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tv   Bloomberg West  Bloomberg  August 17, 2015 4:30pm-5:01pm EDT

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qvc gets a lifeline. eat could this mean for tsy? i am matt miller, in for emily chang. this is bloomberg west. dr. dre gives apple music a trial run. plus, is the amazon model a harbinger workplaces of the futures? all of that is ahead on bloomberg west.
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first up to a story we are watching right now. the irs rate of reach. it is getting much bigger than we realized. we are now learning of an additional 220,000 possible victims and the total number of taxpayers to 334,000. let's go to washington dc and bloomberg news reported jordan roberts. what can you tell us about this new breach? it seems to be more focused. jordan: before and thing to remember is that while we are not talking huge numbers, 300, people at this point, there were highly targeted attacks and and the reason they were able to get that was because he knew about them anyway. they believed they could get a big refund from them if they committed tax refund fraud. matt: this is not a case of them going through each person will
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account. they have reached the irs system at large. but what they were doing is they came in over the a lot of information about their potential victims. social security number, date of birth, things like that. they identify individuals who were high net worth individuals for who they could get a very large refund. they actually did. they used computer programs to do it, but they went one by one and access their account to get previous years tax refund information. as the theory goes, the point of this attack is to file fraudulent reef runs for the current year or subsequent years. it is a painstaking process, but it is one we do not see. the smartest way to do this for you can steal enough personal information or buy it on the internet to do tons of tax refund fraud and billions of
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dollars of year are done with that. so hacking the irs directly is kind of a hard way to do it. matt: as a way that they did it is more difficult to defend against. now to our lead, qvc parent company liberty interactive is ulily. similarly -- zo it went public in 2013. shares soared initially, but they have since dropped 66%. our bloomberg news reporter is here with more. our expert who helps dell and we can integrate and properties after an acquisition. let's start with you. is this a case of finding a company with a large user of
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race and then buying it on the cheap after the market punishes it? >> i think they're getting a number of things. zulily knows there base. they are very committed and know who enjoys the site. they are picking up a very strong brand. they are also became a strong leadership team. this is a smart move with qvc to expand. from this similarly perspective it will hopefully advance their sales. matt: why have. you got punished? with a lotseen it these internet companies. as soon as you see sales growth slowed out, there is a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction to there is a story on bloomberg that says that this is potentially a lifeline for shareholders because for these internet companies, we have seen it with the likes of groupon, that topline as
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contracted for these companies who do not make a lot on the bottom line, shareholders can head for the hills. matt: there are some similarities between them and etsy. are you hearing from shareholders that they will same kind of lifeline? >> not quite yet. they have been public for almost two quarters. it seems like they have a little bit of time. they are still preaching this international sales expansion plan. ulily has had time in the market rate while it might be a new subsegment of customers for qvc, it seems like they have had a slowdown. sales of only 4% last quarter, which fell off quite a bit from the double-digit sales growth from corners previous. how will qvc, or how
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should qvc integrate them to keep a separate and strong brand but to also boost those synergies? >> it is definitely important. protecting the brand would be one of the first things you focus on. do not lose your current customer base. expenses that. they are different in the backend in the way they cover shipping. very similar, they going for that unique product i would definitely focus early on trying to find the synergies where it makes sense without a running the brand or hurting the portfolio. comes to mind immediately. but in general you have mentioned a lot of these tech ipos follow the same pattern. , are wetailers come out
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seeing a wave nni? -- m&a? we are starting to see a bit of this, where these newer ampanies are really owning certain market and really attracting a certain type of customer. once they saturate that, that is when they start to struggle with growth. some of these bigger retail players are also looking for growth in these kind of really committed, loyal customer basis. potentially more of this going forward. it does not mean the city cannot break the mold and turn it into the next amazon, but right now it is a wait and see process for some of the smaller companies. matt: thank you. we appreciate your time today. now, a story that we are
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watching very last week we learned that alibaba plan to repurchase of many as $4 million worth of stock, in an effort to revive a share price that has been beaten down 28% so far this year. now we know that jack ma and are buying a portion of that back. he remains the second richest person in china. he can afford to buy a lot if you wanted. still ahead, why one apple supplier plans to invest billions in next-generation display screens. music streaming sites on cloud could be close to a licensing deal with universal music. and these people enter a cash grab machine at go daddy.
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between six and $700.
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matt: apple's supplier, lg display co. is planning to invest in $.5 billion to develop next-generation screen technology. the investment will be focused on advanced is legs -- advanced displays. will be more expensive and
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difficult to produce. expense -- will give a new version of the apple tv the the set-top box, not the actual television. stephen.n new york, is confusion because we talk about apple tv in three different ways. one, content. tv out is a box that sits on top of your console, looked into your television, and number three, the actual television show green. -- television screen. does this mean that they will use this technology for their actual television? >> the signs so far .2 no. point to no.
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they have been striking deals with media companies to get content to play to that service 33%,, profit margins over they are working on the content. is an apple tv something consumers are clamoring for? >> i do not think consumers are clamoring for that product necessarily. there are enough good aexpensive televisions that luxury tv is not something that people even need or even want. matt: let's move on to the apple music story.
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>> they reported some numbers that came out, they had millions of streams and they sold 7 million downloads through the itunes store -- story itself. willints to the stuff that we be doing to get people to subscribe to a whole music, have things that are exclusive to the service. someone who is on spot if i cannot get a copy of the new dry album, so they may go to a whole music itself. you can do more and more of that, it will give you a leg up on some of the other ones. that is a tough thing to do for a lot of artists, especially because it has lower subscribers than spotify. matt: we are showing video of
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you when you took apple music for a test run. once you have spotify there is no real reason to get anything else unless you are a dr. dre diehard. switch overeople to is the biggest point for apple right now. people get set in their ways, everything is the same price, the same catalog, it is hard to get someone to move over. paid subscribers versus apple. they are an established player. for apple to move out of this trail and expand, they will take some time. matt: set us up for the september apple show. what are we going to see? new phone, new watch? >> the biggest thing is going to be the phone. a lot of attention gets put on some of the new stuff that apple gets introduced, whether it is a watch or's television, but this is all coming back to the
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iphone. as the iphone goes, so goes apples is ms. it if they can continue to increase sales of that product, the company and shareholders are going to continue to love the company. s?tt: the six >> that has been the trend. matt: thank you for joining me. now, i want to tell you about a story we are watching, involving a streaming music service. sound cloud is said to be close to confirming a landmark licensing deal with universal music group. talks between the two have dragged on for several months because universal is asking for a big chunk of equity in sound cloud. the report says sound caught investors, who were spooked by sony's decision to pull music from that service of pressure the company to reach agreements with other major rights holders back in november warner music reached a deal and took a 5%
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stake in the business. you can see this get done for around that amount. a french music streaming service may be joining the global unicorn club. the spotify rival is seeking funds from investors at $1.1 billion. they are looking at emerging markets. coming up, silicon valley to amazon'sefends corporate culture. and cord cutters hitting the media stocks hard. how fast is the american home deciding to get rid of cable?
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matt: time now for the daily bite. one number that tells us a whole lot. 566,000. the estimated number of loss subscriptions from pace tv. the sector is declining at an annual rate of seven tons of 1%. but over the last year 2 million households cut cable tv or decided not to purchase it. the media stocks plunged on espn lost ater modest number of customers. it will be a continuing problem. jeff bezos is defending his company culture after the new york times export a painted a grueling picture of life as an amazon employee. it paints grueling allegations. employees being warned over
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taking vacation in for internet areas. other tech leaders have been commenting. the forward twitter ceo saying this has taken out of context all over it, and hyperbole to score points. mark andreessen, given the number of workplaces designed for underachievers to feel good about themselves... is matt williams thover.nnie branch would it not be difficult to recruit workers given that there are so many silicon valley were ?ords to work at
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jeanne: amazon has an incredibly good name. not every person is looking to be in a place like google. there are truly billion people that want to push themselves, they want to be better they want to make an impact. that is what amazon does it look at these people as the limbic athletes. they are used to working hard, they are working and creating and innovating things that go out in the marketplace. there are people that truly prefer an environment like amazon. matt: matt, what you think? time and timethis again. bezos can denies commands his unease can defend him, but surely it is a stressful place to work. a competitive environment and the treatment of the lower-level employees is definitely lacking. >> i will tell you firsthand
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that it is a high demand, high-intensity workplace. one oft is what makes it the blessed places to work, if not the best place to work in america. a lot of what i read in the article and the story, if they were anecdotes chosen from perhaps occasion over the years, i have never seen any of those things happen inside of amazon. in fact, i have many friends who love working there. i would work there again. it is the best place to work if you're into high demand, high-intensity were laces that change the world. matt: the supreme court case last year said that some employees or mage wait 45 minutes to go through security checks, and they do not pay them for that time. that does not make any logical sense. why did julie? -- did he leave? >> i was able to go be the ceo
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of a social website. it was not because of the people or the culture. in fact, i would challenge anyone to find a company over 100,000 people that could have the consent is the of culture and the relentless focus on customer that amazon has. matt: on the other hand, you look at linkedin and you see junior employees leaving after 60 months. the company has an incredibly high turnover, as proven out by the numbers, regardless of how great it is. there is a lot of companies that will talk about how good they are to the employees. they make life so easy, and the nature they are having fun while they are working. honestly, when it comes to really intelligent people who want to create, who want to be really are not looking to be called. you are looking to be pushed we were looking to be the best. you are looking every day to achieve something that you do
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not even think you could achieve. you want to be surrounded by the best of the best. that is the environment that amazon really creates. the reason that they are our employees that i talked to that saves the best was the ever worked, some people really regret leaving. but most people that leave that are superstars leave because they get unbelievable offers to go do something else fabulous that they would not have gotten if they had not been at amazon getting the experience that they got. matt: how important is the compensation? that a lotthe fact of people go to work there because of the stock-based portion of the compensation and we just showed a chart of the stock. it has done incredibly well. is that an important point to to moveent and a way it? camp, it is not a day
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is a place if you want to work hard and change the world, that is where you go. i think the compensation, the data speaks for itself. the fact that they have not only sustained but grown so tremendously over the past several years, hats off to the employees that work hard, kicked but and were able to deliver. it is something very few committees were ever able to obtain because the stock-based conversation allows them to do that. matt: thank you so much for joining us. we always appreciate seeing you here on bloomberg. worker putting stuff in boxes and a warehouse, and creative executives who are getting stock options, that does it for this edition of bloomberg
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west. tomorrow we are talking but presidential election.
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mark: with all due respect to the presidential candidate is only one sure way to get to the top. [laughter] welcome to the iowa state fair, where john and i have been in to talke ends thursday to voters here and around the state. there is no substitute for talking on the ground. let's talk about what we have learned.

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