highly anti-ed ipo. >> a report they wcourse, we've that with the delay. supposed to happen last week that would be in the back half of september. i talked to sources this morning. they said, look, still multiple scenarios on the table. one of those, does alibaba see them trading september 16th. another sees it trading on the 23rd. could choose to do a longer road show or start to road show late perp that's the process where the company's management will go on the road and talk to investors. they're do a global road show at least three continents, guys. this is going to be a massive undertaking for the company. all of the bankers are not in one place this week, of course. seeing heavy vacation this week. i'm getting a lot of out of office replies, but you want to have everyone in agreement on exactly when the company shot go public. what should happen. so at least what i'm hearing from sources is, yes, 16th is

one date. 23rd is another. there are a couple other scenarios floating around as well. >> one other note overnight. ten cent reported, 438 million users on wie chat. and messenger, 848 million users. ten cent own as stake in jd.com, direct competitor to alibaba and using messaging platforms to drive traffic to jd.com. they're doing well. look at numbers. 438 million. compare that to twitter, still in the 270s. ali ba alibaba needs to play harder. >> china recently started to clamp down quite a bit on wie chat usage wanting real identities, figure who's saying what mediawise. a little different than apples to apples. >> of course, there is still speculation over whether they were ever talking to snapchat about a potential deal. with this process, would you think, so much scrutiny from the

sek kr they're done with invests, in the home stretch looking at trading in september at least the back half and saw a filing yesterday after the bell clarifying its stake in ali pay, payment arm. a bunch of legalese, two pages and a 200-plus page document. what does it mean? potentially big win for alibaba increasing from $6 billion to potentially $10 billion what it could get if ali pay ever goes public. not insignificant consent. the company was focused on calculating that stake and actually narrowing that down before working out the other details. >> as the narrative is built, jon, heading into the day, whenever it is, how much is it going to be about their growth in china, given the limitations of that market. the oddities of that market, and their aspirations overseas, right? a north america, or international growth play? >> they still say officially that they're focused in china but have made so many investments outside of china in the u.s., in so many spaces that

really their impact is broader. not just on the market, also on the technology ecosystem as they invest in tango and all kinds of -- every start-up now that's hot you wonder, could alibaba invest? should they invest? would the start-up take their money? is there any risk of a chinese kpip getting into that space? they become a player broader -- >> the sizzle in the u.s. sizzle, optionality. continue to invest in social things? continue to invest in media? that gives investors the ability to have that blue sky potential giving it a higher multiple than it will already have. >> you say stake, you mean steak? >> like the steak you eat. my favorite place. steak and upon. right. next up, amazon going after companies like square today by moving into mobile pates. today the company's launching amazon local register, a credit card processing device and app designed to help small business. the device costs $10 and basically is a card reader

attaching to your smartphone. companies need an account to use it's service and amazon will take almost 2% for each transaction, which is a lot less, kayla, than square charging. >> yes it is, but this is an interesting move. i just -- i want top see how the actual retail development of this product evolves, but there's no question that amazon wraunts to get into payments, in addition to square being worried about this i think paypal should be worried about this. because in 2011 amazon applied for a license to be a payments company. didn't get the license until january of this year in the state of capital. they've had these ambitions for quite some time, and with so much e-commerce activity already happening on its platform, square can't say that, but paypal can. something they'll be able to combine with this product that they're now selling. >> spectacular article from "fast company" this month. >> talked about it yesterday. >> pro filing square. one of the q in smith of intoet commodity game. square takes, only a portion of

that, doesn't seem lucrative or exciting. for amazon to go into this. everything is a blocking move to have access to everything no matter how low cost. not exciting for me. >> i think it's very exciting, because i think at this stage for amazon, it's about the data. think about, as they expand this, and lots of local merchants start using this, amazon gets to cross-reference the credit cards. see, do prime members buy more from these local merchants versus non-prime members? get to the see which might we want to invite to participate in amazon fresh? amazon will actually deliver goods from local merchants along with amazon fresh. even able to see which local areas might be ready for fresh based on how they compare to areas where they already operate. this is a very important -- >> local is just such a grind. >> you said this -- get in the game? >> but look at every company in this space. the struggles they're having. look at yelp, open table? it's brutally slow to do it. and actually --

>> article on square, getting calls from merchants asking how to work their iphone n. a way amazon's already do it. their last mile is local. paying for trucks to roll down the street. have a relationship with consumers. a big opportunity. >> the trust of their servers. part of the appeal to the business owner is you're going to have the same security services as you have when someone clicks on amazon.com? >> right. everybody else the local market. i'm focusing on national. national, shipping things from giant warehouses in the center of the country to me is always more exciting than trying to get people to pick stuff from target,ut it in the a car and drive it to your house. i ordered a single shaving cream from google local express. it is all over again. >> that is you. not everybody. wouldn't you agree, at the very least, that companies like amazon and like google are benefiting at the expense of some of these start-ups like square and like some of these other retail payment platforms? they let them go out, design the tech knoll, them go out and actually market it to these merchants and then come in and say, okay. we can make that one better and

a little cheaper. here you go. you have or platform, too. >> apple's argument. don't have to be first, just the best. it you're a large company, makes perfect sense. next up, shares of king digital crushrd after missing on revenue. cut its full year outlook. could the candy crush still be an investment opportunity? an analyst at bmo capital markets, outperform on the stock, $20 price targets. good morning. dp it change today? >> the target dropped today. >> where did you go? >> we went from 25 to 20. 20 is the new target but were at 25 before today. when we look at the -- go ahead. >> i was going to say, what's to like here, given their guidance, given the strangeness of this special dividend. what do you see? >> really, the key thing for me is the cash generation. they still are generating a tremendous amount of cash. and ultimately that's really where the value kicks in. they still have a massive user

base. look at their unique users. they're still sitting at 345 million monthly unique users. and so when we look out to the back half of this year, certainly our expectations came down because the monthly unique payer number was lower than anticipated. but we still see an opportunity for them to generate significant cash in that time period. >> you talk about cash generation. that's important. i believe your price target implies that this company deserves to be valued at around

>> edward, talk about this monthly unique payer number. the one most interesting to me.

3% active buying on the gains. the company argues the bookinging per player is going up and this is a decided move they're doing. now at $19.50. that's an all-time high. at $18 last month. what is your read on monthly unique payers versus the basket per payer they're spending now? >> the thing they're kind of two key drivers behind it. the first one you're looking at is that the monthly gross average bookinging per user is rising because you're losing your marginal player. the people spending less are the ones no longer monetizing, coming out of the monthly unique payer number. the second part of the thing is you're seeing the company sell more gold bars. what that basically is turning into, larger transactions that will happen more infrequently. that also is helping to boof ii average bookings per payer user number. >> you like the gold bar thing? >> i like the gold bar thing, because it allow as player to

migrate from game to game fairly easily helping them drive the user from one game to another game. ultimately to help further diversify their revenue base. >> finally a deutsch report on the conference call saying management noted it may be losing share of user game play to other casual games that monetize less well than candy crush. e.g., kim kardashian hollywood. is kardashian crushing king? >> you know, i think that if you look at data, you discover that kim kardashian is monetizing well, and whether or not it's actually crushing candy crush, i'm not quite sure that it's necessarily doing that just yet, but obviously, there are other games. kim kardashian one of them doing well in the market. i think one of the key things to focus on is who's paying for which game? i think the user base is similar between kim kardashian and candy crush but the monthly unique payer person may not be the same person monetizing on both of those. >> yeah.

edward, appreciate your time today. thanks, edward williams over at bmo talking king. we want to check on the markets also right now. the dow isicing up steam. currently up 97 points. we did get a better than expected print on business inventories but did see retail sales flat. even so, those easing geopolitical tensions are in focus and all major markets are strongly into the green at this hour. shares of macy's though hurting after second quarter earnings missed analysts estimates. retailer lowered sales outlook for the rest of yeert. you see the response. macy's shares down but r better than 4%. and beating estimates, deere. the company saved profit in 2014 will be lower than a year ago, but that is moving the stock down, to the down side to the tune of 1%, carl? when we come back, pandora what does the future hold for pandora? we'll talk to the cfo in a cnbc exclusive a little later on. plus, the so-called peter

teele of latin america making a major bet on bitcoin. he'll explain why he think it's a good investment, and a good look at samsung's next generation behind the unveil of the new galaxy phone. and stay tuned. doing that ice bucket challenge for als with no aunger thing on for als with no aunger thing o n the ckre of twitter. ofdeas. being able to pay as we go was crucial for a start up. having to fork out a lot of money up front was risky. you can launch a feature really quick, and if the feature doesn't work, we haven't lost anything and we can have something up and running in days. and this would not be possible without the cloud. we are now supporting over 25 million users each month. ideas can be tried and tried again on the ibm cloud. the ibm cloud is the cloud for business. do you guys have identity theft protection? [ male voice ] i'm sorry, did you say identity distribution?

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how many have donated to this? actually a significant amount of money. huge improvement over the same period last year. that's what matters. >> an amazing cause. i will pick the three i want you

to nominate. >> okay. >> and they're all super fans. the three i nominate for carl are chrissy teigen. spencer pras cough. ceo-of-zillow and ceo of t-mobile. all "squawk alley" super fans are the ones you need to nominate. >> well, funny you should say that. that's our twitter question. our squawk on the tweet is, carl got called out by costalo. carl, i hear you'll challenge costolo to a boxing match? >> already done cross stitch. not sure what's left after this. keep your eye on the markets. dow up 98 now. seeing pretty healthy gains. still not obviously a 1% move. nowhere close. interesting stat today from our statistician peter smack now. posted a bigger move two times in three months.

a season of low volatility. >> passion says the market has been sleepwalking. >> yes. get the no doze. and samsung, a new look at the galaxy smartphone, coming up next. my motheit's delicious. toffee in the world. so now we've turned her toffee into a business. my goal was to take an idea and make it happen. i'm janet long and i formed my toffee company through legalzoom. i never really thought i would make money doing what i love. we created legalzoom to help people start their business and launch their dreams. go to legalzoom.com today and make your business dream a reality. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. where the reward was that what if tnew car smelledit card

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in case you missed it and could be forgiven for missing it as it came out overnight with little fanfare. samsung released a new smartphone. one significant design feature a metal band around the edges. reminiscent of the iphone. the phone appears designed to address complaints about the cheaper plastic feel of some samsung products. a fingerprint scanner, inferior to current devices in terms of battery life and resolution. samsung has a splashy event schedule for september 3rd in new york, berlin, beijing. when they want to throw a party, they're pretty good at it. >> certainly can. this isn't a bad move for them. yes, often dinged for the

plastic appeal of their devices but it could be problematic, because they've got a skew, which is the interesting term for a different version for everything. like every screen size within a quarter inch. now a metal band around the outside as they face pressure in the lower end of the market, particularly emerging markets going cheaper. all of the different skews could hurt them cost wise. as an investors, got to wonder. >> the note event coming up. large factor doing up directly against the larger apple one. that is the event to watch. a dra meekly different product and competes more with apple. >> skitch gear switch gears a l. talking about tech taxes. different tax write-offs companies utilize angle towards potentially tax reform in the coming years. few tax credits are as lucrative at the low income housing credits nicknamed lie tech. how it works. sigh a stay approves a development needs $10 million in

equity pap private build construction passes that on to the renter. instead a corporation could spend just $9.3 million to buy those housing tax credits, since they trade for less than $1 a piece. the company can write off the full $10 million then dollar for dollar and it gets the full amount back over ten years. >> what you're looking at with the housing credit program is the last legitimate tax shelter, way to manage your corporate tax rate, bring down your tax rate, increase after tax rernings. >> that sounds more like an investment instead of tax credits, because it is. primarily this was utilized by financial companies and insurers which by law have to reinvest near their branches, but with returns that near 10% in a low yield environment, more and more non-financial companies have jumped in. think kroger, sherwin-williams, campbell's soup, verizon and google, recently financing this

apartment complex that you're looking at in massachusetts. actually, since the crisis, google alone sought out more than a dozen investments from massachusetts to wisconsin to california near its headquarters. google won't disclose the amount of money spent but confirmed those funds are run by its treasury department to earn what a spokesperson called "a healthy return." afford okay housing of course a popular cause especially in washington. these kred its are one of only two credits to the survive an attack at tax reform. done on a rival. they did make it through. on these yesterday its little to no disclosure by the companies how much they're spending. federal housing date taye baaba you would have in idea who actually financed this. >> unless google finance was

your source of television. >> the building they put up in mountainview has a tech lab with phone casts computers. you might have a few signals there. interesting with few investment possibilities in this low rate environment they are going so far as to build apartment complexes just to get that return. >> is that a zero risk? 10% return? >> not a zero risk return but the foreclosure rate is far lower for these units than for normal units, because they are able to keep the rents so low. when rents are higher, of course, the chance of foreclosure and the chance of defaulting on your payments or not making your payments is higher. >> think about the way google works. i wonder if a group of engineers will say do something speck took letter with these already. make it not just a treasury thing. do what walt disney wanted to do with epcot. prototype community of tomorrow and going's these places out like crazy. it's possible. >> return on this? >> not as much of a return. opportunities are endless. more on cnbc.

certainly a fascinating corner of the market. >> interesting. see ya later, jon. >> yep. good seeing you. >> we'll be in touch. jon steinberg, daily mail north america bring in simon hobbs counting down the european close in a few minutes. >> check out the bottom right-hand corner of i don't are screen. shrinkage in the greece economy, 0.2% in the second quarter. a quarter of the greek economy destroyed since 2008, but they now have a primary budget surplus running at three times target. the rest of europe will be very happy with that. that's where the good data ends. deflation is accelerating in spain. 0.4% year on year. you would have deflation of 0.3% in france for the year, but for the fact that cigarette prices are higher, and overall industrial production for the eurozone having contracted 1.1% last month is now down another 0.3%. that said, the equity stock market rising today for all the

reasons we usually discuss. like central banks, plus the fact that some of the companies have come through with very buoyant results, notably german utility jine eon boofrting the rest of that sector and the largest life insurance, swiss life coming through a gabe of 7.5%. gain. back to the economies, the real surprise, the uk. will you know that the uk is performing very well amongst the g-7 and was likely to be the first to raise interest rates. today we learned actually that cash wages are falling in the uk for the first time since 2009. that's meant that this guy, mark carney at the bank of england, suggested that wages are remarkably weak and because of that now is not the time to raise uk interest rates. so sterling has falling down to a 10-week low as a result of that, the xpmarket expectation,k will not raise rates in february but in march. begging the bigger question,

guys, whether it will be the uk that is the first to raise interest rates or us. the federal reserve. >> thanks, simon. when we come back, is pandora a take overtarget? rumors punishing the stock higher this week. see if the company's cfo has anything to say about that. plus, when things got bad in banks in argentina, our next guest turned to bitcoin. called the peter teele of latin america. made over $1 billion selling a bunch of different companies. he's here next on "squawk alley." ...for the year. hi. sorry. just want to say, i bundled home and auto with state farm, saved 760 bucks. love this guy. so sorry. okay, does it bother anybody else that the mime is talking? frrreeeeaky! [ male announcer ] savings worth talking about. state farm. just take a closer look. it works how you want to work. with a fidelity investment professional... or managing your investments on your own.

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markets gaining traction here up triple digits this morning. s&p up to 1947. didn't start out to be an auspicious morning. negative date taye around the world. eurozone production weak. china growth weak, japan's gdp down 6.8, worse since the tsunami. buyers found reasons to buy largely on the back of companies like merck and united health on the dow. only two dow components negative now. walmart and cisco. keep your eye on this, getting interesting here as we see buying mid-session. in the wake of facebook, google doing the same. apple released diversity numbers. 55 pshs percent white. 70% male. apple ceo tim cook had this to say. as ceo i'm not satisfied with numbers on this page.

they're not new to us and we've been working hard for quite some time to improve them. and out in the "usa today" today, vowing to improve facebook's diversity. guy, the numbers out of apple, 18% black hispanic sounds weak, actually two to three times some rivals in silicon valley. >> by silicon valley standards you strong numbers. curious about the details behind the not just because of apple's retail employee base, now more than half the company. even in technical roles especially technical roles the numbers of blacks and hispanics on the rolls are higher percentagewise. interesting to me is that tim cook makes a business case for diversity. this is the first silicon valley ceo to step forward and do that. i think that's important for investors. i mean, some people feel like diversity is a feel-good cause. some don't care. the question is, is there a business case for 2? tim cook taking steps to say, yes, there is. >> it's about knowing your market and knowing your audience and theying what that audience wants and the more diverse your employee base is the better you

can swhaev is a more diverse, growing population out there. apple numbers on the gender diversity side not as strong as facebook and linked inn. >> angela, one example of that. >> right. meantime, over to dominic chu for a market flash here. >> watching shares of canadian solar. stock moving higher after the company reverse add year ago loss posting a quarterly profit selling more solar panels at higher prices. in addition, expects shipments to rise further in the current quarter and the result is a stock, guy, up about 17.5% in trading. rivals, first solar sun power moving on the day as well. back to you. thanks, dom. when we come back, users dumping a bucket of ice on themselves. all pashlt of the ices bucket challenge to spread the word about als. i'm taking part in a few minutes with the ceo of twitter, dick

costolo. this morning squawk on the tweet. who should we nominate for the next challenge? tweet us. we'll get your responses later on this hour. ♪ ♪

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dow's up 109. to rick santelli in chicago. rick? >> hello there, carl. well, you know, we always wonder exactly why yields are stubbornly low, and let's not even talk about the adjustment from may of last year, where the market really did adjust for the end of quantitative easing, and maybe there's a similar adjustment or more similar adjustments based on the end of zero interest rate policy. but we had some significant clues today, because we had a retail sales number that was pretty flat, and interest rates moved down several basis points. but it's even more than that. how many times can we talk about retail sales but we talk about it in the seasonally adjusted fashion it's released? and i can understand that, but there's another way to look at retail sales. inflation adjusted. here's what the st. louis fed comes in handy and i urge all

viewers and listeners to visit they are website and play with a function faumaled "fred." the federal reserve economic data, and what you can do is tweet the date fra its seasonally adjusted form and inkornt other things, like cpi. what's really fascinating is, if you look at the generic chart from about 2006 to present, when it's not seasonally adjusted, it's a very nice chart. as a matter of fact, what the chart looks like, and i tried to get it ready but it wasn't ready in time it basically -- looks like this. okay? and this, of course, is the credit crisis, but once you seasonally adjust it, what happens is, post-2010, it basically is flat. now, why is this so important jt it's important, because it gives us insight as to exactly how smart a portion of the pricing of the treasury market is, even understanding that the federal reserve has had their thumb on the scale with respect to taking so many of those securities and

basically putting them in quarantine and playing havoc with things like repo and traditional pension funds and insurance companies, and making certain aspects of the treasury market more scarce, which, of course, does contribute to lower yields. but it's exactly trying to figure out each category and how much that contribution is. so my exhibit a for all of those out there that never want to acknowledge inflation especially given the way the government seems to try to push it down and smooth it a bit, that retail sales adjusted for inflation is not very optimistic and one very large reason why interest rates continue to remain stubbornly low. back to you. >> all right, rick. thank you very much. rick santelli. as we get closer to noon, bring in scott wapner host of the "fast money halftime report." interesting show yesterday. >> kind of got you roped into something, i guess. >> you did. walk us through how you got involved in this ice bucket

challenge? >> our colleague, meg ter rhere were doing the ice bucket challenge, the entire research team. the whole spirit of this movement, which is really has become, you know, carl a movement across the country is to do it yourself, or be challenged by somebody to do it and then to pass it on. pass it forward. pay it forward, if you will. so meg did it up there with their team, live on our show, and then later in the "half time" show passed it on to me, which i obviously accepted, and did it, and i figured, you know, this has become such a social media phenomenon, it only made sense, considering who we are here at cnbc, the fact that it's become a social media phenomenon, why not challenge zuckerberg and costolo to do it as well? and as you know, obviously by now, within ten minutes or so, costolo took on the challenge with one caveat, of course.

that you join him. >> yes. >> which makes sense. you did the twitter doc. you know the company as well as anybody in this building, or on this planet for that matter. >> he has a history of roping me into things that i'm surprised by. you know, jon steinberg was here a few minutes ago suggesting we challenge other ceos like spencer rascough of zillow. looking at my twitter feed. spencer tweedts, i'm in. it has a viral component to t. amazing how big it's become. you, earlier in this show, carl, or earlier on "squawk on the street," were talking about the incredible number, the dollars starting to roll in now. it's just staggering how this started, where it started, and where it is today. in terms of the kind of dollars that they are generating. now you also, of course, had governor christie of new jersey do it and he, too, by the way -- you're watching jimmy fallon and the guy doss it the roots.

there's the governor, his kids dumping it on him and he, too, challenged zuckerberg along with cory booker and i think jimmy fallon. the governor, with all due respect, late on the zuckerberg thing but we'll forgive you on that. >> yes. spencer tweets, i lost a friend and mentor to als many years ago. such a horrible disease. that it is pap degenerative disease affecting neurons between your brain, spinal cord, eventually muscles and anybody interested in learning more can go to alsa.org. the whole point. not about us being on television dumps ice on ourselves. >> i'm glad you said that, because the whole reason i agreed to do it in the first place was to honor the memory of paul najarian. one of the najarian brothers, pete and jon's brother, who passed away, carl, within the last month or so because of als. so it hits close to home for the cnbc family there's another gentleman here who lost his

father to apse -- to als. something with think about, people we care about. those we don't know because of who we are and the people that watch every day who watch cnbc. more important than us actually pouring a bucket over our head on television. it was for the greater movement this has become. >> nicely done, scott. with $4 million raced in the last couple of weeks, the als association certainly benefits, as they should. see you soon, when "the half" begins in about 17 minutes. and latest work in financial start-ups from brokerage, he has roots in argentina for many years currently working with digital currencies. could bitcoin be a save hsafe haven in some of these countries? he joins us at post nine. great to see you. good morning. >> thank you, carl, for having me, wences casares. >> one of the maim potential

uses for bitcoin? >> we've seen most users come from the emerging world and mostly because of problems with the local currency or local banks. >> walk us through your interest and investment. what does it look like right now. >> i they bitcoin right now looks like the internet before there was a browser. it's very early. but if you look under the hood you can see it's something that can change the world. we see people in the developed world investing a little bit of their assets, usually less than 1% of their savings into bitcoin in a speculative man if you will. in the developing world where most of the users are coming from, they're doing so because there is no alternative to keep the safe fruits of theirs labor. >> a comparison, maybe bitcoin is still a decade or so away from being harnessed correctly, regulated in the right way and just this week the consumer financial protection bureau here in this country started accepting customer complaints over bitcoin and people who had

lost a lot of money felt there was enough disclosure. where do you see bitcoin on the trajectory of being legitimized? >> again, it's very early on. i think the guidelines at the cfpb issued our spot-on in regards to risk prices, hacking and the scam risks, and other, because it's very early on, but at the same time, we're beginning to see the emergence of an industry that is providing very professional services on top of bitcoin that is having venture capital backing. again it looks a lot like the beginning of the internet when we were beginning to see the broudser and the basic infroo structure but developing quickly. more quickly than most imagined or expected. >> not every investment that works. i believe you invested in bling nation. another payments idea that didn't pan out. what did you learn from that, and why is now the time when xapo and bitcoin will work and that didn't?

>> bling nation was technology tool enabling consumers to pay with their phones at point of sale. two things i learned there is that, credit cards work and consumers are happy with them. and believe it or not, it's a lot harder than you would imagine to get people to change the payment behavior. it's more ingrained than most behaviors on the consumer side. on the merchant side, even though merchant complain, there's a reason they accept them. because it works for them, too. so i think in was the main reason. i think that -- bitcoin is not a payment network. it's an altogether new currency and allows you to do things can you not do way credit card. right? you can have a individual -- videochat. if i want to send one sentence? i can't. bitcoin let's do you that.

>> funny you mention browsers. one of the leading advocates tore bitcoin. see how long it takes for the mainstream to get behind him and you. thanks for coming in. interesting stuff we're watching, wences. and a takeover target up 7%. is pandora really up for sale? we'll ask the company's ceo, when we come back. so i can reach ally bank 24/7, but there are no branches?

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take a closer look at pandora, biggest enter knit radio service shares trading higher initiating a buy. stocking spiking earlier in the week on the report the company to be a takeover taught. here exclusively, cfo of pandora, mike herring, in for a global growth conference. good to see you. >> thanks to having me on. >> great to have you. i'll pose the question, you've been quoted saying you don't wonder if you're going to be a takeover target. what are we supposed to make of these reports? >> we don't comment on these rumors. we're mow nighically focused on helping define the future of the music industry in a digital age. that's our focus. we think with have a lot of room to grow still. we're the largest music service, radio service that you mentioned on the internet. and we continue to grow and that's what we're going to focus

on going forward. >> mike, the music genome project is really special. it's a software solution to a problem. increasingly a lot of companies are going for human curation and a lot of money to pay for it. how do you end up winning out in that kind of environment? is it that they are just not scalable in international markets? how are you going to win? >> we think we just have a vastly better approach. the music genome project is actually a human curation approach. it's a team of musicologists that listen to every song that gets included in our service. we don't just dump music into the service. we actually listen to each one, and classify that music, based upon the type of music it is and its qualities, and then we use algorithms and data to scale the delivery of that music to the right person at the right time. that combination of technology and music curation from a human per spect sieve what really

differentiates pandora and we've been doing it 14 years have a huge lead. obviously our product is delivering a high quality listening experience or we wouldn't have built the customers we have. >> when you see a company as big as apple big a company like beats, which albeit small is a competitor to pandora, what did you think when you saw that headline? what went through your head about pandora's ability to compete with those resources now being put behind beats? >> the history of pandora is defined by competitors large and small, well funded, innovative, and we've continued to grow and build our business despite all of that competition. the beats approach that personal curation, the one to many approach of an expert supposedly who knows the music that you should hear rather than you helping to define that through your own interaction with the service, through thumbs and

through, you know, seeding the music you want to hear, that's a different approach. we think ours is better, and so far the masses have voted for pandora. >> listener hours obviously. we walked flew metrics every quarter. up 39 perce29% year on year. investors wonder, hours are good. how do i really know whether it's the same number of listeners living more or truly new listeners coming to it's surface? how do you claire nigh? >> -- >> clarify that? >> it's a combination. we spend a lot of time driving engagement with listeners through product enhancements. features like alarm clocks and sleep time toers notifications and alerts that remind you to come back and use pandora. and our existing user base continues to listen more, increased from 17 hours per listener per month, industry leading at the time, to over 21 hours perp listener per month now. an important dynamic, but lots

of room to grow from there. there's 241 million people in the united states listening to terrestrial radio today. and the connectability of internet radio and specifically pandora because of u quick kuwa ubiquity across all platforms, auto motive integrations or others, that ubiquity will allow us to expand our footprint into a larger and larger group of internet radio listeners. >> mike, how much of your growth potential is in car? i know obviously people use pandora in car now, but when we talk about talk radio, things like that, non-traditional for pandora, how much of your growth potential is there? >> the automobile provides a huge opportunity for us. it is single digit percentages of our 5 billion hours of music listening that occur in the second quarter. yet it's 47% of total radio listening in the united states. and a large percentage of that auto listening is music, at which we focused on and really

developed that expertise. you know, there is a lot of non-music listening in cars, whether it's news or talk radio, or sports. and those, you know, as we build that audience, we have opportunities to deliver other types of content, but a big part of our success really has been keeping that focus. delivering the best music experience possible, and for now, that's serving us very well. >> mike, we hope you'll come back. great to have you on the program. >> thanks for having me. >> see you next time. mike herring, cfo of pandora joining us from boston today. when we come back, take part in the ice bucket challenge with als. 's in a few minutes from now. today's squawk on the tweet who could to nominate next? tweet us @squawkalley. your answers, next. where the reward was that what if tnew car smelledit card and the freedom of the open road?

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squawk on the treat, from facebook to twit. users spreading the word about als through the ice bucket challenge dumping a bucket of ice on themselves nominating three friends who have 24 hours to do the same or give $100 to

the cause. so we asked you this morning, a question, als, ice bucket challenge, who should we nominate after we finish this? got a bunch of answers. gay rights. warren buffett. elon musk. brad tweets bill ackman and the entire herbal life board. goes without saying, donald trump. i've seen others come in as well. cramer got some. bernanke. ken lewis. icon richard branson, barney frank. a couple for kayla. >> i wouldn't turn it down. donald trump might. you don't want to ruin the hair, but do you need twitter or facebook? a lot of those people aren't on twitter or facebook. easy out. isn't it? bernanke didn't hear about us. >> we'll see who we nominate in a few moments. good market day hanging on to a gain of almost triple digits as we're on the cusp of business retail earnings tomorrow, too that could set the tone. >> july retail sales, not great. amazon, though, leader on the nasdaq because of that payments

news. >> after having a not so good year to date. right, jon? >> yeah. cisco tonight. i'll be on the "closing bell" panel covering that. >> one of the few closing bell not on the panel today. that does it for "squawk alley." over to "halftime report" with scott. >> someone not staying dry, you, carl, right? >> that's right. see you if a few minutes. >> amazing the pourer of social media. carl will get ready and do this along with dick costolo, take us up on our challenge. we'll see the vines on the other side. carl good luck to you. i hope you'll change out of that beautiful suit. go with the golf shirt. like i did. not bokk ebother anybody. see that coming up. today's starting lineup, josh brown, mike murphy, jon najarian co-founder of option monster and steve weiss managing member of short hills capital. right flou to michelle caruso-cabrera for breaking news t