rishaad: china's economic overhaul is taking hold. veteran investor george soros disagrees. he says a hard landing in china is inevitable. it may already be happening.

some say investors are overreacting. hong kong dollar climbing the most in at least four years. currency sankhe to its lowest point since 2007. it has no intention of ending the peg to the u.s. dollar. hong kong has a small gain. shanghai is down.

emily: telecom giant verizon has a solid fourth-quarter earnings report. an update on david versus goliath. we sit down with the ceo of e-commerce startup box to see how he is battling amazon. the reusable space race is heating up. competing with elon musk. verizon is out with fourth-quarter earnings this morning. adding 1.5 million new monthly subscribers. balance duew a nice to these results. can verizon keep it up?

with these price wars coming from t-mobile and sprint. jonathan: we don't think so emily. if you ignore the revenue on the sale of handsets that they don't make any margin on the results are actually a little bit lackluster. wireless revenue may actually decline modestly. it is a tough market.

emily: i recently switched from verizon to t-mobile. do you agree with jonathan? comcast is thinking about its wireless plans which would make the market even more competitive. that is one of the reasons why verizon has been reported looking at yahoo! as some way to get into a richer wireless offering for its consumers. emily: rumors are swirling about a possible alliance between yahoo! and verizon. cfo: we will continue to look

at all of our options. externally ease and internally. if they make sense for the shareholder, we will execute them. jonathan: i don't think for eyes and should by yahoo!. spectrum a deficit of in their wireless business. that is what they should be focusing 100% of the resources on. that is where the value is located. i concede that the logic in acquiring yahoo!. they really believe in this sort of thing. internet content and platforms.

emily: the aol deal just goes to show that they are willing to consider these larger deals. >> we have been very successful focusing on one thing. aol. we believe that our strategy in combination with what everybody so if you come to the conference we are the digital partner. we have a long-term strategy of

our own. long-term partnerships with other tech firms. not so much in direct competition as competition with all those companies. paul: i speak to a lot of yahoo! investors. they would love for somebody to come along and take them out of their misery. the stock is down almost 40% over the last 12 months. their financing plans for alibaba had fallen by the wayside. there is a lot of uncertainty for yahoo! shareholders. to the extent that verizon has an interest in their mobile video business. one of the reasons why they did by aol. you can make a similar argument for yahoo!. even a bigger audience and even

richer content. shareholders from the yahoo! perspective are really scratching their heads and they don't see any improvement in the core business. the honeymoon is over for them. from ursa minor. marissa mayer. jonathan: i totally see why as a yahoo! shareholder you would be delighted to be taken out by anybody. particularly with a nice stable stock like verizon. perspective,zon's it doesn't look like a great place to put the money.

verizon has probably built of the best wireless business on the planet. they are phenomenal managers. there are better assets out there. who do what aol and yahoo! do. facebook and google for example. that is who verizon is going up against. it is not clear that verizon brings the quality to this

combination that will create more success. emily: apple is pushing back against a major eu tax investigation. met with the antitrust chief in europe. to make apple's case. the eu regulators are looking into the iphone makers tax practices in ireland. if they find ireland cut them a special deal he could be forced to pay more than $8 billion in back taxes. cook defended against the allegations on twitter.

>> u.s. markets closed up in thursday's trading. making a clear turnaround from the global route that we saw on wednesday. oil prices jumped 5%. that pushed the energy sector to be the top sector with technology being the number two sector. it wasn't all green on wall street. 5% after barron's said its share price could dive to 45 bucks. it said the video streaming company is burning cash.

emily: facebook has a new app for sport season. social and look at nielsen ratings. what will this new metric mean for advertisers? more bloomberg west coming up after this break. ♪

she covers twitter and facebook for us. live tweeting about things like sports is ok on twitter but it is really annoying on facebook. is that going to change? sarah: on twitter you have to figure out who to follow who the teams are who the reporters are. on facebook they will bring it all to you from your friends. that may be an easier formula. for many people this kind of consumption of game news is

first screen now. cord ny recordcord cutte cutters. i know a lot of people who have to have the twitter feed up while they're watching again. that might be as simple or faster way to get the same thing. without having to follow all those people on twitter. they are building this into there's own product. it is not a separate app. zuckerberg is usually been keen on this separate app strategy. sarah: some of the separate apps have bombed. maybe this is facebook recognizing that if they are

making a product that draws upon the data from the friend connections in my just be easier to have it baked right into the facebook product. they had trending topics. they have ways to click in to see news from things on facebook. as successfuleen to get people to use those products. people go towhat facebook for. but things like this will train people to understand that you can post things in real time on facebook. emily: maybe they could build this out for entertainment, politics, other things. nielsen is getting more social.

the media research company is now going to talk about which tv shows are getting the most buzz on facebook. it will eventually have data from instagram. how are you actually monitoring this data? sean: we have been measuring consumer phenomenon called social tv. people often watch television with a second screen. the standard measure of twitter activity. with the social content ratings we will be expanding that and having a more holistic measurement to include facebook

and instagram as well. we are creating the methodology to understand when people are being social about tv. what language are they using? of all the different classifiers and keywords. doing that at scale for every program that airs. across 250 channels. emily: you can tell when somebody is talking about a show you are not given that person's identity. is that a little big brother? sean: consumer privacy is very very important to nielsen and our data partners. we have crafted a way so that we

apply to those conversations that are taking place between friends and family. but not receiving those conversations ourselves. what we receive from facebook is an understanding of how many people anonymously in the aggregate are talking about a given television program. emily: this could be confusing to advertisers. are facebook and twitter trying to accomplish with nielsen and how does it affect advertisers? sean: the social signal we are providing to advertisers they are looking at social is a form of engagement with television. understandying to

the demographics and the other dimension which is social media. how engaged is the audience? they are making planning decisions based on that. what are the good fits for my brand. what will generate earned media for my brand? they are trying to have the reach of tv but also on digital as well. emily: thank you very much. today we have learned that frome has made $31 billion its android operating system. the numbers were released in

court while lawyer for oracle. google is urging the judge to seal the record saying that the financial information should be made public. it is not all economics and fiscal policy at davos. race is heating up. someone is trying to steal the spotlight from elon musk. ♪

emily: technology is one of the injor themes that d davos. the most remarkable statements i've heard here at technology will become the key to combating climate change. technology and productivity and particularly the internet of things and getting signals from also some parts of the economy are going to allow us to measure more and know what is effective. know when we are using carbon a more efficient productive and affluent society. that has been a big theme here at davos.

the internet of things is not just a small transition. it is actually the next phase of the internet. emily: how a little start up is trying to take on big names like amazon and walmart. after this. ♪

emily: in this version of our weekly venture capital segment, the environment has been challenging for e-commerce startups if your name isn't amazon. i caught up with the ceo of one company and asked him for his take on the state of fundraising right now.

>> things are changing a bit. we grew into all the things we said we were going to do, so luckily it wasn't as challenging for us. but you do see folks pulling back and not looking at new deals, especially in the later stages, until things settle down in the market. emily: let's start with goliath and amazon. how do you differentiate yourself? >> you cannot start any company without thinking about amazon, especially not in commerce. it's kind of how we see the land of retail and commerce. you definitely have folks like amazon who have done an incredible job of building an awesome transactional experience. if you want a single item, a single book, a single roll of toilet paper, amazon is a great place to shop. across the united states, there are not many tech savvy people who do not have an amazon account. but i think there is another audience or part of the retail sector that goes into stores for their stock up trips.

that is the customer we want, not just at the ones that want a single of anything, but either they have a big family, a small to medium-sized business, or even a chain of convenience stores. that is the customer that boxed is serving. emily: but amazon is doing same day delivery, to our delivery in some places. why do we even need to buy in bulk? >> when you do buy in bulk, you save trips to the store or save boxes coming to your house. you also save a little bit of money as well. some of the feedback we get from our customers is that if you do buy in bulk you are not receiving six different packages on three different days. you are getting one shipment on one predetermined day. if you are an office manager, you could be breaking down boxes for half your day. for us, getting that one

shipment at one time is pretty powerful. emily: are you going after nonprime members? do you think that one time fee is still a barrier to entry for some people? >> that i'm not sure about in terms of prime members or not prime members. i do know that you can't think of the opportunity as just going after nonprime members. prime is so ubiquitous. it's going to server great need in a lot of households across the u.s. if you think about walmart, there is a different audience. even though they park their car in the same parking lot, they self select if this is a stock up trip or more of a

transactional trip. i think for the same reason -- or the same way of thinking is going to proliferate online. we want the customer that is otherwise going to the other side of the parking lot for the stock up trip. emily: what about jet.com, this is a company that is providing customers with steep discounts. what makes you different and what is your customer acquisition strategy? >> i think jet is doing a great job and i have a lot of respect for them. what their strategy is and what they are going after is putting their ships across from amazon and training the guns on each other and seeing who survives.

for us, it is the reason why they have needed to raise as much as they have raised. for us, we are going after that stock up customer. the average consumer on boxed buys 10 items. we are also going after the consumer that doesn't search for what they want. they kind of know what they want when they come in. they walk the aisles. 90% of our customers have not used to the search bar. it is really for the customer that is going for the stock up trip and to wander the aisles. emily: the ceo of boxed. coming up, and up-and-coming player in the commercial space has new celebrity status things to winning a major contract from nasa. details from the sierra corporations ceo next. ♪

emily: a big step forward for

digital asset holdings. the company won a contract to dramatically speed up settlements in the australian stock market. the company is one of about dozen looking to prove that the technology underlying bitcoin can be applied to financial markets. cory johnson sat down with the ceo. >> think of a chain or distributed ledger as a shares replicated source. the information stays the same at all points in time. it uses sophisticated technology to ensure that it's not possible to hack into or falsify the record. more importantly, once information is submitted to the record, it can never be edited. if you need to correct something, you can create a correcting or offsetting entry, but you cannot go back and rewrite history. cory: that's is the promise of blockchain. but as of now, who will use this financially? >> many people.

we just closed our first financial round of fundraising from institutional supporters. all of the investors in that round are current or potential future customers of the country. cory: i think it's interesting that it is not just financial investors but investors who are going to put this to work. blithe: that's right. our investors very much hope and expect the company will perform well. for their investment to perform well as a consequence. what they are really doing here is putting their capital to work to prove out and helped drive global adoption of these new ideas. you could see the potential is being very significant for their businesses, cost avoidance, capital reduction, risk reduction, regulatory compliance. these are big strategic issues for financial services today and that is why the interest has grown so significantly.

cory: a year from now, what do you want to look back and say you have proven? >> we are spending the next 12 months taking what are currently prototyped concepts and converting them to something production ready in a real-world environment.

last week, nasa announced a third company to split a 14 billion dollar package. it is called sierra nevada corporation, and it is co-owned by a husband and wife team. they are trying to master landing technology that would allow spacecraft to be reused. their approach is called the dream chaser. the ceo joined me for an exclusive conversation to explain. >> i think the dream chaser is

going to take the whole commercial space initiative to the next level. everything today is about capsules, the last 50 something years. whether it is a manned or unmanned version of the space vehicles. emily: the dream chaser operates a differently than the spacex dragon. it rides on top of a rocket and then lands like a commercial airplane. spacex had another failed attempt over the weekend. what you take away from that? >> reusability is extremely important. i think spacex is on the right track. our vehicle is not a rocket-based technology. secondly, recovering the rocket or the capsule is a lot different from landing an airplane, as you know. that's a huge discriminator for a lot of scientific experiments where you need the soft entry. and a soft landing. it could very quickly land in an airport where you would imagine a normal airliner would land. emily: how much money do you save by trying to land this way? >> it could quickly reached billions. right now, nasa is only guaranteeing six missions with the cargo. the need for this is much greater than just the cargo missions.

emily: ultimately, how do you want the dream chaser to be used, and who else are you talking to? other governments? are there other people you're having conversations with? >> we are looking for strategic partners and investors to come in and join. realize the potential. there is science, tourism, service missions, going up and helping satellites that are broken. there are about 20 countries involved in our program, by the way, around the world. we have four different wings that fit into a standard rocket, so whether it is a european rocket or a japanese rocket, we can launch, which makes other countries very interested in working with us. emily: is it fair to describe sierra nevada corporation as a multibillion-dollar business and is space exploration the biggest part of the business? >> it is fair because our revenues are at that level. space is a significant part of it. it is not the majority of it yet, but i think with this program, there is every chance it will be.

emily: what is your strategy for holding your own against billionaires like elon musk and jeff bezos? >> our strategy has been about performance. you don't need a marketing department or a pr department.

you just need to perform. you need to deliver. we had a very exciting celebration. we got together and celebrated. people screamed and jumped up and down. the next day we went to work. our strategy is really to deliver what we promised, and that is what made sera nevada grow from nothing to this multibillion-dollar level that we are at today. emily: what are your long-term plans? is it an ipo? >> eventually, it could be. we have kept the company private to this point, but space is a different kind of market. the potential is so large. if you want to realize the potential on a timely basis, you made to bring other financial vehicle's or an ipo to the picture.

right now, it is a little early to say that, but as i mentioned earlier, we have an effort underway to bring some financial partners into this effort. emily: sierra nevada corporation's ceo. staying in space, they can't see it but they believe it's out there. u.s. scientists say they have solid evidence of a planet x, a true ninth planet on the fringe of our solar system. according to calculations, the planet is likely to have a mass 10 times that of earth and it is extremely far away. pluto is 4.6 billion miles from the sun. this planet is 20 billion miles away at a closest point in its orbit.

other astronomers point out that this has been "discovered" before and refuted. for some, it seems, seeing as still believing. coming up, are we a step closer to super, super high-speed transport? ♪

emily: elon musk's dream of a super high-speed train may be one step closer to reality. one group with an engineering breakthrough says it has filed permits to build a full scale passenger system. we have the ceo of hyperloop transportation technologies joining us now from l.a. i spoke to the other company working on this, and i wonder what is your timeline? when did this be completed?

>> we have been working for the last two and a half years on finalizing the technology, doing different prototypes. we are going to be able to move people. construction will start this year. we filed the permits. depending on the county, we are expecting this year to be able to break ground. we are in the process of finalizing the contractors and everybody who will be working on the project, and we expect to open to the public toward the end of 2018, beginning of 2019. emily: how are you funding this? are you still pursuing an ipo? >> there are different ways of funding a project. we have investors who are interested in investing into the company and we are in the process of closing that ground. we have a very unique story. our team is working on this in exchange for stock options.

we have partners like the inventors of the vacuum pump, and it's about giving the community options early on. it's not likely one of our targets, but it will happen. emily: i spoke to rob lloyd, your competitor, about their strategy. take a listen to what he told me. >> it could be passenger movement, opportunities between cities, it could be moving freight. we really are focused on identifying the three top opportunities by the end of this year so that in 2017 and 2020 we will begin constructing the first hyperloop systems around the world. >> how are you different from the competition, and who is closer to making this a reality? he told me i could have a ticket on their hyperloop in 2021.

>> we would be 2018, so you wouldn't need a ticket. you could just come on board with me. we started back in 2013. we were the first company working on this. we see this as more of a movement than a company. we have almost two years of advantage in front of everybody else. i think it is not really a competition or a race. it's more of a traditional high-speed rail, traditional transport method. we are ready, and so we have everything we need in order to move people. now we need to build. emily: thank you so much for joining us. that does it for this edition of

"bloomberg west." on friday, don't miss our continuing coverage of the world economic forum in davos. that's all from san francisco for now. ♪

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