tv Squawk Alley CNBC August 18, 2016 11:00am-12:01pm EDT
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kayla is out today put with us is john fort and sarah on post 9. the markets aren't moving a whole lot. an interesting skirmish in the telecon wars. a new unlimited data plan as well as the on going rivalry with sprint. take a listen. >> 75% of my customer adds focus on those two and just copy paste everything i do and it will be fine. >> the sprint ceo joins us on the phone to respond. it's great to have you back. good morning. >> good morning, how are you. >> and they came out with their
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plan and have ledger on. are you in fact trying to ride john's coat tails. >> no, never. what happened is something pretty simple. we started a week ago. we were going to start tomorrow. so what john did is basically copied our rate plans and called for an emergency press release. we're launching tomorrow and he is launching tomorrow at all of our stores so we would be ready for this for awhile. so obviously somebody that says he's not ready to launch the september is lying.
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>> we have the capacity to offer unlimited 4glte for everything. we will never compromise our quality. the quality is identical when streaming music. so you can do this when you have a lot of spectrum. we build our network to be a high capacity network and we'll be waiting for this moment to move all of our customers. >> sounds good when you hear the
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word unlimited. why would a customer go to a regular 1-g plan starting at $50 a month. is this an increase for the consumer? >> i mean and you have a couple and you never have to worry about data over rajs. you know that the bill will be $60. it makes it the most attractive unlimited data plan in the plan planet. >> you have to have this back and forth with your competitors. all of this moves the sub needle. you must have done some
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projections on that. >> should look at the difference we had. we were dead last if you follow the industry we surpass the at&t and the last two quarters meaning we're already second in the number that our customers are coming to our network and now the difference with t-mobile is 1.7 million new customers several years ago and now it's less than 300,000 so we're catching up and in less than a year we're going to catch up to t-mobile and that's the part that matters in the business. >> he said in his words isn't it sad, some of the stuff that you were saying fwichb your parent company according to reports woke up yesterday according to john thinking about t-mobile and
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wants to do this deal waiting for regulatory environment. could you ever see a future where t-mobile and sprint are under the same umbrella and the same company. >> it's something very public. we had a deal before and the government didn't give us regulatory approval and that's something always in our mind. that done mean that we have any conversations. we have always been clear that we believe the conversation of two smaller carriers will make a formidable carrier. nothing has changed. it might be sad for him because if that were to happen he'll probably get put out. >> john ledger has turned himself into an interesting marketing vehicle. he's very active on social media. gets a lot of attention for that. meanwhile at&t and verizon have money for marketing which we see these commercials out now with jamie foxx countering some of
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your marketing where you took verizon and had him coming out for sprint. what is your strategic advantage in marketing? beyond price, that's going to get you the attention you need in order to grow the subscriber base and actually monetize this network. >> i mean, it's quite simple. let's start with our main product which is our network. you can see if you look at every single network publication, the u.s. story is back, our network is better than t-mobile. they basically measure network performance and the difference between verizon and us is now less than 1% according to the world's leading analytic firm so the difference is today we had a very competitive network and we are going after verizon. we have the best unlimited data plan on the planet so this is why, you know, like i said on my last earnings call including this month we are positive against the three carriers.
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what does that mean we have more customers coming from verizon, at&t and t-mobile coming to sprint than customers leaving. when i took this job we were negative 3. for every customer we got we had three customers leaving. that has completely changed and we're catching up day by day. we're growing profitable. we had the first two quarters in many years. sprint with operating income profitable. and we're catching up to t-mobile. we're going to overtake him in the number one position. we had a lot of customers at the absolute lowest in sprint's 20 year history and what that tells you is customers coming in they're loving the product and they're staying. it's the most important service. >> i'm sorry to go back to the social media thing. we're hitting this pretty hard but about an hour ago ledger accused sprint of taking five
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minutes to copy paste as he said, you responded and i'm quoting you truly are a con artist no doubt. good luck. do you mean that? and is softbank, have they given you free reign to say whatever you want about your competition. >> to me that's a con artist. it's okay. it's okay for sprint to launch first and if we were copying his idea how in the world could we be ready to launch this tomorrow when he cannot launch it until september 6th? you call an emergency press conference and now just to get his systems ready and everything ready. we're launching this tomorrowful we're ready to launch. we're ready to go. somebody that does that to me
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and who basically has the audacity to say we're copying and pasting is a conartist. i think the relationship is an open one. he's the king of insulting everybody. he done like when somebody plays his own game. >> i wonder whether or not you think ledger who nurtured that image for a long time if he has any idea who he is messing with and you? >> it's the philosophy when you are fighting somebody like legere you need to go down to his level and fight at the same level. that's the only way he will understand. let me say one more thing. this is not about ledger. this is about us having the best competitive rate in the industry. this is offering unlimiting to the american consumers. this is something neither at&t or verizon can get to it.
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and 73% of customers on the other two networks. the beautiful thing is now we're catching customers from all three networks. >> yeah. that's what i keep wondering. what are you guys fighting for? does feel like this is not that much of a growth market anymore. in terms of saturation everybody has smartphones. it's about taking share from at&t and verizon, correct? >> absolutely and leveraging sprint's main differentiation which is over 200 a spectrum which is do we have capacity to be able to offer unlimited? and that is sprint's main differ she yea to. while most of the networks are getting choked. that's why they have to go through. 200 speck trul you have capacity and speed. that's what the american consumer is starting to realize. >> certainly it is' net benefit for consumers. there's no doubt about that. and probably for us as we watch you two go at it. thank you very much. >> thank you and have a
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wonderful day. bye bye. >> you too. with all of that, business insider is here. you just don't see this often in american or local business, right? >> it is very entertaining, selling a product that a lot of people view as a commodity. sometimes it helps to bring marketing chops and aggressiveness. it's very entertaining in this little world to consumers. it is irrelevant. the very positive thing here is we are another step close tore what everybody wants and where we are headed. it's going to take awhile to get there but it's good for consumers so we can celebrate that. >> i know we were talking about that and you feel like 480 is
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pretty good resolution. especially people trying to cut the cord at home. who are trying to save money on exactly how they're getting data here and there. forget about doing that. and these companies aren't exactly the best. >> we're not there yet but it is a good step. anything that can save consumers to hassle you as the head of the house told this child do they have the right plan, oh they went over by a gig. >> mine are too young now. >> it's a huge waste of time. you're traveling internationally. oh i have to sit there for a half an hour and figure out the right plan when the big wireless providers should know what i want is the cheapest plan. just make it happen and
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everybody hated it but it was very profitable and they made the decision. we're going to go unlimited. and it was a watershed decision and then aol became the new power house for awhile. that's what has to happen. one of these guys -- >> they went through an unlimited phase and switched off of it and now back. >> when news provierds had open season. >> we are getting to the maximum utility. where you need hd is on the 50 inch screen. you don't need it. and on average one of the plans is going to be working with mobile. it's one decision you never have
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to make again. that's a nice way to have a commodity service. >> do you have a guess as to who is the first mover in this episode? or does it matter? does it not matter? are they dragging each other into this they can invest more in the networks. and at some point that's what we all want. >> will it be impossible for sprint to have this ready today if they thought of it last night? it would be impossible. sprint has been working on this. >> i don't dispute that at all. when you have legere on our air and then the release comes out. they were rushed. >> i don't know. i don't know who did the rushing but sprint had been working on it long enough to have it ready today that deal talk is back on.
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>> it's going to be amazing after this. >> you interview politicians and they go after it. >> yeah. >> don't go anywhere. when we come back we're going to talk about walmart seeing a strong gain after earnings top estimates and the company raises the full year guidance. more on the jet.com deal as well. tow up 9. we're back in a minute.
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>> moving higher after earnings and revenue topped estimate. raising it's guidance. this is talking about the jet.com deal. >> operating walmart.com and jet.com will allow us to reach more customers and drive a higher level of growth more quickly. one of the things we liked is it rewards customers in real time with savings on a basket of goods and puts them in charge of the price they pay this is true to walmart. >> now people are wondering, already, getting traction just as you're buying this outside firm, isn't the timing on that curious? confusing? >> a few things going on here. you have to credit walmart for resetting expectations a year ago and then making the bold and very important step to voluntarily give it's employees a raise that. is what is
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starting to happen across the economy. it's what we need to get the economy growing again. it's getting money in the hand of the consumers that then turn around in this case and spend it in walmart. it's working. took a short-term hit to do it. it's the right thing to do. the more we see other companies do it the better. this is a smart play. it's a big bet obviously on jet.com but e-commerce is different. jet knows how to do it. and if they can con bien it with what jet offers that's a good offering. >> is this about getting the leadership and changing the culture more than it's about jet being big enough frankly to have an impact on walmart and isn't that the sort of thing we saw apple try with beats. >> e-commerce is different and
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just as what walmart does is different. and in terms of organizing the whole company and now they have that expertise. jet has been competing directly with amazon. they know how to do it and they have good technology. they're very small. my guess is it becomes walmart very quickly but then they go forward from that. >> we've seen progress but not nearly as big obviously. and merge it's huge stores with it's e-commerce business. have they communicated that. it's so easy and they should know because it is a completely new approach. it's a tiny margin business. you have to drive cost down. you have to have a great technology offering.
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it is different. they will not solve their problem with this but it's a good step. this is what you have to do if you're walmart. you have the cash. you have to invest in the future. they invested a huge amount. >> 7% of the work force. >> what our responsibility is and we believe it should drive our growth in the future. i think that for the reports to get out ahead of our announcement frankly i think are a little irresponsible. we're talking about people's lives here and i think there was even an insen you wags that we may have leaked that that was insulting frankly. we will never do that before we have the opportunity to speak to our own employees.
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we communicated with them and we will take care of them and do the right thing for them and we have to invest for the future. >> meanwhile, they continue to talk about a tepid demand environment, emerging markets, u.s., for a variety of reasons. >> this is the technology shift we have been seeing over a decade. it's the move from the old hardware model to software to the cloud and all of the big enterprise players. there are x numbers of big enterprise players. no way the market has all of us and there has to be consolidation. >> what is happening in service provider is what i want to know. that's the line that's not going for cisco. they mention it again and again
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on the call last night as being weak. we were just talking about t-mobile, at&t verizon sprint those are service providers. they're dealing we nor mouse loads on their network. they are not buying it in the way they used to. how that piece plays out over the next year or so is going to be real interesting. >> that's where a lot of the software side and next generation of hardware when you can sell something a tenth of the cost of the prior system even if you had competitive technology it's hard to compete. >> this transition or goals with microsoft and then we saw hp go a completely different route and split the business. >> microsoft had the advantage of being primarily software and they have gone through their own tough transition but at least they're not converting from hardware to software and changing the whole revenue model as a result of that.
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>> more news coming out of the rio olympics. andrew ross sorkin is there live with the latest. >> good morning. the story about ryan lochte changing as we speak. he and some of his teammates made sworn testimony and said they had been robbed at gun point, pulled over in a taxi cab. that story now coming under a lot of pressure. sources close to the police here in brazil telling nbc news that the story is very different. swimmers actually that evening stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom. they got into an altercation there. they damaged the bathroom,
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possibly breaking a door. security called police and tried to detain the swimmers. the altercation continued. one of the security guards pulled a gun. they were allowed to leave after police failed to respond and they paid for the damage guys. so this is a very different story than what had been told before. we also have a statement now from the ioc defending these guys but also to some degree throwing them under the bus. trying to have fun and represent their country to the rest of their abilities. and sometimes you take actions that you later regret and made a mistake and life goes on. it's unclear whether life would go on at least with these guys. and later today about 3:00 p.m. local time. >> some of lochte's teammates were pulled off of an airplane
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last evening. lochte is back in the united states and relative to the great stories taking place. >> it's about whether or not you can call a 32-year-old 12 time medallist a kid for making a mistake that involves saying you had a gun held to your head on national television. you also had a chance to talk to the athletes about what shows they binge, a hot topic around here. let's take a listen. or not. >> probably law and order suv. it's my go to and it's always playing on usa. >> i really watch too much tv. i'm outdoors most of the time. >> i like series like
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supernatural, once upon a time. of course game of thrones. i love that series. >> i just started watching game of thrones i'm on the first season so i'm binge watch that. >> game of thrones and daredevil. >> game of thrones, lost some years ago and black mirror. >> i haven't been watching tv much lately. i'm trying to keep my mind focused. >> right now gilmore girls. >> i used to watch two and a half men before but not anymore of course and big bang theory. >> i love love and hip hot. the real housewives of atlanta. yeah. >> carl, trying to just we're talking about binging athletes in the athletic village in part to bring it back to the security story for ryan lotche some changing what they are doing.
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and furious about the situation. >> clearly i did -- as far as that piece of tape goes andrew, i love the reminder that binge is not an american phenomenon only and some of the shows we're used to watching on television some people are just catching up on. >> real housewives of atlanta can be binged in nigeria. >> but it's a lot of u.s. created shows being binged elsewhere. we're still exporting a lot of u.s. culture for better and not worse. >> andrew, we can't wait for tomorrow. andrew ross sorkin in rio thanks. >> let's get to seema. >> european stock markets snapping a four session losing streak as they react to the u.s. fed meeting minutes.
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a bright spot as you look at the base medals. traders also reacting to the meeting minutes from the european central bank where investors found there was no clear indication as to whether the ecb will in fact after september jp morgan says delay until october or december is actually increasingly possible however it's important to note mario draghi, central bankers assessing the impact of the brexit. as we switch over to the pound, so interesting moves in the currency there jumping today after retail sales in the u.k. posted a larger than expected increase in july as recent weakness in the pound attracted tourists to london. the upbeat retail number suggests that the shorter term impact of the brexit may have been milder than expected. the pound slightly stronger against the u.s. dollar in today's trade. yet the unrelenning demand for european debt indicates investors are taking a more defensive or risk averse approach to investing.
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yields there moving lower. the exception being portugal where bond deals are rising for the third consecutive day on concerns that the ratings agency may downgrade the investment grade status which would add just one more risk to the european playground. meantime, nestle is one of today's bright spots. the first half results helped in part by stronger sales in north america and nestle shares up about 1.5% in today's trade. back to you. >> all right. i'll take it. thank you, seema. coming up we're still watching walmart. shares moving higher after walmart beat estimates and raised guidance for the rest of the year. we'll take a closer look at the numbers and the future of its e-commerce business. plus the rivalry between sprint and t-mobile continuing to heat upright here on our air. we'll tell you what the ceo said about each other and about the telecom entry when we come right back. that are sixty-two and older
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landing in istanbul. it managed to land safely and no one on board was hurt. mcdonald's will stop putting those activity trackers for kids in their happy meals. some children experienced skin irritations from the devices wristband. the activity trackers were part of a promotional campaign designed to get kids more active and calling all financial geeks you can now friend the fed. the federal reserve launching it's own facebook page today. the fed says that page is designed to make federal vefsh board news and educational content more accessible. that's our news update this hour. let's get back to squawk alley. i don't know whether it will all be open to more interpretation as a result of that. who knows? >> print and t-mobile with unlimited data plans. john ledger joined us this morning and sprint came on the
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show to respond. take a listen to ledger talking about sprint's ceo. >> 77% of my customer ads come from those two and he should focus on fixing his company and copy paste everything i do and you'll be fine. >> now listen to sprint on t-mobile's legere. >> just a very simple philosophy. when you are fighting somebody like legere you need to go down to his level and fight at the same level. that's the only way he will understand. >> that's hard to separate this rhetorical warfare going on. more important issues about the evolution of more consumer pricing and transparency.
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>> at least they have celebrities out there taking on their competitors and cracking the jokes. it's starting to look uncomfortably personal at this point. there's a certain segment maybe they'll be into it. >> if you look at the stock performance at least between the two over the past 12 months you give it to sprint up 24% over the last 12 months. t-mobile up 12% but they have been a long-term out performer as well and usually it's working. look at the long-term charts there. so i don't know, don, i mean, people like it. the question is maybe you're
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getting unlimited. >> right now the limits are in the quality of video that you can get and maybe in the quality of coverage that you get in you're in areas where sprint has good coverage it's a good deal for you but in an area on the fringes where at&t and verizon have better coverage maybe not so much but this is going to get more interesting. we'll start to see cable players getting into this game shares of walmart up. for more now joining us is the retail analyst and managing director. oliver, good morning.
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>> good morning. >> especially the jet.com acquisition and people feeling perhaps it wasn't the best idea and when you see these result douse feel better about walmart's prospects in e-commerce. >> we do have a market perform reading on walmart but what we're seeing here is better customer service leads to nice traffic so what's following through is better check out experiences yielding better numbers and also positive traffic was really nice. this was a great print. especially compared to target. target is going through different stories here with a lot of change in the business. that's disrupting the customer a little bit. so i'm encouraged by walmart.
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>> it's about frictionless and seamless shopping so walmart is making big strides here as it's very dramatic what is happening in retail. >> more than half of walmart's revenue i believe is out of grocery. we tend to thing of other things when we think about them especially in comparison to amazon that hasn't geared up yet. where does walmart go e-commerce-wise. does it have an opportunity to blaze a path there and how much does jet help? they do some consumer goods but not exactly grocery all in yet. that's an interesting point about walmart. you can pick up your groceries you ordered online and customers have been very satisfied so we'll see that roll out
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nationwide overtime. they haven't decided the speed but it seems to be testing well. in america millennials will change. according to a lot of our research younger people are really interested in ordering groceries online. high frequency purchase so that's a big opportunity. it should be a competitive advantage against amazon. jet.com is another hot topic. they have a really innovative way to think about every day low prices. they give the consumer a lot of freedom to decide the basket. to maximize the lowest price so that will be interesting how that folds in overtime and we'll see a lot of innovation which they really need to do because the newest generation of shoppers really want their product immediately and rethinking supply chain is key too. >> we have been talking a lot about walmart as a results and we used to look atwal mart as the ultimate barometer on the consumer and the signals from other retailers have been foggy this season. does it suggest there's an improvement in spending at the lower, middle income consumer
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level? >> i agree with with you with walmart being a key factor and giving us clues about what's happening with the consumer. it's very confusing between department stores having unique challenging. doing a little better but walmart out pacing target. however i think you're right. the u.s. consumer, particularly low to middle is in better shape. low unemployment, wage growth, walmart also commented on lower gas prices and there's food deflation which is negatively impa impacting and it's a different story at the luxury end though. it's more cautious there. >> certainly different from what we're hearing out on the campaign trails these days but our thanks to oliver chen with a look atwal mart. >> thank you. >> let's get over to seema with breaking news for us. >> the justice department says it will end the use of private
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prisons. the washington post citing according to the justice department they're less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government. we're seeing some big moves in the private prison stocks. corrections group down now more than 20%. geo group down about 30%. now halted due to volatility. the deputy attorney general sally yates has been quoted to say they do not provide the same level of correctional services and programs and resources and they do not save substantially on costs and as noted they maintain the same level of safety and security. some big moves in these private stocks. stocks to watch in today's trade. >> we'll keep an eye on that, thank you. a blow to their business for sure. when we come back, amazon's digital assistant could be coming to a car near you. we have all the details on that straight ahead on squawk alley. like coffee. but there's one thing you do. you guys okay?! it's called predix from ge.
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narrator:kubo: est place come on, this way.e... narrator: ...is in the forest. kubo: wow. narrator: so grab your loved ones monkey: don't even. narrator: and explore a world of possibilities. kubo: it's beautiful. narrator: visit discovertheforest.org to find the closest forest or park to you. >> all right on the halftime report a new and potentially major hurdle for valeant. filing suit saying it enfajed in a scheme. plus the analyst behind a big call on twitter today the stock was up 36% in three months. it is time to sell. >> let's get the santellie
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change. >> let's take a walk back through time. 1988. why do i remember that so well? because that is the year fed fund futures well. after a couple of different buildings, this is the fed futures pick now. there's not a lot of people in there. i remember a time not too long ago the whole group was here and the reason fed fund futures were so great because over time neat things happened. we figured out how to do the calculations, did you get close, how the percentages are calculated, how you can do two different ways when back in the day you could have had 25 or 50, you could calculate it as two 25s or 50. but in the end what it was about truly was inputs that meant something. there were rules of the road. most investors in the '80s and
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'90s really understood there were things the fed did and trends the fed followed and everybody seemed to be on the same page but as they say this is about inputs, outputs, and that's it. listen, the new normal has consequences. in other words you can't pick and choice. janet yellen has finally come over to the side of many traders thinking there is a new normal. much of the history of why markets moved and how much they moved doesn't mean the same thing as it used to. so when you put your numbers together for fed funds, it's like these betting sites. the notion and it's true that when investors have money and they can make or lose, actually
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feel pain based on investing something that has significant probabilities to go many directions in the future, the money part of that makes the results pretty accurate, but the problem is it's compromised. if the fed doesn't know what it's going to do, the predictability of this just logically can't be the same. i'll take it a step further. if you get close to the next month and you just get a couple of ticks movement it changes the percentages dramatically. they don't mean anything. back to you. >> all right. thank you. keeping an eye on shares of walmart, best performer up 1.5% after better results and improved outlook. much more squawk alley.
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we're getting some breaking news on twitter. for that we go to washington. >> twitter is about to announce it has deleted about 235,000 terrorist related accounts over the past six months from the twitter service. twitter will say its suspensions are up over 80% last year and the service is working to keep people suspend from terrorist related postings from immediately returning to the service. this is part of an effort to eliminate terrorist related con at the present time from its service. they say that they are working with people in the violent extremism movement. all these details are coming out from a posting from triwitter.
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>> thank you. that's going to be interesting. that's a scale that could be material to maus. >> it could be. it was an interesting detail that was over the past six months so it's not as if they've just yanked those all at once. >> you have a down grade impacting the stock earlier. they are down graid shares of twitter. >> that was competition, the race to mon ties, something that snapchat has shown up twitter. the sales force at twitter said if they didn't have growth at least they monna tiesed the growth they had. >> you can only do that for so long because the rates you're able to demand are on that growth and users. >> i saw that e-marketer put out
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a note saying that twitter's 28% share of users is going to shrink down to 27%. not expecting growth. >> obviously still muted, for now let's get back to post nine and the half. thanks so much. welcome to the "halftime report". we begin with a story new at noon this hour. valiant being sued by one of this country's largest mutual fund companies. they are alleging a fraudulent scheme that cost investors billions of dollars. the suit claiming valiant's drug pricing and use of the specialty online pharmacy exposed investors to massive risks. david covers the compan
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