Skip to main content

tv   Bloomberg Technology  Bloomberg  May 16, 2019 5:00pm-6:00pm EDT

5:00 pm
♪ ♪ carol: i am carol massar in boston, in for emily chang. this is "bloomberg technology." in the next hour, we look at the best boston's burgeoning tech hub has to offer. the cutting edge in some of the city's biggest industries, and today our focus is on the
5:01 pm
environment, which brings us to where we are, the kennedy greenway. we will talk about how this all came together. we have to talk about pinterest reporting its first result is a public company, and investors don't like what they are seeing. and facebook fighting controversies around the world. we will hear from their vp of europe, nicola mendelson. today we are live from the kennedy greenway, a 1.5 mile stretch of park in the heart of orn from a mega construction process to replace the elevated freeway with underground tunnels. now it brings contemporary art and innovation to the city through free public exhibits. today it is launching an exhibit ohat uses augmented reality t explore transportation. m,ining us to talk about it a
5:02 pm
the executive director and -- thank you for inviting us. talk to us a little bit about this space and how it was conceived, and how you guys use it? >> this used to be an elevated highway, where we are sitting, which cut off the city from its waterfront. through the big dig, one of the biggest infrastructure projects in u.s. history, that elevated highway was put underground, and park going through the major tourist destinations of boston, where we are sitting now. carol: people talked about how this used to be elevated highway. very different from what it was today. jesse: and before that, a city that they blew through on the highway. carol: tell me how it fits into boston as a city. jesse: we are right next to the aquarium, next to faneuil hall, between the financial district and the new seaport district,
5:03 pm
where a true menace amount of real estate developer and has occurred --tremendous amount of real estate development has occurred. carol: technology innovation is so much about the core, at boston's core, and you are incorporating that into the greenway as well. definitely. the augmented reality exhibition is paying amash to the hist -- homage to the history of the transportation corridor which we were and still are, but using historical and contemporary imagery to imagine the future of the space. carol: tell me how the exhibit works. it uses augmented reality, so if someone goes to the exhibit, what will you see? lucas: on the greenway you see a series of qubes, and each of them delineate -- cubes, and each of them delineates an augmented reality area. 10 of them are historic images from 19 022 2003, and six of them are contemporary images. downloading an app and going to
5:04 pm
the greenway channel, you can walk through space and see the greenway in a whole new way. carol: really fascinating to be in the space, because it feels it is in the heart of everything, and you guys, the community uses it a lot of different ways. jesse: we have 453 events. concerts, 100 free fitness classes, and markets. we are right across the street from the beer garden, just down the block from the carousel and the city winery. it's a place with a lot of diverse activations. carol: the beer garden getting a lot of attention at this hour. [laughter] i do think about green space in terms of urban development, and you find that cities are thinking in terms of how they want to certainly build buildings, but also think about the open space, and you are seeing that here. jesse: absolutely. boston is doing well, and buildings are going up all around us. new residences downtown.
5:05 pm
it is the kind of sustainable, transit-oriented density you like to see in cities. and the new building right across the street from us, part of their marketing slogan when they went up, this is a 17 acre front yard you don't have to mow. [laughter] carol: which is kind of nice. lucas, one of the things i love, out in nature, something happens when you put works of art out in the elements. they just come to life. tell me about having the space to work at. you have augmented reality, and you have to think about different applications. lucas: definitely. the beautiful thing about our in thisof works space, you might work or live or move through the space in a daily commute, but every time we put up new public art you are able to reimagine the space that you are in and understand it differently, or question the space that you are in. so on top of augmented reality this year we have a series of tions dealing with
5:06 pm
automotive, transportation, direction, and movement. so really a look back to what was here, and where we are going in the future. carol: tell me what types of people are coming. i assume it is the boston community, but a lot of out-of-towners? jesse: because it is a mile and a half long park, you have many audiences in different places. next to faneuil park, the aquarium, you have tourists. and in the financial district you have people commuting. chinatown, the north end, you have residents using it as their neighborhood park. carol: one thing, the july 4 celebration, i will be cohosting with alix steel off the charles river. but you also do july 4 here? here, in fact. it will be simulcast, with a big screen, and instead of the crowds, you can pull up a chair
5:07 pm
on our organically maintained lawn and watch it right here, across the street from the beer garden, right near the beautiful arch. great place. carol: i know we will be here. guys, thank you so much. really appreciate it. brackennbury, lucas cowan. toing up, using technology reimagine how to run your restaurant. and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. listen to us on the app, on bloomberg.com and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪ carol: welcome back to
5:08 pm
5:09 pm
5:10 pm
"bloomberg technology," live in boston. i am carol massar. all week long, we have been highlighting the innovation taking place in the city, a city that according to crunchbase through august of last year's rival toertaking their the south, new york city, with $5 billion to $4.5 billion. our next guest is the ceo of onet, a leading all in point-of-sale restaurant management platform. the valuation, a whopping 2.7 billion dollars. congratulations. how are you? chris: doing great. good to see you. carol: good to see you again. chris: it has been two years. carol: tell us what has happened. that is a nice capital raise.
5:11 pm
chris: we have been busy over the last two years. we are really trying to effect a lot of change across the restaurant community, and we are enabling what we call a new era of hospitality, investing heavily in r&d. carol: talk to me about the r&d. what specifically are you looking to do? you have a platform. you have a bunch of services. what else do you want to do? chris: we look at all the stakeholders. the guests, the employees, the owner-manager-operator, trying to effect change around that spectrum. for example, how to get orders into the restaurant? in today's consumer, personalization, convenience environment, how does the restaurant get orders? whether it is a tool like toast take-out that we piloted in boston that allows you to do mobile ahead with your phone, or if it is kiosk or online ordering, or a device called a toast go that we released last year that allows the waitstaff to take orders at the table and turntables faster. carol: more customers in, more
5:12 pm
tables turned, meaning more revenue for the restaurant owner and more tips for the workers. chris: two things. it is about operational efficiency and getting them in the door. carol: back in 2011 you were founded. where is the capital going? being around eight or nine years, you have to think is it time to take the company public? chris: so, this is a massive opportunity, and the restaurant community is a massive market. carol: untapped market? chris: untapped, and we are in the early days of a major transformation across the entire industry, so in many ways we are just getting started, making massive investments in r&d across the whole spectrum. carol: so you don't feel pressure to do that? chris: no pressure. carol: we have been focusing on a couple stories this week. you have china trade, but more pertinent to you, i think about some of the ipo's that came to market, companies that you know have been around for a decade, like uber. it didn't go so well. i wonder if you think, how long
5:13 pm
do we stay private before going public? chris: sure. first and foremost, we are happy being private and putting investments in pilots and r&d and breaking through to the future for the restaurant community. i've had a lot of friends that have gone public recently, and we are in no rush. we are working on long-term shareholder value, so the opportunity for us is to build a company in boston for the restaurant community that is built long-term. carol: as you said, a very untapped market in the restaurant space. i know you don't like to give out numbers, but give me an idea of growth rate? chris: we are growing north of 100% year-over-year. carol: in customer base or revenue? chris: both. carol: wow. chris: we have over 1500 employees. since we last met we probably added 1000 employees in the last couple years. carol: right, and not just in the u.s. you are in dublin, and eeng center in dublin, but we are
5:14 pm
still u.s.-based with the restaurants we serve. whether it is an enterprise like jumbo juice, or nationally acclaimed operators like jose andres. we are all over the u.s., 30 markets, but it is early days. carol: putting going public aside, what about other partnerships? you have been working with u.s. foods. i wonder what other avenues, because that is more distribution. thes: we look at entire restaurant value chain. we are trying to make their lives better. it is hard to run a restaurant. we announced on tuesday, toast payroll and team management, because a lot restaurant operators are spending hours doing payroll every friday. if we can give them the fridays back, streamline payroll so that they can spend more time with guests, that is what we are doing. we launched that this week, an exciting new venture for us, and we will innovate across the entire restaurant chain. carol: front office or back-office.
5:15 pm
chris: front office, back office. carol: i googled toast competitors. there's a lot out there and even in the boston area. something about the boston city, the tech scene, the restaurant space, there is a lot happening here. so how do you see the competition? folks you might ultimately partner up with? chris: there's areas where we build, areas where we partner. a space that is dynamically changing. at the end of the day, we want move the community forward, and the boston market is tremendous. you have an amazing supply chain of talent with m.i.t., bu, umass, harvard, plenty of talent. and on the other side you have companies transforming the market. an amazing market for us to thrive in, and an awesome restaurant community. carol: you mentioned what a great city to be in as far as
5:16 pm
tapping into talent. what about in terms of what you are doing, what does it mean in terms of replacing workers? how do you see that working? chris: we feel we are enabling the community to thrive, and a lot restaurants running toast workforce, because we are making their jobs easier so they can spend more time with guests, more time cooking, more time managing operations. so we see a lot of restaurants that are thriving and adding labor, and we are trying to make it easier for them. chris: 10 seconds. international expansion? chris: at some point, but not anytime soon. at some point. carol: good to catch up with you. let's not wait two more years. thank you. chris comparato, ceo of toast. coming up, we'll talk about pinterest reporting their earnings for the first time as a public held company. we look at market reaction. investors didn't like what they heard. that's coming up next. this is bloomberg. ♪
5:17 pm
5:18 pm
5:19 pm
carol: welcome back to "bloomberg technology" live in boston. i'm carol massar. in paris this week, facebook pledged to curb that online scourge. withine lacqua sat down facebook's vice president for emea in london. >> i think what we are really getting here today, what are the issues facing the internet, the problems of the internet? and if you look, we have made a huge amount of investment over privacy, over election interference, and through those investments to our different
5:20 pm
platforms, if a bad activity is happening, we can flush it through. we don't think we are perfect. there's more we can do. but we are making progress. francine: do you think regulators understand you an exact we what the internet is? nicola: i think so. but we want to work more actively with regulators around the world. we have been clear about that. mark zuckerberg was in paris last week, working with the french government and working with president macron, reviewing the work we have been doing around hate speech on the internet and content regulation, sharing what we are doing and what else we can do. that's a good model, but we would like to see more around the world. francine: will mark zuckerberg testify in the u.k.? nicola: i don't know. he doesn't have any plans at the moment to come to the u.k.. francine: you have done work making sure there was not interference in elections.
5:21 pm
two weeks from the european elections, do you see signs of people trying to interfere? nicola: we don't see signs specifically, but we have put a lot of work in place to make sure we can protect the integrity of the european election. what does that mean? any political advertiser or any party that wants to put issue-based ads around politics has to register, say where they are from, and that means any ads they put out will say "paid for by" on any of the adverts. once the advert runs, it will live in an ads library we will put up, and you and i can see what the ads are, who was targeting them at you, why, and what their location was. not just political advertising, but for all advertising. there has never been that transparency of political advertising before, so it shows the progress we are making there . we will be able to see who the top spenders are, and we want to
5:22 pm
continue to work with governments and regulators in this area as well to protect our selections. francine: what elements of gdpr are working, and which ones are not? nicola: when gdpr was brought in, it was one of the biggest activities we had seen in the pleased tod i'm see people got involved, did the privacy checkups, and it is working well. we rolled it out around the world into different places. the checks we put in place. francine: do you think gdpr will be a roadmap for u.s. regulations? regulated as a result, and that's a good thing. francine: but will the u.s. force other companies to? do the same in the u.s.? ? nicola: i cannot say what u.s. regulators will do. carol: to what extent is
5:23 pm
bringing encryption into facebook make it actually more difficult to control harmful content? nicola: this is a challenge, but mark has been clear that the direction the company is going is much more privacy-centric. why? people are telling us that is what they want. the last 15 years of facebook has been about people publicly sharing, like mark talked about where a town square people would go out and talk to many. but we also see that people need a place, like in their own homes, where they need to be quieter, a living room. we want to be both. one does not mean the absence of another. you need both together. that is something we are committed to working on,, but it will take time. carol: that was facebook vice president for emea nicola mendelsohn. let's get to a company that has seen a pretty big round --
5:24 pm
run-up, 60% surge since going public in april. pinterest reported its first post-ipo earnings, and the reaction on wall street is not as good. shares tumbling as much as 20%, right now down 16%. ourk to san francisco, where bloomberg intelligence analyst is standing by. is this all about the forecast outlook and sales for the year? >> i mean, the earnings were mixed. user growth was strong, actually, stronger than expectations. but the guidance reflected the state pinterest is in right now, investing in self-service advertising, in international growth. so they are priming the pump, if you may, to accelerate sales in 2020, so 2019 will be an investment year. having said that, the reaction is more of a function of valuation. we don't think the pinterest
5:25 pm
long-term fund mental story changed. but looking at valuation, 16 times fy19 sales was a high number, given where they are now in terms of self-serve advertising and expansion plans. carol: it is kind of an interesting week. the wall street community weighing in on the stock, and some of them even involved in the offering pulling back thoughts on the company. basically a valuation story at this point. but longer-term, they are still bullish? jitendra: if you look at the expectations for the next couple years, it is pretty strong. for this year, what you will see, because pinterest relies on a few large advertisers right now and are just opening up their platform for self-serve and small businesses. this,n snap went through transitioning through the cycle of, like i said, priming the pump so they can get more advertisers on the platform and then drive revenues. so they are hoping 2020 is when the things that they are
5:26 pm
investing in right now will kick in, but this year i think expectations are pretty much in line with what the market, what the consensus is that we are seeing. you do analysis on this company. some of wall street says this is a company that will compete with facebook, or alphabet, google, twitter, in terms of the advertising platform. do you see it that way as well? jitendra: i think it is best if pinterest capitalizes on its niche, a visual discovery platform. people are there to identify what products they would want to buy, and i think retailers have interest, but pinterest doesn't have avenues right now to scale that quickly. they have to hire more people to drive revenues. but that will change as we go through this investment year, as they, it. as self-serve advertising opens more, you will see revenue
5:27 pm
growth coming back more. carol: we will leave it at that. ral of bloomberg, thank you very much. coming up, how does a city like boston deal with the catastrophic impact of climate change? we talk to a top adviser on that topic next. this is bloomberg. ♪
5:28 pm
5:29 pm
when you rest on a leesa hybrid mattress. bedtime is no longer simply the time you go to sleep. it's time to switch off and catch up. enjoy me time, and we time. 40 winks or 8 hours solid. the leesa hybrid mattress combines two technologies to give you deeper rest and rejuvenation. 1,000 pocket springs provide edge to edge support, responsiveness and comfort while premium foams relieve pressure. keep you comfortably cool and limit motion transfer. leesa's hybrid mattress is not only recommended by experts. experts choose to sleep on it too. try it yourself in any west elm store. or order online and we'll ship it to your door so you can try it risk free. the leesa hybrid is american made. built to last. and because everyone needs a place to rest we donate tens of thousands of mattresses to those
5:30 pm
in need. live healthier, live happier, by resting deeper. get 15% off and two free pillows. go to leesa.com today! carol: this is "bloomberg technology," from boston's greenway. i am carol massar. boston is leading the way as a tech and innovation center. the new bloomberg tech innovation center finds massachusetts as the second most innovative place in the country, and boston is a very driver of that new reality. boston is undergoing a revolution into its economic teacher.
5:31 pm
boston, a city that knows a thing or two about revolution, is undergoing a new one. and innovation renovation -- innovation revolution. tech is booming, powering massachusetts to the second highest spot in the nation on bloomberg's state innovation index, based on factors including research and development and education levels, and it's number of tech companies. theuch of that was led by boston area, which is a tech hub with many hot programs for science and engineering degree holders. it also has robust venture-capital investment. carol: on tech density alone, the bloomberg index ranked the state number one. more than 60% of all publicly traded companies there are classified as high-tech. >> one of the main reasons why massachusetts was ranked so high was because of tech company density in the state.
5:32 pm
a lot of that is led by the boston region. if you think of the top s&p 500 raytheon, general electric, those are in massachusetts, some in boston. carol: that tech density is no accident, given the brain burst, which includes 70 top science graduate programs, in an area where 40% of adults have college degrees. statewide, there are now more than 1.3 million jobs in the technology economy. a boost in venture-capital investment has helped fuel that job growth. in 2018, the seed firms invested firms invested $11.6 million in boston tech companies. amazon's $800 million purchase a the online pharmacy was coming out party of sorts for
5:33 pm
the areas startup sector. area's startup sector, and a shot heard round the world for boston's tech revolution. cities grow, other many leaders are focusing on the impact the environment. this man has advised companies on this exact issue. earlier, we caught up with him. we discussed how climate change impacts the financial world. going to have significant impact across multiple sectors. if you believe the general economics literature that has been proliferated the past 20 years, most of the growth that will have in our global economy will be evaporated by climate change impacts, or the sauce -- or the costs associated with those. the impact is quite real. carol: you're saying that most of the growth we have gotten used to will be wiped away? jesse: we have 3% to 4% growth.
5:34 pm
that will be evaporated immediately in the face of the costs associated with climate change. carol: how do investors need to start rethinking how they look at assets? jesse: you're already seeing this in terms of institutional investors that do think long-term. think, over time, what we're of the coreving out infrastructure, the obvious sectors. we are starting to see people thinking in terms of automotive and thinking in the consumers. this is not just a change in consumer preferences. this is a reflection of the product cycles and the supply chains. the supply chain impairment associated with this is significant. that is putting downward pressure on a lot of growth and
5:35 pm
a lot of market share as well. you partnered with goldman sachs, google, the white house and more. what is the kind of work that you do with them? where the questions they want answered -- what are the questions they want answered? jesse: our work is across the board. thinking about housing, where people are moving. thinking about strategic drivers that are opportunities for value add that advance sustainable urban development and lifestyle in many ways. we can't consume our way out of climate change. greater.will be much we have to think about the critical aspects of infrastructure delivery, health care delivery, transportation. havef these things that defined our standard of living, they are up for grabs in the face of climate change. carol: do we have a dollar amount in terms of what this will cost to adjust our society to meet the demand? jesse: it depends on how sensitive the climate system is.
5:36 pm
it ranges in the order of tens of billions of dollars annually for municipal costs -- carol: these are u.s. numbers i'm assuming? jesse: just in the united states. up to the order of 6% of our gdp. carol: our -- are we ready to make the necessary changes? you even have an idea of what will need to change in terms of changing orders, changing supply chains? jesse: we are getting there. the united states is at a superior advantage by many circumstances, because we have a disasters, history of disasters, compared to other countries. we are beginning to think about how climate change is both a shock and a stress, but on the shock and dashed shock end of the equation, we have a fair amount of experience. what is happening now is a lot of technology giving us ongoing intelligence. we have institutional drivers, laws, regulations. we know how to recover.
5:37 pm
the question is how do we building resilience in our tonomic sisters -- sectors take advantage of the opportunity associated with climate change. there is real upside to climate change as well. carol: what are the opportunities? jesse: there will behold you asset classes. people look it credit enhancement products as a great example of this. fairly to think of traditional risk transfer methods, but there are a whole new set of products, whole new set of insurable assets or on how you look at it. --many ways, that is when he that is one of many examples of opportunities. it is santher francisco, boston, new york, all on the water. will they be genetically different in terms of -- will they be dramatically different in terms of climate change maneuvers they will have to take? jesse: absolutely.
5:38 pm
you have to look at these cities as part of the metropolitan region. when you think about affordability, accessibility, degrees of off-center city cut --degrees of authenticity here we are in cambridge, there are a number of different areas, including in the day where they need to start thinking as -- in the bay where they need to start thinking as much or politicians units to scale beyond these borders. keenanthat was jesse with the harvard graduate school design. coming up x, as -- coming up next, as more companies focus on social responsibility, which ones make the cut? that is coming up next. this is bloomberg. ♪
5:39 pm
5:40 pm
5:41 pm
carol: welcome back to "bloomberg technology," live from boston's rose kennedy greenway. i am carol massar. mainstream investors are increasingly shifting to a new investment strategy, impact investing. companies that promote environmental change. according to the global impact investing network, there are over $500 billion in impact assets under management worldwide. space the leaders in this is a boston-based company, which theirrs investors to line portfolios with environmentally responsible -- i love this space, but one of the things that is interesting is how do you defined esg?
5:42 pm
b criteria is different on different investment firms. >> there is different levels of commitment. is -- what it is about instead of just looking at the metrics, looking at the environmental and social metrics, the government metrics. whether companies are managing those risks and opportunities well. in part, it is a sign of whether the company in general is well-managed. carol: a ghost of the top leadership, right? -- it goes to the top leadership, right? natasha: absolutely. as an give you insight investor as to what risks might be down the road. we have been quite president on prescientresident -- on some risks. about -- piece that is
5:43 pm
it is not just what aren't you investing in. for a lot of investors that don't want to be in things like tobacco, nuclear weapons, or big oil, it is very obvious, but there are, what companies do you want to invest in? contact investors are looking at sustainable development goals and trying to align investments with those goals and what companies are commercializing those. carol: doing that type of investing -- at one point, it was thought you had to trade off returns. you don't anymore. natasha: this is not a concessionary approach. it is actually about identifying these opportunities so that you have a long-term tailwind for performance. carol: tell us some of the specific companies. you have been out there front and center in terms of concerns about facebook, and one of the things is you think that mark zuckerberg has too much power over the company. natasha: that's right. we have been engaging with facebook for three years, since december 2016, and asking them
5:44 pm
to address things like election interference, content governance, really the woes that we are seeing on the platform. travis he concerns. with marks -- privacy concerns. with mark zuckerberg in this role as chairman of the board, ceo, and its most powerful shareholder, he has too much control, and it is really important to recognize that zuckerberg alone cannot fix facebook. there needs to be a diversity of views. carol: that is interesting. do you see any signs -- they certainly have been out there looking to make changes in terms of the information on their site , privacy concerns. do you think they are starting to take steps in the right direction? natasha: i think they are. those are the steps we have been pressing for all this time and you're starting to see it. the question is whether that extra transparency -- and i don't think it is full transparency -- is addressing the underlying issues. with a platform at such a scale,
5:45 pm
with 2.4 billion users, i don't think they can manage it. carol: where do you think regulators should be on all of this? i think about the structure where you have a cofounder or head of a company able to consolidate so much power. certainly voting power, when it comes republic company. where should the regulators be? -- when it comes to a public company. where should i give writers be -- where should regulators be? natasha: it simply is good governance 101. we see the outcomes, particularly in facebook. carol: talk to us about other companies. proxy season is coming up. exxon mobil is one we started talking about before we got going. what would you like to see in terms of exxon mobil doing differently? natasha: one of the things we focus on is fossil fuel free investing.
5:46 pm
we have fossil fuel free investments across asset classes, so we do have shareholders, investors that hold stock in exon and have held it for a long time and are very concerned about the direction of exxon mobil. we have a proposal going to a vote at the end of the month asking the company to form a board level committee on climate change, because we think the steps they are taking are not enough. the company is facing and existential crisis in climate change, and they are not pivoting in the way they should. again, going to that governance level, where does the fiduciary duty fall, how does the company change? carol: do you think the c suite is getting more sensitive to these demands? natasha: i do. intel have their virtual annual meeting, which i'm not a fan of. i think you have a meeting place and investors are invited and you can have one individually,
5:47 pm
but alone, idle think it's a great format. ast of the key and a -- q and portion was about sustainability, yesterday -- esg. we had a vote asking for the company to publish its median gender pay gap as one of the structural barriers that women are not holding up high-paying jobs at the company, and in that, they are not in positions of leadership, and we know that gender and racial diversity improves performance. that is what we are looking for. carol: do you feel like the performances are coming along as a result of this? natasha: i think companies are managing these risks better than they ever have. we certainly have laggards like facebook and exxon, but is catching on. carol: you're right to say that they are risks to the company if not dealt with. take you so much. natasha lamb joining us here. still ahead, the importance of sustainable investing.
5:48 pm
why trillium asset management says you should look at a companies carbon footprint before investing. this is bloomberg. ♪
5:49 pm
5:50 pm
carol: welcome back to bloomberg technology in boston. i am carol massar. when ithe pioneers comes to sustainable and responsible investment, going back to the early days on wall street and at lehman brothers. today, he is ceo and managing partner at trillium asset management based in boston. billion ofs $2.8 assets under management. >> great to be here. carol: they goes all the way back to your early days at lehman brothers. what is it you saw that he knew we had to start incorporating esg factors into investing? >> it was clear from early on
5:51 pm
that there was materiality to environmental, social, and governance factors. i looked at those factors in addition to the financial and found stronger management teams and stronger performance. bunchd up finding a whole of early companies that were adopting operating philosophies that were incorporating these. carol: i think about the early days of esg investing and i feel like there wasn't as much performance, but you did notice a correlation? matthew: the performance was there, but you also had to look for financial performance. the mistake i think you saw in the earliest iteration of looking at these factors were people saying, i am going to invest in this company, because it has strong environmental, social, and governance, but didn't have the strongest financial model. it had to be that all of that was there, and so, you did not just by the company because,
5:52 pm
seven generation looks good, it has great environmental, social, governance. it also had to have a financial it, and you had to look and say these are the names i'm going to own. --se are the names i'm got i'm not going to own. here the names that is going to be a stock i can own during certain periods. i'm not going to own all of the good esg stories all the time. that was the mistake that was made by early fund managers ,dopting environmental, social and governance as factors. carol: i talked about this with our last guest -- when you talk about what defines esg standards, is it becoming cleaner? matthew: i think it reflects the materiality, that environmental, social, and governance data can be used, incorporated into the
5:53 pm
investment process. i don't think that we are to a point where the data is good enough, but we are seeing steady improvement, and we have gotten to where there are multiple data sets that are moving toward standardization. of course, there is a move toward standardization. carol: i want to ask about a company about -- the company like pg&e. hedge funds are buying into it. that makes sense. what is your take on a company like this in terms of climate change and the risk that utilities face as a result? are they overvalued? we want to see the future of fossil fuel electricity generation, we need to look to europe, which is ahead of us in adopting renewables. we can look to what happened in germany, where if it were not -- government balance bailout, they would have gone bankrupt. most in the u.s. have failed to
5:54 pm
see what is happening with the change of the carbon footprint on their companies and are not adopting fast enough a model to invest toward changing the mix of how they generate electricity. we are headed for some real &e.blems beyond pg we are looking at problems with a number of utilities who are spending their money trying to look at -- to give you a local --to findversource extensions for a pipeline here in the bay state rather than focus on the changes that are happening in the energy supply and in how we are to need to generate electricity. carol: is the headline more bankruptcies to come? matthew: absolutely. no doubt about it. it is just a matter of how long. carol: we have had some stories on bloomberg that they are having trouble finding financing or when they find financing, it is expensive. matthew: that is part of what
5:55 pm
happens when an industry goes into decline. the industries that are in decline are going to face increased costs and ultimately bankruptcy. largely in thery u.s. has filed for think it's a protection. you're not likely to see anything improve, regardless of what is happening with the administration's constant argument that they were victims of a war on coal. there was no war on coal. better technology, better options were being adopted. carol: the marketplace was just adopting. speaking of marketplaces changing, tesla has upended the automobile industry. you have been pushing for governance and sustainability moves at tesla. where are we on that? do you feel comfortable with elon musk running the company? matthew: no. in a word.
5:56 pm
the high profile of tesla, we were looking for them to try to be more of a leader in sustainability reporting, and we're not looking at that -- we are not seeing that. it has been something we have continued to push them on. carol: very quickly, in terms of the green new deal, are investors starting to adapt in expectation that that will be adopted? matthew: i think people should be recognizing that there are lots of ideas within the green new deal that are likely to be in the long-term adopted. regardless of where they stand now unbelieving how it will be adopted and ready cost will be cost.d and the true total by do think there are elements of the new deal that have to be, if we are going to get to the point where we have sustainability in the economy. carol: thank you so much. trillium asset management,
5:57 pm
really appreciate it. that does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. hear from the rose kennedy greenway, this is bloomberg. ♪
5:58 pm
5:59 pm
6:00 pm
paul: what come to "bloomberg daybreak: australia," i am paul allen in sydney. shery: i am shery ahn in new york. ophie: i'm sophie kamaruddin. we are counting down to the market open. paul: here are the top stories we are covering in the next hour. wall street rose a third day thanks to solid earnings and strong housing data. trade tensions remain high. still in store, the largest losing streak since the

56 Views

info Stream Only

Uploaded by TV Archive on