♪ emily: i'm emily chang, and this is the "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all our top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, after its rocky debut, uber reports its first earning results as a public company. is the ride-hailing giant really on a path to profitability? plus, alibaba is considering a megadeal that will bring china's largest company to investors on its home turf. we've got the details on a potential second public listing. and facebook shareholders pressed for more checks on ceo mark zuckerberg's power.

we will bring you highlights from his annual investor meeting. first, to the top story, uber, the biggest ipo of the year, has had a bumpy start to public life. investors remain concerned about the size of the ride-hailing market, the reality of self-driving cars, and taking on another risky asset amid a worsening u.s.-china trade dispute. the ride-hailer gave insights into its growth, reporting first-quarter results thursday. dan ives, managing director for wedbush securities and bloomberg intelligence's mandeep singh joined me shortly after they came out. dan: right now for investors, the focus is on growth, take rates, and bookings. the last thing you want to do is back yourself into a corner, talking about profitability lovers. it's going to take a few years. right now, they're doing the right things. i view this as a step in the right direction, especially after what's been a shaky start

since the ipo. emily: mandeep, what is your take on this continued level of losses? and the cfo saying this will be an investment year, they will continue to invest. mandeep: and you know where they are investing. they're investing in the food delivery business. that is where they're heavily subsidizing the drivers and that is why the rates are coming down. you can see the reason why. the average prices for food delivery business is much higher. you can scale it up over time and that is the one that is the most fragmented. even amazon invested in a company and so you know the end market is big and that is what they're striving for here. emily: dan, what is your assessment of uber's ability to get to profitability? and you know, i asked him on the floor of the new york stock exchange, if this was the peak

spending year, and he wouldn't commit to that. so how likely do you think it is that uber gets to profitability in the near term? dan: i think that's the smart move, because when you look at lyft, that's maybe something they regret saying because it puts that mark up in terms of what they can do from a profitability perspective. and right now, uber is doubling down. they need to invest. not only do they need to invest in uber eats and autonomous, but in the next two to three years, there's a better chance of me playing for the golden state warriors than them hitting profitability. so i think, in the next two or three years, that's off the table. if you look at five years, it will be more realistic in terms of where they could hit. right now, the focus is on growth and especially on international and putting a fence around their backyard and making sure that the 90 to 100 million users continues to ramp and they monetize, especially on eats. emily: alright, so, i won't be seeing you in the nba finals

tonight, dan. you just broke my heart. but mandeep did say on the call that marketing expenses were going to start to go down. that's presumably welcome news given that both lyft and uber have been spending heavily to attract new riders. mandeep: and he called out the rationality of the pricing in the u.s. markets. so basically lyft and uber are not subsidizing drivers anymore. anymore -- of the riders anymore. i still feel they're subsidizing the drivers and that's why uber's take rates are coming up. i think it's a duopoly. when you look at this kind of structure of online travel and booking.com and expedia, over time it will pay off in the sense that these guys at least can maintain stable take rates in the core ridesharing business. emily: so, dan, what are you looking for, over the current

quarter, which they didn't give a forecast for? what's next? dan: i think it's important on the call that they did talk about take rates and other metrics they expect to improve throughout the year. right now, it comes down to the take rate number. can that spike back up? what bookings looks like the second half of the year? do they monetize eats? when you look at eats, especially with grubhub door dash and others, there is a lot of competition in terms of pressure on take rates. if they can manifest and sort of get through this period, it's an execution story. and no doubt it's in the penalty box. investors will grapple with the valuation, especially with no profitability even with binoculars. we believe they execute some of the parts in the hundred billion plus valuation and you start to get a stock that maybe gets re-rated there when you look out the next three to four years. it comes down to execution. this is why this was such an important quarter. the next few quarters will be laser focused on industry. emily: dan, i'm looking at a chart here that looks at short interest for the biggest and

most recent ipos. the short interest in lyft is way higher than the short interest in uber. what do you make of that? dan: well, i think lyft, right away, because of domestic ridesharing situation, made it an easier target, as well as the timing with uber coming out. they shot themselves in the foot a little on the first calling and not giving take rates and not giving bookings. the shorts have essentially smelled blood in the water and that's why you're seeing that. i do think that's overdone. i think lyft has improved some of the communication, at least with investors over the last week. no doubt lyft is in the investor penalty box, and i think that will be one where they need to prove themselves for the short to cover, which is why they're so much more focused on lyft and uber, at least where we are today. emily: that was dan ives,

managing director at wedbush securities and mandeep singh with bloomberg intelligence. coming up, special counsel robert mueller leaves u.s. citizens with a foreboding warning about systematic efforts to interfere in the 2016 u.s. election, and tech was their weapon. how well prepared are we to prevent it from happening again? and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio, listen on the app at bloomberg.com and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: on wednesday, u.s. special counsel robert mueller broke his silence about the russia investigation. perhaps the most telling statement, he said if he and other investigators had confidence the president clearly did not commit a crime, they would have said so. before stepping away from the podium, mueller also had one last important message about russian interference in the 2016 election via social media. robert: and i will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments, that there were multiple systematic efforts to interfere

in our election. and that allegation deserves the attention of every american. emily: jason casey, chief technology officer of securities scorecard and bloomberg's shannon pettypiece joined us in washington for a reaction. shannon: there wasn't much new in this press conference. he basically gave a five-minute or so summary of his report. but the visuals and hearing it directly from him i think has really sort of shaken things up in washington, especially among democrats. we've seen really a renewed call or increased call from democrats to begin impeachment hearings. and i think just the visual that you can now play on tv and on cable news and on the evening news of mueller in his own words saying these things that if the president didn't commit a crime and i had confidence and that i would say so, saying he was bound by justice department rules not to indict a sitting president. so it was something he couldn't

even consider. and again, using this platform to remind people that despite what the president has said about this investigation being a hoax and witchhunt and a politically motivated action here, that it was at the core about russian interference in our election and trying to raise that issue again and questions about how prepared we are. i think that while there wasn't a lot of news here, it is making waves in washington and it will get democrats catalyzing around the "i" word, impeachment, here. emily: let's take a look at that. facebook took down more accounts tied to iran, not russia, but the social network and other big tech companies have tried to make various changes to prevent these things from happening that -- happening again, but even they have said it is an arms race and it's hard to keep up. how well-prepared are we from preventing the kind of interference we saw in 2016 from happening in the upcoming elections?

jason: sure. so, there really are two parts to what was going on. one was the targeted hacking and extraction of information. and the was using the social second media platform as an amplifier to distribute the disinformation. what we typically find is larger organizations are better prepared than smaller organizations to defend against that first part, the extraction of information. where things don't seem to be going that great is -- how do we get in front and flag the -- flagged this information faster and prevent the amplification and social media from taking effect? there really are those two key points, right? an organization can run better defense and prevent episodes from happening like in 2016, but there still is the process of once information gets out and can be used in a systematic way from a social media perspective, there is an amplifier effect that is quite a bit different and it gets more into disinformation campaigns than actually targeted hacking. emily: now, shannon, some of the details of the russian

interference was among what was redacted from the mueller report. do we have any more indication about what could be under those black lines and whether or not the public will ever see it? shannon: well, i certainly don't have any indication what's under the black lines. now, congress is seeking to get more of those redactions lifted to try and seek some of the unredacted information. the president last week gave the attorney general authority to declassify certain information around this investigation and use his discretion. so, it's possible we could see more. but the reason it was probably redacted in the first place was because there was a long conversation about how it could compromise intelligence sources and methods, and those arguments will still be in place whether it's congress or the president who wants to make the information public. i think there is a lot we will not know and it's a reminder

that this robert mueller report only gives us a small window into all the information that the intelligence community has collected. this is not all the information that robert mueller has that's in his report. it's essentially a summary of it and we're only seeing a few pieces of the puzzle. emily: jason, i want to ask your opinion on what you think the responsibility of some of the tech companies should be, whether it's facebook or twitter or youtube, for example. there's this doctored video of nancy pelosi that was taken down and others have not taken it down. facebook has flagged the video. instead, do you think these companies are doing enough to stop misinformation, if that is what you would call this video, and if not, are you concerned that they will not necessarily make some of the tough choices that might be needed to prevent this kind of inference from happening again? jason: i think in this particular situation right now, facebook is claiming satire in terms of why they didn't bring it down. i do think the social media platforms actually do have a

greater responsibility. they, rightly or wrongly, are the amplification platform of communicating information to the masses, both in the u.s. and most of the western world. what they're doing right now is clearly not enough. what level need to go to is honestly not a simple and easy question. like, there are legitimate arguments around protection of satire for reasons of protecting free speech. with that said, like, clearly we can do better than we're doing right now, and having platforms that amplify the message of national adversaries is not in the goodwill or objective of any of us. emily: shannon, the president tweeted today, "nothing changes from the mueller report. there was insufficient evidence and therefore in our country, a person is innocent. the case is closed! thank you." what happens next? this is certainly not the last we're going to be hearing about the robert mueller report. shannon: i think the ball is in

the democrats' court now as to how much further they want to pursue investigations into the president's time in office if they want to begin formal impeachment hearings. so, i think the democrats, this is something they have to figure out and solve amongst themselves as a caucus, and nancy pelosi is probably going to be the key decision-maker on that. from the white house perspective, i think now the white house has to be on the defense. they're going to have to try to control the message. they're going to try to repeat this no collusion and let's move on, case closed, let's investigate the investigators. so those are the the talking points of where they go from here, trying to undercut this investigation by looking into the origins of the investigation and sort of create a side narrative here. and how it plays out politically for the president, the democrats pursue impeachment or not, i think it's still unclear. everyone looks back to what happened with clinton and the republicans. the republicans suffered big losses and clinton saw his popularity go up during his impeachment.

but remember, republicans took the white house in the next election with george w. bush. so i think it's all up in the air right now and there's a lot that things can go down from here on out. emily: bloomberg's shannon pettypiece and jason casey technology officer of securityscorecard there. coming up, facebook investors are pushing for change at the top after a cascade of scandals. we will tell you what happened at facebook's annual shareholder meeting. and still ahead, following its record-breaking ipo in 2014, alibaba is considering a second listing in hong kong. we'll discuss. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: at this year's facebook shareholder meeting, half of the eight shareholder proposals called for changes at the top, amidst numerous scandals and controversies. bloomberg's kurt wagner and shira ovide joining me to the about what happened and challenges that lies ahead. kurt: i spoke to some people who were in the room.

i was not in the room, but they said it was tense. they said it was sober. i think you could tell by the questions that were asked and the statements that people made that there are a lot of angry people at facebook and a lot of people who want to have more or better answers from mark zuckerberg and sheryl sandberg. emily: now, shira, investors asked zuckerberg several times about the amount of power he holds over the company. there was one who asked a follow-up saying something on the lines of -- i'm asking if you should still be ceo or if you should step down, and he said, we are limiting it to one question. moving on. what do you make of -- obviously the proposals were rejected but also the evasive nature of the answers? shira: in a way, facebook is kind of in a no-win situation right now, that everybody is furious at them or a whole host of sins. one of the people who stood up to ask a question was asking why facebook has banned her small business that sells hoodie

sweatshirts that read, "men are trash." right? so it was that level of shareholder questioning from should mark zuckerberg be a dictator over facebook and why are you blocking my hoodie business? that just shows you the scope of anger at facebook right now from the sublime to the ridiculous. emily: there was one investor who tried to ask the independent board member on facebook scored what she thought of this whole thing. she also sort of deflected. tell us about it. kurt: they also had to bring her up to answer the question. she was not on the stage at that point. they had to make this whole special thing that we want to ask sue a question. let's bring sue up. was about, hey, you're the lead independent chair -- are you going to call a meeting of independent board members without mark zuckerberg there? is that something you would ever do? would you consider holding him to account by may be making decisions while he is not around? she basically said no and was very pointed about it. she said this isn't something we

are considering. we're very happy with the structure as it is right now. we feel this is the appropriate set up. emily: if she wanted to, could she limit his power? kurt: they say, as the independent chair, she would be the only person who he really kind of has to report to. there are rules in the proxy that say she can call a special meeting of the independent board. but again, she said she doesn't want to and doesn't plan to. so, for all intents and purposes, he kind of has the run of the show. emily: meanwhile, mark zuckerberg did answer many questions, including continued questions about counts as speech that should stay up, what should come down. take a listen to one of his answers there. mark: if the rules for the internet were getting rewritten from scratch today, i don't think that most people would want private companies to be making so many decisions by themselves about what constitutes acceptable speech or what people are allowed to say around elections or especially in different countries around the world where we may operate

but may not even have a large physical presence. emily: this as controversy continues to swirl around this doctored video of house speaker nancy pelosi that facebook has chosen to leave on the platform. youtube has decided to take it down. now, nancy pelosi herself has commented on this. she said this to kqed earlier. speaker pelosi: facebook knows that this is false. they know this is false and yet they have decided. we've said all along that poor facebook was unwittingly exploited by the russians, i think wittingly. they're willing to put something on they know to be false. emily: shira, what do you make of that? net to close a coming out swinging. shira: yeah, it's harsh and maybe unfair and i can understand her anger.

there's a doctored video of her that's been seen millions of times on facebook and the company did do things to sort of make sure that it got slightly less distribution in people's newsfeeds and made sure to put a tag on it that said there is more information about this video and linked to third-party articles that said this is a doctored video. it's false. yet millions of people have seen it and some people have chosen to believe it. i think pelosi is reacting to that episode that embarrassed her. emily: kurt, what do you make of the fact that this is the issue that facebook is digging its heels in on? this is the piece of content that facebook is saying, you know what, we know that it's doctored, but it doesn't truly violate our policies. kurt: i said this last week, and this is a good reminder that facebook's policy actually does not mean they take stuff down because it's fake. this happens all the time. this is just a very high-profile

example that's getting when facebook does take stuff a lot more attention. down, it is because the people who posted it might be misleading who they are. they're pretending to be in the united states but are really in russia and stuff like that. they don't take it down because it's inaccurate. so this was just a high-profile example and reminder of that policy, and there is a lot of people who realize, wait, this policy may not be as great as we think because now it involves nancy pelosi. emily: also, it brings the question, is it simply too much to expect? is it impossible for facebook to be the arbiter of truth for everything on its platform? kurt: yeah, i think it is. you think about there are 2.4 billion people on facebook monthly users. are you going to stop every person who says this guy is red? are you going to stop anyone who mispeaks or shares a stat that is a little wrong? i just don't think that it's a feasible task right now and they certainly don't want the responsibility of doing it and that's why they're asking the government to step in and help out. emily: meanwhile, a billboard

went up in san francisco from elizabeth warren saying break up big tech. text us if you want to join our fight. of course, facebook isn't the only company that she's talking about, shira. they're able to throw this up in the heart of silicon valley. shira: right, with elizabeth warren talking about breaking up big tech, her campaign knows what it's doing to get attention. you're right. facebook is not the only company that's part of her policy paper about breaking up tech and amazon is a prominent example, apple and others. this is not a facebook specific kind of target. emily: given that facebook is such a large platform and, in a way, because of all the content that is on there, should they be? should they be in the position of being the arbiters of truth,

even if we believe it's possible the way that facebook is architected right now, and if facebook were smaller and smaller parts, would it be a more realistic proposition? shira: i'm not sure. i think breakup facebook has become this catchall solution to this problem of facebook, any problem of facebook. and i'm not sure it solves the problems that people are articulating. if facebook gets broken up into baby bells, into instagram and whatsapp and facebook, you still have multiple internet hangouts with more than one billion users apiece that are still going to have to make these difficult content decisions. i'm not sure it gets much easier dealing with individual companies with a billion plus users as opposed to one company with multiple products. emily: bloomberg's kurt wagner and shira ovide. coming up, it was one of the

biggest u.s. tech ipos ever and now hong kong is getting a second chance to land alibaba's second listing. we will hear from hong kong exchange chief executive charles li. and bloomberg tech is livestreaming on twitter. you can check us out, and be sure to follow our global breaking news network tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: welcome back to "best of bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang. alibaba is said to be continuing a $20 billion share sale in hong kong. this follows the record-breaking ipo in new york in 2014. the news coming as tensions between the u.s. and china escalates, leaving chinese companies grappling with how to deal with an increasingly hostile u.s. government. the megadeal would bring china closer to investors at home. elizabeth: what we know is alibaba is looking at applying for permission to file this ipo later this year.