Loading summary
Ann Berry
Many employees can't afford a hefty medical bill that pops up out of the blue. But it happens. And employees who are financially stressed are understandably more likely to be distracted at work, costing their employers greatly in lost productivity. Luckily, Aflac plans help with out of pocket expenses not covered by health insurance and can be offered at no direct cost to businesses. Learn more@aflac.com Frumarkets that's aflac.com Frumarkets its earnings season. We have the latest results from Starbucks, Robinhood and Pizza Hut's parent Yum Brands, and why it might be looking to cut ties with the restaurant chain. And from the possible conference here in Miami, my conversation with Zeta Global's founder and CEO David Steinberg on how his company cuts through the Saskopolis plus the battle for ears. The latest from iHeart and Sirius XM. We break it all down for Wednesday, April 29th. It's Brew Markets Daily and I'm Ann Berry
David Steinberg
Foreign.
Ann Berry
More market details to come, but first I'm wrapping up here in Miami, where 6,000 marketers, brand reps and tech solution providers have spent this week at the possible conference, for the most part debating the risks and opportunities posed by AI. So there was one particularly human session that I was eager to listen in on, and that was a live recording. A conversation between Bob Pittman Chris, co founder of MTV and now CEO of iHeartMedia, chatting with Charlamagne tha Guard radio host, voice of the immensely popular Breakfast Club and founder of the Black Effect Podcast Network. Well, with two charismatic media titans on the mic, it couldn't help but be a fascinating conversation on the power of, well, human conversation on how Charlamagne learned to be vulnerable on air, the use of social to meet his audience where they are beyond radio and his own perspective that he's a public servant going live every day in service of his listeners. Daily tune in habit. Well, check out the full chat on Pittman's podcast that's called Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Well, from a financial markets perspective, wearing my show hat, of course, it was Pittman stats on radio listenership that caught my ears. According to the media OG, there are now more radio listeners than there were 20 years ago. Almost counterintuitive, 92% of Americans listen to radio at least once a week. And while the average consumer tunes into dozens of video networks a month, think the streamers or even the cable TV networks, for those who haven't cut the cord with radio, it's only about 2. So this was a reminder on this possible panel of the might of radio and it put in the top of my mind one deal that's getting a little bit of mind share in the markets. SiriusXM. That's ticker SIRI and market cap, just under $9 billion is reportedly in early talks to buy the 800 million dollar market cap iHeart. The move would give Sirius a boost in the podcast market. IHeart Podcast is the number one podcast publisher globally with over 177 million monthly downloads and claiming to have more hit shows in more categories than any other podcaster. Bold numbers amid reports that Sirius, the subscription based satellite and online radio service, has lost more than a million customers since 2022 while Sirius stock has been up on the news. Fun to see old school media making some moves in these merger moments. We're going to keep on watching. Coming up, my conversation with David Steinberg on how he's protecting Zeta Global from disintermediation by large language models. And later in the show, why Starbucks is celebrating the turn in its turnaround. But first, a word from our sponsor, Charles Schwab. Trading at Schwab is powered by Ameritrade Unlocking the power of thinkorswim the award winning trading platforms loaded with features that let you dive deeper into the market. You can visualize your trades in a new light on thinkorswim desktop with robust charting and analysis tools all while you
John Curto
uncover new opportunities with up to the minute market news and insights. ThinkOrSwim is available on desktop, web and mobile to meet you where you are so you never miss a thing. It's built by the trading obsessed to help you trade brilliantly. Learn more@schwab.com trading well back here at
Ann Berry
the possible event in Miami, it's been a busy week. Not only listening to those conversations between Bob Pittman and Charlamagne the God, but also listening to the Walmart CEO talk about how the retail OG is really leaning in to try to get consumers to understand that it considers itself now a tech business. You could not escape the word tech and everything the Walmart chief in the US had to say. Well on top of running around trying to get up to speed on the latest in the marketing industry and what that could mean for market insights. I actually hosted one of the pieces of content here and that was a conversation with David Steinberg, the founder and CEO of Zeta Global. David founded the marketing platform 20 years ago and in our conversation he highlighted his decision to redesign the company's products to be AI native rather than simply integrating artificial intelligence into what was already offered. Plus he shared his conviction that Zeta's extensive cache of proprietary data that's never been fed into an LLM is the company's greatest mode. And so he gave us a look inside how one company is surviving the SaaS apocalypse and why he just doesn't think that the sell off should apply to Zeta Global.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
So here we are live at possible Miami 6th possible thousand attendees. And the thing you hear, other than talking about the Zeta branded coconuts, the buzz phrase on everyone's tongue is AI. What are companies and the market getting wrong? What's just hype from your perspective?
David Steinberg
You can go back to multiple technology cycles that have gone through a similar hype. Right. I mean, in my lifetime alone, it started with dot com, then it was cloud or mobile. If you think about the dot com era, I think there's a lot of similarities. A new technology coming in that everybody said was going to put everybody out of business.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
Yeah.
David Steinberg
Walmart's going to be gone. JP Morgan Chase is going to be gone. FedEx will be gone. Everything will magically get from where it's got to go to where it's got to go. In the end, companies that adopted this new technology have become the most powerful companies in the world. Companies that turned their backs on it are gone. In AI, you are going to have two types of companies. You're going to have companies that adopt artificial intelligence and win. And you're going to have companies that do not adopt artificial intelligence and for the most part fail or go away. When you look at what I think you're subtly referring to, as I lovingly call the SaaS apocalypse.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
Yeah.
David Steinberg
And we've got a lot of that. That's certainly been a fun few weeks for us. You're going to have, once again winners and losers. Companies that are software based, that have built workflow management tools without proprietary data, without intelligence, are going to have a major pivot ahead of them to win or survive. Companies that have massive amounts of proprietary data and create intelligence and really high quality outcomes like Zeta are going to adopt these technologies and thrive in the next era.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
Let's talk about the expectations for AI, David, because in the analogy that you just referred to, those who adopted and got on the Internet aren't just big, they're mega, mega, mega pilots, right?
David Steinberg
Yeah.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
And then you got those who just failed and they died. Yes, but that middle group, what do you think about AI? Is this about growth to being mega, mega, mega or death? And then there isn't a middle.
David Steinberg
No, no, that's. So that's a great, great question. The answer is you're always going to have middle companies for, you know, you've got Walmart, which obviously thrived. You've also got Target, you've also got Kohl's, you've also got a bunch of other places. I believe Zeta is going to be one of the mega megas. Like we really believe we're building the next sort of generational changing marketing company and technology company. The biggest value we drive is today. For every dollar a customer spends through our platform, we return an average of 600%. Our goal is to get that to 1,000%. With Athena, there are companies like Zeta and others like Palantir, obviously OpenAI, Anthropic and others that have made AI foundational to their businesses. It is literally at our core architecture is AI driven. You're then going to have a lot of companies that keep their existing architecture and they have algorithms that sit outside of it.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
What is it about new product development, right, that you're doing that the incumbents aren't doing well? And how are you charging for it? Because I want to do, I do want to come back to pricing.
David Steinberg
So I mean, a lot of this is the innovator's dilemma. This has been going on for hundreds of years. If you're super successful and you're generating billions of dollars of revenue on your platform, you are not likely to throw that platform out to create an entire new architecture. And that's what you have to do with AI. We literally took the eight platforms we had bought to that date. We were very profitable at the time, comparatively speaking, not like today, but. And we had to go to our private equity partners and be like, well, guys, we're going to go from making, call it 50 million a year to nothing for the next three years. So we can actually run these platforms for cash flow while we build an entirely new architecture that's going to put this thing you've never heard of called artificial intelligence as native to the application layer. So while others are talking about this, like destroying SaaS based companies, companies like us that are using it, we're moving three or four years ahead. Today. We're going to push code for Athena in the next three months. That would have taken us three years.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
So let's talk about Athena and how Athena adds to the story of growth. Or does it? Or is this the new table stakes? So take us through what Athena does and then let's talk about whether it's incremental value or whether you're cannibalizing yourself.
David Steinberg
So It's a voice enabled super agent that today allows you to navigate the entire Zeta marketing platform by, you know, conversational.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
And I want you to talk about David, not just about the voice component, which is important, but actually talk about the insights Athena provides if you don't like. To me, that was the differentiator.
David Steinberg
Yeah. And, and Athena can give. So here's how I sort of think about it. Whether it's a Bloomberg terminal or whatever software you're using, you probably use 5 to 10% of the software you buy. Pay for all of it, but use 5%. 10% of it. Athena is how we allow our clients to unlock the insights and utilization of the entire platform. The goal for her, which, which will be this year, is the ability to just say to Athena, Athena, I'd like to create 2 million incremental customers this quarter and I'd like to do it at a 7% lower cost to create that customer. Would you do that for me? And she'll come back with recommendations. Here's how you can do that.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
You've described a system, holistic solutions. Again, I saw the demo and I was pretty impressed. I was skeptical frankly going in. I've seen a lot of demo.
David Steinberg
I was pretty impressed. You weren't like blown away? I mean, come on.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
Well, I'm British, so you know, hyperbolic understanding.
David Steinberg
You're very difficult to impress.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
I agree, exactly. It was fine is what a Brit would say. Right. Talk if you don't mind about as public companies go and looking at that set because we've got investors listening. Why is this system offering different from a point solution tool?
David Steinberg
So with Zeta, our goal is to put everything that an agency or a marketer needs in one UI with one reporting infrastructure. We set up a consumer data platform for our enterprise clients. We ingest all of their first party data that is relevant to the purpose of marketing. We merge it with the 555 million active opted in people in our data cloud and we enrich that data with an average of 5 to 7,000 data elements per person. Then the algorithms custom train inside of that cdp. There's zero data exhaust. So the longer a client is with us, the better the return on investment. The lower their churn. As you think about it, what did we do in that scenario that makes it almost impossible to be disintermediated by a large language model? 1 51% of the Fortune 100 use us today. 24% of the Fortune 500. Do you think a Fortune 500 company is going to hand all of their first party data to a large language model so they can train on it. Two, we have our own proprietary data, 555 million active proprietary names. We have never fed that data into a large language model and we never will. So now you've got these two massive pools of first party proprietary data that come together to learn in a way that the large language models really can't.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
If I'm a client and I'm struggling to find the right talent, and it is difficult to find talent that's got the creative but also the data interpretation skills to help me optimize my spend is the Athena agent I'm getting one that my the client's talent has created and built. Or am I getting the best of your team that's seen everything at Zeta as the agent I get to use?
David Steinberg
So you're getting the best of our team and it learns everything about the user who is using it personally, so it evolves and gets smarter. In the initial findings of Athena, not only are we seeing a substantially higher return on investment than we might have even have hoped for, but our clients are saying they're able to lower the labor by 75% for operating the platform and the MOP.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
So let me ask you about the track record you've had of beating guidance and raising it. This is my markets hat on. Is this an exercise in managing expectations or are you seeing the fundamental demand consistently outpace where you think it was going to be?
David Steinberg
I think it's a big part.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
Both.
David Steinberg
Yeah, we, we tend to have a conservative nature, but we are winning in the marketplace in a meaningful way.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
So given that and the track record now of gaining share, what makes you nervous? David, are there competitors? Is it the pace of technology? Is it something else? Is it the unknowable?
David Steinberg
Zeta's single biggest risk today is execution. When you're growing as fast as we're growing for as long as we're growing, if you don't execute flawlessly, then you're going to have a problem.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
And what does that mean? Define execution in the way you think about it.
David Steinberg
We have to continue to delight our clients. We have to continue to drive the highest possible return on investment while maintaining good relationships with our clients.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
So, David Steinberg, CEO, 60 second final thought.
David Steinberg
the end of the day, I think you're going to see us as a business, continue to spawn out, get deeper into our clients, help them with bigger and bigger problems that they're dealing with as companies in addition to their marketing.
Interviewer (Possibly from Morning Brew or Bloomberg)
Heard it here first. Thank you very much.
David Steinberg
Thank you.
Ann Berry
Well, thank you to Zeta Global for inviting me to host their event and for the branded coconuts. Always a pleasure talking to David. Great energy. Well, let's take a break and when we come back, we take a spin through the headlines Moving the markets Today.
John Curto
Vaneck's got a question for the market.
Ann Berry
Ask away.
John Curto
What if Energy, gold and infrastructure, long ignored by many investors, are becoming increasingly important again?
Ann Berry
Vaneck shares that the assets building the future aren't all in tech. Data centers need electricity, AI needs copper, and gold is signaling that the old rules about money, debt and currency could be shifting. This is something VanEck's real assets team has been highlighting for years.
John Curto
Rax the Vaneck Real Assets ETF can give investors active diversity diversified exposure across all of it in one allocation. It's built for this environment. Vaneck notes that if you're building a portfolio for a new era and Real Assets Racks offers diversified exposure in one place.
Ann Berry
Learn more@vaneck.com brewracks that's at vaneck.com brew
John Curto
r a a x read fun disclosures in the podcast Description Study and play come together on a Windows 11 PC and for a limited time, college students get the best of both World get the unreal college deal everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox game. Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer while supplies last ends June 30th terms at aka mscollegepc it's
Ann Berry
4pm on the east Coast. The markets have closed. There it is, the bell showing things wrapping up for the the day where we don't have a ticker tape, but instead we'll throw it over to our human ticker, our producer John the S&P
John Curto
500 and the NASDAQ both erased earlier losses in the day and finished the day flat. The Dow ended down about half a percent.
Ann Berry
Well, earlier today, the Senate Banking Committee voted to advance Kevin Walsh's nomination to lead the Federal Reserve. Trump's pick will now move on for a confirmation vote from the full Senate. We recently talked about Banking Committee member Republican Senator Thom Tillis signaling that he would withhold his endorsement of Walsh pending a conclusion to the Justice Department's investigation into current Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Well, that investigation into Powell was dropped, and today's vote fell strictly along party lines. All 13 Republicans voting in favor and all 11 Democrats opposing.
John Curto
The vote came hours before Powell's final meeting as Fed chair. And this afternoon, the Federal Reserve voted to hold interest rates steady for the third consecutive meeting. While expected, the decision was highly divided, with an 8 to 4 vote marking the highest level of dissent since 1992. And while Powell's term as Fed chair ends on May 15, just an hour ago he indicated he will serve as a Fed governor for an indefinite period until a separate probe into the renovation of the central bank's headquarters is, quote, well and truly over with transparency and finality. So much to keep an eye on from the Fed in the coming weeks and now pivoting over to earnings season as results continue to roll in. Let's fire through some highlights.
Ann Berry
Well, we fueled up on coffee to make sure we could kick this one off with Starbucks. That's ticker SBUX shares jumping over 8% today after the company beat revenue expectations and raised its full year outlook. It also marked the second straight quarter of increased traffic at US Cafes, a key signal that customers are coming back to to Starbucks Chief Financial Officer Kathy Smith said growth was generated across its menu, from artisanal bakery items to the rising popularity of protein cold foam. And then looking at its international results. Well, we've covered Starbucks challenges in China and earlier this month the company finalized a deal to sell a 60% stake in its China business to Beu Capital, forming a joint venture in the region. For the recent quarter, same store sales in China rose just half a percent and going forwards segment Starbucks does not plan to share China's standalone revenue and same store sales data since it's now considered part of the company's licensed portfolio.
John Curto
And Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, who has been part of that back to Starbucks plan, said the quarter marked a milestone and the quote turn in our turnaround staying with Food and beverage shares and fast food operator Yum Brands. Ticker Yum were up over 3% today after reporting earnings per share up 50 15% year over year, which beat expectations. Same store sales at KFC were up 3% and the Cantina chicken menu delivered an 8% increase for taco Bell, the laggard of the portfolio. Well, that's Pizza Hut. Same store sales were flat and Yum Brands is reportedly looking to sell the business with CEO Chris Turner saying there's a lot of work to be done. Now some of those things are things that Yum typically doesn't do, seemingly looking for another operator to out Pizza the Hut.
Ann Berry
And finally, shares in Robinhood Ticker H o o d heard plummeting almost 14% after results missed estimates for both revenue and profit. A big source of revenue for Robinhood fees from crypto trades fell 47% from the first quarter of last year, driven by a slump across the digital asset world that kicked off late last year and worsened through early February. While Robinhood has been looking to diversify beyond options trading and the volatility of crypto, so it's been pushing into other financial services businesses like banking, wealth management and, of course, prediction markets. Well, tune in next week because I'll be welcoming Robinhood's Chief Investment Officer, Stephanie Guild onto the show to discuss it. All right now, earnings are coming out from four major tech players. Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Mesa will cover it all on tomorrow's show. That's it for today's Blue Markets Daily.
John Curto
Blue Markets Daily Daily is hosted by Anne Barry and produced by John Curto, Tarkab Delatif Avenue Leroy and Emily Miller. Brittany De Taco is our audio engineer and the president of Morning Brew Inc. Is Devin Emery.
Ann Berry
Wake up tomorrow with the Morning Brew newsletter and tune in to Neil and Toby on Morning Brew Daily. See you back here tomorrow. Same time, same place.
John Curto
Some Follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money Whether it's the funds fueling AI or or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com.
This episode of Brew Markets, hosted by investor and board member Ann Berry, explores the latest financial headlines, with a deep dive on AI’s disruptive effect in SaaS (Software as a Service), the state of legacy media and its push into podcasting, and key earnings news from Starbucks, Yum Brands, and Robinhood. The highlight is an in-depth interview with David Steinberg, founder and CEO of Zeta Global, discussing how his company is navigating the so-called "SaaSpocalypse" brought on by rapid AI advances.
[01:03 – 04:09]
“There are now more radio listeners than there were 20 years ago. Almost counterintuitive.” — Ann Berry [03:24]
[05:33 – 15:35]
“A new technology coming in that everybody said was going to put everybody out of business... In the end, companies that adopted this new technology have become the most powerful in the world. Companies that turned their backs on it are gone.” — David Steinberg [05:52]
“You’re going to have companies that adopt artificial intelligence and win. And you’re going to have companies that do not...and for the most part, fail or go away.” — David Steinberg [06:22]
“Companies that are software based...without proprietary data, without intelligence, are going to have a major pivot ahead of them...Companies that have massive amounts of proprietary data and create intelligence...are going to thrive in the next era.” — David Steinberg [06:52]
“We really believe we’re building the next sort of generational changing marketing company and technology company...For every dollar a customer spends...we return an average of 600%. Our goal is to get that to 1,000%.” — David Steinberg [07:55]
“We had to go to our private equity partners and be like, well, guys, we’re going to go from making, call it $50 million a year to nothing for the next three years. So we can actually...build an entirely new architecture that’s going to put this thing you’ve never heard of called artificial intelligence as native.” — David Steinberg [09:05]
“The goal for [Athena]...is the ability to just say...‘Athena, I’d like to create 2 million incremental customers this quarter and I’d like to do it at a 7% lower cost...Would you do that for me?’ And she’ll come back with recommendations.” — David Steinberg [10:28]
“Do you think a Fortune 500 company is going to hand all of their first party data to a large language model so they can train on it?” — David Steinberg [12:12]
“Our clients are saying they’re able to lower the labor by 75% for operating the platform.” — David Steinberg [13:48]
“Zeta’s single biggest risk today is execution. When you’re growing as fast as we’re growing...if you don’t execute flawlessly, then you’re going to have a problem.” — David Steinberg [14:49]
“I think you’re going to see us...spawn out, get deeper into our clients, help them with bigger and bigger problems...as companies, in addition to their marketing.” — David Steinberg [15:20]
[17:08 – 21:20]
Shares up 8% after a revenue beat and higher full-year outlook.
U.S. comeback: Second quarter of increased café traffic.
Menu innovation: Artisanal bakery, protein cold foam highlighted as growth drivers.
China strategy: Joint venture with Beu Capital; future reporting will fold China into licensed portfolio—no standalone same-store sales reporting.
“Growth was generated across its menu, from artisanal bakery items to the rising popularity of protein cold foam.” — Ann Berry [18:42] “The quarter marked a milestone and the ‘turn in our turnaround’.” — Brian Niccol, CEO [19:39]
“Robinhood has been looking to diversify beyond options trading and the volatility of crypto, so it’s been pushing into other financial services businesses.” — Ann Berry [20:28]
“Every new technology, whether dot-com, cloud, or mobile, comes with exaggerated predictions of doom, but those who adapt and build win.” — David Steinberg [06:13]
“Charlamagne...learned to be vulnerable on air, [using] social to meet his audience where they are beyond radio...his own perspective [is] that he’s a public servant going live every day in service of his listeners.” — Ann Berry [01:38]
“We had to go to our private equity partners and be like, well, guys, we’re going to go from making $50 million a year to nothing for the next three years. So we can actually...build an entirely new architecture.” — David Steinberg [09:05]
“We have never fed [our data] into a large language model and we never will. Now you’ve got these two massive pools of first party proprietary data...the large language models really can’t.” — David Steinberg [12:20]
Ann Berry’s delivery is brisk, data-driven, and occasionally playful—particularly when referencing branded coconuts and panel observations from the “Possible” conference. The Zeta Global interview maintains a professional, tech-insider tone with some lively banter between Steinberg and the interviewer.
This episode is a must-listen for those interested in how AI is reshaping software, why proprietary data is the new moat, and how big changes in consumer behavior are reflected in both legacy and cutting-edge media and retail empires. The candid insights from Zeta Global’s CEO on innovation, risk, and AI-native architecture serve as a roadmap for tech businesses, while the market recap offers quick, actionable takeaways for investors.
End of summary.