welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla along with deirdre bosa in san francisco. the stories ahead -- stocks moving higher following a big week of gains. can this rally hold into year-end with key data and one more fed meeting ahead we'll talk to citi's global chief economist. the 48 hours that rocked silicon valley and the a.i. world. we break down the implication of openai's decision to oust ceo sam altman. one year in after his return to disney, has bob iger made progress in turning the ship around at that company first, let's take a look at the market stocks are moving higher on the shortened holiday week the s&p at the highest level with tech among the best

performing sectors we have breaking news out of the new york fed right now steve liesman has that for us. steve? >> thanks very much. the new york fed survey of consumer credit access, showing consumer credit opportunities overall declined sharply in 2023 the application was down 3.6 percentage points from last year interesting way it happened. credit card applications were up for auto loans and credit cards, but they were down sharply for mortgage loans, hitting a new series low with a big decline in mortgage finance applications. the credit rejection rate, something watching closely, rising 2.1 percentage points it's well above the 2019 level and up big for home loans as well as for autos. in fact, we have the highest auto loan rejection rate we've seen in the series going back to 2013 people need to come up with an emergency $2,000 if you needed it, hitting a new low at 65.8%

we've been watching the delinqu delinquencies on a quarterly basis and now the other side of this, the applications we can see the stress that's out there with higher credit, higher interest rates out there and tighter credit standards and the stress it puts on consumers. >> thank you our next guest is fairly bearish on the u.s. economy going into the new year. firmly on team recession, he writes, expects a downturn in the second and third quarters of next year. joining us, citi's global chief economist, nathan sheets you say soft landing we're not convinced. you're looking for 100 basis points of cuts what's leading you to all of this >> we remain on team recession, but increasingly we're sledding, especially over the last week. we saw a fair amount of data that was more consistent with the soft landing narrative now, that said, we're holding onto our recession call

essentially because we believe the laws and the economic gravity we have seen in previous cycles still apply to the u.s. economy. specifically in the past, when wage growth and inflation have been as high as they have been and as they are now, part of the unwinding is a loosening of the labor market, a higher unemployment rate and a recession. and we still think that tough slog of bringing down services inflation, and specifically nonshelter services inflation is still ahead of us. so, it had the easy part of the disinflation process, but there's still a tough slog ahead. >> right what do you think this will do if we play this game out to corporate profits? i'm trying to give viewers an idea of how markets may react in

the next couple of quarters. >> i want to be really careful here in that u.s. corporate earnings and profit have been extremely resilient through this cycle. and the ability of the corporates respond to macro conditions has been extraordinary. my sense is, again, consistent with these laws of economic gravity, that as the economy slows done, perhaps in the middle of next year would be our expectation. we'll see some deceleration in corporate earnings but i would also expect the corporate to bounce back fairly quickly. and, perhaps, even by the end of the year to be back on an upward trajectory >> you just said you're increasingly sweating about a soft landing in the sense we may not get it what's change? a lot of the factors you mentioned, the loosening of the labor market, inflation, have been easing. if you think rates are going to

be cut next year, why are you worried this is going to be harder than some have predicted? >> you know, our sense is, we have seen core pc, which is the fed's preferred measure of inflation, moderate from roughly 5.5% at the end of last year down, by our reckoning, to around 3.5% at present and that's significant progress. when you look at the composition of the inflation, a lot of that improvement has been in goods inflation and that's about improvements in the rest of the world. that's about improvements in supply chains, reduced goods demand, et cetera, et cetera when you look at the component of nonsheltered services, it hasn't moved down appreciably yet.

again, i'm looking at the pc index. our sense is this is tied to the tight labor market yeah, we see a little bit of signs, maybe the labor market is starting to loosen a bit, but by any historical metric, this is still a tight labor market and that's the part of the process, it's being really challenging and still to come. >> nathan, how do you account for the consumer that's been resilient? we just heard from steve liesman saying credit card application, they were up this holiday season we've had some mixed predictions, maybe muted but still strong how does the consumer factor into this? >> the consumer, as you said, is the key engine of the resilience of the economy when i think about the dynamic that's been driving growth, it's consumer spending, especially on services services are labor intensive you need a lot of labor to produce them that supported the tight labor

market low unemployment, rising wage growth as a result of that rising wage growth, more consumer spending we need the consumer to say, you know, we've been throwugh a hot period, we made up for those experiences we diplomat have during the pandemic, it's time to take a breather when you look at, for example, the savings rate, it's a bit low. historical norms the consumer's hot and i think some of these data that steve was highlighting are also suggesting that rates are higher, it's harder to make those payments, it's harder to qualify for those payments and there are at least some parts of the income distribution, largely in the bottom half of the income distribution, where we are starting to see cracks in performance on loans and on credit cards >> finally, nathan, it sounds

like, correct me if i'm wrong, you think ecb cuts before the fed does, and i wonder, is that going to be the european economy is under more duress >> yeah, exactly our call is for the fed to start cutting in july we have ecb actually cutting a month or so earlier. i would say there's a risk that the ecb, given the softness of the economy, our sense is that where it's currently in recession, the economy contracted in q3 we have that data. we expect it tocontinue to contract in q4 and q1. in that environment, inflation may start to fall more ropdly in europe and that would open the door for anything earlier cuts by the ecb. >> on a day where this german ppi number is pretty interesting, too nathan, thank you. always good to check in with you. happy thanksgiving nathan sheets. >> that's right. the holidays are here.

the trees and decorations are up at one market. that also means a busy week of travel is upon us. the ceo of enterprise mobility joins to discuss her outlook plus, we'll look at why airlines are starting to sell $29 tickets and that massive shakeup at op openai we will break downam s altman's move what it means for the future of a.i.

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keeping an eye on penn entertainment, the stock up 6% as bank of america upgrades the stock to a buy with a $30 price target the filler saying espn bet creates an opportunity for penn with initial download and appear activity much stronger than anticipated b of a bullish on what they call promotional discipline and stable earnings. i just called my app store, it's been leading two now. only tmemu ahead of it now.

aaa projecting more than 55 million americans will taken to the roads and skies to get home for thanksgiving what should you expect the next few days other than leftovers, bumper-to-bumper traffic and security lines we're joined by chrissy taylor it's great to have you at post 9. >> thank you for having me >> they say it's going to be one of the busiest travel weekends on that part, what kind of preps do you do at this point? >> we are in full holiday mode it's the beginning of a busy travel season for us our team has been preparing for this and we have seen travel demand at airports are up year over year also our large home city network is up at a record level. overall, we see that the consumer wants to hit the road over 50% will travel this holiday season with 60% of those people, they will hit the road

in a vehicle of some sort. that's really positive for rental, both at the airport and in our home city business. >> there has been some relief price wise in airfares can we say the same about rentals? >> supply of vehicles has been low over the past few years, but it is getting better so, as that supply gets better, a vehicle, we have seen pricing come down. pricing is down for rental vehicles year over year. the best thing we can do is focus on customer experience and all of our operations. >> we just got word that all three of the big three in detroit have now ratified their tentative agreements did the strike sort of throw fleet sales andle kind of inventory management you have to do into some kind of lux >> we are pleased they came to a quick resolution the impact was minimal for us on our business we meet the mobility needs of our customers so the impact was minimal and we are excited about

the holiday travel. >> i think dee has a question. >> it's deirdre in san francisco. i'm curious what you're seeing in terms of ev demand. the hertz ceo said a few weeks ago it was hard to get parts, they made such a big bet what are you seeing at enterprise >> we embrace the opportunity and responsibility to convert our fleet into electric vehicle. what's important with this new technology is we keep the long haul with the customer putting the customer at the center of everything that we do. so, we have several thousand vehicles in our fleet that are electric and when that customer comes to us for a test drive, whether at the airport or in our suburban markets, we want to make sure they understand the new technology because those vehicles seem to be more expensive right now. it is new technology we have a unique -- we are in a unique position to help transition the markets with -- >> are they looking for that is the demand there? >> there is demand for ev, not

as high as our other vehicles. we want to make sure that's the point, the customer experience is so important right now. our 90,000 people are gearing up for the holidays we will rent some evs. it needs to be top notch. >> i wonder if travelers are trying it out before they make a decision to purchase what is this ev thing i keep hearing all about, right >> yeah. it's a huge test drive moving away from the airport, 70% of our rental happens in our home city suburban mark market where you live and go to the grocery store, you know where those chargers are we are different from other mobility operations. we can test-drive that ev in the market and then they will go buy one. they are great cars. are you driving one? >> no. >> i'm driving i an ev they are great cars with new technology, but we need to be thoughtful about that transition because enterprise mobility has a unique role to play and that test drive was such a large

footprint. >> the charger networks and reliability and range. it's going to be a huge education for -- >> we're excited about that opportunity because it just opens up so many different -- different customer service and experience opportunities for us. >> it's great to have you in have a great holiday i'm sure we'll talk again. >> absolutely. thanks so much after the break, more and more advertisers are boycotting x after ad placement concerns. in a recent elon musk tweet. how long can the company survive with ad revenue down 65% over the past year? plus, it has been one year since bob iger returned as ceo of disney the stock up just 3% in that time was the move the right one for shareholders 'ldiusalofhat. back in a few.

the fallout at x continues as more advertisers are boycotting the platform over ad placement. musk now threatening what a, quote, thermonuclear lawsuit our julia boorstin has the latest good morning. >> deirdre, now we're waiting for musk to, perhaps, file that lawsuit he threatened. this advertiser boycott of x continues. apple, which spends tens of millions of dollars annually on x, along ibm, disney, lion's gate and comcast, cnbc's parent company, they have confirmed they have paused ad spending on x. now, in addition to musk's tweet

supporting an anti-semitic conspiracy theory, on thursday media matters published a report that showed x placed ads for major brands, including many of those that paused spending, next to content that touted adolf hitler and his nazi party. musk responding to media matters on x late friday night saying, quote, the split second that court opens on monday, x corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against media matters and all those who colluded in that fraudulent attack on our company. media matters' president responded to this saying, quote, musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-nazi content we identified. if he does sue us, we will win then on saturday, x posting a blog explaining why it's threatening this lawsuit against media matters, saying that the -- that the organization created an alternate x account and deliberately followed sensitive accounts to curate posts and to get advertising to

appear on their account's timeline and they say to then misinform advertisers about their post we are waiting for musk to file that lawsuit it is noting that x had been suffering from advertiser concern about brand safety ever since elon musk took over the platform just over a year ago. insider intelligence estimated back in october, before this latest spate of news, that x's worldwide ad revenue this year will drop by nearly 55% from the year earlier carl, deirdre? >> linda yaccarino posted a few minutes ago, in part, we near this consequential, there will be detractors. it's unclear if she's referring to media matters or any of the advertisers who paused on friday. >> yeah, she was brought into this company because of her relationships with the ad industry and her long history as really a leader in the ad industry of course, she was at nbc universal, cnbc's parent company, for a decade.

when she moved over to x, her job was to help elon musk with advertisers. there's been some reporting that some leaders in the ad industry have urged her to step down because of this. clearly, she is sticking in her role and trying to address some of these issues. but she's in a tough position here because advertisers are very concerned about brand safety brand safety is what she touted when she was at nbc universal for all of those years and so now she has to figure out what to do because this comes at a time, you know, when she's been working very hard to show that they've been trying to minimize any brand placement next to offensive content. this is something that's been a big priority of hers and it's a tough situation. >> her challenges just keep stacking up. julia, i hate to say we've been here before, but we have what's different about this time when elon musk first acquired the platform, you saw some of the big 5d ver tiesers leave and then came back just over the last weekend, you

see the importance this platform still has. all the tiktok, the developments of what's going on with openai and sam altman, that's all been happening on this platform. >> it's been happening on this platform it's fun y i went over to threads this morning to check out the conversation there it was some of the same conversation on threads. but threads has definitely not taken off the way it seemed it would when it launched as an alternative to x, formerly twitter. i think what's changed, it's been a year since elon musk has taken over and a lot of those advertisers first paused, they wanted to see what the platform would look like, how elon musk would handle things. there was a lot of optimism around the arrival of linda yacc yaccarino, and i think what's interesting now is the fact that elon musk himself is tweeting some of these really controversial things it's not just what other content is on the platform it's the role elon musk himself is choosing to play in what he says is upholding free speech.

but i think many others are more concerned. >> right i think as someone said, a big part of the conversation on threads is how bad it's gotten on x it's a difficult one to read, julia. thank you. let's get a news upday with bertha coombs. defense secretary lloyd austin made an unannounced visit to ukraine today he's making a push to keep money and weapons flowing to kyiv even as international resources are being stretched thin by the israel/hamas conflict. he promised the u.s. would support ukraine for the long haul during a meeting with the country's president. a washington, d.c., appeals court is hearing arguments right now over a limited gag order on donald trump in his federal election interference case the order, which is on pause as trump fights it, prohibits him from publicly targeting special counsel jack smith and his staff. the judge's staff and other court employees.

the former president's attorneys say it violates his right to free speech. and shakira reached a settlement today to avoid a trial over nearly $16 million in unpaid taxes in spain. she struck the deal on what was supposed to be the opening day of her trial she is set to receive a suspended three-year sentence and a fine of about $7.5 million. carl >> bertha, thank you very much bertha coombs. big shakeup at openai. over the weekend as sam altman is ousted, moves to microsoft. wells calls it a transition into a new era of a.i. development. what's coming up next? who wins and what are the implications, when we're back in a minute

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one of the most dramatic weekends we've seen in tech for years, a dramatic year, the board of openai, the microsoft-backed maker of chatgpt firing former ceo sam altman, who was seen as the face of generative a.i. right now, joining microsoft as head of its a.i. initiatives joining us, co-founder and general partner at sol ventures. give us the state of play right now, who you think comes out as a winner and who comes out as a loser from the saga? >> the answer is, what a wild weekend. satiya and microsoft come out as winners. it could have been bad for them in a lot of scenarios and i

think they landed this beautifully which makes them the place for generative a.i. for the next period, which is well played on their part sam altman, you know, i think he's left with a ton of option value in terms of where things go from here he'll have access to talent and -- for whatever he wants to do next in generative a.i. openai, big question mark in terms of where that organization goes there's huge internal strife clearly, people will go with sam. clearly, some people won't all in all, as you said, this is one of the most wild -- if you like intrigue, this was the weekend. >> a lot of intrigue still playing out. sam, is it too early to call satya nadella and microsoft and sam altman the winners here? do we know what led to his ousting in the first place d >> at the end of the day, people don't know

from a tabloid perspective, nothing could be tastier than figuring out what happened this will be fun for a lot of people from a purely tabloid standpoint for a long time to come the reality is we do need to see a report from someone about how this all transpired and what happened i think there's some confidence or trust, at least in satya nadella, that he wouldn't have put this together if anything truly bad was happening -- >> but he didn't even know, he didn't have a board seat, right? this reportedly came as much a shock to him as everyone else. >> i think that's true there's no question that microsoft and he were shocked by how this all played out over the last many hours. this is what happens when you have a turducken organization, a for-profit wrapped in a nonprofit. let's not do that again. i think the reality is is that i at least have enough trust in satya to have put up guardrails on true extremes of what went down and how this played out and i have enough trust in sam and kind of what's going forward to say, we can debate about how far we are from agi and the

mission of openai versus practicality or things like that >> what gives you that trust what in sam altman's record, through other startups, what gives you that sort of trust when you don't know the details yet? >> well, again, it's not -- we can look back on this and i can look very silly in a bit here would be my first things. first, a friend of mine once said, we're about as close to agi as a slide rule. that's my take on this stuff people have theoretical concerns about agi but practically speaking, if this comes down to a safety question, i'm not worried about safety from a personal perspective any time soon to the effect it has anything to do with the speed of a.i. being too fast for the goals of the openai board, i personally am comfortable with that and i'm comfortable with a narrative was sam was pushing too hard and too fast versus the nonprofit's ultimate theoretical goals

if something else comes out, the new ceo of openai, the second of the weekends, he was a good guy. i know him from earlier tech days, has said his first order of business is going to be to kind of do an investigation and put out a report of what actually happened. so, i'm sure that will be hotly watched. look, i could be wrong, but i do trust satya as a leader. i trust that while this was a crazy period, we're all going to look back and think microsoft played it brilliantly, is my personal belief. >> when it comes to meta, amazon, google, you point out there's going to be some talent churn and they're likely to be aggressive in hiring there's also this note from wells today that they expect them to be aggressive in making the case to customers that at the very least secondary providers should be considered when you're building out something this mission critical. is that true >> well, i think a few things are going on one, i think all along my position has been the biggest companies in the world will win this this is not a game for startups. i think sam altman recognizing it's hard to build a startup from zero in this space might be

part of the calculus who has the machines, et cetera? there's only a few, meta, google, microsoft that have a position to do anything here amazon maybe to some extent. this is hardware first talent second. talent is also extremely important in this game in terms of having, you know, redundancy or options between different providers, absolutely. i think if you look at -- think about a.i. really cloud 2.0, what you'll see is that actually a lot of companies, a lot of the smartest companies, have figured out multicloud strategies for exactly this reason, which is should you be totally relying on anyone when you're in a tough place? i think that is the way to think about a.i. i do think going forward you'll see the smartest companies say, look, we need multiple options and multiple providers this is happening too quickly. and candidly, even if it weren't, the idea your entire a.i. pipeline would be locked into one provider is a very weak negotiating standpoint so, i do think that is exactly what the future will look like

this is really just cloud 2.0. >> i thought it was interesting how satya nadella's tweet this morning ended by saying, we have all the resources ready to pour into sam and greg, kind of in that sense, compute power is so important here also so expensive. what does this do to the generative a.i. startup landscape? there was already this rising anxiety that mega cap tech was going to win this arms race. is that even more the case now is that what this whole episode tells us >> look, this has been my point for the last year. i've put up plenty of notes on this this is not a game for startups. i think very small businesses, just like with cloud, will do well because they'll get leverage from it this is such an expensive game with so few providers who can actually have access to the hardware, this is absolutely going to make -- to me, it's always been obvious these kind of high-flying unicorn-esque startups doing generative a.i. in a tough space i say sam altman voting to go to

microsoft, it's six hours into the decision, is reaffirmation, that is the right way to think about it even if he wanted to do a startup on his own, purely the hardware access, forget the money, all the access in the world wouldn't have made it possible. >> maybe an important question for regulators in the future it was great to get your insights thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. one of the biggest questions to come out of this, the debate between developing a.i. responsibly versus commercializing it joining us on this angle is ceo and managing director at general catalyst thank you for joining us >> good morning. >> on the crux of this is caution versus commercialization. i don't know if you're listening to sam lessin, he described openai as a tur bducken of an organization can you explain why it was designed as a nonprofit and why so many people are talking about how this needs to be developed

responsibly? >> look, a.i. is one of those technologies if you call more people, the more they learn, the more they get scared about it because of this whole idea of artificial general intelligence. the risks that come with that. so, i think the spirit of openai being set up as a nonprofit from the beginning was to mike sure there are safety mechanisms. sam was a big procponent in making is sure it was adopted. it's difficult to have a structure like that and then have the commercialambitions i the same entity as we saw this weekend and what happened, just the clash of ideology inside an organization we're not investors but just watching from outside. but, you know, thinking responsibly about how we bring this technology to market is something we all need to pay attention to >> so, how pivotal is this moment are we going to look back on this weekend as the moment that commercialization won out? you've been pretty vocal on the

responsible development, you put forth a patrotocol with a buncho other firms and vcs. are you worried right now? >> no. when you take a step back, i would actually say everybody wants the same thing, which is we want to see a.i. accelerate, have progress and humanity, we want to create an environment where startups have a level playing field and being able to do so. we're big believers in making sure open source becomes a core part of how a.i. gets developed. and, you know, when you think about it, in general, having some governance and standards is better than regulation does the bid of commercialization versus caution, to me it's almost sort of a difference in ideology and how to accomplish those goals. there are some folks that believe it's better to be away from the government, not engaged with them and to continue to build a bit like we have in the

last 15 years of social media, and the organization, their belief is maybe it's better to collaborate, maybe it's better to educate d.c. and the policymakers on how to think about these issues maybe it's better to help them understand that rather than regulating the technology itself, we should regulate the application layer, how it's adopted in health care, education and other areas where it actually touches humans so, there's this ideological debate about what's the better way to create the better outcomes >> do you believe the events of the weekend helped the industry move toward that goal? >> look, i hope so i think having -- first of all, let me give credit to satya to step in to stabilize the situation. i don't know if it's going to be an entity that scales long term or a stopgap and figure out what

happens. i think overall sort of, you know, not having a mindset of building these enduring institutions is a problem. i think we saw that here i think the safest debate to me was more about ideology. if we can be much more self-governing and having a set of principles in which we operate, perhaps these issues can be avoided to me that's the main thing. where governance in the early days is way better than leaning towards regulation. >> finally, last question, though, we're all talking about how satya nadella comes out a winner is it too quick to say that? is there a desire in silicon valley to know what actually happened, why the board felt that sam altman couldn't do this job? >> yeah, look, i'm very curious to see why the things unfolded i think the way it got handled from a government standpoint, perhaps, was abrupt and not thinking through all the

consequences, but we should take a pause and take a step back and understand what really is driving it, what are the core issues this is a very profound technology we're building and i think being deliberate and intentional will serve us all rather than be in such haste i feel like there's a lot anxiety to move really fast while we can do this much more effectively by being more deliberate. >> microsoft has been one of the proponents of moving quickly in this space thanks for talking good insights. airlines race to fill a record amount of seats this quarter. we'll get details on that after a quick break.

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13% top line growth from its future licensing deals dee, that's one to watch >> it certainly is airlines, meanwhile, have increased capacity in recent months which could result in some steep discounts for travelers. cnbc.com airline reporter leslie joseph has all the details i did not get one of those tickets when i recently booked my trip over thanksgiving a week before. >> they do go pretty quickly you're not likely to find these deals around thanksgiving. thanksgiving is supposed to be a record this year, lots of people are traveling, about 30 million people in the 11-day period around thanksgiving. that's not where we're seeing these deals. where we are seeing them is in the off-season think of tuesdays and wednesdays when business travelers would normally pick up the slack that hasn't fully come back to pre-pandemic levels. at the same time, airlines have been adding a ton of flights, a ton of seats and they're racing to fill these seats any way they can. and in many cases, we're seeing not just the spirits and frontiers, the ultralow cost carriers with these kind of flash sales, but southwest airlines with some $29 fares, if

you want to fly really early in the morning or late at night even american airlines, seeing around $50 one-ways throughout the fall hopefully for consumers if that last past the holidays. >> i was curious about the business travel part of this you said it hasn't really come back yet in full and that's what sort of made those tuesday/wednesday flights. how sustainable is it to offer these kind of prices or do the airlines expect business travel is still going to come back? >> they are somewhat optimistic that it is chugging along. we're not seeing the big spike we saw, say, from 2021 to 2022 there has been something of a plateau going on, especially as a lot of companies look to kind of hold down their spending. airlines are looking to drum up revenue any way they can we are going back to the way we traveled before the pandemic traveling around holidays, traveling around three-day weekends that leaves some slack in the

system when we're thinking about midweek when business travelers would normally be on the road. >> right leslie, thanks for bringing that to us. >> my pleasure. it's been one year since bob iger returned as ceo of disney what has the company accomplished in that time? what are his goals for the future we will discuss that right after this quick break

today marks one year since bob iger came back to disney, took over as ceo the move was just one year after leaving the company entirely, and since his return, stock is essentially flat as we assess the last 12 months, what has he accomplished

let's bring in laura martin. i'm wondering what's going to get you to move off of your hold rating. >> actually, i'm very positive about the activist being involved, because i think bob iger has been good, saying we're going to invest $60 billion in parks, and parks is really working for them right now post covid. so i'm really excited about him cutting costs more on the content business, or show us that he can grow content faster. that's the main thing, he's got to show us that he can grow movies or grow television, or he can create an espn app that's a super app that wipes out netflix. he's got to show us he can grow this company or cut costs on the content side of the business. >> you've long said that the consensus is too high in terms of earnings. you argue the strike and the charter dispute sort of show that their value chain, they've been over earning relative to their value chain and that is paying the piper now

on the other hand, you have written that you think they would make a good takeover target how close are you to the latter part of that thesis? >> i think the best outcome for disney shareholders would be if apple would buy them or one of the faangs would buy them. unfortunately, you need a republican administration in order to have a republican doj, right now with the democrat in the white house, you have really difficult takeover -- probably there's no actual committee that would approve a takeover by apple of anything, or amazon of anything and those are the only companies big enough to buy the walt disney company these days. >> sort of that, are we closer to a succession plan than a year ago? have any other good candidates emerged? >> i think that's the most damaging thing for the bob iger legacy and for this board. their core job is finding a successor, and they haven't. and i think that's an epic fail. so, no, i don't think we're any

closer the new cfo they just got from 37 years at pepsi, fantastic addition i expect them to be much more locked down on return on capital and on price, and he comes from a branded company. so i'm optimistic about that very high quality hire but the ceo job is the hard job here and they haven't been successful at finding a replacement for igor. >> why is it so hard is it because bob iger doesn't want to give up control to bring in other people? >> they were looking for a decade and had horse races where tom stagg was involved and he didn't get the job and then ke ke kevin meyer was in the running and he didn't get the job. they had a lot of talented people that left and i think part of it is igor didn't want to relinquish the reins.

now he wants to and it's really hard to find somebody that can run this company. >> the investment they said they're going to make in parks over the next several years, and then the degree to which marvel and star wars, some of them have been eroded a bit by just sheer quantity, which of the two things do you think is more important right now? >> i think the most important thing is the fundamentals, the box office attendance, the content. great content, as we know from "barbie" and "oppenheimer," does bring people into theatres, does get consumers off their couch. they aren't making that kind of compelling content yes, they need to make better content and be aware that the consumer has spoken. the consumer wants to sit at home and have streaming, access on all devices only a few consumers want to move through space and get into a theatre or watch a linear tv bundle with 20 minutes of ad loads. the consumer has sort of spoken. so disney needs to update and

makes itself relevant to a younger consumer that wants streaming. at the same time, not totally destroying the business model by giving up the dual revenue stream. >> your favorites are? >> love amazon, love alphabet. those would be probably my two favorites for '24. >> and where are you on some of the other -- for example, a netflix or paramount, if you cover them >> paramount we still think is a takeover candidate netflix, we're a little more neutral. >> paramount one of the big gainers, today at least, as we continue to see valuations shuffle around in the media space. do you think 2024 is going to bring us any new giant narratives when it comes to this >> you know, i think we're going to get consolidation we need more consolidation in the space. and so as discovery runs its way through the warner bros. acquisition and continues to cut costs, i think it's more likely

that that asset buys paramount paramount is way too small and keeps getting smaller and it needs to go away because it needs to be part of a bigger bundle of offerings. warner bros. discovery can give it that. >> the industry continues to punch above its weight always good to check in with you. laura martin of needham. another tech ceo departure making a buzz this morning the chief of gm-owned robotaxi cruise, the ceo is resigning, including recalling the fleet of cabs after an incident with a pedestrian led to california's dmv revoking the testing permits. i rode in one of cruise's vehicles earlier and i spoke to vogt before the incident who was optimistic and felt that robotaxis would be commonplace within the next few years.

waymo is still operating roby taxis, like generative ai, highly regulated, expensive part of technology. and this may be a big step back for the industry as a whole. >> obviously losing him, the nhtsa investigation, the recalls, the suspension from california dmv it's been a remarkable turn for autonomous as we mentioned this morning, the yuuber shares continue to lk past the golden horizon, a 52-week high. >> remember when uber was trying to develop autonomous driving and they had a terrible incident with a pedestrian and that killed their plans to move forward in that space. now their proposition is delivery and ridesharing and potentially tasks as well. it's more than doubled this year now nearly 10 bucks above the ipo price. it took some time to get there. >> finally, i assume after the weekend in tech, the valley, their heads must be spinning.

>> absolutely spinning that's how i've been feeling all weekend, the phone blowing up. there's a lot to come in this. we'll stay tuned, for sure. >> we're going to watch that, obviously as we dive into some final retail earnings tomorrow, and of course nvidia after the close. let's get to the half. thank you so much. welcome to the half time report. the ai arms race with the turmoil in openai, what it means for microsoft, for alphabet, and for investors in that space. we will discuss and debate with the investment committee joining me for the hour, josh brown, liz young, jenny harrington. we'll take you to the markets. we're coming off the third straight positive week the russell, take a look at the russell, up again after 5% yields are stable, and we have a pickup overall in the market as we come on the air today josh brown, i'll go to you first. i've got apple above 190, ab