider driver
connection on Lift and she said, look, I can finally
take a nap in Ride Shair. I can finally take
a nap, which I think is so profound. We've had
(41:40):
something like twenty thousand new women joined the platform on
the driver side just since we've started the program.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
So super important. I'll tell you another thing that's really interesting.
We're seeing.
Speaker 17 (41:50):
Of course, commute is happening, but also party time. People
really are getting out. It's after nine or after five
o'clock and it's going great.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
I am here for party time.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
David Richer, CEO, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
We appreciate it. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition
of Bloomberg Technology Ed. We've got a party tomorrow, a.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Big party for Bloomberg Technology Live, but a big show
to recap. Check out the pod, putting it on Apple, Spotify.
iHeart and of course all the Bloomberg platform's big thank
you to everyone that listens to their podcast and the
way to work maybe in a lift or Reneuber from
San Francisco, New York. This is Bloomberg
From Mark Hard We're Innovation of Money and Power Collie
in Silicon Valley, NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline
Hyde and Ed Ludlove.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm Caroline Hyde at Bloomberg's World headquarters in New York,
and I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
This is Bloomberg Technology coming up.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Full earnings coverage ahead, and we're going to be kicking
off the show with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Plus later this hour we'll turn to ride sharing and
sit down with the CEO of Lift, and.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
We'll hear from Alphabet CEO so No a pitchy ahead
of Google's developer conference. Io will break that down and
discuss so much more throughout this hour, But first we
turn our attention to what is happening more broadly on
the markets. Maybe we look at this risk asset of
choice to start bitcoin currently on the downside versus the
US dollar, or it really shows risk appetite is waning
at the moment. Ed, we've got a stronger dollar though,
(01:04):
and more broadly, we've seen kind of lackluster moves on
the benchmarks. More broadly, I wonder if the director can
bring up at the moment. What's happening when the Nasdaq
more broadly and tex stocks have been underwater a little
bit as we've pulled lower on some of the chip
names in particular. Look at the Nasdaq basically trading flat.
We're off by seven points. There's caution out there ahead
of maybe some bond auctions to come.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
We've seen the sell off in the bond market.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yields as we've been seeing on the tenure just up
about two three basis points. We've got a big flood
of money coming with a supply of tenure debt coming
on auction a little bit later.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
How will that be taken down supply goes up? Of course,
maybe a little bit of a sell off. But I'm
showing a light.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
And what's happening more broadly with the socks the Philadelphia
Semiconductor Index. Why is that lower when we've seen some
real ramifications from that news that broke yesterday all regarding
HUAWEIH once again limitations on the access to chips made
here in the United States by Intel by Qualcom. We
can dig into that story a little bit later, ed,
but I want to show that actually we're bouncing off
our loads when it comes to the socks. But what
(02:00):
if you've got on the micro perspective.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Well, in the first instance, earnings, there's going to be
a lot throughout the hour outside of earnings. But let's
start there with the tail of two ride sharing apps,
Uber and lyft Okay. Uber has a lot more to
it than ride sharing, but in its quarter there was
issues of seasonality. Regionally, it was a bit weaker and
the stock is down pretty significantly. Then you have the
little brother of ride sharing, Lyft, and its stock is higher.
(02:24):
It actually was pretty strong. You know. It wasn't just
that gross bookings, which is the industry standard metric, was
stronger than expected. They're also seeing kind of some bump
in activity for the riders themselves, not just rider growth,
but stickiness the amount they're using it. Then you have Rivian.
Rivian's a difficult one. It's not really about in the moment,
(02:44):
it's about the future. Later in the hour, we hear
again from the CEO Rjscarrange, and what I tried to
get from him was a sense of like, is this
really going to plan? Then there's Reddit redd its debut earnings.
We want to get to that stock and welcome our
Bloomberg TV and radio audiences worldwide. Read it out with
its first earnings report as a public company, shares markedly
(03:07):
higher seven percent. Let's bring in Reddit CEO Steve Huffman
and Steve the quarter gone forty eight cent top line growth.
You're doing well. The ad environment seems really good. But
I actually want to start with the next big thing,
and that seems to be the user economy. That seems
to be your focus. Tell me about the user economy strategy.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
So, good morning, thanks for having me.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
So, the user economy is the family of products and
features that we're building to facilitate transactions between users on
the platform, so user to user, gifting user to use
their subscription, user community, subscriptions, things like that. We think
(03:49):
there's a ton of potential here. One of our sayings
that Reddit is the only thing that scales with the
users is users. And so look, the ads business is
great and can scale pretty much infinitely from our point
of view, but we'd love to have another business model
to sit alongside it, and that's what the user economy.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Is, Steve alongside.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Also, the ad business that you say can infinitely scale
has been AI in the selling of data and licensing
to some of those big businesses that are creating large
language models based upon the data that you license, Google being.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
One of them.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
How infinite is that revenue stream? Because once the models
are trained, how necessary is it to keep on licensing.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
So I think there's a couple of ways to look
at this.
Speaker 6 (04:35):
First, the potential value here is I think quite large,
and between us and other folks in the market, we're
actually still developing that. You know, we're finding increasingly folks
coming to Reddit. And I think what we're seeing overall
big picture is in the AI era, where increasingly content
(04:56):
online is written by machines, there's this increasing premium content perspectives,
conversation that comes from real humans, and that's what Reddit provides.
So so far we've done one kind of major content
licensing deal with Google, but we're talking to others as well.
But your question about is is it a one time
(05:19):
thing or ongoing? I think what's really important here is
folks want real time access to up to date information,
conversation perspectives.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
Right.
Speaker 6 (05:29):
Imagine a search engine that stopped indexing in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5 (05:33):
It wouldn't be very helpful. And so I think that
real time feed is really important.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Steve, you took the interesting step to ask redditors and
particularly redditors who investors in the IPO, to submit questions,
and those some of which you answered on the call
and some of which you will follow up in video form.
We're showing one of them now, which is what is
the justification for having one billion dollars in working capital?
I want to take that question and apply it to AI.
(06:03):
You know, data licensing is a revenue generation tool for you.
But on the technology side, might we see some m
and A that answers that question from your redditor community,
but also helps us understand a bit more like what
are you guys going to do to increase competence to
increase the technology offering on AI?
Speaker 5 (06:20):
Sure, we'll look.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
Our first priority with the cash is to invest in
the business, so to continue to develop the core Reddit product,
the user economy, which we discussed, the developer platform, our
AI efforts, all of those things.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Our second priority would be M and A.
Speaker 6 (06:35):
And so you know, we're always I think looking in
the market for teams and technology that can really kind
of help advance our initiatives. And right as you allude to,
I think there's just a tremendous opportunity in AI in search,
both to make our core product better and potentially to
(06:57):
expand it as well.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Let's talk about expansion and particularly internationally, Steve, because there's
much talk about how you're basically translating able to bring
what is all the reviews, the content, the discussion groups,
not just to those that are writing and speaking in
the English language, but in French and European countries.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
How is this.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Likely to be enabled by AI but also add to
the scale of international growth.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Well, this is really exciting.
Speaker 6 (07:24):
Like, not that long ago, we didn't have the capability
of translating our content at human quality, but with today's
large language models, we can do that, and so we
can translate our what is today our mostly English corpus
into just about any language. And so we're doing that
(07:45):
in French right now and testing that in France, and
it's going very well, and so almost immediately French speakers
can see the entire Reddit corpus or consume their entire
redit corpus in English. And a lot of reddits content
is universal, right, it's just people talking about life. But
(08:07):
even the content that is maybe regionally specific to America,
I think it's still really interesting to read and vice versa.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
And so I'm really excited.
Speaker 6 (08:17):
At this idea that we can fulfill the promise of
the Internet, which is allow people around the world, in
different countries and different cultures to communicate in their native language.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
For our Bloomberg television and radio audience worldwide, we're speaking
to the Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and Steve things are
going well right now. It seems one of the technology
changes at the start of this year and even before that,
was that Google started applying its work in large language
models and AI to its search engine. And there is
(08:52):
a school of thoughts that Reddit was a beneficiary of
that that just within search, Reddit becomes more commonplace up
the results that are given. Can you give us any
sort of granularity on how that's helping you with growing
the redditor base and keeping the redditor base.
Speaker 5 (09:11):
Well, let's just take a step up for a second.
Speaker 6 (09:15):
Reddit has what people want, right, People have questions.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
They often go to Google with questions. Reddit has the
best answers on the Internet.
Speaker 6 (09:22):
They want advice, they want information, they want a sense
of community and belonging. These are the things that Reddit
provides and search engines like Google ten years ago, last year, today, tomorrow,
help people find that content on Reddit. They're looking for
those answers, they're looking for those communities they're looking for.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
And so I think I look at this as a
natural evolution.
Speaker 6 (09:49):
Search engines are getting smarter, they're getting better, they're getting
more effective, which means they're getting more effective at helping
users find what they're looking for on Reddit, which of
course benefits our platform and our business. And so I
think these are all I think welcome evolutions. But Reddit
(10:09):
it's been a net beneficiary of search for a long time,
and I expect that to continue.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
How much have you been a net beneficiary of going public, Steve?
How much did the IPO help draw people to the platform.
How much was it a pr event do you think
and actually boosted some of the community there.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
Well, look, I'm sure that's an aspect to it.
Speaker 6 (10:30):
You know, it's hard to say and that you know,
Reddit primarily grows through word of mouth anyway. You know,
we don't really do consumer marketing, and so I think
anytime we're in the news that helps in the IPO
with a lot of news. But look, the reason I
was most excited about the IPO is that we are
able to.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
Include our users as investors.
Speaker 6 (10:53):
Our users have this deep sense of ownership over Reddit,
right they create the communities, they create the culture, they
create all of the content, and for them to have
the opportunity to be actual owners. That was our dream
and that was one of the main reasons we went
public in the first place. So that's actually what I'm
most excited about.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Steve is a kind of returning founder. CEO of Date,
what's your one personal goal for this year, it's something
you want to achieve.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
Well, we mapped out two of them.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
We got the company public and I had my second kid,
and so for the rest of this year, I want
to deliver on some of the product initiatives that I've
been very excited about, so developer platform, the user economy,
the machine translation that we've discussed. These are all things
I think in the day to day building of Reddit
(11:44):
that I'm very excited about.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Steve, congrats, I'm the second kid. Reddit CEO, Steve Hoffman,
I try to have you with us.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Now, coming up, we'll hear from the Alphabet CEO Sin
of hitsheie his vision for the future of artificial intelligence
as next and.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
What are you watching.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
We continue with the earning story and we take a
look at shares of a firm lower again eight and
a half percent. It's really been a season of if
you don't beat expectations or your prior guidance, you go
down lower. Continued about product differentiation, continue discussion about the
rate environment with the firm as well, or continue the
earnings coverage. Much more ahead. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Let's talk open AI because it's developing a feature for
chatchbt that can search the web and cite sources and
its results according to a source.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Now, the future, we would all allow users.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
To ask chatchbt a question and receive answers that use
details from the web with citations to sources.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Just think Wikipedia entries and blog posts.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Now, this could potentially be competing head on with AI search,
Startle Perplexity, and of course Google Search. And speaking of which,
Google and Alphabet CEO so on a pitch I sat
down exclusively with blubgo Original's host Emily Tang to discuss
the future of search and accelerating work on Google's AI models.
Here's what he had to say on some of the
growing pains of Google searchers adaptation to the AI revolution.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
Anytime there's a transition, you get an explosion of new content,
and AI is going to do that. So for us,
we view this as the challenge, and I actually think
here there'll be people will struggle to do that right.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
So doing that well is what.
Speaker 7 (13:38):
Will define a high quality product, and I think it's
going to be the heart of what makes so successful.
Speaker 8 (13:43):
You make a ton of money on ads next to
the links generated by searchers if a chatbot is giving
you answers and not links, and maybe more answers in links.
Sometimes are we in the midst of an assault on
Google's business model.
Speaker 7 (13:56):
So we've always found people want choices, including in commercial area,
and that's a fundamental need and I think we've always
been able to balance it. As we are rolling out
Aiovius and Search, we've been experimenting with ads and the
data we see shows that those fundamental principles will hold
true during the space as well.
Speaker 8 (14:16):
The images that Gemini initially generated of Asian Nazis and
black Founding fathers, you said that was unacceptable.
Speaker 9 (14:24):
If you look at any pictures of the.
Speaker 8 (14:25):
Founding fathers, you're seeing old white men. People are calling
this Woki and it's not just happening here, It's happening
across the industry. How did the model generate something that
it never saw.
Speaker 7 (14:35):
We are a company which serves products uses around the world,
and there are generic questions. For example, people come and
say show me images of school teachers or doctors or nurses.
We have people asking discovery from Indonesia or the US.
How do you get it right for our global user base.
(14:56):
Obviously the mistake was that we over applied, including case
the spirit should have never applied.
Speaker 9 (15:04):
So that was the bug.
Speaker 7 (15:05):
And you know, you know, so we got it wrong.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
That was alphabet CEO Cunda Pinschai and Bloomberg Original's host
Emily Changi. You can catch the full interview from the
circuit tonight at six pm Eastern on Bloomberg Television.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Let's just check in on the shares of Shopify because
they're down the most on record US after the company
forecasts lower profit margins as I can induce to really
be boosting the marketing spend now. The comments company also
reported a surprise net loss in the first quarter after
the sale of its logistics business last year. Joining us
now to break down the results. Harley Finkelstein, Shopify president,
(15:50):
and Harley I remember speaking with Toby look At, the
CEO of the business once and he said that anytime
anyone talks about the share price in the office, while
everyone has to be bought donuts, I have a fee
that might be some downuts.
Speaker 9 (16:01):
To day specific specific.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, Harley, I mean, what what does it feel like
when you see the shares down that hard?
Speaker 9 (16:09):
Oh?
Speaker 10 (16:09):
I'm I mean we've always managed the business in a
long term way. What we actually and what you're seeing
at Shopify right now is we got came on the show. Actually,
I think it's wo to end about this new shape
of Shopify is unlocking our potential. We're helping all different
types of merchants take more and more of our products.
But let's just kind of break down. You know, how
the quarter went. I mean, we generate almost two billion
dollars of revenue. That was a twenty three percent year
(16:31):
a year. We had a billion dollars a gross profit
and very important in this particular macro environment, Carolyn. We
had free cashual of two hundred and thirty two million
dollars for the quarter. In fact, free cash margin doubled
from Q one of last year, so you're seeing I
think one of the best versions of Shopify with a
ton of opportunities, whether it's enterprise, physical, retail, international B
(16:52):
to B. We are very excited about about what we
did in Q one. We're very excited about the future
of this company.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Hally. The anxiety from investors about fitting margins, right, I
think we all set that as the baseline. One thing
you've been focused on is marketing, right, which accounts for
that in part? Give me some specifics. What kind of
marketing are you doing? And I think you've also said
it's going to pay off in about eighteen months time.
How do you know the marketing spend will pay off? Well?
Speaker 10 (17:20):
First of all, we think about marketing and the same
way we think about building products, build the best solutions,
build the best internal tools to drive decision through data,
and the results are evident.
Speaker 9 (17:31):
I'll go with them in a second.
Speaker 10 (17:32):
But one of the things that we really believe is
that shopi line needs to be agile and at times countercyclical.
When we see opportunities for us to take advantage and
gain more market share across any of our core products,
We're going to do that. But the key for us
is striking a balance between top line growth, operational leverage,
and profitability. And I think what differentiates Shopify from a
growth perspective or marketing perspective to user words is that
(17:54):
the way we interpret data, the way we experiment, actually
helps us to win.
Speaker 9 (17:58):
And we have multiple drivers of this growth.
Speaker 10 (18:00):
But the best proof I can give you is we
drove a nearly one hundred and thirty percent increase immersion
ADS within one of our key marketing channels, sure you know,
the one from Q four to Q one, while still
remaining squarely within our payback Guardrails. So when we see
the people that other companies are pulling back and we
think we can get a return on our AD spend,
that again is within Guardrails has the right CAC to
L two ratios that in twenty twenty five you will
(18:23):
see the growth from these efforts. We're going to take
those and back to sort of the question Caroline open with,
that's the reason why we don't really care about the
day to day stock fluctuation. We care about over the
long run, does a stock price reflect the real value
of the company. And Shopify is becoming the global retail company.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Next month, you're going to have a big event, and
I think I'm right in saying it's the first in
person event at least since before the pandemic twenty eighteen.
That is a marketing expense, but there must be a
reason for doing.
Speaker 9 (18:51):
It, certainly.
Speaker 10 (18:52):
I mean, we are thriving in this remote first environment
and we see immense value in getting people together as well.
So some at SHOPIAY Summit is accommodation of multiple events
that brings together our team, our partners, our top one
thousand developers from all all over the world. And you know,
we think that it's this remote first philosophy and working
(19:13):
model allows us to recruit the best of the brands
from all over the world. But a key component of
this digital bide design approach is also supplementing it with
a few real life events, and we have not done
We've not brought the entire company together in person, and
since like twenty eighteen, we think it's important to do so,
especially because we can also get our developers, our third
party developers in the room, explain to them all the
(19:34):
opportunities of how they should be building on Shopify. Then
they go back home and they and they continue their
businesses as well. So it's an important event for us,
and we're excited by the Shopfy summit, and.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I can imagine that it's important for morale, particularly after layoffs.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Holly, are layoffs done now?
Speaker 10 (19:48):
We have no plans to do any additional layoffs at
this point. What you are seeing, Caroline is this new
shape of Shopify. We have been able to grow top line,
We've been able to grow bottom line. We're making serious
investments in the future of our business now we're doing
so with a relatively flat headcount. In fact, if you
go back three quarters, headcount has not grown that much.
What matters to us is the talent density of the company,
(20:10):
and this is the best talent team, the best version
of Shopify I've seen in my fifteen years of being here.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
And you've talked about how this is. You're being countercyclical
right now. Just tell us how countercyclical. How many headwinds
are you experiencing in the world of the consumer right now?
Speaker 4 (20:25):
How reticent are they to shop?
Speaker 10 (20:28):
Yeah, I mean it's really important, obviously because the state
of the consumers as obviously, and the whole macro trend
is something that everyone's thinking about. First of all, we
see the consumer actually remaining quite resilient. What we do see,
in particular is that these consumers are buying from brands
they love and feel ineffinity to. And all those brands
think of the brands you love are all on Shopify.
But a new area of business are those less discretionary
(20:51):
brands like Nesley or Hines or bark Box or Figs
whose scrubs are in hospitals all over the country.
Speaker 9 (20:56):
Those are also using Shopify as well.
Speaker 10 (20:59):
And when you combine in our enterprise offering, Shopify point
a cell, which is the physical retail product we have,
plus B to B plus all these new merchant solutions
like audiences to help with ads, shop off a capital Shoppey,
which is the best can run accelerated check out. You're
beginning to see that all these on raps are going
to lead to serious growth in our future. And that's
the reason why the sentiment inside of Shopify right now
(21:21):
is incredibly optimistic.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Shop five President Harley Finkelstein, thank you, welcome back to
Bloomber Technology ed Lovelow in San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Aline hid right here in New Or let's check in
on these market said, because we're basically flat when you're
looking at the big benchmarks. I'm looking the na's that
one hundred on the day and a.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Little bit of a cautious tone. And look, we've had
four straight days of games. That has been a good run.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
But we're also trying to digest a macro picture that's
not giving us much. We're still looking at the FED
and some of the speakers coming from the federals.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
EV, but more some of the microheadwinds.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
When you think of well chip maker is trying to
sell into geopolitical headwinds. That's more of what we're boiling
down to on the day. When it comes to tech stocks,
I'm looking at the tenure yield. Though this is a
macro picture. This is one of sales. This is an
auction of tenure debt coming. I'm currently off by about
two basis points. When you're thinking of yields going higher,
prices falling. Bitcoin also on the lower side, resentiment a
little bit dower there or off by one point four percent.
(22:17):
Maybe that's also to do with a stronger US dollor
on the day, but also whether those ETF flows just
cooling down a little bit. Let's look at some of
the micro pictures that we want to shine a light
on though, and we just referenced it just before we
went to break. Tesla currently off by one point six percent.
Now we know that US prosecutors have been looking in
the way in which Tesla and Eilon Musk have discussed
self driving. Did they mislead investors? Do they mislead consumers?
(22:39):
But now the nuance is coming from a router's report
saying that maybe they're looking at them for securities fraud,
wire fraud. Potentially that's a router's report. We're off by
one point six percenters, we're just reminded of the US
prosecutor's investigation. Armholdings up by quarter of a percent. Now,
remember this is a company we were looking at this.
Its current valuation is ninety times future earnings. At the moment,
(23:01):
many wondering how they live up to this valuation on
the market. How we baked in too much from euphoria
around AI for this chip designer. Their earnings come after
the bell so tooos the Airbnb and look, we're looking
for bookings ultimately to be slowing, in fact flowing bookings
growth for Airbnb that will likely to have seen since
twenty twenty. That's what the market braces itself for or
a more than a percentage point ed.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
But what are you looking at.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Well, let's head out to DC and talk about TikTok,
after its China based parent, byte Dance made it clear
it won't comply with the new US law requiring it
to sell the video sharing app, saying quote that for
the first time in history, Congress is an acted a
law that subjects a single named speech platform to a
permanent nationwide band and bars every American from participating in
(23:46):
a unique online community with more than one billion people worldwide.
I want to bring in Bloombergs Chris Strome to break
it all down. It is not a surprise, right Chris.
The legal challenge, but the question to be considered by
the courts is whether or not this is an outright ban,
And I think the academic consensus is that that will
be something the court looks at closely.
Speaker 11 (24:08):
Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean TikTok is making a
few different arguments here. They're saying that, you know, the
the law that was signed in fringes on on on
the first Amendment, it represents an illegal taking, and uh,
you know, TikTok is saying that it's not feasible for
them to separate you know, TikTok us from the rest
(24:30):
of the TikTok you know global community. And so really
what TikTok has done here is they've just bought a
lot of time by filing this lawsuit, because there's no
way this is going to be resolved by next January.
There's going to be a long court battle, you know,
regardless of what happens, There's going to be appeals. It's
most likely going to go to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Okay, And this sort of time frame many feeling that
an expedited ruling isn't gonna come until say the fourth quarter,
then you have to look ahead to January when it
ultimately it might be then at least banned or at.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Least has to be sold.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
It feels as though the sentiment very much is is
that this isn't going to be a sales process, right.
Speaker 11 (25:10):
Bike Dances making it clear at this point that they
have no intention of divesting TikTok. They are gonna you know,
they're digging in for a prolonged legal battle and also
probably with the hopes of you know, a Trump administration
that might be more friendly to them, and so the
law says that they need to divest by next January
(25:31):
or there's going to be a ban in the United States.
The legal process won't be resolved by then. If they
get up to the point where the band is supposed
to go into effect, they'll most likely seek an emergency
in junction to prevent that band from going to and
going going to effect, and it'll most likely be granted.
And so, you know, we're long ways away from this
(25:54):
being resolved.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Chris, who are the players here? You just outline brilliant
the kind of short term and long term process. But
if Bike Dance has filed a legal challenge, who are
they challenging. Who's on the other side of the table.
Speaker 11 (26:09):
Yeah, it's interesting because they actually filed their lawsuit against
the Attorney General Meryrick Garland. And part of the reason
for that is because according to the law, DJs and
is charged with enforcing the law. And so you know,
in order to bring a legal lawsuit, they needed to find,
you know, a defendant that they were gonna that they
(26:31):
were going to sue, so they chose Meyork Garland. But really,
you know, they're they're challenging the law that Congress passed
that Biden signed and saying it's unconstitutional.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Amidst all of this, we have players weighing in whether
it's Steve monusan previous Treasury Sextuori sat down in David
Weston yesterday talking about how he's still hoping that he
might be able to get his hands on TikTok, perhaps
without the algorithm he'd rebuild it. Had Eric Schmid on
the show yesterday who had been interested in buying the US.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Version of TikTok.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
He backs away from that and actually says that this
is just more broadly should be regulated in the US
rather than banned. But Chris, I'm interested from a legal perspective,
can we read anything across from what happened in Montana?
Can we feel that sentiment will be on the side
from a First Amendment perspective, even if though we're hearing
from TikTok that they couldn't legally actually separate the businesses anyhow.
Speaker 11 (27:23):
Uh, there's gonna be a lot of support for TikTok's
It's already it's already coming, and it's gonna it's gonna
h span the political spectrum, the economic spectrum. You have
you know, people who advocate for free speech uh saying
that TikTok shouldn't be banned. You have people who are
(27:45):
saying that the government hasn't made u, you know, a
legitimate national security argument to try to ban TikTok. I
would expect that there's gonna be a lot of amicus
filings in this case, and then you have this statecases
that are playing out like you mentioned, and so you know,
for the foreseeable future, there's going to just be a
(28:06):
lot of litigation over this issue.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Blimbers Kristrom, thank you very much. Former US Treasury Secretary
Steve maninschen As Caroenline says, says he's still interested in
buying TikTok's US operations from its Chinese owner, Byte Dance,
but believes the social media app's critical video recommendation technology
could be replicated. Listen to this.
Speaker 12 (28:26):
Still very interested in buying it, and to the extent
they want to sell it or spin it off, we
very much want to pursue that. I support that Congress
passed the bill and it's now been signed into law.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
I will say this is had just.
Speaker 12 (28:39):
Incredible overwhelming support with the Republicans and Democrats. This may
be the only thing that everybody agrees on the fact
that it's on.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
One hundred and sixty million phones.
Speaker 12 (28:50):
I do think it's a security issue now.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
One of the other people who are at one point
reported to be interested in getting in on buying with
minution was Google or former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. We
spoke with him yesterday and he's actually non interested anymore.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Just take a listen.
Speaker 13 (29:07):
My personal view on this is you're better off regulating
than banning or a judicial action. All the big tech
companies are now in the hands of.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
The DOJ in various legal fights.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I would prefer to see.
Speaker 13 (29:20):
A regulatory regime that it sort of has the right
incentives and the right prohibitions for all of these things.
My own view of TikTok is that TikTok is not
really social media, it's really television, and that you can
regulate television by the equivalent of the equal time rule.
But somehow we're not having that conversation.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Let's get back to earnings and Rivian posting a wider
than expected adjusted loss in the first quarter. A break
down the results Rivian CEO R J. Scaringe.
Speaker 14 (29:49):
The challenge with this number is it's a false metric
and it just causes It just caused a lot of noise,
and so we'd like to rather focus on the product.
We're tears out from launch, and our goal is to
pete ramping production as quickly as possible so that people
don't have to wait as long as they had to
wait in the case of our R one products.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Oh, Jay, something I noticed is interesting in your filings
is the proportion of the R one generation that at
least versus ball seems to be going up. Could you
give us that proportion and is it a good thing
for Rivian right now in this environment where you're between
the two growth phases if more are one generations at.
Speaker 14 (30:29):
Least, Yeah, we don't disclose the split between sales and lease.
We now we've expanded least to offer that on R
one s as well, and we've added a number of
states that we offer leasing. Believe it's not thirty two states.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Now.
Speaker 14 (30:46):
The key to recognize is leasing does have an advantage
for electric vehicles and that any lease qualifies for the
seven thousand and five fron dollar attack credit, and so
that leads to disproportionately large number of leases relative to
an internal combustion engine vehicle given the benefits of that
of that credit.
Speaker 15 (31:07):
And I do want to talk a little bit about
what's going on with the factories because you shut down
some of the assembly lines to make component upgrades. If
you could just walk us through the math and sort
of the path board on how that gets through to
positive gross profit by the fourth quarter, that.
Speaker 8 (31:21):
Would be helpful.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
Yeah, we.
Speaker 14 (31:26):
Started production in late twenty twenty one, and this was
the first time, you know, walking through the plant that
there had been no vehicles on the lines. At the
start of April, the plant was really empty. We drained
out everything that we were producing with the largely original
supply chain and component design, made a large number of
(31:48):
changes to the plant, and then also had a number
of new suppliers come on board replacing existing suppliers and
the park designs and component designs, and that's going to
lead to a step change improvement in our structure, both
at the bill of materials level, but importantly also at
the what we call the conversion costs level, allowing the
plant to run more efficiently. And we did a similar
(32:10):
shutdown with our ED program, and that was something we
did at the beginning of twenty twenty three. We took
about thirty five percent bill of material cost out of
the vehicle with that shutdown, and the scale of change
we've made with our one here is very similar to that.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Great interview ed the Rivian CEO R J. Scarrange along
with Kitiger.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
I felt too.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Now coming up will be joined by Logitech CEO. I
like a favor about consumer tech and gaining on AI
so much more. That conversation you don't want to miss
as a blue meg technology.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
Let's talk Logitech.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
It's linking its products to guess what artificial intelligence in
a whole number of ways, like with new AI Promptu
software which will turn your Logitech keyboard your mouse. It's
basically a shortcut to chat YOUBT a priest and welcome
here in New York.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Ha a favor. Now for more.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
She's just finished our firste hundred days at Logitech, new
ceo coming via here and interested to hear about how
much how quickly you've had to evolve with AI. Was
it something that you already had in the locker, you
were already look.
Speaker 16 (33:19):
In this direction, or something that you were able to
be nimble on. Yeah, I think we have a very
nimble team. So a lot has happened, even in my
first one hundred days there, which has been fun. But
AI is definitely wanted a tailwinds so that we see for
our business going forward, along with some other things. Hybrid
work clearly is a tailwind for us as well as
gaming really mainstreaming and continuing to grow. But if I
(33:41):
look at AI, there's really three things we're doing. First
of all, like everyone else, it's helping internal productivity and
we're seeing, especially with our software engineers, some really good
productivity gains from using some of the new AI tools.
Then when we look at our products, two things into
software you just mentioned it. We just launched the new
Logy AI prompt builder, which is a shortcut to chat GPT.
(34:06):
You know, if you're a big user of chat GPT,
you have to go in and out, you're toggling between
what you're doing and chat GPT. This is a shortcut
so that you can stay in the flow, which is
really important for our heavy users again, the coders, and only.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Open a eyes chat GPT. What about the others?
Speaker 16 (34:21):
Okay for now, but I'm sure more will follow. We're
a company who really partners with everyone, so more will follow. Yeah,
And then what I'm probably most excited about is actually
in the video and audio space, where we've for actually
for quite a while, have been using these large data
models to really step change the quality of audio and videos.
(34:42):
So maybe two quick examples. In headphones, our latest generation
of headphones does two way noise cancelations. So let's say
we're on the phone, I'm at an airport, You're wearing
the headphone, and of course it's super annoying because you
know you're hearing not just my voice, but every announcement
at that airport. New headphones, our new headphones do two
(35:03):
way noise cancelation on both sides. So now it's smart
enough things to the model to recognize my voice, but
to tune out everything else that's going on around me,
which really really step changes audio quality.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
We love that.
Speaker 16 (35:17):
On the video side, we just launched this new video
conferencing tool for offices called Site. It's a camera that
you set in a large meeting room. I'm sure you've
been in meetings. There's twelve of you on one side,
one poor guy on the other side on the screen.
He's of course left out. This acts like a intelligent
producer in the room. It swivels around to focus on
(35:39):
the right person. But again also audio, it swivels to
you when you're speaking, but not when you're opening a
packet of crisps, which is quite important.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I'm afraid I did go away.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
No, really, I think we run out of time. But
what I was just going to say is like, gaming
still a thirty year business and as we reflected on,
it's really hard out there. Just ten seconds sum up
the environment.
Speaker 16 (36:02):
Yeah, we think gaming is a real tailwind for US.
Gaming was up eight percent for US in the last quarter.
We think the future of gaming is really great.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Log Tech CEO had like a favor. We wish I
had more time with you. Thank you for stopping by
while you're on your In New.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
York, ride sharing company Lift reported first quarter results and guidance.
The beat investors expectations really send me the shares of
the company higher. Joining us now is the Lift CEO
David Rischer on set in San Francisco. There was something
(36:37):
interesting that you said, which is you made improvement in
both rider retention and new riders, and you've made some
progress in Canada. But actually I wanted more specifics on
what you did to achieve that.
Speaker 17 (36:49):
Yeah, so I'd break it down like this. First of all,
it's good to be here. The second of all, I
break it down like this. First you got to get
the basics. Rate we call it ride shair perfection. That's
all a pricing rate, paying drivers right, picking you up fast,
our ETA is that's what we call how fast we
pick you up are faster they've been in four years.
So those are the basics. Once you do that, then
you can build on top of that. Then you can
(37:10):
do things like innovations around how fast can.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
We pick you up for the airport, for example.
Speaker 17 (37:14):
One of my favorite example, I think last time you
and I talked, we had just rolled out this on
time pickup promise, and now less than one point five
percent of people are being picked up so late that
we have to give them the one hundred bucks. So
after the basics, then you innovate, and then you partner
with other people. We've got great partnerships with Chase, with
Delta and others. You put all those things together and
it's a great combination. It's work really well.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Oh, let's go in on the B to B partnerships, David,
Because I know that you are mobility first, but you
look at Uber and instacart yesterday.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
What other partnerships do you have in mind?
Speaker 17 (37:45):
So I probably won't be able to speculate on new partnerships,
but I can tell you this. You know, I spent
in my prior career a lot of time in Africa.
And now you're asking where's this going, But the answer
is in a lot of countries in Africa, there's this
great expression, if you want to go fast, you go alone,
but if you want to go far, you go together.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
So you know, as I say.
Speaker 17 (38:04):
Delta Amazon as a partner, we pick up some of
the folks at distribution centers linked in as a partner,
we actually they overran their parking lot when people came
back to work, and so we help people get back
to work. Delta sky Miles, of course you can get
sky miles, but also we help move their flight crews around,
particularly in early morning hours. These are partnerships that they're
Chase with Sapphire. They're really deep partnerships. And when you
(38:26):
really go deep with someone, you know, it's almost like
a relationship. You can find all sorts of amazing things to do.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Those are the groups of people you're moving And as
you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about
how people move from me to be I want to
go back to ROBOTAXI. Tesla will show us a robo
tax in August, and your competitor Uber has this relationship
with Weimo. I don't think you have a formal relationship.
But if Tesla comes to market, you must be thinking
about that long term.
Speaker 17 (38:52):
Yes, but so first robotaxis or let's just say a
time of his vehicles are going to happen.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
There's no question here in San Francisco. They're happening. You
see them on the street. But we have to think
about it this way.
Speaker 17 (39:03):
For someone's got to make the tech, then someone's got
to build the car, then someone's got to own the car,
and someone's got to run the network. Right, these are
four different pieces of business that people have to do.
We run the network and it's a very expensive, very
expansive network that we run every single day, two million.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Rides a day.
Speaker 17 (39:19):
Now, if we need to incorporate and of course we
will autonomous vehicles into that, that's great, that's fantastic. It'll increase,
you know, supply, and increase the number of different ways.
But I don't really look at an initiative like theirs
and think it words me. I think that's really interesting.
It's going to maybe help expand the market. And I
would say for them, gosh, that's a lot to take
on at once, and so you know, we'll see, we'll
(39:39):
see how that goes.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
David, innovation was what you're just talking about. Would you
ever reconsider innovation in taking more than just people but
food but groceries.
Speaker 17 (39:51):
You know, our real focus is on moving people around
and in specific getting them out of their house. And
this is where I get a little philosophical. If you
read any of this of articles about kind of the
health of our nation. We talk a lot about sort
of political divide, but there's also just a tremendous amount
of loneliness and people staying at home too much and
being disconnected from their friends and their family.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
And so forth.
Speaker 17 (40:11):
So I'd say that really is going to be our focus.
It doesn't mean that, of course, we also get people
out on bikes, you know.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
I were just talking.
Speaker 17 (40:17):
You've got a great bike system in New York among
other places, so that's important as well. But I really
think getting people out and about is really our focus,
and then we can partner for other things to the
extent that is important to customers.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
David Our Bloomberg Intelligence, and this man Deep Singing and
I were going through your numbers and trying to see
if it proved you'd taken market share from Uber. Dara
kosh Rashahi is coming up next after we've gone off
on the next program with Bloomberg's Emily Chang. What's your
message for Dara in terms of whether he should be
looking over his shoulder in the progress you are making.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
You know, it's so funny.
Speaker 17 (40:48):
People love, of course, to talk about this sort of
head to head thing. I think our competition is people
staying at home. That's our competition. I want more people out,
I want them connecting.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
With other folks.
Speaker 17 (40:57):
I think it's just a much more interesting way to
run of business than to sort of always focus on
your competitor.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
You know.
Speaker 17 (41:02):
Look, they'll go through their ups and downs in their quarters.
So he's got a loom in his mind. It's fine
ask him about all the different things he's got in
his mind, and we're just going to focus on our
riders and drivers.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
On your mind.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Gen Z, women, corporate travelers, who's getting in your cars,
who's riding your bike?
Speaker 17 (41:19):
David, Well, so a lot of women are I'm glad
you brought that up. Of course, we have women plus Connect,
which I'm so so proud of. One of the great
quotes I heard from a friend recently is when he
said he was actually talking to his girlfriend and he said,
why do you like this women plus connect rider driver
connection on Lift and she said, look, I can finally
take a nap in Ride Shair. I can finally take
a nap, which I think is so profound. We've had
(41:40):
something like twenty thousand new women joined the platform on
the driver side just since we've started the program.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
So super important. I'll tell you another thing that's really interesting.
We're seeing.
Speaker 17 (41:50):
Of course, commute is happening, but also party time. People
really are getting out. It's after nine or after five
o'clock and it's going great.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
I am here for party time.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
David Richer, CEO, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
We appreciate it. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition
of Bloomberg Technology Ed. We've got a party tomorrow, a.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Big party for Bloomberg Technology Live, but a big show
to recap. Check out the pod, putting it on Apple, Spotify.
iHeart and of course all the Bloomberg platform's big thank
you to everyone that listens to their podcast and the
way to work maybe in a lift or Reneuber from
San Francisco, New York. This is Bloomberg
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