Goldman Sachs Industrials & Materials Conference: Key takeaways

Yahoo Finance Live’s Seana Smith discusses key takeaways from Goldman Sachs’ Industrial & Materials Conference happening in N.Y.

Video transcript

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Welcome back. Let's head over to Yahoo Finance's Seana Smith who's at the Goldman Sachs Industrial and Materials Conference. So, Seana, what are you seeing?

SEANA SMITH: So, Rachelle, Yahoo Finance has exclusive access here to the Industrial and Materials Conference being put on by Goldman Sachs. We are hearing from the top names within those two sectors.

One of the big themes that we are talking about is really just the landscape right now for the economy and what the second half of the year looks like. Last hour we spoke to the CEO of RXO, the truck brokerage business, Drew Wilkerson. And he was telling us that, yes, the macro environment is very, quote, "tough," but he is optimistic about the improvement that we could see in the second half of the year.

When we get to a couple of other big themes-- I was just listening in on a fireside chat with the CFO of Southwest, Tammy Romo, and she was saying that the company continues to see strong demand for travel, that leisure demand is really what has been driving the numbers here. She expects that to continue in the very important summer season.

Another big theme is investment in technology. AI, we know that certainly has been the buzzword, Rachelle, over the last several months. Well, it's a buzzword right here at this conference today. RXO was saying that they had actually been investing in AI for 10 years, but they plan to incorporate it more and more. Differing in terms of what we've heard from some of those tech giants, they don't necessarily see it replacing jobs, rather really helping productivity here with each of their employees.

Southwest also has plans to continue to invest in technology. We know that their network has had some issues over the last several months, and Romo saying that she expects the network to be in a much better place towards the end of the year.

Of course, there is some buzz around the debt ceiling, what exactly that will mean for these larger companies. Now, there is an optimistic tone in terms of the fact that people still think that lawmakers are going to get a deal done. But like Wilkerson told us, the CEO of RXO, that you need to be agile. You need to be flexible. You need to be ready to adapt to all different types of markets. That certainly has been the case over the last few years for these business leaders.

Coming up later today, I will be speaking with Mike Battles. He's a co-CEO of Clean Harbors. Really getting a sense of the waste and recycling business where he is seeing demand there.

Now, this company has certainly been an outperformer. Shares up 20% since the start of the year-- since the start of the year, nearly 40% over the past year. So we're going to talk about what is driving that business right now and also talk about reshoring and regulation efforts and exactly how that plays in to Clean Harbors. So we've got all that for you coming up here on Yahoo Finance today, Rachelle.