Are you looking at . As you give us the eps number, it matches estimates, but the sales number is a big miss. Comparable sales, spain samestore sales was down 1. 6 . Analysts were looking for a gain of 1. 3 . What happened in the First Quarter was the weather issues. Frigid temperatures in february. Multiple winter storms. Amateurs were much colder in february than they were in the previous year. A late easter as well. Inventory buildup that carried over into the First Quarter and macys had frequent oneday sales, giving you an indication of how frequently they had to markdown merchandise to clear store shelves. That pressures margins as well. In terms of growth margins, 30. 9 for the quarter. Higher than what analysts were looking for, 38. 7 . The key much the same as it was one year ago. Samestore sales number caught my eye, and unexpected drop of 1. 6 . What we hear from macys is they have raised the Share Buyback by 1. 5 billion, and it is also increasing its dividend by five percent as well. All of that flows straight through to the bottom line in the coming weeks and months as well. You have a meet on the bottom on sales. A miss in terms of the outlook, they say they are going to match the fullyear guidance. When you mentioned guidance, ithe highlights the First Quarter does not mean a lot for macys, it is not back to school, and it is not the promotional christmas holiday. Yeah, and people were looking on april because they are looking for that to set the tone for the rest of the year. The indication on the Conference Call is that april got some traction and they can build on that had the premarket price, 57. 80 a share. It is down slightly from yesterdays close of 57. 84 a share. Much, chief very markets correspondent, scarlet fu. Moving and shaking this hour, russias foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said down with bloombergs Ryan Chilcote and he discussed the crisis in ukraine, call it as close to a civil war as you can get. Sergey lavrov also made it clear that russia has ties with ukraine that involves much more than geography. This is the model of the language,tizen, orthodox christianity, was born on the territory of ukraine as it stems now, and we do not consider ourselves foreigners. Back in the u. S. , president obama visits the tappan zee york, but there is more reasons for him to come to town, money. Phil mattingly joins me now. How does the president said in to democratic plans this year . Are democrats shunning him or embracing him . Exit is complicated. Read it is compensated. Red state democrats do not want him to be around, however they need his money. What president obama can do better than anyone else on the map right now is pull in dollars and we have seen that in spades since the start of the cycle. Entities,jor campaign the president has hosted about 24 fundraisers for the committee,national nine fundraisers for the Democratic Congressional campaign committee, and with the senate in play, and the map tilting toward republicans, he is held seven events already for the Senate Campaign committee with another scheduled for this afternoon. Is there a tangible benefit when you have the president as chief fundraiser . You actually get more cash . You do. The public and officials that i speak to on a regular basis continue to hammer home that when you have the president , regardless of party, so did george w. Bush and bill clinton, the president pulls out big names and big cash. Of 2014, theinning three primary committees have brought in 240 million. It is not all because the president , because but he is a key component. What that does is it gives them an advantage, back to the senate races, over the fund raising that the republicans can do. Even if he does not show up, he can send money their way. An industry that ends up shelling out the most cash for these kinds of events . Firstce the president s campaign started in 2007, he has worked hard and nurturing parts of the economy, silicon valley, corners of wall street, and hollywood. That is his goto place this time around. On wall street, tony james has hosted a fundraiser for him. Valley, to silicon where democrats have really pulled money in the last couple of years. Marissa mayer hosted an event for him last week. Majorars ceo has been a donor. The biggest names have to be hollywood in the sports world hari waldstein Harvey Harvey weinstein, Magic Johnson, alonzo mourning, and alan horn. Talk about bringing in big names, that is the democrats see him as most effective, even as ratings are low. What . No Big Oil Companies . I am shocked. [laughter] bell,ld reports after the and that is after the controversial blackfish movie. In fact, it has been a fabulous 18 months for blackstone. Nothing unless she has more. Cristina alesci has more. Blackstone did an excellent job of taking advantage of the ipo window when it was wide open, and what that means for private investors is they got a lot of cashback, 11. 8 billion in the First Quarter. Oh, my gosh. Huge amounts of money, and they did that at huge valuations. We look at a company like helton, we thought it would be hilton, we thought it would be a terrible deal, but it has been performing pretty well. Those are the sellers. Tone was the seller. What about the by blackstone was the seller. What about the buyer . They are doing well. To 15 . S are up 12 the Kinetic Company like pinnacle, youre looking at a return of 50 from a Public Market perspective, and that does not factor in the deal than ellis with hill scheier, the deal they announced with hill scheier. What were some of the losers . I mentioned seaworld after the bell. How did blackstone fair with that . Blackstone, when they took the Company Public and sold a piece of it, they were valuing the company at double what they paid for it. Already, they will the prophet they booked the prophet. They are doing a good job in terms of looking a booking a profit. Could they have done better without the controversy, absolutely. California is considering a proposed ban, and that creates overhang. Do you think we want to see black sun sell at that kind of rate to wind down their investment in seaworld . Yes. I think we will see them try to get out of that stock. On the other stocks, they take their time. If you look at what they hold in their real estate, they still hold 60 , 70 of hilton. They will be careful about unloading all of that equity into the market. They do not want to shoot yourself in the foot. Thank you so much, deals reporter cristina alesci, really killing it for this quarter. Highflyers a megamerger in the commercial jet leasing business. We talked to the ceo of air castle. Plus, athat might wine that might shake you up a vineyard tilt on top of the San Andreas Fault. Here is a look at our top bloomberg headlines. Reporting af higher than expected loss. The company that owns the lucky brands reaffirmed its adjusted fiscal year guidance. Won a big contract in china. Chinese regulators said in february they will loosen the rules to encourage budget airlines. Therell be a big gap in wall street bonuses this year. Bonuses paid for Asset Managers is expected to rise by 10 while fixed income traders could see a 15 cut according to johnson associates. Johnson says this represents a sea change, noticing that the largest pay check will no longer come from wall streets big banks. Is filled with consolidation. Everyone wants to win with original content, and even radio is saying a renaissance. For analysis, we spoke to a number of tech and media insiders. These are different technologies, and they do not necessarily the only ones that are synergistic are cable, internet, and landline phones. Delicately all our separate. They will be buying a Different Technology that is not synergistic with what they have. They will operate two technologies, very expensive. I really believe that if you look at it over time the pipes of delivering content, everybody is trying to do it, so it is massively competitive space. The content is king. They will cost may be able to extract the most money. Le who bridge the gap it is a lot of money. It is a suckers game. Really, arers, looking for four things as they buy time today, and one is scale. Advertisers are looking for local activation. How do they drive people into their stores, create traffic, and that is what radio does. The third thing would be social and we know how important social ia has become, and social radio was the original social media. We are joined i wanted to get your take on the at tdirectv possible deal. Is this a synergistic deal for the companies or not . I think it makes strategic sense for both parties. In fact, a couple of weeks ago we upgraded the shares of holdtv to a buy from a precisely for that reason. We have covered the sector for a long time and we think the stars have never been more aligned to make such a deal happen. Does that mean we will see mean,ued salivation, i who will be left in the satellite world at this point . I think the time warnercomcast deal brought attention to the fact that the competition will devolve into a handful of players. One comcast and time warner completed the merger, you have more than onethird of the video market in one provider and a significantly higher share of broadband. Are at t and directory trying to do is counter that and i do not see this driven by synergies, but i would beg to differ with the other guest that suggested there would not be any synergy. It is really very easy to conceive of hundreds of millions of dollars of synergies and programming costs on the video side, and the consolidation of some functions. What will be the next catalyst for the Media Industry . We have gone through the potential consolidation when it comes to cable and broadband. What will be next . The next frontier will be streaming and overthetop. Weve already seen that, to initiatives around taking advantage of content online as well as mobile devices. You have a lot of Disruptive Technologies that the media sector is focused on, not just to contend with the disruption, but to leverage those platforms to increase digital revenue, and international and maintenance 14. You mentioned disruptive important thing. You mentioned disruptive technology. What does that mean to you . Areo case with big implications. I think the challenge for ceos and executives is to be able to not only combat these threats, but two, you know, Leverage Technology to be able to increase their revenue from and we see more and more companies focusing on that. Of course, it all comes down to how do you make money off of this, how do you monetize this consumer shift from tv to your phone, and to your ipad. Word, is the m monetization, and i cant not enoughugh cant get comments from investors looking to monetize digital space. You can easily foresee a few years from now where the percentage of revenue will continue to grow, maybe potentially reaching 10 . At that point you will see the evaluation the valuation began to reflect that. You mention the other catalyst will be international. Talk about that. Fromof what at t gets directv is exposure to latin america. That is exactly right and latin america has been one of the growing areas with the emerging middle class, and then you have other emerging regions eastern europe, you know, china, of course, other parts of asia pacific. So, when you look overall, across the media space, International Growth rates continue to outperform a lot of areas whether it is box office fees or international licensing. A lot of companies are discovering found money, so to speak, and a lot of the markets are beginning to realize the appetite for western conference. Every company likes to get found money. ,ou are very much, tuna amobi analyst at s p capital iq. Europeans now have a right to be forgotten online, a major pain for Companies Like google. New mystery at the Federal Reserve some investors might have gotten advance word of fed policy changes. We will discuss coming up. First. Bloomberg. You are watching in the loop , live on Bloomberg Television and streaming on your phone, tablet, and on bloomberg. Com. I am alix steel, in for betty liu. It is 26 minutes past the hour. Bloomberg tv is on the markets. Were looking at futures pointing to a lower open, but really you could call them flat. The s p is off just. 2 , still treating around 1890. Yesterday, the s p was able to surpass 1900 for the first time ever, but not able to keep that steam. The nasdaq is off by about a point. We are on the markets again in 30 minutes. According to truly a, the American Home slipped further out of reach in 2014 2013. Mortgage rates are up, and incomes are not, making homes in popular markets less affordable for the middle class. With me to look at where the prices are hot and where they are not, a chief economist at truilia. What is the criteria . We look at whether homes are in reach for the middle class. We compare the Median Income in the metro area to 31 of the cost of housing. Thumb is your mortgage payment, taxes and insurance should not be more than 31 of your pretax income. Incomes differ. The typical household in San Francisco or new york takes more household incal atlanta. But we pay a lot more, and mike can attest to that. [laughter] the list of where places are most affordable for the middle class is obvious midwestern cities that are not growing very strong, akron ohio akron, ohio, lead your list. The a case of people middle class cannot afford housing, or is it a regionbyregion thing across the country question mark the expense for middleclass homebuyers is very different. Four out of five homes are affordable the class households in much of the midwest. It is one out of four or less here in new york, southern california, or San Francisco. For people with a High School Degree or less, it is even much more difficult. Even metros that are more affordable like chicago, atlanta, houston, fewer than half of the homes are for sale in reach of someone with a High School Degree or less. I guess my question is is it harder for someone the know where you live to buy a house, or did the crash make it easier in certain areas . It is easier than it was in 2006, but harder than it was one year ago. Compared to one year ago, it has gotten much harder to buy you in the midwest, where prices have risen the most, and they were expensive to begin with. It was hard, and is getting harder. Part of me wants to say go buy more homes and ramp up supply, and i will help demand and prices. Is that too obvious . Of thelies a big part equation. When you look at all of the expensive markets in the u. S. , none of them build very much housing. When you look at the markets that build a lot of housing, none of it is expensive. The places that build a lot of housing, phoenix, las vegas, raleigh, austin, none of them is anywhere near as expensive as even some of those midpriced cities on the coast. So, building more housing would certainly be part of the solution, but those expensive markets are both hemmed in by geography often against an ocean or moms and building relations, like zoning, are often a lot more onerous. Isnt there a certain nimby factor to this, too . Absolutely. There is a political challenge. Housing costs to one person are Property Values to a homeowner, and making housing affordable to homeowners to renters or future owners means slowing down housing values for current owners, and they do not like that. The question is what does this say about the broader Housing Market that we saw . Janet yellen said she was worried about that. All data is not great. Job wages are not going out. Productivity is not going up. Is this another reason to be worried . The affordability concerns in big, coastal markets are longterm concerns. Even at the bottom of the recession, housing was still expensive in new york and San Francisco. We are concerned about now in terms of the recovery is we have seen a slowdown in construction, a slowdown in sales, fewer applications for new or just mortgages. Some of that has to do with a shift in the recovery, away from investor activity and bargain buying two households looking for homes themselves. We also see action on the rental side. Young people are moving out of their parents homes, but they are renting first. If youre looking for housing recovery among firsttime homebuyers, that is not where you will find it for the next couple of years. We have heard that banks were lowering standards to separate in firsttime homebuyers. We have Economic Data breaking, Michael Mckee, looking at the Producer Price index. The Producer Price index comes in much stronger than people thought. We are talking about the possibility of a surprise yesterday. A core basis on from one year ago, and an overall basis, a monthtomonth. 6 . , ppi was up by so, were releasing some i look, and, alix, when at this, it is an area that will catch your eye are you talking energy . Food prices. The largest increase in food prices since 2011. This is Producer Prices. When he gets to the table, we will see when it starts to feed through, but everybody has been predicting a big rise in food prices with a drop. Especially in brazil with coffee prices shooting up. 11 of every to dollar you spend because most of it will be labor energy. You can tell the coffee gender is around here. Drinker in april is around here. Food prices in april up 2. 7 . To be a among . It it is difficult. You are paying more for coffee. Alle found that onethird homes listed are still on the market today. Homes are moving fast. It is tight on the lowend, adding to the challenge of people