>> i am alisa parenti and you are watching bloomberg technology. after a tight vote and no democratic support, republicans advanced their health care bill through the house. they addressed a longtime pledge to erase the affordable care act. the measure has to the senate, where it is not expected to come to a vote in its current form. the u.s. senate avoided a 7overnment shutdown with a $1.1 trillion bill for -- with no provision for trump's priorities such as a border wall. trump is expected to sign the bill, which funds the government through september 30. the president says he will make good on his campaign promise to

destroy a law that bans religious groups from endorsing political candidates. he signed an executive order easing limits on political speech for tax-exempt groups. his first trip will include stops in saudi arabia, israel, and the vatican, where he will meet with pope francis. then he will visit nato and a summit in italy. meetings with leaders across the muslim world. global news 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. from washington, i am alisa parenti. this is bloomberg and bloomberg technology is next.

emily: i am emily chang and this is bloomberg technology. coming up, big media comes up small on and revenue in the first quarter. our roundtable discussion. plus, banking on britain. square ceo sarah frier on why company circled the u.k. as a starting point of its european expansion. and to the world's -- two of the world's biggest retailers prepare for digital war. why walmart's acquisition spree may be the am oh to take down amazon. media companies are getting with add this week revenue emerging as a trend. cbs reported its results after the bell, revenue totaling $3.4 billion. that is a beat. still, the fear of cord cutting is intensifying. pay-tv subscribers are moving online.

paul, let's break down the cbs first. how are they bucking or reinforcing some of these trends? >> cbs had pretty good numbers today. they beat on the bottom and top line. when you strip out the super bowl and other top line items, they say that revenue was down -- at the cbs network was down slightly. impacts ofso feeling a slowing advertising environment. but they are benefiting from other revenue streams. their licensing a lot of the tv content they produce. their licensing it to other players such as netflix, both domestically and internationally. they had some good revenue from the licensing side of the business. they are clearly the most bullish on the advertising outlook as they head into the upfront season in a couple weeks. emily: gary smith is joining us -- jerry smith is joining us. i want to talk about this loss in subscribers. we're seeing an impact on the stocks. but cord cutting has been around

for the last several years. why are investors now so spooked by this? >> it has been around for several years. but it appears to be accelerating. there were fears about this a couple years ago. this was the worst first quarter for paid tv distributors in terms of subscriber losses, ever. according to a couple analysts. this is something investors and media stocks really look closely at, is cord cutting. in this past quarter, it it was becoming more of an issue. emily: in the meantime, hulu, at&t dish, sony, youtube, are , companies that are convinced they can lure customers back by a slimmer tv package. one that is cheaper than your traditional cable package. customers going to buy in? paul: that remains to be seen.

i think the expectation is for the content company, the viacoms and time warners of the world, the folks that create the movies and tv shows people watch they , believe they will come out in just fine shape going forward, as long as they can get paid by whomever is carrying their service, whether it is a traditional cable company like comcast or a new player like netflix. the challenge for the media companies is to make sure they get paid every step of the way by whoever distributes their content. emily: we are seeing drops in ad revenue at time warner, amc network. to a certain extent it is a vicious cycle. what is behind this? gerry: there are a couple things behind it. area executive say there broader, macroeconomic concerns that are causing advertisers to hold back. tv ratings are declining. tv networks are trying to charge higher prices for commercials,

but advertisers are saying, you are charging me higher rates, but i am reaching fewer viewers. we are starting to see those higher commercials are not making up for the fact ratings are continuing to decline. on a big macrolevel and related to the tv industry health. emily: what about uncertainty around president trump's policies? is that at play? paul: i think it is. we heard last week from the large global advertising agencies. we heard from the largest ad agency in the world. they cited uncertainty around the new administration as one of the reasons why the north american market for wpp was particularly week in the first quarter. a lot of advertisers are sitting on the sidelines with their discretionary advertising budgets. they want to see how things shake out in terms of u.s. economic policy.

that has been called out. the question is, will they come back later in the year? a lot of media companies expect them to do so. that is why the upfront selling season, where the networks sell most of their advertising inventory in the upfront market, that will be a very important time for these big media companies as to the health of advertising in the market. emily: in the meantime, up and comers like netflix are spending billions of dollars on original content. in the beginning it was just " house of cards," and "transparent." there are more original shows on these streaming companies that i can keep up with. is it going to pay off or will there be some kind of comeuppance? gerry: we are starting to see some of these cable networks that were not big into original series are now trying to create more original shows. there have been a few examples where it hasn't worked out for them and they have stepped back a little bit. it is very expensive to make original, scripted shows. netflix and amazon are lavishing billions of dollars in this

space. the television networks are trying to keep up. there have been a few immediate sounding theutives alarm on this, saying we may be reaching peak tv, that the economics of the television industry can't sustain this. that is partly because viewers are getting fragmented in many ways. the advertising is not there like it used to be. emily: obviously something we will continue to follow. thank you both. facebook has backed away from the pricey venture of life -- live streaming sporting events. mark zuckerberg says of the company plans to pay for content by sharing ad revenue. they have rejected that model planning to sell rights for , lucrative fees. recently amazon agreed to pay $50 million for nfl 10 thursday night games.

verizon will reportedly pay $21 million to stream just one nfl game. still ahead analysts say square , has hit its weak spot with earnings wednesday. is it sustainable? we will hear from square cfo sarah frier. bloomberg tech is livestreaming on twitter. check us out 5:00 p.m. in new york and 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: square climbed to an

intraday high after reporting better than expected first-quarter results. the company, ran by twitter's jack dorsey wooed larger , merchants. still analysts are skeptical

about long-term growth. the company processed $13.6 billion in payments last quarter up 13% year-over-year. ,earlier i cut up with square cfo sarah friar and asked if that rapid growth rate could keep up. sarah: there are a lot of growth drivers in front of us. i would never want to undersell the core. what we do in terms of a small businesses and micro merchants coming onto the scene, still plenty of opportunities. 20 million businesses in the u.s. do not accept electronic a mint. in the u.k. we see the same thing coming through. we are starting to move up markets. as the product becomes more feature full, this is resonating with larger businesses. i mentioned that u.k., but we are in five countries total. finally, the other products we have built around the ecosystem are starting to really gain a lot of momentum, capital cash, , and so forth. emily: let's talk about the

international expansion. what have you learned from your launch in the u.k. in the midst of brexit? sarah: we love the u.k. market. 5.5 million small businesses. incredible revenues that they generate, really the lifeblood of that economy. what we see there, similar to the u.s.. half of them do not accept credit cards. so we know they are missing a sale. in terms of what square brings, it is the same propositions as in the u.s. what is different for us in the u.k. launch is that we launched with a full set of products. not just payments and point-of-sale, but product invoices, our whole api filled with square platform, so you can be online and off-line. that is different for us come to a market so fully featured from the get-go. what we are learning is we are seeing businesses of all sizes coming to square from the beginning. emily: what are the biggest risk factors with international expansion? sarah: ultimately making sure we maintain our culture and the brand we have built strongly in the u.s. as soon as you are at a distant,

-- distance, you need to make sure that culture is quite strong. secondarily, every market is different. you want a strong maintaining of the culture and the value, but you also have to allow international markets to be a little different. i was just in australia this quarter. the australian market leans to being quirky and funny, more competitive and how they brand. something that we probably would not do in the u.s. but are more comfortable doing in australia. we have to allow our country managers the leeway to grow their market. emily: how far upmarket does square want to go? we know you experimented with starbucks, that is now off the table. would you ever get back to something like that? paul: i do not think there is a point where we could not go further. the key is making sure we do it much more in a methodical way,

upmarket. it seems like bigger customers like the small guys come to us. the key is making sure that we are not customizing software for bigger companies. this is where the api platform comes into its own. if you are a bigger merchant and want to do something innovative and a new with your checkout, north face is a great example at a ski resort, square can work really well for you. them toeed to allow work back into their system because they cannot rip and replace all at once. square, we not quite at that scale yet. emily: had you see the landscape evolving between apple pay and paypal -- what does this look like in two years? sarah: there are market trends that are helping all of us. since i joined square, the shift to using electronic payments,

cards instead of cash and check. that has been going on for decades. even in the last five years the u.s. has made a big shift there. thinking back to signs that say we are cash only. today that is becoming less and less viable. your buyers on walking in -- are walking in and do not have cash on them. i want you to be able to do more with your device. it is amazing to me in the u.s. how low the penetration is of contactless payments. being in australia, 70% of all payments happened with cash. the u.s. is slow to that, but it will happen. it is an inevitability. when i look at the environment opening up, i think that is good for all of us in the technology space, helping the seller to accept anything, and helping the buyer have a unique experience. emily: you mentioned caviar. square once tried to sell caviar, but it seems very much on the table in terms of something you are building out.

what is the future of caviar, and will we see more of it? sarah: it is reminding the strategy of why. when we look at the vertical of food, square is very strong going into quick service restaurants. when we go into full-service restaurants, our software is still evolving. what else can we do? delivery was one of the things they needed to never miss a sale. we bought caviar at the time with the idea that we wanted a whole ecosystem of restaurants. we wanted to jump ahead a little. caviar today, we are almost backfilling. we moved in to pick up again this quarter. slowly, the point-of-sale and payments piece is becoming fully featured enough that a restaurant can also use it. it goes back to the strategy of being a technology platform for

food delivery and pickup, not just, why are you in the food business? emily: will we see more acquisitions along those lines? more to build out the particular area? sarah: yes, we always want to keep flexible of the across-the-board. in the quarter we raised the convertible debt instrument. $40 -- $440 million on the balance sheet. i got asked why. nothing imminent, but my job is to make sure that square has the xability toity -- fle grow as a business. we can also be hyper opportunistic. the debt market has not seen a lot in action. with that balance sheet we can keep looking at the m and a landscape. if something made sense to much showed good value, good return we won't be shy of that either. , emily: that was square cfo sarah friar.

the paris prosecutor's office investigating whether fake news is influencing sunday's election in france. prosecutors started the probe into reports of forgery and starting false news. candidate emmanuel macron filed a lawsuit. a report estimates one quarter of the links shared about french elections are likely fabricated stories. coming up, in-flight wi-fi provider gogo has seen a surge since last quarter and has signed a deal with nine satellite providers to keep up with the pace. we will hear from ceo michael small next. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: airline wi-fi provider

gogo shares went soaring after the company reported q1 results. they brought in record quarterly revenue at $156 million, up nearly 17% topping expectations. , the company just struck a deal with airbus. however quality remains a concern.

as of now, gogo uses air to ground network that offer speeds of 10 megabits per second, which is fairly slow. the company is looking to change that. joining me from chicago with an exclusive interview, gogo cfo michael small. thank you so much for joining us. you had a strong report. users say that the satellite technology that your competitors use is better. what are you doing to work on quality? michael: we are rapidly deploying our proprietary solution delivering industry-leading performance. it is fast and it works everywhere around the globe and it works all the time. customers are loving it wherever we deploy it. we are on 170 aircraft with it today and expect to deploy another 1400 to 1500 aircraft.

emily: what is it compared to the current technology? michael: we have a proprietary antenna design that goes on top of the plane that points to the satellite. it is just a better architecture. our antennae are larger and rounder, so therefore we can get higher speeds more consistently over the globe to passengers. we have seen full planes use it all at the same time, doing whatever they want -- streaming or browsing, to rave reviews repeatedly. emily: i just flew from san francisco to new york, and i realize every experience is different. 95 for an- paid $33. creditht pass and my card was initially rejected. when i landed there were five charges that i had to then reverse. the quality was very poor. websites took an incredible amount of time to load. some did not load at all.

on the way back, my credit card worked. but this beat was the same and it was so slow i just turned off my computer and turned on a movie. how do you address these things? michael: well, i explained we need to bring more bandwidth to the sky. i don't know if you are on our flight or some other flight -- regardless, we need to get more capacity. basically, we are entering an era where capacity is more bountiful. we used to peak at 10 megabits per second, but now we have a technology capable of delivering 100 megabits per second. not only is it faster, there is more capacity. the speed limit is higher and we have more lanes on the road. we can handle a lot of passengers at high speed. as fast as we can go, we are adding more aircraft. i would also say we announced in

earnings today we have passed a major milestone with our next generation air to ground network. using the cell towers and today in the lab recently we achieved , over 100 megabits per second with that technology. we invented this technology. it got slow when it got congested but now we have the , capacity everyone is going to need. it will be coming this year and next. emily: it was a gogo flight just to be clear. what are you doing about hacking and security? michael: our public wi-fi hotspot in the sky is about as secure as any public wi-fi. we work very closely with all the relevant agencies to make sure we comply with the security requirements of the aviation industry. we think we do a good job at that.

emily: michael small, ceo of gogo joining us from chicago. thank you so much for joining us. -- stays in the spotlight. if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. you can listen on the bloomberg radio app and on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪ >> it is 11:29 in hong kong,

1:29 in sydney. malcolm turnbull has been resettling his relationship with trump in new york, echoing some of his rhetoric at home. next week's federal budget is expected to compete -- contain an infrastructure spending splurge as the prime minister tries to appeal to voters with a nationalist views. it will likely see the deficit expand and could cost australia its aaa rating. marine le pen faces defeat in sunday's presidential election after failing to land the decisive blow on rival emmanuel

macron in one debate. they say even winning 40% of the vote when not be enough. emmanuel macron is 22 points ahead. he was the clear winner in the debate. bloomberg tv and radio will bring you special coverage of the french presidential election on sunday, and full reaction on monday. has as upcoming model 3 downer, elon musk himself. the ceo told investors his concern that expectations are too high. offeringesla will be no test drives of the car and no advertising for up to nine month. tesla is targeting output of one million cars per year by 2020, a sharp rise from the 84,000 produced in 2016. global news 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries.

you are watching bloomberg. >> i am checking the markets. this is a three day chart of oil you can find on the bloomberg. you're seeing this big drop coming through in crude oil, falling below $45 a barrel for the first time since november 29. oil is down by over 7%. it is continuing to fall over the week. we see the continuing expansion of u.s. crude production erasing the gains from the opec that's. past few minutes in the crude contract. the lowest we have seen oil since november 29. let's look at other commodities. a big drop in iron ore, another 7.7% down. the contract in china weighing into these retail markets.

cholesterol you down 7/10 of 1%. oil, energy, and iron or producers. that is the state of play across the asian markets. ♪ emily: this is "bloomberg technology." i am emily chang. softbank has been a near constant source of fascination. a lot of the headlines involving -- of all around talks to invest in big tech companies around the world. many wonder where the japanese tech giant stands with regards to grading 50,000 new u.s. jobs. joining me now from new york, steve murray, partner at revolution and former partner on softbank capital. we will get to the softbank stuff but first i want to start with revolution. you have two decades of experience investing in asia, which is a sector the revolution

does not focus on. why make the move? steve thanks for having me. : first,thank you for taking the time to talk. i joined revolution a year ago. it is a great organization lead out of washington, d.c.. we do investment in cities outside of northern california. it is a great brand and one that i was very comfortable with after a great and long career at softbank. emily: steve case has talked to us a lot about his strategy and the idea of investing outside silicon valley. what is your vision for your own investment and where do you see the most promise? steve: it has been very consistent during our time at softbank capital. we look at the world the same way. there are great opportunities in

running california and silicon valley but it is also an area , with a lot of great firms with deep roots and great money. at softbank capital and here at revolution, we find that we can find great opportunities in other cities. whether that be l.a., chicago, boston new york, washington, , d.c., baltimore, maryland. we find there are great entrepreneurs across the country, and that is very consistent with steve case's rise of the rest program. emily: does any one of those geographic centers stand out to you? steve: it depends. what we find is different parts of the country have different things they are good at. as an example, atlanta has a great fin-tech community because they have such great history in payment processes. l.a. has great video because of all the studio and video production that has been done there. we see great things out of chicago now in particular with respect to data analytics and machine learning, partly because of the great institutions that

exist in chicago. each one of the pieces of the country that we look hard at has different things to offer. emily: let's talk a little bit about this softbank vision fund there. there is so much speculation about it. it still hasn't closed yet, to a areo a lot of people wondering where this stands. you haven't worked there in a while, but what is your take? steve: the softbank vision fund is exciting. i am still very close to a lot of folks there. ron fisher, i was a partner with him for 20 years and still a great and dear friend of mine who helps lead that effort. i think the softbank vision fund is going to be one of the most important technology investors on the private side over the next several years. it is certainly an entity that at revolution we will continue to stay close to. they have a lot of capital to deploy. they have a global focus, and they will be looking at big opportunities where they can put a lot of capital to work for long periods of time. when they set out their

investment agenda, they are quite clear. they want to find the next alibaba, if you will. they are looking aggressively to do that. you can't underestimate the importance of the vision fund over the next several years in the private markets because of the sheer size and aspirations that they have. emily: we hear, though, that the fund won't close for six to nine months. what is the hold up? steve: that one i can't answer. i don't have any inside information on that. i am sorry. emily: let's talk about softbank in general. the heir apparent is now out of the company. is he the decider on these investments? steve: i do not know exactly how they're investment committee process works, although i know that he is very involved in the company. some of the companies i am familiar with have worked with the vision fund recently.

as you probably know, if you talk to him in the past, he is an amazing character. he has amazing passion for entrepreneurship, and at his heart he really is an entrepreneur. he loves to connect to new businesses. entrepreneurs really value is input, and he gets deep into these businesses and can be very helpful in key decisions. emily: you are also on the board of draft kings, in the middle of merger talks. how do you see those companies integrating strategically and financially? steve: that process -- i believe that the signed agreement to merge was in november of last year, and now we are awaiting a final ruling from the f.t.c. over the next month or two about that process and then can go about the business of combining the companies. there has been obviously some work that has been done on thinking through things like

technology platforms, and team, and brand and approach and other things. but some of those, until the formal approval from the government, some of that has to be on hold. hopefully that will happen over the next 30 or 60 days, and we can get to work at building what we think is a revolutionary company and a really exciting that is changing the way that one people interact with sports and information. emily: alright. steve murray, partner at revolution and former partner at softbank capital. thanks for joining us. meantime, apple has $148 billion invested in corporate bonds according to a new filing. more than 90% of that debt is invested abroad. apple announced on thursday it is selling about $7 billion of that debt to fund a stock repurchase program. coming up who will reign supreme , in the battle of market places? this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: walmart's feud with amazon isn't just business. it is personal. they have been visiting walmart regularly since they bought jet.com. his goal is to help topple amazon's dominance in retail. i spoke with our editor brad stone, who did a deep dive in the e-commerce aspirations in the latest edition of bloomberg business week. >> it is still early. it has been less than a year. but the last quarter in february when we got a walmart earnings announcement, e commerce growth was about 28% or 29%. that is not only far above the

industry average it is actually , above amazon's growth rate. walmart is starting from a much smaller base, but it was a promising sign. their investors reacted quite well. the stock has been up. there are reasons for optimism. has the founder of jet.com done, he has administered the medicine walmart needed. he has broadened that marketplace selection, which walmart resisted for a long time. he has done what is sort of necessary online in terms of matching lowest possible price. walmart historically was a little unwilling to do that because the store is supposed to have the lowest price. he went on an acquisition spree. moose jaw, there are rumors about bonoboth. he has been pretty aggressive. emily: why is he buying these smaller companies? brad for a couple of reasons. : one, to bring product selection to walmart.com.

there are some brands that won't sell to an amazon or walmart. these websites have that selection. some of the selection we bring over to wal-mart.com or jet.com. then the third reason is he is getting some very skilled founder entrepreneurs, who they will then put in charge of outdoor, shoes and the properties. in a way, it is a strategy to hire great e-commerce operators. emily: what did he learn at amazon that he is bringing this moment? brad: it is almost more interesting to talk about what he is not bringing, what he almost learned not to do. he was very gentle or reserved, is the very -- the better word when talking about his amazon experience. but one thing that clearly he left amazon with a bad taste in his mouth around the willingness of the company to empower the start ups they were acquiring.

they started the diapers.com business, but is competing with other people that sold diapers. the ceo of walmart has put him in charge of e-commerce across the board and he is following that model. when he acquired the outdoor retailer moose jaw, he is use , -- responsible for them. he is empowering onto nor is in a way that he did not before. emily: so what do you think wal-mart's chances really are of giving amazon a run for its money? >> the truth is this is not a zero sum game. e-commerce is 10% of all of retail. it is only going up. more and more people are discovering the convenience of shopping from their character offices when they should be working. i think it is far likelier, the better question to ask is, what are the chances walmart can a sustainable e-commerce

business that thrives alongside amazon? amazon is an unstoppable juggernaut, and wal-mart can never displace it. amazon is an internet company, to a great extent. i do not think wal-mart can unseat amazon. but it has its own advantages. perhaps in apparel. the challenge is to create a growing and profitable e-commerce business that thrives alongside amazon. that was brad stone. deep map is a new start up focused on 3-d maps. they are designed to assist self-driving cars. these cars can steer through complex cityscapes. alex webb reports. >> if you are trying to control a robot, which is what we are trying to do, the robot needs to

know within centimeters where it is with respect to its surroundings. >> a mile away from where google builds their maps, a 25-person start up is doing the same for robots. deep maps is building maps allowing cars to steer threw complex city escapes. >> we collect all the data. usually we will collect it over several runs of the same location. we will bring it into the cloud. we run a bunch of processing algorithms to create a single picture, unified of all the data. highll create a fairly resolution 3-d image of the area. can create a model down to the detailed accuracy featuresthe geometric of the road that are relevant to the self driving car. >> the team of former google and other engineers is racing to beat uber and others.

the deep map system is aimed at helping robots navigate rather than humans. the 3-d maps complement the car's sensors by giving them a detailed awareness outside the car's field of view. >> here is the usage map we have created. now it knows the lanes are here, and where the signs are indicated. now it can start making decision about things in its environment and planning accordingly. >> this is really the end product of the maps. >> yes. this is the ultimate goal of using the map. >> and with $30 million in venture capital funding, the company is confident it can navigate a path to success. emily: that was bloomberg technology's alex webb. the global tablet markets continues to decline. -- shrink. shipments of tablets in the first order 2017 totaled an

estimated 36.2 million units, an eight and a half year over year deadline. it marks the 10th straight quarter the market has shrunk. they attribute that to an increasing dependence on smart phones and a lack of interest from consumers in buying new devices. coming up, slack is opening a new held in london. the c.e.o. speaks to bloomberg about the company's concerns about brexit and an ipo. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: slack's ceo is going against the grain, saying the u.k. will remain a key market regardless of brexit. ,ceo stewart butterfield spoke in london ahead of the official opening of slack's new hub. butterfield discussed why they are laying down roots in the country. stewart: we have a lot of customers. one that most viewers in the u.k. would recognize, retailers like lush, broadcasters like

skie, sage software. and we want to have a relationship with them and other customers yet to come on board. it is much easier to physically be here. it is a sales-led office with customer success teams and solutions engineering as well. we are still going to grow. it is a country of 65 million. >> yes. we keep expanding. tell me, one of the things we see a lot of tech companies do is base themselves in ireland, which is much less of a problem regarding brexit. we have stories about companies considering other countries? did you consider ireland as an option? stewart: we already have a pretty large office in dublin. we have been there a year and a half with 70 people or so. and we are continuing to grow there. we will eventually open offices on the continent as well.

we have customers in nearly every country in europe as well. we have seven offices in five countries around the world, and we will be expanding at a pretty good clip over the next 18 months or so. >> now, one of the topics, there has been a lot of discussion about over the last 100 days or so is hiring and talent under the trump administration. i am curious, is that something that has been affecting you or that you are going to have to think a lot more carefully about over the coming months and years? stewart: we started off with an office in san francisco, and vancouver, canada. vancouver is a great city for many large u.s. tech companies who are having trouble bringing someone into the u.s. they bring them into vancouver instead. that has been part of our structure from the beginning. so it has been less of an impact for us. we also have offices in dublin

and melbourne, toronto and new york. immigration issues have been less -- they make people who work at slack as citizens are more concerned about than i am as the chief executive of the company. but there is a general atmosphere of uncertainty when it comes to trade policy, when it comes to tax policy, when it comes to immigration, and in that context, it will be difficult for businesses to make decisions. communication software is going to be needed either way. >> talking about acquiring talent, specifically internationally is another issue , that we are having to consider seriously in britain as well. a lot of the talent comes from the continent, and problems can be caused. do you have to consider both sides of the atlantic and the

talent? stewart: yes. we don't have a great number of remote employees now, but it is something that as we get larger and more mature as an organization we will be able to accommodate. if there are great people we cannot get to our offices, we can consider opening up an office and bringing them on remotely. it is an incredibly competitive market. but because we are growing quickly and because of our presence in the tech industry, there are very, very few tech startups in the san francisco bay area that are not existent software users. that gives us a leg up in recruiting because they're familiar with the software. if you are in the bay area, especially if you are in tech, the perception is that everyone uses slack. people want to go where they have a big impact. we have a recruiting advantage. >> i have to ask what is next for slack? do we have an i.p.o. in sight in the near future? stewart: an ipo would be years

away. we are growing at a fair clip. predictability is hard, not the kind of predictability they will want in a public market. but the good news is that the private capital markets are friendly to companies like ours. so is there is no need for the public offering. the focus is on growth, customers and increasing the value of the core product. we are doing a lot of work on machine learning and a.i., and bringing those things to market over the course of this year. that was stewart butterfield, ceo of slack. a disclosure, bloomberg beta is an investor in slack. that does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. we are live streaming on twitter. check us out there weekdays 5:00 , p.m. in new york, 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> it is noon in hong kong. end theific market week on a loser. near august, and iron ore near the 50's. chinese equities and further -- equities head on a losing streak. president trump met australia's prime minister in new york, calling the call in january fake news. malcolm turnbull is borrowing some of trump's rhetoric by promising and australia first budget next week. bhp