Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - June 19th, 2026

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1:39Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast. A lot came at investors in a shortened trading week because of Friday's Juneteenth market holiday. We had the first FOMC meeting presided over by new Fed chair Kevin Warsh.

2:22The latest actions between the U.S. and Iran in ending that war, which brought enthusiasm back into the markets. And speaking of that, SpaceX continued to capture a lot of attention on Wall Street and in the overall narrative. For the latest, head on over to Bloomberg.com or to the Bloomberg Terminal. Speaking of SpaceX, the historic milestone on Wall Street that just might reshape the entire late-stage private ecosystem. We dive into the massive SpaceX public debut, the largest IPO on record, which is still sending shockwaves through tech and capital markets and has us all eyeing the next big AI IPO.

2:58Could it be Anthropic? Could it be OpenAI? Could be. That's the question. It's also one of the macro themes, new companies, AI and IPOs that we're focusing on this hour. Yeah. And another major macro theme, the race to secure critical minerals and build up their supply chains. It's all in keeping with countries protecting their national interests. Those critical minerals, by the way, also important to AI and SpaceX overall. For more on silver, antimony, and kind of the whole industry and what's going on, we checked in with the CEOs of two publicly held mining companies. And our third theme this hour that's on our radar, the push to build, manufacture, and physically rebuild America's industrial base from the ground up.

3:37With the CEO over at Thompson Research Group, she shares why we are in what she calls, quote, the golden age of commercial construction. All of that to come, we begin with the company that's captured our imagination for a long time, first as a private company and now as one that just went public in the largest IPO ever one week ago. It's one for the history books and one that launched SpaceX into the ranks of the world's most valuable publicly held companies. And this week overtook some of its MAG-7 colleagues when it came to market cap. The offering syndicate for the IPO included several lead underwriters, including JPMorgan Chase.

4:13The list, to be fair, reads like a who's who of Wall Street's biggest and best known banks. For an inside look at how this all played out, we caught up with David Bauer, head of Equity Capital Markets Americas over at JPMorgan Chase. Also, Bailey Lipschultz, Bloomberg News IPO reporter. SpaceX, of course, the largest IPO ever. I'm just curious from your view how you think market participants right now, Dave, should be looking at this in the context, not just of other potential IPOs in the future, but really in the context of everything we're seeing out there right now, the talk of people taking money from other assets, selling that, getting into SpaceX, just your view.

4:50I mean, first of all, for somebody in the ECM world, what a time to be alive. These are great times for the markets. And I think unlike other cycles we've seen where IPO issuance has been extremely active, you have a real catalyst forming the investment thesis behind this. This is the reindustrialization of America. We're creating new ecosystems, new economies. I mean, you think about what space could become, what AI could become. These are investment theses that many people haven't been able to invest behind before. And so I think seeing this euphoria in the IPO market is warranted and appropriate.

5:23What's the signal to the market and market participants specifically? I think right now you're seeing that the IPO worked. And so I think it's all systems go to make a pun intended for SpaceX. But I think if there was any hesitancy of, you know, should I continue to buy up 20 percent, I think the answer is yes. And if you look long enough, this is a business that could be generationally transformational. But thinking about the generational transformation, Dave, when I look at the pipeline or the kind of group of companies that could be coming public, they don't look like SpaceX. When you're meeting with people, maybe your former employer, KKR, talking about something in their portfolio, a number of other private equity firms, what are they looking at?

6:01Obviously, this is a big one for IPO buyers, but does that translate to someone who owns, say, software companies or other companies in other industries? Look, the mega IPOs are getting the headlines right now, but there's been a very active and very accommodative equity market in general throughout this year. And putting SpaceX aside, new issuance volumes are up almost 2x this time from last year. And the vast preponderance of that has been other sectors. And we've seen healthcare coming back. We've seen biotech issuance coming. We're seeing industrial energy. So the markets are working at large.

6:38But aren't all those themes still off of AI in some capacity? If the bottleneck is power and I'm a power company, then I at least have an AI pitch. Because when I look at it or talk to folks, it's kind of like your TAM is either infinite because you have AI behind it or it's zero because your software and the worry is that your kind of total market could be at risk. How do you think about kind of other industries and how that fits into that? Yeah, look, I don't think the market is shut out for certain issuers. I think it does come down to price and having the right starting point in the public markets.

7:08And I think there is a bid for those other businesses. You know, you mentioned sponsor-backed businesses. it's a good time to, you know, what I would say, get the puck on the ice, start it. And, you know, we always say, or advising our clients and our issuers, proof points in the public market are worth even more than in the private market. And so getting out there, starting it, and you can see how, you know, your valuation can expand as you perform. You can get your share price to a level that you might be more interested in selling at, but getting, you know, getting started can be helpful. What is it about this moment right now, Dave, that is compelling so many of these companies, not just to go public, but also to look into going public.

7:45And I am going back to sort of the companies that, when they do go public, will become mega cap companies. And just to tag on to what Tim's saying, opportunistic or fundamentally based? I think this is a more fundamental-based market. And you look back to 2021, which felt a little bit more technical. It was like rates were zero, and so therefore equities were attractive. And you had a very different dynamic that drove that. I think this is much more of a fundamental. I think the market is looking at what the next three to five years could be and potentially looking past some of the near-term volatility.

8:18And it's not saying they're ignoring downside risk, but I think saying there are certain businesses right now that are very much worth investing in. There's a whole slate of new issuance that is different than the portfolio I've had in the past, and I'm going to take that opportunity to invest in it. I am thinking, though, about those mega IPOs, be it Anthropik or OpenAI. Should we make any assumptions about their market reception just because of what happened with SpaceX? I think, I mean, SpaceX is an N of one of itself from the fact that no one else is doing space at this scale, at this velocity.

8:50But it's an AI play. But it is an AI play. But where I was going with that is, I do think, I mean, this bodes, if you're anthropic and open AI, you're applauding that this type of market reception happened. And the size of the deal getting done, having a trade as well as it did, to me, that gives you more confidence that the next wave could get done in a very positive way. Well, when we look at what the next few months can look like, back to the broadening out, is AI still the flavor of the day? If we look at some of the reports that are out there in SK Hynix or other large companies in the AI space looking to tap the market, like Carol was mentioning, because of these tailwinds and kind of what does that mean for this July, this August class?

9:29Yeah, look, I think we're going to have a very active summer, even the SpaceX period of time. A lot of people thought coming in, we'd have a dearth of issuance and you'd have a real quiet period. we did$10 billion of equity capital outside of SpaceX last week. And so, you know, the market was still working. There were still a ton of deals getting done. I think this CapEx cycle, to your point of AI, people still want to invest on it. And that's across equity debt, you know, all the facets of capital here. And so the public markets are helping that, but it's also the private capital markets as well.

9:59We're seeing capital formation in almost every corner of the capital markets. You oversee ECM. I come back to the point that Google, Alphabet, however you want to call them, raised close to$90 billion across a suite of products. Is that something we should expect from all these hyperscalers who need capital to attack the equity market? And is there any risk that that gets oversaturated? I think the speed at which Google is able to raise in the public markets shows the depth and the capacity for the capital markets. And I think as long as companies are showing an ROI and a good use of proceeds to raise that equity capital, the markets will be there for them.

10:36How do we know when it becomes uncomfortable, crazy, exuberant? Frothy? Frothy. Well, think back to 2021. It's easy now to say that these were companies that were advantageous, but in the moment, did it feel that way? I go back to when you look at fundamentals and you look at valuations, we're not terribly stretched and we're not at a new point in time. And you go back and you look at, for example, software valuations in 2021, those were hitting new highs and they were hitting kind of new records of where the market was trading that we're not seeing that writ large in the public markets. But SpaceX isn't profitable.

11:11No, it's not. And it's being valued on a sales multiple for 2025 sales. And I think that some people have come and sat here and said, you know, it's starting to feel like, you know, when we're valuing IPOs on sales multiples, it started to feel a little bit like the dot-com boom. Why is this time different? Well, one, I think that's unique. One, SpaceX, I think, is its own animal. And I think when you're thinking about the space economy, you have to look at that in a very different way. I don't think you're seeing the rest of the market being valued aggressively on a sales multiple or other metrics where people are trying to extend and get comfortable with it.

11:44I think these are based more in fundamentals. It's based on growth right now. And people are seeing where the capital being laid today has a return in the future. And I think you can pull that forward. And that's what's going on. But the circular financing doesn't worry you guys? We have this conversation a lot. Are we stupid to have that conversation? conversation about a company that seems to buy from another part of its properties or invests in a chip maker because they need to, like, you know what I'm saying? What's the conversation you guys have about that circular financing? What keeps me sleeping well at night about this is the fact that we're having the conversation.

12:19And I think if people are acknowledging it, we're talking about it, you're dissecting it, you're diligencing it. I think the cycle has room to continue and to grow. I think it's the unknown risks, not less the known risks that I think could derail the cycle. And when we look at this market, is there a risk in kind of just thinking about the difference between a hyperscaler who has historically been the best cash flow cows in the history of mankind, they can at least turn off spending. How do you think about companies that are spending and need to spend but don't have hundreds of billions of dollars annually or biannually in terms of free cash flow?

12:56Yeah. Look, I think you have to look at the fundamentals of the contracts. What is contracted from the demand bill that they have today and get comfortable that what they're investing in right now has the right economics to yield a return in three or five years. And I think you're right. They might not have the free cash flow spigot today, but you look at what is contracted and what could come to fruition in a high-quality way in the next two to three years you can bridge to that free cash flow. We've got 30 seconds left here. You've been covering this market. What do you want to ask Dave? Do we see more private equity IPOs in the second half, or is that still an area, broadly speaking, that's touch and go?

13:37I think definitively, yes. I think the market would be accommodative for that, and our backlog suggests that we will have a number of those in the second half. In about 10 seconds, how much does leverage ratios matter for those companies? It matters, I think. I think you want to get it to a comfortable starting point. But I think for good free cash flow stories with solid, predictable revenue and growth, the market can get comfortable. Our thanks to David Bauer, head of Equity Capital Markets Americas at JPMorgan Chase, and to Bailey Lipschultz, Bloomberg News IPO reporter. The IPO market is evolving.

14:12We know that thanks to those mega cap tech and AI connected companies. It's a major narrative and theme this year. So too is what all those AI and high tech companies and their supply chains overall need. And that takes us to critical minerals. And to two CEOs and one strategic alliance to strengthen America's critical minerals supply chain. The CEOs of United States Antimony and America's Gold and Silver Corporation join us next. You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek. This is Bloomberg.

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16:43public.com slash disclosures. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube. One major theme over the past year or so, the high stakes race to secure the world's critical mineral supply chains, a macro theme that just got a massive jolt with the Pentagon's latest multi-million dollar defense grants and the rollout of the government's$12 billion project vault stockpile initiative. It highlights a crucial vulnerability as Western nations scramble to decouple from dominant suppliers like China.

17:22For more, we caught up with two executives at the center of this resource rush, Paul Andre Hewitt, CEO of America's Gold and Silver, and Gary Evans, CEO of U.S. Antimony. We spoke to Gary and Paul back in February, the day they announced a plan to construct and operate a hydromet processing facility in Idaho. And we began with an update on their project. Since then, we've done a lot of work. We're doing a lot of the engineering work. Gary and I actually traveled to Bolivia together to go look at one completely operational plant, which was extremely useful for our team, his team as well. We're able to look at the best practices they're doing, and we're going to be deploying a lot of those best practices in the engineering work we're submitting for our own plant.

18:02So our intent is still follow through with this JV, have a fully domesticated line of antimony production here in the very near future that will last decades to come. And this isn't a flash in the pan where you go, I know this is going to be around for a couple quarters. Our intent is to have this new facility, state-of-the-art facility that will be there for four or five decades at least, minimum. So this is a big change here for the U.S. and we absolutely need this antimony. It's so desperately needed and required. Gary, you know about this, right? You guys have the only North America antimony processing facilities, right?

18:40It's out in Montana. Tell us about what's going on here. And I am curious that since we've had President Trump really focus on critical minerals, rare earths, and so on and so forth, I mean, is the momentum continuing? Is the demand? Like, tell us what's happening because it feels like we talked about this nonstop for a long time, and now it feels like we moved on to AI and some different things. Where are we? Well, obviously, with watching the Iranian situation, we're using up our military goods quite quickly. Is that tapping supplies? That's happening. So as the only antimony supplier to the U.S.

19:16government, we're a sole source contract, a$240 million contract. We see the purchase orders, and we're delivering now to the government. Just started in May. and um you know our year in our year revenues will be a hockey stick because we are we just announced two days ago our new smelter in thompson falls which the government helped fund right uh 27 million dollars worth is about a 40 million dollar facility um that we started firing up furnaces in may we have five running now we'll go we'll have full capacity by the end of the month which will be nine furnaces nine furnaces correct and so we have an existing plant already and now we have the new plant we decided to not refurbish the old plant because we want to get as much production as possible so we know we see the demand from the government and we're trying to ramp up as quick have you gotten that 27 million dollars fully of that 27 we received 12 there's milestones like every time these furnaces that's a milestone so we'll get the rest of it by the end of the year why is it so hard to to get a furnace fired up um these are not off the shelf furnaces We had to custom make them.

20:22And so there's parts, you know, everything. There's a little, this didn't work, this valve didn't work. So you're testing them over about a three-day period. I guess what I'm wondering, though, in general, and Paul, I want you to come back in here. I mean, like I said, there has been so much focus. We were often taking, going to the White House, the Oval Office, for the president to talk about how important it was. He went to China, talked to President Xi. Is there anything that has come out and changed since we last talked that has showed, yep, still a priority, there's a lot going on behind the scenes that maybe we're not daily reporting on like we used to, but it's happening?

20:56Yeah, there's certainly, even I can see the difference in reporting, no doubt about it. However, behind the scenes, it feels like a duck on water, right? The duck is real calm, but the feet are going 100 miles underneath the water. Think about our own JV. We have been working nonstop since the day we announced it. we announced that that was that week we announced it the day we were here on live right so since that day we've had a crew of around eight people working non-stop making sure we get this engineering so there's certainly no lack of aggressiveness on our part without doubt there's there's like you hear Gary the purchase orders are coming in like I hear him and I speak to him every week it's like oh Paul we're we've got to get this thing up and going you know we need we need the supply we got to be able to feed into this thing there's a lot and and it's it's the antimony is obviously critical but you think about the silver you you you talk about these we were talking earlier about these ipos that are coming yeah yeah my god some of the biggest trillion dollar ipos we've ever seen in our lifetime since the railroads began at the turn of the century here these are massive ipos what do you think is going to power these things um the steel was the industrial revolution silver is going to be this new power revolution there's no doubt silver is going to be required for the transformation we're going to need for all these AIs.

22:12Well, Paul, then why is silver down 45 % from January? That's a good question. If I knew that one, man, I'd be a lot richer than I am today, no doubt. I can't answer that, but I can say this. Silver has, in my opinion, there's no doubt, everybody I've spoken to, every expert, every technical analyst, silver's found its bottom for sure, right? We've seen some silver price above 100. Silver's in its first innings here silver is still at a massive price to you know you think about it we're still very very short on demand year after year after year five years in a row short on demand would you say the same for gold down 25 percent from those highs at the end of january very different when you were on with us in february gold was a different right it was it was 20 percent higher than it is it was it was yeah look um i've been a gold miner my whole life i'm currently a silver i know we're called america's gold and silver but we're predominantly and you were talking about all the gold that you were sitting on yeah when we we don't for america's gold and silver doesn't have a lot of gold just to just to impress you it's more silver right we have silver copper antimony and lead all critical elements the critical metals that we need in the industry uh gold it's look gold's far from done shining people are trying to reposition to everybody is trying to get into these new ipos you hear of funds i've got funds that have been long-term shareholders for more than 10 years into us that are saying we're repositioning we're trying to get into these new AI into this stuff so it's not uncommon to see people having redemptions going in and then buying something into this AI world.

23:45Carol you brought a great point about the government and where the government kind of stands on funding our company has today 245 million dollars of government grant requests in from antimony to hydromet to tungsten and our joint venture has a 75 million dollar government grant request in request these are requests and these are grant requests where they basically just like we got the 27 million their grant requests we're still dealing with a bureaucracy it moves slow uh deadlines were given to us in january by the Department of Energy were missed in April and May and June. Why is that happening?

24:26Good question. If it's such a priority, can you pick up the phone and talk to the president or his team? Well, we have on our board, General Jack Keene, who you know, and he has definitely helped us in the past. I tried to not use that a lot. To me, it's kind of the last resort, but we're getting ready to have to shake the trees. And what he does, he goes and sees the Secretary of War, he goes and sees the head of the Pentagon, and they go, well, why hasn't this been approved? And the trees get shaken. So the government has a lot of third-party contractors that are slow. Well, I guess what I would just to follow is it's still a national priority.

25:05We've heard from the administration that it was about national security, right? We've been talking a lot about energy security, and the U.S. is in a much better place than it was decades ago, but we see other countries struggling with that. But again, going back to national security, whatever you need, whether it's oil, whether it's critical minerals, supply chains, drugs, whatever it is, is it still, though, when it comes to rare earths or critical minerals? I have no doubt it's still a high priority. It's just we're dealing with government bureaucracy. That's the only thing that I can see. I thought we got rid of bureaucracy.

25:37I thought Elon took care of that. Yeah, well, not exactly. Not exactly. It's not moving as quickly as people would want. There's no doubt about it. But it prevents you guys from doing things, right? Absolutely. It slows us down. It slows us down. The whole purpose of these grants are to speed things up. Right. And so we're waiting six months to a year for a grant that we've applied for that makes perfect sense. And still, it's going through the wheels of motion. The biggest one is that you think about Project Vault. We were both so excited about when you hear this reserve for critical metals. Your Project Vault's$12 billion.