good morning, it is 8:00 a.m. at ebay. it is 11:00 here wall street and "squawk alley" is live. ♪ you, you've got what i need ♪ you say he's just a friend ♪ oh, baby you've got what i need ♪ ♪ you say he's just a friend but you say he's just a friend ♪ ♪ oh, baby you've got what i need ♪ welcome to "squawk alley" for a monday morning. jon steinberg, good to see you,

jon. kayla is here. john ford is live at ebay headquarters in san jose, california, where he is going to talk to the ceo of ebay in a cnbc exclusive later on this hour. a big morning for you. >> it is, and they're getting ready here at ebay to set the stage for this next era for them as a company. this is what ebay used to be. it bulked up with paypal and now back to being stripped away and investors getting a chance to take a look at the company all on its own. started the day trading down a little bit. now it's up nearly 2% versus paypal up around 5%. we're going to talk about the strategy going forward, how this company gets to stake its claim on e-commerce going forward. should be an exciting interview. >> what should we pay attention to, jon steinberg? >> the price looking at it now is actually trading at $40, visa's price earnings, it would be trading at a multiple so kind of a rational price for a

company that's only growing slightly faster than visa and that really is the right comp for it right now. if it's able to build a truly rebooted consumer brand, it drives more options because people are loving paypal, loving these products, but for right now it's more of an enterprise story. braintree is embedded in so many mobile apps. uber uses it, people like that. the consumer story is a little weak for paypal right now. >> most people don't even know the name braintree but they know gunmo. john ford, i'm wondering what space you think paypal occupies at this point because it's about half the size of the major credit card companies but it's so much larger than the squares, the stripes, and the upstarts trying to go directly against it. >> it's not a credit card company but there are other efforts including apple pay, samsung pay trying to come in.

paypal has a lot of work to do. they are trying to focus its vision on trying to eliminate players within the organization, bureaucracy that slowed itself down. and a company whose systems were built for the desktop pc area. i'm not sure companies have always understood that. they look at paypal's payments volume and it's an impressive number. to get them to where they want to be, part of the reason they bought braintree and that work isn't done. >> the question is being asked what would paypal look like if it wasn't under the ebay umbrella? some say maybe it kept it from growing as fast as it could as an agnostic payment platform.

the bulk of those is in things nobody heard of. braintree and the company needs to establish a consumer brand, be at scale so they're able to go to other merchants and place who is have not accepted them and use the consumer engagement. otherwise it's just a commodity processor like a stripe, like so many competitors they have. >> after all those years of saying why don't they bust out paypal, we'll see if that works in practice. >> i was on paypal. i was disputing something. i got a recurring charge and i was trying to transfer money and it's really old. i hadn't been in in months and it reminds me what it was like when i was buying and selling stuff on ebay in my late teens and stuff. >> as we mentioned the ceo of ebay will join us in a cnbc exclusive.

john will talk to him in a few moments. next up it's apple set to report earnings after the bell tomorrow but a well respected analyst from kgi predicting trouble for the ipad and the watch. he estimates that apple will ship a little under 9 million ipads and 4 million watches in the latest quarter. that's worse than the estimates. he expects that to be balanced. apple shares today are worth watching and they will be tomorrow as well. "the new york times" as well, guys, with this piece about the watch and why facebook has dragged its feet developing a product for that platform. they say they toin continue to evaluate it. 3,000 apps, you still want the big gorilla to come in. >> the first iphone that launched without even apps and how long it took people to come around, this is very much a beta product. in terms of how the quarter is going to look according to the kig data, iphone is up 54%. ipad's down 34%. even if they only do 3 million watches, the absolute low end of the range, $1.2 billion in

revenue for a product that barely had a full we're of launch. if it sells a few more iphones, phenomenal success any way you cut it and it will get better. >> you've said this a couple of times. if it's a failure it's one of the most profitable in history. >> even the ipad which is down is a success. >> john ford, how are you watching -- what's going to be on your mind going into tomorrow night? >> well, when it comes to apple, it's the iphone that really matters. the ipad, you hate to see it go the way with ipod with sales declining, we expect to see them refresh the product coming up. that's a side issue. with the watch, it is early ings. i've been critical of the watch because part of the reason why looking at the thing is to figure out what work they still have to do. but, yes, it appears this launch is strong. we have some new data out today, a company working with analysts looking at customer satisfaction somewhat satisfied.

very satisfied, up in the 97% range. that is very strong for any new product. apple is probably not going to break out any kinds of numbers in terms of units sold. in a sense it doesn't make sense. it doesn't matter how many units we think they sold. what matters from here is how they close out the year. how does watch os2 do? does it solve some of the little problems that are annoying with the watch that are going to get people to come in on the holidays and buy in much higher volume? >> of course, john, as you mentioned this will be buried in the other category for apple. i just wonder what you think the momentum feels like at this point because, yes, if it sells 5 million watches that would be better than the first introductory quarter for the iphone or the ipad, and we forget sort of the slow build some of these products have had. to only have 5 of the 20 most popular free iphone apps developing or having already developed apps for the watch, does that not stand out to you? >> i don't think it matters at

this stage because, really, this is sort of a soft launch for them. yes, they do want developers in here eventually but they need to get the bugs worked out of the os and there are a few. so i don't think that's a concern. apple can afford to have, if you want to call them momentum issues, i don't even know. this satisfaction data is strong. and the reason why they have this huge marketing budget. they can, in effect, launch this thing all over again for the holiday season without the bat of an eye, without really having an impact on margins. i say we want to look at this around the october/november time period and measure buzz then versus july when it doesn't particularly matter yet. >> like the mud season at a ski resort. you don't know how good the base is going to be when you're planning your ski vacation. john, thanks to you. jon, thanks to you. good to see you. john ford and jon steinberg. let's get a check in on the markets. the dow up by about 22 points. s&p is positive by just about

2.5 points although it was negative earlier in the session. the nasdaq is up a third of a percent after that stellar trade on friday largely thanks to google. shares of amazon in the green after getting upgraded at both wenbush and cowan. they say amazon is poised to overtake macy's as the leading retail -- apparel retailer, rather, by 2017. that stock up by 1 1/3 percent. says watch out walmart, watch out target. when we come back, the future of ebay after a spinoff of paypal. we'll talk to the ceo in a cnbc exclusive. and alibaba makes a move with the help of taylor swift. testing and using self-driving cars. we'll take you live to see how that all works when "squawk alley" continues in a minute. i'm here at the td ameritrade trader offices.

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welcome back to "squawk alley." i'm here in san jose with ebay's ceo, devin wenig. and this is the first day in a long time that ebay has been trading without paypalace a part of it. stock's up, i think, around 1.75%. we tend to watch the moment by moment, but i know you've got longer term things to think about. i think it's fair to say in the

split ebay is coming out as an underdog, smaller market cap. saddled you with a bit more debt but you have some cash on top of that. do you embrace that? >> welcome to ebay this morning. we're delighted to have you. this is an exciting day. we'll celebrate the history of the company, but most of all will look forward. we're really excited. we're delighted at the success of paypal. a lot of us work very hard to make paypal successful and it's a proud day to see them now an independent company doing so well. but now our focus is on building ebay and this is an incredibly strong business. this is a business that's added almost 70 million users in the last four years. incredible cash flow and balance sheet. and grounded in a real sense of purpose. the fact that paypal is doing great and now ebay is doing great, it's a really exciting moment for the entire ebay family. >> and ebay is a strong brand. a lot of people know it. we've had some challenges over the past several months, the

hack, trying to reacquire users. you've had search engine issues with google and you're reorganizing the site to make the content on ebay easier to find. you're no longer defined as an option site. you have a lot of other things going on. but maybe you can help put a fine point on that for me. define ebay in the devin wenig era as ceo, maybe in terms of what you're not going to be. >> i don't think we want to be like anybody else. you'll define us in a couple years not by how much we compare to our big competitors but by how little we compare to them. this is a market that it's all of commerce. it's $14 trillion. when the phone was launched a couple of years ago that brought the barriers between hohn and offline commerce down. in that world a sharply different ebay that stands for value and selection, which it's always been about, and innovates along that access is exactly

where we're going. so i don't look at anybody else's business with envy. i start by saying this is one of the world's most important commerce sites and we're going to lean into that. >> how do you differentiate? amazon doesn't want to give you any room to run. they want to be everything. they had this prime day thing to create their own holidays now. they spent time building up this logistics infrastructure that years ago looked like it was a problem because it affected margins and affected profits. it turns out investors don't care about profits anymore when it comes to amazon. what does ebay do that makes you different enough that people say, nah, i'm not going to go to amazon for that. i'm going to be to ebay. >> 160 million people shop on ebay all the time because we have the most things for sale. we have the best choices. we have the best value. and our brand stands for something different. in many ways it's an emotional brand, not a utility. people come to ebay when as much they don't know what they want to buy as when they do.

it's a place that they fuel their passions. it's a place that they can engage with the community. that's really different about ebay. and on the seller side, we don't compete with our sellers. we're a marketplace. that's a big deal. and that's why we're the world's biggest store, why we have 25 million sellers and i think the next biggest marketplace might have a couple million. so this is a company with extraordinary advantages. we're starting today with a great sense of enthusiasm. in many ways the focus the pay pal spinoff brings us gives us great opportunity to innovate in that core, and i think that's what our consumers and sellers want from us. >> speaking of innovation, a lot of names in e-commerce are branching off into digital media. it used to be you bought your books, your cds, your movies and tv shows in a physical media form, now a lot that have is streaming. does that just mean that's an area that ebay is not going to touch anymore, or do you do something either by yourselves or through partnerships in

streaming down the line? >> we'll see. i think it's a really good question. i don't think the world needs another streaming music service or another movie service. >> you're the only one in silicon valley who seems to think that. >> we'll see but i don't think that's the only digital content that's relevant and ebay started down the tail and ebay aggregated a long fragmented set of goods. i now look at what's happening in digital content away from big movies and music, and i say how do we get small artisans and creators to better advertise in an advertising dominated world. it might be an opportunity for us. >> does that mean you buy -- >> no, we're talking digital content. i think there are many opportunities perhaps to allow digital creators but not compete with netflix and apple. we don't want to do that. >> okay. you have $8 billion in cash overall, nearly $7 billion in debt, i believe. does that tie your hands at all when it comes to acquisitions?

do you plan to acquire at any scale or are you in a position of being conservative? >> i think the hallmark of our company has been discipline and capital allocation. we're tough on ourselves. we don't buy things just for the sake of buying them to get bigger. this is a company that has an incredibly strong free cash flow position. it's a great business model. this year we said we'll generate between $2.1 billion and $2.3 billion in free cash. even $1 billion of net debt, this company generates billions of free cash flow a year. how we'll use that will be -- will allow that to compete for our shareholders. undoubtedly we'll do acquisitions. we may return capital to shareholders. and always to invest organically into our business and innovate. we have tremendous flexibility. we don't feel any financial constraint whatsoever to accomplish our mission. >> two years from now, what's the one metric that people are

going to look at with ebay and say, i'm surprised that that did as well as it did? >> i'm surprised this business has grown as much as it has. >> is that revenue? is that users? which one? >> i think it's users and the two metrics our investors look at. can we grow our user base and can we ultimately gmv for us is measured sales. >> gross merchandise. >> that was $83 billion. and if you look at the four years, which is my time frame here, it grew about 11% compound annual growth and users grew faster, about 15%. last year some challenges, but our goal is to get our growth back, work it back up and be disciplined in how we do that. exciting future. >> exciting indeed. an exciting day for you here at ebay. devin wenig, ceo of ebay, on its first day in a long time trading separately from paypal. back to you. >> great stuff. thanks so much. up next after the stock's best day since 2008, google

shareholders have more good news to smile about today. we will explain when "squawk alley" returns. can a business have a mind?

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shares of google falling today after hitting an all-time high. friday, of course, after that strong earnings report, there is a fair amount of profit taking but there's also a downgrade from s&p capital iq this morning. after the company added more than $65 billion in market cap, that's the market cap caterpillar in its trading. there's still some good news for google, namely youtube, advertisers has soared more than 40% in the past year. add spending up more than 60%. youtube, of course, does not disclose its revenue figures but according to nielsen the site reaches more people aged 18 to 49 than any cable network in the united states. carl, that was a point that was brought up on the conference call last week by the chief business officer at google. one stat they did not say anything about when asked was

whether youtube is profitable. >> which we might find out more about later. we'll see. i think it's interesting google and amazon are starting to hint they're going to give us more granularity on the metrics over the coming quarters. that will be good for some investors. europe will close in about six minutes or so. simon is back at post 9. >> this is the nooininth consece day of gains. 9% gains in nine sessions. the coast is clear as far as many people are concerned with greece. a lot of the nordic regions have done well. if you were to look at one other group standing out i guess it would be the italian banks, upgraded today by bank of america to a buy or reinstated as a buy. you can see it's going to 4% there. the other thing that's happening is as things get easier in europe, you see the bonds rally and, therefore, the yields are coming back down. so, for example, if you look at

the italian ten year after it was pushed down by ecb to 1%, you have this huge rise in yields and then as the bonds rally you can see the yields beginning to fall again. actually there's a suggestion that over the next few weeks or at least the positions are in place perhaps with some forced buying of the bonds because of the high cash allocations that they have at the moment. the slight acceleration you get in eurozone growth and because greece is basically no longer a major economic concern. in greece today the banks did reopen which obviously is good for morale. they have repaid the ecb. they have repaid the imf and, indeed, they have hiked the i.t. rates, the banks opening some hours ago. adding to the sense of an easier situation angela merkel is saying that she is open to limited debt relief. what really becomes crucial is another parliamentary vote on wednesday with the reconstituted government and the type of pressure they come under to

still follow through. not that the government will fall, but it is an indication perhaps later in the week how close we could come for snap elections in greece. that's really not a great concern to people at the moment. as you can see things are relatively calm. >> thank you, simon. we'll keep our eye on that. alibaba rival announcing today it will be the first authorized seller of taylor swift merchandise in china. their ceo will join us to explain that move in a moment. dow is up 33. ♪ no student's ever been the king of the campus on day one. but you're armed with a roomy new jansport backpack, a powerful new dell 2-in-1 laptop,

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i'm courtney reagan. the cuban flag was raised at the country's embassy in washington for the first time in more than 50 years. the symbolic move signaling the start of a new post-cold war era in u.s.-cuban relations. defense secretary ash carter welcomed by his israeli counterpart, the first u.s. cabinet member to visit israel since the nuclear deal was announced, reaffirming israel is the bedrock of u.s. strategy in the middle east. republican presidential candidate jeb bush says he would call for a federal balanced budget amendment. bush says it's it's way of overhauling washington's culture. and at a fifa news conference,

announcing fifa will hold a meeting in february to announce the successor but he was interrupted by a heckler who throws money at him as he asks where is my security? that's our cnbc update. back to "squawk alley." thank you, courtney. jd.com partnering with american companies and taylor swift, of all people, to bring u.s. brands to china. the ceo of jd mall joins us now. it's great to see you. >> thank you. thank you for having me. >> why start with taylor swift? what cache does she have? >> taylor swift is an internationally influential artist and she has events in china and we're happy she chose jd to be the platform to offer her merchandise in china.

>> j.d. has partnerships with unilever, gap, sephora. is this a platform to help those companies sell their products to the j.d. consumer? >> yes. so actually we're here today in new york to have an event to recruit merchants and brands in the u.s. to offer them a chance to have presence on jd.com to help them to reach the chinese consumers on j.d.'s website. and as you said, we're also already working with a lot of u.s. brands already, but we want to use this opportunity to offer our platform to more brands in the u.s. >> i'm sure you know here in the states we're still trying to get our heads around regulation regarding stocks in china and the degree to which the markets there have an impact on consumer spending. where is your head on that? are you worried about the consumer retrenching because they sense volatility in the capital markets? >> our focus is on the capital

market or stock price. retail has moved from online -- from offline to online. so we're seeing that happening. as you can see from our numbers of last quarter we're still having tremendous growth and we're seeing that trend continue. >> we've seen numbers that only about 15% of households are even invested in the stock market. that's why people say maybe there wouldn't be broader fallout. i'm wondering what statistics you are looking at, what metrics give you confidence that any volatility in china wouldn't necessarily disrupt your business. >> so we're not here to -- the past june we just had our 12th year anniversary, annual campaign, so those numbers are still showing momentum in growth on retail specifically in j.d.'s space. >> you're on the road now talking to potential brand

partners for u.s. mall. i'm wondering how you're proposition is different from what alibaba is doing which just today announced it's reinforcing its own partnership with the likes of unilever. how is what you're doing different than what alibaba is doing? >> our customers tend to have higher income. they're bigger spenders. and we started -- j.d. started as a first-party retailer only, so we have the reputation in china of selling only authentic brands and we protect the brands. and we offer the best customer service because we handle logistics from end to end. >> so why would a company on its own not set up their own website and market directly to the chinese consumer? >> it's very difficult to set up a site in china because the traffic has become very expensive. so really the best way for brands is to find a platform that suits their needs and who

can protect the brands to help them to reach chinese consumers. >> how many swifties do you think you will be reaching? >> i'm sorry, i didn't get the question? >> how many taylor swift fans do you calculate you'll be reach g reaching? >> i don't know. i'm sure by working with her in china we will be able to grow her fan base and offer merchandise to her fans in china. >> when will we start to see some of the fruits of this project? will it be the next quarter? >> i believe the taylor swift merchandise will be live on jd.com in august. >> any other partners you think we could look for? >> there's no one now but i'm sure there will be more to come. >> you can imagine why she's interested in that market. a lot of people to sell to and that's what it's all about. haoyu, thank you for your time. haoyu shen joining us from j.d.

mall. a behind-the-scenes look at one of the biggest self-driving car experiments ever. we're going to go there live in just a moment. facebook just hit 97. we're watching that. and, rick santelli, what are you watching today? >> reporter: we're going to be watching interest rates as per usual, but we're going to be looking at them from a different perspective. the magic number today is 105. what does it mean? back after the break and we'll tell you. this is a great place to work. not because they have yoga meetings and a juice bar. because they're getting comcast business internet. comcast business offers convenient installation appointments that work around your schedule. and it takes- done. - about an hour. get reliable internet that's up to five times faster

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coming up on "the halftime report" the markets march to all-time highs, is it time to take some money off the table? plus, one of the biggest bulls on the street makes his case for why stocks will rally. 10% for the year. and pay up for paypal, if you should buy in or stick with ebay. carl, back to you. >> thank you, melissa. keep your eye on facebook as well. it hit $97 a share. the netflix comps last week. that's an all-time high and done repeatedly over the last several sessions. an 18% gain in the past 30 days. >> when you see google touting the number of advertisers increasing on youtube, which facebook is an increasingly popular destination for video

advertisers, i think there's some expectation when they report earnings they could see the halo effect. >> remember those days where we wondered if you were going to do mobile. >> we wondered if they would trade after the ipo. we saw what happened then. >> let's get to the cme group this morning and check in with rick santelli and get "the santelli exchange." >> reporter: hi and thank you. there are so many different ways to anticipate where markets are. i believe technical analysis and understanding the past gives you a leg up in the future. nothing is foolproof. in the pitts or working with

clients is that they behave under pressure at about the same way whether it's five years ago, ten years ago, 50 years ago. of course markets change. how you trade markets change, but the underlying investors remains constant. to that end let's look at a chart of the boone yields since april. i want to you look at that chart. i quickly tried to draw one that's equivalent to the white board. starting in april of deals you had the low yield. right around the middle of april to, of course, the high yield off that low which was 98 basis points. rates will go higher right around 70 basis points, 64 base points. there's some significant tech nals. technicals. here is the way i want to look at it. look at a month to date chart. what should jump out at you is,

no, that's not a crazy jack-o'-lante jack-o'-lantern stencil for a pumpkin. the spread has been hovering at 152 and 161. the average is 157 basis points. take 157 basis points on the spread, okay, and you add 105 meaning can boone yields go to 105, what does that result in? it results in a yield for our ten year of 262 which is a significant level for other forms of technical analysis. instead of thinking about global slowing and all the papers and research well done that i get on an almost hourly basis saying yields will go lower, reflections on demand, what gold is doing, normalization of rates, how that's going to affect leverage and carry and bother owing, i get it. in the end we can make it simple.

do you think a boon could trade 105 basis points? i do. if that's the case i would be surprised if we don't test higher yields in u.s. treasuries. does it make sense? i understand global growth will keep a led foot on interest rates but exactly where they blow off to and where it touches the bottom of that shoe is anybody's guess. carl, back to you. >> rick santelli, thank you. today marks the opening of a 23-acre mini metropolis designed to test self-driving cars. our phil lebeau is there in ann arbor, michigan. hi, phil. >> reporter: this is called "m" city, a first of its kind facility in terms of automakers having access to it and behind me they're doing some testing on smart infrastructure communic e communicating with vehicles in terms of h.o.v. lanes, letting people know whether or not it's open. "m" city is all about a public/private partnership, university of michigan at the heart of it. you have a number of auto companies here including ford,

gm, toyota, honda, as well as some tech firms. they're all participating in this. they put $10 million into "m" city creating four miles of different traffic scenarios and the person who runs "m" city says this is all about making it clear this industry is not ready to relinquish development of future vehicles to the silicon valley. >> i'm really pleased silicon valley is pushing so hard because it's really making -- what it's done is to wake up the industry here in michigan. >> reporter: here in michigan they are all in when it comes to self-driving cars but is the public all in? a survey that was done last week by the university of michigan's transportation research institute, they asked people, about 500 people, if they had any interest in self-driving cars. 43% said, no, no interest at all, separately 35% were concerned about riding in a fully autonomous drive car.

the reason people are concerned they think there will be accidents and then you've seen this video from last week from google. this is a computer image that the google car shot of it being rear-ended by a vehicle driven by a person. so the google car was not at fault here. there have been 14 accidents in the silicon valley involving these self-driving prototypes that google has had out on the roads. it's always been the person. and yet the public says not sure these vehicles are safe. i'd be remiss to not talk about mobile eye at the heart of so much of the development when it comes to self-driving cars. back to you. >> a nice run, phil. up 141% in the last year. it's a pick of many fund managers we have on here.

states like virginia and california are willing to test the cars on open roads. >> reporter: they believe they can do more testing faster by setting up these scenarios. it's wonderful to test on the real roads and there is some of that work being done here in southeastern michigan but they believe if you have a new piece of software or a new system you can rapidly test it in a number of different scenarios here in this environment. we'll see how much of an immakt this has not only for southeastern michigan but for the industry overall over the next couple of years. >> i wonder what's going to be more difficult, the engineering and algorithm that went into these cars or the municipal debate that's going to establish regulation. >> or rewriting the insurance policy when the algorithms aren't at fall. >> reporter: it is the municipal debate. you hit on it. regulators are going to be way

slower than the industry in terms of developing these vehicles. we've seen that. the public is like, i'm not sure about being in one of these cars. i've driven in them. i did not feel unsafe when i've been in the google car or the other self-driving cars i've been in. >> you've been in a lot of situations. perhaps you've seen more of your share of these situations than many. phil lebeau, fascinating story. we'll talk to you soon. >> reporter: thanks. ashley madison, the online dating site for cheating spouses has been hacked. data of as many as 37 million users has been compromised. some of the data has already been posted online. it's unclear what's been shared because apparently the hackers are threatening to release all customer information unless ashley madison is taken offline, quote, permanently in all forms as this was mentioned earlier. a bad story for bad people.

>> karma is -- we all know what karma is. this is all about that. >> more surprising is possibly the 37 million people have their information on that site. >> i know. i like the whole discussion between you, sorkin, and kernan. >> i stayed out of it. speaking of hacks, how can you make sure your information is safe when dating online? a number. ery auts but not every insurance company understands the life behind it. those who have served our nation. have earned the very best service in return. ♪ usaa. we know what it means to serve. get an auto insurance quote and see why 92% of our members plan to stay for life.

the website ashley madison, concern about information on dating sites. >> it's good to see you, joel. the elderly being targeted on dating apps. is the industry at risk of i want no part of it? >> for us, it's all about security. so at grindr we do our best to keep things secure. we actually don't keep any personal information. no names or credit card information. all of that information is outsourced. we try to minimize. it's the best way to meet. this is today's way of meeting. we balance those risks.

>> does that make it riskier? >> no. we work with apple and a lot of these secure companies. that's a much better approach for us. >> is that a push in the industry overall? >> that's our approach. we don't require you to put a photo or a name or any information. it's up to you. if you want to provide information, you can. it's in the users hands. >> a more refined targeted search, right? if you want to find the perfect mate you have to give more to get it. >> if you're -- definitely the more information the better. you don't have to give your last name, you can give your first name, put a photo and be very smart about it.

>> your app is very gps based. is it powered by google maps? what partner is the most accurate? >> so we use the location services on the smartphone. so it's on ios, it's with apple and on google it's on the android it's google. you'll just see guys around you, very, very simple, can create a profile within seconds. >> you're six years old, you have 196 countries. how long did it take to you get to that point? what did growth and the trajectory look like? >> it was very quick for us. we launched about six years ago, as you mentioned, and it picked up quickly. ward of mouth. we spent no money on marketing. all our growth has been organic. our users telling each other and the press. our goet has berowth has been v strong here in the u.s. and

abroad. >> fastest growing overseas market and are there characteristics about the culture that you think drive that? >> we're seeing a lot of growth in mexico and brazil right now. they're both in the top ten. i think adoption rates are accelerating in those countries. and it's not a cultural -- it's not cultural. it's just part of biology, right. gay men everywhere and gay men are looking to meet everywhere and that's fueling our growth. >> do you have any effects on your business after that? no effects in the last month or so but over the last six years our business has been, that are working with us top name brands,

uber, audi, a lot of these top brands are now advertising and reaching our audience. part of the evolution of gay rights. it is cool to be gay and i think a lot of advertisers are seeing that and want to reach our demographic. >> are there some accounts that were hard to close but after the scotus decision they finally came around? we're focused internationally, we want to advance gay rights. there's violence going on all the time. so we need to change that. we need to really focus on this and advance gay rights everywhere. >> do you think that we'll reach a point where there won't be niche dating apps, christian mingle, grindr, there will be general online dating apps?

>> i don't know. we focus on gay users. we understand the gay men very well. we focused on helping them meet. other services have a different approach. a lot focus on women. women focus -- women socialize in different ways. i see grindr around for a long, long time and growth continuing. i think grindr is the best way to do it. >> talk about a business model that perfectly matched the evolution of rights. please come back. coming up, the $100 million search for extraterrestrial life. the men behind a new outer space initiative and what they hope to find. what if there were only one kind of dog? then it would be easy to know everything about that one breed. but in fact, there are over three hundred breeds of dogs. because no one can be an expert in every one...

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russian billionaire spending $100 billion to search for extraterrestrial life. the breakthrough listen program will spend it over the next decade making apgs observation

year hoping to find life on other planets. >> the world's largest steerable telescope will be part of the breakthrough. fascinating to see what they find. if they find anything. >> and who gets the first interview with whoever that person is. that's going to be a race for that exclusive. the dow is up about 28 points. we mentioned all the earnings coming this week. everybody from caterpillar to boeing to ibm, for instance, and apple tomorrow night. >> ibm reporting after the bell today the expectation $20.9 billion. a 14% year over year decline before you actually count currency, head winds, we'll see what they report. we'll watch the effect the currencies have on these other names later in the week.

ibm and amazon and apple and -- >> microsoft. it's the biggest day. >> and a quarter of the s&p reporting this week. melissa lee and the half. welcome to "the halftime report." jon najarian and awaiting mr. pete najarian who is en route to the studio. he should be flying in at any moment. our game plan looks like this, it is paypal's first trading day and yahoo! warns a split with alibaba may cause tax troubles. joe goes all in on two high-flying tech names ahead of earnings. but first the markets continue to rally with a nasdaq at a fresh all-time high and the s&p near record levels. is the trend your friend or is it time to let go of some of these winners?