News of the father of the Pfizer Vaccine shou. Our conversation with jeremy stopple min later this hour. Tiktoks Parent Company is asking a u. S. Court to intervene in President Trumps attempt to thwart the sale. We will have the latest from beijing. First, a comeback for big tech in the stock market. For more on the trade, we are joined by Sarah Ponczek in new york. Walk us through the day and how tech drove market action. Sarah we did have a tech turnaround today. After two days when the nasdaq fell. You see the nasdaq 100 back on top. You look at your other major benchmarks not staging as much of a rally. So what changed . Not too much. You could say its just a comeback. At the same time, there were headlines being here in new york city, headlines about further restrictions in the city. It begs the question about whether or not people will be working from home, stuck at home with restrictions longer than previously thought, especially with the positive news on the vaccine. With that, we did see the stayathome trade likely to return. Emily with tech getting hit hard the last two days is the , worst over, or is the worst still to come . Sarah it is a great question. One day does not make a trend, and neither does two days. That was the question with the rotation we saw the last two days. The difference was that we did get positive news on the vaccine. As you see on your screen, bank stocks posting strong returns, above 2 , three percent. Apple amazon, microsoft, really , taking the lead, and what investors seem to believe is that if we get a return to normalcy, the minute you get the participation from smallcap stocks, maybe you get the participation from airlines, cruise lines, but that doesnt necessarily mean that tech is going to fall behind immensely. Tech can continue to trend higher. You could also get more participation from other areas that need it. Emily thank you so much for breaking that down for us. Of course we will be watching , tomorrow. Meantime, georgia secretary of state said the state will begin a county by county hand audit of ballots in the president ial race that would be completed by november 20. The review comes as president elect joe biden leads by a slim margin of 14,000 votes in the state, but President Trump continued to tweet that he will win with the help of his lawyer. We want to bring in tim obrien who has a new piece out on why President Trump may be scared to leave the white house. Jim, you always have a way with words, and as you point out, the president has overcome Sexual Assault allegations, impeachment, and the threat of personal bankruptcy. Can he get out of losing an election . Tim i dont think he can get out of losing an election. Biden is ahead in the popular vote by 5 million votes. He has a healthy lead that is only going to get larger in the electoral college. He is not going to get out of the fact pattern around this election. I think he is trying to create through these lawsuits and his tweets and what some other members of the Republican Party are doing right now this idea that it is rigged and he can say he did not lose this election. I also think he is wary of losing the power and the insulation that the presidency provides him. I think those are the twin explanations for why he continues to engage in this fantasy of declaring himself the winner of the election. Trumpso be clear, legal challenges are focused on six battleground states that he won in 2016. Biden is leading in five of them, and there is no evidence of fraud in any of these states despite what the president has said. That said, it seems like he is going to make it difficult between now and inauguration day. How do you think this plays out . Tim theres no question hes going to make it difficult, but he began telegraphing that months ago. He began talking months ago about the fact that mailin ballot and cannot be trusting in the election was rigged. And the election was right. I think it was a foregone conclusion that november to january would be a difficult transition. Its worth remembering that when bush and gore were in a dispute over the florida election, it was only 537 votes that separated the two of them. In all of the states that trump is contesting youre talking , about tens of thousands of votes. Even if fraud existed, which no one believes it did, it would have to exist on such an epic scale for those many votes to get over the transom. Againsts alone weigh him. He is using powers of the federal government to disrupt the transition. The General Services administration has not given the resources it typically does to the incoming president elect to get staffed up and in transition. The party itself is feeding this idea that the Election Results are not reliable. He is going to continue to try to burn the house down. That is who he is when he is cornered. I think we should rely on our institutions, both parties, the media and our citizens to stand up for the fact pattern and truth in a good clean, process. Emily that said, how much confidence do you have that the house wont burn down, that he wont be able to inflict that kind of damage on the office in the 70 days he has left . Tim i think he is going to try. I think he will be hardpressed to do more than sit out in the sandbox with his pail and shovel banging them together for quite a while. I think he is clearly doing things to federal agencies in the pentagon. I find some of the moves hes made at the pentagon to be very concerning. He is putting loyalists in the upper ranks of the pentagon, and you wonder why when he only has several weeks of the presidency left. But at the end of the day, we can all count on keeping him at bay. Meeting he gets marks on the door of the white house because he is resisting leaving, then so be it. I certainly hope we dont get to that point. Emily what is your sense of how scared he should be to leave the white house . There has been speculation that he will face prosecution in new york state at the very least. Is that going to happen . Tim there are two substantial new york investigations. The new York State Attorney general is investigating him for possible tax fraud, and the Manhattan District Attorney is looking at the trump organization, his children, for similar allegations, inflating the value of assets to investors and lenders, accounting gimmickry and possible financial fraud. Those are serious cases he is going to have to deal with. The manhattan das case could have felonies involved and the possibility of prison time. Trump is also looking down the fact that he has got over 1 billion in debt that he is carrying against assets that are getting battered around by the coronavirus pandemic. Over 400 million of that is coming due relatively soon. He is in a position where he might have to engage in some fire sales of illiquid assets to raise money to pay down his debts. He has got this financial anvil hanging over him and a legal anvil hanging over him. It is not clear how those will get resolved. Emily thanks so much for weighing in. Coming up, the travel industry has been hit hard to say the least by covid19. The ridesharing sector is continuing to feel the struggle. We are going to talk to lyft cofounder and president john zimmer about how the company is starting to recover. That is next. This is bloomberg. Emily the pandemic has spared nothing and no one, and Ridesharing Companies have been battered amid a global plunge in travel and commuting. Lyft, a company dependent solely on getting people from point a to saw a majority of its riders point b, vanish as businesses shuttered and workers stayed home. With recent news of a potential vaccine and a major ballot measure being passed in california, the ridesharing business could be navigating its way back. Joining me now, john zimmer, lyft cofounder. It feels like a lifetime has passed since we last spoke. It has been a long seven months and a long seven months for you. But lets talk about it. Earnings looked better than some of the doomsday scenarios predicted. Ridership is coming back, but it is still way down. What does ridership look like to you over the coming winter months . John quarter over quarter, we saw 47 growth in revenue. And so, a very material return, but a ways to go. It is hard to predict. The news of the vaccine is great for society as well as for lyft, so we are planning to be thoughtful about how we use our capital and be ready to hit profitability in q4 of next year irrelevant to the speed of the recovery. Emily when are you forecasting a vaccine will be ready, and how are you baking that into your model . John we are being careful to predict a slow recovery. As a human living in society with the pandemic, i am hopeful that it is available in the first half of next year in a meaningful way, and that would obviously be great for our drivers and riders and business. Again we are ready to hit , profitability at the end of next year even with a slower recovery. Emily what is your longerterm view of ridesharing with people leaving big cities to suburbs . Maybe we have a vaccine, but that trend continues. How does that change the Competitive Dynamics between lyft and uber . John one of the ways we are differentiating is we are focused on providing a portfolio of Transportation Options for personal transportation. Examples of that being like share being bike share we purchased the bike share system known as bay wheels in of the bay area, divi in chicago, so we have seen bike share yearoveryear rise. While obviously ride share has decreased. Weve added consumer rentals to our mix. We are seeing that peoples interest in transportation as a service is going to be a longterm trend. Just as people have moved away from owning dvds and moving to netflix, music, spotify, we see the same thing happening in transportation. Longterm, there will be shifts. There will be changes in how people get around, but by having a portfolio approach, we will be able to capture that shift. Emily you bolstered your delivery business. Youve done deals with grubhub to deliver food and epic to deliver nonemergency or arrange transit for nonemergency medical appointments. What can you do to expand delivery as we wait for travel and commuting to bounceback . John we are excited about the grubhub relationship. The way that works is with our Subscription Service we call pink, you get access to all of grubhubs restaurants with free delivery if you are a pink subscriber. In terms of medical transportation, it is something we continue to invest in over the last few years. Nonemergency medical transportation we believe is a multibilliondollar opportunity, and so the integration allows us to be integrated i believe by 70 software is used of hospitals across the country. Delivery more broadly we are not , interested in being another consumer platform. What we are focused on is what we can do to be a logistics layer for other large retailers or businesses without cutting ourselves in between that retailer and the consumer. What we are hearing from retailers is that while they are going through the pandemic, they wanted to get on some of these different platforms, but they want the traffic and their customers to be loyal and organic to their website and to their platforms. I think that is going to be a nice opportunity for us next year. Emily how profitable can that be . How do the rates differ from your other businesses . Obviously we know that food delivery has been an especially costly business and has been for over. For uber. John one of the big differences when you talk about uber, uber eats, they are subsidizing the actual cost, and then they are charging the restaurant in that case anywhere from a 20 to 30 commission. The difference is if we work with retailers lets think of a nonperishable item, and we provide that last mile service at a similar rate to people getting around in a lyft, there are a lot of opportunities where existing providers cannot provide Sameday Service like a ups or fedex. Emily prop 22 was a huge victory for you in california, and i know youre going to use that as a blueprint for conversations at the state and federal level. What states are you engaging with and how do you convince a first new administration, joe biden and Elizabeth Warren, who were against this . John this was a big turning point. You have the state of california, which is extremely progressive. I believe president elect biden won by 30 , and this proposition to allow drivers to be independent and get benefits like health care, as well as disability and additional insurance protection, won by a nearly 20 margin. It had support broadly from all parties. We will be looking to talk to regulators and labor leaders to say, hey, lets work together. Drivers want to this on a six to one basis. Drivers prefer to be independent contractors instead of being an employee but they also want , benefits. We have to find a way by providing benefits that they dont all turn into employees, which many existing laws would actually do because that would result in things like schedules is noter things and lyft interested in. Emily i know every new years eve, you are a lyft driver. Are you going to be driving this new years eve . John thats the plan. [laughter] that is the plan. Ive done it every year. One year, we had our first child a few days earlier. My wife was not happy about that. This is a little bit different but im going to do my best. Emily you will have to tell us how it goes. John zimmer, lyft cofounder. I should say your wife is a champ. Thank you so much for joining us. Coming up, what used to be a nicety has become a necessity. Grocery delivery has seen a boom in the pandemic and has provided a lifeline to those at high risk of covid19. We are going to talk about that next. This is bloomberg. Emily over one million u. S. Households now use government benefits to buy groceries online. Those numbers spiking 50 fold this year amid the global pandemic. Once a nice perk, grocery delivery from some Companies Like amazon and walmart is now a lifesaver for families across the country. With us, Bloomberg News west coast reporter matt day. This is something we dont talk a lot about, but we should talk about more. In the past, you couldnt get you could not use food stems online anywhere. What is the status now . Matt you used to have to go into the store, and this was until last year when they started a pilot to take this program into the 21st century. Now its online in 46 states and washington, d. C. In most of those states, you can buy groceries or pickup delivery from amazon or walmart. Emily how does amazons offering different from walmart . Matt amazon has much smaller brickandmortar presence. Walmart has thousands of stores you can pick up from. Amazon will deliver fresh groceries in most metro areas. Beyond that, youre probably looking at a much more limited selection of shelfstable or frozen stuff rather than fresh food. Emily there are many worthy organizations out there working to fight hunger, but some of them arent happy about this. Can you explain that . Matt the overarching critique, ecommerce and grocery delivery have been a thing for many years now. I think the biggest lingering question mark for folks is the number of retailers involved, primarily walmart and amazon, and there are concerns that the surface area in terms of coverage for deliveries is not as wide as people might have hoped. It is not going not going to as eliminating food deserts. Emily do these companies, amazon, walmart, do they have anything special planned for these folks heading into the holidays . Matt its a great question. both of them have ramped up donations since the pandemic began. No, i havent seen anything specifically targeted to food aid recipients. Emily it was interesting to see jeff bezos response to biden winning the election, becoming president elect, and im curious what your perspective is on what bidens election means for amazon given that the antitrust scrutiny is not likely to end. Certainly, it means bezos wont have as contentious a relationship with the person in the white house. Matt that is certainly true. Amazon like a lot of institutions got tired of waking up to the headlines. Trump one after amazon for his contract with the postal service. Amazon contends that trump actually cost amazon the 10 billion Defense Department jedi contract. I think amazon will be pleased with a more predictable administration in the white house next year, but it is hard to say with that antitrust question mark. Emily bloombergs matt day in seattle who covers amazon for us. Thank you so much for bringing this story. Coming up, how does a Business Review site stay afloat when the world is on lockdown . We are going to hear from yelps ceo on how he has led through what he describes as pandemic terror, but finally sees a light at the end of the tunnel. That is next. This is bloomberg. When you switch to xfinity mobile, youre choosing to get connected to the most Reliable Network nationwide, now with 5g included. Discover how to save up to 400 a year with shared data starting at 15 a month, or get the lowest price for one line of unlimited. Come into your local xfinity store to make the most of your mobile experience. You can shop the latest phones, bring your own device, or trade in for extra savings. Thats simple, easy, awesome. Visit your local xfinity store today to ask, shop, discover the latest on xfinity mobile. Emily im emily chang in San Francisco purity yelp shares spikes 25 on early news of a Pfizer Vaccine. To gain when a vaccine is ready and the economy starts to real been. Ing may not be straightforward as new york and San Francisco just put new restrictions on indoor dining. I sat down with yelps ceo to talk about how the company has navigated the crisis. Probably the best word is terror. It was a scary moment obviously for america, Small Businesses and especially for yelp because we are a way to find great local businesses. The first thing crossing my mind is, are people still going to buy advertising . Big hit inretty advertising dollars. We had functionality that allowed them to set a future date and we encouraged people to set a resume date for the advertising months later perhaps as the pandemic had passed or at least went the panic would have been s