tv Bloomberg Technology Bloomberg February 9, 2022 5:00pm-6:00pm EST
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plus, more earnings, uber is in the green and bookings that beat estimates with the most active users being recorded in their history. we will chat with john zimmer about how the company reported fewer rides than expected with higher than expected ever revenue per ride. first of all, stocks rallying and the meta-dip after the shares slid after earnings, watching for disney and uber, of course. kriti: the nasdaq, rallying back to percent. the move for today, bringing it into perspective for the selloff that we saw, in the s&p 500 it pared back half of the losses in a brutal cell in the tech sector. you can see what it is doing to the volatility sector there for the nasdaq, coming back down a
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bit into the 26 handle but on a macro perspective all eyes will be on tomorrow's inflation report, where we have our eye, on the 10 year yield. does tomorrow's report get it to a 2% level and does it make any impact on tech? that is what we will watch from the macro perspective. uber in particular, soaring with bookings beating estimates. 118 million active users on their platform, the largest amount on record. they made quite a bit of revenue off it. they can see over shares up in the premarket, lyft is also up in the premarket following their lead. similar story when it comes to disney beating their earnings with pretty fantastic subscriber numbers. the estimates going into that work 100 25 million subscribers and they came out with 129 million total, adding 11.8 million new subscribers and a lot of the growth happen in the
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united states. it happened in india, their fastest growing market. 35% of those global subscribers coming from their partnership with hot star. i want to stick with the disney results -- emily: i want to stick with those disney results. what's your take away from the slowdown that we saw in subscribers but the big beat today? >> those numbers were way through the charts, top and bottom line, but as you mentioned, the headline is the subscriber numbers which, you know, way past our estimates. this really kind of answers some of the concerns out there as to whether the deceleration that we have seen on the other platforms, netflix and others, if it was something structural going on. it was more remarkable that they had increased their acceleration in the second half.
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the idea that we are seeing this now when a lot of the content that they are planning to launch is still, is still out there, it speaks to the potential demand and appetite out there for streaming. the other number they got lost, espn plus adding north of 4 million subscribers. that was quite pleasing. those were some of the strongest numbers we have seen. direct to consumer business firing on all cylinders, it should re-accelerate even more as we enter the second half of the disney fiscal year. emily: the ceo reiterating their forecast. i wonder, is this going to be lumpy, quarter to quarter, depending on the content that we saw? or do we have to focus on the long-term? >> he did make the point that it
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wouldn't be a linear trajectory and frankly emily as we kind of think about that number after what we saw this order, it's actually looking really, really conservative. so, now they are at 130 million roughly from disney plus. looking at how fast they got to this number and this idea that they will be launching 50 international markets this year and then moving on to over 100 and year reaching 160 total countries, i think it is really going to speak to how much traction they get in those international markets. if i were to go by what we saw, that number, 260, is quite easily achievable at this point but i don't expect them to raise that guidance anytime soon until the end of this fiscal year, perhaps. emily: what is your read on the
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parks? are fewer people just paying more to go? >> there is a tremendous amount of pent-up demand for the parks, and we knew that going into this quarter. we knew that from other major theme park operators out there but what we didn't expect frankly was the velocity of the acceleration that we saw. all of the key metrics that we looked at in the parks seem to be actually, you know, outperforming expectations. the operating income number, it beat estimates by a lot. attendance, spending is higher at the theme parks. there is a tremendous amount of power in the parks. this could be the silver coming out of the pandemic, the path of the parks accelerating towards
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the peak attendance level that we saw a few years ago with margin expansion really coming back to life and we expect the parks to hit operating margins faster than expected, of course subject to any uncertainties related to the omicron variant. emily: all right, tuna, we will continue to listen to that call, the disney earnings call, and sharing headlines as we have them in later this hour i bring you a live conversation with ceo bob che pack that you don't want to miss. more on the early -- the earnings from uber, most active users in history of the company. tom white joins us now for his take. tom, what do you make of the fact that uber and lyft earnings were so different? tom: i don't know that they were massively different. with uber we got a pretty constructive update from the ceo
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mid-december. they indicated that the fourth quarter was likely going to come in at the high-end of the range they had given and then omicron hit, so i think investors wondered, was the drop off that likely could have happened in the business going to be so detrimental that it could kind of derail the quarter? most people's of -- suspected not and that's basically what we saw. solid quarter, headline metrics for revenue, it was all above consensus. mobility, the rideshare business was light on revenue, but they beat in the market right now, everyone focused on profitability and willing to pay for unprofitable growth companies. and then all eyes were on the guidance depending on what lyft talked about last night. gross bookings were a little bit
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below what investors expected but the market was clearly kind of fixed -- clearly kind of expecting that after what they said last night and it was an important comment from that press release where after january they had started to see a recovery in the mobility business. it's what investors needed to hear to feel comfortable with numbers. how big of -- emily: how big of a concern visit need to be? tom: driver supply, less of a shortage over the last month with demand shrinking a bit because of omicron, but i think they are working their way towards finding a balance in the marketplace. we think that they will eventually reach that. they have been able to kind of peel back the incentives to attract drivers. you mentioned in the run-up that the monthly active platform of
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customers hit an all-time high in the quarter. you know, it's really impressive to think that that was the highest level ever even though it is the business that in some ways has been shrinking in areas, exiting certain countries and unprofitable markets. with an audience that large across ridesharing and delivery, it's just a matter of time before drivers are attracted to, attracted to the platform. emily: all right, we are listening in on the uber call as well. tom, thanks for giving us your take. coming up, lyft hitting and omicron speedbump. we talked to john zimmer about the road ahead. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: lyft reported fewer riders in the fourth quarter but the ones that did ride lift took longer trips from the airport, for example. i want to bring in john zimmer and philip john. reckitt -- riders not as high as expected, what is your outlook for the road ahead given that it seems omicron is waning but we could be senior waves of the virus? >> for the full year this year we expect even faster growth than last year. we are quite excited about that. excited to see health conditions
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improving, certain states are removing the mask mandate when it feels like it is safe to do though -- do so. hard to predict how quickly it will happen which is why we said we are cautiously optimistic for the broad recovery but it is not known exactly how that will impact of the rest of q1 and q2. emily: beating almost everything, there's a thought that they could have the upper hand. are you concerned about alienating users if prices stay elevated? john: i'm not familiar, i haven't been able to follow what they were reporting on today but in q4 talking about pricing, a lot more the ride mix changes and you are not looking at like for like rides from lyft in q4 or q3. the bike rides are counted in
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the overall rides. when it is winter and people take less bikes, there are less expensive rides and when more people go to the airport in q4 to travel for the holidays there is a longer distance, more expensive ride. we didn't see major changes to base pricing and in fact we see service levels improved dramatically. q2 to q4 eta improving by 30% with the dynamic elevated part of pricing. emily: when it comes to drivers by, we have the gig economy and what is your strategy to compete with the other companies given that some drivers don't want to get in the car with another person and they prefer to deliver a meal and that's a business you are not in? john: new driver activations are up, returning at a fast pace. concerns or questions in the
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first half of last year compared to where we are ended, we are in a much better position, extremely confident. if you compare the return of labor to the hospitality or retail industry, we are far outpacing the return to work. if you zoom out and think about what is, what other options is there where you can turn on and off work and earn 20 to $30 per hour, there is no other option and historically ride-share drivers earn more money than delivery drivers. emily: what kind of risk does it pose to profitability if the shortage continues? john: we are actually not seeing it repeatedly. it is getting better. surface levels improving by 30% because supply has been less of an issue. we could talk about a hypothetical if that was true,
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but it is no longer the case that that is as much of a concern and we feel great about our position and the balance of proving again, eta is a great measure of balance and we are also getting ready for the bigger return of demand of riders and we will continue to incrementally invest on the driver side. something that we have done historically well and during covid had to do with much more difficult conditions. emily: on that note, the uber ceo last quarter when he was on the show made this production about riders. take a listen. >> i'm quite confident that next year we will be hitting records, all-time records in terms of mobility bookings. i will make that prediction now. emily: would you be willing to make that same production, lift hitting pre-pandemic records for riders in that span of time?
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john: i won't be providing any new guidance, but what we have said is that we are cautiously optimistic that we will exceed growth rates on top line from last year and we remain cautiously optimistic, which would be a very good thing. emily: i have to ask you about this story about a potential kidnapping attempt by a lyft driver in brooklyn. she said she tried to file a police report couldn't because lyft didn't get the license plate, didn't get a call or apology from lyft. what's the status of the case and what are you doing to make sure that it doesn't happen and that this person, this suspect, potentially, is brought to justice? john: i'm not familiar with this specific case. my guess is a call has been placed to that individual to determine what has happened.
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i would just emphasize all of the things that we have done on safety over the past several years. we have a feature called silent escalation where a driver or writer in unsafe situations can tap a button silently and we partnered with adt to provide emergency services necessary. we look at any anomalies in route. if someone stops for a long time where they shouldn't ask the writer in the driver if they are ok and if they need any of those services. again i can't comment on that specific incident in question, but i can say safety is incredibly important to us in something that we continue adding more products to. emily: you release your first sexual assault incident report in october. is that something you plan to do regularly? john: we haven't made that decision.
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our focus is on making sure we provide safe rides and if that helps do that, that is something we can consider. we have continued to improve again those safety features and when you compare it to alternative modes of transportation like the taxis that came before us, having identity, license plate, it's all of this information leads to safer outcomes. it's one of the reasons we started the business and it is one of the things that we get up every day working hard to improve. emily: good to know. john zimmer, lift president -- lyft president, co-founder, thank you. coming up, microsoft with new rules in order to ease the approval around their deal for activision. next. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: microsoft making its case again in washington around the purchase of activision and for this we want to bring in david mclaughlin, who met with the microsoft ceo and president, brad smith, today in washington. how did the meeting go, david? david: microsoft is a bit of a on a bit of a charm offensive after the deal. they are trying to deliver this message in washington that the future they see is one where, you know, app stores are open and they don't come with the
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kinds of restrictions that have come under so much criticism. really what this is i think is an attempt to tell regulators looking at the activision deal that they don't have anything to worry about in terms of -- well, do they -- emily: well, do they? david: obviously, it's a huge deal happening at a time when so much scrutiny of big companies and a lot of criticism that in the past, enforcers sort of got it wrong when it came to tech companies buying other companies. they let these companies gobble up rivals.
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so, that's the environment. and of course the biden administration appointed people who are so far talking much tougher. one of the real serious concerns about the deal is that microsoft would potentially be able to withhold activision games from other, other console makers. so, that is something that is going to get a pretty hard look. emily: what is your bet? does the deal get done or not? david: [laughter] i would never want to predict what enforcers would do. i would say that this, so this issue of whether microsoft might want to or have an incentive to
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withhold activision games and keep them exclusive to microsoft you know, that's something that is common in these kinds of deals. vertical deals, not direct competitors. it's worth pointing out that the last two merger challenges brought to the ftc were vertical deals and votes to bring those cases were both unanimous. emily: thanks for sharing the color from that meeting and we will continue to watch how that deal progresses. david, thanks for joining us. coming up, we revisit a term that we use a lot on this show, unicorn. what does it mean to be a unicorn in this ever-expanding club? the term was coined nine years ago. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: look back to bloomberg technology, let us get an update from kriti gupta. kriti: one development is the bonds, is it selling well? the s&p 500 information-technology sector, after a 15% drop it has pared back so those losses. one big one will be the big tech names. i want to look at what that performance looks like not just
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in the last three weeks but in the last six months. there is a clear outperformer evening big tech and it is capital -- apple and microsoft. they are outperforming social media companies, alphabet in the green but only 2.5% over six months. meta is the real lag or, losing 36% of its value in the last month according to its stock price. let's talk about what else is impacting this, semiconductors as well. i love to look at this gauge because it shows a magnified approach to big tech. when they rebound, big tech follows its lead. it had bottomed out before the broader index and for me that was a big gauge whether or not the bottom was in. now looking at the tech labels bouncing off the 14 day rsi, it looks like they have pared back some losses. things are looking good for now.
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that is hope they stay that way. emily: thank you for the update. this product board is the latest company to reach unicorn status, the coming number 1000. but what does it mean to be one of 1000 unicorns? the phrase emerged decades ago -- but with startups and investors looking to give the next successful company its horn, we may need to revisit what is and is not a unicorn. turning us is the founder and managing partner of cowboy insurers, great to have you back with us. so curious how that number strikes you when there were only already nine unicorns in 2013 -- only 39 unicorns in 2013 when he coined that. aileen: i know. thanks for having me, i am happy to be here. when we did the analysis in 2013
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it was just the u.s.-based list. so the thousand list is half u.s. in half international, so it is more like 500 to 39, it still an amazing growth in the number of unicorns. emily: should it still be a $1 billion company or should we raise the bar? aileen: this comes up a lot. it is still rare and hard to achieve. so yes, i think what is exciting is that the ceiling has been lifted. when the first analysis was done, there was only one company worth over $100 billion. now there is a bunch of them. the market to protect companies has gotten bigger, they are global. sadly pandemic has inflicted so much pain on all of us, but it has also allowed technology to be a bigger scaffolding in our life. i think tech will continue to grow and the combination of the
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list has changed. i think that is good for tech but it is still hard. the probability is still rare if you start a company that raises venture capital for you to achieve valuation of over $1 billion. look at the terminal in the market right now, the sustainability and staying in that zone for a long time is hard. emily: does that mean you don't think private markets are overheated? as i hear over and over that valuations are too high and there's so much money going in. aileen: it's both. yes. i remember a time when companies traded at five times revenue. it has not happened in a long time. so the multiples are pretty big relative to where they have lived, but a lot of the companies have grown into the valuations because the markets are so big. i know we are having a rocky start to the year, but look at the revenue that company drives.
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i remember when people laughed at facebook raising a $100 million valuation, there were like how will they make money, it is free no one will buy ads. but the revenue is incredible. emily: we are looking at companies at $95 billion, spacex $100 billion and still not public, do you condone the use of the word decacorn? aileen: in the piece we wrote we used mega unicorn and deca-corn. emily: centi corn. aileen: whatever people want to use is cool with me. it -- i know it is annoying to some, but it is useful. emily: a whole breed of corns have been born. you're are one of the biggest
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champions into getting more women into this field. we got a depressing statistic that women founders got 2% of vc funding last year. why is that given all of the momentum and of the work you and others have done to change this? aileen: we have got a lot of work to do. when we founded all raise, we said this is a marathon and we cannot let up. we have centuries and bought -- centuries of bias to undo, not just tech and finance but pretty much every sector in the economy. in health care, law, government. in advertising. there is a ton of disproportionate power held in the hands of institutions that have a lot of embedded bias. i think we are making progress on the funding side in terms of changing the composition of the industry. we have grown it and i'm hoping that is the leading indicator
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and that founders will follow. but yeah, we are not making as much progress -- my dog in the background, sorry. we are not making as much progress as we need to for female founders. it is up to everyone and whatever job they have to examine the way that they can make a positive difference with who they hire, how they have one on one, who they promote and give projects to. there are ways everyone can have an impact on making it more fair. emily: what trends are you doubling down on these days? are you excited about the metaverse or is that overhyped? aileen: i think the metaverse is -- what does that mean really? if you mean like are we all going to be wearing vr headsets and staying in our houses all of the time, if we are lucky enough to emerge from our caves after the pandemic, think for the next three to five years people will
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be more excited to engage in real life than ever before. restaurants, hospitality, travel, fashion. i think pip -- people miss real-life experiences. the access economy is going to boom. where people are going to live, both the unicorns of the future, what countries they are in, what cities, that will change. so i do think the software that is scaffolds our ability to communicate and collaborate and work wherever we are is going to continue to grow like crazy and also vertical software, whether in health care or ed tech, those are categories where -- i mean fintech was a tiny component of the list of u.s.-based unicorns and now it is huge. we are rebuilding the infrastructure and the rails of all of the major categories of our industry and i think larry from blackrock made a comment on how he think's a big component of the next unicorns will be
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energy tech and i hope that is true. emily: we will be watching, we will let you get back with your dogs hanging out back there, cowboy ventures founder and managing partner, and q for the cameo. appreciate you taking the time. coming up, financing, more on a meal delivery companies deal to help companies grow. plus a conversation with the disney ceo. you don't want to miss this. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: a few stories we continue to watch, a new york judge granted bail for two people charged with trying to launder billions of dollars of bitcoin. the cryptocurrency was stolen in a hack in 2016. the two were arrested yesterday. the government seized about 3.6 billion dollars of cryptocurrency from the couple. the biggest meal delivery service in the u.s., doordash starting at financing arm for restaurant owners, allowing them to apply for financing to pay for equipment, rent, hiring. the money can be dispersed in as little as one to two business days. tesla expecting to be sued by california over allegations of racial dissemination and harassment. they had claims from workers at
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emily: i am here with the disney ceo bob on the heels of the first quarter earnings, we will talk about everything from the theme parks to the pandemic and the metaverse. bob, thank you for joining us. this month marks two years as -- for you as ceo, bob iger has been away from the happiest place on earth and i want to know how you feel, if things are working.
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bob: i think as evidenced by this editing is goingrecent quarter, -- i think as evidenced by this recent quarter, things are going well. our storytellers get to tell great content, we are full of optimism, we have energy and momentum. we have a vision for the future where we are going to appeal directly to our audience using technology in great storytelling and we think it's going to be a more exciting next 100 years than our stellar first 100 years. emily: give some color on what is driving the burst and subscriber growth and disney plus compared to slowdowns lost quarter. bob: we had said for a long time that it is not going to be a linear growth quarter to quarter on disney plus.
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they would be some quarters higher, some lower and it is almost directly a function of what the new content is that is flowing into the service. obviously that was impeded and made choppy even more by the fact that we had covid and it interrupted our production cycles. but as we stated last earnings and this one as well, that becomes more steady and predictable, more optimal during the second half of this year and we expect that we will add more subs in the second half of the year the first. we are encouraged by that. it will still be choppy, not a perfect line. but when you have great storytelling and great brands like we do, it's going to draw a lot of people across the globe so we are excited. emily: you said it was hard to get people to the theater for family movies.
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i wonder when you see that changing and with that means for the next few family titles. bob: we are carefully watching the return to theaters. you have something like spider-man that comes out into the marketplace and does gangbusters numbers, we are encouraged. it is called the 18 to 34 demo. if you have got the right movie, big blockbuster, a great film based on a franchise that is back, we are concerned about family films and some that appeal to the over 35 audience. but we are lucky in that we have the ability to appeal to all audiences on disney plus and we are encouraged, we help the family audience comes back to theaters, but we believe that even with a title like encanto, which has proved that we can build a disney franchise on the back of disney plus, because our
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merchandise spiked as soon as it came out, the music went from 197 on the top 200 in billboard to number one for weeks in a row, we can build a franchise on disney plus. we would love for theatrical to come back for family movies, we hope it does but we know we are secure in being able to use our own platform to help do that. emily: here with disney ceo bob chapek, i want to talk about parks in more detail. you hit the revenue records but attendance is still lower pending on the park. what is the outlook ahead as omicron wanes? are you preparing for new variants? is it all about revenue? bob: we are preparing for anything. if the last two years have
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taught us anything, -- but if we have a focus on our guest, we believe it will turn out just fine. one of the reasons we have had such a recovery in demand and attendance at our parks is the function of the fact that consumers, our guests and fans, trust us. not only do we deliver great experiences and tell great stories, but they trust us and we are going to move very slowly when it comes to attendance increases. we want to be very responsible and some of the reasons we don't have max capacity right now is that we still have not turned on all of the live entertainment that we have at the parks, which is a big component of a great disney experience. but we are moving slow because want to make sure that our guests feel comfortable. we do surveys all the time in terms of what guests feel is appropriate density. we are metering that.
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but the performance of parks, using that approach has been great. and our domestic parks we had a record quarter this past quarter. we are very excited about that because even without being able to maximize the density inside the park because of everything i mentioned, we are getting great performance. i think that says it all. no matter what circumstances or situations the world throws at us at disney, because of our hundred 95,000 unbelievable cast numbers, they find a way to make our guests have magical memories that last a lifetime. emily: disney is leaning into the metaverse. i wonder if you could give details on your vision. how could disney offer products that fit in? is it about lucasfilm, industrial life and magic? bob: it is about all of those things. if you step back from it,
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regardless of what you want to call it, we believe there is a world where we can add a third dimension of storytelling, a three-dimensional camera. you can take the folks that make our television shows and make great music and the them attractions and what happens if you enable them, you give them the degrees of freedom to paint on that third dimension and don't necessarily constrain it with typical definitions about what is a book and what is a movie. and you let them explore and use both the physical world the disney is uniquely positioned to create in our theme parks but also take the media and digital news which we have shown we can do and use disney plus as an operations -- as an opportunity to bring those together so we can tell stories in the third dimension. i think it is a great opportunity and the next great horizon for disney and for entertainment.
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i don't think anybody is situated as well as the walt disney company to have our creative geniuses work on that. emily: you are investing heavily in international local content. have must specifics. what does that mean for orchids like china and india, especially in light of net fuchs's recent -- netflix's recent hit, squid game. what will drive growth? bob: -- we found out in our two year journey on direct to consumer that the localized content is important and we announced we were doubling our content slate internationally. as a result, we are finding that can be a major driver. it's not just our great global
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franchises. those are a big piece of it and in some markets it is sports, but we just had an organizational change at disney that will accommodate so that we can shepherd some of those developments and keep a closer eye on them. but that is going to be a major driver for us in those local territories and we are hoping we got the ability to have some of those flow backwards and become big franchises as well. so we have local productions and that inside each market. emily: any update on the sports betting partner? bob: we believe that aspect of the business is increasingly important for the younger audience who wants to lean forward and engage, not just sit back passively, and we want to enable that. we are bullish about the future of sports at disney and whether it is the metaverse or sports betting, we are all in.
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