AI transcript
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0:00:42 In the U.S., there are tons of ways to get where you’re trying to go.
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0:00:57 That’s this week on Explain It To Me,
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0:01:09 There’s a story sailors used to tell
0:01:11 of mysterious rogue waves
0:01:14 rising out of nowhere in the middle of the ocean.
0:01:17 But it was always just a story.
0:01:20 Until New Year’s Day, 1995.
0:01:27 The Dropner Deep Sea Oil Platform had been weathering a miserable storm for hours.
0:01:32 But then, suddenly, an 85-foot wave rose out of the sea.
0:01:36 This wave was impossibly steep.
0:01:41 A nearly vertical wall of water as tall as a seven-story building.
0:01:46 The first rogue wave to ever be recorded.
0:01:53 But how do giant walls of water spring out of the ocean, seemingly out of nowhere?
0:02:00 This week on Unexplainable, the reality behind mythical rogue waves.
0:02:04 Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Wednesday.
0:02:11 Today’s number, one trillion.
0:02:15 That’s how many different smells can be detected by the human nose.
0:02:20 Researchers had previously estimated that humans could only detect 10,000 smells.
0:02:23 That was until they met Sam Wagman-Fried.
0:02:26 Money markets matter.
0:02:29 If money is evil, then that building is hell.
0:02:30 The show goes on!
0:02:34 The folks are never watched the show, show!
0:02:36 Welcome to Prof G Markets.
0:02:37 I’m Ed Elson.
0:02:38 It is August 7th.
0:02:41 Let’s check in on yesterday’s market vitals.
0:02:46 The major indices all rose as investors digested the latest round of earnings.
0:02:50 Apple drove some of the rally, climbing 5% on news from the White House
0:02:54 that the company will boost its investment in U.S. manufacturing by $100 billion.
0:02:57 Meanwhile, the dollar and short-term treasury yields fell
0:03:01 as traders bet on the possibility of imminent rate cuts.
0:03:06 And finally, Trump’s extended tariff deadline has officially arrived.
0:03:11 Tariffs on more than 60 countries plus the EU are set to go into effect today.
0:03:18 Trump raised the total levy on India to 50% yesterday due to India’s purchase of Russian oil.
0:03:22 He also said he would impose a 100% tariff on chip imports.
0:03:28 But companies moving production back to the U.S., or promising to do so, Apple,
0:03:30 those ones will be exempt.
0:03:32 Okay.
0:03:34 What else is happening?
0:03:40 OpenAI is in talks for a potential share sale that would value it at $500 billion.
0:03:46 There’s a massive jump from the $300 billion valuation it secured earlier this year.
0:03:52 And this new deal would be a secondary sale with current and former employees selling shares.
0:03:57 So, OpenAI has hit a half a trillion dollar valuation.
0:04:00 That makes it the most valuable private company in the world.
0:04:04 Also, the most valuable private company of all time.
0:04:11 Well, if this isn’t proof that the public markets and the IPO is just becoming increasingly irrelevant,
0:04:12 I don’t know what is.
0:04:19 And the fact that there is enough money in the private markets to invest in a company at half a trillion dollars,
0:04:28 the fact that there is enough private investor demand not for a proper funding round but for a multi-billion dollar secondary sale,
0:04:34 that is evidence to me that the public markets are just kind of irrelevant at this point.
0:04:37 I mean, think about why the public markets even exist.
0:04:40 I mean, it’s for one, to raise capital.
0:04:43 If you want to raise tens of billions of dollars, you need to find the money somewhere.
0:04:46 The public markets are supposed to provide that for you.
0:04:53 Two, brand awareness helps get your name out, helps when you’re ringing the bell on CNBC, everyone’s talking about you.
0:04:56 And three, most importantly, liquidity.
0:05:05 If you’re a founder, if you’re an employee, if you’re an early investor, this is how you sell your shares and you cash out.
0:05:07 You IPO, you go public.
0:05:15 But what this secondary sale proves is that the private markets are now more than capable of checking all three boxes.
0:05:18 Capital raising, done.
0:05:22 This company has raised $60 billion in its lifetime.
0:05:25 There is more than enough capital in the private markets now.
0:05:27 Brand awareness, also done.
0:05:30 OpenAI has Twitter and Instagram and podcasts.
0:05:33 You don’t need the NASDAQ to get the word out.
0:05:36 And three, most importantly, liquidity, done.
0:05:38 Why is OpenAI doing this?
0:05:45 According to the reporting, this is exclusively for the current and former employees who want to sell their stock.
0:05:47 In other words, this isn’t even about investment.
0:05:55 This is all about liquidity, which is the one thing we used to think the public markets were supposed to be really good at.
0:05:59 If you want to get your bag, if you want to cash out, you go public.
0:06:02 Now, why should we care about this?
0:06:06 Why am I speaking in this semi-aggravated tone right now?
0:06:11 Well, for the same reason we’ve discussed when we talked about SpaceX and Anthropic and Stripe.
0:06:18 This is a potentially once-in-a-lifetime company in which retail investors cannot invest.
0:06:23 And that is even at this crazy valuation of $500 billion.
0:06:30 I mean, this makes OpenAI more valuable than Coca-Cola, more valuable than Johnson & Johnson, more valuable than Netflix.
0:06:34 This makes it the 19th most valuable company in the world.
0:06:37 It’s just a few billion dollars shy of MasterCard.
0:06:41 You know, this company has every reason to be a public company.
0:06:44 And yet, at the same time, it doesn’t.
0:06:54 Because in 2025, the private markets can do everything the public markets can do, minus the scrutiny from the SEC and minus the hassle of regulation.
0:06:56 So, you can’t really blame them.
0:06:58 I mean, why go public when you can just do this?
0:07:00 No one loses.
0:07:03 Not your investors, not your founders, not your employees.
0:07:04 If they want to sell, they can.
0:07:06 Plenty of buyers out there.
0:07:11 So, the only loser here is the retail investor who doesn’t get access to any of this.
0:07:18 I mean, if you’re a retail investor and you want to participate in this thing called AI, you basically have three options.
0:07:25 One, you can keep investing in the chip stocks like NVIDIA, which are already worth trillions of dollars.
0:07:33 Two, you can keep investing in big tech, which are building data centers but are also already worth trillions of dollars.
0:07:41 Or you could try to find some AI alpha in the public markets and maybe you invest in Palantir, for example.
0:07:43 But, oh, wait, that’s what everyone’s doing.
0:07:47 Hence why the company is valued at 600 times earnings.
0:07:57 And so, what we have created here is a world in which assets in the private markets are extremely accessible and liquid for the private investors.
0:08:02 But as soon as you’re in the public markets, ironically, the dynamic flips.
0:08:11 And that’s exactly what we saw, by the way, with the Figma IPO, which, as you probably remember, we were very bullish on, but only at $33 per share.
0:08:14 Because, remember, that was the IPO price.
0:08:17 That was the price at which certain people were able to get in.
0:08:20 And allocation at that valuation was very scarce.
0:08:28 If you tried to buy the Figma IPO on Robinhood, for example, you probably got either zero shares, or if you were lucky, maybe you got one.
0:08:32 And what happened as soon as the company started trading?
0:08:34 It shot up 250%.
0:08:40 Put another way, in the private markets, where the demand was artificially constrained,
0:08:43 the price was a lot lower.
0:08:44 It was a lot more accessible.
0:08:51 And then, in the public markets, for which this was basically the only exciting IPO of the year,
0:08:55 you had this gigantic flood of demand.
0:08:56 The price went way up.
0:09:00 And suddenly, you could only buy Figma at $100 a share.
0:09:08 So, what we have here is this growing rift between the private markets and the public markets,
0:09:12 where not only do the private markets have greater access to the most valuable companies,
0:09:16 they’re also getting lower prices because there is less demand.
0:09:19 But again, not so little demand that there isn’t enough liquidity.
0:09:20 There’s plenty of liquidity.
0:09:27 It’s just the right amount of demand such that you know the price will go up, especially if the company does go public.
0:09:30 And you also know that you can sell whenever you’d like.
0:09:33 I mean, it’s basically an investor’s dream.
0:09:40 And it’s why these venture-backed companies keep pursuing the same strategy because they know that it works.
0:09:48 And they also know that if anything goes wrong, they can always just pull the cord on the parachute and take the fallback option of the IPO.
0:09:49 And that’s what we saw with Figma.
0:09:58 Put another way, there are too many good companies in the private markets and too many shitty companies in the public markets,
0:10:05 such that when the one good company goes public, it’s like getting into a nightclub at 1 a.m. on a Saturday.
0:10:07 You can’t really do it.
0:10:10 The only ones who can do it are the ones who are buying tables.
0:10:13 It’s the ones who have $10,000 to spend.
0:10:18 So, look, congratulations to OpenAI and to the employees.
0:10:22 $500 billion, the most valuable startup in history.
0:10:23 Good on you.
0:10:29 But, you know, just remember, there is a reason why the rest of America isn’t celebrating here.
0:10:30 They’re not celebrating alongside you.
0:10:33 And it’s because the rest of America can’t buy.
0:10:42 All they get to do here is sit around, read the news, listen to this podcast, and watch you get rich.
0:10:43 That’s what’s happening.
0:10:46 But the same isn’t true of public companies.
0:10:57 If OpenAI goes public tomorrow, suddenly there’s a chance for regular investors, for retail investors, to have a stake in this thing, to participate in the upside.
0:11:00 But that’s only going to happen if you IPO.
0:11:02 And I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
0:11:12 Disney stock fell yesterday, despite beating expectations.
0:11:14 Revenue came in just shy of forecasts.
0:11:19 And while Disney raised its fiscal guidance for the full year, some analysts were still underwhelmed.
0:11:27 The experiences segment was a standout, with revenue up 8%, thanks to strong performance from the domestic parks and the Disney Cruise Line.
0:11:31 However, revenue for its entertainment segment rose just 1%.
0:11:36 That was dragged down by a 15% revenue drop in the traditional TV business.
0:11:37 No surprise there.
0:11:43 One bright spot in entertainment, though, Disney Plus and Hulu added 2.6 million new subscribers.
0:11:48 Now, the company also made two very interesting strategic announcements.
0:11:55 One, it will sunset the Hulu app and roll it all up into Disney Plus.
0:12:03 And two, they also unveiled a new deal between the NFL and ESPN, which Disney owns.
0:12:07 Under the deal, the NFL will take a 10% stake in ESPN.
0:12:16 And in exchange, ESPN will get control over the NFL network, the NFL Red Zone channel, and also NFL’s fantasy platform.
0:12:25 They will also get licensing rights to three additional games, meaning ESPN now has the rights to 28 NFL games per season.
0:12:32 Disney’s stock declined as much as 5%, but it ended up closing down roughly 3%.
0:12:36 Okay, a lot there, a lot to unpack.
0:12:42 So let’s bring in Jason Bazinet, Managing Director of Media and Entertainment Research at Citigroup.
0:12:48 Okay, Jason, thank you for joining me on the podcast.
0:12:49 Yeah, happy to do it.
0:12:54 So we’d love to just get your initial reactions to Disney earnings.
0:12:56 What were your initial thoughts?
0:12:58 What were your biggest takeaways from the earnings we saw?
0:13:06 Well, to set the stage, I mean, the main fear the street had coming into this earnings result was what they call the experiences segment,
0:13:08 which is really theme parks to laymen.
0:13:15 There’s a few competitive jitters because of Comcast Epic Universe and a little bit of macro fears.
0:13:19 So that’s where I zoomed in first.
0:13:22 And I would say the numbers were actually quite good at experiences.
0:13:31 The second thing the street was expecting was for the firm to raise their earnings guidance for the full year.
0:13:36 So they were $5.75 was the guide for this fiscal year.
0:13:38 The street was looking for them to raise it to $6.
0:13:41 And they only raised it by about a dime to $5.85.
0:13:44 That’s really why you saw the weakness in the shares today.
0:13:48 It was just a miss versus those buy-site expectations.
0:13:52 Was any of this, do you think any of this had to do with the other announcements we saw?
0:13:55 These were the things that at least we were most interested in.
0:14:02 One was Disney Plus merging with Hulu and perhaps what that would say about the company.
0:14:05 It seems like a significant strategic move.
0:14:12 And then the second, which has been getting a lot of coverage, is this deal between ESPN and the NFL.
0:14:21 And I’m just wondering if, in your view, the market’s reaction might have been reflecting that or if it’s largely, as you say, to do with the guidance.
0:14:24 Well, no, I don’t think it reflected either of those things.
0:14:25 I say that for two reasons.
0:14:35 The first is Disney has been somewhat hamstrung in terms of what it could do with Hulu until it bought the 33% that was owned by Comcast.
0:14:41 And so they sort of finally settled that a little bit earlier this year.
0:14:49 So this is sort of the first sort of flexibility that Disney had to do whatever it wants to do with Hulu, which includes expanding it globally.
0:14:57 So that was sort of viewed as table stakes and largely expected, and it was more mechanical in terms of the timing.
0:15:12 Regarding ESPN and what happened there, I would say that the street has almost removed all of the direct-to-consumer business from their valuation calculus.
0:15:14 Why do I say that?
0:15:32 The way you should, I think, most investors think about the direct-to-consumer business is you have the 800-pound juggernaut with Netflix, and then you have a bunch of sort of small apps, Max, Hulu, Peacock, that are really too small to really matter.
0:15:34 And Disney’s sort of stuck in the middle.
0:15:38 They’re not really sort of really big, but they could be relevant someday.
0:15:43 And so what the street’s been looking for for some time is just healthy subscriber additions.
0:15:52 And Disney hasn’t had healthy subscriber additions for some time, so it’s almost been removed from the way the stock—the way the buy-side thinks about the stock.
0:15:55 So it’s really much an earnings story.
0:16:10 What the bulls hope for is that the streaming business begins to accelerate, and if it begins to accelerate, it can sort of help Disney’s multiple more than it will help the earnings, and that’s really the thing that they’re looking for.
0:16:15 But I don’t think—I felt today was just a building block and moving in that direction, right?
0:16:28 Beginning to put, you know, the flagship service as part of streaming, to bundle what they call flagship, what we all think of as the real ESPN, with Hulu, with Disney Plus all together.
0:16:33 And those are all just sort of building blocks, laying the foundation to accelerate streaming growth.
0:16:37 And so it could become more important in the future, but it’s not why the stock was down a couple percent today.
0:16:47 Yeah. It’s interesting how, with Disney, increasingly the story has become about the parks and the experiences and making sure that there is real growth there.
0:16:53 I assume because it’s sort of their greatest differentiator in the entertainment space.
0:16:58 I mean, it seems increasingly that that is what investors are most focused on.
0:17:04 How are the parks doing? How is the cruise line doing? Is that something that you would say is happening?
0:17:07 It’s 100 percent true, and there’s a delicious irony embedded in all this.
0:17:15 If I rolled the clock back 15 years ago, investors would say to me, oh, I love Disney, but I hate the theme parks because they’re cyclical and capital intensive.
0:17:25 It really speaks to it really speaks to just how much damage has occurred inside the media ecosystem, where now what you have essentially is this declining legacy linear business.
0:17:33 You have a somewhat growing direct-to-consumer business, and the two just sort of net out where people don’t really get super excited.
0:17:38 And that’s why all I shift towards experiences where it’s viewed as sort of better.
0:17:41 Yeah, why do you think that shift has really changed?
0:17:50 I mean, thinking about it just from a purely business perspective, as you say, 15 years ago, the view is it’s too capital intensive.
0:17:52 It’s too expensive to build these parks.
0:18:00 You know, I’d rather a software application like Netflix that can just sort of quickly and easily and cheaply distribute the content.
0:18:06 And now it’s almost reversed where it’s like, well, because it’s so capital intensive, that’s your moat.
0:18:12 And then, you know, everyone can build a streaming service, so we’re not as interested in that anymore.
0:18:13 That’s exactly right.
0:18:14 That’s exactly right.
0:18:19 I mean, it’s what was considered sort of a negative is now actually a positive.
0:18:20 I mean, you have some other tailwinds.
0:18:27 I mean, to Disney’s credit, the parks have become bigger because they fortified it with a lot of the recent intellectual property.
0:18:34 You know, the Pixar that they bought in 2006, Lucasfilms, which they bought in 12, Marvel in 2009.
0:18:36 So they really refreshed the parks.
0:18:37 That helped.
0:18:44 You have a long secular tailwind where younger consumers are just valuing experiences over things.
0:18:46 That’s been another tailwind for the business.
0:18:48 So there’s some other vectors to it.
0:18:54 But I would say the central one is really just media has just been walloped by all these, you know, digital changes that have happened.
0:18:57 And it’s been very difficult for traditional medias to navigate that shift.
0:19:07 Just going back to this deal between ESPN and the NFL, at the very least, whether or not the market really cared about it.
0:19:08 Yeah.
0:19:10 It’s a new kind of deal.
0:19:19 I mean, the idea of having a sports league taking this pretty sizable ownership stake in the network that’s going to distribute its content.
0:19:19 Yeah.
0:19:22 I don’t think I’ve seen that before.
0:19:26 I’m just wondering if you’ve ever seen a precedent for this.
0:19:29 Have you ever seen an agreement that looks like this?
0:19:31 Or is this pretty new?
0:19:32 It’s absolutely new.
0:19:42 I mean, there are some examples in the sports betting world where leagues have taken stakes in the data companies that feed sports betting apps.
0:19:49 So it’s not totally unusual for the leagues to take equity stakes in their intellectual property as opposed to just selling it for cash.
0:19:55 But you’re right that it is certainly unique to take one in a video distributor.
0:19:59 And I think the reason I would sort of offer up one primary reason for that.
0:20:10 If you think about what allowed ESPN to become ESPN, they essentially had deeper financial moats than a lot of the other sports channels because they’d been around the longest.
0:20:15 Therefore, they got the largest affiliate fees from the cable companies.
0:20:18 That allowed them to bid more than anyone else, right?
0:20:32 As we move into this new world of mega tech companies with, you know, trillion-dollar market caps and much more free cash flow, the calculus has sort of changed where you can have a big tech company, you know, outbid Disney for rights.
0:20:37 So if you’re Disney, what do you do in that world where you’re no longer the biggest fish?
0:20:51 Well, you start tethering yourself to the league where at least if a league takes a larger cash payment from a tech giant, they’re going to at least think about the diminished equity stake in their existing partner, if that makes sense.
0:20:59 And that’s sort of how I would think about it and why Disney was probably willing to sell some of ESPN today where they probably wouldn’t have in the past.
0:21:04 Yes, it sounds like the way Disney feels about it is what can we do?
0:21:12 Well, we can make sure that the NFL has an upside in doing business with us by literally giving them a stake in the upside.
0:21:12 Yeah.
0:21:22 It almost reminds me of what we’ve seen in big tech where big tech will establish these contracts with these AI startups and then also invest in them.
0:21:23 Yeah.
0:21:26 And basically make sure, like, we’re both on the same team here.
0:21:26 Correct.
0:21:30 We’re doing business together, but ultimately we’re on the same team.
0:21:34 We’re both going to share in the upside here, which makes a lot of sense.
0:21:34 Yeah.
0:21:46 And also sort of inflict some pain, potentially, where if the NFL goes with someone else, they may get a larger cash payment, but their equity stake in ESPN will be worth less.
0:21:47 Yes.
0:21:47 Yes.
0:21:53 Which sounds a little anti-competitive the more I sort of think about it in real terms.
0:21:58 But perhaps 10% is small enough of a number.
0:22:00 Well, we really appreciate your time, Jason.
0:22:02 Yeah, absolutely.
0:22:03 Thank you for joining us on the podcast.
0:22:04 Thank you, Ed.
0:22:14 That was Jason Bazinet, Managing Director of Media and Entertainment Research at Citigroup.
0:22:20 So, this NFL-Disney deal, we tried to sort of identify a winner.
0:22:22 Maybe it’s not as clear.
0:22:23 The NFL, maybe it wins.
0:22:24 Maybe Disney wins here.
0:22:26 We’ll see how things shake out.
0:22:33 However, there is one loser that we can identify to a certainty here, and that is the viewer.
0:22:40 Because if you watch football, well, the long and short of it is, this deal is going to make it even harder for you to access games.
0:22:54 In fact, to watch every game in the 2025 NFL season without cable, you would need subscriptions to at least half a dozen streaming services and YouTube TV, which will run you up as much as $1,500.
0:22:57 And by the way, that was before this deal.
0:22:59 After this deal, it’s going to be even more.
0:23:03 Now, you might say, well, why wouldn’t I just watch the whole season on cable?
0:23:07 And the answer to that question is, you can’t.
0:23:14 Because Amazon now owns the rights to Thursday Night Football, and Netflix also now owns the rights to select games, too.
0:23:19 So, if you’re a serious football fan, basically, you have to stream now.
0:23:23 This is the net-net of the streaming wars.
0:23:31 And if there’s one thing that you want to take away from this deal, it’s that, yes, streaming just got even more expensive.
0:23:36 After the break, a look at Uber’s earnings.
0:23:37 Stay with us.
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0:26:09 I’m Jesse David Fox, senior writer at Vulture and host of Good One, a show with the best interviews with your favorite comedians ever.
0:26:13 And this week on our podcast, stand-up comedian Bill Burr.
0:26:15 Yes, that Bill Burr.
0:26:25 My new perspective is there’s nothing wrong with being a billionaire, but if somebody is working 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month, and they can’t make their rent, you’re not paying them enough money.
0:26:28 Maybe you should just be worth $900 million.
0:26:32 You can watch Good One every week at youtube.com slash Vulture, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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0:26:35 Have a good one.
0:26:44 We’re back with Prof G Markets.
0:26:50 Uber reported strong earnings yesterday and announced one of the biggest buybacks in tech this year.
0:26:53 Revenue was up 18% year over year and beat expectations.
0:27:00 Monthly active users grew 15% and they issued this $20 billion buyback.
0:27:06 So you would think that that is all great news, a huge buyback, strong revenue.
0:27:08 You’d think that’s a recipe for a pop in the stock.
0:27:12 But no, the markets actually didn’t like it that much.
0:27:18 The stock fell as much as 5% on the day and then partially recovered by market close.
0:27:29 So for more on these earnings and why Wall Street reacted the way it did, our producer, Claire, spoke with Mark Mahaney, Senior Managing Director and Head of Internet Research at Evercool.
0:27:36 Well, I think the star of the show was the delivery business that showed this kind of accelerating bookings growth, revenue growth.
0:27:39 And the company, to their credit, does give you a lot of disclosure.
0:27:47 The number of trips, the number of active users of delivery, all of that showed growth rates that were either very consistent or actually accelerated.
0:27:49 So that was kind of the star of the show.
0:27:53 Mobility came in a little bit light versus the street.
0:27:56 The unit metrics that they give you, the number of trips was very consistent.
0:27:59 Bookings growth decelerated a little bit.
0:28:08 There’s this odd issue with the mobility bookings, and that’s the Uber that most people know, which is that it includes insurance.
0:28:12 And insurance is a big chunk of their bookings.
0:28:18 In California, I think it’s like 40% of any ride you do is just to cover insurance costs.
0:28:22 It’s exceptionally high, especially in California, but in a few other states, too.
0:28:29 Anyway, what’s happened is actually some of those insurance rates have started to come down and moderate, so that means the bookings have come down.
0:28:35 And so that sort of has a negative optical look, negative optical read.
0:28:41 So that’s why you look at kind of the basic trips data, and that’s been very consistent, kind of high teens, 18% year-over-year growth.
0:28:48 So I look at this asset, and I think you kind of got, if you’re an Uber bull like I am, you kind of got what you wanted to hear.
0:28:52 They’re pretty consistent, top-line growth, expanding margins.
0:28:54 They said they’re going to lean in and do even more buybacks.
0:29:01 They increased their share repurchase authorization, which is a company like this should do, given the amount of cash that they have.
0:29:03 And, you know, I kind of came away.
0:29:11 I think the last point is what’s really big on the stock is what’s the AB future look like, or what’s the RoboTaxi future look like?
0:29:21 And I thought they did a decent job of explaining the number or detailing the number of rollouts they’ve had, and they will have, over the next 6 to 12 months.
0:29:24 Some of that’s with Waymo, but there are other companies here, too.
0:29:32 We Ride and Pony are two that we’re going to see in international markets, and they’re probably going to be other ones in the U.S. market.
0:29:39 Anything that suggests that there’s going to be multiple AV vendors or RoboTaxi companies is probably a good thing for Uber.
0:29:43 So I think they checked off most of the boxes that they needed to for their print today.
0:29:49 I want to go through all those units you mentioned, but let’s start at the top with mobility and delivery.
0:29:53 Do you know what we can really attribute that growth to?
0:29:54 Well, maybe three or four things.
0:29:59 First is that there’s still kind of secular growth in this industry.
0:30:04 I know everybody who’s watching this probably feels like everybody uses Ubers, but that’s not the case.
0:30:13 There’s still a very large percentage of Uber users who don’t cross-sell yet, that use one but don’t use the other.
0:30:16 So there are more of these cross-sell opportunities.
0:30:18 There are these curves.
0:30:26 Like when we’ve done our own independent survey work, you know, the percentage of users who use Uber either for delivery or mobility on a weekly basis is still a minority.
0:30:28 I mean, it’s like 20%.
0:30:31 That number is roughly right.
0:30:32 We did it in our survey work.
0:30:37 But so there’s this thing over time, you just get people more embedded.
0:30:41 They get more used to using Ubers, and that frequency rises.
0:30:43 And then the number of users continues to rise.
0:30:46 So I think there’s one is just secular growth.
0:30:48 Secondly, I think they continue to execute pretty well.
0:30:56 Like what they’re doing is in the mobility service, you know, what most people think about associate with Uber, they’re taking all these price points and they’re stretching them.
0:31:00 So they’re offering you cheaper ways to do it with wait and save.
0:31:07 And they’re also offering you more premium services like Uber Reserve, where you reserve your ride the day before you pay extra for it.
0:31:10 But that part of the business is growing something like 60%.
0:31:18 So they’re taking a basic product and they’re just kind of tiering it, like T-I-E-R tiering it and lower price points, higher price points.
0:31:19 It just expands the market.
0:31:24 So I think they’re doing they’re taking some steps to kind of keep that growth rate relatively elevated.
0:31:34 And I think it is, you know, if you’re doing over 100 billion in bookings and you can still maintain, you know, high teams, close to 20% unit growth, that’s not too many companies can do that.
0:31:47 It probably speaks volumes to how well they execute, that they’re the market leader in almost all markets that they’re in, and that this is just a really large trillion dollar TAM, you know, couple of trillion dollar TAMs, mobility and delivery.
0:31:55 And they’re still, you know, they’re still relatively small, you know, kind of very low double digits, maybe high single digit percent share of that.
0:31:59 That means they can maintain high growth for a long period of time.
0:32:06 Let’s get into the autonomous vehicles part of the business that came up a lot on the earnings call.
0:32:11 And we’ve discussed Uber’s role in the autonomous wars with you before on this show.
0:32:19 What do you make of their strategy at this point where they’re, you know, they’re basically, they don’t have their own robotaxi platform.
0:32:23 They’re partnering with companies like Waymo and Baidu and others.
0:32:25 What do you make of this strategy?
0:32:28 This has been the biggest swing factor in the stock.
0:32:30 Look, we began the year at 60 bucks.
0:32:33 The thesis on the stock at that time was that it’s robotaxi roadkill.
0:32:40 And then they rolled out successfully with Waymo in Austin and with Waymo in Atlanta.
0:32:45 Now, Waymo is going, you know, a couple of markets, some of which I think they’re just going to continue to go solo and not with Uber.
0:32:53 But they at least, Uber was able to prove to the market and I think to Waymo and its investors that it could really accelerate their rollout.
0:33:06 One of the biggest investors in Waymo, one of the partners at Andreessen Horowitz, tweeted that Uber had helped, what was the expression, turbocharge the launch of Waymo in Austin.
0:33:11 And so that kind of removed a little bit some of the robotaxi overhang.
0:33:13 There’s still a little bit of an overhang.
0:33:18 All of us are going to have these questions, like, in 10 years, am I really going to be using Uber?
0:33:20 Am I going to just use a robotaxi instead?
0:33:22 The truth is it’s probably somewhere in the middle.
0:33:26 You could well be using Uber to order your robotaxi.
0:33:30 Or, you know, you may be indifferent as to whether it’s a robotaxi or a human driver.
0:33:41 You just want to get to LaGuardia, you know, for a 530 flight or, you know, wherever you want to go to the to the restaurant for dinner, you know, a family dinner on Sunday night, whatever it is.
0:33:50 And so what Uber now needs to do is I think they’ve proven that they can add value to at least one robotaxi partner.
0:34:00 But now they’re bringing several onto the network and they need to prove to the partner and also to consumers and regulators that other AV partners can work just as well as Waymo did.
0:34:02 Because Waymo seems to have been very successful so far.
0:34:07 And what’s also last point is really important is, look, they’re just an intermediary in the middle of all this.
0:34:14 If there’s only one robotaxi company, if it’s Waymo’s world, that’s not a good thing for Uber.
0:34:16 Like they that means they have no leverage, no negotiating leverage.
0:34:31 However, if there are multiple robotaxi companies out there, Baidu, Pony, WeRide, Zoosk, the Amazon company, if there are multiple of these, then all of a sudden that intermediary in the middle gains more negotiating leverage.
0:34:33 You get more suppliers, better economics.
0:34:36 So that’s that’s kind of, I think, the next leg in the stock.
0:34:38 And that’s why I continue to be an Uber bowl.
0:34:43 Is Uber the only intermediary in that market at this point?
0:34:45 Do they have any competition for being that middleman?
0:34:47 No, Lyft is.
0:34:49 Oh, in the U.S., that’s pretty much those two.
0:34:57 I think if you go into international markets, I know there’s some other players, but, you know, there’s no question that Uber is far and away the largest global player.
0:35:03 That doesn’t mean it’s the largest player in every market, but in most markets that it’s in, it’s the largest player.
0:35:16 So, yeah, they’re the look, if Uber can make it work such that they can be the largest demand aggregator, I guess it’s the terminology for the robotaxi companies.
0:35:18 I mean, they can prove this in multiple markets.
0:35:21 I don’t see any reason why Lyft can’t take advantage of this, too.
0:35:24 The advantage that Uber has is simply one of scale.
0:35:37 So, you know, Uber can say, turn to Waymo and say, you know, give us 500 cars and we will fully utilize them because we’ve got two to three times the demand of a Lyft or whoever their closest competitor is.
0:35:39 And we can pay you more.
0:35:50 So, Uber posted revenue and profit growth, a strong third quarter outlook and that $20 billion buyback, but the stock still fell.
0:35:53 Why do you think we saw that pullback in the stock?
0:35:58 We’re off less than 1% and the stock was up 47% on the year.
0:36:02 So, you have a stock like that, you know, you need to, that means expectations were high.
0:36:07 So, for the stock to really move up a lot, you would need a big beat and raise quarter.
0:36:14 And I think we call this more like a, you know, modest beat and raise or a modest beat and bracket quarter.
0:36:16 I think that’s most of the answer.
0:36:23 A little bit of investor concerns over the profitability of the mobility segments because the margins sort of came down a little bit.
0:36:30 I think they addressed that in some of the callbacks, but, you know, or in on the main call, but that’ll be a little bit of an overhang.
0:36:38 And so, yeah, I think that’s why you just didn’t, you know, for the stock, if your stock runs up that much into the print, you need a big print.
0:36:44 And my guess is that the stock consolidates here a little bit, and then we’re just going to wait to see more AV launches, RoboTaxi launches.
0:36:48 If those happen, I think the stock will continue to work higher.
0:36:49 It’s still one of my top picks.
0:36:52 So, this quarter was strong, no doubt about it.
0:37:00 But as we just heard, when your stock’s up 50% year-to-date, sometimes a strong quarter doesn’t really cut it for Wall Street.
0:37:04 They want to see something spectacular, and we probably didn’t see that.
0:37:11 What we did see, though, is a company that clearly wants to be more than just a ride-hailing company.
0:37:17 This is a company that has demonstrated a pretty strong ability to diversify into new businesses.
0:37:19 They did it with delivery.
0:37:21 They did it with freight.
0:37:25 And now, they are clearly focused on catching the big fish.
0:37:28 And that is, of course, autonomous.
0:37:32 On Monday’s episode, we talked about how Uber might be taking the Netflix approach,
0:37:37 where you build the distribution network, you get custody of the consumer,
0:37:40 and then you sort of build your way back up the supply chain.
0:37:41 Perhaps they will do that.
0:37:46 But what is definitely clear is that they are laser-focused on autonomous.
0:37:49 As Dara Khosrasahi, the CEO, highlighted on the call,
0:37:55 they have secured at least 20 autonomous vehicle partnerships so far.
0:37:58 The only other real competitor that could take that approach is Lyft.
0:38:03 And by our count, Lyft only has four partnerships so far.
0:38:05 So, Uber is by far the leader here.
0:38:08 They’re well on their way to controlling the supply.
0:38:12 And that would help explain the valuation and the run-up we’ve seen this year.
0:38:17 But the message from Uber this quarter is quite clear.
0:38:20 They don’t want to be just a ride-hailing company.
0:38:22 They want to be something more.
0:38:26 Okay, that’s it for today.
0:38:27 I’m Ed Elson.
0:38:30 Thank you for listening to Profity Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:38:36 And one note, our team is out of office for vacation starting next week.
0:38:38 There will be no new episodes for the next two weeks.
0:38:43 But before we go, join us tomorrow for our conversation with Professor Aswath Damodaran,
0:38:45 only on Profity Markets.
0:38:47 Profity Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:39:05 Thank you for listening to Profity Markets.
0:39:09 Thank you for listening to Profity Markets.
0:39:09 Thank you for listening to Profity Markets.
0:39:10 Thank you for listening to Profity Markets.
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0:00:42 In the U.S., there are tons of ways to get where you’re trying to go.
0:00:45 Unless you’re talking about taking the train.
0:00:48 What’s the state of high-speed rail here in the U.S.?
0:00:50 Non-existent and terrible.
0:00:57 That’s this week on Explain It To Me,
0:01:00 New episodes every Sunday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:09 There’s a story sailors used to tell
0:01:11 of mysterious rogue waves
0:01:14 rising out of nowhere in the middle of the ocean.
0:01:17 But it was always just a story.
0:01:20 Until New Year’s Day, 1995.
0:01:27 The Dropner Deep Sea Oil Platform had been weathering a miserable storm for hours.
0:01:32 But then, suddenly, an 85-foot wave rose out of the sea.
0:01:36 This wave was impossibly steep.
0:01:41 A nearly vertical wall of water as tall as a seven-story building.
0:01:46 The first rogue wave to ever be recorded.
0:01:53 But how do giant walls of water spring out of the ocean, seemingly out of nowhere?
0:02:00 This week on Unexplainable, the reality behind mythical rogue waves.
0:02:04 Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Wednesday.
0:02:11 Today’s number, one trillion.
0:02:15 That’s how many different smells can be detected by the human nose.
0:02:20 Researchers had previously estimated that humans could only detect 10,000 smells.
0:02:23 That was until they met Sam Wagman-Fried.
0:02:26 Money markets matter.
0:02:29 If money is evil, then that building is hell.
0:02:30 The show goes on!
0:02:34 The folks are never watched the show, show!
0:02:36 Welcome to Prof G Markets.
0:02:37 I’m Ed Elson.
0:02:38 It is August 7th.
0:02:41 Let’s check in on yesterday’s market vitals.
0:02:46 The major indices all rose as investors digested the latest round of earnings.
0:02:50 Apple drove some of the rally, climbing 5% on news from the White House
0:02:54 that the company will boost its investment in U.S. manufacturing by $100 billion.
0:02:57 Meanwhile, the dollar and short-term treasury yields fell
0:03:01 as traders bet on the possibility of imminent rate cuts.
0:03:06 And finally, Trump’s extended tariff deadline has officially arrived.
0:03:11 Tariffs on more than 60 countries plus the EU are set to go into effect today.
0:03:18 Trump raised the total levy on India to 50% yesterday due to India’s purchase of Russian oil.
0:03:22 He also said he would impose a 100% tariff on chip imports.
0:03:28 But companies moving production back to the U.S., or promising to do so, Apple,
0:03:30 those ones will be exempt.
0:03:32 Okay.
0:03:34 What else is happening?
0:03:40 OpenAI is in talks for a potential share sale that would value it at $500 billion.
0:03:46 There’s a massive jump from the $300 billion valuation it secured earlier this year.
0:03:52 And this new deal would be a secondary sale with current and former employees selling shares.
0:03:57 So, OpenAI has hit a half a trillion dollar valuation.
0:04:00 That makes it the most valuable private company in the world.
0:04:04 Also, the most valuable private company of all time.
0:04:11 Well, if this isn’t proof that the public markets and the IPO is just becoming increasingly irrelevant,
0:04:12 I don’t know what is.
0:04:19 And the fact that there is enough money in the private markets to invest in a company at half a trillion dollars,
0:04:28 the fact that there is enough private investor demand not for a proper funding round but for a multi-billion dollar secondary sale,
0:04:34 that is evidence to me that the public markets are just kind of irrelevant at this point.
0:04:37 I mean, think about why the public markets even exist.
0:04:40 I mean, it’s for one, to raise capital.
0:04:43 If you want to raise tens of billions of dollars, you need to find the money somewhere.
0:04:46 The public markets are supposed to provide that for you.
0:04:53 Two, brand awareness helps get your name out, helps when you’re ringing the bell on CNBC, everyone’s talking about you.
0:04:56 And three, most importantly, liquidity.
0:05:05 If you’re a founder, if you’re an employee, if you’re an early investor, this is how you sell your shares and you cash out.
0:05:07 You IPO, you go public.
0:05:15 But what this secondary sale proves is that the private markets are now more than capable of checking all three boxes.
0:05:18 Capital raising, done.
0:05:22 This company has raised $60 billion in its lifetime.
0:05:25 There is more than enough capital in the private markets now.
0:05:27 Brand awareness, also done.
0:05:30 OpenAI has Twitter and Instagram and podcasts.
0:05:33 You don’t need the NASDAQ to get the word out.
0:05:36 And three, most importantly, liquidity, done.
0:05:38 Why is OpenAI doing this?
0:05:45 According to the reporting, this is exclusively for the current and former employees who want to sell their stock.
0:05:47 In other words, this isn’t even about investment.
0:05:55 This is all about liquidity, which is the one thing we used to think the public markets were supposed to be really good at.
0:05:59 If you want to get your bag, if you want to cash out, you go public.
0:06:02 Now, why should we care about this?
0:06:06 Why am I speaking in this semi-aggravated tone right now?
0:06:11 Well, for the same reason we’ve discussed when we talked about SpaceX and Anthropic and Stripe.
0:06:18 This is a potentially once-in-a-lifetime company in which retail investors cannot invest.
0:06:23 And that is even at this crazy valuation of $500 billion.
0:06:30 I mean, this makes OpenAI more valuable than Coca-Cola, more valuable than Johnson & Johnson, more valuable than Netflix.
0:06:34 This makes it the 19th most valuable company in the world.
0:06:37 It’s just a few billion dollars shy of MasterCard.
0:06:41 You know, this company has every reason to be a public company.
0:06:44 And yet, at the same time, it doesn’t.
0:06:54 Because in 2025, the private markets can do everything the public markets can do, minus the scrutiny from the SEC and minus the hassle of regulation.
0:06:56 So, you can’t really blame them.
0:06:58 I mean, why go public when you can just do this?
0:07:00 No one loses.
0:07:03 Not your investors, not your founders, not your employees.
0:07:04 If they want to sell, they can.
0:07:06 Plenty of buyers out there.
0:07:11 So, the only loser here is the retail investor who doesn’t get access to any of this.
0:07:18 I mean, if you’re a retail investor and you want to participate in this thing called AI, you basically have three options.
0:07:25 One, you can keep investing in the chip stocks like NVIDIA, which are already worth trillions of dollars.
0:07:33 Two, you can keep investing in big tech, which are building data centers but are also already worth trillions of dollars.
0:07:41 Or you could try to find some AI alpha in the public markets and maybe you invest in Palantir, for example.
0:07:43 But, oh, wait, that’s what everyone’s doing.
0:07:47 Hence why the company is valued at 600 times earnings.
0:07:57 And so, what we have created here is a world in which assets in the private markets are extremely accessible and liquid for the private investors.
0:08:02 But as soon as you’re in the public markets, ironically, the dynamic flips.
0:08:11 And that’s exactly what we saw, by the way, with the Figma IPO, which, as you probably remember, we were very bullish on, but only at $33 per share.
0:08:14 Because, remember, that was the IPO price.
0:08:17 That was the price at which certain people were able to get in.
0:08:20 And allocation at that valuation was very scarce.
0:08:28 If you tried to buy the Figma IPO on Robinhood, for example, you probably got either zero shares, or if you were lucky, maybe you got one.
0:08:32 And what happened as soon as the company started trading?
0:08:34 It shot up 250%.
0:08:40 Put another way, in the private markets, where the demand was artificially constrained,
0:08:43 the price was a lot lower.
0:08:44 It was a lot more accessible.
0:08:51 And then, in the public markets, for which this was basically the only exciting IPO of the year,
0:08:55 you had this gigantic flood of demand.
0:08:56 The price went way up.
0:09:00 And suddenly, you could only buy Figma at $100 a share.
0:09:08 So, what we have here is this growing rift between the private markets and the public markets,
0:09:12 where not only do the private markets have greater access to the most valuable companies,
0:09:16 they’re also getting lower prices because there is less demand.
0:09:19 But again, not so little demand that there isn’t enough liquidity.
0:09:20 There’s plenty of liquidity.
0:09:27 It’s just the right amount of demand such that you know the price will go up, especially if the company does go public.
0:09:30 And you also know that you can sell whenever you’d like.
0:09:33 I mean, it’s basically an investor’s dream.
0:09:40 And it’s why these venture-backed companies keep pursuing the same strategy because they know that it works.
0:09:48 And they also know that if anything goes wrong, they can always just pull the cord on the parachute and take the fallback option of the IPO.
0:09:49 And that’s what we saw with Figma.
0:09:58 Put another way, there are too many good companies in the private markets and too many shitty companies in the public markets,
0:10:05 such that when the one good company goes public, it’s like getting into a nightclub at 1 a.m. on a Saturday.
0:10:07 You can’t really do it.
0:10:10 The only ones who can do it are the ones who are buying tables.
0:10:13 It’s the ones who have $10,000 to spend.
0:10:18 So, look, congratulations to OpenAI and to the employees.
0:10:22 $500 billion, the most valuable startup in history.
0:10:23 Good on you.
0:10:29 But, you know, just remember, there is a reason why the rest of America isn’t celebrating here.
0:10:30 They’re not celebrating alongside you.
0:10:33 And it’s because the rest of America can’t buy.
0:10:42 All they get to do here is sit around, read the news, listen to this podcast, and watch you get rich.
0:10:43 That’s what’s happening.
0:10:46 But the same isn’t true of public companies.
0:10:57 If OpenAI goes public tomorrow, suddenly there’s a chance for regular investors, for retail investors, to have a stake in this thing, to participate in the upside.
0:11:00 But that’s only going to happen if you IPO.
0:11:02 And I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
0:11:12 Disney stock fell yesterday, despite beating expectations.
0:11:14 Revenue came in just shy of forecasts.
0:11:19 And while Disney raised its fiscal guidance for the full year, some analysts were still underwhelmed.
0:11:27 The experiences segment was a standout, with revenue up 8%, thanks to strong performance from the domestic parks and the Disney Cruise Line.
0:11:31 However, revenue for its entertainment segment rose just 1%.
0:11:36 That was dragged down by a 15% revenue drop in the traditional TV business.
0:11:37 No surprise there.
0:11:43 One bright spot in entertainment, though, Disney Plus and Hulu added 2.6 million new subscribers.
0:11:48 Now, the company also made two very interesting strategic announcements.
0:11:55 One, it will sunset the Hulu app and roll it all up into Disney Plus.
0:12:03 And two, they also unveiled a new deal between the NFL and ESPN, which Disney owns.
0:12:07 Under the deal, the NFL will take a 10% stake in ESPN.
0:12:16 And in exchange, ESPN will get control over the NFL network, the NFL Red Zone channel, and also NFL’s fantasy platform.
0:12:25 They will also get licensing rights to three additional games, meaning ESPN now has the rights to 28 NFL games per season.
0:12:32 Disney’s stock declined as much as 5%, but it ended up closing down roughly 3%.
0:12:36 Okay, a lot there, a lot to unpack.
0:12:42 So let’s bring in Jason Bazinet, Managing Director of Media and Entertainment Research at Citigroup.
0:12:48 Okay, Jason, thank you for joining me on the podcast.
0:12:49 Yeah, happy to do it.
0:12:54 So we’d love to just get your initial reactions to Disney earnings.
0:12:56 What were your initial thoughts?
0:12:58 What were your biggest takeaways from the earnings we saw?
0:13:06 Well, to set the stage, I mean, the main fear the street had coming into this earnings result was what they call the experiences segment,
0:13:08 which is really theme parks to laymen.
0:13:15 There’s a few competitive jitters because of Comcast Epic Universe and a little bit of macro fears.
0:13:19 So that’s where I zoomed in first.
0:13:22 And I would say the numbers were actually quite good at experiences.
0:13:31 The second thing the street was expecting was for the firm to raise their earnings guidance for the full year.
0:13:36 So they were $5.75 was the guide for this fiscal year.
0:13:38 The street was looking for them to raise it to $6.
0:13:41 And they only raised it by about a dime to $5.85.
0:13:44 That’s really why you saw the weakness in the shares today.
0:13:48 It was just a miss versus those buy-site expectations.
0:13:52 Was any of this, do you think any of this had to do with the other announcements we saw?
0:13:55 These were the things that at least we were most interested in.
0:14:02 One was Disney Plus merging with Hulu and perhaps what that would say about the company.
0:14:05 It seems like a significant strategic move.
0:14:12 And then the second, which has been getting a lot of coverage, is this deal between ESPN and the NFL.
0:14:21 And I’m just wondering if, in your view, the market’s reaction might have been reflecting that or if it’s largely, as you say, to do with the guidance.
0:14:24 Well, no, I don’t think it reflected either of those things.
0:14:25 I say that for two reasons.
0:14:35 The first is Disney has been somewhat hamstrung in terms of what it could do with Hulu until it bought the 33% that was owned by Comcast.
0:14:41 And so they sort of finally settled that a little bit earlier this year.
0:14:49 So this is sort of the first sort of flexibility that Disney had to do whatever it wants to do with Hulu, which includes expanding it globally.
0:14:57 So that was sort of viewed as table stakes and largely expected, and it was more mechanical in terms of the timing.
0:15:12 Regarding ESPN and what happened there, I would say that the street has almost removed all of the direct-to-consumer business from their valuation calculus.
0:15:14 Why do I say that?
0:15:32 The way you should, I think, most investors think about the direct-to-consumer business is you have the 800-pound juggernaut with Netflix, and then you have a bunch of sort of small apps, Max, Hulu, Peacock, that are really too small to really matter.
0:15:34 And Disney’s sort of stuck in the middle.
0:15:38 They’re not really sort of really big, but they could be relevant someday.
0:15:43 And so what the street’s been looking for for some time is just healthy subscriber additions.
0:15:52 And Disney hasn’t had healthy subscriber additions for some time, so it’s almost been removed from the way the stock—the way the buy-side thinks about the stock.
0:15:55 So it’s really much an earnings story.
0:16:10 What the bulls hope for is that the streaming business begins to accelerate, and if it begins to accelerate, it can sort of help Disney’s multiple more than it will help the earnings, and that’s really the thing that they’re looking for.
0:16:15 But I don’t think—I felt today was just a building block and moving in that direction, right?
0:16:28 Beginning to put, you know, the flagship service as part of streaming, to bundle what they call flagship, what we all think of as the real ESPN, with Hulu, with Disney Plus all together.
0:16:33 And those are all just sort of building blocks, laying the foundation to accelerate streaming growth.
0:16:37 And so it could become more important in the future, but it’s not why the stock was down a couple percent today.
0:16:47 Yeah. It’s interesting how, with Disney, increasingly the story has become about the parks and the experiences and making sure that there is real growth there.
0:16:53 I assume because it’s sort of their greatest differentiator in the entertainment space.
0:16:58 I mean, it seems increasingly that that is what investors are most focused on.
0:17:04 How are the parks doing? How is the cruise line doing? Is that something that you would say is happening?
0:17:07 It’s 100 percent true, and there’s a delicious irony embedded in all this.
0:17:15 If I rolled the clock back 15 years ago, investors would say to me, oh, I love Disney, but I hate the theme parks because they’re cyclical and capital intensive.
0:17:25 It really speaks to it really speaks to just how much damage has occurred inside the media ecosystem, where now what you have essentially is this declining legacy linear business.
0:17:33 You have a somewhat growing direct-to-consumer business, and the two just sort of net out where people don’t really get super excited.
0:17:38 And that’s why all I shift towards experiences where it’s viewed as sort of better.
0:17:41 Yeah, why do you think that shift has really changed?
0:17:50 I mean, thinking about it just from a purely business perspective, as you say, 15 years ago, the view is it’s too capital intensive.
0:17:52 It’s too expensive to build these parks.
0:18:00 You know, I’d rather a software application like Netflix that can just sort of quickly and easily and cheaply distribute the content.
0:18:06 And now it’s almost reversed where it’s like, well, because it’s so capital intensive, that’s your moat.
0:18:12 And then, you know, everyone can build a streaming service, so we’re not as interested in that anymore.
0:18:13 That’s exactly right.
0:18:14 That’s exactly right.
0:18:19 I mean, it’s what was considered sort of a negative is now actually a positive.
0:18:20 I mean, you have some other tailwinds.
0:18:27 I mean, to Disney’s credit, the parks have become bigger because they fortified it with a lot of the recent intellectual property.
0:18:34 You know, the Pixar that they bought in 2006, Lucasfilms, which they bought in 12, Marvel in 2009.
0:18:36 So they really refreshed the parks.
0:18:37 That helped.
0:18:44 You have a long secular tailwind where younger consumers are just valuing experiences over things.
0:18:46 That’s been another tailwind for the business.
0:18:48 So there’s some other vectors to it.
0:18:54 But I would say the central one is really just media has just been walloped by all these, you know, digital changes that have happened.
0:18:57 And it’s been very difficult for traditional medias to navigate that shift.
0:19:07 Just going back to this deal between ESPN and the NFL, at the very least, whether or not the market really cared about it.
0:19:08 Yeah.
0:19:10 It’s a new kind of deal.
0:19:19 I mean, the idea of having a sports league taking this pretty sizable ownership stake in the network that’s going to distribute its content.
0:19:19 Yeah.
0:19:22 I don’t think I’ve seen that before.
0:19:26 I’m just wondering if you’ve ever seen a precedent for this.
0:19:29 Have you ever seen an agreement that looks like this?
0:19:31 Or is this pretty new?
0:19:32 It’s absolutely new.
0:19:42 I mean, there are some examples in the sports betting world where leagues have taken stakes in the data companies that feed sports betting apps.
0:19:49 So it’s not totally unusual for the leagues to take equity stakes in their intellectual property as opposed to just selling it for cash.
0:19:55 But you’re right that it is certainly unique to take one in a video distributor.
0:19:59 And I think the reason I would sort of offer up one primary reason for that.
0:20:10 If you think about what allowed ESPN to become ESPN, they essentially had deeper financial moats than a lot of the other sports channels because they’d been around the longest.
0:20:15 Therefore, they got the largest affiliate fees from the cable companies.
0:20:18 That allowed them to bid more than anyone else, right?
0:20:32 As we move into this new world of mega tech companies with, you know, trillion-dollar market caps and much more free cash flow, the calculus has sort of changed where you can have a big tech company, you know, outbid Disney for rights.
0:20:37 So if you’re Disney, what do you do in that world where you’re no longer the biggest fish?
0:20:51 Well, you start tethering yourself to the league where at least if a league takes a larger cash payment from a tech giant, they’re going to at least think about the diminished equity stake in their existing partner, if that makes sense.
0:20:59 And that’s sort of how I would think about it and why Disney was probably willing to sell some of ESPN today where they probably wouldn’t have in the past.
0:21:04 Yes, it sounds like the way Disney feels about it is what can we do?
0:21:12 Well, we can make sure that the NFL has an upside in doing business with us by literally giving them a stake in the upside.
0:21:12 Yeah.
0:21:22 It almost reminds me of what we’ve seen in big tech where big tech will establish these contracts with these AI startups and then also invest in them.
0:21:23 Yeah.
0:21:26 And basically make sure, like, we’re both on the same team here.
0:21:26 Correct.
0:21:30 We’re doing business together, but ultimately we’re on the same team.
0:21:34 We’re both going to share in the upside here, which makes a lot of sense.
0:21:34 Yeah.
0:21:46 And also sort of inflict some pain, potentially, where if the NFL goes with someone else, they may get a larger cash payment, but their equity stake in ESPN will be worth less.
0:21:47 Yes.
0:21:47 Yes.
0:21:53 Which sounds a little anti-competitive the more I sort of think about it in real terms.
0:21:58 But perhaps 10% is small enough of a number.
0:22:00 Well, we really appreciate your time, Jason.
0:22:02 Yeah, absolutely.
0:22:03 Thank you for joining us on the podcast.
0:22:04 Thank you, Ed.
0:22:14 That was Jason Bazinet, Managing Director of Media and Entertainment Research at Citigroup.
0:22:20 So, this NFL-Disney deal, we tried to sort of identify a winner.
0:22:22 Maybe it’s not as clear.
0:22:23 The NFL, maybe it wins.
0:22:24 Maybe Disney wins here.
0:22:26 We’ll see how things shake out.
0:22:33 However, there is one loser that we can identify to a certainty here, and that is the viewer.
0:22:40 Because if you watch football, well, the long and short of it is, this deal is going to make it even harder for you to access games.
0:22:54 In fact, to watch every game in the 2025 NFL season without cable, you would need subscriptions to at least half a dozen streaming services and YouTube TV, which will run you up as much as $1,500.
0:22:57 And by the way, that was before this deal.
0:22:59 After this deal, it’s going to be even more.
0:23:03 Now, you might say, well, why wouldn’t I just watch the whole season on cable?
0:23:07 And the answer to that question is, you can’t.
0:23:14 Because Amazon now owns the rights to Thursday Night Football, and Netflix also now owns the rights to select games, too.
0:23:19 So, if you’re a serious football fan, basically, you have to stream now.
0:23:23 This is the net-net of the streaming wars.
0:23:31 And if there’s one thing that you want to take away from this deal, it’s that, yes, streaming just got even more expensive.
0:23:36 After the break, a look at Uber’s earnings.
0:23:37 Stay with us.
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0:26:44 We’re back with Prof G Markets.
0:26:50 Uber reported strong earnings yesterday and announced one of the biggest buybacks in tech this year.
0:26:53 Revenue was up 18% year over year and beat expectations.
0:27:00 Monthly active users grew 15% and they issued this $20 billion buyback.
0:27:06 So you would think that that is all great news, a huge buyback, strong revenue.
0:27:08 You’d think that’s a recipe for a pop in the stock.
0:27:12 But no, the markets actually didn’t like it that much.
0:27:18 The stock fell as much as 5% on the day and then partially recovered by market close.
0:27:29 So for more on these earnings and why Wall Street reacted the way it did, our producer, Claire, spoke with Mark Mahaney, Senior Managing Director and Head of Internet Research at Evercool.
0:27:36 Well, I think the star of the show was the delivery business that showed this kind of accelerating bookings growth, revenue growth.
0:27:39 And the company, to their credit, does give you a lot of disclosure.
0:27:47 The number of trips, the number of active users of delivery, all of that showed growth rates that were either very consistent or actually accelerated.
0:27:49 So that was kind of the star of the show.
0:27:53 Mobility came in a little bit light versus the street.
0:27:56 The unit metrics that they give you, the number of trips was very consistent.
0:27:59 Bookings growth decelerated a little bit.
0:28:08 There’s this odd issue with the mobility bookings, and that’s the Uber that most people know, which is that it includes insurance.
0:28:12 And insurance is a big chunk of their bookings.
0:28:18 In California, I think it’s like 40% of any ride you do is just to cover insurance costs.
0:28:22 It’s exceptionally high, especially in California, but in a few other states, too.
0:28:29 Anyway, what’s happened is actually some of those insurance rates have started to come down and moderate, so that means the bookings have come down.
0:28:35 And so that sort of has a negative optical look, negative optical read.
0:28:41 So that’s why you look at kind of the basic trips data, and that’s been very consistent, kind of high teens, 18% year-over-year growth.
0:28:48 So I look at this asset, and I think you kind of got, if you’re an Uber bull like I am, you kind of got what you wanted to hear.
0:28:52 They’re pretty consistent, top-line growth, expanding margins.
0:28:54 They said they’re going to lean in and do even more buybacks.
0:29:01 They increased their share repurchase authorization, which is a company like this should do, given the amount of cash that they have.
0:29:03 And, you know, I kind of came away.
0:29:11 I think the last point is what’s really big on the stock is what’s the AB future look like, or what’s the RoboTaxi future look like?
0:29:21 And I thought they did a decent job of explaining the number or detailing the number of rollouts they’ve had, and they will have, over the next 6 to 12 months.
0:29:24 Some of that’s with Waymo, but there are other companies here, too.
0:29:32 We Ride and Pony are two that we’re going to see in international markets, and they’re probably going to be other ones in the U.S. market.
0:29:39 Anything that suggests that there’s going to be multiple AV vendors or RoboTaxi companies is probably a good thing for Uber.
0:29:43 So I think they checked off most of the boxes that they needed to for their print today.
0:29:49 I want to go through all those units you mentioned, but let’s start at the top with mobility and delivery.
0:29:53 Do you know what we can really attribute that growth to?
0:29:54 Well, maybe three or four things.
0:29:59 First is that there’s still kind of secular growth in this industry.
0:30:04 I know everybody who’s watching this probably feels like everybody uses Ubers, but that’s not the case.
0:30:13 There’s still a very large percentage of Uber users who don’t cross-sell yet, that use one but don’t use the other.
0:30:16 So there are more of these cross-sell opportunities.
0:30:18 There are these curves.
0:30:26 Like when we’ve done our own independent survey work, you know, the percentage of users who use Uber either for delivery or mobility on a weekly basis is still a minority.
0:30:28 I mean, it’s like 20%.
0:30:31 That number is roughly right.
0:30:32 We did it in our survey work.
0:30:37 But so there’s this thing over time, you just get people more embedded.
0:30:41 They get more used to using Ubers, and that frequency rises.
0:30:43 And then the number of users continues to rise.
0:30:46 So I think there’s one is just secular growth.
0:30:48 Secondly, I think they continue to execute pretty well.
0:30:56 Like what they’re doing is in the mobility service, you know, what most people think about associate with Uber, they’re taking all these price points and they’re stretching them.
0:31:00 So they’re offering you cheaper ways to do it with wait and save.
0:31:07 And they’re also offering you more premium services like Uber Reserve, where you reserve your ride the day before you pay extra for it.
0:31:10 But that part of the business is growing something like 60%.
0:31:18 So they’re taking a basic product and they’re just kind of tiering it, like T-I-E-R tiering it and lower price points, higher price points.
0:31:19 It just expands the market.
0:31:24 So I think they’re doing they’re taking some steps to kind of keep that growth rate relatively elevated.
0:31:34 And I think it is, you know, if you’re doing over 100 billion in bookings and you can still maintain, you know, high teams, close to 20% unit growth, that’s not too many companies can do that.
0:31:47 It probably speaks volumes to how well they execute, that they’re the market leader in almost all markets that they’re in, and that this is just a really large trillion dollar TAM, you know, couple of trillion dollar TAMs, mobility and delivery.
0:31:55 And they’re still, you know, they’re still relatively small, you know, kind of very low double digits, maybe high single digit percent share of that.
0:31:59 That means they can maintain high growth for a long period of time.
0:32:06 Let’s get into the autonomous vehicles part of the business that came up a lot on the earnings call.
0:32:11 And we’ve discussed Uber’s role in the autonomous wars with you before on this show.
0:32:19 What do you make of their strategy at this point where they’re, you know, they’re basically, they don’t have their own robotaxi platform.
0:32:23 They’re partnering with companies like Waymo and Baidu and others.
0:32:25 What do you make of this strategy?
0:32:28 This has been the biggest swing factor in the stock.
0:32:30 Look, we began the year at 60 bucks.
0:32:33 The thesis on the stock at that time was that it’s robotaxi roadkill.
0:32:40 And then they rolled out successfully with Waymo in Austin and with Waymo in Atlanta.
0:32:45 Now, Waymo is going, you know, a couple of markets, some of which I think they’re just going to continue to go solo and not with Uber.
0:32:53 But they at least, Uber was able to prove to the market and I think to Waymo and its investors that it could really accelerate their rollout.
0:33:06 One of the biggest investors in Waymo, one of the partners at Andreessen Horowitz, tweeted that Uber had helped, what was the expression, turbocharge the launch of Waymo in Austin.
0:33:11 And so that kind of removed a little bit some of the robotaxi overhang.
0:33:13 There’s still a little bit of an overhang.
0:33:18 All of us are going to have these questions, like, in 10 years, am I really going to be using Uber?
0:33:20 Am I going to just use a robotaxi instead?
0:33:22 The truth is it’s probably somewhere in the middle.
0:33:26 You could well be using Uber to order your robotaxi.
0:33:30 Or, you know, you may be indifferent as to whether it’s a robotaxi or a human driver.
0:33:41 You just want to get to LaGuardia, you know, for a 530 flight or, you know, wherever you want to go to the to the restaurant for dinner, you know, a family dinner on Sunday night, whatever it is.
0:33:50 And so what Uber now needs to do is I think they’ve proven that they can add value to at least one robotaxi partner.
0:34:00 But now they’re bringing several onto the network and they need to prove to the partner and also to consumers and regulators that other AV partners can work just as well as Waymo did.
0:34:02 Because Waymo seems to have been very successful so far.
0:34:07 And what’s also last point is really important is, look, they’re just an intermediary in the middle of all this.
0:34:14 If there’s only one robotaxi company, if it’s Waymo’s world, that’s not a good thing for Uber.
0:34:16 Like they that means they have no leverage, no negotiating leverage.
0:34:31 However, if there are multiple robotaxi companies out there, Baidu, Pony, WeRide, Zoosk, the Amazon company, if there are multiple of these, then all of a sudden that intermediary in the middle gains more negotiating leverage.
0:34:33 You get more suppliers, better economics.
0:34:36 So that’s that’s kind of, I think, the next leg in the stock.
0:34:38 And that’s why I continue to be an Uber bowl.
0:34:43 Is Uber the only intermediary in that market at this point?
0:34:45 Do they have any competition for being that middleman?
0:34:47 No, Lyft is.
0:34:49 Oh, in the U.S., that’s pretty much those two.
0:34:57 I think if you go into international markets, I know there’s some other players, but, you know, there’s no question that Uber is far and away the largest global player.
0:35:03 That doesn’t mean it’s the largest player in every market, but in most markets that it’s in, it’s the largest player.
0:35:16 So, yeah, they’re the look, if Uber can make it work such that they can be the largest demand aggregator, I guess it’s the terminology for the robotaxi companies.
0:35:18 I mean, they can prove this in multiple markets.
0:35:21 I don’t see any reason why Lyft can’t take advantage of this, too.
0:35:24 The advantage that Uber has is simply one of scale.
0:35:37 So, you know, Uber can say, turn to Waymo and say, you know, give us 500 cars and we will fully utilize them because we’ve got two to three times the demand of a Lyft or whoever their closest competitor is.
0:35:39 And we can pay you more.
0:35:50 So, Uber posted revenue and profit growth, a strong third quarter outlook and that $20 billion buyback, but the stock still fell.
0:35:53 Why do you think we saw that pullback in the stock?
0:35:58 We’re off less than 1% and the stock was up 47% on the year.
0:36:02 So, you have a stock like that, you know, you need to, that means expectations were high.
0:36:07 So, for the stock to really move up a lot, you would need a big beat and raise quarter.
0:36:14 And I think we call this more like a, you know, modest beat and raise or a modest beat and bracket quarter.
0:36:16 I think that’s most of the answer.
0:36:23 A little bit of investor concerns over the profitability of the mobility segments because the margins sort of came down a little bit.
0:36:30 I think they addressed that in some of the callbacks, but, you know, or in on the main call, but that’ll be a little bit of an overhang.
0:36:38 And so, yeah, I think that’s why you just didn’t, you know, for the stock, if your stock runs up that much into the print, you need a big print.
0:36:44 And my guess is that the stock consolidates here a little bit, and then we’re just going to wait to see more AV launches, RoboTaxi launches.
0:36:48 If those happen, I think the stock will continue to work higher.
0:36:49 It’s still one of my top picks.
0:36:52 So, this quarter was strong, no doubt about it.
0:37:00 But as we just heard, when your stock’s up 50% year-to-date, sometimes a strong quarter doesn’t really cut it for Wall Street.
0:37:04 They want to see something spectacular, and we probably didn’t see that.
0:37:11 What we did see, though, is a company that clearly wants to be more than just a ride-hailing company.
0:37:17 This is a company that has demonstrated a pretty strong ability to diversify into new businesses.
0:37:19 They did it with delivery.
0:37:21 They did it with freight.
0:37:25 And now, they are clearly focused on catching the big fish.
0:37:28 And that is, of course, autonomous.
0:37:32 On Monday’s episode, we talked about how Uber might be taking the Netflix approach,
0:37:37 where you build the distribution network, you get custody of the consumer,
0:37:40 and then you sort of build your way back up the supply chain.
0:37:41 Perhaps they will do that.
0:37:46 But what is definitely clear is that they are laser-focused on autonomous.
0:37:49 As Dara Khosrasahi, the CEO, highlighted on the call,
0:37:55 they have secured at least 20 autonomous vehicle partnerships so far.
0:37:58 The only other real competitor that could take that approach is Lyft.
0:38:03 And by our count, Lyft only has four partnerships so far.
0:38:05 So, Uber is by far the leader here.
0:38:08 They’re well on their way to controlling the supply.
0:38:12 And that would help explain the valuation and the run-up we’ve seen this year.
0:38:17 But the message from Uber this quarter is quite clear.
0:38:20 They don’t want to be just a ride-hailing company.
0:38:22 They want to be something more.
0:38:26 Okay, that’s it for today.
0:38:27 I’m Ed Elson.
0:38:30 Thank you for listening to Profity Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:38:36 And one note, our team is out of office for vacation starting next week.
0:38:38 There will be no new episodes for the next two weeks.
0:38:43 But before we go, join us tomorrow for our conversation with Professor Aswath Damodaran,
0:38:45 only on Profity Markets.
0:38:47 Profity Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:39:05 Thank you for listening to Profity Markets.
0:39:09 Thank you for listening to Profity Markets.
0:39:09 Thank you for listening to Profity Markets.
0:39:10 Thank you for listening to Profity Markets.
Ed breaks down a potential share sale that could make OpenAI the most valuable private company in the world. Then, he’s joined by Jason Bazinet, Managing Director of Media and Entertainment Research at Citigroup, to dig into Disney’s earnings. Finally, Mark Mahaney joins the show to unpack Uber’s results and explain how the company is positioning itself in the race for autonomous dominance.
A note to our listeners: our team is out of office for vacation starting next week. There will be no new episodes from August 11th to the 22nd. Enjoy the rest of your summer, and we’ll be back on the 25th.
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