Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg Technology 20170417

In 2016, the retreat of a large glacier in canada led to the rerouting of water. Global news before hours a day powered by more than 26 journalists and analysts. I am Alisa Parenti and this is bloomberg. Caroline i am caroline hyde. This is Bloomberg Technology. Off subscriber gains in the First Quarter falls short. We will explain what is behind the slip. Uber has lifted the veil on its finances. We will run through the closely held numbers. One man is spending millions to to leave his support for donald trump. Hours theares after back of the First Quarter Earnings Report. Below see shares falling 140. Gipo on bloomberg, you can get the postbell trading. Up 1. 2 . Shrugging off the initial concerns, focusing on the customers initially. The numbers were below what was expected for the First Quarter. In the Second Quarter, a little stronger. Lets look at the First Quarter because they added 1. 5 9 million customers in the quarter, more than half a million behind conservative estimates. Joining us for more on these results, Andre Swanston of tru weik and greg portell, partner at a. T. Kearney. Thank you for joining me today. Last activity or full the glass captivity or full . Are you worried about q1 were optimistic on q2 subscribers . They pushed a lot of pressure on to q2 by missing estimates for the First Quarter. They will have to come through with a strong addition in the Second Quarter. The challenges around subscribers are not going to subside soon. The pressure will get real in the Second Quarter. Content what about the . We are expecting the content to become thicker and faster in the Second Quarter with the next series. Are they lining up the content to draw in the new subscribers . Obviously, netflix has made substantial investments over the last year or two in terms of developing their own original content. In general, i think investors looking at the value of netflix just based on previous quarter s subscriber acquisition is a missed opportunity. If we look at all the ways they can still monetize, things like branded content, merchandising off the original content they own, i think there is a lot more diversification and opportunity to monetize audience for netflix other than whether they get 5 million subscribers. Caroline is interesting that is interesting. Should we be shifting our attention away from subscriber growth, looking at other numbers . Should we be looking at areas of opportunity to grow . That is one thing i would expect to hear more of Going Forward in the next couple of weeks, what their innovation platform is. The concept of lets make a couple of tv shows and sell subscribers is getting more competitive. They need some sort of innovation platform in order to bring the Competitive Edge up in the Second Quarter. I would expect to see something there. Caroline dig into the innovation platforms we might see. Who would you see them selling homegrown content to . What are other areas of opportunity . I agree. Sports is out of their specialty and a very expensive arena for them to go challenge others in. When we look at branded content, most of the growth over the past year has been in adsupported content. I dont see netflix domestically starting to show 30second ads in the content. Because they produce original three measurement part theyeing able to prove were sold, that is to be proven. Innovation may be in ways they can get brand engagement, sponsorship, and merchandising in particular. Caroline interesting area. Maybe more Product Placement Going Forward. What about the splash of cash we continue to see . 1 billion is how much they will be spending on marketing in 2017. Add that to the 6 billion they are spending on making the content, at what point do we see a raining in of spending or do we not . Revenue Growth Numbers clearly support a Company Still in growth mode. At some point, they are going to need to figure out how to make the adjustment into more of a mature Going Forward business. Costs me to come under control. They need to figure out a way to manage subscriber turn in a more costeffective way. And avoiding mistakes on longterm content costs. All three will be important Cost Management tools as they evolve from a Growth Company to more of a study, profitable company. Caroline autism competition. All eyes on competition. Comcast will get in on streaming as well. Netflixse could we see having to fight back . International markets is more difficult than people realize. It is not just having distribution rights to be lackluster from disney or others. You go into markets like brazil and indonesia, they have wellestablished local content in local languages. There are big players that own the rights to those that content already. The pressure to produce original content in multiple language for different genres is going to be astronomical. Not to mention the domestic pressure they are getting from telcos coming in more aggressively. Caroline interesting. Do you anticipate m a abroad to make that International Content . How do they satisfy the International Expansion and fend off the competition . Their contentment commitment to original content helps mitigate that to a certain degree. One of the Biggest Challenges going internationally is challenges with subscriber acquisition and how they use consumer data. A lot of their programming and marketing is driven off the data they are able to collect on consumers. Internationally, those direct marketing channels and data laws are much different. That will be a bigger content challenge for them than just the acquisition of content and television shows. Caroline fascinating conversation with both of you. Portell,nston and greg thank you very much. On stocks quick check other than netflix. The dow and nasdaq turned in the best performance since march 1 today. Nvidia rose nearly 4 , being the best performer on the s p 500. Snap falling more than 1 . There was a spike late in the session after the story was posted saying the company should consider selling itself to disney. Another key story we are watching. Verizon may throw its hat into the ring on a bit of a challenge the offer at t made to the company. Spectrum for holds fast internet speed. Shares hit a record in monday trading. Coming up, a murder out of cleveland has gained widespread attention after it was posted on facebook. We will explore how the company is navigating the posting and other violent acts. This is bloomberg. Caroline Facebook Live was launched last april based on instant sharing to as many people as possible. The feature exposes the dark side of the web. Since its launch, there have been several violent acts broadcast live leading up to the events in cleveland over the weekend. Police are searching for a man suspected of killing an elderly man and posting footage to facebook. Office a Facebook Post person spokesperson said it was uploaded and not streamed on Facebook Live. It several hours before the video was taken down. How can a company with more than one billion users navigate and enforce use of its platforms . Covers companies for Bloomberg Technology. You know this Company Inside out and have seen how difficult it is to monitor this heavyduty. Echnology it is developing it needs humans to assess the content as well as mobile. They think about what makes it great for connecting to friends and family and only later thinking about the societal implications, the things that could go very wrong. We saw this with the fake news situation after the election last year. We have also seen this over and over with live. This is a product Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated for his daughters first steps. Other people have used it for similarly innocent reasons. That is how it was marketed. The problem with this kind of thing is it is very difficult for facebook to tell if a video is broadcasting a murder, for example. Au could be easily showing trailer for a movie that has a violent scene. How can facebooks Artificial Intelligence determined that versus something violent and not allowed on the platform . Caroline they talked about using ai but they also use humans. Four different offices to judge and categorize whether this content is disturbing. How can they speed up the situation . They right now have people training the algorithms. That is very difficult. Right now, the way a video gets flagged or taken down is if users see it first and say this video needs to be taken a look at. Somebody in one of their offices around the world will review it and decide whether or not it should be up. That process is long. The way they could speed it up is by building the data off enough video content that comes in to detect automatically. That said, you do not want to remove a video if it is not bad. They have had some instances where they have removed content that is not, like for example the napalm girl photograph that got removed for being considered child pornography when that is a Pulitzer Prize winning picture. Caroline iconic indeed. This has got to be something building Artificial Intelligence in general. Facebook is not the only company doing Live Streaming. Has periscope been affected by this . Twitter . What have other companies done . So Many Companies have been affected by this. This is something advertisers are worried about, too. In facebooks history, the ads have been separate from the content. Look likeed ads posts from friends. As facebook thinks about video ads, they started putting ads into the actual videos, tying advertiser content to other content. That opens up similar issues you have seen with youtube and google where they have had ads tied to messages that are extremist, racist, etc. Facebook is going to have to start to navigate those waters as video builds up on its platform and they start to make more money off of it. Caroline coming out and apologizing and speaking to those who could help them. It is interesting. Zuckerbergk mark will address this to the developers . What im interested in tomorrow is zuckerberg earlier this year put out this manifesto in which he outlined in 5000 words how you think he thinks facebook should go beyond connecting the world and start to improve the world, help civic engagement, make sure we are more informed people. I am curious. Those are very vague things. This kind of instance does play into it, this live video that has a shock value or makes facebook feel less safe to be on. These are things he will have to address in a broadway broad way. I doubt he will mention the murder in the most important public address of the year he is going to give tomorrow. About usingill talk the network to try to make everything better. Whatever that means to them. Caroline the optimistic side of facebook. Sarah frier, fantastic reporting. Thank you for the analysis. Company, a taiwanese we will bring you the plan to invest in asian startups. That is next. This is bloomberg. Caroline a new development in the bid for moneygram. Shares surged more than 6 after jack mas Company Raised its bid by 36 to about 1. 2 billion. Offeret with a competing is reviewing offers saying it continues to believe u. S. Thwartors will forte the chinese bid for the company. One company in taiwan is making a big leap into investing in startups. Taiwan accelerator is the countrys first accelerator based on the accelerated the bay area. It recently invested in eight startups. After going through an eightweek program, it is in the u. S. For its first road trip. Joining us is richard kang. You are based in toronto, canada. You are here with the eight companies you have helped to mentor and coach. What does the u. S. Roadshow bring for them . Hopefully some cash. We have heard a lot of technology coming out. I dont know if many people know about the Startup Community in singapore. Big names like htc, big public names. Do they know what other innovations are coming up beyond hardware . Caroline taiwan is being put on the map. What about the areas you want to be growing in particular . Ecommerce, agricultural technology. Chips . Seeing what sort of verticals are you seeing developed by the Startup Community . Similarity to korea. How much money can you make when it is so commoditized . The same with taiwan. Ecommerce, software in general, cybersecurity. This is the future. This is the ultraskilled worker. This is why the h1b visa in the u. S. Is so interesting to me. That ultraskilled new 1 of the future is not going to be in the coal mining industry. They will be in solar or tech. That is the future. Ist is where taiwan competing that space. Caroline on the back of the h1b visa, slightly more difficult to get access to the United States. Do you think we will see more highly scat highly skilled tech entrepreneurs remain in singapore and taiwan rather than the United States . Francisco and san trying not to make it sound antiamerican. It is not the demise of the u. S. , it is that about the rise of others. There will be another Silicon Valley. Not because the u. S. Is crumbling. Forything the u. S. Stands is in full force. It is just that others are starting to copy. Universities and accelerators. That is happening now. When you think of these companies inventing new technologies, that is what the u. S. Should be thinking about. What can we use for infrastructure building that is in the Technology Space . Why cant this brain trust come out of asia, africa, or anywhere else. Caroline you are an accelerator. What do these Companies Expect and game from you when they come on your program . Expertise from westerners and those were local. They also have a different point therew because they know close to markets like china. Aquatech them agritech. I didnt understand the potential for china. Youre building a canister that will attract insects so you dont have to crop dust. That will yield more in terms of quantity but also more in terms of dollars because that is an embryonic organic product. China has a sevenyear plan. Number one is environmental protection. It is not just global warming, the clean air, clean water, clean food. You have an educated consumer i dont like tainted milk on the front page again. This kind of product is what they are demanding. You are hitting a lot of keywords with this one company. Caroline youre looking to expand across asia. What about the geopolitics in the area . Are looking at what is happening in north korea, south korea under pressure. Between taiwan and china are not always the strongest. How do you navigate that . Does that not stop entrepreneurship . I in my previous life, cofounded and managed a family of etfs focused on emerging and frontier markets. We made a decision not to include south korea, taiwan, and israel, even the somewhere some were considered emerging markets. All three have missiles from everywhere pointing in that direction. Somehow, they were able to create modern telecommunications, hardware. Most of the technology in our house comes from these three countries. You cannot say because someone is pointing weapons at them that they do not strive hard to make a Better Living for themselves and their country. Caroline we will keep a close kang, partner of taiwan accelerator. Coming up, the inside track on uber. We dig into the privately held companys financials. This is bloomberg. Hey youve gotta see this. Cmon. No. Alright, see you down there. Mmm, fine. Okay, what do we got . Okay, watch this. Do the thing we talked about. What do we say . Its going to be great. Watch. Remember what we were just saying . Go irish see that . Yes im gonna just go back to doing what i was doing. Find your awesome with the xfinity x1 voice remote. Alisa i am Alisa Parenti and you are watching Bloomberg Technology. Lets start with a check of your first word news. The treasury secretary says getting the goal of getting tax legislation passed by august is highly aggressive and not realistic at this point. In interview, he says the legislation is delayed because of setbacks and passing Health Care Reform legislation. U. S. Supreme Court Justice neil gorsuch hit the ground running a week after being sworn in. He took the bench for the first time today filling the space next to Justice Sonia sotomayor to hear arguments in three cases with another four schedule to follow later in the week. In asia, questions are being raised about just how much influenced china has over north koreas leader. According to people familiar with the situation, north korea snubbed senior chinese diplomats this month as tensions mounted with u. S. The North Koreans ignored requests for a meeting from chinas foreign minister and its top envoy for Korean Nuclear affairs. Russia plans to hold talks on syria next week with the u. S. And united nations. Those will be the first negotiations since President Trump took office. Russia and the u. S. Have been at odds since the president ordered a missile strike on a syrian airbase. Global news 24 hours a day powered by more than 2600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. I am Alisa Parenti and this is bloomberg. It is just after 5 30 p. M. In new york. Already 7 30 a. M. In sydney. Im joined by paul allen. He has a look at the markets. Good morning, paul. Good morning. We are seeing strength on nikkei a. 9 . Early on, already asx futures have not started trading yet after the easter break. Some interesting things around iron ore today. A dire prediction about the future price, below 50 by the end of the year. The Iron Ore Price was down 9 over the past week with teachers slipping as well. The main event in australia today is the minutes for april. The cash rate went unchanged this month at 1. 5 . There will be watching for commentary around house prices and debt. That has become a focus of the governor. Mentioned the lack of buffer for many borrowers. China home sales are due out in a few hours. Expected to stay resilient before new restrictions. More from Bloomberg Technology next. Caroline this is Bloomberg Technology. I am caroline hyde. Netflix reported Slower Growth than forecast in the first without big releases. It did offer a more optimistic picture for the current quarter. Joining us for more is lucas shaw. That might be why we are seeing a recovery in the share price. Im looking at my bloomberg. I have a great chart. Volatility one the day of earnings, the day after we see them drop. Perhaps no surprise if we see swings in the share price. What is most important from your perspective . Probably that they will continue the growth going into the Second Quarter. If you are an investor, you see the initial performance. In the First Quarter, you get nervous. That would typically send the stock down. That is probably why for the first hour it was. It has recovered, probably because people thought about it thesis isealized the unchanged. In quarter two, you will see better growth and they have had historically. One other theory is people who shorted it tried to cover it later in trading. It is a mixed bag for netflix this quarter. You often come out of the netflix Earnings Report with a clear message of this was a really good quarter or backorder. The past couple of years it has been mostly good. This one is more mixed. Caroline for mixed more mixed but spending still comes in. 1 billion to be splashed on marketing. 6 billion on making their own content. Talk about the new ways they are providing future films. Does the future looked bright in terms of the way theyre using their cash . Netflix said in this release that they hired this guy to oversee the film division. It has made a handful of original movies. Crouching tiger hidden dragon did not do well. It does not usually call at any one individual program is not doing well. They did here because the future Film Initiative has been all over the place. They brought in the sky that has made movies like ted to bring order to that. Netflix will release three of its biggest movies ever in the next quarter. War machine starring brad pitt. And another adam sandler movie. As much as people like to tease netflix for his love of adam sandler, they say the movies are working because they are making four more. Netflix has a lot of new movies coming. They are spending a lot of money to support it. There is so much tv being made that netflix realizes is has got to spend money to keep ringing people in. When it does not have a big yet and a quarter, they do not grow as much. We will look for house of cards in the Second Quarter. Thank you, lucas shaw in l. A. For us. Uber has lifted the lid on its financials. In an unprecedented move, the privately held company shared the numbers exclusively with bloomberg. Doubledross more than last year. Net losses, 50. 8 billion. The culture comes under fire and top executives flee with claims of a toxic work culture. Joining us is Eric Newcomer who got the numbers. Also covering uber is brad stone who wrote the book on uber. Lets ask the key question. Why did they drop the numbers . They have to mount the last couple of quarters. We got them the first half of the year. They come out and it is the whim of members leaking them to frame them and share what they will. Uber felt they could own the message more. This is an experimental step. Caroline what did you read into the numbers . I was blown away by the growth but the hefty losses. 1 billion they are managing to splash each quarter. Extraordinary growth on the top line, 6. 5 billion over the year. We have seen this movie before. 2000, glosses over 1 billion. 52 billion. 1. 4 billion at the time. 50 of revenues. Labor has advantages amazon does not. It is a private company. Extra ordinary capital environment where a lot of people are willing to provide these companies money. Expanding geographically and with platforms. I tend to give these companies the benefit of the doubt. Obviously, it has to grow into that loss and continue to show topline growth. Caroline we are hearing netflix from netflix they need to splash the cash to grow. The numbers are interesting. The losses do not include stock compensation, certain real estate investment. How much bigger could they be . E uber refers to them as a bit losses. They lost at least 1 billion last year in china. We are looking at at least 3. 8 billion. It is hard to find a private company who has lost that much money. Even that, we are not quite capturing the extent of it. We tried to look through the money in an money out. They have raised 15 million in equity and spent at least 7 billion of it. Do not see the losses encompass the full extent of the cash burn. Uber would say they are experimenting in parallel rather than in serial like some companies. They are doing everything at once because investors are providing the opportunity. Amazon has been aggressive with cash flows. Uber has been able to try to do it all at once. After the 2000 spending, amazon laid off 15 of its workforce. There are dangers to going as big as amazon did then. Caroline investors have given them this cash. They are able to put it to work. Said sometimes you need the jam today and should keep on betting. Jeff bezos invested early on. Backt know that he would this kind of company now. I guess we will see. This is a company that has gone out every year since it started. You have the public scandals over the last couple of months and these numbers which are not for the faint of heart. I think we will see early on if they raise capital what the valuation is. Companies have taken down rounds. It does not seem like the same optimism is here around ridehailing. If uber can raise money at a higher valuation or we see a Public Offering in the next 12 months, we will see how investors are reacting. Maybe this is trying to distract us from the scandals. Is that your viewpoint . To another push for uber allow tipping in new york and california. Do you think that will be allowed . I dont think it is an outright destruction attempt. I think they need to reassure employees and partners this company is not imploding. They think the numbers reflect well. Their view is the per ride losses are going down. Bookings are going up. That is what you should value them on. That is what they will be looking at. I the tipping issue, personally said in our newsletter i think they could launch tipping this year. They want to do it in a situation where they would get credit for it and in a way palatable for them. There are lots of ways they could message when mess around with in out tipping. I think will be interesting to see how they react. In our story, uber was not disowning the push. It will be interesting to see whether they let new york be a test case. There is steadily soulsearching and the company about how to handle tipping. Caroline soulsearching in the company to handle many things of late. Great to have analysis from you both. You can always read their stories online for indepth coverage. Case wasfounder steve on bloomberg surveillance monday speaking with tom keene. He was optimistic about future growth. Silicon valley is great. There is an ecosystem that is welldeveloped. It will continue to be great. We have to figure out a way to support entrepreneurs everywhere. Caroline he also discussed a hot button issue facing tech, u. S. Immigration policy. We need to make sure we are welcoming people while enforcing our laws. That is particularly important in the technology and innovation sector. 40 of the fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants. 50 of Silicon Valley companies were started by immigrants. We need to figure out how to start this balance. Caroline coming up, one man is spending millions to get elon musk to dump trump. What is behind his campaign . That is next. Caroline a story we are watching. The Big Data Company aims to raise as much as 210 million in its initial Public Offering. The company backed by intel is marketing 15 million shares. It will list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under cldr. One man is doing everything in his power to break elon musks ties with president donald trump. Doug derwin of triage mentors is preparing to spend millions on a campaign he is calling elon, dump trump. We asked what the best possible outcome would be. I would like him to step away. I think idea that elon musk or anyone else can whisper into Donald Trumps here and get him to change his position on Climate Change is naive. It has not happened so far. The likelihood it will happen in the future is about zero. I met with some of elon musks top people who try to dissuade me from this campaign. I said if you can tell me something he has accomplished, something he has gotten donald trump to change his position on, i will back off. If you are making progress, i will back off. They had nothing. Muskine therefore, elon probably knows about the campaign and has yet to respond . They responded in that they try to persuade me not to do it. That was pretty much the response. I also got a sense that they felt it was out of bounds for anyone to criticize elon musk on Climate Change. Caroline would you put your how else do you want to see a change come about from the administration in their reaction to Climate Change . If you feel elon musk cannot whisper words into donald , what will you do for the next four years or longer . Donald trump is not an emperor or dictator. He could not even get health care through. There is a lot of opposition to donald trump on Climate Change. There is opposition coming from state governments, the courts, congress, and employees of various agencies. That opposition will determine how much of Donald Trumps agenda he can get through. That is extremely important. That opposition requires public support. It requires the public to come out in opposition to Donald Trumps Climate Change policies. That will energize the opponents of those policies in all the various institutions. That requires leadership from those who are important, who are recognized as important on Climate Change. And that is elon musk. If he speaks out, there will be opposition to donald trump that will be energized. There will be more pushback than their otherwise would be. Donald trump will get less of what he wants in cutting back Climate Change regulations, and we will have less Greenhouse Gas in the atmosphere in four or eight years. Caroline that was doug derwin. Joining us is alistair barr. You edit the piece on the bloomberg right now. 2 million this man is willing to spend. You think people are listening . I think people might listen now. They stopped listening in the last few weeks i would say. Lon joined the e advisory council, there was protest about it. Now it has died down. This is an effort to try to get the process going again. Caroline when you were looking at the background, he has this successful career. He was a lawyer. He had cash she was going to put into tesla and was so angered by the relationship he decided to renege on that purchase and spend heavily. What do we expect to cover in this campaign . I think he came from nowhere. He was an i. T. Lawyer, which is pretty straightlaced. He seems to is have become obsessed with it. Hear whether it is having any effect, whether people respond. One interesting idea is to go to College Campuses and set up information booths and try to steer young engineers away from joining elon musk companies. Tech companies would hate that type of thing. If that gained momentum, that would be very damaging. Caroline we will see how much it affects the brand of tesla and elon musk himself and await his response. Great editing. Great piece. I urge our viewers to read it online. Developers across the globe are gearing up for facebooks annual conference. We will hear from the head of partnerships about what to expect. This is bloomberg. Caroline walmart has its eyes set on another ecommerce startup. Retail giant is said to be in discussions with the online tailor. Walmart has been working aggressively to close the gap with rival amazon since he joined the company in 2016 when his Prior Company was acquired. Facebook is gearing up for its annual developer conference. Mark zuckerberg is expected to take the stage tuesday and expand on his vision for the Company Beyond the social network. We spoke with the Vice President of partnerships, ime archibong, about the role of developers. F8, our big developer conference, we were in san francisco. Probably 800 or so people. We were focused on what we were calling the first substantiation of the facebook platform. Fast forward 10 years, i could not be more excited because the community has grown too probably 4000 people in the room. Millions of people probably given then livestream technology and what that allows you to do. Caroline f8 is an annual occurrence. What do you hope to achieve when youre Getting Developers in the room . Is it to try to convince them we are the best platform to integrate with and be providing content for . These developers are being pulled every which way. It is twofold. The first, you have to go back to understanding the importance of that for the culture of facebook. When we had our first f8 in 2007, it was lets talk about this platform we spent developing for this community. We had no idea how people would react to it honestly. We put it out for the world to see. Over the next eight hours, lets hack on it. What can be built . Lets think about people. How can we build better experiences based on the fact we have collective energy with 800 people in this room to build on this platform . Fast forward 10 years later, it is still the same premise. Maybe it is not just the facebook platform. Maybe there is instagram and oculus, all these different platforms and tools and programs we have built that help the community. Lets introduce you to them. Now lets see what we can do. We can build for a collective stakeholder, which is people. Caroline he said tools to help the community you said tools to help the community. I was exhausted looking at where you have been. Pakistan, mexico, even in the last month. How much of these communities shown you what you need to be tapping into . That is the most important piece of it. We started with a platform. We said there are too many things we want to build we will not have resources to build. Lets make sure people can build it. Theyre too many things in the world we do not even know need to be built. The Community Knows how to build it. We are extending the platform and tools for them to build. Caroline that was ime archibong. Tuesday, we will be sitting down with the head of messaging platforms at facebook. On top of that, we will be speaking with Steve Wozniak on tuesday. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Remember, all episodes of Bloomberg Technology are Live Streaming on twitter. Check us out weekdays at 5 00 in new york, 2 00 in san francisco. This is bloomberg. Announcer from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. He is an assistant professor of medicine at columbia and a cancer physician and researcher. He is also a very good writer, feel its a prizewinning author. His latest book comes out in paperback this month. He writes about the future of automated medicine in a new piece for new yorker magazine. It is called the algorithm will see you now. Im pleased to have him back at this table. Welcome. With some sense of paternity, tell me how this piece cam