stock, up by about a percent or so other leaders include brighthouse financial, goldman sachs, keycorp. and sun trust banks. that does it for "squawk on the street." back downtown for the start of "squawk alley. back to you. >> thanks so much. it is 8:00 a.m. at disney headquarters in burbank, california, 11:00 a.m. on wall street, and "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪ good thursday morning, welcome to "squawk alley." i'm carl quintanilla with melissa lee, john fortt at post 9 of the new york stock exchange obviously, a busy day in

hollywood and media. a monster deal reverberating through hollywood and silicon valley, too. the deal david has been reporting has been announced disney is buying the majority of 21st century fox for more than $52 billion in stock david broke the news seems an eternity ago and is with us at post 9, having talked to eiger this morning >> we did. november 6th we broke the story. people still trying to get their head around it, but here we are with the deal itself a little more than a month later. some $52.4 billion worth of disney stock exchanged for these assets, in addition to $14 billion from the company closer to $55 billion overall in equity when you count the 515 million shares exchanged there will be some considerations netted out and so forth is why they get to the $52.4 billion number the stocks themselves, fox performing fairly well as people try to understand the future of this independent entity that will comprise of fox sports, the fox network, fox broadcast, the

affiliates, fox business channel. you can see that stock up almost 3% disney hanging in there, let's call it more or less flat. they are going to try and offset some of the dilution prior to the close of the deal. it's an enormous deal in every way. not just the regional sports networks, but those international assets, including star in india, sky and what they are going to be able to do in latin america, germany, europe, the uk, that is so important for disney as its plans change in terms of bringing direct to consumer offerings in a very robust way in 2019, both here and conceivably throughout the world to a certain extent. this allbegan back in august, when as is typical of the case, rupert murdoch and bob eiger sat down for what is a chat they have every so often, and in which mr. murdoch started to

share some of his concerns about the changing landscape of media, scale of competitors such as amazon and facebook, google and netflix and whether he could compete in the world eiger saw potential opportunity at least to continue that conversation with the idea being, well, maybe he'd be willing to part with some of his key assets and slim down that is the deal we got today. earlier when i spoke to mr. eiger, i asked if he thought he'd ever get to this point when he began that conversation last summer >> i thought it was a long shot, but the more i thought about it and the more we talked about it, the more it made sense and we were able to agree to the terms, somewhat complicated in nature, but still, i think, compelling we got it done i'm certainly excited to be here today. i think if you were to ask me in august whether i would get to this point, i'm not sure i would have bet that i would have, but certainly glad that we have reached this agreement and really looking forward to the

future >> and that future will be a complicated one to a certain extent no small task in integrating all of these assets. the least, of course, is the international assets does appear mr. eiger will have help from james murdoch, though he did not say mr. murdoch, that is the younger mr. murdoch, james, the ceo of 21st century fox, will have a role in the combination, but that certainly seems to be a possibility given his comments about that. as for mr. eiger, he's going to stay in his job through 2021 he was slated to exit in the middle of 2019, which would be conceivably in the midst of this massive integration. no longer the case and for that he abandoned a potential run for the presidency of the u.s. as i've been reporting, he had been seriously considering that effort i asked if he was sad to have to say no to potentially a run for president. >> i love my job and the company i've had an opportunity to run

for 12 years i believe strongly in this combination and knew that if we pursued it, that it would require me staying longer and i felt that was the right thing to do for me personally and the shareholders of the walt disney company. this is going to take a lot of energy and a lot of focus, and i look forward to rolling up my sleeves over the next few years in putting together a company that, i think, will be both compelling to shareholders, but also great for consumers around the world. >> carl, of course, the shareholders will include the 25% owned by fox shareholders. not the least of which will be the murdoch family itself. >> david, don't go too far for more on the deal we want to bring in morris mark of mark asset management, joins us on the newsline ed lee is with us here at post 9. morris, eiger told david this is worth the risk, given the head start netflix has in streaming and the cloudy regulatory picture. how much risk is there >> there's risk, but i think there's great opportunity.

i think there are some real questions to answer. obviously, number one, it has to be approved, though i think it definitely will be, because it is horizontal and the complexion of the content creation process has changed. when you've got the emergence of major new content companies in the form of netflix and probably amazon, i don't think anybody can complain about a horizontal deal so i think the deal gets approved i think the potential is enormous, but there are real questions. >> like what >> okay, two things that are on my mind. in fact, david touched on one and i have a mixed reaction to it if you want to compete in today's world, you have got to be prepared to invest capital, time, and people i don't know if that's compatible with massive share buybacks there are too many companies in the old media area that have been buying back overvalued

stock. i don't think disney stock is overvalued, i think it's undervalued, but i don't think i would worry right now about the dilution from the deal i'd really be focused on doing what this deal enables disney to do, which is to create a lot more great content and it has a lot. that's -- the deal from our perspective, threethings, $25 billion, a lot of free cash flow the fact that content is king and disney's a special company and it's acquiring a tremendous amount of i.p. and a tremendous amount of content creation capability, and the international distribution i think that's fabulous, but it's got to be executed properly so i'm not so worried. in fact, if you're a shareholder and really want to build value, you want them to use that money productively now and i worry about buybacks

and secondly -- i'm sorry. >> let's get to ed lee >> that's a big one. >> ed, what is this bizarre world we're living in, where this is one of the largest media deals of all time but we're saying because it's horizontal it's going to get done >> yeah, you want to keep a closer eye on. >> everybody likes disney, so let them do it >> the elephant on the room is at&t buying time warner, justice suing that to block that deal. that's a vertical merger, which typically is fine. you're not taking out competition in the marketplace horizontal deals typically do that in this case if you're a cable or satellite company and used to dealing with fox on one side and disney on another, now it's one company. so disney has more leverage in these kinds of deals and that could harm competition from one point of view, but bigger picture, though, this is still old media buying old media, right? the idea here ultimately is, you know, we need to take on netflix and the internet in general.

this helps them a little bit, but not a massive game changer there's still this issue of cord cutting and this issue of the primary engine of the media business right now is declining little by little there's less affiliate fees coming in and look at espn, the ratings have taken a hit, less advertising. >> hulu make disney effectively new media? >> right thing, disney controls bam tech, which is a lot of those services this deal than netflix buying the ip and studios that's great and will help to fuel the content for these streaming, but distribution is the main problem for these media companies. this solves a little bit of it, but not a big part of it >> hey, morris -- >> i respectfully disagree >> go ahead. >> i think the one thing to remember is steve jobs' definition of what media is.

it's the creation and distribution of content. well, this is really going to help them create it. and i think eiger really understands the fact that distribution will be ott that's why there's bam tech. that's why they had a piece of hulu and why he announced the other philosophy at his earnings call at the end of the last quarter where he said basically we're going over the top with our ip, with our content >> but they started with zero subscribers, that's the thing. right now they have zero ott subscribers. hulu gives them 12 million plus right now, but again, what is hulu in the future >> i'm going to quote eric schmidt. eric schmidt said what he worries about as the ceo of google when he was, was the fact that the competition is a click away the ability to set up a website

with disney's persona, you just saw the review of "star wars 8." there's going to be "star wars 9," ten, 11, and 12. these are must-have if disney continues to be a great storyteller. now i'm not taking anything away from netflix i think netflix is a fabulous company. i think they are both going to do really well i think the road kill is in another direction. >> morris, i mean, hulu loses money, who knows what amazon video loses or makes and now you're telling us to lower our expectations on buybacks it sounds like investors in disney should be willing to tolerate some pain, at least on costs, on margin, something? >> i don't think so, carl. remember, disney is a very profitable company and the old businesses are not going away. and to be very fair to netflix,

netflix generates tons, if it wasn't, it couldn't be selling the debt it's selling to finance the content creation that's helping build the value of netflix. i think they are really smart, i think they know how to count netflix is profitable, and it would be a free cash flow generator if it wasn't continuing to do what it should be doing, which is investing in more and more content. >> at the same time, netflix, i agree netflix is a massive, great company. its main value right now is distribution 50 million in the u.s., 50 million overseas yes, they are producing their own content and drives a lot of subscribers, but the real value is they own pipeline into homes that cable is losing and that's what iger is seeing and trying to shore up. again, i don't see him buying distribution in this deal so much as more content >> that's what's underexplored in this deal, content is still critically important there are pitch forks outside the fcc this morning because

people are worried about access to content when disney is going to have so much leverage, what if they pull their content from the amazon echo what if they pull their content from apple tv? it's a huge percent aage of the portfolio. >> i don't think bob iger is going to do stupid things, at least not intentionally. if you have great content, what you want to be able to do is distribute it. i'm an apple tv user, a lot of people are roku users. the great thing about either one of those physical devices is i go there and there's netflix i just click it. i don't really have to worry about putting in my password again or doing anything else same will be true with amazon tv and the same thing will be true with the disney -- i'm going to use the word channel, but won't be that, it will be the disney app. i think that you get distribution because you've got great content, and you use the

new technology intelligently, and i'm prepared to assume they'll do that. i just want to make sure they really invest the kind of money that they will have to invest in that content creation process. as i said -- >> content helps them get to that distribution, but the margins on ott business are really, really small not the same thing you're seeing with cable that they enjoy for decades and decades. that's the main conundrum, how do i convert this business with great margins and the sort of monopolies of audience and into this collapse it down into the internet where you're getting pennies to the dollars you used to get >> the one thing you've got to remember is the incremental cost of distribution over the net is almost zero. so when you reach the plateau that you feel you're comfortable with in terms of what you're going to be spending annually on new content, it's just going to flow -- >> i'm going to challenge that,

because online distribution, there's more cost to the actual infrastructure of it than people realize, for one thing, and might even go higher after net neutrality changes, you know, which we're going to get that today. we're going to live in a world where there's a chance, especially for video distribution, which is the most costly and the most sort of bandwidth sort of extensive. where that ends up costing more to the edge providers, right, to the netflixs, facebooks, whatever disney is going to look like that's another cost. >> that's a different point, i think it's a great point, the reason why the government objects to the at&t/time warner acquisition, because they control the pipes. and i think that that's the essence of the -- i don't know how the court is going to rule, but i think that's basically it. in this case, this company doesn't control any pipes. i think your point's well taken, but i think i'll stick to my point, you have certain fixed costs and then your incremental costs are very low i understand -- >> cnn might have something to do with that at&t deal

i don't know so much about the pipes as the fact that there's a news, you know, sort of business that's attached to this deal the other calculus on looking at disney/fox, there are no news assets being transferred here that might color your sense of this >> that's the next story >> the news company is the stub, and i don't think that decision was an accident. >> morris, appreciate it very much morris mark. >> you're welcome, carl. thanks a lot >> we'll talk to you next time >> great conversation. >> let's now check on shares of twitter. they are jumping to more than a one-year high. no specific piece of news that we can see driving these shares, but some say the stock is experiencing a technical breakout to the upside guys there's a lot of action in tech this morning alibaba on the breakdown of a deal with a russian company. tanking a little bit this morning, though it has come back

it's now down less than 3% >> all right still ahead, a lot more on the story of the day what the fox/disney tie-up means. ceo of reddit is here at post 9. his take on the day's vote when the fcc is expected to repeal net neutrality plus, the gop tax bill sprinting towards the finish line. we'll hear from speaker ryan in a few moments when "squawk alley" returns

net neutrality, we just got the dissenting statement on the controversial issue, clyburn saying, quote, i dissent to this repeal of net neutrality, because i am among the millions who is outraged. she goes on to say the public can plainly see the soon to be toothless fcc is handing the keys of the internet over to a handful of multibillion dollar corporations, saying the opposition to the regulation that at last count at least five republican members of congress went on the record calling for a halt of today's vote, but the vote will indeed happen shortly,

and ajit pai is expected to have the repeal of net neutrality approved by the commission it's worth noting clyburn ends her statement by saying she's optimistic today's vote will be an aberration and this plan will be either vacated by a court, reversed by congress, or overturned by a future commission certainly a controversial issue and we'll be watching this as it develops >> thank you, julia. sticking with this issue, the fcc is in the process of voting on a whole host of items, including these rules. joining us to talk about this issue and online protests gaining momentum on sites like reddit is reddit cofounder and ceo steve huffman. steve, great to have you this morning. >> good morning, thanks for having me. >> what is it about this issue that particularly struck a nerve on reddit? granted, you and alexis o'hanie stoked that a bit with your own statements on the subject, but this is one that's generated

more traffic on reddit, if i'm not mistaken, than anything else >> yeah, it's one of our, i believe, most active days ever, beating even the super bowl, which is generally one of our most popular days of the year. and that's because this issue is near and dear to every internet user's heart not just on reddit, but across the country. and you see broad support for the current regulations on reddit and where it's very hard to find an issue where redditers agree pretty much across the board, and this is one of them >> steve, some of the scenarios that i see people posting on what the world posts, title ii is going to look like are, frankly, ridiculous. seems to be little nuance or depth that a lot of the arguments either for or against net neutrality how is the online forum either contributing to that or mitigating that effect, perhaps

educating people i don't see a lot of educated discussion >> i don't know what you mean by ridiculous it's pretty easy to find examples of what the world will look like. >> these rate tables saying this is how much you're going to have to pay for what's app or a single show if net neutrality rules, if title ii is repealed >> i think what makes the most sense is to look at how the isp/media companies behaved a couple years ago with at&t blocking facetime and skype, blocking google wallet these are all examples of companies that are, frankly, conflicted in their duties, basically boxing out other competitors. verizon charging their customers extra for tethering before the regulations. so it's not farfetched to think that in a world without these regulations, these companies would do even more to separate themselves from their competition. >> like what, steve? what are we going to see how are they going to compete?

>> well, so i think one of the problems you have here is the largest isps in the country are also very large media companies, and so if you're, you know, any of these companies looking at your competition and you control the customers' access to netflix, youtube, us, to anybody else, that puts you in a very powerful position, so the entire premise of net neutrality is that all traffic is equal, which allows everybody online, small start-ups to big companies, to compete fairly and that's what's allowed the internet to flourish in the u.s. and, therefore, the rest of the world, and that's really what we're talking about preserving >> i think this is a good point for us to make our blanket disclaimer cnbc is part of nbc universal, which is owned by comcast, which is one of the more hated isps, according to surveys at least. i have no dog in that fight particularly i don't take orders from comcast executives, but it is something, of course, we have to disclose i wonder, all traffic it seems

should not be treated equally. we don't handle roads that way it should be treated fairly, but there are lots of cases where people want certain traffic to be prioritized, like, you know, if you've got tv running over an ip network, you would like quality on your tv you just don't want a service that you want to access that you feel like you deserve to access to be blocked or throttled to the point of not working right, steve >> i'm not sure the point you're making right now consumers have complete control over the power of their internet, right you can prioritize your own traffic on your own routers at home, and so the last i checked, that quality is not really been the issue, it's really when these media companies flex their muscles and effectively shut down competition when at&t blocks facetime and saying -- or you have to charge extra -- >> at&t's network, to be fair, wasn't really ready for facetime at the moment. we have the rise of the smartphone as a trend, the networks weren't ready

you could barely make a phone call at the time and people wanted to facetime it would be nice, but you need to make sure the network is ready before you do that even under these rules against blocking and throttling, there are provisions for legitimate network management >>i would say saying at&t's lack of coverage, which affected phone calls competing with facetime is a little bit of a misunderstanding of how the networks work. voice requires substantially less bandwidth this was really at&t deciding to charge extra for a feature that they were, you know, in the ability to do so and that's not really fair and it flies really in the face of the concept of net neutrality. >> yeah. i see where you're coming from seems to me like competition, as it seems to exist in the wireless business, is a decent hedge at least against those things at the time when at&t was dealing with the facetime issue,

you could only get an iphone on at&t, but then when there's competition, if you don't like the way at&t is managing its network, it's easy to switch to verizon or t-mobile. why do you think we're focusing on regulation, perhaps, more than ensuring there's competition in broadband so that consumers have a choice if they don't like the way one provider is providing broadband, they can switch to somebody else? >> i think that's actually a really, really good point, and if i had choices other than comcast in san francisco, i might have a different opinion the reality is, most americans have one to two isps to choose from and they are not exactly known for customer service comcast is one of the most hated companies in the united states >> all right we'll leave it there for now waiting to see how the fcc decides this one it's interesting when you have disney on the one side, let the mouse buy what it wants. on the other side companies dealing with difficult issues and, of course, consumers need to come out ahead in all this.

we'll see how it shapes up steve huffman from reddit, thanks for joining us. >> we should mention, as well, what the markets have done here as the dow went red for a few moments. caterpillar dragging it down >> had been the biggest gainer in yesterday's session coming up, much more on fox/disney we'll talk to the founder of yes network to find out how the mega deal could impact sports. "squawk alley" back after this at fidelity, trades are now just $4.95.

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i'm contessa brewer. here's your cnbc news update at this hour. somali police say an islamic suicide bomber disguised as a police officer killed at least 17 and injured 20 at a police academy in mogadishu it happened during morning exercises. the al shabab extremist group

quickly claimed responsibility turkey's coast guard evacuated migrants in the agean sea. the operation could only be in daylight because the area is so rocky. among the stranded were 15 children russian president vladimir putin warns the u.s. not to use force against north korea. he says the consequences would be catastrophic. he was speaking at an annual year-end news conference and says russia opposes pyongyang's nuclear program and is ready for constructive talks a record 107 million americans expected to travel for the year-end holidays, that's 3% more than last year. most of those travelers will drive with peak congestion on december 20th and 21st, sometimes on the subway it feels like they've already started very packed. let's get back to "squawk alley" now. >> all right, thank you, contessa and still ahead, the gop agreeing on a final tax bill house speaker paul ryan set to take the podium in moments wel in'lbrg you his comments

live when "squawk alley" returns.

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there, but today the bank of england, ecb and swiss national bank holding rates steady. just hours ago ecb president mario draghi saying the bank revised its growth forecast upwards for the next three years since the ecb expects inflation around 1.7% in the year 2020 that's below the bank's target of over 2% now the euro hit its highest levels in more than a week on the decision headlines and draghi's comments, but since erased some of those gains we're going to finish with sky, one of the assets disney is acquiring in its mega deal with 21st century fox shares in sky it doesn't already own and anticipates its purchase will close for sky by june 30th of 2018. carl, back over to you >> all right, dom, thank you very much. dominic chu. let's bring in cramer on the phone. we haven't had a chance to check

in with jim regarding this blockbuster deal you read pretty well, heard the thoughts on iger, your thoughts? >> my take is this is a subscriber story and we've had subscriber growth go down, which was espn suddenly you put all the subscriptions together and they can show up numbers. there's no reason necessarily to say having espn live, so i love the deal i think the biggest problem is the questions that david asked, which is that there is such an antitrust problem here, ginn the fact that we know there's an antitrust problem with at&t/time warner, but this deal is great and gets rid of the espn problem. >> how much are you tuned into complications, potential complications, regarding hulu? >> oh, i think those can be worked out, and i know that the people who are involved in this deal are all pretty high end this is not like some rogue

deal these guys have dealt with each other and poked with each other, they are frenemies, i think they are friends, i'm worried about antitrust because it's such a wild card. to be consistent, they have to examine this deal. that's why i think the june closing date is unrealistic, but boy do i like the deal >> the breakup fees don't suggest that disney sees much of a problem, right >> i know. i was shocked at that. god bless them to consider that bullish. i think you can work anything out with these, but i think it's a workout and the reason disney is not at 1.10 is people suspect that while they have the big breakup, it's going to be closer to 18 months than 12, if not two years. that's a long time >> jim, what other assets are in play now, do you think >> i think about that and i was looking at cbs, with that in play, but you know there's no way that less is ever going to

want to do anything there. i keep coming back to david's interview with john malone i think you've got to discovery combo, it's so great, it's so cheap. i can't believe something can't happen with that that's a good subscription business, too, if you tier it. >> there is some criticism of the deal on the street, jim, about margins and how disney is now entering a competition with the competitors who are willing to sort of just bankroll their fight for an ott audience the likes of a netflix, amazon, and so on. why would disney want to get in on that fight and pressure their own margins? is that a concern of you >> no, those who paid fortunes for disney product because when our kids were little they insisted on it i think there's a lot of ways to boost the margins, actually. this is something i really trust bob on bob has been so consistent on margins, so consistent on tiering, so consistent on

premiums, these are all the things that make money for a company. the only worry that i have is that antitrust is something that no one can gain, and since no one can gain, why should i be positive about the idea there's a good time frame here buyback some stock >> jim, that's what i wanted to go back to for novice tinvestors, regulatok is always an issue, but on the one hand when you have vertical deals getting attacked but a shrug perhaps to horizontal deals, writ large, how are you supposed to look at this stuff these days >> well, the problem is, if you wlo look at the time warner/at&t deal, it flies against all the doctrine what you have to do, if somebody studied antitrust and had been involved, the doctrine is what you hold it by, but these guys have introduced a whole new doctrine that hasn't been flushed out. so, i mean, i don't know why any

lawyer could possibly think that they know what this antitrust department is going to do. this is like when they did the baker hughes/halliburton deal. so obvious the obama justice department was going to veto that this one, who knows? honestly, no one knows this is a total black box. any assurance they give you, to me, is glib. and i don't like glib. >> all right, jim, thank you for phoning in good to hear from you, your analysis jim cramer >> great coverage this morning, thank you. let's dig on the sports angle, disney combining with espn take a listen to iger on that component. >> on the sports side, i think you have to look at the regional sports networks as a complement to espn, not an overlap, in the sense that like a television network has tv affiliates, a network is a national programmer and the affiliates are local, the same thing is the case here, where espn has, essentially, a national program footprint and

they'll be able to complement one another. they'll be a sharing of products to infuse espn national with more local content and infuse the local regional sports networks with more national content and the result will be better for the consumer than it is today >> leo hindry is the former ceo of tci liberty media and at&t broadband and joins us at post 9. >> nice to be here >> specifically on the sports side, wasn't too long ago when disney had an espn problem focus of subscriber losses, subscription losses and cord cutting and now with regional sports networks, does that perceived problem disappear? >> they still have a problem, melissa. i was saying earlier, this transition from a big bundle to a world of eight to 15 streaming services over the top is going to be a rockier road than any people that have been on your

show have talked about this morning. there's an intellectual consistency between bob saying the rsns are a complement to espn, while rupert is keeping fox sports 1 and letting those two rsns go. it's just doing this, but the world of eating what i served and paying what i charged was a perfect model for a long, long time it respected the diversity of the country and it's really hard to anticipate this ott transition being as smooth as this transaction is suggesting it's going to be you had some people on this morning, who i really take exception to, who said it was just going to be a slam dunk this transaction today began ten years ago when we started to break up a legacy of vertical integration. and then it got a super boost five years ago when netflix, which many think should have been killed in the crib, took off. so it's very hard to envision a

world as smooth a landing as carl we heard this morning >> yeah. you made the point that it's interesting now these companies have really different strategies you point out fox, at&t, disney, cbs. but as some argue that if anybody can do this, it's going to be disney do you disagree? >> well, we always thought the big four were sacrosanct, and rupert has eviscerated one of the big four but the other thing that i find concerning is for an industry that prided itself in moving in generally the same direction, some of us were slower, some of us were faster, but we were all headed towards a common finish line, you now have wildly divergent strategies and john talked about it earlier in your prior segments, even the intellectual inconsistency of the government going against at&t/twix, while in an hour or so getting rid of the net neutrality rules is just mind boggling it can't be both, but suddenly

seems to be. so content is king it's certainly, you know, in a transition moment, but it's king generically, it's absolutely not king specifically in all cases >> who controls the king, though, in this case and where is the consumer left seems there are dangers if disney has control over all this content, gets to decide whether or not to give it to netflix, whether or not to give it to apple, to amazon, et cetera, on what terms, we might end up with a new kind of digital blackout situation and consumers in the middle is that something that consumers should be thinking about or concerned about in this environment? >> i'm not man enough to bet against jeff bezos and tim cook, who are out there also playing in this ott world. video of all sorts is profoundly expensive, and when you go a la carte or ott and shrink the audience to only the user community, and melissa you made the point that espn had a problem. it has a problem

a year or so ago it had 100 million subscribers, today it has 88 bob is bolting on 22 rsns saying that's going to reboost that figure, but rupert just kept fox sports 1 and shed 22 rsns. it's this divergence, carl, of strategy and opinion, and so they can't all be winners anymore. we lived in an era where we all won because we were vertically integrated, and when you split, john, when you split distributors from content providers so acutely, randall stevenson is trying to crawl back into that world with twix, but it's not going to help his wireless business. it's just, you know, he could have bought hardware stores with his cash flow, but it's not an enhancement of the wireless business >> an apple, an amazon, they are the winners, you think, in all of this? >> i don't bet against them. you can't have eight to ten,

maybe 12 streamers thinking they are all going to survive nobody -- nobody has ever watched a piece of programming based on who owns it or who made it >> gone on a platform because it has abc content or cbs content >> they watch based on if it's any good and who told them word of mouth to watch it it's rocky there is a reason why in a country built on immigration, proudly built on immigration, that we built the bundle and we need to be mindful of what happens as we shave the bundle, cut the bundle and again, the winners aren't as obvious as they used to be >> always great to get your analysis, leo, thank you >> thank you very much still to come this morning, teva is surging as the company's layoffs exceeded what was expected they also suspended the dividend we're watching that stock slightly off the highs of the day.

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i'm brian sullivan today on "the halftime report" the two reasons why this year's amazing rally may still have more room to run. plus, the single big name retail stock one analyst says is ready to jump next year. and two of our traders are pounding the table on one part of the energy market saying this is a great time for you to get in we are naming names when "the halftime report" starts at noon

eastern time right now back to melissa lee. >> thank you, brian. look forward to it shares of teva pharmaceuticals are surging on news of significant job cuts let's get to meg for details. >> teva announced it will cut 14,000 jobs or more than a quarter of its workforce in the next two years the israeli drug giant is aiming to reduce its cost base by $3 billion by the end of 2019 the news comes after a rough year for teva. the stock lost half its value on concerns of the drug business and a mountain of more than $30 billion in debt. the new ceo who took the helm in november told teva employees that the company doesn't take the job cuts lightly but there is no alternative to these drastic steps in the current situation. they have faced pricing pressure on generic medicines, particularly in the u.s. the company will take steps on price adjustments and

potentially discontinuing products something the generic industry has warned could happen teva will close or sell a significant number of research and development facilities, headquarters and office locations, suspend its dividend and not pay bonuses for 2017 while wall street cheered the news, it isn't going over well in teva's home country the prime minister benjamin netanyahu spoke to schultz and asked him to minimize injury to his workers and many plan to strike on sunday that strike is expected to close israel's main airport and cost the economy more than $100 million. carl, back to you. >> meg, thank you very much for that let's bring in ylon as we watch the tax bill. >> reporter: house speaker paul ryan just wrapped up his weekly news conference. they plan to vote next week but it's unclear which chamber will

go first oer originally the senate was to kick this off but the house may go first as there are continuing concerns about the health of john mccain and other absentees in the senate, so unclear still which chamber will go first. also speaker ryan talked about the possibility of multiple implementation dates for the tax bill he said that some implementation dates could date back to 2017 for depreciation schedules and some could take place later than 2018 he said that's how all tax bills work he also dismissed some of the poor polling numbers that we've seen for this tax plan in some cases nearly half of americans or more find that this tax bill would benefit the wealthy over the middle class. he said the 1986 tax bill also didn't poll well initially but that he is confident that this bill will boost economic growth. back over to you guys. >> all right, ylan, thank you. the very latest on the battle for tax reform. coming up, we are continuing to keep an eye on the net

neutrality hearing we'll bring you the results of the vote once it closes "squawk alley" is back in a moment

we are awaiting the fcc's vote on net neutrality for all of this we're sticking

with julia boorstin who's watching the vote. julia, what's the latest >> we've just been listening to the commissioner read her dissent. we talked about her statement earlier. she's talked about her outrage and how overturning these net neutrality rules that were implemented under the obama administration would be terrible for all sorts of different groups, particularly all those who rely on the internet for communication. so we could hear some more dissenting statements in the coming minutes we expect to also hear dissent from commissioner jessica rosenwersal and then expect to see a vote we do expect the commissioner's proposal to be passed, which would overturn net neutrality. it's not the end of the story there. this could be challenged in court and many people are saying that it could very well be overturned so we'll have to see what happens we'll be watching for that vote. carl. >> listening to clyburn's dissent, highly emotional as we saw with your interview a few

minutes ago with the head of reddit. >> impassioned, certainly. those on the democratic side feel strongly about, title 2, the regulations the obama administration put in place. it wasn't always obvious that was the way to go. tom wheeler at first was against title 2 and then he was for it but this has become about something called net neutrality, even though these rules are just one component of that. and people are fired up because they believe that the internet itself is at stake and competitiveness. but meanwhile, we've got these huge companies coming together in the content realm, which is a huge part of what people come to the internet for that's not getting enough attention. >> very simply from the stock perspective, it's the telecoms, isps and service providers that would be perceived as the winners of this appeal and the content providers, somebody who provides a service over the internet, relies on fast internet speed to deliver

whatever their service is, as the losers here. >> unless you're so big as a content provider that they can't mess with you. >> like netflix? >> netflix has been a little less vocal on net neutrality than it was because everybody has come to associate netflix with over-the-top goodness so who's going to try to block or throttle netflix disney could be in a similar position, especially if they end up with these fox assets. >> the difference in tone from hastings at code conference two years ago versus this past summer looked a lot different absolutely obviously disney/fox is the other media story of the day we did talk to bob iger in the 9:00 a.m. hour we talked about what he thought about running for president and now that he's staying at disney, he said it's rolling up your sleeves time as he knew once this deal came together that he was going to have to stay to see it through. >> as we talked with leo about, there is risk to this whole thing.

ott is not necessarily a slam dunk and perhaps investors aren't anticipating there are issues starting from scratch to compete with netflix >> by the way, tonight oracle, costco and adobe, strange busy night in earnings season. >> and we have the coin based president on "fast money." let's get to the judge and the half welcome to "the halftime report." i am brian sullivan in for scott wapner today glad to have you with us the strong rally for stocks may get two more reasons to surge. one, the final tax package and two, new signs today the american economy is getting even stronger with you for the hour today, i'll call it the triple j, joe terranova, jim levanthal,