♪ emily: i'm emily chang and this is "best of bloomberg technology." coming up $120 billion wiped off , of facebook's market cap after earnings disappoint. this is the largest single loss for a company in history. what has got investors nervous ahead. plus, how the rest of tech seared in earnings this week in the ripple effect felt in the market afterwards. we will dig into amazon and alphabet. and president trump's china fight chills tech.

what to expect from tech m&a ahead. facebook's market cap wipeout was the biggest in u.s. history. in the blink of an eye, $120 million was wiped off a valuation, two thirds the size of 1929's black market losses and larger than texas instruments. this all follows earning disappointment when, for the first time since 2015, the tech giant missed analyst estimates on revenue as well as daily and active users. daily active users remain the same in the united states and declined in europe from 282 million to 279 million. we spoke with david kirkpatrick and melissa forrest after the results were announced. >> facebook has missed for the first time in quite some time. although, in my world, an 11%

year over year increase for active users is still a win. so the headline is a little different than my own interpretation. emily: and look, they missed on these metrics, but not by a lot. are investors overreacting? >> it is a historic day, it is a sign of a turn. but i would agree with melissa. revenue is up 42%. this company is not hurting. they did disappoint vis-a-vis expectations, and that in itself is historic. it is probably healthy for the company to see their results get criticized, because it will force them to take these problems they are in the midst of even more seriously and be more candid with how they are addressing them. i do not think they have been very candid. although, some results suggest they are spending more than we thought trying to remediate it,

which is good. emily: we have great commentary happening right now. my colleagues asking perennial question has facebook reached , the end of new users? are there just no new users? melissa, what do you think? melissa: i think that is a fair question to ask. they are at 30% of the worlds population. there will be a ceiling at some point. i do not think they are there yet. though we know sentiment and interest among the youngest users has not been as strong as previous generations, i still think there is room for growth. there are an awful lot of young people in the world who have yet to get on facebook. emily: david, how much does this have to do with scandals do you think over data privacy? : as you asked that question of melissa of growth being possible, i think it occurred to me that look, there are still people to come to

facebook. we know for example in india, people are flocking on facebook right now. if growth is slowing globally, it could mean even more people are coming off in some of the more developed countries or slowing their usage. that could be significant. those are the users that are the most profitable for facebook at the moment. there is a massive unserved community of people in the billions in the developing world that want facebook, will get facebook. growth has not ended for facebook. again, this is an historic shift. things are not as good as they were. that is significant. emily: that was techonomy ceo david kirkpatrick and melissa parish. i also caught up with a representative from elevation partners, with facebook tumbling, he was one of mark zuckerberg's mentors and an early investor and has been very critical of the company's privacy issues.

take a listen. >> investors have been willing to overlook a lot of red flags that have been showing up. the maturity of north america has been insight for the last few quarters. there were signals europe was reaching some kind of saturation as well. those are, by far the most , profitable parts of the facebook application in terms of generating profit. so, any slowdown was going to spell trouble for the stock. to be clear, i look at this thing as a mixed signal for facebook. if you are an investor, the good news is facebook has other properties. it has instagram, which is very profitable and growing rapidly. it is, in many ways, just a bad a product for users as facebook,

and for teenage users, it is much worse. emily: why? >> they had just begun to monetize whatsapp. there is a lot of growth opportunity, the issue is what pe multiple are investors going to put on that, given that facebook's underlying business model is based on promoting disinformation and hate speech. not because facebook approves of disinformation or hate speech, but because those are the things that generate the most engagement. the most views of advertising, and therefore, the most economic value. emily: mark zuckerberg pitched instagram as the savior on the earnings call, but as you mentioned, it had its own problems. you have been outspoken about the privacy issues. do you see some of those same threats with instagram, messenger, and whatsapp?

>> with instagram, the real challenge that is happening today comes in two places. one relates to the impact on teenagers. if you look at girls between the ages of 12 and 15, there are huge issues of bullying relative to body shaming and things like that. for all teens, fear of missing out is a bullying issue that instagram has -- you know, it didn't invent bullying, it just bullies an effective tool. and any parent of a teenage kid has at least some exposure to this. the second issue is because it is so dominant amongst young voters, we would anticipate much more manipulation. it tends to suppress young voters from going out.

and i do not think facebook is prepared for that. it concerns me enormously. emily: is this the beginning of some short or long-term pain? will we see this again next quarter? given what the facebook cfo said on the call, that this revenue deceleration is going to continue. >> i believe that, relative to the proportions of the business that are hurting now, which is basically the facebook product in north america and europe, that those issues will persist. it is now a matter of time to see how long it takes for instagram, whatsapp, marketplace, the other things they can monetize, to fill the hole and restore growth. my sense is that they can.

the larger question for investors is what multiple we are going to put on the stock, given that we know the business model is dependent on activities we would not permit in any other sector. tech has been given a free ride and then allowed to get away with behaviors that are regulated everywhere else. until that regulation comes in and makes it safe to be involved, i think these companies are going to carry a stigma. and there will be huge relative benefit to google, twitter, or anyone else who can distance themselves from disinformation. distance themselves from election manipulation. i do believe facebook is sincere in its efforts to limit that kind of stuff. i do not think the things they

are doing are going to be effective, because the problems are at the heart of the business model. they are not things that can be fixed by adding moderators. emily: that was early facebook investor roger mcnamee. we will stay on the earnings front. later this we will talk about hour, qualcomm terminating its deal to acquire nxp, bringing an end to a two-year saga. we will talk about where they go from here. and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: president trump took aim at two familiar targets in the united states, amazon and the washington post.

world both are controlled by the richest person in the world, jeff bezos. president trump called the washington post an expensive lobbyist for amazon and alleged the retailer has a huge antitrust problem. staying on amazon, the company came out with earnings thursday. we caught up with boomerang ceo and former amazon as eric -- exec as well as a reporter for bloomberg intelligence. >> if you look at the profit, it was massive. if you look at every segment, margins improved across the board. and one of the key things that jumped out was if you look at the advertising revenues that , last quarter they started reporting under the new accounting change, it continues to be strong. 130% growth. a combination of these advertising, the amazon program picking up, and private goods are helping margins. that is driving this monster

be on earnings. -- beat on earnings. emily: the cfo talked about improving efficiency across the board, even as they are making the investments in alexa and other areas. >> right now, it is achieving a snowball effect, starting to build momentum. if you look forward there are , about three plays they had perfect. one is the cloud services businesses. there are competitors coming in like microsoft is making a big acquisition. and then google going big on cloud businesses. they have to play defense. but there are two other areas where they can play massive offense and gain revenue and margins. number one is the amazon marketing services. that is a very high profile and high margin business. it is growing.

it is a measurable technique for getting in front of shoppers. the other is the grocery business, which having acquired whole foods, it is starting to pick up momentum. continuing those businesses, even on prime day that is a big , opportunity for revenue. emily: also, amazon saying that whole foods is bringing new prime membership and on prime day, they saw more subscriptions than ever despite that glitch. >> i think the pace is accelerating at a smaller than expected pace, to be honest. but it is actually a very big market. the opportunity is there. they have to build infrastructure first. emily: are there any red flags? >> i do not see many at this point. even slower revenue growth could be a strategy in terms of starting to capitalize on some

of the profitability levels. because of the prime membership and their ability to capture customers and that allows them to start reinvesting all of that back into r&d. because the r&d expense went up significantly that allows amazon , to create a significant competitive model in the long run. emily: do you not see a lot of challenges ahead? >> we talk about tax challenges and regulatory challenges. emily: this is a quarter in which president trump has taken aim at amazon. >> absolutely, but if you look at the core business, especially the marketing services business, what we're seeing is google and facebook go after the traditional advertising dollars. but amazon can go after both. they can go after traditional

retail but they can also go in the trade promotions bucket. they can grow without directly competing with google and facebook in a lot of ways. if you look at their traffic on the platforms in the u.s., they're getting pretty close to where google and facebook are. they have the ad inventory and we have seen alibaba do this successfully in china. we see rapid growth in profits from advertising. emily: what about international? they talked about improving efficiency in europe and japan as they continue to invest heavily in india. >> india is a big growth segment for them. we also saw that the head of india is now a part of the senior team at amazon. having missed the boat in china, they are serious about india. they announced a big entry into australia. they had bumps in the road with that. there is a big market over there. europe continues to be very strong for them, a lot more developed than other countries. all of these vehicles we talk about in terms of advertising whether it be advertising,

prime, groceries these are all , significant amount of opportunities, not just the u.s., but international. emily: coming up, alphabet hits a home run its second quarter, with google despite costly regulatory trouble. we talk about the consumer impact against google. president trump tweets that tariffs are "the greatest." dozens of business leaders travel to washington to argue the policy is cutting into profits and forcing them to raise prices. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: spacex launched a batch

of satellites for a long time customer early wednesday. the falcon nine rocket lifted off on the central california coast. this was the 14th mission of the year for the company. spacex is hoping to launch at least 30 rockets in 2018. executives at google are giving no sign that a costly regulatory crackdown in europe will hurt profits. parent company alphabet posted second-quarter results that smashed wall street expectations. on the earnings call, the ceo suggested the company would not alter its android strategy. >> we will always take the constructive approach. we will appeal the decision and take due process available to us. but we are also looking forward to finding a solution that preserves the enormous benefits of android users and so on. there's more work to be done and i think it will become clear as we go along.

i'm confident we can find a way to make sure android is available to users everywhere. emily: what does this mean for regulation of the tech industry as a whole? we spoke with caroline hyde in london as well as shira ovide in new york. fine was just a week ago, and as i noted this morning, it was literally a footnote in my column yesterday. that is how relatively immaterial it was to the results of the company, at least financially. that is interesting. the other thing is the issue that had been freaking out investors for the last few months was its spending. it makes revenue-sharing payments to its partners like apple and others and the pace of growth of those payments moderated in the second quarter,

is the way they put it. that gave investors in alphabet some relief, although we will see how long that lasts. moderated in the second quarter, emily: caroline, google is appealing this ruling but it has not been appealed yet. they still face a $5 billion fine which they will accrue over the second quarter. the bigger question is, will handset makers now start charging google to preinstall these apps that are in contention? are investors correct in shrugging off these regulatory concerns? caroline: that's a great question. rbc is saying the size of the fine was the great unknown and maybe the key regulatory issues are in the back mirror. but $5 billion, put that to one side. it's interesting as to whether or not we will see alphabet and google having to start to bid for the real estate it might have to forgo if they don't manage to appeal successfully. they have got just over two months to put in their appeal to the e.u. and if they do have to change their model.

they can not automatically put an androidches into device. maybe they will have to start to bid to win that real estate against the app makers. as many have been noting, they still have the deepest pockets around. around. $3 billion is net income they manage to make despite a $5 billion fine. overall, it's a company that can flash the cash to ensure that google searches where needs to be, and therefore, draw in the key advertisers. emily: we spoke to bill snead, an investor who is warning that participating in this tech euphoria is incredibly dangerous and will permanently damage long-term investor success. this as google reports 25% , revenue growth. what about the bears here? does he have an argument? >> i think he does. look, it depends a little bit on the company. there is a pretty big difference in the euphoria between a

company like netflix or amazon whose stock prices have grown by leaps and bounds, are trading at valuation multiples that are not normal, and then a company like facebook or google or apple, which are trading at relatively modest valuation multiples for companies of their size and growth rates and profits. that's a little bit of the difficulty of making broadbrush arguments about big tech, that there's a pretty big distinction between the unsustainable valuations of companies like netflix and amazon and the valuations of companies like alphabet and apple. emily: caroline, what is interesting is that these tougher e.u. privacy laws have so far seemed to help rather than hurt google and they hurt smaller players that have had trouble becoming gdpr compliant.

i asked the alphabets ceo about this in a phone call before the conference call, and she said it's too early to tell what the impact will be, but from the outside, what -- how does it appear these new regulations will actually impact these companies one way or another? >> this seems to be the effect the e.u. did not realize it was going to have, when it made sure that key companies, when they do specific advertising that they get an agreement that allow them to be targeted in such a way. suddenly the unknown consequence ais that it reinforces duopoly such as facebook and google. they were compliant. they have the cash ready to be able to invest to make sure they are ahead of the game, they're asking the user base if they did want to receive such targeted ads. they therefore have the trust of those looking to buy advertising that they can be

compliant with gdpr. the companies that are looking to advertise, going through google's services rather than rivals because they trust them and ensure they will not get any fines. thus far, it looks like it's benefited googles bottom line rather than undermining control of the market, which is exactly what the e.u. generally wants to do. it doesn't want to reinforce duopoly's, it wants to ensure that competition is wide and varied. emily: bloomberg's caroline hyde and shira ovide in new york. coming up, we turn to qualcomm, scraps its plans to buy annexed be --nxp amidst u.s. china trade attention. what it means for dealmaking ahead. and bloomberg is live streaming on twitter, and be sure to follow our global breaking news network on tictoc. this is bloomberg. ♪ phones have made our lives effortless.

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♪ emily: welcome back. i'm emily chang. there are bigger forces at play than just us, that is what qualcomm's ceo said after announcing he is abandoning his $44 billion bid to acquire nxp. the aborted takeover has been the largest high-profile victim of the trade spat with every other relevant jurisdiction clearing the bid months ago. while china denied its decision had anything to do with trade tensions, qualcomm's ceo seemed to disagree. >> the decision for us to move forward was a difficult one. continued uncertainty introduces

heightened risk. we weighed that risk against the likelihood of a change in the current geopolitical environment, which we did not believe was a high probability outcome. emily: the company also outlined its plan to buy back shares. we were joined by the editor of bloomberg news and in washington we had a senior fellow at the asia society. >> qualcomm had banked a lot of its future on a merger with an we had a senior fellow at the ws not happening, there will be questions long-term about what the future of qualcomm is. how it can grow. as you mentioned, it did cushion the blow today with that stock buyback announcement, but that will probably only get a temporary boost to the stock until we get more clarity about what management can do.

as far as nxp, it is murky. no one is sure what options they have other than going along. particularly in the environment we are in. unless some of the rhetoric on the u.s. side between the u.s. and china changes in the next few months, i think that both companies are going to sort of have to go on a solo paths, if you will. emily: nxp has a tough job ahead convincing investors they have a strong future. qualcomm's ceo said that we did end to the an process and we had to move on. there were probably bigger forces at play than just us. we are still big fans of the deal and the logic behind it. so he is certainly there, implying that the trade tensions had something to do with it. chinese regulators, as far as bloomberg is reporting, were on track to approve the deal, but did not. they did not say no either.

what should we read into it? >> the ceo did say, roughly a week ago that trade tensions had something to do with this deal being held up. this is classic beijing strategy -- they did not deny the deal, did not block it. no official statement saying this deal is not going forward, they just let the deadline expire. we were six hours away from the deadline, they said we will just let this one go. it gives them somewhat plausible deniability when they're having this conversation. they could say we did not have enough information from qualcomm. we didn't have this or that. this is not part of the trade tensions. if they do make the point with the u.s. side, it allows them to say, we are blameless on this. you guys have to make other concessions. emily: how big a shadow does this cast on potential deals in the chip industry?

this after president trump essentially blocked the acquisition of qualcomm by broadcom. >> there's a pretty clear message coming out of the administration here. that any sort of mergers, particularly cross-border mergers are going to be scrutinized. not in the context of whether it is good business, but whether in the context of whether it is in the trade war or in good politics. you saw the comments from qualcomm, sort of alluding to that as a reason they wanted to walk away. i think that will give a lot of companies pause going forward because you're not really navigating antitrust issues in some of the more traditional issues you would have to with regulators. this is really about how does your merger fit into the new policy initiative by the united states government? and does it conflict with what they are trying to do in asserting their influence over trade partners?

emily: the blocking of the broadcom and qualcomm deal is something qualcomm wanted. president trump hurt an american company, qualcomm, as a result of this america first strategy? >> it certainly would not be the first time. i think there is a lot of frustration among american companies about the way trade tensions are going and tariffs on chinese goods making it harder to deliver products to consumers. american companies don't have the same obsession with the trade imbalance that trump does. trump, navarro, other people at the top of the administration feel strongly about rectifying a trade imbalance, but most of the serious economists out there and businesspeople out there do not feel that is a problem in terms of doing business with china. there are more interested in intellectual property issues and market access issues. they don't care about the trade imbalance. emily: qualcomm, romaine, has other problems.

stock on the way to the third year of annual declines and also in a big standoff with apple in various disputes around the world. >> that is getting overshadowed. the stock is down 8% this year before today. you consider the rest of the semiconductor space was up about 9% so far this year. it has really lacked, and that is because of the fundamental issue that is plaguing this company. something we did not see a lot of discussion about. they are getting some questions on the call, this is something i think once the euphoria over the buyback dies down, investors will have to reassess, is the growth still there for this company? can they resolve the issues that they are having with apple? right now, those questions are still out there. emily: thanks to bloomberg's romaine bostick and isaac stone fish. global trade dominated headlines

as the world reacts to president trump's tariffs. on tuesday, he tweeted tariffs are the greatest. either a country negotiates a fair deal or gets hit with tariffs. simple as that. and everybody is talking, remember, we are the piggy bank that is being robbed. all will be great. but not everybody agrees with the president. including the semiconductor industry. sia in association with the likes of qualcomm and intel said they are "undermining technological leadership, costing jobs, and adversely impacting u.s. consumers." we broke it all down with our chief content officer and visiting san francisco from tokyo, bloomberg's asia tech editor. >> the technology industry is nervous about this.

the supply chain for tech stretches between the united states and china. the chip companies are shipping product into china and being assembled and being shipped back across the ocean. they are nervous that if this trade war gets out of control, it will cost them business here and it could raise prices and cause other disruptions to the supply chain. emily: meantime, we have got new news the trump administration plans to shield farmers from the impact of this trade war. of course, we can assume farmers are a larger part of his voting base. walk us through the issues. certainly. >> certainly donald trump thanks these tariffs are a great strategy to repair the damage of three or four decades of globalization. it is true that he is going to

try and shield some of the farmers of the damage. obviously, the semi conductor industry is not a hot bed of his core base. so i doubt you will see a to tech in general. but this does speak to donald trump's real view that tariffs are the way to go to get people to come to the table. emily: so far, the tariffs have been limited. $34 billion in tariffs. another $16 billion martin ebner -- another $16 billion today. the president is saying we will go whole hog, all $500 billion. >> it would be a big issue. well beyond tech. at the current level of tariffs, it is an opening skirmish but if you are talking tariffs on millions on every product that comes in. that includes iphones in particular. remember, apple iphones are designed in california but assembled in china.

if they were to levy tariffs on those products, that would cause damage on both sides. emily: marty, it sounds like he is not just talking about china. when you look at his tweets, he is talking about any country. what are the broader implications of this? could this expand? >> it very well could. we have juncker from europe trying to diffuse the situation tomorrow to talk to trump. watch for the results of those discussions. the longer-term issues as peter explained, our supply chain issues. if you are a company, you have to think about whether you need to permanently disrupt your supply chain plans if this becomes a protected trade war. emily: several companies said they might have to move out to the united states. peter, you're based in tokyo, what is your view in tokyo,

in china, and from the chinese government? >> generally, they are nervous that this could disrupt a very successful process. china has grown into the manufacturing hub for so much of the industry. for so many things beyond that, including a parent and automobiles. emily: but what about the united states? >> that is what trump is calling them out on. they are nervous this could go south. emily: how could they retaliate? we have already seen some retaliatory measures, but we have not seen them go whole hog either. >> the disconnect is that they can impose tariffs coming out of the u.s., but it is not nearly as much. they have other points of leverage, take apple, for example. china is an important market for them. it is the second largest market for that. they need to be able to sell their phones. they lost some ground against domestic competitors and run the apple stores within china. that could be a point of contention. many other companies are depending on china for growth

and opportunities from starbucks to ibm and apple as we mentioned. emily: marty, this is an unpredictable administration, is there any sense of which direction this will go in? is it going to get worse before it gets better, if ever? are we at risk? is china at risk of the $500 billion of goods ultimately being taxed? >> i do think that, ultimately, donald trump likes to rescue situations that he sets up himself. i have contended that in the last minute, there maybe will be conversations on a personal level between trump and world leaders. xi, for instance. to try to resolve the situation. i think it will get worse before it gets better. it will have to be the markets themselves and the economy that will force these issues onto the table. emily: thanks to bloomberg's marty schenker.

the battle to be china's premier meal delivery service is heating up. alibaba will spend $433 million trying to win over customers from a rival. the goal is to control over half of the chinese food delivery market. the rival currently has a 51% market share. seeking $2id to be billion in funding to bankroll this battle, considered the world's third-biggest startup. they are said to be starting an ipo this year. targeting $60 billion valuation. still ahead, spotify successfully fends off competition for now, how the music streaming company is keeping apple and amazon at bay. this is bloomberg. ♪

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airbnb received a big blow. a city council required the company to hand over the addresses of its hosts. according to officials, this information is needed to police hosts. they say the legislation could potentially cut growth. they have said the bill is in violation of user privacy, as it prepares for its $140 million in bookings to drop by at least half. spotify overcoming. the company was gaining more subscribers next to customers in latin america and emerging-market. this eased concerns that competition from apple and amazon will stunt growth. spotify boosted its customer base to 180 million, more than the average 178 million forecast by analysts. million,cribers hit 83

more than any other music service. >> still in the early phase of secular growth of streaming music. you have a lot of devices like the amazon echo, google home proliferating, and subscription has gained more awareness. it is very early. people are shifting from a traditional purchase model to a rental model, and there is a lot of growth across the globe. >> we talk a lot about the subscription service. >> for spotify, it is about 10% of revenue. they missed a little bit this quarter due to some gdpr-related issues. longer-term, radio is a $25 billion market, and there is room for spotify. emily: talk about the competition with apple. we are still waiting for apple to report, but this is a company

that has really deep pockets and really long-term relationships with artists that spotify has to compete with. justin: apple does have a platform advantage. it can push apple music to iphone owners, ipad owners in the market. that said, if you look at the global market, apple has a small market share relative to android and other devices. that market share further fragments when you factor in that amazon echo is the dominant speaker. when you look at the winning factor for streaming, it is device ubiquity. spotify works on every device and it is starting to build up a data advantage that will be difficult for others to compete with. emily: but amazon also has its own music service they are trying to push on users. >> it does. they are all trying. it will be a unique situation where amazon, google, and apple are competitive. yet spotify is the market leader.

if you look at each one of those businesses, they do one device well, but not every device well. none of them are optimized to work on one another's devices. spotify works well on every device in the marketplace. that is why it is growing so rapidly. emily: talk to me about the data spotify has and why it is so valuable. >> another great question. if i look at the way artists are compensated, it is more toward live performances and building up an audience. so what spotify is doing with the spotify for artists initiative is bringing that data back to musicians, helping them grow their audiences. in this past quarter, spotify increased audience listenership by about 5% per artist. that is something you can build up and monetize overtime. -- beg artists the more more successful.

emily: how does that differ from what apple does and amazon and pandora? >> the data advantage is basically a function of spotify's scale. it is multiples bigger than any other player in the market. with that, it consumes substantially more hours listened. apple is still a subset of the market. pandora only looks at the u.s. if you are being a global player, trying to build a global audience, you need spotify's data. emily: what are the trends we should be watching for in emerging markets? and international markets? >> for emerging markets, it is about launching at this point in time. spotify is in developed markets right now. it was in 65 markets this past quarter. it is starting to launch in the rest of the world a bit more. its first launch in africa last quarter. i would be watching the download trends for spotify. is it getting partners to push into those markets? and what is the price point? if you do go into the rest of the world, discretionary income

gets less and you need to price it accordingly for different markets. emily: that was justin patterson. coming up, we hear from bloom energy ceo as they hit the public market, shares spike in over 60%. why it is so rare for alternative energy companies to go public. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: bloomberg has learned the trump administration will try to revoke california's authority to regulate car emissions. including the mandate for electric car sales. the revision of obama era standards is expected this week, and would put the brakes on federal rules to boost fuel efficiency and instead, what cap -- would cap federal fuel

economy requirements. manhattan office buildings and sprawling data centers can now get power without connecting to an energy grid. bloom energy is making that happen. this $270 million ipo means more cash to fund expansion. it is the first alternative energy ipo the u.s. since october 2016. and the best first date debut of the past five years. shares were up over 66%. bloomberg deals and ipo reporter alex barinka reports. ♪ alex: imagine a future where anyone can be their own power provider. that is the reality is that -- that is the reality that the bloom energy ceo set out to create. now he is selling that to public market investors. bloom energy began trading on the new york stock exchange wednesday morning. >> we have a simple value proposition. number one, we are more reliable and resilient than the grid.

number two, we are cleaner than the grid. number three, we save them money. alex: bloom sells what it calls energy servers. they are customizable systems that generate power for customers like morgan stanley and at&t, without the need to connect to a power plant. these high-tech boxes run on natural gas or biogas, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. in the past five years, only 1% of american ipos have been alternative energy companies, and it has been over a year since one went public. clean technology had been riding a popularity high, on the tail of more than $100 billion the obama administration piled into the industry. under the trump administration, enthusiasm has faded. along with many of the government tax credits and other incentives for clean tech. yet the reinstatement of an investment tax credit for fuel cells in the massive tax overhaul bill worked in bloom energy's favor. the cost of fuel cell projects has also declined as the systems have become more efficient.

for years, bloom had been racking up a huge deficit totaling $2.3 billion. but the company's finances are finally turning a corner. in the first three months of this year, revenue tripled compared to 2017. $121 million. >> the world needs reliable electricity. we have gone from a mechanical age to a digital age. and we are a solution. alex: an alternative energy company inching closer to profitability is something public investors can get comfortable with. emily: with us, bloomberg's alex barinka with more on bloom energy's ipo. what makes it so unique? among other such companies that have gone public. alex: it is a fuel-cell company. when you think alternative energy, you think solar. solar has been the reason the industry has been dragged down. china is the biggest market for solar. they ended their initiative in may. that brought down the whole group.

fuel cells are unique. they are complicated to put together. you saw those big boxes. as you heard kr sridhar say, the ceo, it does help with costs once customers get them installed. so there has been at this gap because the industry is in a lull. folks may hope that others may follow. emily: will there be more? alex: that is the hope. the issue is trump seems to be talking a lot about coal. this investment tax credit they have got reinstated for fuel cells was a bit of luck in lobbying on bloom's part. we will see if we get more of this. emily: thanks to bloomberg's alex barinka. that does it for this edition of the issue is trump seems to be "best of bloomberg technology" tune in at tuesday for full coverage of apple earnings and wednesday for tesla. each day, we are here. 5 p.m. in new york. and remember, all episodes are now now streaming on twitter.

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emma: coming up on "bloomberg best," the stories that shaped the week in business around the world. for president trump, angry tweeting gives way to a promising meeting. >> intention to make a deal today. we made the deal. emma: the ecb keeps policy on a patient have. >> they know they fired the arsenal they have. emma: china's central bank signals a shift toward stimulus. turkey does not tighten and the lira shutters in response. >> investors are losing faith in the central bank's independence. emma: corporate earnings reports come in fast and furious. >> we want to be a global carmaker. >> that was a disappointing