Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg Technology 20240711

Bloomberg technology. Lets take a look at the markets on the day. It was a risk on session, of course avenue do with the news out of madera that they have a vaccine that is 94. 5 effective on the volunteers. 500hat news, the s p finishing higher. Some nice gains out of the nasdaq. Moderna itself sharply higher. After the market, we did have news coming from brookshire and s. Her hathawaye berkshire added to their portfolio in terms of health care. Typically, health care a defensive space. With the virus, perhaps these additions have something to do with the virus. Stocks have been down sharply on the day after moderna news about the virus came out. Likingours, investors pfizer as well. All right, abigail doolittle, thank you so much for that round up. I want to get to airbnbs filing. The company disclosing details of its initial Public Offering plans for the first time, releasing Financial Results and previously confidential information on its operations. In ipo search that has largely defied the economic devastation inflicted by the pandemic. I want to bring in crystal, who has been running through what has just crossed. Highlightse of the of what you have seen so far. Crystal as expected, we are seeing a bit more of a Third Quarter rebound. The revenue took a hit from the stomach for the nine months ending in september. It is down 32 yearoveryear. That is topline. Narrowed inever has the same period. A 350 page filing, it so about 20 minutes ago, there will be more to come. Emily lets talk about some of the risk factors. Airbnb saying they may not be able to achieve profitability. That is not usual to read in an s1 filing for a tech company. They are going to see greater decline in experiences yearoveryear, and that covid will continue to adversely affect the business. Had bouncedirbnb back somewhat in the pandemic but it continues to be a big risk factor. What do investors need to consider as they consider making a bet on this company . A it is not uncommon for company to have a very, very long risk factor. Foremost, theand risk factor is the covid democrat and its impact to the business, the operations, and financial conditions. Reallycause the pandemic limits social gatherings, it makes it very difficult to continue their business. This is really up to investors. They warned that these clients in profits or these losses could continue in the foreseeable future and they may not even be able to achieve profitability altogether. Typical language you see in s1. Emily i had a long and wide reaching sit down with the airbnb ceo early in the pandemic and he was quite frank about how terrifying it was with the epic, they hit their business took, how the company has gone back to its roots. We are seeing in the filing that they now have almost 7. 5 million listings available. They have pulled back on some of the other more experimental businesses and gone back to home and apartment sharing. And that will be their bread and butter for the more foreseeable future. Will that be enough from a Growth Perspective for investors wondering about the companys future prospects . They also had a pretty good job cut during the pandemic. Of theng like a Quarter Company was led go. The very famous here full announcement to the employees, which we also reported. Is up tosaid, it investors to decide whether they have done enough in cutting costs. To growth mode. Right now, they have shown that the top line has gone up. That what brian said in that interview with you. Are next steps . I know that we were looking at potentially december and certainly before the end of the year. Are they on track for that . Crystal 15 days from now, they are allowed to market to investors. 15 days from now, we will see a price range that will give us a good sense of what airbnb is valued at. Followed by a roadshow, they will determine a price and list on nasdaq. So we will be following this whole process. Right now, were just combing through the prospectus and seeing what else is interesting. They will be listing under the ticker abnb on the nasdaq. There was speculation that they were considering the Longterm Stock Exchange, which would be a departure from the traditional path and a huge win for the Longterm Stock Exchange. What do you make of the fact that they have chosen a more triedandtrue path . Probablyd say that is more of a marketing, that they have made this pledge more so than improving the trading liquidity. Thet now, nothing trades on Longterm Stock Exchange. Nothing that they do would happen until as early as next year. For a is a big, big win Longterm Stock Exchange which only started operating in september. Nobody knows what it will be like because nobody is listed on it. But we will see how it goes. Emily we know that you will be continuing to pore through airbnbs s1, which just crossed. Thank you for your analysis. Coming up, quickly and of the pandemic be inside . Be in sight . Moderna is out with a new vaccine candidate that is more than 94. 5 effective. This is bloomberg. Said monday its effectiveine is 94. 5 in a preliminary analysis of a large, late stage clinical trial. The highly positive read outcomes just a week after a similar shot developed by pfizer haveiontech was found to an efficacy of over 90 . We think that this is highly encouraging as it relates to the possibility that our vaccine and hopefully those of others will have a profound impact in pushing back the damage done by this virus. The reason is that we need to attack this at the level of hundreds of millions of people if not billions. This is a preemptive treatment. In other words, your own immune system will defend you against the virus. What we have shown, that in a trial of 30,000 subjects where we have already received some 95 cases of infection, of those, 90 of them work in a population that did not receive the vaccine. Only five were in the population that did. 95 comesere the from. If that scales to millions and hundreds of millions of people, we should be able to save lives, avoid severe disease, and pushback this pandemic. Emily what are your next steps and when can you file for an emergency use authorization . We are in close collaboration with regulatory and other authorities for authorization. We will pursue an emergency use authorization for which we still need to finalize safety data over the next days, then prepare the file for review by the fda. That should happen in early december, we hope. Once we get the authorization, we are already ready with supplies and distribution to start reaching out to the front line workers and populations appropriate to apply the first wave of vaccine to. The vaccine will be disturbed it through the distributed through the operation warp speed supply chain that has been set up. First, at the level of tens of millions of doses. I would expect some 2040,000,000 doses will be made available. We have already said 20 million will come from us. Going into the first quarter, that number should wrap up to as much as 50 and 100 million doses. Through 2021p up to 500 or a million doses. We will not be the only vaccine. There will be other vaccines. As it relates to individuals receiving it, i would say that the first wave will be the most vulnerable. The second wave will begin to be a bit broader. I think in the Second Quarter of 2021, we should begin to see an update. Datape that this kind of end,he efficacy and safety with leadership from any levels, will lead people to take it up as much as possible. So, that will also dictate timing. Emily was a lot of excitement around the pfizer news, which uses the same mrna technology that moderna uses. But then we learned it has to be stored at 94 degrees fahrenheit. Yours can be stored at refrigerator temperature for 30 days, as i understand it. Noubar i should say that moderna pioneered this mrna field and has worked on it for 10 years. There are more that have entered the field more recently, using technologies that we looked at some years ago. We spent a lot of trying to achieve the 20 degrees centigrade target, which is our longterm storage condition, already something that can be done quite broadly. Then, of course, what you just mentioned we announced today the results on our storage conditions where it is clear that we can keep things on the refrigeration process 30 days and, in fact, for 12 hours, we can have it at Room Temperature sitting on a table. Tot that means is we want take the pressure off the Distribution System both to have to do unusual things, but also not to feel the stress of getting things wrong. Every one of these vaccines will be precious. There will be a limited supply for a long time. We dont want 10 vials to go bad or 100. I would say that this is not a recent innovation for us. They will be other vaccines. The covid19 one is the beneficiary of all of that experience and innovation, something at a scale we never imagined who have to work in. Needs your vaccine also two doses likely pfizer vaccine. Getting people to come back will be a challenge. Talk to us about your Distribution Plan and how challenging the process of getting this added into the world will be. Noubar i think there has been a lot done to prepare for this moment. In the u. S. , the work of operation warp speed has been not just securing the supplies that we needed, the supplies we apply to the Vaccine Distribution program, but the entire distribution chain and preparedness. While there is a lot of work to do, i think we have already done quite a bit. Two doses, it is interesting because almost everything related to vaccines these days has become a point of debate and speculation. The reason we are using two doses is to give people the maximum amount of protection. When we set out to do this, we could have done it with one does. Microgramso and 100 because we could. Why . Because we wanted the highest possible protection as we anticipated that the burden of disease would be so terrible that we needed to flatout protect people. Emily more of my conversation with noubar afeyan, the chair and cofounder of moderna, after this break. Before we go, i should add that tesla has just been added to the s p 500. A huge milestone. Shares jump 5 after hours. We will keep our eyes on that as we had to break. Emily moderna was a littleknown company just a year ago and is now emerging with a potentially leading vaccine candidate for covid19. More on my conversation with coach with cofounder and chair noubar afeyan. Noubar moderna is a product of a whole different way of thinking about in about innovation which we employ at flagship engineering. The idea is, rather than look at the way science advances incrementally, instead think about leaping to not yet discovered capabilities and first think about, what do you wish you could do if you could do anything . Among the hundreds of such explorations we carry out every year, every two years, what we uncovered here was, if only you could provide to a human a code that would cause themselves to make a protein that is either therapeutic or preventative, then that capability would be advanced over the stateoftheart of biotechnology. This was 2010. We did not know how to do it, how effective it would be. But we first envisioned that such an arbitrary, imaginary thing would be possible. Then we started working backwards. If you are going to do this, what would it take, how could you prove it, how robust, etc. . The entity was called ls18. We number our projects. It was the 18th such life science project we had done. It eventually became moderna. We tried a number of approaches. We were not looking for an application for discovery, we were looking for a discovery that would fit an application. The first years were quite remarkable. Emily what was the eureka moment where you realize that mrna, which basically tricks the body into producing what it needs to fight without actually injecting the virus, what was the eureka moment that that was going to work . Youar the idea is that take a code, you formulate it, you enter the body with it, and it gets into the cells you want and starts making a protein. Virus, theally, this virus, it is an mrna virus. It does the same thing. Viruses know how to do what it took the biotech industry 40 years to figure out how to do. To give cells that they infect the code by which they can reconstitute themselves. Thatrony is not lost on us the very thing that will undo the virus we hope is the very innovation that a virus has made to begin with. Emily there is reporting that the nih may own some of the patents that moderna is using. Is that correct . Noubar the nih has very productively for us been both a collaborator of ours and has worked on the underlying protein that is a vulnerability of this class of virus. That protein, they had worked on for many years. Several years ago, we began to collaborate with them to develop a mers vaccine, which was about to get ready to go into phase two human trials when the sarscov hit earlier this year. That same Team Immediately decided to collaborate to change the sequence to the one from this virus and not its cousin virus. Filedh and others have proteins that are sort of broad background proteins. Everyone is using the spike protein, so that will be important. Beyond that, the vaccine that we make takes advantage of many inventions that we have made, including for the covid19 vaccine. And that is intellectual property that moderna has. Some oftock sales of the executives of the Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies have been screwed i stand i know that your fund sold some stock earlier this year. Things people have said about individual decisions. In our case, flagship owned all of the company in the very beginning. As we formulated the initial Founding Group with certain academic cofounders, we distribute it some shares to them. Actually, flagships ownership not anunding ownership, investing ownership. Our investors basically invest in funds at appropriate intervals. We have made small amounts of sales. In this case, it was a small fraction of our sales which we effectuated. That is a completely different thing than these programs, executive sales. Fory we could have talked hours. Noubar afeyan, cofounder and fascinatingerna, on vaccine development. Coming up, businesses today are looking to tomorrow. Adapting. Innovating. Setting the course. But new ways of working demand a new type of network. One thats more than just fast. You need flexibility to work from anywhere. And manage from everywhere. Advanced technology. With serious security. And reliable coverage, nationwide. Forwardthinking enterprises, deserve forwardthinking solutions. And thats what we deliver. So bounce forward, with comcast business. Adapting. Innovating. Lsetting the course. But new ways of working demand a new type of network. One thats more than just fast. You need flexibility to work from anywhere. And manage from everywhere. Advanced technology. With serious security. And reliable coverage, nationwide. Forwardthinking enterprises, deserve forwardthinking solutions. And thats what we deliver. So bounce forward, with comcast business. Spacex hitting a huge milestone this past weekend. Elon musks company launching its first regular nasa mission to the International Space station. Four astronauts took off from Cape Canaveral and will dock at the iss 11 00 p. M. Tonight. Joining us now is thomas jones, a former nasa astronaut and fourtime Space Shuttle pilot. My kids and i were watching last night. They were so excited and its almost as if nasa is inspiring a new generation after all these years. What makes this particular lodge so significant launch so significant . Thomas it is an exciting time for the country because we are now going operational with these commercial crew transports to the space station. After the shuttle retired in 2011, we had no way to get to the space station which we largely built except for russian rockets. Now we are out from the russian monopoly. With this launch of the spacex crew dragon, next year, boeing will join that fleet. Nasa will have two reliable ways, really stateoftheart ways to get to the space station for the next 10 years of its research lab. Emily what exactly are these astronauts going to be doing in space . We always hear they will beat helping out with scientific experiments. Give us more details. What are they doing up there . Thomas the astronauts that Just Launched last night they join a crew of three that is already up there. Two from russia and kate rubins. Personew has one extra over the usual number of six to turn to Science Research productivity, more hours applied to the research on the three big labs. Everything from growing plants on the station to help us forge a way to mars by recycling carbon but dioxide, to experiments. The latest experiment i have been intrigued by is using microbes to attack and process rocks from the moon or asteroid to make valuable economic materials. This material of can produce economically viable minerals and compounds we might even use back on earth, most likely use them in space for the lifesupport system or construct Building Materials out of these microprocessed rocks from space. They so, as you mentioned, names of the astronaut including shannon walker, a female astronaut, africanamerican astronaut. This is definitely a history making mission. I saw a lot of parents tweeting about their little girls watching this last night. Talk to us about how this partnership with spacex and outside partnerships change the equation for american efforts to get to the final frontier. Thomas i think it is a big, Important Development shifting over to enlist commercial partners in nasas exploration fo program. By bringing to the table new rocket designs, a way to recycle the first stage of the falcon nine space x booster by linda get back on a recovery barge, for example, that is a new innovation. Nasa used to recycle with shuttle boosters but not such a sophisticated way. This lowering the cost of launch services to orbit will not only help nasa, funded by the taxpayer, but it will free up funds to go out to the moon and asteroids. Companies like spacex and boeing are now going to be offer the same spacecraft to tourists who want to pay to go to orbit for a week. Visit first the space station but then later on there will be commercial hotels and pharmaceutical and industrial labs in orbit that these transports can service. It is really bringing innovation into the nasa program as well as lowering costs. Emily how far out is that . When a space tourist can go into space and stay at a hotel up there . Thomas it is an exciting development. The more people, i see in the next 10 years hundreds of people going into space outside professional astronauts, i see that as generating a larger, broader base of support for nasas exploration efforts. There always be professional explores employed by nasa, but if you can have a private experience in space first for the wealthy but then competition will bring that cost down. In a generation, it will be much like a trip to antarctica today, where you can take an adventure for a couple of weeks. That is really important to engage a broader base of the public in a personal experience of space exploration. Emily im curious about the Geopolitical Forces at play here. Are we competing against china and russia the same way we were in cold war times when we landed on the moon . Especially as we have a changeover in the u. S. Administration . Thomas i would say we are not under the gun like we were during the cold war days where john f. Kennedy had committed the u. S. To get a human on the moon first. The soviets were in that race in a very serious way, and we had tragic failures like a fire on a launchpad that killed three i astronauts. The schedule was pushing the United States to take on the maximum amount of risk. Today, we have geopolitical competition with the chinese who are most capable. The russians are still involved with a partnership with the chinese. It is not a schedule driven race like we think of in the 1960s space race. Instead, it is important to invest for the long term so that the u. S. Has the technological advantage that it maintains over competitors like china. The chinese in 10 years, they want to have their people on the moon. We did that over 50 years ago, but we cannot allow the situation to develop where the chinese are the only ones who can reach the moons surface. You are no longer the technological leader of this planet if you cannot work with your people on another planet. Emily now, you have gone to space four times yourself. You have done multiple spacewalks. You helped install a critical part of the International Space station. 53 days living and working in space. I know you have done a lot of research on asteroids. There is talk of mining the objects, the debris in outer space. Talk to us about how feasible a project like that is and what the actual use of it would be. Thomas heres another example of commercial innovation in outer space exploration. We are bringing these commercial companies to space with these lowcost transports and reliable transports like the crew dragon and star liner. That will enable cheaper robotics missions to the moons poles where we know there is water ice available. Also on the nearby asteroids where there is water locked up in the minerals on the surface of some of these objects. Water is like gold in space. You can make it into oxygen to breathe, you can drink it. To makealso split it cheap rocket fuel, not having to be hauled up from earth. I think the mining revolution will first start with water. Perhaps purchased by the government as a reliable supply of rocket fuel. Then, products from that Mining Operation will trickle into the larger economy. Using it for construction materials, feeding a greenhouse, providing organic chemicals to be used for industrial processes in space. It is great to start with government customers buying water that is mined, but soon, that will lead to a commercial market for raw materials. Emily so fascinating. Tom jones, former nasa astronaut, fourtime Space Shuttle pilot. Thank you for joining us. This is one i will share with my kids tonight. All right, it is a final day for big institutions to file 13s forms for the Third Quarter. Those list of Investor Holdings gives a signal on where they are doubling down and pulling back. Catherine drawing felt who has been following all of this. What are some highlights you are pulling out . one of the big stories was Warren Buffetts berkshire hathaway. It went big on the drugmakers. It added stakes in merck, bristolmyers squibb, and pfizer which we know delivered extremely good vaccine trial results last week. Its biggest position increase among those names was abbvie. You are seeing a client in after our trading. It is up about 1. 5 thanks to that buffet boost. You are seeing pfizer rise as well, even though this is a name that traded on the back foot all na came outoder with its own extremely good studies today. It is doing good in the postmarket as these results filter in. Emily what are you seeking when it comes to tech in terms of where firms are holding on and where they might be pulling back . As we know, the market caps of some of the Biggest Tech Companies have really run up over the last year. Katherine that is for sure. It is definitely a mixed picture when you look at tech. You are seeing some big additions. Maverick has boosted its overall tech exposure by 9 . And microsoft was particularly popular. The top new buy. You saw others add to the positions there as well. You are seeing appetite cool for amazon, for example. You saw d1 completely exit its stake. Others trimmed their holdings. Kind of a mixed read. I will note this period covers through september 30 so probably too early to read into whether these funds are exiting the stayathome trades now that we have these vaccine breakthroughs. But, we know that some of them were definitely set up well heading up into this most recent rotation away from tech we are seeing at the moment. Emily so, what about some of the new names on the block, like snowflake, like nikola . Some of these high flyers or more sort of controversial ones we have been watching, but a lot of investors are really excited about . Katherine these are the fun stories. Aowflake, for example, is Cloud Computing company that ipoed in september and has been on fire since then. It surged over 100 . Viking,tiger global, were among the hedge funds that got into some of the ipo action. Lets also look at nio, a chinese electric vehicle maker that has also been redhot. Over the past six months, it is up over 1200 , just surging. We know that bridgewater added a stake there. On the less successful side, you have vanguard adding a new 3. 4 position in nikola, another ev. Throughd nearly 700 early june, but it has fallen 72 since then. So, maybe not the best timing for vanguard. Emily that is what i meant when i said controversial. Ok, kathryn, thank you for digging through all of that for us. Really interesting to see where strategy is heading. Coming up, we will hear from former secretary of state Henry Kissinger about covid19 and its impact on u. S. China relations. Some pretty dramatic revelations at our Bloomberg News Economy Forum. That is next. This is bloomberg. Emily Henry Kissinger was the architect of u. S. China relations in the modern era. The former secretary of state spoke earlier today at Bloomberg New Economy Forum on what covid means for International Relations and whether there is a global solution. The differences on the issue of human rights and tois important for each side understand the sensitivities of an. Other and not to lead to a problem, but to alleviate it to a point where further progress is possible. One of the basic historic issues americans deal with Foreign Policy is a largely pragmatic issue over a series of specific problems. Chinese deal with Foreign Policy primarily as a view of historical evolution. So, when the american and chinese president s meet, they are not necessarily talking about the same subject. Begin tove to understand the historical issues and the chinese have to important that it is not only to arrive at a destination, but to have some point in between that need to be dealt with. Do you think that there is a way in which people can learn from history . And do you think the chinese really understand context globally in the way america is used to . Mr. Kissinger the history of china is different from the history of america. Have had aans history of relatively uninterrupted success. The chinese have had a very long crises. Of repeated has been free of immediate dangers. Chinese have usually been surrounded by countries that designs on their community. It is necessary but each side learns enough about the basic principlesothers and definition of the National Interest of the other to being a dialogue. What we can learn from history people agree catastrophes can occur if. Ocieties slip into a conflict on the basis of repeating these conflicts for a long time until suddenly it blows up. The issue itself was no different from 10 others that have been dealt with in previous decades. Of this time, the method diplomacy that had been used then didnt work. N effort to avoid the risk. Each side will defend its National Interest. And we should not turn this int o, where can we conciliate china . The issue is can we achieve outcomes which both sides can coexist . Emily fascinating conversation. You can catch more of that at bloomberg. Com. Henry kissinger. The new Economy Forum will continue tomorrow with a stellar lineup of guest including ray dalio, christine lagarde. You can catch the event across all bloomberg platforms. I will be entering the president of didi. Within on another bull run some crypto investors betting on a 20,000 price tag by yearend. Outlook from bitcoin. Expert. That is next. This is bloomberg. Emily bitcoin is in the midst of another notable rally. The cryptocurrency on a sixweek running streak, and at highs not seen since 2017. The mania that surrounded Digital Currencies back then is largely absent this time around. We are joined by raoul pal, founder and ceo of vision groups. Extremely bullish on the coin and thinks we should be just excited about it now as we were back in 2017. What is driving these gains . Raoul gains have been driven by the impacts of all of the global Central Banks printing a lot of money right now. Also, the excessive fiscal stimulus. This a lot more money around and bitcoin is probably the hardest of all assets. It has a very restrictive supply, even more so than gold. Investors are finely tuned into the fact this is the way of protecting the value of their money. So, it has been driven by that narrative as becoming a store of value for people. It has gone from being a retail adoption in 2017, and now an institutionally adopted asset class and that shift is enormous. Emily now, you are taking on what you call an irresponsible amount of risk and going long bitcoin. Why . Been inimply, my have this business for 13 years. I have been in the macro world, started in equities at goldman. Errani hedge fund, advising the worlds biggest hedge funds. This is the biggest single opportunity i have ever seen. Because what we are doing, bitcoin itself is the best performing asset class of all time over the last five years, over the last two years. This year, it is already up 135 . It is still in price discovery mode. While the institutional wall of money starts coming into the space, i think it goes up maybe another 25 or 50x from here. You dont find those kind of returns in any other asset any where in the world. It is truly can export an area opportunity. Emily what can go wrong for bitcoin investors . Talk about the primary risks. Power outage, regulatory risk. What if governments just dont accept it . Raoul interestingly enough, i have spent a lot of time reading papers from the ecb, the bank of england. They are all talking about official currencies, as we know. They are talking about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, they understand it is part of the landscape. Yes, they are going to regulate it, but in the way regulation exchanges are integrating in the current Financial System and the future central bank, Digital Currency system they are building. There is no noise whatsoever that they are not happy or comfortable with it. I dont think it will be banned. Even if it does, it is on the internet. It is everywhere. It is pervasive. Even when the u. S. Banned gold in 1933, it traded everywhere else in the world. I dont think that is a thing. In terms of the electricity outage story, if the global Electricity Supply is gone, we have other things to worry about and you probably werent going to get your gold out. You will be looking for food and guns at that point. I think we need to be careful. The other one that comes up is quantum computing, which i think everyone is aware of and people are building protocols around that, around bitcoin as well. Emily all right, fascinating stuff. We will be checking on your predictions. Raul paul, ceo and cofounder of real vision group. Thank you for weighing in. Tomorrow,wes will be watching Facebook Mark zuckerberg and twitters and twitters jack dorsey. They will be testifying before the Senate Judiciary committee. This will be their second appearance in less than a month. Republicans are likely to focus on how they handle the New York Post reporting on president elect bidens son hunter biden. Democrats will be wanting more moderation, not less. The hearing is called breaking the news censorship suppression and the 2020 election. We will have reaction to that when we catch up with republican senator Marsha Blackburn 5 30 p. M. Eastern time. That does it for this edition of bloomberg technology. Im emily chang in san francisco. Bloomberg daybreak asia is coming up next. This is bloomberg. Haidi very good morning. We are counting down to asias major market open. Shery welcome to daybreak asia. Im top stories this hour. Asian markets set to extend the rally after u. S. Stocks see new highs on modernas vaccine claims. Shares linked to a reopening economies rally strongly. Janet yellen adds her voice to calls for fiscal s