Joe Feldman (3:33)

Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to chat with you.

Ed Elson (3:36)

So we want to get your reactions to these earnings beat on revenue missed on EPS stock fell 6%. Take us through what happened with these Home Depot earnings.

Joe Feldman (3:48)

So I think what happened was expectations were a lot higher heading into the print, really self induced by Home Depot. If you go back a quarter, they saw some momentum in the business. They had a better spring, early spring, summer period and they thought the second half of the year was going to be even better. They thought there would be continued momentum. So we in the street all expected higher sales trends coming into this quarter and then when the quarter materialized, it didn't happen. Basically the consumer stayed kind of stable. So their underlying business stayed stable at around a 1% growth in terms of comp. But there was some pressure because of the lag, lack of storm activity. Usually hurricanes are a good thing for Home Depot, for Lowe's and when that didn't happen, it caused further pressure on sales. Then the margins start to deteriorate a little bit and you saw some deleverage and so the earnings came in a little bit worse and the investor community was a little frustrated with what happened.

Ed Elson (4:49)

Can you tell us more about how hurricanes relate to profits at Home Depot? It's a strange thing in the business, but it is important.

Joe Feldman (4:58)

Yeah, no, it's very important actually that in the third quarter and sometimes in the fourth quarter where big storms can have a big impact. Because when a hurricane comes and there is some destruction related to it or tornadoes and other storms, you know, houses need repair, roofs might get damaged, gutters might get damaged. And so when that happens, the consumer usually comes back in force in that region soon after the event to try to repair their homes. This time around in the third quarter of 2025, we didn't really have any major storms like that compared to two last year late in the quarter around October. And those storms had a big positive boost to Home Depot, Lowe's, Tractor Supply late in the quarter a year ago, in the fourth quarter. So now when you look ahead and you don't have any storm activity or recovery activity to happen, that's going to put some extra pressure on the sales.

Ed Elson (5:53)

Yeah. So interesting, aside from the hurricanes or the lack thereof, which was interestingly a bad thing for, for the company, was there anything else? Was there anything that we learned about the consumer perhaps? I mean, I feel like Home Depot is generally considered to be like a bellwether for how the consumer is doing. Did that, did that play a role in these earnings here?

Joe Feldman (6:19)

You know, I think the consumer was definitely front and center and there was a, it's always a much talked about topic, as you said, with Home Depot as a bellwether and their consumer is actually pretty healthy. It was interesting. Now you may not think that when you look at the sales trend, however big ticket sales were actually up a couple of percent. That would imply that people, when they do go to shop, they're opting for, you know, new innovations, newer products, things that may have advanced technologies within them. I'm thinking of appliances and power tools and things like that where they are stepping up. So that would imply that the consumer has the money to spend. The homeowner by definition tends to be a bit more affluent just because to own a home you need to be. And so I think they're seeing resilience among their consumer. It's just they're not seeing people, you know, digging in deeper to go after bigger projects like a bathroom remodel or a kitchen remodel. And that's really what's causing the pressure. The day to day repair and maintenance is happening. And that's why I said earlier that the business is relatively stable because that underlying core business is fine. And we're seeing consumer spend and shop. It's just that incremental spend is not happening because that otherwise considered discretionary within the home improvement space is not happening because people are just a little bit more cautious. Maybe they're waiting for rates, interest rates to come down a little more to finance some of of these projects. And home values are still up, but with lack of housing turnover, there's also some pressure there. Usually people will do some extra work to clean up the house before they sell it or soon after they buy it. And with the lack of turnover that Hurts as well. So broadly speaking, the consumer is somewhat resilient. They're spending, it's just that they're not spending beyond what they need to spend on the day to day maintenance.

Ed Elson (8:10)

Have tariffs played a role in the story here? I mean, Home Depot, I believe it imports quite a lot of its inventory. Have tariffs had any effect on the business?

Joe Feldman (8:22)

You know, so far tariffs have not had a significant effect at Home Depot nor at Lowe's. I mean, we'll hear from Lowe's tomorrow. But I think what we've seen is that the tariffs, you know, over half of what Home Depot buys is domestic. So, you know, little less than 50% is imported. Those goods there are tariffs on. They've been able to mitigate a lot of the tariffs through negotiations with suppliers, through, you know, cost controls on their own end, maybe, you know, operating more efficiently. And there has been selective pass through. They've not really seen much pushback on the pricing pass through that they've had to do. It's not been too dramatic. You do see it, appliances, power tools, things like that that come out of China or other parts of the world. But you know, broadly speaking, tariffs were not a major impact in this quarter.

Ed Elson (9:14)

Yeah, but they are increasing prices and they are saying that it's because of the tariffs. In other words, it's impacting the consumer at least a little bit.

Joe Feldman (9:23)

Yes, I think broadly, yes. To expand beyond the Home Depot story. You're absolutely right. The consumer is very much feeling the impact of tariff related price increases, there's no question about that. And I think the Trump administration response on food the other day really reflects that. You know, I assume when we speak here from Target and Walmart later this week, we're going to hear that tariff pressure is, is, is there, it's real. It's causing consumers to have less discretionary dollars. It's causing consumers to be a little sharper and tighter with how they spend. They're seeking out more value. So yes, broadly, the consumer is definitely being impacted by the higher prices that are starting to flow through. And it's really just starting because if you consider when the tariffs really did jump up a little bit, inventory that's now hitting the stores for this holiday season and into next year. That's the tariff inventory at the higher tariffs that are in place today.

Ed Elson (10:18)

Right, yeah. Just before we let you go here, what did we learn about the guidance? I mean, is there anything that the guidance for Home Depot could tell us about the economy at large? I mean, can we learn anything from these earnings about what will happen either on tariffs or on anything else going forward. Forward, Yeah.

Joe Feldman (10:40)

I think the guidance from Home Depot reflects the fact that the macro, or more specifically the housing market is still rather sluggish and we're just not seeing that pickup that we would have expected to see at this point. Now we are seeing a more stable housing market and the turnover is running at around 4 million. At an annual run rate. 4 million units are turning over that. But we need to see it higher. We want to see it higher and I think Home Depot wants to see that. They also want to see lower interest rates that would help people to finance projects. So I think their guidance shows that caution that we're just not getting that incremental lift from the industry that we would like to see at this point. I do believe Home Depot is taking market share reflected in their current business. I mean, it was positive sales. They generated $40 billion, $41 billion of revenue in the quarter. But the go forward, I think there's going to be some caution in 2026 as well. Tariff related pricing pressure on the first half of the year, on the consumer is going to continue to weigh on things. And so you may not see this sharp rebound in the first or second quarter. We're hoping spring, so maybe second quarter you'll start to see a little bit of a lift. But it still looks like we're going to see more of the same for the next couple of quarters.

Ed Elson (11:56)

All right. Joe Feldman, senior managing director at Telse Group, thank you for joining us. Really appreciate your time.

Joe Feldman (12:02)

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Ed Elson (12:03)

After the break, Big Tech Embraces Debt if you're enjoying the show, give Prof. G Markets a follow.

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Ed Elson (14:27)

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Robert Schiffman (15:28)

Foreign.

Ed Elson (15:32)

We're back with Profgue Markets. What's the hot new trend in AI right now? Raising a lot of debt. This week, Amazon raised $15 billion in its first US dollar bond offering in three years. It's not alone. Google sold $25 billion worth of debt in the US and Europe earlier this month. Meta issued $30 billion of corporate bonds in October. Meanwhile, Oracle is already carrying $104 billion in debt and it is lining up another $38 billion. All of this spending adds up. These deals have contributed to a record $6 trillion in global debt issuance this year. In sum, big tech is now financing the AI boom with borrowed money, just as investors are starting to question how and when this AI build out will actually pay off. So here to explain the role that debt is playing in the AI boom, we are speaking with Robert Schiffman, Sydney technology and intern analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Robert, thanks for joining us on Profgy Markets.

Robert Schiffman (16:33)

How you doing, Ed?

Ed Elson (16:34)

Doing very well. Thank you for being here.

Robert Schiffman (16:36)

Awesome.

Ed Elson (16:37)

So a lot of big tech debt headlines in the news Recently. Amazon raising $15 billion. We saw Google raise 25 billion. Meta raised 30 billion. These seem like very big numbers, but for those of us who are, you know, less familiar with the debt markets, how big are these numbers really, why are we seeing them, and why, why do they all seem to be happening kind of at the same time or at least in the same month?

Robert Schiffman (17:09)

Yeah, it's even bigger than what you said because Oracle did $18 billion of public debt and they're looking to do 38 billion of private debt. Meta did another $27 billion of off balance sheet debt. So we're actually in a record year for debt issuance, public and private. And it's a little bit of a question of if we build it, will they come? When it comes to AI, I actually think it's the other way. I think the demand has come. So these companies are building it. And the reality is this is just the early stages. There is a lot more spending to go. I think we're going to see hundreds of billions of dollars of debt over the next few years because we're likely to see $3 trillion of AI cap spending cumulatively from probably a handful of the largest hyperscalers through 2030.

Ed Elson (18:01)

So those names you mentioned there, these are all companies that, generally speaking, already have quite a lot of cash on the balance sheet. You'd kind of think that if you're Google or your Meta or your Amazon, that you don't need to borrow money. Do they need to borrow? I mean, do they not have enough cash already to just finance this themselves?

Robert Schiffman (18:24)

Yeah, listen, the old adage in the bond markets are you borrow money when you can, not when you have to. And right now the market is still ripe for lending. If you can take down 10 year money with a 4 handle on it, so a 4% coupon, you're going to do that all day long. You can borrow 30, 40, 50 year money with a five handle on it. You're also going to do that. The reality is they, they have enough money today that if they didn't want to borrow another dime, they could probably get away with it. But what it would do is it really pulls resources away, pulls financial flexibility away, because most of these companies other than Amazon are also spending 30, 50, 70, in the case of Apple, $100 billion a year on shareholder returns. So how do you do everything is really the question. And this enables borrowing money, enables them to both invest organically, continue to do M and A, and pay significant dividends and share buybacks over the next couple of years. Some of the companies like Ameda, are going to be spending more money than they're pulling in if they continue on a shareholder return path they've been on. So they actually do need money. Others like an Oracle, which are triple B rated, are just flat out free cash flow negative. They're spending a lot more than they're bringing in. So it's a little bit idiosyncratic. But remember, for years most of these companies, whether it's Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, they've been very conservative in terms of their balance sheets, Double A balance sheets, aaa balance sheets, 50, 75, $100 billion of cash. They've been setting themselves up for an opportunity like this, so they position themselves very well. That being said, borrowing money today makes a pretty good argument that they're going to spend a lot more money tomorrow.

Ed Elson (20:11)

You mentioned that there's this question of if we build it, will they come. You said that you think the demand already is there. I think the AI bears would say, well, yes, there's demand, but it's all kind of circular, it's all coming from the same people. I mean OpenAI wants to buy Compute, but you know, Nvidia, they're the ones who have been investing in OpenAI and then OpenAI takes their money and spends it over at Oracle. In other words, the demand is artificial. To the people who are worried about that prospect, what would you say to those people?

Robert Schiffman (20:46)

Yeah, there's been a lot of incestuous type of investing here. That doesn't mean that true third party demand doesn't exist. I actually think it does. I think every Single business is looking towards these large hyperscalers to create an AI backdrop for them. They cannot do that on themselves. Every one of these companies, companies constantly are talking on their earnings calls about they have much more demand than there is supply and that's why they're spending so much. I understand the naysayers because if you're spending hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars right now and you're not seeing returns for the next two, four, six years, you get skeptical in particular. The skepticism though is coming from the equity markets. We saw stocks skyrocket all time, high valuations, expectations that every single one of these companies are going to the moon and beyond. The credit markets though have been, I think, a lot more based in reality. Spreads have gotten a little bit wider as all this debt has come. That being said, there hasn't been the same sort of panic or sell off. We're not 35 or 40% off from our highs, we're just a little bit wider. And I think that's really the market that you need to look at to see is there really, is there really some sort of systematic problem? And the reality is I think the market is much more fighting headlines on return on investment that they are. Whether or not these are going to ultimately pay off. They are going to pay off. The question just is how much? From a credit side, pretty much everything's trading at par. Things are trading near historic tights that says where the market is pretty comfortable that those cash flows are going to be there in the future. Equities are just a different story. Perhaps they got ahead of themselves and that's why they're coming back. And that's where we're seeing a little bit of the panic in the market. But we've been asked whether or not this is a systematic potential risk and I don't see it at all. And the difference between now and say the dot com era is the dot com era had companies that weren't generating any revenues raising money via IPOs at ridiculous valuations that couldn't never be justified. Here you actually have companies collecting money. The reason why Amazon stock took off after the end of the quarter was because aws, its AI and cloud business, had its best quarter in three years off of really large numbers. And you're seeing that across this space. So we've got really big companies generating real revenues and real cash flows today and they're spending money to make money in the future. I just don't think that the type of worries that people have out there really are justified.

Ed Elson (23:27)

Yeah, it sounds like you think that yes, they're taking on a lot of debt, but for the most part it's justified and responsible. Are there certain companies that aren't doing it right though? I mean, I think of Oracle as an example. You mentioned there they've taken on more than 100 billion. Investors seem to be getting a lot more anxious. You mentioned their credit rating. I think you said BB or somewhere closer to junk. Are you concerned about a company like that or maybe a company like coreweave again, which is borrowing quite a lot? Are there companies doing it right and companies doing it wrong?

Robert Schiffman (23:59)

Yeah, it's not necessarily right or wrong. It's just the starting point. So some of the largest companies like Microsoft or Amazon or Alphabet have double A or triple A ratings. So their balance sheets are already prepped for more borrowing. They have little to no leverage. Absolute debt might be high. They might have 50 or $100 billion of debt, but they also have 100 or 150 or $200 billion of EBITDA. So in the world of credit, it's all relative. Leverage is still very low. As you move down the credit scale. Somebody like Oracle, who's triple B rated, this is sort of important. They are investment grade, they're mid triple B. They've got negative outlooks at S and P and Moody's. People are worried that a name like that could fall to junk because the free cash flow is going to be so negative over the next couple of years. It doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong. And in fact, it appears as if they've got about 300 billion of contracts coming from what we believe is OpenAI. If that's the case, if they're spending money now, they're more than willing to go into a cash flow deficit in order to meet that demand over the next few years. So it's not a matter of right or wrong, just their balance sheet is starting in a different place. And what that means is that credit risk is going to be higher because they're triple B with 100 billion plus a debt and adding more debt versus a Microsoft that's AAA, that has less debt, that's adding debt. So it's still a little bit relative. I don't think it's right or wrong. I think it's all sort of right. They're actually all going after very similar dollars. This is a huge pie of potential revenues, but there's only a handful of players here that are actually building super deep moats around them. They're going to make it so that you're not going to be, have. There's, there's going to be such large barriers to entry that no one else is going to be able to provide these services. So if that demand does end up playing out, I think we're going to be looking back at now and saying why didn't actually, why didn't they spend more money? Yes, I think that's a fair argument is we just wrote a note on Amazon saying that they're going to spend a trillion dollars over the next five years. Is that too much or too little? I actually think it's going to end up proving to be too little.

Ed Elson (26:06)

Yeah, yeah. I think those are all fair arguments. I think someone, my position at least is that the very important word there is if, if it is the case that the demand is coming, if it is the case that OpenAI will spend those $300 billion. There are a lot of ifs which I think make people like me and I think other, other investors kind of nervous. But just at sort of a general level how much debt is too much debt? Like at what point do we look at what's happening and say yeah, we're going too far. What is that line do you think?

Robert Schiffman (26:42)

Yeah, I don't think we're anywhere near it. And the reason why is credit markets. Again it's about relative numbers. If you have growing cash flow, if your EBITDA is going from 100 billion to 200 billion, growing your debt levels from 50 billion to 150 billion might not mean that much. Your leverage still might be very, very low. So your absolute debt levels might be really high. I think this market is ripe for dramatic more borrowing. If you look at some of these transactions, the amount that the books were oversubscribed. So the book talk on Amazon they raised 15 billion of debt. The buzz on the book was it was $80 billion of demand for that $15 billion of debt. What if Amazon wanted to raise $100 billion? How much would the book of demand had been? It's sort of hard to say. But these deals are being way over subscribed. There's a lot more money chasing this debt, particularly for the high quality names than not. Yields are hard to come by in a spread compressed environment. Generating alpha and excess returns is very difficult. These are all very high, highly rated, high quality companies. People are not used to this levels of debt. I'm telling people get used to it because we're going to see more because they want to build more. And if you say to me, how much more can they borrow? I don't know what that number is. I just know it's more and it's more and it's more by a lot. And by the way, let's say I'm wrong. I sort of sound bullish. Right. Say I'm dead wrong and that you're only going to get half the revenues that these companies are expecting. The reality is the vast majority of them, Certainly these double A's and AAA's, it's going to primarily be an equity impact. The credit profiles. If you go from AAA to aa, you're gonna get your money back. If you go from AA to single A, ultimately you're gonna get your money back. But if your equity is valued at 30 times earnings and your revenues are growing at a much slower rate, 50% less than what the market anticipates, your multiple could be cut in half, your stock price could be cut in half and you can get crushed. And I think that's a little bit of what's going on now. Just like you said, everyone's asking the what if this doesn't happen? What if those revenues don't come? What if they're not there? It's really much more of an equity risk. Even though this is being funded on the back of bondholders, the equity holders are actually taking much more risk than the debt holders, from my perspective. And that's why you're going to see even more debt.

Ed Elson (29:18)

Yes. Which is itself concerning for some people as well. It was very, very interesting stuff.

Robert Schiffman (29:24)

Well, listen, these are the Mount Rushmore of credits. If you think about names that are positioned to borrow more money, these are the names they've run historically very conservative financial policies. They've got tons of cash, they generate a lot of cash, they can add a lot of debt. The rating agencies are providing support and letting them grow into the balance sheet. So what I would say for the. For the everyday person who's not even investing, this is a great thing. This means the benefits of AI are going to come to you sooner than later. And I think that's what all these enterprises are looking for. They are, they're desperate to enhance efficiency. Sometimes it means firing people, other times it just means the ability to sell more products and services. And they need these hyperscalers and they need these products and services quicker, so the faster they can be built better. And I think that's actually good for everybody.

Ed Elson (30:17)

All right. You are bullish, I'll tell you that much. We appreciate it. Robert Schiffman Senior Technology and Internet credit analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Robert, this was great. Thanks for joining us.

Robert Schiffman (30:29)

Thanks so much, Jake.

Ed Elson (30:33)

Well, as Robert told us, record year for debt, both public and private, more than $6 trillion issued this year. And as Robert also told us, it is only going to continue in his words, expect, quote, more. Now, clearly Robert isn't so worried about that. Part of that is probably because he's more focused on the credit markets than the equity markets. As he said, the equity investors are actually quite exposed here. And part of it is also that he is fundamentally bullish on AI. And that is a fair position and many people take that position. But regardless of what you think of all of this, the point does stand, and that is that we are borrowing more money than ever before to build AI. And that is important. And it's also highly relevant to a conversation that we had a few weeks ago with Andrew Ross Sorkin. You might remember we had Andrew on to discuss his new book, 1929, which tells the story of 1929 and how the US stock market collapsed that year and how it ultimately led to this Great Depression. We covered a lot of ground in that conversation, but there was one piece of the story that we perhaps should have dug into a little bit more, and that was the debt piece of the story. The enormous amounts of debt that investors on Wall street and on Main street were taking back in 1929 to finance their investments. Now, I won't explain exactly how that all played out. If you want the full explanation, then I encourage you to just read the book. But I would highlight just one paragraph that I think really summarizes things and which I think is probably the most important paragraph in the whole book. So here it is. Andrew Ross Sorkin writes, quote, the almost singular through line behind every major financial crisis is one thing, debt. It is a powerfully optimistic force. If we envision the future as a land of ever expanding opportunity and affluence, why shouldn't we marshal some of those resources for use today? That's what debt does. It draws the wealth of tomorrow into the present. Problems arise when we get greedy and take too much. Nobody knows for sure where the line is or what to do when we discover we've gone past it. At that point, panic is the natural reaction. The future suddenly grows so small and so dark that there isn't enough optimism left to draw from. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller, edited by Joel Patterson and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Our research team is Dan Shalon Isabella Kinsel, Kristen o' Donoghue and Mia Silverio. Our Technical director is Drew Burrows. Thank you for listening to Profit Markets from Profit Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I'll see you tomorrow. This message comes from at&t. America's First Network is also its fastest and most Reliable based on RootMetrics United States Root Score Report first half 2025 tested with best commercially available smartphones on three national mobile networks across all available network types. Your experiences may vary. Rootmetrics rankings are not an endorsement of AT and T. When you compare, there's no comparison. AT and T.

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