# Mixed Big Tech Earnings, Powell Says He'll Stay at Fed as Governor

An episode of [Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia Edition](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1663863437), 30 Apr 2026, 16 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/58e85be7-dbb5-4043-afed-af80014dc0b3/9f579e23-33ab-44cd-9184-b43c00098ae7/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=27143354-63aa-4ac5-965d-af80014dc0d3

US equity futures rose, reversing earlier declines, helped along by late-market gains in Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Meanwhile, Meta Platforms Inc. shares slid in post-market trading alongside Microsoft Corp., keeping alive lingering concerns over artificial intelligence spending. We heard from Maribel Lopez, Lopez Research Founder and Principal Analyst. She spoke to Bloomberg's Shery Ahn and Haidi Stroud-Watts. Plus - Federal Reserve officials left interest rates unchanged, but revealed a deepening division over the outlook for policy amid increased uncertainty caused by the conflict in the Middle East. Four officials voted against the decision, including three who objected to language in their post-meeting statement that suggested the central bank would eventually resume cutting rates. In what will be his last press conference as Fed chair, Jerome Powell said he intends to remain at the central bank as a member of its Board of Governors. We heard from Jeanette Garretty, Robertson Stephens Chief Economist. She spoke to Bloomberg's Haidi Stroud-Watts and Shery Ahn. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
[0:10] Speaker 2: Welcome to the Daybreak Asia Podcast. I'm Charlie Pellet. Doug
[0:14] Speaker 2: Prisoners got the week off. US equity futures rose, reversing
[0:18] Speaker 2: earlier declines, helped along by late market gains in Alphabet
[0:22] Speaker 2: and Amazon. Meanwhile, Meta platform shares slipped in post market trading,
[0:27] Speaker 2: alongside Microsoft keeping alive, lingering concerns over AI intelligence spending.
[0:35] Speaker 2: For more on earnings, we heard from Marabelle Lopez, the
[0:38] Speaker 2: founder and principal analyst at Lopez Research, and she spoke
[0:41] Speaker 2: to Bloomberg's Heidi Stroud, Watts and Sherry on is.
[0:45] Speaker 3: It all about really the Kapex story here and what
[0:48] Speaker 3: stood out to you when it came to that drag
[0:51] Speaker 3: in their numbers.
[0:53] Speaker 4: Yeah. When we look at.
[0:54] Speaker 5: What's happening, AI rises all boats, but it also is
[0:57] Speaker 5: one of those things it's very difficult to get over
[0:59] Speaker 5: the wave. So what we've seen happen is almost everybody
[1:04] Speaker 5: is coming in with well over one hundred billion in
[1:08] Speaker 5: capec spen. You know, we're looking at one hundred and
[1:10] Speaker 5: ninety one hundred and forty five. It's really hard to
[1:13] Speaker 5: see when the revenue hits to match that capex spen
[1:17] Speaker 5: right now. So that's the thing that Meta is experiencing
[1:20] Speaker 5: right now. There's waning interest in the belief that they
[1:23] Speaker 5: actually have the right AI to gain that money, whereas
[1:27] Speaker 5: you see someone like Anthropic and even open Ai starting
[1:29] Speaker 5: to make real strides with that. So the kapex thing
[1:32] Speaker 5: is the thing that's also killing the Microsoft earnings. You know,
[1:36] Speaker 5: by all standards, they had a great quarter, but people
[1:39] Speaker 5: just don't believe that their AI revenue is going to
[1:42] Speaker 5: keep pace with their AI spending.
[1:45] Speaker 3: A different story for Google though, Is alphabet the one
[1:48] Speaker 3: that right now we're seeing the capitalizing of all of
[1:51] Speaker 3: these AI investments.
[1:53] Speaker 5: Yeah, this for a horse race, would be calling Google
[1:56] Speaker 5: the closer right now, in the sense that everybody thought
[1:59] Speaker 5: that they were extremely behind in terms of whether or
[2:02] Speaker 5: not they were a leading cloud provider, whether or not
[2:05] Speaker 5: they were leading AI provider, And now it turns out
[2:08] Speaker 5: that everybody's trying around, looking around and saying, hey, they
[2:11] Speaker 5: seem to be having really good AI revenue, really good
[2:13] Speaker 5: cloud growth. They're coming on really strong, and they're coming
[2:17] Speaker 5: on strong at a time when we're actually starting to
[2:19] Speaker 5: see enterprise buyer interest in both cloud and cloud AI
[2:24] Speaker 5: together so it's a really good time for them to
[2:27] Speaker 5: have this hit. Where's the other companies? If you look
[2:30] Speaker 5: at Microsoft, people feel like their big wave is passed
[2:34] Speaker 5: them by, and even though they seem to be growing
[2:36] Speaker 5: really at a good rate, the consensus just feels like
[2:40] Speaker 5: it's not enough. They thought that they should be growing more,
[2:42] Speaker 5: whereas Google came in, they thought they were going to
[2:44] Speaker 5: be growing less, and they're growing at a better rate.
[2:46] Speaker 4: Than people expected them to.
[2:47] Speaker 5: So that's what I think we see some of the
[2:49] Speaker 5: disrupt and the numbers that we're looking at right now.
[2:52] Speaker 5: By most standards, with the exception of Meta, we could
[2:55] Speaker 5: say that everybody did really well.
[2:57] Speaker 4: This quarter.
[3:00] Speaker 1: When it comes to Meta, though they attributed it that
[3:03] Speaker 1: Quebec's overhang also to more expensive component costs. Right, how
[3:07] Speaker 1: much does this become more of a broader pressure point,
[3:10] Speaker 1: particularly as we take a look at the expense and
[3:14] Speaker 1: the sort of lack of flexibility in terms of supply
[3:17] Speaker 1: chains as this war drags on too.
[3:21] Speaker 5: Yeah, this is where we get into the real interesting
[3:23] Speaker 5: thing of how you know, do you have a chip
[3:25] Speaker 5: game and how advanced is your chip game? So if
[3:28] Speaker 5: you look at Google, they just announced new TPUs last week,
[3:31] Speaker 5: at their conference, and that really they made a very
[3:34] Speaker 5: big point about how that was going to help them
[3:36] Speaker 5: on the cost side. You know, AWS and Microsoft have
[3:39] Speaker 5: both made similar moves, so not everybody is so dependent
[3:43] Speaker 5: on Nvidia in that regard, and that gives them a
[3:44] Speaker 5: little more flexibility in terms of what that operating expense
[3:48] Speaker 5: is going to look like and what the capex is
[3:49] Speaker 5: going to look like for them. So I think when
[3:52] Speaker 5: we look at Meta, the biggest issue with Meta is
[3:56] Speaker 5: they're going to spend a lot on AI, but we're
[3:59] Speaker 5: not quite seeing where they're going to make the revenue.
[4:02] Speaker 5: Is it going to be on ads? Is it going
[4:04] Speaker 5: to be on front chair models? They seem quite far
[4:06] Speaker 5: behind in the front term model game. They've made some acquisitions,
[4:09] Speaker 5: they've been some difficulty with those acquisitions lately. So really
[4:12] Speaker 5: it's a very troubled time for Meta in terms of
[4:14] Speaker 5: understanding how that AI strategy comes to fruition. Whereas if
[4:18] Speaker 5: you look at the hyperscalers, it's pretty clear what happens.
[4:20] Speaker 5: They're going to sell cloud workloads based on AI. They
[4:24] Speaker 5: may sell AI applications and agentic software and other things
[4:27] Speaker 5: on top of that. So the revenue picture for them,
[4:31] Speaker 5: while not clear. You can actually see a path to
[4:33] Speaker 5: growth for them, where it's much harder to see a
[4:35] Speaker 5: path to growth to Meta, where they're spending a lot
[4:38] Speaker 5: of money on capital expects AI.
[4:43] Speaker 1: The investor reaction seems quite binary in that sense, right,
[4:45] Speaker 1: Either the spend is warranted or it is and then
[4:48] Speaker 1: that's a cycle. We continue to see these broader markets
[4:52] Speaker 1: go through for Meta, as you kind of allude to,
[4:54] Speaker 1: it's a matter of well, you're spending this money now,
[4:57] Speaker 1: you're going to be a market later and their adults
[4:59] Speaker 1: on that. What do you see in terms of the
[5:01] Speaker 1: competitors in this space right, because we're hearing that internally,
[5:04] Speaker 1: Google is very worried about the lacks of anthropic.
[5:09] Speaker 4: I think everyone's worried about the likes of Anthropic.
[5:11] Speaker 5: They've made a really much stronger play in the enterprise
[5:14] Speaker 5: than people thought they were going to make. They have
[5:16] Speaker 5: been very focused in terms of what they're doing. You know,
[5:19] Speaker 5: if you look at open AI, they have things like Sora,
[5:22] Speaker 5: and then they shut down Sora because video spends a
[5:25] Speaker 5: lot of tokens, but it doesn't really get you a
[5:27] Speaker 5: lot of money. So the question is not can you
[5:30] Speaker 5: develop AI? The question is can you monetize AI, and
[5:33] Speaker 5: I think that's one of the things that when people
[5:35] Speaker 5: look at what Anthropic strategy has been.
[5:38] Speaker 4: People love cloud code, people are coding. There's all this.
[5:41] Speaker 5: Discussion about the demise of software engineers, which I don't
[5:44] Speaker 5: believe is valid. But even having said that, they are
[5:46] Speaker 5: selling into enterprises, they have healthy, strong enterprise revenue, so
[5:50] Speaker 5: people are more willing to give them a pass on
[5:53] Speaker 5: the KAPEC spend because they can see a path to growth.
[5:56] Speaker 5: Because we're really at the early days. We are nowhere
[5:59] Speaker 5: near at the point where we could say AI has
[6:01] Speaker 5: mass penetration in organizations. So there's a lot of runway
[6:06] Speaker 5: for the right companies.
[6:09] Speaker 1: Is there room do you think for the right companies?
[6:11] Speaker 1: Is there room for both an anthropic and an open AI.
[6:14] Speaker 1: We're hearing now that Anthropy is looking at a new
[6:16] Speaker 1: funding round offers at over nine hundred billion in terms
[6:20] Speaker 1: of its value.
[6:22] Speaker 4: This is not a Lord of the Rings moment.
[6:24] Speaker 5: There's not going to be just one It's impossible for
[6:26] Speaker 5: them to be just one AI company that rules it all.
[6:30] Speaker 5: So I think there's opportunity. I think there will be
[6:33] Speaker 5: a tremendous amount of competition, and I think that people
[6:36] Speaker 5: will continue to pick their tools, just the way that
[6:38] Speaker 5: there was room for more than one cloud company. I
[6:41] Speaker 5: believe there's room for more than one AI company. So
[6:43] Speaker 5: I think we're going to have a healthy set of
[6:46] Speaker 5: competition moving forward. And I think part of the bigger
[6:50] Speaker 5: issues for all the smaller, more specialized companies how do
[6:54] Speaker 5: they continue to drive value and will they just end
[6:57] Speaker 5: up rolled up into something like an anthropic or.
[7:00] Speaker 2: That was Marabell Lopez, the founder and principal analyst at
[7:04] Speaker 2: Lopez Research, speaking to Bloomberg's Heidie Stroud Watson Sherry. On
[7:09] Speaker 2: Next up, Federal Reserve leaves interest rates unchanged. For more,
[7:13] Speaker 2: we'll hear from Jeanette Garrity, chief economist at Robertson Stevens
[7:18] Speaker 2: right here on the Daybreak Asia podcast. Welcome back to
[7:28] Speaker 2: the Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm Charlie Tall, Doug Prisoner's got
[7:32] Speaker 2: the week off. The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged,
[7:35] Speaker 2: and FED Chair j Powell said he will remain at
[7:38] Speaker 2: the Federal Reserve as a governor after his term as
[7:41] Speaker 2: chair of the Central Bank ends. This puts an end
[7:44] Speaker 2: to months of speculation as to whether Powell plan to
[7:48] Speaker 2: stay or leave. And for more on the fed's latest
[7:51] Speaker 2: decision and Powell's future. We heard from Jeanette Garrity, chief
[7:55] Speaker 2: economist at Robertson Stevens, and she spoke to Bloomberg's Heidie
[7:59] Speaker 2: Stroud Watson Shrry on.
[8:00] Speaker 1: It was such an interesting meeting for a number of reasons. Right,
[8:04] Speaker 1: the fact that Fedja Powell has decided to stay on
[8:06] Speaker 1: that's pretty unprecedented, but also even just in terms of
[8:09] Speaker 1: the widening gulf on the outlook for inflation, for energy
[8:13] Speaker 1: prices and the war. What did you make of everything?
[8:17] Speaker 6: Well, the descent was very interesting. The interest rate decision
[8:21] Speaker 6: itself was kind of aloumire, but the descent is what
[8:26] Speaker 6: obviously caught everybody's eyes. And I think it's also the
[8:30] Speaker 6: fact that the three people dissenting were, you know, sort
[8:35] Speaker 6: of not the usual vocal dissenters, and they're all FED
[8:40] Speaker 6: presidents from, if you will, the heartland. You know, does
[8:43] Speaker 6: that predispose them to look at inflation a little bit
[8:46] Speaker 6: of a different way.
[8:47] Speaker 4: Possibly, But.
[8:51] Speaker 6: The fact that it was a descent over the language
[8:57] Speaker 6: is almost, in an odd way, to the heart of
[9:01] Speaker 6: something that Kevin Walsh is soon to be new Chairs
[9:05] Speaker 6: sort of put out there as something he wants to address.
[9:09] Speaker 6: It's about communication. He has a very different view of communication.
[9:13] Speaker 6: I think he might say, well, this is kind of nuts.
[9:18] Speaker 6: If we've got people dissenting because of the tilt and
[9:22] Speaker 6: the language from one FMC statement to another, that's not
[9:27] Speaker 6: really what it should be because it's not clear at all.
[9:32] Speaker 6: It's not explicit. The market has read this as being
[9:36] Speaker 6: these dissenters seeing something very different about inflation, but it's
[9:41] Speaker 6: not really clear that that's the case. That they just
[9:44] Speaker 6: wanted to take a more neutral position. So it is
[9:49] Speaker 6: very much about communication. I know that the markets are
[9:55] Speaker 6: reading into this that they're at confirmation where they are
[10:01] Speaker 6: already at sort of here in the United States at least,
[10:04] Speaker 6: that there won't be a rate cut this year, But
[10:08] Speaker 6: that's not clear to me. I think it still depends
[10:12] Speaker 6: on Look at tomorrow, we're going to get GDP numbers
[10:16] Speaker 6: a Thursday, the United States time. We're going to get
[10:19] Speaker 6: GDP numbers for the first quarter. We're going to get
[10:23] Speaker 6: more inflation numbers. All of this is going to be
[10:27] Speaker 6: highly interesting. And Powell put out there he said, in
[10:32] Speaker 6: the next two quarters, we should find out if we
[10:36] Speaker 6: are correct in our meaning the FED judgment that the
[10:42] Speaker 6: inflationary impact of tariffs is going to fade away as
[10:46] Speaker 6: a one time event. I think that might be some
[10:51] Speaker 6: of what the bond market is listening to, quite frankly,
[10:54] Speaker 6: because they're saying, oh, that means they might not see it.
[10:57] Speaker 6: There might be something else going on that is a
[11:00] Speaker 6: concern about inflation. I think that has been overlooked in
[11:05] Speaker 6: the statement that he made.
[11:08] Speaker 1: The other interesting thing, of course, which is unprecedented, is
[11:11] Speaker 1: chair Pal's decision to stay on as the governor. And
[11:14] Speaker 1: he said essentially that he was left with no choice
[11:16] Speaker 1: but to do that, and that he would be sticking
[11:18] Speaker 1: around until the threat of the criminal investigation has truly passed.
[11:23] Speaker 1: But take a listen as to one of the many
[11:26] Speaker 1: kind of very frank comments he gave about the risk
[11:29] Speaker 1: of losing the Fed's independence and the risk of political interference.
[11:34] Speaker 4: Look, I think it's at risk.
[11:35] Speaker 7: I mean, I think these these you know, these legal assaults,
[11:40] Speaker 7: if you will, As I mentioned, you know, we're the
[11:42] Speaker 7: institution is being battered over these things. We're having to
[11:45] Speaker 7: resort to, you know, the courts to enforce our legal
[11:50] Speaker 7: you know, it's not so much independence, it's it's really
[11:54] Speaker 7: the ability to do monetary to make monetary policy without
[11:58] Speaker 7: political considerations. That's what we're talking about.
[12:03] Speaker 1: Jenett, the time shadow chair kind of typically refers to
[12:05] Speaker 1: an incoming chair of the FED, right, But do you
[12:08] Speaker 1: think this is a role that perhaps gets assumed now
[12:11] Speaker 1: by FED chair Pow, even if he is sort of
[12:14] Speaker 1: a very low profile governor.
[12:16] Speaker 6: Well, I yeah, he said he wants to be there
[12:20] Speaker 6: to guard, if you will, the independence of the FED.
[12:27] Speaker 6: It Just him staying on means that Stephen Mirron goes off,
[12:32] Speaker 6: and I think that's significant changes the weight and character
[12:37] Speaker 6: of the FED self, of the board itself. So I
[12:42] Speaker 6: think that's significant. The You know, when I was playing
[12:47] Speaker 6: back the press conference in my mind afterwards, one of
[12:50] Speaker 6: the surprises I had myself was that he made the
[12:56] Speaker 6: statement that he was going to stay on right up
[12:58] Speaker 6: front in the press conference. I sort of thought he
[13:00] Speaker 6: might introduce that two thirds the way through, or maybe
[13:04] Speaker 6: even at the end, and I realized he may have
[13:07] Speaker 6: done that because he really, really really wanted to talk
[13:11] Speaker 6: about FED independence. I think he wanted that to be
[13:14] Speaker 6: his legacy statement to the press corps, and it showed
[13:19] Speaker 6: how strongly he felt about that. But he's been talking
[13:22] Speaker 6: about that for a few months now, certainly since the
[13:26] Speaker 6: legal actions or the threatened legal actions, but even at
[13:29] Speaker 6: the end of last year, he has a deep seated
[13:32] Speaker 6: pride in the people and in the institution, and I
[13:38] Speaker 6: think he will personally. I think he will do it
[13:41] Speaker 6: in the right way by staying on the board, and
[13:44] Speaker 6: it will not be disruptive. But I think he feels
[13:46] Speaker 6: he has a right to stay there and help the
[13:51] Speaker 6: FED retain appropriate levels of independence.
[13:57] Speaker 3: So, Johnette, when it comes to the US economy, where
[14:01] Speaker 3: are we on inflation? I know that nobody wants to
[14:04] Speaker 3: use the infamous transitory ward, But if we get past
[14:08] Speaker 3: the war in Iran, is inflation actually being rained in?
[14:15] Speaker 6: That is a much bigger question right now, Sherry, than
[14:18] Speaker 6: it was a couple of months ago, I think, And
[14:23] Speaker 6: so for the first time, and I'm starting to see
[14:29] Speaker 6: economists and others really raised this issue of is this
[14:34] Speaker 6: all just terrif related the non energy energy spike? Powell
[14:42] Speaker 6: specifically mentioned not all of the inflation spike or the
[14:46] Speaker 6: level of inflation that is that is too high, that
[14:49] Speaker 6: is elevated, is attributable to energy spikes because of the war.
[14:54] Speaker 2: Jeanette Garrety, chief Economist, stood Roberts and Stevens speaking to
[14:58] Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Heidi Stroud, Watt and sharey On. Thanks for listening
[15:05] Speaker 2: to today's episode of the Bloomberg Daybreak Asia Edition podcast.
[15:09] Speaker 2: Each weekday, we look at the story shaping markets, finance,
[15:13] Speaker 2: and geopolitics in the Asia Pacific. You can find us
[15:16] Speaker 2: on Apple, Spotify, the Bloomberg Podcast YouTube channel, or anywhere
[15:20] Speaker 2: else you listen. Join us again tomorrow for insight on
[15:23] Speaker 2: the market moves from Hong Kong to Singapore and Australia.
[15:28] Speaker 2: I'm Doug Chrisner, and this is Bloomberg

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