Big Day of Tech Earnings | Bloomberg Markets: The Close 4/25/2024

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Live from Studio two here at Bloomberg's headquarters in New York. I'm Shonali Bassett. And I'm Gina martin Adams. We're kicking you off to the closing bell here in the U.S. Let's get a check on where markets stand. As you can see, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, not so bad. We're flying our way back from those and those lows earlier this today when the GDP report certainly took out stocks, Treasuries certainly selling off quite a lot and the dollar not doing much. Something abnormal with the Treasury, selling off on the dollar, not doing much as stocks are really where all the action is. As we're going into earnings finale, we're looking at those treasuries selling off. As you've been saying, we have the two year yield hanging out just under 5%. And today's GDP and inflation numbers fueling stagflation jitters, leaving investors with even more uncertainty to the path of Federal Reserve policy. And speaking of the Fed, Chicago Fed Austan Goolsbee saying in an interview that the central bank has to recalibrate after the latest string of higher than hoped for inflation. Data traders today paring back expectations for a rate cut now fully pricing in the first cut in December. But there's big tech here in focus. The stakes are high for Microsoft and Alphabet results after the bell today. Those results coming just a day after Metro revealed it will spend billions more dollars than expected this year and it's been triggering gina a stock selloff. Let's take to kick things off on the tech earnings expectations with stuart Keiser, head of equity trading strategy over at citi. Stuart, tell us where are we in the cycle right now because clearly the tech stocks have been struggling a little bit. We got that news yesterday, met a beat expectations and yet the outlook wasn't as good as investors were expecting. What are you doing in your equity portfolio and how does that relate to where we are in the cycle? I mean, I think you hit on the key point here, which is the results haven't been that bad, but you need to separate that from what the stock price reaction has been. And clearly, a lot of these companies that have put up decent numbers but either guided a little soft or maybe not hit on a few kind of key metrics and have traded off pretty hard. And I think that says if you're overweight these tech stocks, you need to be a little careful. We've been recommending using, you know, triple Q's triple Qs perch to kind of hedge that long tech portfolio as we go into earnings just for this reason. Not that we're negative on the fundamentals, but the crowding and the positioning does seem pretty full right now. Right. Speaking of, there's some volatility you're seeing in the names. You see it in Meta today. How much more downside risk is there now that we're getting some of these numbers out of the gate? I mean, downside of the market, I think there's a little bit I think, you know, as you and I mentioned earlier, the GDP print this morning probably opened up a little more space to the downside than we thought you would had. You know, our view coming into earnings was a combination of strong GDP and a strong EPS growth set a very high floor for us equity markets, you know, getting higher inflation and lower growth and you would have wanted probably opens up a little more space there. And you have key stocks, whether that's metal, whether it's ASML, whether it's Taiwan, Sony, whether it's Netflix, you know, some of these key high flying stocks kind of coming under pressure, I think hurt your risk reward. It probably opens up a little more space to the downside than I would have thought we had a couple of days ago. What has surprised you so far in this earnings season? I know it's early. You were sort of positioned for a rockier period, given expectations in tech, anything outside of tech that's been interesting or that we should keep an eye on? Yeah, I mean, look, tech has gotten all the focus. I think, you know, the financials earnings I think to start were interesting because we did start to see a little bit of that deal calendar coming back. And obviously Goldman and Morgan Stanley responded a little bit more positively to that. So that's a positive if you're looking for the rest of the year. But, you know, there's three themes that we were really looking for in earnings. One was A.I., which I think everybody's focused on, right? You're number two is what happens to margins and the margin outlook a couple of quarters out and tech is going to be a key aspect of that. And then the third topic is going to be later in the quarter. What are retailers saying? You know, is there any evidence of this really strong consumer spending pattern, you know, kind of seeing some weakness? So, you know, the biggest surprise, I guess, is going to be we came in pretty bullishly positioned, pretty small and part moves option set up very positive stocks that are putting up what I would consider decent numbers missing on sort of a KPI or something are really getting hurt. So that's probably the the number one, you know, surprise so far. You know, it's interesting, speaking of outside of technology, you look at some of the best sectors this year, the energy sector in the S&P 500 still up more than 15% on the year. Some of these stocks are still reporting pretty gangbusters profits and seeing a sell off after that, too. I mean, are these sectors overbought? And if that's the case, and what does it mean for the S&P? Yeah, I mean, overbought stuff, I think I think stock by stock basis should probably need to go, you know, about that from an S&P level. We actually triggered what we would call oversold the middle of last week on the sell off. So the equity market itself doesn't feel overbought. But I think there are pockets that are we've seen a tremendous amount of demand for energy stocks, for copper and sort of that commodities exposure. So that stuff's probably gotten a little bit more ahead of itself than it was last quarter. I would have argued coming in that positioning in tech actually looks a little bit less overbought than it did last quarter. So, look, when you have valuation where it is, we think the ERP is probably in its 15th percentile in the last 30 years. I mean, you're at an extended valuation spot right now. So any blemishes are going to be treated, I think, more harshly in that situation than they otherwise would of our view on valuation. That's potential energy, not kinetic energy. What releases potential energy. In this case, it seems to be good, but not great results, essentially. I'm curious how you're incorporating movements in the bond market into your strategies. Clearly, the bond market has been a new animal in the post-pandemic cycle relative to the pre-pandemic cycle. How do you think about that in the midst of earnings season when you have these really big bond market moves, how do you incorporate that on a day to day? Look, it's a it's a big important part of the macro macro landscape. From our perspective, we tend to focus more on the size of the moves and the volatility in the bond market than necessarily the absolute level. Like, even if we got to 5%, that's not a forecast. But even at those levels, if bond market volatility sort of pegged itself there, I think equities can do just fine in that environment. What's tricky here is we went from nearly 5% down to four and now we're kind of on our way back up to five. So I think we're considering that two ways. One is the velocity of the move and then to which stocks have the most sensitivity to that. You know, most of the equity market is basically long growth and and has a negative impact for higher yields. So it eats into your valuation. But again, for us, it's much more about volatility in the bond market than it is about the absolute level. I think it's worth kind of doubling down here on what gets impacted if you still have a two year closer to 5% and for how long. At what point does that pain start to multiply? It's a great question. I mean, it's funny because people have been calling for this credit event now for a while, Right. But the fact is, most of corporate America is actually pretty well situated from a credit perspective. Even the companies that need to refi don't need to refine now because people were smart enough to lock stuff in. So I think my view is if you're higher for longer, yes, eventually that starts to get into your weaker credit type stocks. But for most of the first quarter, you were higher because of better growth. And if you're getting better growth and that's pushing yields higher, I think equity markets could deal with that just fine. What's really been disruptive the last 4 to 6 weeks is you've had higher yields and that's becoming know be coming from the inflationary side. So, look, if we get into the second half of next year and we're still pushing out cuts, then yet people are going to take a second look. But we actually had a lot of trouble finding companies that actually have to refine the next 24 months. So it's one of these things, yes, it's an issue, but it's hard to sort of identify the specific stocks that might be impacted. Sticking with the macro, how are you incorporating currency and sort of the divergences that we see globally? You know, we lived in a world for so long where everybody moved together and now it seems to be quite divergent activity between the U.S., China, Europe, Canada, the name your country. How do you incorporate currency? Is that a part of your thought process? It is. I think my experience in general has been you need the dollar to move pretty big and then stay persistently at that level to really get into earnings. Right. So that this is you know, a lot of these companies hedge their their currency risk on a waterfall fashion, right. You need big moves that are persistent. I think the question here is if you start to get currency volatility, and that's because you're either getting growth divergence or central bank policy divergence, well, now you're talking about risk sentiment and that can kind of get into your valuation. So similar to rates that give the dollar is grinding one way or the other, a little bit less concern. But if we do start to see central bank policy divergence and that gets into your risk and I think that's what we'd be the most concerned about, you know, gold is a perfect example. This obviously, you know, gold has been moving almost of its own volition. And I think equity folks are thinking, I don't really understand what's going on over there. Maybe I need to be more careful just because I don't understand. And I almost put the dollar in the same category right now. So we have to leave it there. Thanks for joining us on what's been a tough tape and a very busy day of earnings and a very busy week ahead still, Stuart Kaiser, head of equity trading over at Citigroup. Coming up, Chipotle's strong earnings beat sending shares surging today, extending a nearly six month rally that's seen the stock climb nearly 66%. And the CEO, Brian Nichols, joins us to discuss what's fueling that growth. Plus, Hertz driving in the opposite direction. Shares hitting an all time low after reporting a loss that was nearly three times worse than analysts expected. And it's our stock of the hour. And Southwest is considering ditching a classic hallmark of its business model. We'll discuss the airline's potential move as it grapples with slowing growth. All that and more coming up. This is a close on Bloomberg. Stay with us. And. Earnings season is here. I think we're all asking the same question just how much earnings growth you're expecting. Bloomberg is first to break the numbers. Iliad just coming out right now, we have take two numbers shares of pinterest lucid group coming out with its earnings all eyes right now on nvidia a loss still to come with the smartest insights how much better could profit and revenue have been better than what the street was expecting? Bang in line with estimates, we will have full and instant analysis. Continuing coverage on Bloomberg Context changes everything. Shares of Southwest are sliding today, and that's as the airline ends service at four airports and offers voluntary leaves to address challenges that are stemming in part from reduced deliveries of Boeing planes. Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst George Ferguson joins us on the airlines all over them really this week. George, when you think about the problems that Southwest are facing today, exiting airports, how do you feel about the changes being made? Yes. So, I mean, when I think about Southwest, I think, frankly, they've been trying to add too much capacity to the marketplace. And so, look, as much as they need Boeing aircraft because they're they're larger. And the increase in pay they gave to their pilots unions, those larger aircraft allow them to, you know, to spread the cost of that pilot over. More people in the airplane help them lower their costs. So for sure, the lack of getting airplanes is really making it difficult for them to drive down costs and improve profitability. But this is an airline that was looking to grow its schedules at 6% in an economy that's grown maybe 2% since last year. I think really the post pandemic bouts where everyone had to go away and summer vacation fly somewhere on summer vacation is over. So that extreme demand, I think, is fading. And I think so, you know, fares just aren't rising anymore. They were flat at Southwest. They were down at American today. And so I think part of what Southwest really needs is less capacity, less flying. And that's why they're cutting back these cities. Is there a read through from southwest Jorge to the rest of the industry? You mentioned American as another specific example, but when you're looking about across the entire airlines industry, is this something we need to look for across the space? It is, right. So I think you saw in JetBlue's earnings, I think the more your airline is focused on the domestic business and the basic economy seat, the more challenges you have. There's just too much of that capacity in the marketplace, we think. Right. And that means that that's a commodity and you're going to have to lower prices to fill airplanes. To the extent you're in premium seating, you can provide, you know, any kind of sort of upgrades more more a better meal, you know, more more space. And those are the deltas. Those are United's. You're going to see better yield development, which is the price paid per mile flown. And that's what we've seen. American is one of the full service carriers that actually caters more to the economy, you know, seating and a little more of the interior of the country. I think that's why they had more of their problems today. It's interesting you have Southwest saying that the restructuring steps that they're taking so far could contribute 1000000000 to 1000000005 to the pre-tax profits this year. But the market doesn't seem to be biting on the plan. Why is that? Well, again, I think we're seeing some softness in the in the marketplace. And so I'm not sure, you know, the market really believes that Southwest can get fares to rise to the level they need. And it's going to be hard for them to cut expenses because, like I said, they're just not going to get all the deliveries of the Boeing MAXS. And so they're going to have a hard time, you know, sort of spreading those costs over more seats. So they're in a bit of a rough patch here because they can't really reduce expenses well and revenues and isn't going to cooperate for them, I don't think. Speaking of those expenses, I'm curious how the airlines are now positioned for higher fuel costs, higher oil costs. We've seen the cost of oil obviously accelerating pretty rapidly so far this year. How are they positioned going into the second, third quarter? And where might we see some surprises on the input cost side? Yes. So I think that if fuel costs keep going up and frankly, even if they just stay here, they're going to be higher year over year and that's going to create a real challenge for the airlines. Right. So they don't hedge theirs. So most of them don't hedge. I mean, you get a bit of hedging at JetBlue and Alaska. But the core and I will say actually Southwest does hedge as well. So those airlines could potentially fare a bit better as fuel prices rise, but most of them don't. And so that'll be a challenge. And to again, we think the basic economy seats are probably in excess and so therefore pricing a little bit soft, it'll be really hard to push through that increased costs to to that basic economy customer. Now, if you're United and you're at Delta and the front of the airplane is, you know, is is really demanding summer vacation travel no matter the cost, you could probably push it through to them. And to the extent business continues to flow back for those big full service airlines, you push through to them the increased costs and they'll be able to manage it. But the more you're in the basic economy world, it's going to be really hard to do. You know, you saw Southwest really address significant challenges in part from the reduced deliveries of these Boeing planes. Where else can we see the Boeing challenge start to ripple into the airline industry? Well, so United should have it. But I'd say, you know, United used to be less focused on. Their domestic business and they used to use smaller gauge airplanes on it. So they've been increasing size, which has been helping them, and they've been sort of bridging some of that gap between them in Delta and in fares. So you should see it there. But you don't because again, of this change going on it united Alaska is another one I get concerned about. They're very big Boeing shop taking a bunch of deliveries. Alaska showed some pretty good results this quarter and it was driven by, you know, what they called a nice return in California business travel. And we saw Southwest tell us the same thing. And so that tells me that Alaska might be getting a bit of a bump from maybe some better West Coast trends. Alaska does have some premium seating, too. That helps, but those are the ones I worry about, most notably Southwest. They'll be Alaska. They'll be United are the other big Boeing customers here in North America. George, we have to leave us. We have to leave it there. Thank you so much for your time and for all your analysis this week on a very busy word, earnings week also for the airlines, of course. That is George Ferguson of Bloomberg Intelligence. And coming up next, we're going to talk about tech because artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure are top of mind over at Microsoft. We'll preview what to expect for the third quarter report. This is a close on Bloomberg. And it's time now for our top calls. A look at some of the big movers on the back of analysts recommendations, starting with Monster Beverage Truist cutting the energy drink company two notches from buy to sell. Analyst Bill Chappell calls Monster a great company, but with limited reach, he questions its ability to tap into new customers for sales and growth. He also says there's no reason why it should continue to hold a super premium valuation multiple. This is Monster's only sell rating. J.P. Morgan also downgraded the stock this morning and shares are moving down more than 2.2%. And Deckers outdoor next in line. The owner of the footwear brands HOKA and UGG a downgrade to neutral from buy at Bank of America. Near-term trends at Deckers are fine, but the analyst cautions that a softer than expected margin outlook could temper the pace of upwards earnings revisions. Therefore, he sees better opportunities elsewhere within his coverage. Shares also down more than 5% on that name. Finally, UPS upgraded to buy from hold at HSBC. Price target raised to one $70, up from 1.50. The analyst expects the shipping and logistics company to shift its focus on volumes and margin recovery. This, coupled with its UPS Postal Service contract, could restore confidence in its 2026 guidance and shares now moving up about 2/10 of 1%. And those are some of our top calls. And we're also less than an hour away from Microsoft's third quarter report. Revenue expected to increase 15% in the quarter, mostly driven by its Azure cloud computing unit. Joining us now for more on this is Truist analyst Joel Fishbein with a buy rating on Microsoft. Do you still see risk going into the earnings today, given the sentiment we see around the big tech names and any signs of weakness? Only. Thank you for having me, first of all. But the only risk we really see this is macro related. Obviously, we can't control what happens with interest rates and and the economy and the markets moving on this economy. But we think that Microsoft is amazingly positioned here to capitalize on this big trend that you brought up in your preamble, which was A.I. And frankly, there's no better positioned company there. And we think those numbers coming out of Microsoft are going to be very positive. And we've got a lot of data points, and we've done a proprietary survey that says 80% of the customers we surveyed are going to increase your spend with Microsoft. So we think Microsoft is well positioned to come out of this earnings and several others in a very positive light. John, can you put Microsoft in the context of the overall software industry? You mentioned that it is something of an outlier. It has unique tailwinds relative to the rest of software. What are you looking for across the space in addition to sort of Microsoft's nuanced approach, what are we seeing in software? What should we look for in this earnings season? It's great. It's a great question. You know, we think it probably has been overhyped. There's billions of dollars being spent in AI from infrastructure to applications. And if you think about what your social positioning be, over over 1,000,000,001 billion users of Microsoft Office, they have a massive cloud computing network and not unlike Google and Amazon and also Oracle Building one as well. But we are now seeing them move from people trialing, piloting into actual production, and companies like Walmart and Mercedes are using Azure as a service which will be driving the number. It's not only here in the near term, in the long term, and I think that puts them in a very unique position relative to a lot of the other companies. And this is one of the needs in our space that we're actually seeing monetization. People are actually making money on on air and we think that that could drive the growth rate higher. We think the Azure growth here, the bogey here is 20%. We think it'll would likely be higher streets to 50% overall top line growth. We think they'll probably be closer to 60 to 70 driven by this trend. And we think that will continue. If you're in the early stages and continue for some time. You know, Joe, we asked you about the downside risk, but what about the upside? If you think about where they have the potential to really expand on expectations currently set out by the street, where do you think that they could provide a little more color? So I think that's going to be the real question here. How much do they want to disclose from a competitive positioning that you talked about? They are contributing to their actual growth going from 1% three quarters ago to 6% right now? We think they're on a trajectory of it being closer to 8 to 9%. Did they disclose that number? Number one? Number two is do they disclose how many co-pilot and co-pilot users they actually have? Again, from a competitive perspective, they probably don't want to, but they're really going to get pushing a lot of color about that. Again, externally, we're hearing demand is very, very strong and we're moving from trial and piloting into real production. And people are talking about. Massive cost savings by enabling this. So those are some of the key factors that I think we're looking for from Microsoft. And they'll be pressured to give a lot of color around them. Talk a little bit to us about their capital deployment. What is Microsoft doing with their cash at this point in time? How does that differ from the rest of the software and then the rest of tech? So the first thing they've been doing is deploying it towards A.I. investment. So you probably seen a massive amount of investments. The latest one was in the Middle East building out data centers there. I think they've spread the love around in terms of investments here. They've done some what I call a few hires where they're going to some of these companies and hiring engineers. That's number one. I think they'll continue to buy back stock to offset dilution. And I think that you'll continue to see the small dividend going forward. They do need to you know, this is a capital intensive business, the building of this data center. So you'll think of majority of the cash investment will go towards. We got to leave it there. That's thanks to Joel Fishbein over at Truist. And coming up next, we're going to talk about Chipotle's sizzling hot quarterly results and a pickup in traffic. That's all up next, conversation with the CEO. This is a close on Bloomberg and. For our television and radio audiences. I'm happy to welcome now Brian Niccol, the CEO of Chipotle, who, of course, has just announced that the full year outlook over at Chipotle would be boosted for the year because there is more growth there than at other fast casual rivals in this space here. Brian, what's going differently for you than perhaps a lot of the industry? What is driving people into the stores? Yeah. Well, great to be with you guys. And look, you know, I think the purpose of Chipotle has always been food with integrity, using classic culinary techniques so that we give people delicious, nutritious food. And, you know, I think that I think we've just done even better of late is bring that experience to people in a fast way. So, you know, one thing that also makes our brand really special is the customization that you can get with all these great ingredients. And so we've been working hard to ensure we're staffed, we're trained or deployed so that our team members can give people exactly the burrito or bowl experience that they want at a pretty meaningful speed so that people can get on with their day. So I think that's what you're seeing is the power of great food, great culinary, great people, and now also some great operations around throughput. Can you talk to us a little bit, Brian, about the general state of the consumer? I think this stands out as a very strong success story, but also in the midst of a lot of skepticism with respect to how much the consumer can continue to spend and the general health of the consumer. What do you see from your consumer? Is it Chipotle specific or do you generally see a very strong consumer out there? Yeah, look, when we do the research on a broad scale basis, we definitely see that consumers are feeling a little bit of pressure on the economic side of things. Right. Gas prices are elevated. They've been dealing with inflation for a while. Fortunately, the wage market has been strong and unemployment has been really low. So the good news is jobs are there. Wages are there. But they are feeling pinched on, you know, kind of their budgets as it relates specifically to Chipotle. Fortunately for us, the feedback we get is the value proposition has never been stronger. So if there being more, you know, choice in how they're going to choose their ten or $15 on a meal away from home, what we continue to hear is we're one of the great solutions for that type of outlay of cash. And so, you know, we're that's why we're so dedicated to having great ingredients, you know, great culinary, and then obviously giving people the customization that they want so they get the food at the speed that they want to. So I think that's that that is the thing that's separating us right now is our ability to provide this great culinary, great ingredients at what are pretty reasonable prices. It's interesting because some of your products are so popular that not just the earnings today are grabbing a lot of attention. It's this idea of chicken. And the chicken shortage is really being faced. You know, we had reported that you told staff or recommended, rather, that they stop eating the chicken, given the popularity of some of your chicken items on your menu. How has this been perceived by employees? There have been some pushback on the idea of itself. And do you have to change anything in terms of the way you handle the product? Oh, no. I think this is a story that's looking for a headline. You know, what would actually happen is the supply got really tight. We asked all our employees, including myself, to pitch in for a week to maybe try something else on our menu. The good news is we're through that pinch. There's no challenges on our chicken supply. Actually, our supply teams that are for now, you know, fabulous job of securing supply to what has been really tremendous demand. So, look, the good news is our employees were happy to pitch in. I guess there were maybe some employees that didn't want to pitch in on this one. But in the end, we came together, did what we needed to do. And, you know, we're going to continue to focus on giving people great experiences with our product. And that includes chicken. You know, it's interesting because you guys have been very fast to pivot around a lot of things here. I'm really curious around other potential ways you react to the consumer. You had mentioned kind of the general states so far, but do you think that the consumer would be vulnerable to any future price hikes? Do you think that the price hikes already having been put on products or as far as you can go? You know, look, I don't know the answer to that for everybody. The good news for Chipotle is we definitely believe we still have some additional pricing power if we needed to take pricing in the future. Our hope always is that we can hold our pricing because we want to protect our value proposition always. And I think frankly, it's one of our competitive advantages are really positions of strength is just the strength of the brand because of our unique commitment to ingredients and the speed at which. We can give people these customized meals. So, you know, look, I definitely think the consumer is feeling pressure. All right. We've had inflation for the last couple of years. In some cases, things are up 20, 30% from where they were just not that long ago. And now here we are, hopefully with inflation starting to moderate. But still, things are, well, elevated from where they were a couple of years ago. And I think that's what positions us so uniquely in this space is at the end of the day, you can still get a really meaningful bowl or burrito from Chipotle. They for around ten bucks, if you choose not to have chips and Glock or drink and stuff. So, you know, look, I would suggest everybody look hard at their value proposition and ensure people feel great about what they're getting for what they pay. And if that plays out, you'll be rewarded with business. I think that's what we're seeing happening. Let's talk a little bit more about those embedded costs and just the general sort of embedded inflationary costs and how you're managing through that inflation. I know that Chipotle has several automation projects underway. Maybe talk to us about where your automation priorities are and how much that might offset the margin pressures from study or inflation. Yeah, So thanks for asking about this. You know, obviously we set out to figure out what are ways we can be more productive in the restaurants. And specifically we started with asking our employees what are the what are the pinch points, what are the things that are most challenging to do? And one of those things that came up was cutting coring and scooping avocados every morning to make our guacamole. And so we've created a new robotic or robotic device that will cut core and scoop the avocado. We still have to hand mash it and we still have to, you know, add the cilantro, lime juice and onions and stuff. But, you know, it gets rid of some of the harder parts of making guacamole every morning. And those are that's just one example of many other things we're looking at. We got feedback that frying the chips is a difficult task. So we experimented with a a robotic arm to fry the chips. That one hasn't worked out. So we're going back to the drawing boards. But the good news is the learning from the robotic arm for frying chips informed what we did on designing what we call auto koto and then other places that we're looking to build innovation is on our digital make line. Is there a way for us to help our employees build bowls and burritos on that line so that with the one or two people working on the line, they're capable of producing even more burritos and bowls. So other things too, like AI and machine learning to help us in our rewards program, our forecasting, our supply chain. So I'm really optimistic about the innovation that we've got coming down the pike. Obviously, we have to take it through our stage process validated, ensure that it really plays out the way we want. But I think we're we're hunting in the right place that will make the job better, protect the experience for our customer and provide no compromise on the culinary. You know, it's interesting, speaking of inflation, curious about the California $20 an hour minimum wage for fast food workers since this has happened here. Curious, Bryan, about your view on what else would be impacted with that rise in minimum wage for workers here. How do you think about how that fits into your broader cost picture and whether you need to make changes elsewhere? Yeah, I mean, look, obviously we move the wages accordingly and then, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with this, but that creates compression for wages throughout the business, meaning managers and apprentices and people that have more tenure at the crew level. So we adjusted all those wages accordingly. And we did take a price increase in California to offset the wage inflation that we're dealing with, which was close to 20% wage inflation. And what I'm happy to say is, you know, we didn't have to change anything else. You know, we're not cutting corners on our food. We're not cutting corners on portions. We're not cutting corners on the speed at which provide our service. You know, we're committed to giving people the Chipotle, the experience they know and love with the culinary that they know and love. And, you know, obviously, we had to raise prices a little bit. But, you know, the reality is it's more expensive to do business in California. And, you know, we adjust accordingly. Brian, we thank you so much for your time. We should say Chipotle shares actually today hitting a record off the heels of those results as well. That is Brian Niccol, the CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill. We're going to stick with that last thing we were talking about, that California wage hike that we've seen. Bloomberg Economics says that it could also raise the risk that the Federal Reserve delays its first rate cut. Joining us for more context is Anna Wong. She is Bloomberg economics chief economist. Very curious about how you see this wage hike really impacting the broader economy. Of course, California being a whale in the room here. When you think about how many people live there in the United States. Yeah. So, you know, California employed about 12% of the total national employment. And the number of workers that are directly affected by this fast food minimum wage hike is about half a million. And just those half a million workers seeing 20% increase in wages would boost the employment cost index, which is a wage measure that the Fed pays a lot of attention to. It would boost it by 0.1 percentage point. And add to that, as Brian just said, not only are the fast food workers seeing 20% hike, but they need to raise the wages for managers and a lot of other related jobs that could that could boost the ECI by a total of 0.2 percentage point. And the Fed is getting these numbers on the second day of their July FOMC meeting. So that means that it could be that when they looked at the employment cost index, they would be like that would be like maybe they couldn't do the cut in July. And we also think that if they don't cut in July, then they probably missed the window for cutting because they are after unfavorable seasonal patterns. Base effects would cost a 12th month change in inflation to drift up. And along with Bloomberg Economics, we thank you so much for keeping an eye on something that is under the surface. Perhaps not a lot of people had noticed how that would be a bigger impact here. Now, coming up, we're going to talk about shares of Hertz now hitting an all time low after the company reported a loss that was nearly three times worse than analysts expected. Tons of ripple effects. It's our Stock of the hour up next. Stick with us. This is the close on Bloomberg. And. Time now for today's Stock of the Hour. Shares of Hertz hitting an all time low and Abigail Doolittle joins us to explain. And this is a total mess. So they put up a loss of a dollar 28 per share. That's almost three times worse than what they were expected to do. But they put up $2.1 billion in revenue, which actually beats that speaks to a margin problem, problems with costs and it really having to do with their pricey EVs. They have this huge inventory of Teslas now, ironically, the huge inventory of Teslas, that's because of their biggest owner, Knight had Capital asked them to buy these EVs a couple of years ago, thinking the values would go up, but the values have declined. So now they're taking big depreciation charges to write them down. In addition, they've closed locations. Collision costs an issue revenue per car. So lots of issues here. But the new CEO, Gil West, he came from the former GM Robotaxi, the head there. He's an operations geeks. He's saying he's going to turn it around. He's determined to get it right. Still a lot more for him ahead and more for us ahead as well on the close. Stick with us. More markets into the close. This is Bloomberg. This is the countdown to the close, emotionally Basic, alongside Gina martin Adams and Gina, we are looking at a market that has been having a bit of a tough day. Pretty remarkable. If you look at it, the S&P 500 still down after some big tech earnings only really now down one half of 1% with the Nasdaq 100 down 6/10 of 1%. The ten year yield now still above four seventies. So even that bond market sell off still quickening and the dollar now on the decline, but essentially flat on the day. Interesting to see here the equity reaction on the tape, isn't it? Yeah, and it is all about equities, which tells you it's probably mostly about earnings. So the bond market isn't reacting materially to GDP. Then what's really going on here? I thought at the beginning of the day it was really about GDP, it was really about earnings, it was really about what's going on in the economy. But I do think the market is a little bit nervous. Well, these tech stocks really put out the earnings numbers that we're hoping for, particularly after Mehta sort of disappointed with an outlook that wasn't quite what investors were were counting on. Biggest moments of the day still after the bell. Now, earlier today, we spoke with Stuart Kizer of Citigroup and we asked about the increased downside risk in equities after today's GDP numbers. The GDP print this morning probably opened up a little more space to the downside than we thought you would had. You know, our view coming in to earnings was a combination of strong GDP and strong EPS growth set a very high floor for us equity markets, you know, getting higher inflation and lower growth and you would have wanted probably opens up a little more space there. For more market analysis, let's welcome Leo Kelly. He's founder and CEO of Burden's Capital Advisors. You know, this idea of downside risk I think is interesting, particularly because we did see some, let's say, brutal selling in the last couple of weeks. We did have that optimism come back this week. But at what point do you think the selling is over? But I think the selling is over when we get through what I was what I would call the inflation bear market, this is all a continuation of a two year plus time period from 2022 when inflation really started heating up and bond yields started to rise. So until we settle this, until we know how this is going to end, I think we see continued volatility at an elevated pace. Talk to us about what you do with sectors if you're worried about inflation, your point about volatility continuing check has done very, very well over the course of the last year or so, despite the concerns about inflation. Would you stick in tag or do you move to other sectors that are maybe a little bit more inflation sensitive? Yeah, I think you have to be very careful with tech here. Specifically with the handful of names have gone to astronomical levels now they've corrected a little bit, but the valuations are still high. The answer to your question is you have to mind valuation. I think the market and the market started to get overly optimistic about these. The six rate cuts, which for the life of me, I never understood how they came up with six rate cuts, let alone even one rate cut now seems seems to be a question. And what we know about technology is technology does better in lower rate environments where capital is plentiful, more people are running to risk assets. That's when high valuation assets do well. So our thought is the risk is higher for inflation to continue. Remember, the Fed has to make a decision here, either take the economy to the brink of or into recession to fix inflation, or just stay off of recession and deal with inflation. Never really hitting target, continue to go higher. That's not the best environment for long bonds. It's not the best environment for tech. So I do think you have to be active here, financials, small cap stocks. I think the international markets look interesting. Why those markets, it really doesn't have to do with the Fed, has to do with valuation being significantly cheaper than these these top names that everybody's fallen in love with in the last 18 months. I'm interested in your view here outside of the United States, because we know there are still the strong dollar dynamic and you're seeing it not only hurt other countries, you're also seeing it really weigh on some of the multinationals. Do you think that that dynamic continues and can continue to put a pinch and some of the expectations investors had coming into this year? Well, again, I think international stocks, despite the dollar strength, international stocks have done quite well here over the last year or so. They're holding up well. And again, it comes down to valuation. They're cheaper than their U.S. counterparts. And so while there's a lot of risk in Asia with what's been happening with China, the markets outside of that still to us look to be opportunistic. I think you have to be very patient there. Long term plays, you get nice dividends in some of these markets. The valuations are lower. And so I think there's still opportunity there. Remember what the US did here with with the. Increasing money supply by 40% in two years. That's third world countries, stuff that happened all over the world. So really what we have is water rising, all boats up and down. And I think we'll continue that pace. Talk to us a bit, Leo, about how you balance your portfolio of equities and bonds in an environment where inflation is more volatile, more pervasive, more concerning at large, and stock prices and bond yields are positively correlated. I think this is the biggest challenge for asset allocators and and investors in general. How do you look at the world when when we're in that kind of broader macro landscape? And where do you find some value outside of stocks and bonds to kind of offset that imbalance? Yeah, it's a great question. We have been really of the mindset that yields will stay higher for longer and will potentially go higher. I was on the show, I think, in January and, you know, we thought the six rate hike thing was crazy. So what we've been doing to offset the risk of interest rates rising and long bonds getting hurt and some of these growth stocks going down, we've moved money into value oriented stocks with dividends. Okay. And income replacement. We're keeping our duration in our bond portfolios low. In other words, buy short bonds, you get a higher yield and less risk. And we really are interested in the private equity markets. Specifically, we like private credit. We've allocated capital to private credit. It's a good place to be. Yields are high. It's not as susceptible to movement with the bond yields in the public markets. And so I think that's a great place to put money. I will say this, though, you have to be incredibly discerning when you go into the private markets. You need to understand or have a manager that understands credit quality and is as good as that as they are at reading a balance sheet. Leo, We have to leave it there. That is Leo Kelly, founder and CEO of Verdant Capital Advisors, certainly taking us all across the market. Gina There's certainly a lot going on in almost every asset class you look at today. Yeah, and it is a big challenge. I do think that that is the biggest challenge for the broader investor class, is what do you do in an environment like this where we sat in an environment for 20 years where stock prices and bond yields were negatively correlated. So there was an offset. Any time you had some weakness in equities, you had bond strength. That has not been the case in the post-pandemic world, and that's really disruptive for asset allocators and managers of of capital. I do think it also feeds through to the equity market and we've seen that a little bit through the volatility in the sector rotation. It's a very, very challenging climate. Gina Of course we are certainly looking at limbo for a lot of investors out there, but now we are moving closer to the closing bell for market coverage right here on Bloomberg as we take it to the bell and beyond. Beyond the Bell Bloomberg's Comprehensive cross. Coverage of the U.S. market. Close starts right now, about 2 minutes away from the end of the trading day. Sonali Basak and Gina martin Adams counting down to the closing bell. And here to help us take us Beyond the Bell with a global simulcast, we're joined now by Carol Massar. And since then, Vivek bringing together our Bloomberg Television, radio and YouTube audiences worldwide to parse through the crucial moments of the trading day. And certainly it has been quite the day Carol. Yeah, interesting. Right? And we're definitely well off our worst levels of the session. Having said that, I look at the S&P 500, you still have more than 300 names to the downside. And folks, if you look at some of the ones that are going to be reporting Google, it is down right now just shy of 2%. Microsoft, it is down about 2.4%. So you're seeing these names as we get ready for earnings trending, lowering the trade, incredible range in today's trade to the Nasdaq, 100 down half a percentage point right now. It was down as much as 2% earlier in the session. Gina, the S&P 500 down more than 1.6% earlier in the session, now down only half a percentage point. Yeah, and a nice climb back. And tech is not leading the downdraft, which is interesting considering all the nervousness around tech. This really is seems to be related to matter. And a market that was caught off guard by what Maytag said regarding their spending and their future growth prospects. It's definitely weighing on the rest of the communications space, putting a lot of pressure on Google after the close or alphabet as as the younger folks say. Nonetheless, I do think it's notable that tech stocks are actually in the green now, the tech sector rising, and that's helping the broader S&P 500 closely out of this negative territory. Yeah, it's interesting. And we'll see what today has to bring as well. Just a lot of uncertainty out there as we wait to see what more of the tech giant has to say. We are getting the bells here now down to the close and we are indeed ending the day again in the red here. We're looking at the S&P 500 really still down on the day, having closed close to one half of 1% lower with even bigger declines here on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, down almost 1%. That NASDAQ 100 now down about 6/10 of 1%. Of course, snapping that winning streak we saw earlier in the week. All right, guys, real quick on some of the movers in today's session. Nvidia, that stock up about 3.6%. This this has to do with what we got from Metta, basically, because as they have saying, we're going to do up our spend our CapEx. We're doing a lot of things when it comes to AI. So companies that play in the air space benefited and that included NVIDIA. It was up about three and a half percent. And you also had super micro, it was up about 4.3%. Hey folks, we've got Microsoft, so let's get to it. Crossing the Bloomberg terminal, third quarter revenue, 61.9 billion better than what the Street was forecasting. That was a forecast of 60.87 billion third quarter EPS. We're looking at $2.94 a share. Let's go to cloud revenue. So key for this company, Intelligent Cloud for the quarter, 26.71 billion better than the street forecast of 26.25. Looking at personal computing revenue that to a slight beat, 15.58 billion versus the estimate of 15.7 productivity revenue pretty much on target 19.57 billion. The Street was looking for 19.54, but that third quarter revenue folks coming in better than forecast and you've got the stock up almost 5% here in the aftermarket. Yeah, expectations were for about $61 billion. We're seeing it at about $62 billion for the third quarter. Going to the press release. Looking at what Satya Nadella chairman and CEO of Microsoft has to say about the quarter, quote, Microsoft, co-pilot and co-pilot Stack are orchestrating a new era of AI transformation, driving better business outcomes across every role and industry. Finally now, it's interesting. We do have Intel also now out. You do have adjusted EPS forecasts, missing analyst estimates here. The second quarter revenue is estimated to be 12.5 billion to 13.5 billion and the estimate had been 13.6 billion, a little shy of expectations there, even with revenue very narrowly beating estimates here. Intel shares now down more than 2%, fluctuating more than 2.5%, quickening its losses now after market. And what a contrast between the two. You've got the software company contrasting with the hardware company. Clearly, Microsoft has been just a dominant force in software, investing in all the right places, growing in all the right places. Intel, a little bit of a different story. And that's definitely showing up in this quarterly earnings season with not necessarily bad results, but not an across the board just pummeling of expectations like that which we saw from Microsoft. Okay. Let's get on over to Alphabet, because we're seeing the results come right now. It looks like a B when it comes to first quarter revenue, 80.54 billion, beating estimates of a $79.4 billion first quarter EPS. Well coming in way above expectations at a dollar 89 versus estimates of $1.53. We're also seeing first quarter operating income significantly beat expectations up 25.47 billion versus 22.4 billion. The stock just surging right now up by. 8% while taking a page from, should I say, whose book matters book The company, the board approving initiation of a cash dividend, declaring a cash dividend of $0.20 a share. You want to know why the stock is really popping in the after hours? That's got to help in a big way. Well, it's interesting. You're just seeing it soar past 9% after market and Alphabet right now. And you are really seeing these results coming out of Alphabet and Microsoft shrugging off a lot of those problems you saw in technology. You got to go there. Yeah, share buyback, too. This is something that investors are certainly loving right now. Alphabet authorizing to buy back up to an additional $70 billion in shares. Shares Alphabet higher by 9.5%. Definitely needed this in the communications space, which was really beholden to what what Metta said with respect to the outlook. This is should turn the tide for communications at large, depending on what the other stocks do. But remember, this is the fourth largest stock in the S&P 500. This could make a really big difference to the tone of the market. Yeah, as we open up tomorrow, I got to say that alphabet move, man, that is just a big one, nine and a half percent to the out to the upside here. You know, initiating a dividend, a big buyback. And what's interesting is talking with our own Mandeep Singh about, you know, alphabet. It's all about engagement. And this is what you want to see at this company. Advertising revenue at Google, 61.66 billion that was above street estimates. YouTube ads, revenue that was above what the street was anticipating, services revenue coming in. So really cloud revenue, that too was above what the street was expecting. So you look at all of the businesses across the board. But what's really key, again, this is an engagement company. This is about advertising and that is certainly firing on all cylinders. Yeah, worth reiterating the cash dividend of $0.20 per share. Also, the company authorizing that share buyback add up to an additional $70 billion worth of shares. I go to the press release and I look to see what Sundar Pichai, CEO of the company, says that the results in the first quarter reflect strong performance from search, YouTube and cloud. We are well underway with our Gemini era. That's what investors want to hear about and there's great momentum across the company. Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure and our global product footprint position as well for the next wave of innovation. Remember, investors want to see that the company companies search product is keeping up when it comes to AI and competing effectively against everyone else. She's working on integrating AI tech into search a.k.a meta platforms. Every headline Crossing the Wire is making investors love this story more. Look at that 12% higher on the day. And it's because not only of that 70% $70 billion share repurchase reauthorized here you also have that cash dividend declared of $0.20 per share. And not only, Tim, to your point here, Sundar Pichai just really highlighting here the Gemini era and momentum across the company, particularly leadership in AI A.I.. You do have him really expanding more there in their operating results about consolidating their teams as they've announced that focus on building AI models. So driving efficiency here while focusing on the future, that's that's what's holding on here to this stock right now. All right, guys. So you've got Alphabet up about 12% in the aftermarket. You've got Microsoft a gain of about five and a half percent in the aftermarket. Made me want to look at the Nasdaq 100 e-mini futures. And you've got that up, that index up about just shy of 1%. So providing some upward momentum overall to certainly the Nasdaq trade. Okay. Let's go back and check out what shares of Microsoft are doing, up 4.5% as we speak. Shares rising after third quarter revenue beats estimate. Worth repeating these headlines, third quarter cloud revenue coming in above estimates at $35.1 billion. Estimates are for $33.93 billion. So a beat there. Also third quarter revenue coming in at $61.9 billion, handily beating those estimates of $60.87 billion. Yeah, and a nice little payout to shareholders as well. And more than $8 billion, $8.4 billion to shareholders via dividends and buybacks over the quarter. That I think is a very welcome surprise for investors that are really counting on Microsoft to be a spender, but then give a little back a bit back to shareholders and it certainly adds a bit of juice to the stock price, which is soaring in after hours. Very different story. So Microsoft soaring, Alphabet is soaring. Not the case when you look at Intel, that stock in the aftermarket, we're looking at about a five and a half, almost 6% decline here as we speak. The weak forecast exactly giving a weak forecast. You know, big maker of personal computer processors, such a big part of their story, but giving that lackluster forecast for the current period, it is still struggling to right the ship, turn it around and kind of get back to the top tier. The chip industry having a tough time. All right, guys, last name for you is the big names and some big movers. So we're going to certainly track this into the after hours and certainly into the Friday trade. All right. That's a wrap. Are cross-platform radio, TV, YouTube, Bloomberg Originals. We will see you again, folks. Same time, same place tomorrow. Now let's get more on Microsoft results. Anurag Rana Bloomberg intelligence senior technology analyst, joins us now. What do you think about the results that you saw first blush? What is there to like that investors are most holding on to? And does it hold into tomorrow? The Azure growth of 31%, I mean, that's a big jump. The expectations were 28%. And frankly speaking, going into the quarter, we thought anything above 28 would be a welcome. I mean, this is a very big number, frankly, given the current macro conditions. Is there anything bad in this report on Iraq? I mean, every every headline I'm seeing come across the terminal is a beat. They're even handing out more capital to shareholders. They seem to be beating everywhere. Is there anything that we can point to as a risk for this company right now? Yeah, I'll let you know. In one and a half hours when they give guidance, because that's really what's going to dictate what's happened to the stock tomorrow, because that 31%, they better find a way to either, you know, say they're going to be flat growth rate next next quarter for 31% or better. You know, otherwise you're going to see a reversal of this. Right. I mean, is there anything that they could say that could really stop the party to the point that both of you have been making here, especially when it comes to spending in terms of kind of building up on future plans, particularly as it relates to Asia? So one of the things you would notice right now in the last few weeks, non-IT Tech spending is has been weak. In fact, it's it's been abysmal whether it's Accenture and IBM and perhaps even Intel. So when you look at the AI part of it, that's probably what's driving a lot of what's happening with Microsoft. So they need to keep that momentum going. Otherwise, you know, it is as I said, it's going to be it's going to be a different story tomorrow morning. Talk to us a little bit about their efficiency. I mean, they obviously are beating across the board on every revenue line, but they're also extremely efficient and producing pretty solid margin. Where do you see potential future gains from efficiency coming from? See the scalable model of software as something now they have been spending quite a bit on CapEx and they've been investing quite a bit. Now over time that really translates into, you know, high gross margins, how high return on those invested capital and somebody like Microsoft, it can absorb a lot of these investments better than anybody else. So I think there's a lot less spend on sales and marketing, I think already still. Okay. So so it's a scale business and then there isn't anybody out there better than Microsoft wins when it comes to scale in the software world. Anurag Rana, Bloomberg Intelligence, thank you so much for joining us right after those breaking results. I also want to bring you some more breaking news now, more breaking earnings. We have SNAP reporting seeing revenue for the second quarter exceeding analysts estimates to be 1.23 billion to 1.26 billion. The estimate had been one point to 1 billion. You also have daily active users for the first quarter beating analyst estimates. Check out SNAP shares just soaring after market reaching almost a 20% gain post market. A lot of interesting news coming out of these social media companies. We're going to go back to big tech now because we have more on Alphabet also soaring. We are joined here by Mandeep Singh, Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst. And, you know, when you think about Alphabet, it's so funny to go through these big tech names and see the divergence of what's going on. They have just shown the market that they have a ton of cash on hand that they're also willing to return. Is that the biggest part of the story or is there more? I mean, look at the beat on search. That's a core business. When they come out and beat like this where it reflects in the operating margin. 32% consensus was at 28%. That just tells you how healthy that search businesses. And it continues to command the kind of margins we're used to seeing with Google search. So really, everything else is a side story right now. You know, with YouTube and cloud, all are all the segments did well. But the real key segment is search. And it all the talks about search getting disrupted. I think they have proved their naysayers wrong here. What do you think they did right on search? What drove that beat? I mean, the Gemini launch of it was by startup initially, but then they kind of got it right. And now they are integrating Gemini with pretty much every product they have, whether it's certain, look, even if there will be some disruption in terms of, you know, perplexity or chat, Betty, taking some share in terms of volume. Ultimately, you have to come back to Google, search for real time results. That's what everyone is realizing, is it's very hard to build that crawling infrastructure for real time search, because when you want to kind of ground the chatbot results, you need to go to Google for that real time context. Well, what do you make? I understand search is the main game in town, but what about the other efforts being made at YouTube ad revenue? How does it compare relative to what you may have wanted to see? And that's a big difference between an alphabet and a meta in the case of Alphabet, all that. CPU capacity that they are getting from an area is getting deployed in that cloud business. In fact, the cloud business margins are better than expected as well because everyone wants to train on those GPUs and they are actually using that to drive the cloud revenue. Cloud profitability was a bit of a concern before, you know, Generate API. I think that is on the right track now. You see incremental margins coming out from the cloud segment. Talk to us a bit about this capital deployment announcement, buybacks and dividends, all in one nice pretty package for the investor in Alphabet. Does it take you by surprise? Is it about time for this company sort of where are we in that cycle? No, I think it's kind of good to see them being prudent about capital allocation given they generate so much cash and given the search business is intact in terms of generating, you know, that kind of free cash flow and dividend is pretty much symbolic for both meta and alphabet. But it's a good thing. It kind of draws more long term investors. And in this case, I mean, there's no doubt that they can keep generating 80 to 90 billion in free cash flow every year or so. Right. What do you think about the capital return plan here? When we think about these companies and you think about their use of cash, you wonder whether they're giving back too much to investors, frankly, Obviously, investors like it. But is it better that they give it back or is it better that they invest and they are investing? So, look, they've I've no doubt they will raise their CapEx by 30% similar to meta. But the difference is matter was losing 20 billion and reality labs that nobody liked. So in this case, Google has their moonshots. But I think what they have shown is the cost discipline and they are still in that phase. Their cost discipline is showing up in their margins. Once we are, I think past second half, that cost advantage is going to dissipate and then it will be more about top line growth. You did a disservice by comparing and contrasting Google or sorry Alphabet and I'll never get that right and matter earlier. But I'm curious, I'd like to go back to that conversation because they are the two biggest behemoths in communications. Which one is really the guide or the the bellwether for the sector at large that we should look to for signals, if you will? Yeah, I mean, in the case of Alphabet, they really signaled the health of the digital ad spending market simply because, you know, when it comes to search, there are a large number of advertisers that just use search. Whereas on the social media side, the advertiser base is probably smaller, albeit it's more effective in terms of targeting the ads. So the fact that Snapchat also did well, it tells me that digital ad market is bouncing back. And look, the small business sentiment is still weak. So that's the caveat in terms of the sustainability of digital ads. But there's no doubt that when it comes to digital ad spending, search, Google search spend is the most non-discretionary part of it. And that will continue to show in that Google ads results. Mandeep Singh of Bloomberg Intelligence, we thank you so much for all of that breaking analysis. More breaking news crossing the terminal here as we also have earnings from Atlassian. We also have some news coming out of the company as well. The stock now down more than 6% after market. They are having a CEO transition over there at the technology company after 23 years. Scott Farquhar is stepping down as co CEO. The company says it's to spend more time with his family and focus on philanthropy and work in the technology industry globally to further their initiatives. His last day will be August 31st. He'll continue as a board member and a special advisor, and he will, yes, be stepping down in the coming months here. And of course, you do see a change here in the stock by the tune of nearly 7% as we speak. Now, coming up, we're going to take a deeper dive into those results from Google and Microsoft with Brent Bell. He's an equity research analyst over at Jefferies. We're going to go around the board on all we've seen over the last 24 hours. Stick with us. This is the close on Bloomberg. Spring season is here. I think we're all asking the same question just how much earnings growth we're expecting. Bloomberg is first to break the numbers. Iliad is coming out right now. We have talked to a number of shares of pinterest lucid group coming out with its earnings. All eyes right now on nvidia. A lot still to come with the smartest insights. How much favor could profit and revenue have been better than what the street was expecting saying in line with estimates. We will have full and instant analysis Continuing coverage on Bloomberg. Context changes everything. Now let's get back to our top story results from Alphabet and Microsoft out just a few minutes ago. And we're joined now by Brent Thill, equity research analyst at Jefferies. To go through these numbers and really parse through the noise here, perhaps we start here with Alphabet, because this beat is not only what's giving investors some love here, it's also this capital return story. Do you think that there's any bad news, frankly, when you look at these results? Yeah, no real bad news. YouTube by five, search by three, cloud by two. So you had a pretty strong beat across the board going into earnings. Google was the most negative. Investors in Internet have hated this story relative to other stories that we cover. So the sentiment was strongest on that. Obviously, you saw the bar high there. It was very low for Google. So Google had a low bar to jump over given all the AI concerns. And clearly the numbers were good. The capital return is good. The dividend installation is there. We're still looking for a CFO. It's been nine months. I don't know why it takes so long, but we're still looking for who is going to be the replacement for Ruth. But beyond that, I think the AI worries are going to continue to linger on this one. And they're not totally out of the woods. But short term, obviously this is not many. These AI technologies are not enough to disrupt their dominance in search. And I think everyone is continuing to be concerned down the road, but it still feels like good, good results and a good clean beat across many of the key metrics. I think the one thing that we've been seeing between that of Microsoft and Google is everyone is spending a lot more on CapEx. Google's CapEx was 2 billion ahead. Microsoft's CapEx was a billion ahead of our number. So you got 3 billion incremental in CapEx. You know, that announced a big a 12% increase in CapEx yesterday. So this is clearly going to all a data center infrastructure today. None of these services are monetizable yet. So continued view on when can they actually monetize AI and that's still probably a ways out. Bryant Correct me if I'm wrong, but my interpretation of all of these Giants spending so much money on CapEx is that's more to go around for the rest of tech. And we should see generally tech stocks performing relatively well given the surprise that they potentially face at the top line. Yet yesterday we had the revenues and the generally negative response really overwhelmed markets today. What's going on there? I would think that positive CapEx from these companies would be positive news for tech. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, if you think about it, semis and hardware today was up and video was up 4% and is up one. Dell's up for Internet and networking is up four. So I think exactly what you're seeing is higher CapEx is good for infrastructure today is and infrastructure you know it's like it's like you build a house, you got to buy the land, you got to get an architect, you got to put the concrete in, you got to put the water. You can't have the artwork, which is the applications in the AI until all that stuff's done. So right now everyone thinks like you're going to some magic pixie dust and all the tech lights up and air, and that's not going to happen. What's happening is what you said is you're spending to build the foundational infrastructure. Today, all air is in the infrastructure layer. It is not in the application layer. And so Microsoft and others aren't benefiting. Salesforce.com, Adobe, they're not benefiting as much. But to your point, you're seeing a strong surge into all this infrastructure, including energy. You know, we're continuing to do a lot of work at Jefferies, like we're running out of energy transmission lines to get the the energy to these customers. There's a whole host of infrastructure that has to get built. That is going to be the this is going to be the first area of spend. So our clients are largely overweight semis in our hardware and are looking at coming back to software and Internet. You know, once we see this investment cycle start to slow down, we haven't seen signs of that yet. Brian, even if you love these numbers for Alphabet, for Microsoft, what you're saying about CapEx, what I'm wondering is what level of growth do they need to sustain in order to really supplement that spending to boost those future initiatives? Because today's numbers might be great, but if those margins start to compress in the future, these numbers don't stay as large for macro reasons or otherwise. Where is there the most risk and in which stocks? Well, that's the beauty. What just happened even at Google and Microsoft, margins are going higher and Microsoft committed to higher margins in the age of AI. So don't you know, don't mess around with Amy Hood, the CFO there. She her biggest room is the room for improvement. You she everyone was freaked. Hey, like margins are coming down and Amy's like, margins aren't going down. We're going to charge a lot of money and we're going to help our clients and they'll get value and we'll make money on this. So we're seeing actually what's so different about the dot.com era is we're not seeing money wasted. We're seeing these companies actually making money early on on these services because they're charging so much for them. They're expensive to run, but they're making money and margins are going higher. So I think, again, you have not crazy valuations and you're continuing to see pretty good support. Microsoft remains one of our top picks for 2024. So we obviously have yet to get much guidance from either of these companies. That's yet to come to keep us all excited through the evening. But nonetheless, what are you expecting with respect to Microsoft and Alphabet going forward? What can we hear and how high is the bar for these companies? Yeah, I mean, this is it wasn't a magic quarter. It was the guided that hurt the stock. And so to your point, you know, we don't have that yet. We don't know. Google doesn't obviously guide and they never have. Microsoft gives you a lot of color. And Google should go to the Microsoft school of of of how to give guidance. If I had my my my $0.02. But you think about with Microsoft, I do believe that these companies will be aggressive. We're in a CapEx war environment. We've said this repeatedly. There's only going to be a few companies that really went in the air because you need user data and money and there's a literally on both hands, you can count who's going to win that war. And so we're going to continue to see a spend. I think we'll get care. More CapEx comment. You have 20 seconds here, but for Atlassian, you see the CEO, the co-CEO stepping down here, Scott Bach, you are, but you have Mike Cannon-Brookes staying on board. How big of a deal is that to lose their co-CEO at this time? It's a big deal. I mean, he's been there forever is a big deal. There's a lot of things going on inside that company, a lot of moving pieces. So they need to stabilize the ship. They need to get back on the right foot and get to cloud. And they've had a lot of moving pieces. So this is another brick in the wall worry, if you will, for the stock, and that's why you're seeing the stock down. Brent, we appreciate it. Thank you for going through so many names with that. A third is Brent Thill over at Jefferies. Now coming up, our own Ed Ludlow spoke with Porat, the alphabet CFO, in the last few minutes. We're going to bring you exactly what she said up next. This is the close on Bloomberg. And. Let's get back to those results from Alphabet. Ed Ludlow now joins us, the co-host of Bloomberg Technology, and he just spoke to CFO Ruth Porat. What did she have to say, particularly about this big beat in search? Because as our own Bloomberg Intelligence and Mandeep Singh point out, there were some skepticism that this could continue this strong. Yeah, I mean, Porat went to her kind of go to phrase, which is resilience in search, you know, search and the advertising market generally, it's going to be difficult to get a health check on that until the call. And I'm sure she'll go into more specifics. I think, you know, alphabet doesn't give sort of very rigid guidance, but very careful with her words. Porat did say that that testing's the word she used is showing that, you know, bringing Gemini, the latest AI model or generative A.I. tool to search the testing showed that it's driving increased use. And those little nuggets, those little pieces kind of answer the question which is before the investment, when are you going to start seeing sales growth directly from the AI work you're trying to implement? And that's there's much evidence that we're going to get at this stage. So clearly a big beat across the board search being a huge part of that ad. But I'd say one of the bigger surprises is this capital deployment and the buyback and dividend growth that has kind of shocked many. Talk to us about that decision. Why now? Surprised, Gina, this was that's been in vogue. It's not even an original idea at this point. I mean, fit for Alphabet is their first ever debate. You know, it's interesting because investors, you know, look at the after hours trading. I think the dividend, the expanded buybacks, a big factor in the after hours performance. You guys had Brent Hill on on the show last segment. Right earlier today when I spoke to him, he accused Alphabet of being the least investor friendly company in the world. Well, you know, a dividend, a buyback is pretty investor friendly. And perhaps response to his statement, by the way, was we appreciate the feedback. Well, did she should she say anything else about that, too? I mean, is the results themselves kind of a affirmation that what he's saying might not be the case in the future? Yeah, look what she said. A bit more expanded was that they think about capital allocation and capital strategy constantly, not just on the shareholder returns. It clearly they've moved on to Debbie and that's being welcomed. But they also have to think very carefully about expenses and basically resource allocation. Right. This has been a story for Alphabet. You know, they had to cut back in some areas to to put on the priority, which is basically cloud to go to the cloud growth of 28% year on year in the quarter. And you know, again, this isn't a company that gives us very formal guidance, really in the same way that many of the other mega caps do. But the commentary on cloud that she gave me was, yes, hey, I played a really big part in this quarter Gone and that generally the market across all the subsectors and industries they sell cloud to showed strength. But look at the first part of that sentence. So you know as it relates to where they're spending, they clearly feel confident enough to return to give shareholder returns while they are also in investment mode. Right. They have to continue to invest in the infrastructure that's allowing them to to scale the cloud based air offering. And thank you so much for your time and your reporting. That is Bloomberg Technology co-host Ed Ludlow. Now, a number of companies out with earnings in the last couple of minutes. And here to take us through some of the results are Bloomberg's Emily Griffen, Normal Linda and Abigail Doolittle. Emily, start us off with SNAP because after a 32% decline this year, you are now seeing shares snap back higher more than 23% on the day. How well exactly are they doing? Yeah, well, that's exactly right. We're seeing that stock up 22%. The prior seven earnings reports, the stock had declined post earnings. So if these gains hold until tomorrow, we'll see SNAP really break that losing streak. The second quarter revenue forecast was higher than analyst estimates as the company reworks its advertising model. The company also reported a surprise profit. It was a small one, adjusted EPS at $0.03, but that was versus estimates of a loss per share of 4.8 cents. The first quarter revenue also beat estimates at $119 billion. That's up 21% year over year. Also slightly beating estimates and daily active users for the social media company at 422 million also beating estimates. So all in all, some relief for these SNAP shareholders because like you said, down over 30% year to date. I'll be watching for maybe any signs that the company is going to see growth. If we do see a tech talk ban, hopefully that would bring in some more revenue for SNAP. Norah, what are you looking at? Well, let's take a look at one of the big three phone service provider companies. That's. Mobile. We are seeing a slight pop in after hours trading this afternoon, up about 9/10 of a percent. Now, let's break in some of the numbers. We're looking at the positive side. We saw the stop top profit expectations for the first quarter and it saw first quarter EPS of $2. It also boosted its forecast for the full year for postpaid net customers. Now, on the downside, growth slowed in its high speed Internet business. And this is really in focus for the company as it was a larger drag than expected. And this comes after Verizon just reported a loss of its phone subscribers and AT&T reported a gain. But we are seeing all this in the mist after T-Mobile just got approval to buy budget phone company Mint Mobile. Over to you, Abigail. Great analysis, Norah. Let's take a look at the odd stock out and that is capital one. And it's odd because it is down down 4/10 of 1%, but off the pre after market lows. At the lows, it was down closer to 2%. And this has to do with the fact that they missed their first quarter earnings adjusted earnings estimate. They came in at $3.21. The assignment was 330 revenue. It did beat revenues of $9.4 billion better than the estimate of $9.33 billion. But deposits were also just a little bit light. They came in closer to 351 billion. The estimate above 352 billion into today, up 11% this year. Not so shabby. Not eating into it all that much. And one thing that's really interesting here tonight on Capital One, I was surprised by the 3.5% short interest on Jamie Stock, a tech stock that wouldn't be too surprising. But on a big financial stock, you don't see that every day. You sure don't. And of course, a lot of interesting things happening over there in the card industry, too. Thanks to Bloomberg's Abigail Doolittle normal Linda and Emily fail and another company out with results is Intel. And certainly a lot going on there. We have the shares now down more than 8.7% after hours. Remember a lot banking on how quickly their growth turns around here. Joining us now is Mario Morales, group vice president enabling technologies and semiconductors at IDC. When you took a look at the numbers and the path forward for a company like Intel, what were your initial thoughts? Well, one of the things I thought about, I mean, they're still continuing to gradually improve. You're seeing an improvement on a year over year basis of 9%, which is pretty solid for for Intel given what we've seen in the last couple of years. But they're still not quite yet growing at the same pace as the total industry. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that they're still losing some market share in the data center and some of their smaller business units continue to suffer from elevated inventories and slower and softer demand. Talk to us a little bit about their guidance. They not only missed on revenue, but guided on second quarter in a little bit of a disappointing fashion. Where's that coming from? Well, I think, you know, seasonally the second quarter tends to be a little bit softer than the third and fourth quarter. So I think what you're starting to see now is just that, you know, I think it's going to be in line with Q1 is what they guided and maybe a little bit better than that, which is not abnormal. I think that's normally the seasonality that you get for the PC space specifically. But they are expecting to see a second half that is a lot stronger, especially as some of the new platforms for part of their PC begin to roll out, especially the follow on to Meteor Lake, which will be Lunar Lake and soon after Arrow Lake. And these are all HPC platforms. I think one thing that's tough, Mario, is that Intel shares were already the second worst performer on the Philadelphia Semiconductor index before they reported results. And now the report has really shed those shares a little bit more there. They're still down today. How do they competitively stack up here? I think when you look at them, I mean, clearly the reorganization that they made a couple of weeks ago that they announced was very significant for them and it was very necessary. I think the timing of of the announcement was part of the the issue that you're seeing today in terms of their performance for investors. I think it's going to continue to take some time for Sprint to truly recover. They definitely have the right pieces from a technology standpoint. They're building a lot newer products and the foundry business seems to be at least stable from a perspective of technology now. Now they just need to win the customers in order to drive the scale that they need to drive to drive top line revenues. Talk to us about that very point. How will they win the customers? How will they go out and compete in this incredibly competitive industry, considering just the focus of attention seems to generally be favoring some of their competitors? Well, definitely they're the newcomer, but they are not a small company. And I think one of the things you're seeing is that not only will the investments that the government is making through the chip that help support the cost structure, But, you know, at the end of the day, most customers are all looking for an alternative. So they're looking for someone to be the alternative to TSMC and to Samsung. And if the company continues to execute and bring in some of these newer technologies, then I think you're going to see. More attention from from the established companies are the big ones. And when you think about AMD or Qualcomm, these are the companies that they're going to have to win in the coming years. I think we have to ask kind of a flipside to if you're talking about this idea that people are diversifying back into Intel. On a customer level, how much risk is there that they don't that the gap kind of widens, especially with the trajectory they're giving with the forecast that has fallen short now of expectations? Well, all of this takes time. So when you make an investment and you decide you're going to build a plant, you're deciding you're making a decision for the next 5 to 10 years. And, you know, they've been on this roadmap where they're introducing five technologies in four years. So they're sort of almost at the tail end of that. And I think you need a couple years of time to let customers, you know, play with the process, be able to optimize their own silicon to it. And then you ultimately see a design win that eventually leads to commercial volume. So we're at that stage where, you know, they're doing a lot of kicking of the tires. So the customers are in terms of intel, but you're not really going to see this just begin to scale until you start getting into 20, 26, going into 2027. And that's why the company decided that the foundry part of their business will likely not make money until that period of time. So we're looking at margins from Intel of roughly 45%. And this is a company that historically had margins north of 55, 60% from what I recall. What is there in the margin lines? Is it really just a matter of their top line sales growth just isn't quite cutting it? Or is there something in their internal cost structure that they should be addressing as well? Well, I think that when you look at it, a lot of it has to do with the fact that there's a lot of upfront costs that that they're making rate that they were behind from a technology standpoint and are now trying to catch up. And that takes billions of dollars of investment. So we've seen that in the last three years and we think that some of that will begin to pay off in the coming years. But part of it is just that large upfront costs. And I think you're now, because of the new reorganization of the company, you're now starting to see that the products teams need to also become a lot more efficient. And once they do, they'll be able to elevate the gross margins overall. Mario Morales of IDC, thank you for such a deep look into Intel and its industry, especially on a very complicated earnings report that we're taking a look at today. We're going to take a look at other companies that have reported in the last hour a lot out of the gate here. You have snap up more than 24%, really recouping a lot of the losses from this year alone. They had given second quarter guidance that beat analysts estimates, really snapping back their alphabet, also up more than 12%, really shuttering any fears right now in that big tech industry alphabet, of course, with that massive buyback plan and dividend declaration and Microsoft as well, still up over 5%. Stick with us. More coverage ahead. This is the close on Bloomberg. And. It's time now for the top three. Every day at this time, we do a deep dive into the people at the center of today's top stories. Up first, we're going to talk about Mark Schapiro, the Endeavor and Tyco president and CEO. He sat down with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly on their latest episode of the deal. He talked about how company culture comes from the top. If you're not at a company where the executives, the leaders, the managers are investing in their people like that succession planning for the future, trying to identify the future stars of tomorrow, investing in them, and then bringing them up the ranks, nurturing them, you should get out of there. You can catch that full conversation on the latest episode of the Deal tonight at 9 p.m. on Bloomberg Originals or tomorrow at 7 p.m. on Bloomberg TV. And it's so interesting. Of course, we know that certainly marks a pullout. Farrow has been doing many deals. We hope to have him on the deal at this time is pretty remarkable. Yeah, very, very apropos if as they say. But also this company, his commentary was really interesting about company culture being really essential to success and something that I think we all look forward to hearing a little bit more about. I'm watching Leena Nair, the Chanel CEO, defended the luxury brands pricing after it raised the cost of one of its best known handbags to more than $10,000. She sat down with Bloomberg Bloomberg's Francine Lacqua. So we could raise our prices according to the inflation that we see so of really linked to the cost price. We've also made a commitment to price harmonisation across the world, which means our clients should not experience excessive price differentials. No price differentials, no matter where they buy. More inflation, right? Can't get away from it. Sonali, who's number three? We're watching Peter Orszag. He's the CEO of Lazard, and he's pretty new to the job. He says he's focused on an ambitious expansion plan after the company posted the best first quarter revenue on record. And it's so interesting, Gina, because you see these independent investment banks, some of them are called boutiques, if you will, really starting to jump back with that slow rebound we've been seeing in M&A. But let's see if it holds. Certainly for Peter Orszag. It's early days. It is working out. Yeah, one would hope we certainly see the investment bank struggling with M&A, IPO, you name it. The issue has been struggling, a struggle for those segments as well as the bigger banks with larger departments and investment banking. So I think the entire capital markets are kind of hoping, fingers crossed, that comeback stories come back. Still ahead, we're going to watch what investors need to know for tomorrow. Stick with us. We will talk a little bit about earnings that are still on the tape ahead. Stick with us. This is Bloomberg. The. Busy day of earnings, but another busy day ahead. And one big thing investors will be watching tomorrow. Exxon and Chevron both out with earnings tomorrow morning. And for more, we're going to be joined now by Bloomberg senior oil reporter Kevin Kelly over in Houston. It's interesting, with energy really leading the S&P 500 so far this year. How does that set expectations really high for these two energy companies? Yeah, definitely. Expectations are high. They had had a pretty knock out fourth quarter and it's been a it's been a certainly been a strong a strong start to the year. I mean, one of the key things that we're really watching out for is any insights into how arbitration proceedings are going to be between these two companies and are they? They are they're having a dispute over Chevron's takeover of Hess, which gets Chevron into Exxon's Guyana projects. So the two companies are kind of dueling, and it's a fairly unprecedented dispute over that. So any any kind of insights into into there is going to have is going to be going to be of great of great interest. It's a it's quite a it's quite a major headache, especially for Chevron. And then that and then the other the other key thing we'll be watching out for is is that Exxon, when Exxon expects its $60 billion purchase of that clean air to close, it's currently being looked at by the FTC. The expectations are that it will close by in the in the first half. But as we've seen recently, the FTC has been it's been blocking a number of a number of mergers. So that would be something to watch pretty closely. In addition to that, it does seem that the energy space has been a pretty big drag on the indices at large, posting negative growth rates on a year on year basis. But that's expected to ease throughout the rest of this year. When you're thinking about their guidance, when you're thinking about where they're going to go into the rest of 2024, what are going to be the key drivers of that recovery? Well, I think think you mean oil prices have been pretty strong, strong this year? I mean, especially this year, especially in the most recent. What's due to the geopolitical situation and what's going on in there in the Middle East? We've dropped back a little bit in the past week or so, but current prices, anywhere between 80 and $90 is is very, very comfortable for these companies. Typically, they only need about 40 or $50 there in order to break even and to pay their to pay their dividends and share buybacks. So these are these are very, very comfortable prices at the moment. And really where the energy transition is going, a lot slower than people expected. And investors are now looking for oil and gas production growth, which is a big change from from the last of four, four or five years or so. So both Exxon, Chevron are both looking to show the market that they have the barrels to pay these buybacks and dividends that they've been raising recently. Kevin Crowley down in Houston, thank you so much for your time. And a busy day of earnings for you tomorrow. Now, speaking of tomorrow, we have a lot of things forward, too, including overnight China, the Bank of Japan decision with the yen being as weak as it is, it's going to be fascinating to see how their decisions really set the tone for the market. Yeah, and you can't get away from those central banks that will also get the PC e data tomorrow, which I think is going to be an interesting follow up to the GDP data that we got today. Are the consumers, the consumer strong enough? What's happening with inflation dynamics inside the consumer space? Are they spending on only services now? And when will good spending come back as a really key consideration and if it'll have any move on the yields here? We've seen already the two year hop so close to 5% just today. Will it have an impact? And of course, because it's Friday, we do have all those earnings before the bell, thank goodness. Thank goodness it's Friday. Those earnings are going to come in hot and heavy with the energy sector Chevron, Exxon, AutoNation, Newell Brands, Colgate and AbbVie. What are you watching, Gina? I'm really interested in what happens with those energy companies, mostly because as we were just discussing, they have been a huge drag on the index. There's just been no earnings growth out of that space. Can they start to show some recovery as indicated by oil prices? Will we see that or won't we? Is a huge question mark for the S&P 500 and the equity investor at large. We should say. Also we have Microsoft and Alphabet. They still have their earnings calls. And so we'll get some news out of that, potentially some guidance, probably not from some of them. We'll see how that impacts the market. But that does it for us right now. Balance of power is up next. A lot going on in that political world as well. Have a great evening. Get some sleep. This is Bloomberg.
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Channel: Bloomberg Television
Views: 21,898
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Keywords: Alphabet, Anna Wong, Brent Thill, Brian Niccol, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., Citigroup Inc., Ed Ludlow, George Ferguson, Gina Martin Adams, IDC Group, Inc., Intel Corp., Jefferies Group Inc., Joel Fishbein, Leo Kelly, Mario Morales, Microsoft Corp., Sonali Basak, Stuart Kaiser, Trust Securities, Verdence Capital Advisors LLC, snap inc
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Length: 93min 56sec (5636 seconds)
Published: Thu Apr 25 2024
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