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- [00:00]
A
Ditch the complexity. Intuit Enterprise Suite delivers AI native ERP power that is intuitive and intelligent. Scale faster with advanced control. Getting started in days, not months. Learn more@intuit.com Enterprise and get the power you need. Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio news. You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at 10am Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube. Let's go back to the tech sector. We can't stray too far from it ever when we talk about the market and take a look at some of the Mag 7 names. Alphabet this week has moved ahead of Apple in terms of market cap and Meta signing this big, big power generation deal with this company called Vistra, which has had a really volatile week. Let's bring in Mandeep Singh right now. Mandeep is our global tech research head at Bloo Intelligence. And Mandeep just put into context for us this multi gigawatt nuclear deal that Matter has signed for its AI data centers. How should we think about this?
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B
Yeah, I mean the best way to frame it is how these companies are spending their CapEx. And we know roughly, you know, 1 gigawatt of AI data center capacity costs about $50 billion. Again, depends on the region, the source of energy and land, etc. But that's a rough ballpark. So when you think about 6.6 gigawatt and we already know OpenAI has committed to about 26 gigawatts. So clearly these companies have big ambitions. And what it suggests is a company like Meta, which will very well spend over $100 billion in CapEx this year in 2026, may stay on that path for at least the next three to four years because they believe, you know, they have a lot of applications when it comes to their own consumption of AI data centers. And they seem to be confident about their own model, which has so far trailed the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini in terms of capabilities. But it sounds like they want to make sure they have the capacity to deploy AI. And that's where nuclear is an interesting choice because a lot of the other hyperscalers have gone for more natural gas turbines. But we know there is a big backlog with someone like Jeev or Noah for their natural gas turbines. So from that perspective, nuclear is an interesting choice. You know, as an alternate, what are.
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C
The big tech companies, these big AI companies, saying about their confidence in the reliability of power in the next 5 10, 20 years because a lot of folks are saying that really could be the gating issue for the development and evolution of AI.
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B
Yeah, I mean, look, I was at CES where Jensen highlighted, you know, the reason why companies would upgrade quickly to the latest Rubin architecture is because they give, I mean, Rubin will give them more tokens per unit of power, which is really a way to emphasize the efficiency of, of how you utilize your available power. And so from that perspective, everyone sees very long lead times when it comes to adding new power and they want to maximize the usage and utilization of whatever they have right now. And look, you could argue there are some other sources which may have shorter lead times like solar or battery packs. But in this case, given the size of power that these companies need for running, we are talking about 1 GW data center. It's very hard to think about too many sources of energy that will give you that sort of power. And you know, that's where the lead times are. So long.
- [04:07]
C
Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- [04:12]
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Stop struggling with complex, costly ERP systems. Introducing Intuit Enterprise Suite, the AI native ERP that adapts with your business. Get enterprise grade power made, intuitive, intelligent, adaptive and ready for what's next. It streamlines complex financial management, automates workflows, and unifies all your entities. It's simple to access and quick to adopt, helping you get going in days, not months. Get the power you need without the complexity. Learn more@intuit.com Enterprise. Now you're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live weekdays at 10am Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg business app Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
- [04:58]
C
Let's get to the restaurant business here. You know, the flu season which is upon us and it's, you know, a little bit more harsh than average. It's impacting a lot of folks. Obviously it's also impacting some businesses like the restaurant business. I didn't think of that. Michael Halen, he thinks of it. Senior restaurant and food service analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Mike, talk to us about recent trends in the restaurant biz.
- [05:23]
D
Yeah, it was a tough fourth quarter, you know, especially December. December was hurt by cold weather, snow, and an earlier flu season. It's the worst flu season so far in 25 years. There's been some issues with, you know, the vaccines not covering the current strains that are out there. And so December was pretty rough. You know, quick service and fast casual did better. Quick service sales were down slightly. You Know, fast food chains like McDonald's and whereas fast casual like Chipotle Shake Shack, they were up slightly in December, it was the full service chain. So casual diners like Chili's and family dining like IHOP that struggled the most, which makes sense. If it's really cold or if it's snowing, you're less likely to go out to a restaurant and dine in. You're more likely to order Domino's. And so it all kinds of makes sense. But these trends are going to flip pretty nicely into January. We've seen a huge squeeze in restaurant stocks to open up this year, and we think it's going to continue.
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A
So what do these casual dining chains do to change the trajectory of, of what seems like a pretty set trend at this point?
- [06:44]
D
Well, the casual dining chains had had a really nice year in 2025. We, you know, they, but because of that, they have tougher comparisons to lap. Right. And so for the, for that reason, we think, you know, and we think QSR stands to benefit more from, from, from tax reform as well as like a 10% ish decline in oil prices. So we don't expect a bad year out of casual dining. We think they'll continue to do pretty well. They're going to, you know, they're not going to receive as much of a boost from Chili's, which had a, you know, an unbelievable year in 2025. But we think casual dining can have a solid year here in 26. But it's the casual dining names and some of the fast casual names we cover like Kava and Wingstop that we think can have a really nice bounce here, especially in the first half of 2026.
- [07:40]
C
Mike, we got some labor data to some jobs data. Unemployment rate ticks down a little bit here. I got to think that's, that's important for restaurant companies.
- [07:49]
D
Yeah, you know, labor has been tough for restaurants. You know, we've seen a 4% ish wage rate inflation in our, in this industry, you know, going back to before the pandemic, you know, so labor continues to be kind of an issue. There's still some talk about restaurants being understaffed right now. So that obviously impacts service levels negatively and hurts the, the customer experience. So obviously something we look at pretty.
- [08:24]
A
Closely in terms of names that you like. And I know we don't do buy, hold, sell recommendations at Bloomberg Intelligence, but the kinds of companies that are best positioned in 2026. What are you looking for?
- [08:39]
D
Oh, yeah. So, you know, for us, we're looking at chains that we think can outperform, you know, same store sales estimates on the street with some chains that we think, you know, other analysts are just not bullish enough on. You know, McDonald's is coming up against some really easy comparisons due to E. Coli once they report the 4Q and the 1Q wingstop, Brinker. These are some of the names that, that we've written about.
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C
Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- [09:13]
A
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live weekdays at 10am Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg business app Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
- [09:27]
C
Well, this transition to electric vehicles is proving very costly for automakers around the world. We had the big 20 plus billion dollar write off from Ford a couple of weeks ago. Now General Motors will take another $6 billion in charges tied to production cutbacks in its electric vehicle and battery operations. Let's break it down with Craig Trudell, gloom Global autos editor for Bloomberg News. He joins us from our London office. Craig, what's GM telling us here about kind of their transition to EVs?
- [10:01]
E
Yeah, I think, you know, this is like a sort of ongoing toll that they're reporting and I don't know that they're necessarily done. We heard them report actually some months back that, you know, sort of rethinking their production capacity and paring that back in response to the way electric vehicle demand and, you know, battery supply was shaking out that that was going to set them back more than $1 billion. So this is, you know, an incremental amount of money on top of that. And there was some warning in the AK last night that actually, you know, there may be more to come. So, you know, I think this is part of a broader sort of rationalization taking place in the U.S. where, you know, an industry was trying to, to respond to an administration that was, you know, banging the drum in a much different way than the Trump administration is now.
- [10:54]
C
You know, I look at this trailing twelve month performance of General Motors, it's up 61%. That kind of tells me you can take as many charges as you want here. I want you to pare back your transitions to ev. Is that kind of what you're hearing?
- [11:09]
E
You know, it's fascinating because on one hand you're seeing, you know, electric car leader, or at least former electric car leader Tesla taking off and doing so in spite of the fact that their sales are slowing down. The outlook for EVs in their home market is is pretty bleak. And yet you also, in unison have, you know, sort of the contrarian play taking off in gm. I think, you know, it's maybe not quite that simple in that, you know, GM does have, I think David Welch's story on last night's news does have, you know, sort of the context that they have quite, quite a lot of electric vehicles available. They're going to continue to have a pretty broad range of cars. And Mary Barra has Talked about how EVs is their quote, North Star and that that's not going to change. So I think there's going to be a little bit more stick to it iveness on GM's part than Ford. And yet I think this is also an indication that the market is saying, you know what, the way this company makes money is its full size pickups and SUVs. The more of those that they can make in this new paradigm, the merrier.
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C
So I guess give us a sense of in the US I think we have an idea that this transition to EVs is going to take longer than maybe we initially thought. That's not the case, it seems like in Europe. Tell us how the adoption is going in Europe.
- [12:33]
E
Yeah, I think actually last year it may be surprising to people because we ended the year with these headlines about the EU sort of backing off of its combustion engine ban for 2035. That being said, we actually had a nice pickup in momentum for electric vehicles last year. A lot of that was driven by the Chinese manufacturers. I think that is part of where the concern is here that, you know, the, you know, local manufacturers in Europe, some of them are doing better than, than they were. But it's, it is patchy. I think it's also patchy, you know, sort of country by country. But we did see, you know, a roughly 30% increase in battery electric vehicle sales last year in spite of the fact that a big player in Tesla had a really tough 2025.
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C
That's interesting. You know, talk to us about hybrids here. I just caved and leased a hybrid for my number four offspring because he goes to school in California where the gas prices are just ridiculously high. A the technology seemed really cool to me. The car drove great and it seems like a nice mix between, or a nice compromise between going full EV and full ice. How do you, how do you think about it?
- [13:43]
E
Yeah, I mean, this was the supposed bridge technology and the bridge is going for a lot longer than I think a lot of people reckoned. You know, I remember, you know, covering Toyota being based in Japan for a few years. You know, Toyota taking a lot of heat for sort of cling to, you know, this technology that it sort of pioneered with the Prius and, you know, not sort of jumping with both feet in fully electric vehicles. That has very much turned out to be, to be the play. And I think we're seeing, you know, a lot of the excess battery capacity that got built in response to the Biden administration's push for, you know, more of a battery, you know, sector to be built in the US A lot of that is going to get soaked up by these hybrids, whether they're, whether they're plug in vehicles or not. If you can make, you know, the bigger pickups and SUVs that are already popular in the U.S. more efficient, you get sort of the best of both worlds. Even if there's a little bit of incremental cost on the front end, these vehicles are going to be much cheaper to refuel and, you know, better to run.
- [14:49]
A
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