Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst/Interviewer (3:01)

Lindsey, did they talk at all about tariffs and the impact they've been having? Because if I remember correctly, they were one of the companies early on to say that tariffs could actually hit the bottom line.

Lindsay Dutch (3:12)

So tariffs actually were not mentioned at all on the call this morning. I don't think the impact to 25 results was significant. A lot of what ended up happening was the manufacturers that chose to raise prices as an offset to the higher costs. Those higher prices were mostly passed through to the consumer. And Dick's really didn't face a significant margin headwind in 25 from tariffs. A sort of a similar situation. Thinking about 2026, Lindsey, it looks like

Bloomberg Intelligence Host (3:45)

Dick's has pretty ambitious investment plans for this year. I'm seeing $1.7 billion in gross capex planned for fiscal 2026. What is the breakdown between brick and mortar expansion tech investments? What is it spending this money on?

Lindsay Dutch (4:01)

So I think the vast majority is actually going to the physical footprint and you have two pieces of that. One is their house of sport concept for the legacy Dick's business. They're opening another 14 of those house of sport stores in this year. Those are higher capex to open their experiential stores. But they have really been driving the strengthen that core business driving ticket and transaction growth simultaneously, which is really quite impressive. The other piece is they're redoing about 250 Footlocker stores. They want those done before back to school season, which probably starts, you know, in late June, early July, depending on where you're located. So the vast majority of that investment is going to physical storage stores. They will continue to invest, you know, in technology, in AI. You know, they do see some efficiencies both internally and you know, consumer facing with tech investment. But the priority is that physical storefront.

Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst/Interviewer (5:04)

You know, Lindsay, about the 30 seconds we have left, what about online sales for Dick's? What's, what's it looking like for them?

Lindsay Dutch (5:11)

So they continue to see growth in online sales. I think a lot of that is supported by the fact that they have a higher income consumer who likes to shop across multiple channels. So we continue to see growth there, but the penetration in sports is on the lower side. You always have that kid who forgets his cleats and they're at a soccer tournament and they have to run out and go get that piece of equipment. So the stores are really important to the growth story in general. And we will continue to see both store and online growth.

Bloomberg Intelligence Host (5:44)

Stay with us.

Lindsay Dutch (5:45)

More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.

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Bloomberg Intelligence Host (7:41)

Now. Earlier this morning we got earnings from Dollar General, a bellwether of the US consumer. The company forecast sales in line with analyst estimates, slowing momentum for a company that had been exceeding Wall street expectations quarter after quarter. Joining us to discuss the report is Jennifer Bartucius, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Analyst for retail staples and packaged food Food Jennifer Dollar General earnings were were solid, but it seems like the guidance was kind of the point that disappointed investors. What exactly is management seeing that is making them a little bit more conservative in their outlook?

Jennifer Bartucius (8:17)

Good morning. It really comes down to a very tumultuous backdrop. You know, when you think about Dollar General and you think about their core customer, it is the low income customer. They're under a lot of stress. They continue to be under stress and I think that that along with policy shifts is just keeping the company with a very conservative outlook for 2026 even though they've had really good momentum in their core business coming into the year.

Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst/Interviewer (8:45)

Now this stock though, Jennifer, I was looking at the stock, I mean yes, it's getting hit today, but it had surged more than 80% in the past 12 months. So what was buttressing the stock?

Jennifer Bartucius (8:57)

Well the company really looked last year as, looked at last year as a, as an investment and a reset year. And so they put into place a lot of strategies to help reinforce the core business. And it was really a story about getting back to retail basics. So things like just having clean stores, not having cluttered aisles, having enough people working in the store so that there's customer service, you know, improving the assortment of what they are offering and, and, and increasing their value perception by lowering prices in some areas and adding, adding products that are in lower price point ranges to appeal to their core demographic. So as those changes started to gain traction and customers noticed it, that was really what was driving performance last year and why the stock then was rewarded with regards to its price appreciation.

Bloomberg Intelligence Host (9:47)

Jennifer, this is a company whose core customer is the lower income consumer. What are these results telling us about the health of that income group right now?

Jennifer Bartucius (9:56)

Well the results really show that customer is very, very value focused. One of the interesting things that the company called out on their earnings call was that they have over 500 products that are at the $1 price point or below. And that category of products had 17% increase in sales. So that just shows how much value means to that low income consumer. And as long as Dollar General can continue to deliver on that need, there reason to think that they can't continue some of the momentum that they've been able to establish.

Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst/Interviewer (10:34)

Has Dollar General been a real competitor as of late for say the Walmarts of the world or Family Dollar? Who is I guess Dollar General's biggest competition?

Jennifer Bartucius (10:48)

That's a great question. They compete obviously they disposed of Family Dollar because they owned it.

Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst/Interviewer (10:56)

Sorry.

Jennifer Bartucius (10:56)

They compete with Family Dollar which was disposed of by Dollar Tree last year. But they do compete with Walmart. You know, they strive to have their prices within 3 to 4% of the bigger box retailers. And it's with the, it's with grocery stores, it's with the mass merchants and to some extent with convenience stores are really their main competitors. But what's really unique about Dollar General is that they are positioned in rural communities. And so while Walmart is a big competitor, the Walmart might be a 10 or 15 mile minute drive away from where you live versus a Dollar General that could be on the corner. So that's the competitive advantage that they've been building off of and that they continue to see as a as a competitive advantage.

Bloomberg Intelligence Host (11:40)

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.

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Bloomberg Intelligence Host (13:36)

It's interesting, Alexis, to hear people talking about space X and IPOs at a time when there's so much volatility in the market, but yet everyone wants in on Space X. From Silicon Val to Wall street to the City of London, financial elites are hitting up their wealth managers and plugged in friends to find a way in. And we have the reporter on this big take with us today, Bailey Lipschultz. He is senior equities reporter here at Bloomberg and Deputy ECM Tar Bailey. Can you tell us a little bit more about this? I think something so interesting is that these deals are increasingly being marketed to smaller investors through private funds and platforms. Should regulators be paying closer attention?

Bailey Lipschultz (14:16)

Regulators are and they should be. And I think the big question comes back to how are these deals being marketed? We've seen cases where there was outright fraud or allegations of outright fraud and obviously the government is moving to restrict that. But I think anyone with a social media account can say that they've been on X or on instagram and someone's DM them saying hey I have access to SpaceX or the Elon Adverse that you should just wire money. Granted those are outright scams. But there's also this, this world as it relates to SPV special purpose vehicles where investors, people who are allocating these are creating these are full within their fully within their rights to email people who can check the box that they're accredited investors and offer terms to these investments. And by definition it's totally legal. It is murky. People should do diligence but there's no real restriction around those executed deals.

Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst/Interviewer (15:07)

So these SPVs I guess is because Wall street likes acronyms. They're fairly new. I mean weren't they just, they came to market just a couple of years ago? How much of the market are they now in just that short amount of time.

Bailey Lipschultz (15:17)

So we, we aggregated our data through capillary they see about a third of the flow. They say that SPV volumes over the last few years has gone up 11x. We've seen these layered SPVs that are even more opaque and more convoluted. We've seen them go basically from a nothing market to well north of a quarter million dollars, but probably even far larger than that. If you looked on the whole and were able to access all of the data. It's something that is a factor of or is, is emblematic of just where we are because these are companies that have stayed private for so long. Elon Elon SpaceX now wants to go public at $1.75 trillion. That's a breathtaking number to even try to think through. Especially when you look not too long ago, a decade or so, it's closer to $20 billion. So there's a lot of money and there's a lot of appetite and even just talking to people on Wall street and people who run investment portfolios, family offices or late stage growth, you need to be able to go to clients if you're raising a fund and say, oh, I have access to Andrew. Oh, I have Space X, I have. Otherwise it's like, why are you going to give someone your money to invest in companies that you could access?

Bloomberg Intelligence Host (16:23)

Let's say, Bailey, that economic and geopolitical risks get bad enough to freeze the IPO market and SpaceX doesn't go public. How do investors in these vehicles get their money back?

Sonesta/Okta Advertiser (16:34)

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Bailey Lipschultz (16:37)

like anything, as long as the market is liquid, you can sell it to someone else. So if there were to be a prolonged downturn or the market was frozen, or if Elon woke up one morning and said, you know what, I actually don't want to go public, which is

Wise/iShares Advertiser (16:49)

not unlikely, which is not out of

Bailey Lipschultz (16:50)

question, out of the question, there still probably will be a market. The question comes back to if you paid on face value, $2 trillion value investing in SpaceX because you thought there was an IPO and you thought it would pop and go trade at $3 trillion and now there's no market for that. You have to probably sell it at a steep discount. That gets back to the whole issue around private markets.

Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst/Interviewer (17:11)

What should investors know though? If they want to make use of these special purpose vehicles, sort of, they want to go in eyes wide open.

Bailey Lipschultz (17:17)

Do your, do your research. Understand A that the core investment exists, B, that it's preferably on the cap table so it's recognized by Space X and C, ask the questions of what fees am I paying? What management fees are going out the door no matter what, what is being paid in the form of carry? Because the issues, and speaking to people in the industry, the issues are that you can be pitched an SPV or a fraction of a multilayered SPV where you say 2% management fee, 10% fee, easy, done. Well, that's on top of a 20% carry. On top of a 20% carry where all of a sudden you say, okay, well I'm up 100x when these shares, if they do get delivered, you say, oh, well, I actually doubled my money in five years with risk and illiquidity and it's not worth it.

Bloomberg Intelligence Host (18:04)

Does it vary by fund, how much these fees weigh into returns?

Bailey Lipschultz (18:08)

Every deal is different. And I think that's the tough part with reporting and writing about this story is just like you can't paint in broad strokes saying this is how every vehicle is structured because there are very well structured clean SPVs that are on the cap table. And then there are deals that you get a cold email and you say, okay, wire me $25,000 and congrats at some point you'll get shares.

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