tv Bloomberg Technology Bloomberg November 18, 2021 5:00pm-6:00pm EST
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plus, growing calls for the activision ceo to step down. we speak to an insider for reaction. and the supply chain drags. an outlook on the holiday season later this hour. first, let's get a look at the markets. tech stocks doing well today. there was a volatile session ahead of options expiring tomorrow. ed ludlow joins us for a breakdown. ed: tech is in the driving seat. the nasdaq is a tech heavy index. some options are expiring friday. don't forget about inflation. it doesn't go away just because we focused on other items. jp morgan joined the
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conversation on thursday about the idea we would get a rate hike in 2022. there was some selling in cryptocurrency. bitcoin is down below $57,000. the fifth day of declines. this is a correlation between tech stocks and bitcoin. it is basically zero. it raises the question, i heard you talk about inflation days, is bitcoin and inflation hedge? who knows, but it's behaving differently at the moment. caroline: there was selling pressure on other companies coming with earnings after hours. ed: applied materials, that's the company that makes the machines that manufacture the semiconductors. there was a lot of talk that they would benefit from
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investment in chip infrastructure. they are down because they are so hampered bite supply chain constraints. they're not able to make -- meet demands from the chipmakers. similarly, ross is lower now. the consumer is not want to tolerate the higher inflation. his that something that the retailers take a hit on the bottom line or do they pass the cost onto the consumer? ross is not a tech company. but foot traffic in stores really grew year on year. it's the idea that we are spending online anyway, you would expect ross to benefit. caroline: some companies have been able to pass on the increase prices to consumers.
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when you look at the chip equipment maker, then the chipmaker today flying high and nvidia is doing well on managing the supply chain headaches. ed: the biggest points gainer on the nasdaq 100 in percentage terms. you have to remember these companies have different management. in the case of macy's up 21%, have a cfo who is been savage on cost-cutting. they really protected their bottom line. they talk about demand from the consumer going into the holiday quarter. nvidia was able to grow gross margin. they are selling their most expensive chips and trying to get their hands on those before they sell the lower-priced once. it's a smart play in a tough environment. caroline: thank you for keeping us up to speed.
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apple is accelerating its development of an electric car and focusing the project around full autonomous version of the car. we are going to dig into this with mark. the fully self driving capability, why? why leapfrog? >> that's what apple does. they only enter a new product category when they're able to come out with a leapfrog product. you saw that with the iphone, the ipad, apple watch. they want to release something that no one else has been successfully able to nail. they want to create a car that is a hands-free experience. they are redesigning the interior and exterior around the idea of having no wheels or petals.
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caroline: as soon as year, that's fast. is there regulation? >> not next year, 2025 is when they want to debut the car. perhaps it will hit the streets a few years after that. their current target is funny 25 for an actual announcement. caroline: tell us about the driving forces from the executive perspective. >> the new person in charge, his name is kevin lynch. he was one of the major pioneers behind the apple watch. he has the experience launching from the beginning to the release the last new product category for apple. he is a software expert, a management expert. he is not a car expert or an autonomy expert, but he has the right people underneath him to push this forward. since he took that job, we have seen this acceleration and refocusing around a level five car approach. caroline: how much market share
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do they want to win? how ubiquitous do they want the car to come when they are so successful in getting the phone in our hands? >> before knowing what your market share is going to look like, how much sales you will have, what you need to do first is settle on a business model. there are a few approaches apple can take. the individual ownership. also the fleet approach having a service like uber or left. -- lyft. individual ownership will likely be the route because that is the apple business model. caroline: meanwhile sticking with apple, there is a deadline for employees to return to the office. it is marking a key step toward getting operations back to normal. employees are asked to work from
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activision ceo after allegations he was aware of the sexual misconduct at the company years before a lawsuit made a public this summer. now, employees and some shareholders are asking for his resignation while other naming companies are distancing themselves. our guest is going to dissect this with us. i'm fascinated as a female who has worked in this industry for so long how surprised or perhaps disheartened how long it has taken for some accountability to be asked from the ceo. >> completely unsurprised unfortunately. this has been a systemic problem in gaming for as long as i have been in it, 20 years. what i am encouraged to see is the growing chorus of voices who are demanding more than just
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saying i will take a pay cut and we have zero tolerance than employees not seeing any difference inside the organization. caroline: is change coming? will it be loss of talent makes a change of culture internally? >> i don't think it will be loss of talent. i do think the drop we are seeing in activision share price specifically over the last couple of days, the recent calls are very sobering to activision and their board of directors. this is not just something that is going to go away. it's going to continue until real change is made. caroline: the systemic issue of this, give us your experience here. having built a successful business within gaming and built such success stories, how much
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is the issue pervasive when female gamers in and of themselves have a trouble penetrating the space. >> it has been as i mentioned a problem for as long as i can member. i remember hearing about conferences where there was a lot of drinking and women were made to feel uncomfortable. if you just look at the statistics of the number of executives in large gaming companies who are women it's very small. my company is unfortunately the exception. 50% of our executive team is female. i think that comes partly from the fact that they know it's going to be different culture here. that's not necessarily a culture that has been embraced in some of the other gaming companies. my hope is that that will change. i think it has to change because
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our customers are women. 50% of our customers are women, especially in casual games. you are serving a customer, yet internally you don't have representation of that customer understaffed, that's a problem. caroline: i am acutely aware that we are two women discussing this. there are men who have been particularly supportive of females within the gaming space. you cofounded your business with your husband. talk to us about what male focus has been in the system. >> i think that the recent letters by leaders to their staff saying they take it seriously as a partner of activision and they are looking into it and they will not tolerate this kind of misconduct
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is a very encouraging sign for the industry. caroline: what about the prevalence, the importance of gaming within the metaverse in particular? there is a worry when you look at the crypto space and and fts, we need to ensure some of the negative side of what has been built within technology, we are not just talking about lack of diversity for women or people of color, how are you ensuring that the less -- next iteration of the internet and gaming doesn't go that way that we can reduce bias in all its forms? >> that's a good question. i don't have high hopes right now for what will likely take place in the metaverse at least in the initial iterations. obviously, gaming is leading the way in the metaverse. things like roadblocks and minecraft have been early views
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of what people are going to be experiencing in the future. i think it's going to be quite some time before people are walking around in novels. these systems that are already pre-existing need to be very heavily policed by community people and they tend to go in not great directions in terms of harassment and lack of diversity and lack of inclusion. for my small piece of the puzzle, all i can do is control my own organization and the player avatars that we have in our mobile games and on arcadian.com represent all ages, diversities, genders. we're are doing our part to ensure that our little space of gaming is more representative of how we like to see the gaming world at large. caroline: talk to us about ages.
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how are we looking to protect children in the next iteration of gaming as well? >> my company focuses on older adults. 35 plus market. i definitely feel differently about my customers. i feel differently when i'm watching my son's name. there are companies doing this really well. roadblocks is an example of that. they are taking the protection of children in that community very seriously. they are chosen as an example for places like facebook that have maybe not done as good a job in policing the kinds of talk on their platforms. caroline: for any startup entrepreneur listening, anyone who's looking at the culture in the business they are building, are there tangible pieces of advice, things that you did with your husband to ensure that people knew it would be an
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inclusive culture? >> we have always taken a people first approach to our business. we know if our employees are happy and fulfilled and growing, that will come through in the products they are creating. it will eventually affect the bottom line positively. it's not that hard to act with integrity. generally -- to genuinely care about people. when you do that, it comes through in your actions. it comes through in your one-off discussions when you're having lunch with someone. it builds on that. caroline: fascinating to have you on of course. you have won many awards. we thank you for coming here with your wisdom.
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meanwhile, let's talk about shares of alibaba. it was lower on thursday. the revenue forecast far missed estimates. sales were lower than expected for the second straight quarter. the businesses have been hit by macro economic issues and regulatory as well. also competitive turmoil. there are so much more ahead, stick with us. we will look at some of the retailers out there and their earnings. macy's pushes its digital strategic move, which investors they wanted. this is bloomberg. ♪
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issues are just having an impact on retailers, they are also affecting the distribution of vaccines. bill gates talked about it in singapore. >> the vaccines are very good news and the supply constraint will be largely solved as we get out into the middle of next year. we will be limited by the logistics and the demand. in a lot of countries, it's not clear what the demand level will be. in a country like sub-saharan african countries, it's challenging to generate that. what's pretty impressive is that merck and now pfizer have oral antivirals that the merck drug
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we have been able to reformulate to get it to be less than eight dollars. we will be able to have anyone whose age or medical condition makes them have significant risk immediately begin what is called presumptive treatment as soon as they test positive. between natural immunity, vaccine immunity, and these oral treatments that can scale up in a way that the antibodies never did, the death rate and the disease rates should be coming down pretty dramatically. by next summer, getting to be quite a bit lower than the average seasonal flu level assuming there are no surprise variants which right now the evidence is that's not that likely, but it can never be ruled out. >> just mentioned next summer,
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what do you think victory looks like in this? is it effectively taking covid back? making covid a flulike disease? i know it is, but is that the kind of version of what victory is in your brain? >> yes things are fairly binary. if death rates in driving were 10 times what they are, people might think wow. flu is accepted. the average years of life lost for flu and covid is about eight years because it is so prevalent in the elders versus the young. we accept about 60,000 average per year rate. as part of the tools of innovation to avoid the next pandemic, we should go eradicate the flu as well because it's
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mutations are another source of -- a significant source of teacher pandemic risk. the idea that economic activity will resume in full once you get to flu levels, it's very likely. there will be some hotspots without huge incentives for people to get protected. >> to push you a bit on the vaccination, if you look at the way that countries are dealing with it, you have two very different ways of doing it. you're going to take two extremes, you could argue that the country which i live in, britain which has opened up a lot relied on vaccination and is taking a slight we will see what happens attitude at one end. on the other end, you have china which is really clamping down
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closing things down. when you look at those, do you see problems with both or which basic strategy do you have more trust in? >> any country that was able to do what china did and stop it early before it exponential a up where you have case rates above 2% of population, that's a huge blessing that they were able to do that. that means they have very little natural immunity so they have to drive there vaccination coverage up for medically before they drop the wall that has allowed them to elude infection from coming in. caroline: coming up, sonos is
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caroline: this is "bloomberg technology." general motors says it's working some of the biggest name in semiconductors to come up with new chips to go into its cars. ed ludlow is with us to talk about why it's important. ed: any given cart whether it's gas powered or ev has dozens of microcontroller units.
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they had to stop production. gm is saying it is assembling a superteam. it has gathered the who's who of chipmakers. chip designers, and others. look at that chart. that is not just a random list of the world's greatest and chipmakers. it's who gm says liquid to work with and they want to consolidate. each unit does something different. when you push a button for the air-conditioning, that relies on a single chip. they want to get books analogy -- functionality across several chips. the time from ordering semiconductor to when we get it. this whole situation over the last 12 months, for automakers you see the lead times there.
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it's not in the short-term effects. this is a long-term fix for general motors. the others have had to rethink supply chain completely. redesign, look at the technology. in the future, this doesn't happen again. it's a great question for guests going forward. caroline: it looks like everyone is trying to make their supply chain that much more effective and efficient. let's take on the supply chain issue. sonos just reported fourth quarter earnings that beat wall street expectations. the ceo warned that chip shortage at the holiday season will be challenging especially for growth. it was refreshing to see how transparent you were on all of this. how reggie -- how are you managing to navigate this?
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>> it is something we have been battling for a year. i am grateful to deliver the kind of growth we reported yesterday. coming in ahead of it expectations. it has been an outstanding year. we were transparent about the fact that we have a ton of demand. the consumer is extremely strong. it's going to be challenging in this quarter and that is all the supply chain side of things. we had to look at how we replace those chips in our products. we have dozens of components and a lot have been short given the supply chain crunch. when you look at putting different chips in, working with other suppliers, going to the open market and buying chips from others. a bunch of different things they are trying to do to mitigate it. nevertheless, we are left in a situation where the december quarter is going to be a challenging one. we expect it to get better as
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the year proceeds. caroline: long-term, what do you make of the on shoring of chipmaking? apple going so far as to make their own chips. looking at foundries to bring chipmaking into the united states, are there longer-term solutions you have been looking at? >> definitely engaging with more partners. being a smaller company, we had to partner with a lot more companies to get to where we are. we are definitely looking at where we can make our supply chain more resilient. it was only a year ago, we diversified from china to malaysia. we were looking at onshore options over time as some of our partners move on short. -- on shore. we have been building up the supply chain for 30 years. a lot of the component
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suppliers, not just the manufacturers, that's a big task to bring on shore. you will see that happen as part of building more resilient supply chains. the pandemic has taught us a lot in terms of needing to have the resilience and the localization. caroline: how do you expect the holidays will look and feel to the end consumer. will they look -- walk into the stores and the products won't be there? how will you navigate the next few months? >> consumers should get out there in order today. you can see on our website or through our partners like a spy or cosco, it depends on the product. sometimes you can get it right away, sometimes you will wait a few weeks. more and more consumers are getting the message and getting there sooner. we have a tremendous backlog right now. the good news is that throughout the year, consumers have been sticking with us. sonos is more of a considered
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purchase. we are in the enviable position where cancellation rates have remained low and throughout the year. we expect any demand that doesn't get fulfilled in december to be fulfilled through the rest of 2022. we are watching that very closely. caroline: let's talk about previous partnerships that have turned sour. we know that you have sued google. how is that progressing? >> to be clear, google is still our partner. we support youtube music. we continue to work with them. that's part of existing in the tech industry. the partnership. sometimes, there are issues you can't resolve through regular negotiations so we are very confident, we are very -- head of positive ruling in august and
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tomorrow, we should get an update on the next step in that procedure. it is something we are very confident in. we invented the category and we believe that we need to stand up for all inventors in smaller companies in the face of anyone trying to trample on our intellectual property rights. caroline: it's interesting that you are able to disassociate. how do you still have a good working relationship with the likes of google when it does seem to have got relatively personal? >> it's mutually beneficial at the end of the day. some of those things they want to be in, the homes that sonos is in. we want to offer customers all of the services. that's one of our strengths. we are going to lock you into one ecosystem. try to offer all of that choice so it makes sense for us and for them because they want to be in
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all of the very attractive homes that we are now in 12.6 million of. we acquired a company around voice in the past and we think there are some really interesting opportunities there. we want to support what is happening in the industry. we were the first to support amazon alexa and google assistant. at the end of the day, what's important is a great experience and making sure the customers get choice of whatever they want to use. we don't think it's the right thing to lock them into a particular ecosystem or force them to choose one. we remain the standard when it comes to being open to all alternatives. caroline: on the legal front, are you joining the antitrust lawsuits? >> i testified in front of the congressional committee last year. they asked a lot of questions in
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terms of our experience. this is the most attention i have seen on this. we have heard it from europe, from the american authorities, canada, australia. there is a lot of interest. we want to cooperate, because we believe in a world where there can be more startups and innovative companies and they shouldn't just have bigger players copy what they are doing and try to trample their and electoral property rights. caroline: you don't want legal issues to bog down your innovation. what are the next big things you are talking about? >> our roadmap is exciting. we do to new product every year. we just brought out a new sound bar. another concept called holiday at home, -- hollywood at home, we have a huge tailwind hung that. we have exciting products in 2022 and the on.
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the market. i discussed this this week in the unequal recovery series. a ceo was here to talk about the drive to keep up the momentum. >> for the first time in many years, we have progress in terms of the women -- number of women at the table writing checks as well as the number of women founding companies and receiving venture dollars. we are also seeing more exits from female founded companies. there is exciting news to report, a lot of work that remains to be done. caroline: in some ways, it shows a doubling of the amount raised for female entrepreneurs. it has been a silver lining of what became a crisis and a
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reckoning of what needed to be done. >> the pandemic across the board has generally been a blow for underrepresented people. that has been the case for women . it has especially been the case for mothers. it has been the case for women and mothers of color. that also is the case in the venture world. for a time we saw a dip in dollars that was going toward women founded companies in terms of the actual number of dollars as well as the percentage of dollars. that was despite the fact that we were in the most productive times in venture deal activity. there are many reasons for that, a lot of which have to do with systemic issues related to women as well as the communities of color. that is starting to change and it is not a coincidence that it
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is changing on the checkwriting side and the venture funded founder side. there is data that shows that women investors tend to attract female founders and vice versa. there is a natural some biases that happens. there is also data that shows that women founded companies perform better. that's what i like to speak to because it is about the bottom line. caroline: we see this in terms of money management, women who control money can outperform because they have a different view on risk. we have had these moments of great glory this year. we had runway going public. to see a mother and her child ringing that bell together was such a moment. what businesses are being founded that you are excited about? what problems are currently being fixed that you think are
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notable? >> i'm so glad you brought up the public exits. the symbolism ended the inspiration of those moments. when i saw rent the runway and bumble and across the board it seems like on a weekly basis it is a very different view than we are used to seeing ring the bell. my first reaction was to go home and show my daughter. on the early-stage side, we are seeing so much talent that is innovating in particular around areas like women's health which has been relegated by many wrongfully so to it niche category. 80% of the dollars and health care are being spent with us. >> that's why you have a company that has been raising phenomenal amounts of money showing real growth. where do we push this forward? as we still see what is
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desperately unequal recovery? women holding back as we still have a stop start relationship with children getting safely back at school. the has and have not becoming more clear. how do you propose to tip the balance? >> there is still a lot of work to be done. for me, my job as a venture capitalist is to make money for my lps. some of them are philanthropic institutions, but i only doing that in investing in the best understand companies. that is where the data is incredibly compelling. people should be looking at women, founders of color. the data shows that they outperform across the board including faster time to exit. diverse boards have better
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performance as well in terms of board members which really should start as a practice much earlier than the last minute we are going public at a board member type of activity. they are also innovating in areas that are right for disruption. that means they are opening up and in some cases creating categories that will be returners for inventors -- investors. caroline: at the moment, we are all taken with web 3.0. whether it be metaverse, the future of cryptocurrencies, nf ts. you see that most of those tend to be white men and the money is not flowing to diverse creators. how do we ensure that the biases that occur there don't happen again? >> it starts with making sure
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that the investors around the table are representative of the population that we live in because there is the natural attraction that happens with founders and investors. i have been heartened to see at least anecdotally, it seems to me that the early-stage founders look different than the founders we saw with web 1.0. i hope that that will turn into large exits and outcomes because there is clearly a lot of wealth to be created and wealth generation in these communities will create more opportunities, more investors, and more investment down the road. caroline: lastly, you come traveling here on the east coast, you are based in palo alto. how do you ensure you get the geographical diversity which shines a light on more diverse entrepreneurs as well? >> the zoom world has been a
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game changer for everyone. in the world of venture, the idea of traditionally investing in your own zip code or some investors have commented previously that they would only invest where they could drive to the board meeting where they had a physical proximity. it's not relevant anymore even though we are returning to travel. with investors resuming with founders, we had no idea where they were based. it didn't really matter. that was the case even on the hiring front. we are seeing a lot more international investment which is very exciting. there are opportunities for leapfrog innovation. lots of opportunities where investors might not have been too excited to invest in at different times. caroline: that was a great conversation.
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sustainability. how are sales? >> it is stronger than ever. we saw the same huge boost during the pandemic that all other grocery platforms have seen. in 2021, we have seen continued strength. we have seen a lot of those purchasing habits that customers have retained post-pandemic. order frequency is as high as it was. caroline: you are expanding. tell us why california and how you continue to do that? >> we are approaching grocery from a different angle. our goal is to build the affordable grocery store online doesn't exist. most online retailers are focused on the affluent urban
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customer demographic. there are 100 million other households that don't have access to the services that the urban areas do. we started on the east coast and we have expanded gradually west. california is the biggest market that we haven't been in and he officially launched there last week. when you look at california, everyone thinks about l.a., san diego, san francisco. people forget that one in five california households are in food deserts. we are trying to solve that. caroline: talk to us about supply chain issues. how has that affected you? >> it has been a big challenge. the cost of food his going up substantially across the board. we would look at items like organic avocados, those doubled in price over the past year. the cost of labor has increased.
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packaging his going up ultimo times. when we look at our supply chain, we have fewer touch points than the average grocery retailer. we go from farm or manufacturer to the warehouse. from the warehouse to the household. because of the limited touch points, we have been able to shield ourselves more than the average supplier, but it is still a challenge. caroline: differentiation, how do you differentiate yourself from the competition? >> a lot of online grocery businesses out there. value is our special word. we are building a new food value chain. we are buying from farmers and manufacturers that others won't bite for reasons. on the consumer side, we are providing 30% to 50% discounts compared to traditional grocery stores delivered to your doorstep.
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