Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - August 23rd, 2025

23:30So based on your reporting, the folks you spoke to, what's next here? We have U.S. Steel. We have MP Materials. We have Intel. We have news around AMD and NVIDIA. What do investors need to be prepared for the next shoe to drop? I don't know, Tim. I don't know. Would it be like a do autos go and get on your radar at all? It's hard to tell. Listen, Bloomberg has reported, particularly around the MP materials deal. We had reported that MP materials looked like something was being lined up by the DOD and it wouldn't just be the only one. Some of the reporting we have had is that the Intel situation may not just be a one off.

24:14Right. Like the things I have heard are this administration is keen on taking home run swings and not just on one thing. Right. So I think at this point, the market is looking into the question that you're asking, Tim, like what is next? I think it's hard to know what's next. I mean, so much of this, it's important to say, is so fluid. The conversations are just ongoing and what they might be talking about today might completely change in the next 24 hours. Joe Doe. We know whatever comes, you will be on it. It's one of the most read stories on the Bloomberg Terminal. President Trump targets America Inc.

24:50with a new brand of U.S. Statecraft. Joe Doe is economic statecraft reporter.

24:56Carol Massar:This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. And we stick with Joe Doe and the race for Greenland's riches. We've been hearing a lot about rare earth minerals, you know, the critical materials used in everything from missile defense systems to smartphones. And now they're at the heart of renewed U.S. interest in Greenland, where some of the world's richest untapped deposits can be found.

25:32The Trump administration has made no secret of its geopolitical curiosity about the Island, and the minerals may be a big part of why. To break it all down, Bloomberg cross-asset reporter Isabel Lee and I were joined by Joe Doe, Bloomberg News economic statecraft reporter who visited the icy island. This was really the thesis I wanted to dig into, right? I mean, we spent the first three months of the Trump 2.0 administration focusing on, let's buy Greenland again, let's take it over, we're not going to rule out military force. And, you know, I'd been talking to people kind of in the background who said, you know, what's really being discussed here is the national security and the potential for investments within the island.

26:17So I met up with Drew Horn, who is a former Trump administration official. He worked in the DOD Defense Department and the Defense, excuse me, the DOE, the Energy Department. he was on Trump's team in 2019 that was tasked with figuring out a way to um own Greenland I guess and so where we came down on this was we took this trip with Drew to kind of see this behind the scenes of like trying to invest in Greenland so take us there because you went to Greenland well first you went to Denmark yeah I believe and then you yeah I went to Copenhagen for a day yeah well Greenland is I guess I should say Greenland is part of Denmark but first you went to Denmark proper, Copenhagen, to then fly to Greenland.

27:01What was it like? How'd you get there? Was it all snow? Just break it down for us. Partly. Yeah. I mean, it was really difficult. People had warned me before I went to Greenland. Hey, like actually my my neighbor is a flight attendant and said to me, hey, some of my flight attendant friends have been stuck for like three days in Greenland. And this was literally a week before I went there. And I said, oh, my gosh. OK. And other people had warned me, listen, whatever days you think you're flying in and out of Greenland, just like assume it's going to be a day or two difference. And that turned out to be the case.

27:37I mean, I flew out of Newark on a Tuesday. I got into Copenhagen the next morning. No problem there. uh and then the day after that so this is thursday i took a flight four and a half hour flight direct to nook i didn't realize at the time that something like 20 percent of the the direct flights from copenhagen to nook there's only one per day had been canceled or turned around or something to that effect we got in i thought no problem a day later we fly out to southern greenland which is where this actual mine was located we flew on a plane or a helicopter we We flew on a plane to get down there.

28:12It was a prop plane, which was kind of cool. We landed, and within moments of landing, it's like the densest fog I've ever seen in my life just started to settle in. And we were supposed to be up the next day in a helicopter to get to this mine. Because getting to the mine from this kind of base camp that we had in southern Greenland, it was either like a two-and-a-half-hour, three-hour boat ride or a helicopter ride that takes you 15 minutes. There's no driving. There's there's no other options. Those are the options. The next day we woke up and it was snowing and it was a fog. I mean, I feel like the the the fog ceiling was like 20 feet above us.

28:53I mean, it was straight out of like a like Harry Potter, you know, when he's like at the end of the whole movie and he's just in this densely fogged area and none of it makes sense. It felt that way. does it and you know there's a big take podcast that you did with david gura it's great you have some sound from the french the helicopter pilot yeah yeah pier explaining to you uh you know about the percentages that you were going to actually get off the ground i'm not going to give the whole thing away but it made me think when i was listening to that and reading your story the actual extraction and processing of this stuff it's got to be pretty challenging in an environment such as this yeah our part of that story was just pointing out how hard it was to get to the mine itself so you add that on top of uh it is in a type of rock that has still not been processed at commercial scale uh it is in a place that currently has no port um there's no there there's no equipment there right like it's not like there were roads and early stage equipment there's not even like a small campsite of people on the site it's just a mound of dirt on a mountain So you have to imagine that from that point on, you need to somehow get all the equipment in.

30:09You somehow need to basically build out like a small camp to begin digging into the ground. And this mine, Tanbury's, the deposit is well known as being a serious deposit of critical minerals, specifically rare earths. And, you know, one of the things we point out in the story is that Chinese officials have been to the property before asking about the potential of buying it. We've also heard that Russian officials had been there before. So it's known. But to get it to work, it is still unclear actually how you will get it to work.

30:45Carol Massar:One of the tidbits that I learned from your story among the many is that rare earths, in spite of their name, tend to be abundant as other industrial components. But I guess, I mean, extracting them is a different story altogether. Yeah. So we know that Trump floated buying Greenland in 2019, a move back then, which was widely mocked. But given the island's rare earth reserve, strategic location, shipping potential, was Trump actually ahead of his time or ahead of the curve? I don't know for sure. Like, I think maybe the way I kind of phrase it is, you know, it seems like the president gets information in front of him uh and the way he kind of communicates it maybe is uh cut up and spliced as to what the reality is i think people like drew horn and others who have been around greenland now for years finally felt like the attention by the president united states on this on the rare earth on the island give it a business opportunity because the the sense from drew horn and he said this to me on the trip was like if investors feel like the full faith and credit that the united states federal government is behind a project they will suddenly give it a chance and that will be the thing to see here like one of the things we pointed out was uh so we drew horn finally made it to tan breeze and he got to see it and later that week he got out of greenland and went down to mar-a-lago to talk to trump aides about it um and then within weeks after that, the Export-Import Bank in the United States gave a letter of interest of a 15-year loan for the mine.

32:23Now, the key thing here is that's a letter of interest. It's non-binding. It technically means nothing, but it does mean that it's now on the radar of the U.S. federal government. So is that enough to convince investors like this is a good bet? I don't know, But it does say to investors, OK, so it's probably not a complete no show. Like maybe we should at least sniff around it because there is a potential that Trump just says, let's throw some money at it. But I think that's that's where we get into this territory of like, whoa, what are we really doing here? I've covered mining for 10 years at Bloomberg.

33:07and one of the things you run into all the time are these junior exploration companies or these junior miners and you don't you don't write about them because they're nothing because they haven't done anything they haven't done anything and typically kind of the rule of thumb is like they aren't really anything until a major miner comes up and buys them you know 50 of them or the entirety of them and then it's like okay this is a real deposit it's going to get developed by serious people with investors and, you know, the companies with good bonds. But this, this, Tanbury's, still does fall within that junior miner, junior exploration company.

33:43Carol Massar:So then what challenges, technical, financial, or regulatory, still stand in the way? All of them. Of Tanbury's. Yeah, I mean, all of them. All of them, for sure. One of the things pointed out to me in Greenland was like, hey, the thing about Greenlanders is they're open for business. They love that idea. So locals were open. Well, open, but so long as it doesn't hurt the environment. So we don't want our fjords polluted. We don't want very nice green mountainside with a big hole in it suddenly. If you're able to do it responsibly and sustainably, the understanding was that would be okay. But then it's still not clear that that would necessarily happen with tan breeze.

34:27Can that be done, Joe? Can mining happen? Can mining of rarests happen in a sustainable way that doesn't scar the earth, that doesn't destroy or affect these fjords? The Tanbreeze folks would say yes. They would say modern mining technical capabilities, we're able to figure it out. We're able to make this sustainable and clean. But again, like anything else, it is you enter a period of show me. Investors need to see that you can actually do it. Does the US buy Greenland? does it need to buy Greenland? No, no. I mean, let's be honest. It does not need to buy Greenland. It's not going to buy Greenland.

35:07Greenland is still a part of Denmark. One of the most interesting parts of the story for me was I sat in the home of a local politician who said, listen, for me, it's not about being owned by the United States. Like right now, we're owned by Denmark. We don't want to be owned by Denmark. We don't want to be owned by anybody. We want to be ourselves. We want to be our own country. We are Inuit. We are Greenlandic. There's a real history there. So I think that's another important part is it's not a, oh, the U.S. would be better. It's like, no, we don't want to be owned by anybody. And I think that bit has often gotten missed in the discussion over Greenland.

35:46Joe Doe, he's the economic statecraft reporter for Bloomberg News. Check out his Big Take. It's on the Bloomberg Terminal and at Bloomberg.com. Also, check out the Big Take podcast. podcast. Him along with David Gurra of Bloomberg News.

36:08Carol Massar:This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Now with ChatGPT work. I'm Carol Masser. Globetrotters hunting for airfare bargains are in for a rude awakening as the days of stumbling across a cheap seat on a popular flight could soon disappear. Bloomberg's Juan Ha reports that airlines from Delta to Virgin Atlantic are adopting artificial intelligence to change seat prices more quickly by weighing dozens of variables in real time, helping capture more revenue while shrinking pricing gaps that once allowed travelers to find bargain fares. Machine learning models can more accurately forecast demand by analyzing historical booking patterns, seat inventory, and seasonal trends, while also continuously tracking competitors' fares and capacity changes to update prices in near real time.

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38:15Carol Massar:Let's talk about healthcare for a second. It doesn't always work the way people expect it to. If you've ever waited on a prescription refill or had a hard time getting the care you needed, you know the feeling. The system should just work better for everyone. That's exactly what the people at Optum are trying to do every day. They're a healthcare company linking patient care and pharmacy services and using data and technology to drive the whole system so care is connected, not complicated, for patients and providers. Things like making it easier to get care that looks at the whole person, from primary care doctors to mental health support and even in-home care, and then using technology to make sure they all work together.

38:54Carol Massar:Technology designed to help doctors spend less time on busy work and more time with their patients. And those prescriptions? Optum is working to bring costs down, save patients money, and make it easier to get refills. Little by little, Optum is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Head to business.optim.com to see how.

39:41That moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.

39:46Carol Massar:You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Or watch us live on YouTube. Earlier this month, the Trump administration increased its tariffs on imports from New Zealand from 10 % to 15%. A move that has rattled New Zealand farmers, manufacturers and trade officials. It's a move that threatens billions in economic ties and raises tough questions about how New Zealand navigates a trade relationship with both the U.S. and China. On top of that, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut its policy rate by 25 basis points to a three-year low of 3%, flagging a stalled economy and warnings of domestic global headwinds.

40:32For more, Carol and I recently caught up with the Finance Minister of New Zealand, Nicola Willis.

40:37Carol Massar:Well, I think that there's considerable uncertainty in world affairs today. Where there were once things that were given and were very predictable, we are now seeing more volatility in policy decision-making, which has implications for investors and for sovereigns in terms of the way that we go about things. For our part in New Zealand, we tend to want to be a beacon of stability amidst all of that, to say, you know what, we're going to continue to be rules-based, we have low stable inflation, we have declining interest rates, We're going for growth. We trade with many countries around the world and wish to continue to pursue freer trading relationships.

41:13Carol Massar:We have prospects for growth. And so we aim to be stable, predictable. We have secure institutions and we think those things will be at a premium in the coming years as there is more volatility. Mr. Willis, whenever we have officials from other countries visiting the U.S., which is a big part of your job, We always ask the question about a particular trip. Why are you in New York right now? Why are you visiting us right now? We're here because we value very much both our economic and security relationship with the United States. And I'm pursuing more economic growth for New Zealand and New Zealanders.

41:50Carol Massar:And we believe it's in the interests of both of our countries to forge stronger trade and investment ties in pursuit of that. So how does that work in an America first environment? in an environment from Washington, D.C., where the communication has been very strongly, this is an administration that is looking at the priorities of the U.S., whether or not it affects other countries in a negative way. Well, quite simply, our proposition is it's in the United States' interests to have a strong and growing relationship with New Zealand. We're part of the Five Eyes security partnership, along with Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

42:28Carol Massar:and we continue to believe that's very important for the United States. We also have a very complementary trade relationship. We export primary products, tech services, which Americans value and equally we import significant amounts from the United States and we'll continue to do so. We, like many countries, are increasing our investment in defence and it's likely that some of the kit that we will be purchasing in future will be manufactured in the United States. similarly when our national airline replaces its fleet, it's likely that some of those planes will be produced in America. We have very strong and long-standing people-to-people ties.

43:06Carol Massar:Our two countries have got along well for many, many decades, and we think it is in the interests of both countries that New Zealand continue to be a strong relationship that the United States can look to and rely on. So is this White House, though, impacting the relationship, the strong relationship that New Zealand has had with the United States in any way? We continue to view the United States as our friends. Now, of course, we would prefer not to be facing additional tariffs. Find me a country that says, yeah, we really like additional tariffs. And we're not in that situation. And we have a history of pursuing freer trading agreements.

43:42Carol Massar:We have very, very low trade barriers for United States imports. And we feel we've treated American exporters very well. So we would prefer to be on a lower tariff rate. We've ended up at 15 % as a base rate, which reflects the fact we have a small trade surplus with the United States. We're talking very marginal New Zealand dollars, 500 million. So it isn't big. We don't really think - But it's disappointing that it wasn't maybe the 10 % that folks were thinking initially. We would have preferred that. We understand the rule that's been applied, but it's hard to conceive that New Zealand, a country of 5 million people, is any kind of threat to the manufacturing or industrial base of America.

44:20Carol Massar:Does it lead though, and I guess we're trying to figure out, we talk a lot about the geopolitical world order being changing around. We talked about, the president was just asked about maybe closer ties between China and Latin America. China already has a presence, we know in Latin America, but maybe they are increased as a result of what's going on. Are you forging different relationships because of some of the strained relationships out of the United States, or strained relations out of the US? I wouldn't characterise it that way. New Zealand has always looked to forge relationships around the world and to reinforce the rules-based system wherever we can and to work through multilateral institutions because we're small and our voice will never be the loudest.

45:02Carol Massar:Like the United States, we have a strong and important economic relationship with China that we've been able to maintain while also taking very different points of view on many matters and we've been able to balance those two things. So not strengthening them with China because of maybe what's going on? No, I would not characterize it that way, but continuing to lean into our relationships where we have common interests. So we are members, for example, of the CPTPP trade relationship, and we have welcomed the EU's interest in becoming a dialogue partner and looking to reinforce that trade arrangement.

45:39Carol Massar:We recently signed free trade agreements with the United Kingdom, with the European Union. They're important. with the GCC, the UAE, and we're pursuing a trade relationship with India. We think it's very important as a small exporting country that we have options in who we trade with, wherever possible try and open more doors. We've got a grand history of doing that. We were one of the first countries in the world to drop subsidies, to ensure that we were genuinely open to the world. We won't get rich selling to ourselves. We're too small for that. So we do well when the world welcomes our goods and services.

46:13Minister Willis, are you meeting with any US officials on this trip?

46:18Carol Massar:Not on this trip. 36 hours only, I'm afraid. But I look forward to returning to Washington later this year for some of the annual meetings. And at that point, I would hope to meet with some people from the administration. At that point, will part of your job be to try to reduce the 15 % tariff on goods from New Zealand? Well, look, we're realistic about the fact that the Trump administration have set a clear parameter that countries that have surpluses are unlikely to get reductions in their tariffs. But we will continue to advance our case, which is that we have a very complementary trade relationship with the United States, built on a security partnership in a very long history.

46:57Carol Massar:And we will press the case for our exporters that we would, we think, be fairly facing a lower rate. And we will continue to share that message with our friends in the United States to make sure that if there is reconsideration of the current tariff regime in future, that we're front of the line for reconsideration. We think we should be. We're Kiwis. We play fair. We play by the rules. We sell you Sauvignon Blanc tourism experiences and lean red meat that Americans love. And we would like you to be getting it at fair prices into the future. And a lower tariff rate supports that. And we expect to continue buying huge amounts of American goods into the future.

47:34Carol Massar:So there's nothing to fear from giving New Zealand a lower tariff rate in the future. You're also great sailors. I'm just going to point it out as a fellow sailor myself. We're talking with Nicola Willis. She's Minister of Finance of New Zealand here in our studio at Bloomberg headquarters in New York City. What are you guys doing to encourage foreign direct investment? Yeah, well, we're very big on this. So we've set up a new entity, Invest New Zealand, to connect international investors with New Zealand. We're reforming our legislation to make it easier for foreign investors to make investments.

48:06Carol Massar:And administratively, we've sped up the process by which they can do that. In particular, we've introduced golden visas, the active investor plus, which means that investors can get residency rights in exchange for making investments either actively or passively in New Zealand assets. Is it working? It is working. We've been delighted by the response. A really high degree of interest. Hundreds of people have applied for those visas within the first few months, pledging over a billion dollars in New Zealand funds. And I think that reflects two things. One, New Zealand is a safe, secure place in a world that increasingly is less so.

48:44Carol Massar:And people like the idea of having that residency in New Zealand. But second, they can see that many of our investment opportunities are currently undercapitalised. Investing in New Zealand is a good bet. Can they buy real estate in New Zealand, though, if they get residency? Not currently. That is excluded. Our government, which is comprised of three parties, has been in discussion about loosening those regulations so that those who get an active investor visa may in future be able to purchase a property in New Zealand. How far into the future? What are we talking about for a timeline here? Those talks have been underway and you would expect that a decision would be made by our cabinet in the coming weeks.

49:22Okay, in the coming weeks. So, Carol, get ready. I'm in. Your little slice of paradise.

49:29Carol Massar:We're surrounded by a big, fat ocean. I know. We have huge amounts of land. It's beautiful. I think the world should be looking at New Zealand. We have great prospects. Will the U.S. tariffs impact growth in your nation? Well, as I said, we'd always prefer not to be facing those tariffs. But as a proportion of our overall trade, it is actually quite small. the more significant impact for us is the same as it is for many other countries, which is a lower rate of global growth resulting from tariffs and retaliatory tariffs. Are you worried about a global recession then? No, not a recession, but just a lower rate of potential growth than would have otherwise been the case, particularly out of our trading partners.

50:10Carol Massar:That then affects prices for our goods and demand for our goods. I mean, it can slow enough to feel like a recession, right? It can slow enough to feel like we're not meeting the potential that would have otherwise been realised. And that's been reflected in our forecasts for the New Zealand economy in which we did pare down our growth expectations for the future based on what was developing with tariffs. You know, obviously there's a lot of water to go under the bridge to see how all of this does play out globally, how countries are affected and what it means. For New Zealand's part, we continue to forecast strong growth, low inflation.

50:43Carol Massar:That will remain the case, but a tariff-free world is one in which we grow faster. Do you think that might come back if there's a different president in the White House? I think countries will always continue to pursue their own interests as they should. Yeah. And that's why I will keep singing the song for freer trade, because that is in New Zealand's interests. So glad to get some time with you. Thank you so much, Tim and I both enjoyed it. Nicola Willis, she's Minister of Finance for New Zealand right here in our studio. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Listen live each weekday, starting at 2 p.m.

51:15Carol Massar:Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week. From subways to superchargers, more insights from the C-suite, including the CFO of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority on addressing fare evasion, keeping the city's public transit budgets on track, and the agency's nearly$2 billion investment in a subway line. Plus, the founder and CEO of SparkCharge wants to bring mobile EV charging everywhere you go.

51:54We discuss the company's plans to accelerate EV adoption all across North America. That's coming up later this hour, but first, the digital payments company Block, formerly known as Square, earlier this month raised its full-year profit guidance. This after second quarter earnings came in well ahead of Wall Street expectations. It was fueled by strength in its cash app lending business and resilient payment volumes. The company now expects to generate$10.17 billion in gross profit this year. That's up from a prior forecast of$9.96 billion. We've got with us Amrita Ahuja, CFO and COO of Block. She joins us from Palo Alto, California, actually from Hillsborough, California.

52:30Excuse me. Amrita is going to be featured in an upcoming edition of the Bloomberg CFO Briefing newsletter. You can sign up for that at Bloomberg.com slash CFO Briefing. Also with us is Nina Trentman, Bloomberg News Senior Editor. She writes the Bloomberg CFO Briefing Newsletter. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Welcome, welcome, everybody. And Rita, I want to start with you. I almost said square at Block. You've got a great view of what the consumer is doing because of transactions, because of what's happening with the cash app. How would you describe the U.S. consumer right now?

53:03Carol Massar:Yeah, well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. You know, look, we have real-time data across our two at-scale ecosystems, Square that serves sellers, small businesses. And across that, we see hundreds of millions of buyer cards, consumer cards. And then Cash App, which serves individuals, 57 million monthly active accounts on Cash App across the United States. So between these two businesses, we get to see a lot in terms of consumer spending and consumer health patterns. Overall, what we've seen is resilience. From a Square perspective, we see strong retention.

53:40Carol Massar:This is the growth or seam store growth for a small business on our platform, remaining steady and strong. And we see strong new customer acquisition, which we think is a sign of strong small business as well as the growth of our platform. And then from a cash app perspective, we see continued growth in spending and in earned wages on our platform, which again is an indication of the engagement of our platform. our ability to command share of wallet, as well as the resilience of a consumer. And Rita, thanks for joining us. Just following up there, in terms of your business, you also have a buy now, pay later component.

54:17Carol Massar:I'm wondering how delinquency rates have evolved in that business and also how you're thinking about underwriting in this somewhat uncertain macro environment. Well, we think the product attributes of our three lending products enable us to be pretty nimble. and be able to pivot quickly to the extent we do see a turn in repayment rates, which, as you heard on our call, we haven't yet heard. We have three primary lending products, Square Loans that serve small businesses, as you note, Buy Now, Pay Later, which serves customers at a point of checkout when they're buying something and they can pay in for that transaction.

54:55Carol Massar:And then Cash App Borrow, which enables you to get a line of credit that often bridges people. We know so many Americans are living through effect to paycheck, and this helps smooth their cash flows. And across each of these three lending products, we've seen strong and healthy repayment behavior. Now, we're ready to the extent that that changes. We have the ability to update our underwriting, machine learning-based underwriting models in real time. But we also want to be there to support customers as their needs arise, and we think that our products can do that effectively. Just following up in terms of signals that you're looking for specifically on performance of the business and whether any of the macro uncertainty is feeding through, what are the metrics that you're specifically looking for?

55:39Carol Massar:Sure. So from a cash app perspective, we look at things like inflows per active. That's the amount of money that customers bring into cash app. And that held a growth rate on inflows per active in the second quarter for us with cash app was at 8%. showing, again, strong engagement with our platform and resilience of the consumer. We also look at things like commerce volumes. Our commerce volumes over the last 12 months within Cash App grew 16 % year over year. That's the amount of money that people are using our platform to conduct commerce, whether it's buy now, pay later, Cash App card or Cash App pay.

56:18Carol Massar:We also look from a square perspective at things like growth on our discretionary verticals. So our food and beverage GPV, which you can think of as discretionary, we serve a lot of quick service restaurants, full service restaurants, grew 15 % year over year in the second quarter. retail GPV, also oftentimes discretionary vertical for us grew 10 % year over year. Again, these are healthy rates of growth, but we're very watchful. We look at this data on a daily basis and we want to be there both to protect our business, but also more importantly, serve our customers to the extent that, you know, in this dynamic environment, anything were to change.

56:57Carol Massar:I want to pivot a little bit to crypto because Block holds roughly 8 ,600 bitcoins worth almost a billion dollars and crypto treasury companies have been getting a lot of attention. You guys own Bitcoin. Are there any plans to add Ether to the company? What's the journey been like on that crypto plan and Ether plans at all? No plans to add anything beyond Bitcoin from a cryptocurrency perspective to our balance sheet. We believe that if the internet is to have a currency, Bitcoin is the most likely contender. It's the longest lived. It's resilient. It's an open developer ecosystem. All the rules are understood and it is effectively an open source platform, an open protocol for money.

57:43Carol Massar:We think ultimately if the internet does have a currency and that is Bitcoin, that enables us as a company to move at the speed of the internet as we think about our business more globally. So a world in which Bitcoin succeeds is a world in which companies like ours can move more efficiently and more quickly to serve our customers. That's the sort of purpose, the strategic alignment that we have with Bitcoin, all sorts of different ways that we as a company are learning about how to operate in a Bitcoin world. One of those is by holding it on our own balance sheet as a corporate to have Bitcoin in our treasuries.

58:21Carol Massar:And we've been doing this for five plus years now. And it's something where we get to learn the insurance aspects, the buy-sell aspects, the custody aspects, the protection around that, and how we think about the accounting and the tax elements for Bitcoin. So we're learning a lot as a company as we do that, just as an individual would or another institution might. And I think it's something that a lot of other corporates will begin to consider more and more. We're speaking with Amrita Ahuja, CFO and COO of Block. And Rita, on the Bitcoin question, the buying and selling, do you have plans to buy more Bitcoin to add to the treasury?

59:02Carol Massar:We have a program in place where we dollar cost average our Bitcoin purchases. We have gross profit that we generate from Bitcoin and our customer oriented products. So we sell Bitcoin through Cash App. We've sold over$58 billion worth of Bitcoin to our Cash App customers. We also have a product that we're launching in the back half of this year for Bitcoin miners around the infrastructure, the hardware and this integrated software for that. And we have a self-custody product, BitQ. We have said that 10 percent of all of the gross profit that we generate across our Bitcoin products, we will invest back into Bitcoin.

59:40Carol Massar:And so we're in the market every single day buying that 10 percent worth of our gross profit back into Bitcoin. Rita, we are running out of time. just very quickly, just wondering from a CFO perspective, you said if you've held Bitcoin on your balance sheet for five years, you've seen the fluctuations. That's basically what I'm hearing from CFOs as to why they don't want to hold Bitcoin. How is the company navigating the ups and downs in the price, even though most recently we've seen more increase than decrease? You know, there's been fluctuations in a number of different assets, different asset classes.

1:00:11Carol Massar:You have to be transparent with your investors as to what's driving various elements. The updated accounting standards for Bitcoin treat it like any other asset that you may own, where you write it up at the end of the quarter if the value goes up and you write it down at the end of the quarter if the value goes down. The prior standards, which to get into some of the accounting wonkiness, were as an intangible asset were very, very strict and you could only ever write down the value of Bitcoin. So now with these updated accounting standards that look like any other asset that you may hold on your balance sheet, we think that that has the opportunity to create clarity for investors and for companies and to bring more people into the Bitcoin ecosystem.

1:00:55I'm Rita Ahuja, CFO and COO of Block. Please do come back and join us soon on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily. Really appreciate your time. Once again, I'm Rita Ahuja, CFO and COO of Block, joining us from Hillsborough, California. Also with us, Nina Tretman, Bloomberg News Senior Editor. She writes the Bloomberg CFO Briefing Newsletter. Sign up for it at Bloomberg.com slash CFO dash briefing.

1:01:21Carol Massar:This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Now with ChatGPT work. I'm Carol Masser. Globetrotters hunting for airfare bargains are in for a rude awakening as the days of stumbling across a cheap seat on a popular flight could soon disappear. Bloomberg's Juan Ha reports that airlines from Delta to Virgin Atlantic are adopting artificial intelligence to change seat prices more quickly by weighing dozens of variables in real time, helping capture more revenue while shrinking pricing gaps that once allowed travelers to find bargain fares. Machine learning models can more accurately forecast demand by analyzing historical booking patterns, seed inventory, and seasonal trends, while also continuously tracking competitors' fares and capacity changes to update prices in near real time.

1:02:08Carol Massar:The technology could lead to higher fares on busy routes as airlines pack flights closer to capacity, but may also result in lower fares on off-peak and lower-demand routes. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com today by selecting Work Mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans. Whether you're planning a big tech event, launching a new campaign, or just stocking up on team gear, finding the right promotional products makes all the difference. 4imprint offers thousands of options, from on-trend apparel and premium drinkware to tech, totes, and giveaways, so you can find the right fit for any audience, purpose, or budget.

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1:03:28Carol Massar:Let's talk about healthcare for a second. It doesn't always work the way people expect it to. If you've ever waited on a prescription refill or had a hard time getting the care you needed, you know the feeling. The system should just work better for everyone. That's exactly what the people at Optum are trying to do every day. They're a healthcare company linking patient care and pharmacy services and using data and technology to drive the whole system so care is connected, not complicated, for patients and providers. Things like making it easier to get care that looks at the whole person, from primary care doctors to mental health support and even in-home care, and then using technology to make sure they all work together.

1:04:07Carol Massar:Technology designed to help doctors spend less time on busy work and more time with their patients. And those prescriptions? Optum is working to bring costs down, save patients money, and make it easier to get refills. Little by little, Optum is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Head to business.optum.com to see how.

1:04:54moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.

1:04:59Carol Massar:You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube. The MTA runs New York City subways, buses and commuter trains that 6 million people rely on each weekday. And on Monday, board members approved close to a$2 billion contract to expand the Second Avenue subway line into East Harlem. Jay Patel is the CFO of the MTA. She's charged with quite the task, which I think is fair to say many would find unenviable, charting a sustainable path through one of the agency's most financially trying periods in its six decade history.

1:05:42She joins us here in the Bloomberg Businessweek studio. Jay, welcome. How are you?

1:05:46Carol Massar:I'm good. How are you, Tim? Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks so much for joining us. I want to start with the numbers and just ridership here. Weekday subway ridership is still 25 % below pre-COVID levels. In your modeling, does that ever come back to where it was? You know, we have a financial plan that's a five-year period. And originally, we were projecting that we would see our subway ridership up to 90%. But a couple of years ago, we were revised that because we weren't seeing that. But we're hopeful we see an 80 % by 2029 ridership recovery for subways. But on the railroads, we're seeing that recovery even higher today.

1:06:24Carol Massar:We see 85 % ridership recovery on our railroads, which is amazing. Something that we thought was going to be slower, our railroad customers than our subway customers, originally coming out of pre-pandemic. So is there a way to tap into that growth financially, perhaps with higher prices for those commuters, rather than here in the city for subway and bus riders? So, you know, what we have is very small, predictable fare increases that help balance the financial plan. And so we don't want to burden one rider over another. It's really about distance based and commuters. And so we keep that equitable.

1:07:04Carol Massar:You know that we do a 2 % fare increase every other year. And that keeps our financial plan in balance. How do you plan to get that number? I think you said 80 % ridership. How do you bring people back into the subways? We bring riders back by providing reliable on-time performance, right? Our service matters to customers, and delivering the service that we promise and schedule is something that we strive for, but also safety. Our customers need to feel safe, and our customers feel that, right? We've had the lowest safety numbers or crime numbers in July, and so our customers are telling us that by taking the subway, but also our customer surveys, right, tell us that customers are satisfied with the service that we're providing.

1:07:56The MTA faces a combined$1.1 billion deficit over three years starting in 2027. It already owes close to$50 billion. It needs to spend$68 billion more for vital improvements. There's some federal aid that's up in the air. The Trump administration is trying to roll back congestion pricing. What's the backup plan if the aid evaporates and the president is successful in rolling back congestion pricing?

1:08:21Carol Massar:You know, Tim, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that back in 2023, we were the first transit agency to solve our fiscal cliff. Thanks to Governor Hochul, Chair Lieber, and the legislature, we were able to come out of a deficit unlike any other transit agency today. You've heard SEPTAs facing deep cuts, Chicago, but we were the first to say we need state, federal, and local aid. And we got our state federal funding for us. We also, as the MTA, contributing to our solving our deficit, right? The MTA contributes 500 million to its operating efficiencies. And those deficits that we have in 27 and 28 and 29 are very small compared to our operating budget.

1:09:05Carol Massar:And we are committed to doing our part in saving money to help ensure that we can balance our budget in the out years. We were talking a little bit about the base fares of subways increasing regularly. I'm wondering if there, is there a set area within the MTA that that revenue goes toward? Because the base fare for a subway in New York City, it's expected to increase to$3 in January. Correct. So our fares help our operating budget, So 70 % of MTA's cost are labor and fringe. And so that pays for 70 ,000 employees. And then the small fraction is for the non-labor contract. So every fare contributes to operating cost on our side.

1:09:52Let's talk about fares and fare evasion. Usually when we talk fare evasion, I think of people jumping over subway turnstiles. And I know there've been some mitigation efforts in place, but I took the bus to LaGuardia on Thursday. It was a great experience. But when I got on the SBS in Queens, I got on, it was like an articulated bus. So, you know, it was a long one. I got off on in the back and out of like more than half a dozen people, I think I was the only one who paid. And I was thinking to myself, I didn't know it was optional to pay to get on the bus. What are the numbers there?

1:10:22Carol Massar:So it's not optional, right? To pay the fare. We are encouraging every customer to pay their fare share to the MTA. But there's no enforcement on the bus. So there's a couple of things that we're doing for fare evasion, and our chair has been tackling this first when he became chair. So on the subways, you've heard of us talking about we're doing fins, sleeves, gate guards, enforcing the exit gate, which is the fare evasion highway. And so we've made great strides on the subways. We've reduced fare evasion in over a year by 30 percent. We've dropped that rate from a high of 14 % to 9.8%. So we know those efforts are working.

1:11:04Carol Massar:On the buses, it's a little bit more difficult, but we're also working there. We've decreased fare evasion on our buses as well in the last year from 50 % to 44 % because all the tactics the president of New York City Transit is employing, we have Eagle teams that are on different bus routes to make sure that they are enforcing the pay your fare, right? Our bus operators do their due diligence, but really our Eagle teams are enforcement out there riding different routes and making sure customers pay their fare or they're getting a summons or they're getting off the bus. And that's how we're working towards that.

1:11:41Carol Massar:How does that work? Because I heard of a friend who was on a bus and someone had come around and like scanned their phone to see if they had paid the fare. Is that how it works? Explain to us. So right now, what we are doing is if you're boarding the bus, you have to pay because there's two different ways you can pay, right? Today is the MetroCard and the Omni. And when we go to full Omni next year, there's going to be proof of payment. And so what you can do is European-style proof of payment for customers is you can tap their phones or credit cards, the method of payment, to see if they paid their fare.

1:12:14Carol Massar:And if they didn't pay their fare, that's something that we'll work with on a summons or, you know, you need to pay your fare for our customer. And so that's something that's coming. We're really excited about that for Omni and proof of payment. But right now there's two different methods. And so we're working on different ways to combat fare evasion. I want to talk a little bit about proposals from mayoral candidates. Zorin Mamdani, for example, his proposal to make all New York City buses free. What do you think of that? And does it create a sort of a two-tiered mass transit system where people who ride buses don't pay for it, but then people who ride the subway do?

1:12:50And it kind of offset people not necessarily taking the right mode of transit for their destination.

1:12:56Carol Massar:We've heard the Mariel Candidates proposal for fare-free buses. What I'd like to emphasize again is fare box revenue is important to the operations of the MTA. It's 26 % of our revenue. And buses is about a billion dollars in the out years of revenue for the MTA bus, for the MTA, excuse me. And that's important to us. And so we want to make sure revenues equal service. And that is something that's a hypothetical right now. But we rely on Fairbox revenue. So you said a billion dollars in revenue is what it brings in. And Mamdani estimates that's about$750 million annually to make buses free. Is that an accurate assessment on his part?

1:13:39Carol Massar:I think there's pieces that he's looking at just the New York City Transit bus fare. We have MTA bus that we also run that the city contributes to. And that is also fare box revenue for buses. So what would taking away that revenue from the MTA do to the authorities finances? Or would it just be, I mean, look, again, it's a proposal. You said it's something that, you know, is not a plan yet. But to be fair, he is by far the favored candidate. And there are a lot of questions about what power he has to actually follow through with a campaign promise such as this. But this is certainly a central part of his campaign.

1:14:12So you've got to be looking at it closely.

1:14:13Carol Massar:We are looking at it. But one thing that I would like to emphasize, right, right now in New York City, fares are affordable. We make transit and buses the most affordable at$2.90. sense. And it's affordable with fair fares, reduced fare for our customers. But, you know, it is something that we will look into as the mayoral candidate has proposed. What about mitigating climate issues that affect particularly the subway stations? You go online, you see videos of flooding in stations. Or maybe you're trying to get home and on a rainy day in the summer and it happens. Water in the subway station. Do you guys have, at least as part of the upcoming capital plan, a plan in place to update the infrastructure?

1:14:57Carol Massar:A couple of points on that, right? A couple of the issues that arise in the subway systems are not the MTA's fault. New York City, right, contributes to the flooding issues that we face in the subways, whether it's through DEP, manholes, the sewage. So that is one aspect of the flooding that you see on the New York City transit. But our historic capital plan, that's$68.4 billion, does have climate resiliency of hardening the system in certain stations and proposed in therefore. Let's talk a little bit about congestion pricing. Not as hot of a topic as it was a few months ago. It seems like it's died down a little bit.

1:15:36In your view, is it working?

1:15:38Carol Massar:Congestion pricing is working. It is reducing traffic by 11 percent. What does that mean? 170 ,000 cars are off the road every single day. What else is it doing? It's moving our buses faster. It's moving people faster. We've seen a change in ridership, but also we've seen safety increases. There's a 14 % decline in pedestrian crashes. And on top of it all, it is bringing in the revenue that we had projected originally. It's being watched very closely, not just by proponents and opponents of it, but also by other cities that might want to put this into practice. have you or has the MTA heard from other cities about congestion pricing, about the model and about questions about implementing it in their own cities?

1:16:20Carol Massar:The MTA has heard from other cities and transit properties and engaged with them to have conversations about the process that New York implemented for the successful congestion pricing program that we're having. So they're looking at us as a model. We have to ask about the Second Avenue subway expansion as well. Just walk us through some of the plans for, and the timeline here, because this has been something that's been in the works, something that any New Yorker who's lived in New York for the last - Four, how many years? 40? Decades, 50 yards. 50. I think we talked about that at our special board meeting.

1:16:58Carol Massar:The contract that our board just approved is almost a$1.9 billion contract to start boring, right? What does that mean? It's starting the tunneling for the three stations that are vital to Second Avenue Subway Phase 2. And we are committed to expanding Second Avenue Phase 2 here at the MTA. And we think it's going to be a great service to our customers. It's going to serve about 100 ,000 customers in addition to the 200 ,000 customers that Second Avenue Subway Phase 1 serves today. Do you have a timeline or an expected timeline? I think the 2032 was the service date that we have set publicly. It's a very, like I said at the beginning, it's an unenviable task that you have ahead of you.

1:17:48Some people would argue. I would imagine that you spend quite a bit of time studying other transit systems around the world, what's worked and what hasn't worked. If you could wave a magic wand here in New York City to overcome some of the barriers that the MTA has experienced, whether they're financial barriers, whether they're CapEx barriers, what would those be? Like, what is the biggest obstacle to making the service even better here?

1:18:13Carol Massar:So I think, Tim, one thing that I would say is MTA is a leader. And being the largest agency in North America, other agencies look to us. I think I said this before, we led with the fiscal cliff. We lead with our capital program as well. We have started to do things differently since Jan O 'Lieber took over for C &D and now Jamie Torres-Springer. We do design build, we do faster, cheaper, and better. But we're employing definitely different ways of doing capital programs as well as operating for us to be better. I want to go back to congestion pricing and some financial questions around that, specifically about selling debt off of revenues.

1:18:59Do you have plans to sell debt off of revenues from congestion pricing?

1:19:03Carol Massar:So as you know, the congestion revenue is dedicated to the 20 to 24 capital program. It is expected to generate$15 billion for that program. And once we see a stable market in the revenues coming in, we do plan to issue debt. We've talked about it. That's not sometime until 2026 for us. Once we see a comfortable stream of revenue, We've projected$500 million for the next three years, and we want to make sure that we see that revenue and the markets are comfortable issuing that debt for us. You've talked about fair increases on MTA services. What about increases in congestion pricing, and what is the timeline for that?

1:19:41Carol Massar:So as the governor has said to us, the toll will continue to be$9 for three years. Then it will increase gradually to the next three years at$12. And then in the final, the seventh year, it'll be a$15 toll. So we've already had that phased in based on the schedule we approved. Can you just bring us, I know there's litigation around this with the federal government and with the state, but can you just take us into conversations that you've had with counterparts at the Department of Transportation over the last few months about making sure that the MTA stays on a sustainable financial path? So I think, you know, what I would say is the federal government contributes$2 billion to the MTA.

1:20:27Carol Massar:And that's a revenue source that we rely on to keep the system in a state of good repair. And so we would continue to want that funding. You know, MTA moves 40 percent of riders across North America, but receives only a fraction of federal dollars from Washington. And so we continue to rely on the federal dollars that we get. And it's important for us. But what's the backup plan if that evaporates? Yeah, we're confident, right, that the MTA and the federal government, the federal judge that is assigned, right, we're confident that we would win that lawsuit. You know, Judge Lyman issued a positive finding for the MTA just a few months ago.

1:21:08Carol Massar:And congestion pricing is, you know, continuing to operate and we're generating the funding. Jen, thanks so much. Oh, go ahead. Well, I was just going to ask one more question. And just, I mean, I imagine, you know, you get a lot of people who hear these numbers, congestion pricing is on track to raise 500 million. They say, wow, that sounds like a lot of money. Why are, you know, why are the subways still the way that they are? Delays, crime, uncleanliness. Help us just understand. I know that you said that a lot of those fares go towards paying workers, but a number like this, a number like 500 million.

1:21:46Carol Massar:What does it mean in the context for the broader MTA organization? Is that a lot of money? So I'll give you context. Our operating budget every year is about$20 billion, right? That is to run subways, buses, commuter rails, and the services for 6 million commuters every day. But in order for us to keep that system running, you have to maintain it, right? And so$68.4 billion, a good majority of that funding is to keep it in a state of good repair. That means new rail cars, new buses, new signal upgrades, track maintenance, and everything else that goes with operating a system that's so vast in size.

1:22:29Carol Massar:So$500 million is just one stream of revenue that generates, when we leverage it,$15 billion to continue with the capital side of the world. but the operating side has different funding sources. But we're confident that we, you know, move 6 million customers every single day and we're happy to do that safely. Jay Patel, CFO of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, joining us here in the Bloomberg Businessweek studio. You're listening to the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.

1:23:07Carol Massar:Or watch us live on YouTube. Some big news in the EV space this past month. Bloomberg reporting that Ford is unveiling plans for a new line of budget universal EVs and a$5 billion bid to achieve mass appeal. And then the U.S. Department of Transportation revived the$5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program, which was suspended back in February. So while Ford and the Department of Transportation pour billions into EV manufacturing and charging infrastructure, one company is providing an alternative to EV charging. Spark Charge provides off-grid, scalable charging solutions where they bring the charging power to you.

1:23:47The company recently raised over$30 million in capital to accelerate mobile EV charging adoption. For more, Carol and Bloomberg TV anchor Matt Miller caught up with the founder and CEO of Spark Charge, Josh Aviv. Matt is widely known at Bloomberg as a major car enthusiast, always driving something new. He kicks off the interview by explaining whether he is ready to make the transition to a full EV. No, because I'm a gearhead. I like to work on my cars myself. I like old American muscle. I like cars to be loud and smell like gasoline and vibrate a lot. But lately I've been driving a ton of EVs.

1:24:23I drive a new car every week for my podcast. It's called Hot Pursuit with Hannah Elliott. And the acceleration, the handling has gotten so much better. there's so many more to choose from that it's not just boring looking teslas with spartan interiors that it's it's become almost a preferred mode of transportation for me the one problem i have still charging the charging network is so bad yeah so we have a guest who's got a front row seat to

1:24:49Carol Massar:it so let's bring him in josh aviv is founder and ceo of spark charge uh he's out there in massachusetts josh good to have you here with matt get ready for a grilling because it is matt Miller. We're ready. We're ready. Listen, your company reminds us that it is the world's largest EV fleet charging network. Lay it out for us where it is, how many, who's using it. Give us some size and scope. Absolutely. So SparkCharge is the world's largest off-grid EV fleet charging network. We have operations across all 50 states and recently just launched in Canada and Mexico. What makes us special is that we bring the power to the fleet.

1:25:26So we show up with our off-grid mobile battery chargers and mobile power hubs. We can get going without any grid connection, which means we get fleets up and running and charging and as little as three to seven days versus them having to wait as much as two to three years for infrastructure to catch up. So you're the biggest off-grid EV charging network.

1:25:46Carol Massar:What does that mean? Meaning you're not the consumer chargers that are built up in malls or next to a Starbucks. You're working with like Ford Pro kind of customers to charge their trucks. Exactly. So you're working with construction fleets, with plumbers, with electricians, with anybody who's got a pro fleet. Amazon. Wow. Fleets like Amazon, last mile delivery, rideshare fleets as well, construction fleets, rental car fleets, school bus fleets. Think about the problem that consumers have where they're like, hey, I need to figure out how to charge one car. Fleets have the issue of how do I charge 20 cars, 100 cars, and how do I do that every day to keep my business going?

1:26:31And we step in and we basically get them up and running quicker than any other electrification option on planet Earth. We can get a full fleet up and running in as little as three days, fully electrified, and those cars out on the road. Dude, that is such a great business. How did you start this? Yeah, so we started it when we realized that a lot of fleets were waiting anywhere from two to five years before the grid would catch up and allow them to electrify. And we said, well, what happens if we bring the energy to you or if we get power set up to where we can use our batteries to get you charging almost immediately?

1:27:09What we realized is that fleets, they'll incorporate 50 cars, they'll incorporate 20 cars. but then they'll have the issue of going to the grid and saying, hey, we want to get these cars electrified, but the grid can't handle the demand of all these vehicles. And so we show up, we get them up and going with our mobile battery chargers, which means they're charging from a giant battery connected to charging stations. And then they're able to get up and running a lot quicker. And then they also have a smoother service, right? There's no such thing as grid delays or power outages, especially when it's being battery backed.

1:27:40All the energy is there.

1:27:41Carol Massar:Wait, so you just kind of bring a massive battery to places and that's how you do it? Is it on 18 wheels? How do you transport that? Yeah, so some of them are trailer-based. Some of them are container-based. But basically, we can get that fleet set up operating off that battery, and then they can begin charging from those charging stations immediately. We also have power hubs that use basically clean energy like hydrogen and things like that that can also get a fleet up and running quickly as well. That's what I was going to, so how do you charge your battery? That's what I'm curious. Like, where are you getting the power and how do you make sure it's cost efficient, especially when there's such a power grab right now with all the AI going on?

1:28:21Absolutely. So we're pretty much energy agnostic. So that means that we can grab energy from solar, which a lot of times that's what we'll do. We'll swap the battery out. So we'll basically have a battery recharging from a solar partner. We'll bring it in. We'll swap it out with a fresh battery and then keep that fleet going 24-7, 365. To the fleet, it looks like limitless energy, and we're managing all the power on the back end, which means they never have to worry about downtime or any operational inefficiencies. We're constantly swapping that battery out or hooking it up to solar to keep them going.

1:28:52I'm normally pretty skeptical, but I was like, wow, what a cool company. What a great idea. And now I realize he's just a great pitch man also. Right. I didn't see until now that you got a million dollar investment from Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner on Shark Tank. I think you've won various awards too. So you're great at selling these businesses, Josh.

1:29:12Carol Massar:But there has to be demand. Otherwise, you don't have a business. No, for sure. No, it's huge. And I mean, look at how well Ford Pro has done with that unit. It's just unbelievable, the growth. But what's your exit? I mean, are you looking to IPO this company? Will you sell it to a bigger company? How do you get Mark Cuban's money out? Yeah, so I mean, right now, we're really just focused on execution. We're having an amazing year, thank God. And we're really seeing fleets come to us and say, hey, we want to get going a lot quicker. We don't want to wait. And so we're having an amazing year. I think for us, the right exit will present itself.

1:29:48But right now, we're focused on scale. We're focused on making sure our customers are happy and making sure that we're onboarding a new fleet. Keep in mind, because we're not waiting on the grid to catch up, because we're able to service these fleets, we're almost onboarding a new fleet every week. So, you know, while we don't come out there and say it, we're probably one of the fastest growing EV charging networks out there as well.

1:30:09Carol Massar:Wait, execution. No offense. It's a pet peeve for me when an executive says execution. I don't know what that means. It's like everybody dumps things into that work. They just want to grow their business, you know, and they don't want to tell you what their exit is. So tell us, I mean, what does that mean? What do you need to do? What do you need to hit? What targets in order to really be successful and sustainable longer term? Absolutely. So for us, success is making sure that when we get a fleet operational, we're getting them operational to where they can actually grow their fleet. A lot of times fleets will come to us and they'll say, hey, I'm starting out with 10 cars, but my goal is to get to 100 cars and the grid can't keep up with that growth.

1:30:48Plus the time to install is going to take me three to five years at that number of vehicles. So for us, execution means, hey, get this fleet up and running in three to seven days, get them fully electrified. And then now that they're fully electrified and they want to grow their fleet, let's grow with them. Let's allow them to go from 10 vehicles to 20, 20 to 50, 50 to 100, and see long-term growth with that fleet partner over a number of years as they continue to grow and operate. And because we're getting them up and running quicker, we want them to see a better ROI than if they had to wait on infrastructure to catch up.

1:31:22All right, so we're speaking right now with Josh Aviv. He's the founder and CEO of Spark Charge. I know that you're focused on the pro, the commercial fleets, but you must also love cars. I've been in a ton of EVs lately. I was in a Chevy Blazer EVSS. I was in a Dodge Charger Daytona Scat Pack, which I loved. Right now I'm in a Cadillac Vistic, which I'm also just really positively surprised by. What do you drive? What's your DD, Josh? I drive a 2026 Cadillac Vistic. The Vistik is pretty sick, isn't it? I was truly impressed by this vehicle. I love it. I didn't love the Escalade IQ as much, which is the bigger EV.

1:32:06It's massive. It's a giant. It's like a giant house on wheels. But the Vistik is relatively snappy for a car that can still hold like seven people. What do you do for your charging when you're on the road, when you're going around, you know, to make work trips and you can't just be charging at home every night. What's your experience been with the U.S. consumer charging network? Yeah, so I'd say, you know, when it comes to road trips and things like that, one of the things that I love about the Vistic, it's got, I think, you know, real world mileage, roughly around 330 miles of range. And so I've been able to go from basically Boston down to New Jersey and almost all the way back on a single charge without having to stop.

1:32:51And I love it. I love it. I love the Super Cruise on it. It's probably, in my opinion, one of the best EVs I've driven. And I've owned, I think, close to 10 EVs in my lifetime. So love that car. I think when it comes to travel charging, I've typically used the Tesla Supercharger Network or Electrify America, any of your standard EV charging networks.

1:33:14Carol Massar:So what do you make of the state of EVs in America under this administration, which seems to have been pulling back? There's a lot of backlash. It seems like sales have slowed down. But is there any doubt in your mind, Josh, that we're all driving EVs in 10 years? There is no doubt in my mind. I think, look, I think what it's going to come down to is the economics of owning an EV, right? I think that's real. And I think that probably should have been the focal point from day one, right? Look how much money you're going to save when you're charging at home, right? Look at the time save not having to go to the gas station, right?

1:33:48Look at the experience of just being able to plug in when you pull in to your driveway. I think that is really going to come down to it. And if you think about it, the low cost of maintenance. I can't remember the last time I went to a mechanic for an oil change. I can't remember the last time I went to a mechanic because the engine light came on. I didn't know what that meant. The low cost of ownership for an electric vehicle is ultimately going to push more people to own electric vehicles. And I think that is why in the next 10 years we are all going to be driving EVs. is because they're going to save so much money to the consumer.

1:34:20Carol will switch when they drive themselves. She wants her own personal Waymo at her house in Jersey City. I do love Waymo, but I do like the idea of EVs.

1:34:29Carol Massar:I don't want to, you know, I'm concerned about the environment. Hey, Josh, stay in touch. Josh Aviv, founder and CEO of Spark Charge, joining us from Massachusetts. We've got to get him on my podcast, Hot Pursuit with Hannah Elliott. No. Yes, you could. Yeah, we'll share. We'll share. This is the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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