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22:23And the head coach that was fired was asked, do you think things will be better? Things will be different? And he was like, well, the guy who sat next to me the whole prior season, he's there. He sat next to me, and I'm not sure things are going to be entirely different, right? And so if Ternus wanted to make a big acquisition, I think he had the confidence from Tim Cook to make a big acquisition. and we didn't see that happen. So I don't think that Tim Cook stepping down, being replaced by John Ternus, especially with Cook remaining executive chairman, is going to heavily change their acquisition strategy.

22:55Mark, just 30 seconds. Will Ternus be able to have independence to spread his wings with Tim Cook as executive chair very briefly? Yeah, I think Tim Cook was pretty clear in his remarks to employees just about a couple hours ago. He said there could only be one CEO at a time and I'll do what I'm asked to do by Ternus. I bet he's six that I don't think he's going to pull a Bob Iger here.

23:17Carol Massar:All right. Interesting stuff. And as we share said, shares of Apple right now just down about 2.3 percent in today's trade. Mark Gurman, thank you so much. Bloomberg News Managing Editor for Global Consumer Tech.

23:39Listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. The world's top oil traders warning that the ongoing closure of the Straderform moves is increasing the risk of a global recession as fuel demand takes a hit. On oil, trading hit a session high as uncertainty builds about peace talks between the U.S. and Iran as Wednesday's ceasefire deadline nears. Curious how Samantha Dart is looking at all this. She's co-head of Global Commodities Research at Goldman Sachs. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio.

24:10Carol Massar:Samantha, great to have you back here with Tim and me. So the trading that we're seeing when it comes to the energy markets, is it very reactionary? Do you feel like we've settled in at all on certain levels that might be with us for a while, even if the war ends tomorrow? Yeah, so we were just touching on that, right? How the back end of the curve has actually been surprisingly stable. And we have Brent hanging around$80 a barrel, which is actually pretty in line with our year-end forecast. But the front of the curve has had a very different type of behavior with the risk premium going up and down, up and down, depending on the headlines, depending on that market perception of how long this disruption is going to last.

24:53Carol Massar:But how do you think about the destruction that we've seen in the region? We talked about, I'm just looking here at another story by our team, and it's the impact of the Iran war will continue for months, even after any deal to restore shipping through the strait. This, according to the world's largest oil traders. I mean, the waterway, they say, some say flows through the waterway may never return to normal. Like, is it going to be different or we don't know yet? It is quite possible that some of the suppliers that used to rely on this trade very heavily might rely a little bit more on their pipeline.

25:30So we know that Saudi has their east-west pipeline that wasn't fully utilized before, and now it is. We know that the EOE could move some oil straight to Fujairah via pipeline, and maybe they'll do more of that. So I think it's fair to expect that we'll see a little bit more of redirection via pipeline than we did previously. Will it make it more expensive? Not necessarily, but we don't know whether the total flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf is going to fully normalize. We assume that it will. Still, you have an impact on inventory levels, right? Already, if we look at visible global inventories today, we've already sort of eliminated half of all the builds we had seen last year.

26:16I'm looking at dated Brent. So physical oil, about$1 over$108 a barrel versus being shy of just about$100 when you look at WTI right now, or Brent rather, the international benchmark. That spread is getting closer and closer together. What's the typical spread on that versus what we've been seeing throughout this conflict because it's getting a lot of attention it's a lot narrower normally uh you're right and i think when you have a supply disruption of this magnitude how long it lasts can make a huge difference so if you're thinking of data brands that has that delivery within 30 days call it and you have an expectation that the disruption is going to impact that period then data brand in particular is going to price a lot higher than your June delivery prompt financial Brent.

27:15You had this note out earlier this month that said, in an adverse scenario where the ceasefire doesn't hold and the straight-up form is reopening is postponed for a month, Brent could still average$100 a barrel in the fourth quarter. Carol mentioned, we were mentioning the vice president's trip on hold right now. That note was from a few weeks ago. Where are we in this adverse scenario? Yeah, it's a good question. So one thing has not changed. If you delay the reopening of the strait, you're hurting inventory levels more. So you should have higher year-end prices, yes. You're requiring a bigger utilization of strategic petroleum reserves.

27:53So that's also something you're going to have to replenish down the line more significantly. And you're incentivizing a bigger sort of structural risk premium embedded in the market. So all of those are reasons why the back-end should be higher the longer this tracks. But to your point, some things have looked a little bit different versus what we expected over the past few weeks. Number one, we're seeing a smaller curtailment of oil production versus what we expected. And that's because a lot of these countries in the Gulf, they seem to have a little bit higher inventory capacity to keep pumping production out and storing it.

28:30And it matters because if they can store it as opposed to just shut it down, once the straight opens up, they can just send that back to the market. So it helps replenish inventories to a certain extent. So this is a little bit softer versus what we expected. The second factor that I would say is a little bit different is demand destruction that is proving to be higher than what we expected as well. And this again helps rebalance the market a little bit more with prices that don't need to be quite as high. So instead of thinking of an adverse scenario, let's say with flows restarting in the middle of May as opposed to the middle of April, instead of$110,$115,$100, maybe we could be a little bit lower, maybe between$90 and$100.

29:17So it'll depend on all these factors combined.

29:21Carol Massar:You know, it's interesting. I wanted to throw this into the mix. I was looking for it, so forgive me. I was a little distracted. But there is a FT Commodities Global Summit going on today. And the head of LNG at Vittel said, gas markets have seen a massive amount of demand destruction as the Middle East conflict cut supplies. And they say most of that came from consumers that could switch to coal, but some industrial gas consumers, including the fertilizer sector, were also forced to reduce production. Went on to say that's not sustainable or you'll be transferring the energy crisis into a food crisis.

29:54Carol Massar:So we are on borrowed time. There are things that are going to be impacted the longer this goes on, right? You're right. Fertilizer production has suffered. In fact, right away, right after the start of the crisis, we saw India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, all of them saying we have had to curtail our natural gas supplies to fertilizer production. So this is already happening. And to your point, I think that the next shoe to drop in our view is manufacturing, Because when we think of chemical products, chemical products go into just about 95 % of all manufactured products. And one of the biggest disruptions of this crisis has been NAFTA.

30:39NAFTA is the main feedstock that is utilizing producing chemical products. Right now, there's still inventory of NAFTA, of chemicals, and of manufactured goods. So we're not in that problem just now. But yes, the longer this drags, the bigger the risk to supply chains more broadly.

30:59Carol Massar:Yeah, I feel like the great reveal of what can happen in these choke point crises. Well, I'm glad you mentioned choke point because that's certainly been a focus for us. And I think one thing that the world has learned is the power that Iran has over the Strait of Hormuz. Is there going to be some permanent risk premium on commodities because Iran has the power to close the strait? And it is now clear to the world that Iran wields this power? We think so. If you think, for example, about the oil market and all the spare capacity we're used to counting on, that spare capacity normally sits with Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait.

31:40But they need the strait to use it. So we can't necessarily count on it. Saudi has the East West pipeline. Does that make a difference? It helps, but it's not large enough to be able to reroute all of their production.

31:53Carol Massar:What does this do for renewables? Like, it's interesting. We've heard some different individuals talk about, you know, we are, you know, we know we are going to need all forms of power moving forward. And so even though certainly here in the U.S. there's been a pushback on renewables and alternative energy and green energy. That's not necessarily the case around the globe. But is it just a reminder in terms of what's going on that, yeah, we're going to need renewables and green energy as well, whether it's wind, solar, what have you? Yeah, I would say outside of the U.S., there will be a lot of regions questioning exactly that and thinking, hmm, we're short oil, we're short gas.

32:32What do we have or what can we build? And a lot of times the answer to that is we can build renewable generation capacity. And a lot of times the answer can be, we have some coal, maybe we should produce a little more. By the way, this is exactly what China has done since they had their last electricity crisis in 2021. They vowed never to let that happen again. And they started investing in coal production to be higher and higher and higher. And they are building renewable generation capacity like crazy. So does that happen here in the U.S.? And look, it's a different crisis because we have access to natural gas here in the U.S.

33:06So we haven't necessarily seen power prices or electricity prices go up as a result of this. AI is a completely different story. But to Carol's point, does that happen here in the U.S.? Sort of like that China moment. So I would think of the U.S. in two different angles. From an energy perspective, I think because the AI story is very big here, yes, we need all of the above. So I think we will need renewables, more renewables in the U.S. I think we very much need natural gas. And I wish we could have more nuclear, but nuclear has proven to be a bit more difficult to be built on time and on budget.

33:42But I wish we could have all of that. We might need to delay some retirement of coal plants as well. It's all of the above. Separately from that, when I think, what are the commodities the U.S. is net short of? It's really not on the energy side. It's more on the metal side. So I think the government's initiative, okay, if we're going to tariff anything on the commodities universe, let's tariff steel, aluminum, so that maybe we can incentivize investment here. We are net short of these metals. So this does make sense. When we think of Project Vault, when we think of these initiatives of shoring up the commodities we're short of.

34:17Carol Massar:But that also plays into then what it costs to do things here, and it can be more expensive. And I just think about the inflationary picture. That's another story. Another day for another story. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you. Samantha Dart, co-head of Global Commodities Research, of course, at Goldman Sachs, joining us right here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

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37:29Carol Massar:Hey, folks. Earlier, we did a search on Adobe on the Bloomberg today. You came up with a bunch of stories on Adobe teaming up with or collaborating with IBM, Comcast, Dick's Sporting Goods. The Wall Street Journal noted yesterday that the company, Adobe that is, teaming up with Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, NVIDIA. And they also talked about how Adobe's new AI agent to help boost customer engagement and sales. So there's a lot going on at this company. And they have a big event going on in Las Vegas, Nevada right now. Yet at that event, Abzinga noting that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong praised Adobe's impact, stating, quote, no company, no CEO has ever made a greater contribution to how the world tells stories than Adobe.

38:07Joining us now from the Adobe Summit 2026 in Las Vegas, Anil Chagvarty, president of Digital Customer Experience at Adobe.

38:15Carol Massar:Anil, so great to have you back with us. A lot of announcements being made. You know, it's an interesting time. We have tons of AI headlines coming at us, coming at you every day. I want to talk about these collaborations, these partnerships, and really, you know, the shift that you guys are doing to agents, agentic AI. We're talking about it so much. How is that going to change or how will that change Adobe's business model? And how important is it going forward? Well, thanks for having me on. It's great to be here from Adobe Summit. to over 14 ,000 people, the world's largest digital marketing and customer experience conference, and the energy is off the charts.

38:52Regarding the partnerships you talked about, it's a massive ecosystem that we are a part of and that we are helping drive towards the agentic world. All SaaS companies are becoming agentic software companies. And in our space of customer experience, it's traditionally been a mix of tools, automation, manual processes in an area where enterprise customers, CEOs, CMOs, chief information officers have been looking for a solution that can really help them automate the end-to-end customer lifecycle and provide those kinds of personalized customer experiences to every single customer. And that's been hard to do before Agentec AI.

39:32And so now with Agentec technology, we announced what we call Adobe CX Enterprise, which is an end-to-end Agentec system. That's exactly what you can do is that one-on-one personalization at scale to every customer across the world.

39:46Carol Massar:So how does it change the business model? How is it going to the financial picture going forward for the company? It's actually growing our time dramatically. I mean, we talk about how our total addressable market is now going to be north of$250 billion. It's a vast market because every company in the world, whether it's a B2C company or a B2B company, cares about providing a superior customer experience. And now they can have the technology to be able to do that. And that helps them with their growth. It helps them with their customer satisfaction and loyalty and also helps them take out costs in terms of the manual processes and tools that they have.

40:24And what we see happening over time is that our business model aligns with that of our customers. It'll align with the business outcomes that they are trying to achieve. It'll align with the business metrics that they care about. And we see a lot of our business model moving in that direction and aligning with their business outcomes and their business metrics. And Neil, investors are trying to understand how the rise of agentic AI changes the SaaS business model. So from Adobe's perspective and for Adobe clients, will they still continue to need a subscription to Adobe products and services? or will they be paying or looking to pay for projects or outcomes just based on outcome, just based on deliverable?

41:08It'll definitely be a mix of both. We see a lot of customers here. Many of them are happy with the current model because it's very predictable for them. They know what exactly they're getting out of it and they're getting business results from it. There are other customers who are saying as they look at these new technologies and the pace of AI innovation, They look to Adobe to be able to bring that in into the software that they already know how to use, whether it's Photoshop or whether it is Adobe Experience Manager. These are all great tools that they know how to use. They're saying, bring it in your own models, but also bring in, you know, we are over 30 partnerships with AI companies like Google Nano Banana and others that we can provide through our solutions.

41:50And that's what they're looking for. They're looking for a mix of both, depending on what they're actually doing with the software. One of the narratives that has emerged over the last year, at least when it comes to risks for SaaS companies, and you're all too familiar with this, having followed this closely, is that the rise of AI will somehow make it difficult or make it so these companies no longer need to pay for subscriptions or at least seat-based models because maybe they can get Claude to create exactly what they're looking for without paying an ongoing subscription for that. How do you manage the risk to seat-based model?

42:30Yeah, you know, lots of customers here, we've been in a lot of conversations. And the view that you just expressed is not what we hear from customers. A lot of customers think that that's way too simplistic to think that they would actually just use an AI coding tool to replace software. If anything, what they're looking at is saying, look, traditionally for software, we had to take software. We had to customize it to our own needs. And that involved a lot of work. And that work can actually be done a lot more efficiently with the AI coding tools. So they're looking at the sort of the last mile of using the software, making it perfectly tailored to their needs.

43:05And that's where they use a lot of the AI coding tools. And that's where their attention is. What is actually being done by the software companies, that actually has a network effect that has the economies of scale. Because we have over 20 ,000 enterprise customers. and we are taking the expertise we have from those customers and making that available. Any single company is not going to have that expertise, and they're not looking to replicate it. If you're a consumer products company or a bank or a healthcare company, you're not looking to become experts in digital marketing or digital customer experience.

43:39You want to get the best of both worlds. You want to get the expertise that you get from software companies, but you want the flexibility that AI offers to personalize it at scale to your customers. So they're getting the best of both worlds through agentic software.

43:56Carol Massar:And, you know, legacy customers might get it, but I think about a new creative person. What is the reason to buy Adobe products when they can use free LLMs to create videos and pictures? What's the argument here? Yeah, I mean, if you are anybody who is doing it for, let's say you are a creative professional or a freelancer or you're doing it as a gig, for example, you want to be able to get the benefit of not just the AI models, which obviously anybody can get, then how do you differentiate yourself? That's where if you can bring the power of the AI models and then combine it with the capabilities that we provide, you know, built over time.

44:35So if you can say, hey, through Photoshop, I'm able to access 30 different models. I can use that as the starting point. Then I can add my own unique touch to it. That, again, you're getting the best of both worlds. And we believe that that's how you produce content that stands out. Otherwise, if you're doing the same thing out of the AI models, then all content is going to look the same. How are you going to stand out? And if you don't stand out, just putting content in front of customers, they're not going to click on it or they're not going to take it to the next step. It's not going to be effective.

45:07So we believe that for content to stand out, you need both. You need the AI models and then you need to add your own unique touch, your own brand to it to make it stand out. Anil, always great to check in with you. We appreciate you taking the time from the Adobe conference this year. We know it's busy out there. That's Anil Chakravarty joining us from Las Vegas, the president of Digital Customer Experience. This is the Bloomberg Business Week 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.

45:45You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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