and welcome to "squawk alley." joining us, jon steinberg, ceo of daily mail north america, jon fortt, kayla tausche here. a busy week for tech as the dow is down about 54 points. first up this morning, the man of the morning. shares of the online real estate firm trulia jumping more than 10% today after news that zillow has agreed to acquire the company for $3.5 billion and a stock-for-stock transactions. both companies say the deal expected to close in 2015. spencer rascoff is the ceo of zillow. spencer, great to see you. congratulations. good morning. >> thank you very much. thanks for having me. good morning. >> obviously, this was not the best-kept secret of the past 72 hours or so. how far back does this adventure begin? >> well, the adventure begins

for real eight or nine years ago because our companies have always admired each other. this most recent deal came together over the last six weeks when we approached trulia and said we thought now would be a great time to combine. >> spencer, with the stock up so much, how did you get them to take all stock for this? >> i think the trulia board on behalf of trulia shareholders think that we're just getting started. and they wanted stock. they wanted to share in the combined upside of this new company because both sides, zillow and trulia, think we're just getting started, that there's a long, long road ahead. >> got a question about structure here going forward. trulia's going to remain a brand, the trulia ceo will report to you, i believe they'll get a board member as well. how exactly will that be managed? how big a role is trulia going to play in the zillow story going forward? >> well, trulia has a huge audience and a very powerful and important brand. zillow already operates multiple brands in the real estate media category. zillow, street easy and hot pads. and we think by adding the

trulia brand to our family of brands, we can grow our brand all that much more. we couldn't be more excited about the trulia brand. this is something that a lot of other online media companies have done, whether it's the weather company that operates weather.com and weather underground and intellicast and expedia and hotwire. it allows you to be more relevant to more consumers and a larger audience and that, in turn, helps with your ability to help advertisers reach that audience. >> spencer, you and trulia basically created this market nine years ago when the company started. now both sides account for some 61% of online real estate traffic. i'm wondering, do you think that there will be any competition concerns, or do you think that ultimately this will be seen as a good deal for consumers, too? >> well, i don't expect regulatory issues for the following reasons. first of all, the consumer audience is incredibly fragmented. every local city has tens of thousands of individual real estate websites that every agent and broker and every other person in the community operates

real estate websites with real estate listings. those long tail of real estate websites don't tend to get picked up in the national traffic stat that you cite. in addition, agent advertising is incredibly fragmented. zillow and trulia together only have 4% of what real estate professionals spend in total advertising. so i think the obvious consumer benefits and the fact that the audience and the ad budgets are very fragmented means that this will be met with approval by regulators. >> spencer, every time you're on, we have a conversation about valuations and skepticism regarding your stock and trulia stock for that matter. in the past you've said haters are gonna hate. what would you say who argue that you're using this moment and that valuation to use your stock as a currency? >> i think in stock-for-stock deals, here the exchange ratio is .444. you'll get .444 shares at closing. it was from a pro forma ownership standpoint. we had to ask ourselves would we

rather own 100% of zillow or two-thirds of the combined company? and i'm very excited and much more excited about owning two-thirds of the combined company than owning 100% of zillow. so it makes a lot of sense for zillow shareholders to issue these shares to trulia in exchange for acquiring the trulia company. i think it's a great deal for zillow shareholders. >> spencer, even in just the last six weeks when these talks took place, trulia stock was at -- let's call it half of what the deal values it as. i mean, that's a pretty spectacular valuation increase in just the time that these talks were taking place, given that it was an all-stock deal, how difficult was it to come up with the right valuation for this company? >> well, these stock deals are negotiated as an exchange ratio and not on a dollar basis. so you're right, the dollar value, the headline price today is $3.5 billion. the actual price of the deal won't be known until closing when we issue the shares to trulia shareholders. i think from an exchange ratio standpoint and from a pro forma

ownership stand poipoint, both s feel we've reached common ground. >> spencer, one last question on brand. when you think about the power of a single brand, especially with the twelevision advertisin you're doing now. isn't more wood behind fewer arrows to go a better way to go? even in the short term, don't you want one brand out there as the definitive place for real estate? >> you know, i think it partly depends on the category, jon, and it also depends on how the brands differentiate themselves. certain consumers have certain affinities for certain brands for different reasons. they like the color palate of one more th palet palette. i think it's very helpful to have multiple brands and they end up evolving over time to focus on different things and stand for different things for the consumer. it's very helpful to have multiple brands to appeal to a larger audience, and i think the trulia brand complements the zillow brand really as well. the overalap stats in the press

release, for example, more than half of trulia's visitors also visit zillow and around two-thirds of zillow's visitors don't visit trulia. >> spencer, how does this affect your relationship with yahoo! which had been one of your partners facing the consumer, doing some of what trulia does, is that relationship going to change? will that hurt yahoo! in real estate? >> no, this is -- i mean, our relationship with yahoo! is great. in fact, we recently renewed our partnership. we now power yahoo! real estate, msn real estate and aol real estate. all of them have great partnerships with zillow. if anything, it benefits those three because as they start working with trulia and we can innovate on the product more quickly, those product benefits make their way to the portals' users. so i think actually this is a slight positive for those folks. >> spencer, is any part of this deal you're doing today defensive? there are some talks, even rupert murdoch mentioned in an

interview he considered buying trulia and zillow. he thought they were overvalued. is this an attempt to thwart a bigger competitor? >> no, it's not. it's a realization that it's very early days in the online real estate space p that there's $12 billion spent every year in total real estate-related advertising. and zillow and trulia are just a tiny drop in the bucket. and advertisers follow audience. and by joining forces as one company, we think we can end up with an even larger audience and eventually more advertising share. we focus on our users and employees. and if we do that, then our shareholders end up benefiting and the competitive landscape sort of works itself out if you just focus on your users. >> that 4% number you gave us, what is the ultimate target on that number? >> i don't know. i mean, i don't have a specific number. it's a lot more than 4%, though. >> it's great having you with us. and congratulations again on the deal. we'll keep our eye on you. spencer, thanks again. >> thank you for having me. >> spencer rascoff.

we kick off a big week for tech earnings. here's a quick map. twitter tomorrow, yelp, tesla, gopro, the first public report on thursday. sony, time warner cable, t-mobile later in the week. you name it, media, tech, and then some other industries, too, jon. insurance. >> twitter, twitter, twitter. >> is that it? >> that really is. >> it's like ohio, ohio, ohio? >> everyone's going to look at that user number. i'm looking at the goadman number. they say 264 million monthly active users. that's one number everybody's looking at. remember, they crushed it on revenue last time. nobody really cared. the big wild card here, anthony nodo, goldman sachs banker extraordinaire who joined them as cfo. if he is on that call, no one is better at explaining a company to hedge funds and wall street. and i think that could really help them quite a bit. for metrics, other things they should be thinking about, that way on the call the stock could really move up, i think. >> well, the company does have a lot of explaining to do. so having someone like that to

massage the message to investors i think would be helpful. but remember, this is a company that just a quarter ago was talking about how events didn't really matter. it wasn't a one hit, two hit, three-hit wonder when you have the oscars, the olympics. but you did have the world cup this past quarter. and that was very big for twitter. the most tweeted event ever. and you have to think that that's been changes, that they do start figuring out, okay, advertisers place a lot of importance on these events, and we shouldn't dismiss them. >> the spin does have to change. and i think for tesla and twitter, it's not so much about the revenue and earnings as john was saying. it's more about some of the more intangibles, the internal metrics. for gopro, i think the bar is very high. i was at a bike shop, and they were telling me, we don't sell a lot of gopros. they're high priced. i brought my gopro to my high school reunion this weekend. and these are kind of communication-savvy people who were asking me, what is that? they haven't reached the mass market yet there. for yelp, i think there's an interesting transition happening in the local review market where

it's less about advertising, more about driving business to the small businesses and taking a cut of the transactions. angie's list is trying to move there. we want to see if yelp has a story especially after angie's list shortfall. >> maheney is calling for an important metric. that would be up from 74,000 which was 65% year-on-year growth last quarter. we want to see if there's an acceleration there as well. >> yelp ads are incredibly expensive. they need to have diversification away from that. >> it's not yelp, yelp, yelp. >> we want to see if they're going to be make more money than previously which is basically half of what facebook makes off a user as well. lots of metrics to watch and they want to change those metrics. meantime, more acquisitions for apple. rico, it comes on the heels of a

string of content apps, beats with streaming music service. another small acquisition friday, apple buying book lamp, the book recommendation service. jon, what are they up to? >> well, i think the swell acquisition makes sense in itunes radio, they recently added npr and some other more talk-oriented things that seem to be popular. this allows them to expand that, get a different kind of user in there. for book lamp, i think more about book ecosystem amazon, especially since some of the regulatory decisions and pressure that apple has been under has been kind of running away with that market. apple has a bit of an opportunity maybe with the negotiations with amazon to create a little bit of momentum for themselves, if they can work on that. >> and talk radio audio, carl, what am i going to say? >> um -- >> cars, right? >> jon loves the cars. >> cars are the new mobile, the new video. car play. what better thing to put in the car in terms of radio than talk

media? >> there's also a common thread to all of these deals, and that is the pandora-like service. book lamp has been described as the pandora for books. swell has been described as the pandora for talk radio. the only thing they don't seem to be buying is pandora, given how -- >> good point. >> -- similar some of these services are. >> eventually, though, the music genome project is really unique. very good technology. i haven't seen anything that matches it. all of these companies trying to avoid buying pandora, we'll see if they can avoid it forever. >> jon, you're going to stick around. meanwhile, the dow is down 35 points. a check of the broader markets. pending home sales disappointed, but the week is going to be very busy for economic data with the fed decision on wednesday and the payrolls number on friday. right now the s&p down 6 points. the nasdaq down 20 points just a couple hours into trading. but not family dollar. take a look at this stock. carl icahn must be happy to see this move. that stock up 22.5 after

pressure from activists. family dollar selling itself to dollar tree. you're also looking at dollar general which had been rumored as potentially playing in some of the deals. dollar general still up 1%. tyson foods moving tie higher. a profit miss but revenue beat on the top line, and the company is forecasting strong earnings growth going forward. it's announcing it will divest its poultry businesses in mexico and brazil. tyson foods up nearly 5%, carl, on that news. when we come back, blackberry ceo john chen on apple and ibm and a possible buyout. plus, amazon's latest gambit. the ceo of legendary pictures, thomas tull. ddy for defending our country. thank you for your sacrifice and thank you for your bravery. thank you colonel. thank you daddy.

military families are uniquely thankful for many things, the legacy of usaa auto insurance can be one of them. if you're a current or former military member or their family, get an auto insurance quote and see why 92% of our members plan to stay for life. who don't have electricity 400 million people and i just figured that it's time i do something about it. what we're doing right now, along with ibm, is to actually transfer data through a satellite from our wind farms directly onto the cloud. i think we could create a far more efficient system across the whole network where we could actually draw down different kinds of energy based on when it's needed by the consumer. a smarter energy system is made with the ibm cloud. the ibm cloud is the cloud for business.

earlier this morning our jon fortt sat down with blackberry's ceo. here's what he had to say. >> after the apple/ibm partnership announcement, which we're all waiting for more detail on. i believe you characterize it as two elephants dancing. there's a proverb about when elephants dance or fight, the grass suffers. so what exactly does that mean? is blackberry the grass here, or are elephants clumsy? what do you think is going on there? >> obviously i meant the elephant is clumsy and big. i mean, you know, and we

certainly are not the grass. we might be yet another animal of some sort. i prefer to be more nimble. i mean, i told everybody the same thing. this seems like it's generating a lot of interest. it is a good thing that ibm and apple recognize that enterprise is a big market. i mean, that's a good thing. you know, we are aiming at a market. we've been doing well in that market. and so it's important that we know the market is expanding. having big players like that coming in, you continue to help expand the market. >> have you had any offers placed in front of you to do either an acquisition of blackberry or some sort of significant investment? >> no. no. right off the bat, no. we have a lot of conversation about different market partnerships and technology collaborations and so forth. >> so there you have it.

they continue to be independent. but they're looking for dance partners in this in the enterprise, more in the sales and marketing line. he's clearly looking to invest his money in r&d, deep in enterprise, in security technology. things like that. i'll have more from him some news that is breaking tomorrow in that space. but if you thought that they were going to play consumer a little bit more in bbm, some other things, no. even in hardware, even in handset, they're very much focused on the enterprise user believing that the enterprise user whose higher end is going to carry two devices. that i.t. is going to push back. byod won't be everything. they think they can play that. >> very interesting. there has been such a trend in bring your own device into consumerization. what's your take on that? do you think that's a legitimate angle to go with? >> it's possible. you look at what happened with angela merkel, for example, and concerns about security of certain communications, and that gives the i.t. manager, who's

been back on his or her heels for the past five years, a tool to say, you know what? fine. bring your own device. but for all the corporate data, for all the government data, you need this device. this is the device that that's going to live on. so he thinks that he can turn that enterprise into a new sales channel. but, you know, the tide up to this point has been with consumer. but like we see with yelp and angie's list, there's a need not just for a consumer play but also for a business play. >> he is tenacious. you've got to give him that. so far. surprised some people. thanks, jon. when we come back, how an internal staples document reveals amazon's next piece of hardware. and the dow hitting a one-month low today. we're down 45 points, off of the low, but we will see how europe closes in just about ten minutes.

if energy could come from anything?. or if power could go anywhere?

or if light could seek out the dark? what would happen if that happens? anything. welcome back to cnbc. i'm michelle caruso-cabrera at the news desk. we want to tell you about the libyan government right now

appealing for international help in dealing with a massive fuel tank fire which, if you were in tripoli, the capital, you would be able to see it billowing across the sky. here it is. a massive fuel tank fire that began yesterday because of fighting between militias. now they're worried that it's burning out of control and could light nearby liquid natural gas tanks which they say would cause a humanitarian and environmental disaster. once again, video coming in from libya of this massive fuel tank fire, guys. i don't know about you, carl, but does it seem like the whole world is on fire at this point? >> i was just going to say, one more hotspot, michelle, that we have to look after. thank you for that, michelle caruso-cabrera back at hq. looks like amazon's looking for a competitor, rolling out its own mobile credit card reader. the store is preparing to stock a new product called the amazon card reader. alongside existing card readers from square, paypal and staples.

on the heels of the quiet launch last week of the amazon wallet app and, of course, those crazy earnings on thursday night. >> yes. people are criticizing am done for getting into some of these new ventures. but remember, these toggles, very cheap to produce. they're cheap to sell. amazon's apparently will be $9.99. square's is about $5. there's going to be the very important point of distinction. and that is the merchant fee that they charge. square, to use it, it charges a small business 2.75% per transaction. actually, a local coffee shop in my neighborhood was watching out its square reader because they said it's too expensive, and they're going to a cheaper option. it was a smaller company. amazon's going to try and get that sweet spot to make it cheaper than square. >> this is like cloud services now. i mean, how cheap can they be? now everyone is going to do this with local payments as well. basically everyone's interested in local because it's so hard. and with amazon payments on your

phone, they could potentially compete from the user side as well just like we heard last week that apple is going into payments. basically everybody's going into payments and music still. >> and again, this is the big existential threat to yelp and angie's list. they need to get out of that expensive app business or at least relying on it and diversify into payments and driving business to small businesses. >> it's hard when one player owns all the hotels like a monopoly board, right? amazon has the strategic advantage here. >> they also have -- everybody has an amazon account. in apple, everybody has an itunes account. >> the plus is that small businesses have to be a little skittish about relying too much on amazon because they will come in and not just eat your lunch but eat your breakfast and dinner, too. >> but these small businesses, they process orders. they have, you know, some of them are using amazon warehouses, amazon lends to them if they want to expand. so to build on to that platform, just add another product that is incrementally more expensive but not a huge lineup and cost for amazon makes a lot of sense.

>> although i think a lot of people are local presence. whereas a lot of them are basically small e-commerce. let's get over to simon on the floor and see how europe closed. >> yeah, we've actually been seeing european markets through the session. tomorrow eu ambassadors will meet to discuss russia. germany, over the weekend, appeared to back down on its opposition to that, provided the burden of those sanctions is spread equally across the whole of the eu. germany, if you see that figure, is disproportionately falling today. it's not hit its 200-day moving average but it does continue into negative territory. there are some of the heavyweights. some of the stocks that did well. ryanair is projecting $86 million, and therefore their costs will fall. and their profitability rise.

recitt is going to kick off their pharma unit. it looks as if it's going to be able to sell its medical nutrition units, the latest of the u.s. tax inversions. meantime, for most europeans, probably the biggest story today is the fact that the permanent court of arbitration in the hague has ruled that actually russian government misappropriated year cost oil last year. remember when they threw him into prison? they should be paid $50 billion by the russian government. this is what a spokesman said in reaction to that. >> we knew that they were always on our side. yukos was stolen by the russian federation in 2004, and we've been fighting ever since then to get compensation for our

shareholders. >> obviously the russian government, guys, is going to appeal that decision. but as it stands at the moment, if they don't win through, then russian assets could be effectively sold by those shareholders or seized and sold in order to repay that debt. back to you. >> simon, thank you so much. when we come back, the producer of "the dark knight," "the hangover," "300," "inception." tom ago tull with us in a rare and exclusive interview in a moment. here at fidelity, we give you the most free research reports, customizable charts, powerful screening tools, and guaranteed 1-second trades. and at the center of it all is a surprisingly low price -- just $7.95. in fact, fidelity gives you lower trade commissions than schwab, td ameritrade, and e-trade. i'm monica santiago of fidelity investments, and low fees and commissions are another reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today.

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♪ this weekend, at comic-con, the producer of mega hits announced he's building a new franchise around this summer's hit "godzilla" with a "king kong" film in the works. what's his plan to buck the trend at the box office? he joins our julia boorstin in l.a. in an exclusive interview. hey, julia. >> reporter: carl, thanks so much. and thomas tull, legendary entertainment, thanks so much for joining us this morning. straight off the heels of the new universal films you're building around "godzilla." why is this a big deal? why is "king kong" and that whole world so promising? >> you know, it's something that we're passionate about and thankfully fans around the world seem to love our version of "godzilla" and gareth edwards did a great job for us. >> reporter: your movies have bucked the trend, but how

concerned are you about the fact that people might get used to going to the movies less? >> i think we have been able, thankfully, to have continued success. i think there are more entertainment choices available today than ever before. so the bar is higher. and what you have to do is make sure that you deliver every time out. and that's what we're focused on. >> reporter: how do you do that? what is the key to breaking through the clutter? >> for us, it's sticking to our knitting. you won't see us making romantic comedies and things that we really don't -- wouldn't be very good at. and it's working with amazing, talented people like chris null and ghee arrow del toro and zach snider and folks like that. >> reporter: you've been building a studio in china. is that more about the potential in china or trying to diversify away from the u.s. where things are stagnating? >> it's both. we've certainly diversified our company over the last couple years in television in china, in digital and things like that. but the market, you know, is growing, and our films have done very well there.

so having a presence, and we've had had a presence there for years, was really important to us. >> reporter: talking about diversifying can tv and all these other divisions. the world on the street is you're building towards an ipo, that the company is valued at $3 billion. what's your plan? >> our plan is to continue to grow. and whatever is in the best interest of our shareholders is what we're going to pursue. right now, you know, the focus is on making sure we make great content across the board. and those opportunities will be assessed as they present themselves. >> reporter: now, you have a very different kind of studio here in hollywood. you have the backing of big institutional investors like fidelity and morgan stanley. on your board, you have big names like jim breyer and procter & gamble ceo. what do they bring in terms of perspective to the company, and how does that impact your strategy? >> it's invaluable, frankly. to be able to have a guy like . a.g. laughly on our board to talk about bringing profit, branding and such universal

themes whether you're selling the type of products that he does or connecting with consumers like we do with film and television, it's a privilege to have him. and jim breyer for technology, we try to be very forward leaning in terms of the way that we connect with consumers, having jim on our board is fantastic. and our investors are patient capital and certainly want us to grow us into an even bigger company. >> reporter: but we're in this area of major m&a in the media space. are you going to be bought up by someone? do you want to buy a smaller player, or are viewers someday be able to buy shares of legendary? >> all of those things, i think if you start to get ahead of your skis, you know, my experience in both running the company and as a personal investor is if you do a great job building the company, those things take care of themselves. so we certainly -- we've been active buying companies. we're going to continue to look at those things. but whatever is in the best interests of our shareholders, you know, that's what we do. >> reporter: now, i understand that one of hollywood's biggest

challenges is marketing costs. the marketing costs continue to go up. but you say you have a strategy to bring them down. you're investing in big data crunching, technology to manage marketing. how is that going? >> so far, it's going very, very well. for the last two years, we spent a lot of time and energy building our applied analytics division in boston. and it worked great for us on "godzilla," and we're excited about what it will do for us across all of our divisions. and again, it allows us to be smarter about the way that we deploy capital and connect with fans. so it's really part of our dna at this point. >> reporter: and so do you think you have the special sauce in terms of higher profitability for films than other studios? >> you know, any time you start thinking that, you're only as good as your last movie or television show. and it's an unforgiving business. so at this point, we've been extraordinarily fortunate. we've had had great partners ten years at warner brothers and now it's your parent company, comcast universal. so, you know, we're sufficiently

nervous about the next thing, but we think we have a good plan. >> reporter: and i understand you're also an owner of the pittsburgh steelers. we were just talking about watching practice. now, it's interesting that the nfl is now pushing to save sports blackouts. and this is a big change here. what's your perspective as a media guy? >> well, look. the league, roger and the league, do an amazing job running things. it's a new age where people are watching on their cell phones, their ipads and so forth. so it's a much more sophisticated question these days. it's something i think the league is in a good position to answer. but it's definitely not an easy topic. >> reporter: interesting times from the nfl to "godzilla" and "king kong." thanks so much for joining us, thomas tull. carl, back over to you. >> thank you so much, our julia boorstin. the dow is down 18. let's get a "market flash" from bertha coombs. >> we're watching shares of smith & wesson. s.e.c. for $2 million over he

charges of improper payments to foreign officials. s.e.c. saying the company was trying to win contracts and supply firearm products to military and law enforcement in pakistan, indonesia and a few other foreign countries. smith & wesson stock is actually up about 0.5%. back to you. >> bertha, thank you. when we come back, social entrepreneurism. the founder of ethos water who sold his company to starbucks going to join us next. first, rick santelli, what are you watching? >> reporter: we're watching things like plans. do we have an energy plan? do we have a tax plan? we do. we've never adopted any. it seems as though right now the main plan for just about everything is this. and we're going to tell you why and why it isn't best right after the break.

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coming up at the top of the hour, the king of doom is at it again, predicting a stock market crash soon. we're going to ask mark faber why he has such a goody outlook and what he actually like likes. some major mergers happening. we'll break down all the news, the big players and who could be next. and we're kicking off a new series as the nasdaq gets ever closer to its all-time high. could we see a repeat of the dotcom crash. we're talking to familiar faces of that era about the warning signs investors might be missing all straight ahead on the "half." see you in about 20. peter thune wants to do to gun violence what he did to

dirty water. he wants to get rid of it. he helped people get access to safe water by ethos. now the social entrepreneur is trying to reduce gun violence in america by recycling illegal guns into jewelry. joining us here at post 9 this morning, peter is the founder and ceo at liberty united and fondray 47. thank you for being with us. this is a fascinating business. how do you source your material, so to speak? >> well, liberty united functions a lot like ethos water, at least in the way that we address consumers. we make something that people already buy, but we make, in this case, we make it out of gunmetal that we get from police departments in american cities. we make it into jewelry. and then the purchase of those pieces then funds programs back into those same cities to reduce gun violence. >> you brought some samples. they're here on the desk. >> that's right. >> you change the metallurgy, so to speak, the chemistry of the metal? >> so actually, we smelt down the bullets and the illegal guns

into their molten form. and then we incorporate them into the jewelry. and then some of the pieces also include silver and stones and things like that. >> gun control and gun violence has been a hot-button issue for the year that this company has been under way. so you just said that you source the materials from police departments. >> that's correct. >> i'm wondering how you get them to cooperate and how you get them on board, given that the politics around these issues differ so widely in different geographies in the u.s. >> well, i think the word that you said that i think i'm particularly driven by is the question of politics. and we're not a political organization. we're a company. and so we're trying to address this through a very american thing, which is consumerism that i think is sort of a parallel to democracy. and so i think it gives the cities and the police departments an opportunity to take that useless material and make it into something valuable that we can then turn into cash and give back to their cities. >> two things particularly interesting about this to me, i hope you can address. one is this is expensive jewelry. so chances are the people buying

it are not necessarily in the communities where gun violence is an issue. and then i'm also wondering about how the proceeds get spent that reduce gun violence then in those communities and how closely that's monitored. >> sure. so to your first question, we first started introducing products through collaborations with two existing very well-known jewelry, fashion jewelry designers. phillip krangy and his sister's company and took some of their very famous designs and pieces and launched another collection with pamela love and now we're launching our own collection. those prices will range from $35 up to $1600. it crosses a range from very affordable up, you know, to your point, much more expensive pieces. i think we're giving everyone an opportunity to get whatever they want. in terms of how we use the money, we give it to not-for-profit organizations we select in collaborations with the cities that they actually help us to find. so that we're picking programs

in their cities that they approve of and support. >> finally, on water and beverages in general. >> yeah. >> i mean, we continue to see the big beverage makers challenged in soda. >> right. >> tough to get volume growth around the world. do you think that trend is the soda trend and the world falling out of love with bubbly drinks is going to change? >> i don't think so. i don't want to speak for the entire world, but i think that in the united states, sugar is a problem because it's a health care problem. and i don't think that the pressure between the costs of health care and the cost of the health care problems related to drinking lots of sugar and eating lots of sugar in our diets will change. and therefore i think there will be continued pressure on the soda market because you see that line ticking down and down and down. and so those ceos of the big companies, coke, pepsi are going to have to figure out solutions. >> peter, it's great having you. >> it's a pleasure to be here. thank you very much. >> peter thum joining us. let's send it over to ber sha coombs with a quick "market

flash." >> we're watching shares of h s hospira. it would help shift its tax base to europe and would be the latest in a controversial tax inversion deals. over to you. >> thanks so much, bertha. they just keep coming. when we come back, a new project is the talk of the town in boston. >> i think it's pretty cool. like i can go about my business here. i can train. i don't have to run home and juice up my phone or find a plug somewhere indoors. i think it's fantastic. >> she's talking about the sufa. that's coming up next and hopefully to a city near you. "squawk alley" is back in a minute. during the two weeks at wimbledon. true tennis fans want to know what's happening. they don't want to just see what's happening, they want to know and understand why it's happening.

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♪ stuck inside these four walls ♪ ever need an emergency charge on your cell phone but you can't find a place to plug it? well, if you're in boston, just have a seat on a park bench. ten of these so-called soufas have popped up since june. each one has two usb ports. they're called urban furniture pieces, and they've been a hit. this one that you're looking at

providing about 12 hours of charging to an average of 17 users per day. >> only 17. >> after we installed the first bench behind me, it took about three minutes after we walked away. the first person sat down and charged her phone. >> the city has received more than 600 location suggestions from residents for just two additional bench builds. and the company changing environments has requested -- has gotten requests from all over the world including europe, latin america, pakistan, kazakhstan and china. but they've decided to stay within the u.s. for now. the boston benches, we should note, are sponsored by verizon and cisco, but the company will sell the next 100 benches for an as of yet unannounced price. i'll tell you what, this would have been handy during hurricane sandy. >> yes, any kind of electricity would have been nurse during sandy. you were impressed by this, jon, right? >> yeah, impressed, but only 17 in a day. come on! don't they use smartphones? must not be enough iphones.

they must not be running out of juice fast enough. >> wait till the 6. >> yeah, there you go. >> interesting that verizon and cisco power the benches, but there's no wi-fi. just charges. maybe that's the next -- >> samsung does in some airports. >> these are certainly popular in boston. i know they'd be popular in new york and any other big city. we'll see where they go next. let's hop over to the cme, check in with rick santelli, good morning, rick. >> reporter: everybody seems to be wanting to jump on this inversion conversation. you know, in the end, there are many plans. larry kudlow might have said it best. baucus had a plan. david camp had a plan. and they worked many months, years for mr. camp. and we also had simpson-bowles, let's not forget. so there were plans. were any of them adopted? no. do we have an energy plan? no. here's the deal. we talked about the fire extinguisher. shs the no-plan option. but any parents out there raising kids realize that no decision is a decision.

no plan is a conscious effort. that is a plan having no plan. and what happens when you have no plan? let's think about it. it becomes reactive. the solution always becomes money. and it's about optics and the media. when there is no plan and something happens, even if you're well aware, simpson-bowles wasn't put together because everything was hunky doory with taxes. there's a need when it comes to energy, all of the above, really? all of the above? hey, isn't coal all of the above? wasn't that a big positive in front of the election? but is it really? no. see, when you don't have a plan basically and you ignore it, you ignore, you ignore, the media loves p this. why? because when there's a fire, nothing is better for the media than a fire. and think about the optics. okay? if you're the executive, the optics are you've got to put out the fire. and anybody who stands in your way, well the optics become it's their fault. it's their fault. now, what happens when you have a plan? you have to lay out your

priorities. you have to share. it's like in the legal jargon, discovery. when you prioritize and you make the list of things you like, you don't like, things you may compromise, you are sharing. and by sharing, you are diluting your power. it's about power and control. so if there's a position staked out, somebody in the media or one of your foes or one of your friends or one of your alternative-type leaders that potentially could run against you in a future election has something to focus on. so the real issue, then, becomes, what are we going to do? well, we have to spend some money. we need plans. now, when it comes to this tax inversion issue, it really is sad that we haven't reacted to this sooner, and now we have the fire we need to put out because the country loses. remember, when you have a plan, that means there's a goal to solve. when you're reactionary, what it means is whatever you need to deal with today, you can deal with.

otherwise you sweep it under the rug. it's about leadership. it's about leadership. so the house has power. the senate has power. but there's only one branch that truly has to bring and lead both those houses to a solution. and we know what that address is. pennsylvania avenue. back to you. >> i have a feeling it's 1600. thanks a lot, rick. rick santelli. when we return, apple takes the first steps in addressing bitcoin and other currencies. the ceo of blockchain will join us in just two minutes.

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because the future belongs to those who challenge the present. some iphone users were so infuriated when apple removed this bitcoin app from its app store back in february that they smashed their phones. today apple opened its arms and reinstated blockchain's bitcoin app, but how big of a deal is this for blockchain and for bitcoin? peter smith is the co-founder and coo at blockchain, and he

joins us this morning. good morning, peter. >> good morning. how are you today? >> we're doing well, thanks. and it's a big day for you guys. walk us through your interaction with apple over the last six months to get back on the app store. >> our interactions have apple have actually been pretty positive. we've had a good dialogue with them and found them pretty supportive of, you know, new and exciting software projects. so i think overall, our relationship with apple is probably more positive today than it ever has been. >> in february when they suspended your app from the app store, it was basically taken as the bitcoin community as strikedown from these big tech companies, basically not taking it seriously. now that they've added bit toin to some of their guidelines in the app store as of june and that they've reinstated some of these apps, what does this say to you? >> you know, i think other technology companies take it very seriously. it's an extremely disruptive technology that makes perfect sense on the internet. it makes perfect sense in the mobile context. and i think that the developer

interest around the technology is extremely strong. and so because of that, i think that every large tech company, whether it's google or apple or even microsoft has to take this technology very seriously. and if they want to retain users and keep people inside their o ecosystem, they have to find a way to support it. >> peter, i'm trying to figure out how much this matters to you and to bitcoin, kind of at the numerical level. kind of february and pre, how much of your user base was on ios versus android, and where was the momentum? >> i think most of our user base was on ios. the predominant kind of, you know, device in most of north america right now, single biggest is ios devices. we had a huge install base on ios, over 100,000. you know, we had about half of that on android at the time when the app was pulled. now the numbers are are more like at parity. but i think it's huge for the company. but it's also really big for bitcoin. obviously, apple's a huge player in the tech ecosystem.

and for them to allow companies back into the app store, particularly large companies like ours, is gigantic. >> hey, peter, you did use the opportunity to rewrite the app. how is it new and improved? >> you know, a lot of the code that was in that app was fairly old. we hadn't been able to update the app in about two years. so you're looking at code that was 2 to 2 1/2 years old. you know, those kind of things, they wear out over time. so we replaced almost the entire code base. it's a very simple product today. it sends, receive, displays your balance and it does these things very well. so it's a great app for new users. and we're really excited about a lot of new bitcoin users downloading that app on ios. >> peter, your customers are loyal. that's something that we have seen. so we will see how growth looks from here. but congratulations on getting back on the app store. >> thank you. we appreciate it. >> peter smith, the coo of blockchain. >> i like that, smashing your phone because the app is killed, temporarily. meantime, dow's down 27. you know, we mentioned zillow at

the top of the show. but haven't mentioned family dollar or dollar tree. family dollar remains the biggest gainer on the s&p today, as the m&a train rolls on and dollar general taking a hit as well since it was not part of that party, at least hasn't been. that does it for us here on "squawk alley." let's get back to the judge, scott wapner takes over the "half" starting now. >> carl, thanks so much. welcome to the "halftime" show. here's our game plan. crash coming? mark faber thinks so. the king of doom joins us live with yet another dire prediction. nasdaq 2.0. 14 years later, are investors partying too much like it's 1999 and ignore it issing the warning signs yet again? a pair of monday mergers bringing questions for investors. the traders weigh in on what the marriages mean for your money. let's meet today's starting lineup, stephanie link, joe terranova. we begin with a monster week for