>> from the heart of where innovation, money, and power collide, in silicon valley and beyond. this is bloomberg technology with emily chang. emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco and this is "bloomberg technology.” wing up in the next hour, disney park shares, we break down those results in a conversation with the ceo. 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 2%. 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 sell in the tech sector. you can see what it is doing to the volatility sector there for the nasdaq, coming back down a 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 were 125 million subscribers and they came out with 129 million total, adding 11.8 million new subscribers and a lot of the

growth didn't happen in the united states. it happened in india, their fastest growing market. 35% of those global subscribers coming from their partnership with hot star. emily: i want to stick with disney results. what's your takeaway 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. 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 that had gotten lost, espn plus adding north of four million subscribers. that was quite pleasing. those were some of the strongest numbers we have seen. direct to consumer business is 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 wouldn't be a linear trajectory

and frankly emily as we kind of think about that number after what we saw this quarter, it's actually looking really, really conservative. so, now they are at 130 million roughly for 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 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 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. later this hour, i bring you a live conversation with ceo bob chapek that you don't want to miss. more on the earnings from uber, most active users in history of the company. tom white has a buy on uber and 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 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 suspected not and that's basically what we saw. we saw a pretty solid quarter, headline metrics for revenue, it was all above consensus. mobility, the rideshare business was light on revenue, but they beat on ebita. 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 below what investors expected but the market was 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. emily: how big of a concern does the driver shortage continue to be? tom: it's improving. 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 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. ♪

emily: lyft reported fewer riders in the fourth quarter but the ones that did ride lyft took longer trips from the airport, for example. i want to bring in john zimmer and philip john. 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 seeing new 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 the health conditions improving, certain

states are removing the mask mandate when it feels like it is safe to do so. hard to predict near-term how quickly the recovery 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: uber just beat on 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. meaning also our bike rides are counted in 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 rides. we didn't see major changes to base pricing and in fact we see service levels improve dramatically. q2 to q4 eta improving by 30% bringing down the dynamic elevated part of pricing. emily: when it comes to driver supply, 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 50% year over year, returning at a fast pace. the concerns are questions in the first half of last year compared to where we are ended, we are in a much better

position, extremely confident. if you compare our return of labor to the hospitality or retail industry, we are far outpacing that 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? let's say quarter after quarter? john: we are actually not seeing it repeatedly. so, it is getting better. surface levels improve by 30% because supply has been less of an issue. we could talk about a hypothetical if that was true, but it is no longer the case that that is as much of a

concern. we feel great about our position and the balance imroving 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: now, on that note, the uber ceo last quarter when he was on the show made this prediction 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, lyft hitting pre-pandemic records for riders in that span of time?

john: i won't provide any new guidance, but what we have said is that we are cautiously optimistic that we will exceed our growth rates from last year on top line from last year and we remain cautiously optimistic, which would be a very good thing. emily: i have to ask you this story about a potential kidnapping attempt by a lyft driver in brooklyn. it's getting a lot of attention. the rider 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 this 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. i can tell you that license plates is something we track. my guess is a call has been placed to that individual to determine what has happened. i would just emphasize all of the things that we have done on

safety over the past several years. a feature called silent escalation where a driver or rider in unsafe situations can tap a button silently and we have partnered with adt to provide any emergency services necessary. we also look at any anomalies in route. if someone stops for a long period where they shouldn't, we ask both rider and 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 also released your first sexual assault incident report in october. is that something you plan to do regularly? when will we see the next one? john: we haven't made that decision yet. 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 taxis that came before us, having identity, having license plate, it's all leading 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: all right, good to know. john zimmer, lyft president, co-founder, thank you. coming up, microsoft revealing new rules in order to ease the approval around their deal for activision, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: microsoft making its case again in washington ensuring the purchase of activision, and for this we want to bring in david mclaughlin, who met with the microsoft ceo and president today in washington. how did the meeting go, david? david: well, microsoft is on a bit of a charm offensive after this 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 kinds of restrictions that have come under so much criticism. and really what this is i think is an attempt to tell regulators that are going to look at the activision deal that they don't have anything to worry about in terms of -- emily: well, do they? david: well, obviously, this deal is a huge deal and it's 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. so they let these companies gobble up rivals. and so, that's the environment.

and enforcers that the biden administration appointed to the ftc and doj are so far talking a much tougher game. one of the real serious concerns about the deal is that microsoft would potentially be able to withhold activision games from other console makers. you know, so, that is something that is going to get a pretty hard look. emily: so, what is your bet? does the deal get done or not? david: [laughs] 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 withhold activision games and keep them exclusive to

microsoft, you know, that's something that is common in these kinds of deals which are called vertical deals, they are not direct competitors. it's worth pointing out that the ftc, the last two merger challenges brought 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. we're going to talk about what does it mean to be a unicorn in this ever-expanding club? the term was coined nine years ago. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: welcome back to bloombeg

technology. let's 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 some of those losses. halfway back. one big one will be the big tech

names. i want to look at what that performance looks like not just in the last three weeks but in the last six months. there is a clear outperformer even in the big tech's place apple and microsoft. , they are outperforming social media companies, alphabet in the green but only 2.5% over six months. meta-platforms are the real laggard, 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 technical levels bouncing off the 14 day rsi, it looks like they have pared back some losses. things are looking good for now.

let's hope they stay that way for the bulls. emily: thank you for the update. product board is the latest company to his five unicorn status, becoming 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 true unicorn. joining us now is the founder and managing partner of cowboy dentures, great to have you back with us. so curious how that number strikes you when there were only only 39 unicorns back in 2013 when you coined that term. aileen: i know. thanks for having me, i am happy to be here. when we did the analysis in 2013 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 the pandemic has inflicted so much pain on all of us, but it has also cemented technology to be a bigger scaffolding in our life. i think tech will continue to grow and the combination of the

-- composition of the 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. it's harder than ever to keep it there. 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? 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. meta has been having a rocky

start to the year, but look at the revenue that company drives. 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 private companies at $95 billion, spacex $100 billion and still not gone public, do you condone the use of the word decacorn? is that good? 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 champions into getting more

women into bc, more entrepreneurs funded. 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 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 vc industry. we have grown it and i'm hoping that is the leading indicator 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: talking about how to get impact 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 be more excited to engage in real life than ever before. restaurants, hospitality, travel, fashion.

i think people miss real-life experiences. i think the experience and 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 actually 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

energy tech and i hope that is true. emily: we will be watching, we will let you get back with your dog who has been hanging out back there, cowboy ventures founder and managing partner, thank you for the cameo. appreciate you taking the time. coming up, financing, more on a meal delivery companies deal to help restaurants grow. plus a conversation with the , disney ceo. this is bloomberg. ♪

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 2016 hack. they 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 a financing arm to offer loans to restaurants on its app. it will allow restaurant owners 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 said the claims had to do

with workers at their factory in fremont, california. a legal battle could inflame tensions between the state and ceo elon musk. last year they moved headquarters from california to texas. coming up, deep dive on disney. the disney ceo will be right here. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome to our global television and radio audiences, 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. i want to start with this month marking two years with you as ceo, bob iger has officially written away from the happiest place on earth and i want to know how you feel, if things are clicking, working. bob: i think as evidenced by our most recent quarter,

everything is falling into place. we are filled with optimism. we're just at the last start of the first year of 100, and the inflection point. if you look at our parks business, the media business, all fueled by the great content our internal storytellers get to tell 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 at disney plus compared to the slowdowns last 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. 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 content 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 flow 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 dear than the first half of the year. we are very encouraged by that. again, 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. i wonder when you see that changing and what 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 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 or in-line depending on the park. what is the outlook ahead as omicron wanes? are you preparing for new variants? do you see hitting new records in attendance? bob: we are preparing for anything. if the last two years have taught us anything it's to

remain flexible. 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. 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 195,000 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 fitting? is it about lucasfilm, industrial life and magic? paint the picture. bob: it is about all of those things. if you step back from it, 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. -- campus. you can take the folks that make our television shows and make great music and great movies and great theme park 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 pieces which we have shown we can do and use disney plus 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. i don't think anybody is situated as well as the walt disney company to have our

creative geniuses work on that. to tell the kind of stories guests will expect. emily: you are investing heavily in international local content. give us some specifics. what does that mean for markets like china and india, especially in light of netflix's recent hit, squid game. what will drive growth? bob: we have global titles with worldwide appeal, lucas or star wars, marvel or disney, but in addition to that, 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 franchises. those are a big piece of it and in some markets it is sports,

but really those localized productions -- 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 have got the ability to have some of those flow backwards and become big franchises as well. we are all in on local productions and how the experts inside each market. emily: 30 seconds. 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. emily: bob chapek, ceo of disney, thank you for joining

us. i will toss now back to all of our global outlets. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology". tune in tomorrow we have more earnings coverage, we will talk with the twitter cfo and so much more, we will see you then. this is bloomberg. ♪

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