More like the apple watch series five. And linking up. We get an exclusive check in with linkedin ceo. His thoughts on the Company Three years after microsoft acquired the website. We begin with one of our top stories this week. Oracle announced wednesday that the ceo is taking a leave of absence for health reasons. They disclose the move along disclosed the move along with Quarterly Earnings a day earlier than results were scheduled to be released. The company did not specify what issues he faces or how long hes leave will be, but the executive chairman released a statement saying quote oracle has an extremely capable cfo and a deep team of executives with long tenure. We will cover marks responsibilities during his absence with support from the rest of our strong management team. To discuss, i spoke with a Bloomberg IntelligenceSenior Analyst and our Global Executive editor tom giles. As far as his leave, there have been signs that he may not be unwell. What was not expected was the announcement to come today. And because they had not announced until now, there was a question mark about whether they would and whether he was getting well or not. It took us a little bit by surprise the timing in particular. Taylor i want to bring you in here. You heard it from larrys mouth, does any of this change the future direction of the company . No, it does not change the future direction of the company. Oracle is a very stable business, given a large on premise database business they have and a large applications business. The key risk for oracle and the key story remains how soon can they get the database customers on to the cloud . That story remains the same. I dont see any changes because of this shift. Taylor tom, mark hurd was known as working on shifting that composition from hardware to software. He touted getting to 50 software. How did he do . Tom it has been a mixed record for oracle over the last several years. Their stock price, i should note, has been really over 20 gained this year because a lot of investors are looking at that staff, the deep bench. They are looking at the shift and they are starting to see signs that it is taking root. It has not been even. There have been quarters where people have doubted. On todays numbers which we will talk about in a minute, looking light. It has not been super even. However, what you are seeing is when customers shift to the cloud, that is where the growth is coming from. The legacy database business, Traditional Software has not been growing as needed. And had the shift been happening as quickly, sometimes the answer has been no. But again, when you look at the stock price, you are seeing an Investor Base giving them the benefit of the doubt. Taylor talk to me about the earnings. Top line is a little bit of a miss. Margins look healthy. What was your take away . Anurag with almost everything, there was a slight slowdown in the application business. At the same time, we saw margins expanding. We saw buybacks. Overall, i was not that surprised with any of the numbers. The key issue remains how soon some of the new database products adoption goes. And that we will see from the colors, how that is going along. Taylor what does a 15 billion buyback tell you . They have nowhere else to invest or they think their shares are undervalued . Tom i think it is both. Are there acquisitions you can make, are there largesize acquisitions you can make . Oracle has been a big acquirer. They have made a big acquisitions. It seems to me that there is not a lot in the pipeline right now that they want to take aim at. But they have a lot of cash. So i wouldnt rule it out. 15 billion shows a vote of confidence. When you are announcing a ceo is taking a leave of absence. Again, you want there to be some vote of confidence on the part of the management. As larry said, they have confidence in their bench. Safra catz, capable, very well regarded. And larry, even though he handed over the reins, he has never strayed that far from having a hand in how the company is managed. Taylor did the Cloud Services revenue meet your expectations . Anurag there was slight slowdown in the applications area. But, you know, overall, it is lumpy because unlike in adobe or office 365, these large enterprise deals could take time. As i said nothing surprising from our side, generally in line quarter for us. Taylor tom, generally speaking, how is oracle set up among china and tariffs . It is something we have talked to so much about. What is your broad take . Tom right now, a lot of companies in the tech sector are going to be affected by the tariffs. And a lot of it has to do in areas such as hardware. Oracle has not been one of the companies that we have looked at and said, this is going to be a huge hit for them. We talk about apple a lot, some of the other companies, some of the chipmakers for example. Oracle, less so. That has not been a big area of overhang. I would be curious to hear what anurag says about that. But, really, the tariff issue is one we think that will hit a lot of the other big tech players aside from oracle. Taylor was the revenue not related to tariffs . Anurag i dont think so. To toms comment, Enterprise Software spending has little exposure to china. When you have macro sharks, people pullback spending. You really dont need to upgrade if you dont have to because you can go around another six months before getting that new server or upgrading to the new set of software. That is where we have already started to see some kind of cracks in the Software Growth story with some of the companies such as them talking about weaknesses in europe right now, that is leading to software. Taylor we know that all the glitz and glam is in software. Get us back to basics care and. How is the hardware business doing . Anurag hardware business has been weak. That has been the story for a while. People have been delaying their hardware upgrade cycles, just largely because whatever little money they have, they want to spend it on the next transformation. Which means you want to spend it on either advanced Security Products or you want to spend it on cloud products. People take money from hardware and they are spending more on software. Taylor tom, key take away from the Earnings Call . All about the ceo . Tom a lot about the ceo, why didnt they disclose it sooner . There may be questions along those lines. Who will be in charge of what set of responsibilities that mark was in charge of . How concerned are they about his health . How long will he be away . And certainly cloud, cloud, cloud. That is something it always comes back to. And as we pointed out, as people move more and more to the cloud, that is something that affects spending on hardware which has not been a real strength business for them. Taylor number one talking point from the call you want to hear . Anurag i want to see what is a the transition, the take for the new database product. That is a very important thing for us. That is what dictates how soon people will adopt into the cloud. Any new applications business, bookings numbers, those would be the areas we will be looking at. Taylor that was a bloombergs anurag rana and tom giles. I also discussed it with the former cisco ceo john chambers, he weighed in shortly after the announcement. The reaction first and most importantly is, as larry ellison, a speedy recovery for mark. He is in my thoughts and prayers. If you really think about the team of oracle, they work more effectively than anyone envisioned a three some would work. Larry and safran worked together for 25 years. I know all three of them very well. Safra is worldclass off the charts. Larry has always been involved in the strategy, the vision, the engineering side of the house. I think they will navigate through this one. I dont think they will have issues at all. They have a deep company, and a lot of capabilities. As i said, larry and safra are worldclass leaders that are very actively involved. My thoughts are with mark for a speedy recovery. Taylor yeah. Talk about your relationship with mark hurd during cisco and then his time at oracle. How was that relationship . John the relationship with oracle and hp have always been very strong for me. I have a lot of confidence in hp. They helped me when i moved out to silicon valley, to understand the valley when i only had 400 people at cisco and people got us confused with the food truck company. Lou platt helped a great deal. Their new ceo, antonio, is amazingly good. I have a lot of confidence in the direction of hp and they did a nice job on the turnaround. In terms of safra and larry, i have always been close to them. Both on political issues in terms of positioning tech for good in the world. They are very strong leaders. I would always bet on larry and safra and mark together. I would bet on them in the interim. They have got a deep team. As an investor, i think they will navigate through this very well. Taylor that was the jc2 ventures ceo and founder john chambers. Coming up, ipo woes. Why the Company Looking to make changes is looking to make changes at the top. Will the changes be enough to save the ipo as investors seem worried. We discussed next. And later, watching your health. Why apple is betting its wearables transformed the health industry. Highlights from the big apple event day in cupertino. This is bloomberg. Taylor welcome back to the best of Bloomberg Technology this week brought a flurry of activity from the ipo front. Including cloudflare, wework, and peloton. To break down the ideal landscape we talked about how wall street was interpreting the ipo parade. Truly amazing. We have reporting that they boosted the price range from 12 to 14. The question is where will it price . Just two days ago, we had a lot more optimistic sentiment around some of these big ipos. A lot of them that up to their ped their pricing actually did a very well. Everybody but uber and lyft, really. Taylor talk to me about peloton which seems to be another big success story. Peloton . The tone with palatin the story is similar to everybody else. We were saying everything was ok, but remember when cloud was going to market, they were up. The nasdaq was up. For cloudflare to fall so much has cast a cloud over a lot of these listings. What is really happening is investors want to see a stronger bottom line. Revenue growth is not enough for a lot of these companies. We have had ceos of investment banks coming out and saying so for the first time all year. Taylor what changed . For one thing, investor sentiment. We have a lot of people say they want to invest in stocks that are steady, value stocks instead of growth stocks. Remember, there was the we work cloud over everything and people were looking for not only companies showing stronger revenue growth, but also governance they are comfortable with. Thing is, we are in the late stages of an economic cycle. People are starting to, at some point, get more cautious on their investments. Taylor we talk about cautious. You earlier were talking about how the nasdaq was higher. We did see another ipo, smile direct club, how do they end up doing . Down quite a bit, more than 25 , something unseen since 2008. We have not seen a company priced above is range and went to markets and dropped in the first day of trading. We saw uber drop but they price was at theice lower end of the range. Cloudflare, we are waiting for their pricing tonight. Whether or not they price in the range they have increased does not indicate whether they will trade well tomorrow which is scary for investors. Taylor another thing that is scary for investors is wework. What happened . We are waiting to see if they will kick off the roadshow, monday. Bloomberg has been reporting all week that the valuation could be as low as 15 billion. To put that in perspective, Goldman Sachs was thinking it was worth 65 billion over the 47 billion they fetched in valuations. So we are watching valuations go way down. We are in a situation where softbank is considering more private capital invested to help turn it around in a place where they can go public and would be more pleasing to investors. All of that is still up in the air and its yet to be seen how they will get it done. Taylor there was also there is news they are removing the founders wife from the succession plan. We will see. We still have the voting shares adam newman has which is in 20 times more power than other investors. Depending on how they change the corporate governance. It will be a big deal for how , investors view the stock. If softbank does take a bigger stake in the firm, they already have a bigger stake then newman, so who controls the company . The wife stepping back is one thing, but there are a lot of governance challenges they are facing. Taylor finally, as you take a look at the landscape of the ipos, who is to blame . Is this the bankers fault . The companys lack of profitability . People like to blame the bankers very quickly for pricing an ipo too high. Normally, institutions like to pop. But this market is a tough one. All year, like i was saying, the ipos traded very well but now we are in a situation where it is just not working for them anymore. Taylor that was bloombergs sonali basak. Coming up, delivery game on. This luxury Delivery Platform is ramping up its competition with amazon by shaving a day off its free delivery service. We hear from the ceo next. And if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. You can listen to us on the bloomberg app, bloomberg. Com, and in the u. S. On sirius xm. This is bloomberg. Taylor is two day Free Shipping speedy enough . Verishop does not think so, which is why they announced free oneday shipping for all purchases. They are going even one step further, allowing all customers to benefit from the offer without a membership fee, subscription, or minimum purchase. But is it enough to compete with amazon . To discuss, i spoke with the ceo. He is also the former chief Strategy Officer at snapchat. In our company, we believe customer first, employee second of a shareholder third. And shareholder third. And we are maniacally focused on making customer life better. We launched with two day shipping and saw the possibility from our customers. We wanted to make things better and that is why we have launched free oneday shipping. Taylor so you say customers before shareholders, how are shareholders responding to the increased costs . Customers are happy, they will become loyal and that will drive significant lifetime value. The way we are orienting our company, were just one year old, but the way we are orienting is focusing on the longterm thinking about the longterm value of customers. We believe that by delivering value on daily basis by delivering faster and having the best selection and quality and Customer Support, for example, we put our Customer Support phone number at the top of the site. By doing so, we increase the lifetime value. If we do that, that creates longterm shareholder value. Taylor amazon and walmart have also come out recently with free oneday shipping. How do you compete . First of all, we have to recognize that ecommerce is a large market. If you look at retail sales in the u. S. , it is 5 trillion and only 10 is online. Serve retail is one of the biggest Market Opportunities out there. So we dont think it is a zero sum game. We seek multiple players who will serve the customers and we are really focused on serving them better. We are focusing on categories like fashion, beauty, kitchen, and we are really focused on servicing the customer better. We believe the market is big enough for multiple players to do well. Taylor that was verishop ceo imran khan. From competitive shopping to competitive gaming, there are more than 2. 6 billion gamers in the world and most consider themselves competitive gamers. That has given rise to Esports Companies and competitions. In fact, intel Just Announced another big esports tournament in tokyo around the 2020 , olympics. I talked to the ceo of Super League Gaming thursday. When you are entering a brandnew market space, very nascent, dont even know how to find the edges of how big the market space can be, many investors see it as a fad until they have children or grandchildren who game. Then, the light bulbs goes off. You realize its not something you grow out of. They are spending just as much time watching other people play as they are playing themselves and this is something that is becoming increasingly multigenerational. With the bat, i will say we are that, i will say we are uniquely positioned as the rare pure esports play. Most activities are private investments with high valuations. What is an earlystage space, when it is an earlystage space, often people think and worry about a bubble. What i would tell you is this. Right now, the projections are that esports will be a 3 billion Global Market in 2023. I used to run a 3 billion business for bp and i would not get out of bed if that is just what this was worth. I think it goes back to gaming is how people want to spend the time now and we are just figuring out how big of a category it can be. Taylor you ipod just six months ago, how has it been . Its funny. I believed i would wake up at 6 a. M. And to stare at the stock price all day. I am delighted to say i dont do that. Im fortunate that i have a lot of investors who are excited about our delivery and tell me not to look at the stock price, just deliver. That said, its strange. We have an experienced leadership team. Top talent, from game publishers like take two and endeavor. What happened is we are a bunch of grownups who got a big jolt of adrenaline the day we went public because it is extremely focusing. With all about transparency come it also feels hugely empowering. We sit around the table and talk about opportunities we would not have dreamt of if we were sitting there in the small, privately owned space. You have got adults taking it seriously whose credibility is on the line. We know there is money to be made and we are determined for super league to be the leaders in proving it. Taylor that was Super League Gaming ceo ann hand. Coming up, you had Better Believe we were all over apples product