good morning it is 8:00 a.m. in eattle, 11:00 a.m. on wall street and "squawk alley" is live ♪ a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down medicine go down medicine go down just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down ♪ ♪ in a most delightful way

♪ a robin feathering his nest has very little time to rest ♪ good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk alley i'm carl quintanilla, morgan brennan is back along with jon fortt. dow managing to come off the worst levels of the session. s&p is holding 2700, which has a lot of people interested pharmacy a big story today as amazon buys pill pack and has a lot of these names on the run today, guys. >> we don't even know how much they spent and i don't think a lot of investors have necessarily dug into what sector of the market amazon is detecting. you scream amazon in a crowded theater of investors and people run. >> cvs and walgreens in terms of a percentage lower that they're trading today. i think it's interesting you get this news when you have the news from amazon announcing its

last-mile delivery service when you're talking about something like online logistics for pharmaciy, that is part of the story. it's high margin, highly sophisticated business to pack all those pills and ship them out. >> crude is zeroing in on $74. we have breaking news from the white house. eamon javers is in washington today. >> reporter: clarification from the state department on iranian oil waivers. this has been important to the markets this week. let me walk you through exactly what they're saying. earlier in the week, a high-level state department official had suggested as part of the overall push by the united states to take iranian oil out of the global oil market there might not be any waivers issued by the united states to allies to allow them to import iranian oil. earlier this week, i would be hesitant to say zero waivers ever i think the previous position would be no, we're not granting waivers. that statement provoked a lot of

head scratching in the market. a lot of oil market experts suggested that taking all iranian oil out of the global market could cause prices to spike here at home ahead of the mid term elections they assumed that was something that they would not want to do this, from a state department officer official just now saying we are prepared to work with countries that are reducing their imports on a case-by-case basis. we are serious about their efforts to pressure iran to change its threatening behavior. our focus is to work with these countries importing iranian crude oil, to get as many of them as possible down to zero by november 4th there's some nuance here, carl this new statement doesn't say no waivers from the state department this new state says they'll work with countries on a case-by-case basis and would like to get as many of them down to zero by november but doesn't say they'll get all of those countries down

to zero iranian oil by november. an important piece of nuance from the state department, guys. >> energy complex listening to every word here, eamon thank you. big morning for amazon, taking a step further into health care, announcing its buying pill pack, online pharmacy that offers presorted doses of medicine and home delivery it did send pharmaciy stocks tumbling today meg tirrell has been watching these guys for a while meg? >> absolutely. this has been an ongoing question, what amazon will do in this space there were rumblings that amazon had required licenses to move into the pharmaceutical space. that affected not just cvs and walgreens and rite aid that are getting hit today. pharmacy benefits managers, express scripts, cvs caremark

and united health have been really roped into these questions. amazon didn't have those pharmacy licenses. the licenses they had in health care were for their existing businesses that they were already in now it appears that with this acquisition, the terms of which weren't disclosed and appear to be less than $1 billion, amazon may have obtained the licenses they needed to do this in all 50 states that is a major part of this deal and everybody today is saying that the signals that amazon has put its flag down in the pharmacy space the question now is what is it going to do. carl >> meg, what is amazon really buying here? one of the interesting things about pill pack is this pharmacy aos that allows them to help patients who have four or more medications to manage exactly how they take them, to make sure there's not negative interactions with those on top of the service where they say if

you're going on a trip we'll send you a special package that has just the dosage to last you through that trip. how much of this is about the logistics of pharmacy and software that manages that what does that tell us about the segment of the market that amazon is after here >> those are great questions, jon. pill pack really focuses on customers who have a lot of prescriptions to manage. if you think about having to take more than one pill a day, having to take them at different times or you can't take them together because of drug interaction. if you're an elderly patient, that can be really challenging they try to make it easy as possible but it's a very customized way of doing business how do you scale this, that very customer centric business model on a broader scale there will be questions about the broadness of this and whether getting that technology and the licenses, more importantly, mean that a.mazon

can expand this much more broadly. >> much like whole foods day just over a year ago question is how quickly they can scale it meg tirrell, thank you let's get to jackie deangelis here. >> i want to point out oil backed off a little since we got the state department headlines talking about waivers, saying they could be granted on a case-by-case basis eamon was 100% correct in saying this has been push and pulling the oil market all week, people thinking iranian oil could evaporate into thin air by the november deadline that the state department set. >> it's actually, perhaps, complicating things even a little bit more. we don't know the criteria on which the state department will judge which countries will get a waiver and which won't

there are some who are saying wti seeing a more than 10% increase to try to tamp the market down. a couple of other reasons you can see prices staying elevated. we're heading into the fourth of july don't discount that seasonality fact factor it's big and at play here certainly. also an outage in canada people are watching closely that could take barrels offline. when you look at the overall supply in north america that could be why prices are supported as well. back to you. >> thank you, jackie deangelis. now back to amazon with this buy of pillpack and announcement of an uber style plan for local delivery will other tech companies follow suit what does this mean for the future of the retail giant walter price and colleen mitchell join us good morning, guys

walter, which of these announcements do you think in the near to medium term investors should focus on more, this pillpack buy or this logistics move in which amazon is arguably trying to disrupt the u.p.s.'s and fedexs to staff the last mile? >> i think logistics is the most important issue that amazon has to continue to deal with if it's going to go to 40% or 50% of commerce they're going to have to increase their logistics capability by 3 or 4 x and u.p.s. and fedex basically can't do that. so amazon has to find new ways to grow their logistics capability i thuveng this is an important

step it will continue to help amazon gro grow. >> and kate, this was not a hot area for investment in silicon valley when pillpack first started. is it now? are people looking at their portfolios and saying what do we have in the pharma space that amazon, google or somebody might want to buy? >> no kidding. we always think that, number one. i will debate walter in that one of the things -- i certainly agree, by the way, logistics is a key part of. >> i think this pillpack acquisition is a brilliant move. you may have confusions about where public policy is going and being implemented. once amazon puts its sites on a market it's not confusing about where they're going. the fact that they can provide

better, more customized one-to-one service in a wholesale way it's logistics on the back end for amazon and on the front end for me i think it's brilliant and i think a lot of folks are looking in their portfolio and wanting to be an apple in amazon's eye. the synergies you see between the businesses they're acquiring and focusing on the logistics of drugs is key when i go into cvs and walmart, i'm picking up a lot of things on the way to getting my drug prescription at the back of the store. now i'm definitely going to be doing all that online. i think this just puts amazon right in a great place you add to that and finally the demographics, that baby boomers throughout the western world are growing market and doing more onlin online. >> i think about u.p.s

one of their higher growth businesses has been fulfilling health care services, online service deliveryies, et cetera i the health care space. to piggyback off what kate just mentioned with walmart, we had had reports -- cnbc reported that walmart had been interested in pillpack as well. how much does this up the ante in terms of the competition and deal making between amazon and walmart? >> i think amazon is clearly going to take business away from walmart in the future, as they have in the past and i think, as kate said, getting into health care is an important stla teenlg ic aspect for amazon it is something that consumers will buy online and have bought online and amazon will get their share of that and focus on improving the customer experience and reducing costs.

i think that's great for customers and that's why amazon has been successful. >> diagram what they will do in health care versus what they did in grocery and whole foods is that part of this chain or is it more via delivery of pillpack at scale >> i think it's everything it's starting to look at both the employers and all the insurers who who are, in many cases, footing the bill for health care. one of the biggest issues as people get over is compliance. they've got all these drugs, taking it at the right time, remaining effective and reese re duesing the cost of health care coverage i think it's a great play for them we could see this extend into things like medical devices and so many other things, particularly devices where you're buy iing certain refills.

making it much more efficient and effective and ultimately lowering health care costs not just making amazon one of the biggest companies on the horizon. >> that will dovetail some of this, too. >> certainly will. >> yeah. >> so much to watch when it comes from amazon. to provide the labor wonder how long it's going to be before those vans are driving themselves watch out, small businesses. walter, kate, thanks for joining us. >> thank you sticking with amazon, amazon launching a new delivery program aimed at growing small businesses, which jon mentions for that, we've sent courtney reagan to amazon hq in seattle good morning, court. >> good morning, carl. shares of fedex and u.p.s. are

lower today by more than 2% as amazon, one of their biggest customers, becomes an even bigger competitor. we know they have planes, trucks and now they're building out that last-mile delivery capability starting today, amazon is hiring delivery service partners, individuals that will run their own local package delivery network for amazon with up to 40 load vehicles that they'll lease from the company each unit will start their day at one of amazon's distribution stations there are currently only 75 of them in the country. they'll pick up their parcels, get their routes and that's determined by amazon built to maximize efficiency and determine which packages actually go to the delivery station and which go to those other delivery partners. >> this is all about scaling cost effectively if you think about the growth of e-commerce, we're going to have

to meet this growth. this program is all about enabling small business, in small increments it would be able to expand across the u.s. to meet our growth rates. >> now clark says that amazon is not ending its relationship with itsbly partners with fedex, u.p.s., but as they grow exponentially, so does the e-commerce, spending $22 billion almost on its shipping cost. this program may help to gain more control on the cost and customer service we reached out to the delivery partners to get their reaction so far we've heard from u.p.s. which says, in part, it does pay attention to its customer and competitor announcements but it doesn't speculate on the likelihood of the success or the potential impact on u.p.s.'s business u.p.s. is confident in its strategies back to you at the new york stock exchange. >> court, thank you very much.

>> today it's especially concentrated right? hitting on so many fronts. >> absolutely. the key piece to this when you're talking about last mile delivery for amazon is the postal service you got reports that the government is in negotiations over the postal service's contract with amazon, which is up later this year they do do the last-mile deliveries. >> through price discovery we'll figure out if amazon is getting such a sweet deal with the postal service they'll find other people to deliver the services if usps doesn't want to. restrictions on foreign investments, white house may be sending mixed signals to chinese companies. we'll take a closer look we continue to churn right around 2700. dow down 12.

squawk alley is back in a moment.

the president is in milwaukee today for a groundbreaking for foxconn, which comes amid attacks against harley davidson. former head nora daily and also with us, former acting u.s. trade rep and wendy cutler thanks for joining us today,

guys good to see you. >> good to see you. >> nova, i would love to get your take on this enhanced review power that they may get what does it bring them? do you wish you had it when you were there >> yes, i do think i wish i had it when i was there. one of the key elements it provides is a mandatory declaration for state-owned and controlled transactions, meaning under this new law they'll have to declare their acquisition before they do it. other passive investments where folks who wanted to get certain technologies were able to skirt the law and find a way around i it. >> where does it exist semis, wireless? how granular can we get on that?

>> i think it's absolutely in semi conductors, emerging technologies that are rising, autonomous vehicles, robotics, nano robotics. these technologies are coming out of silicon valley every day and emerging and sometimes we don't know where they are, who they're coming from or what the next evolution is going to be. that's why they're looking for the commerce department to focus on what's emerging and what should we protect not only for our innovation but national security. >> wendy, nova mentioned certain real estate transactions the thrust of this, the language that's been put forth is mostly on critical technology but i wonder if investors should be concerned at all that this could go outside of the bounds that had been initially announced into government having

its hand in capitalism and transactions at a level that maybe goes beyond what some people would be comfortable with. >> there's always that concern but i do believe that when the administration ends up implementing this legislation, it will do so in a responsible manner that will alleviate those concerns but there may be some start-up issues where the bounds of this law will need to be, you know, better defined. >> nova, you've got the president and governor of wisconsin celebrating the foxconn groundbreaking a couple of miles down the street and the headquarters of harley davidson that has come under fire and become somewhat of a lightning rod for this broader global trade debate how do you see this playing out in terms of all the tariffs and policies and you have a company like harley that came out saying it will shift production overseas for its europe-bound

motorcycles? >> yeah. i guess, you know, i think it's a wonderful thing that foxconn has decided that manufacturing in the united states is what they want to do. i think that's what the president is seeking for the united states and our manufacturing base, a resurgence of it. i applaud it concerning what harley davidson has chosen to do in a business aspect, i think you have to look at the broader aspect of why the steel and aluminum tariffs were done they were done because china represents the entire world combined in terms of capacity. that needs to be addressed it was unwanted, unnecessary capacity and needs to be shrunk down by doing the tariffs, the president is asking the rest of the world to join him in shrinking china's exports to them as well that way we can address china's overcapacity. >> wendy, do you agree with that >> well, i think what this shows is how complicated all of this

is on one hand, wisconsin, yes, it's benefiting from this new, big investment, which will create many jobs on the other hand, many workers and farmers and companies in the state are very concerned, not only about the increased prices for steel but counter retaliation, particularly in the ag sector implemented by countries like china, mexico, the eu and canada, very soon. >> everyone is trying to game out china's motivation, how fierce their motivation is to cut this deal and bring this skirmish to an end there's a big story in the ft about their troubles going way beyond any kind of trade offensive. do you think they are prime to cut a deal if they do, does that make it more likely that the canadians and europeans want to follow suit >> my sense is, yes, china does want to make a deal. i think they're very confused about what the united states

would want from them our positions seem to change week by week in terms of what we're asking them. i think they want to get back to the table. not only for their own economy but the global economy and i hope that the united states has the same motivation. how this plays out with other countries remains to be scene because their counter retaliation is in response to u.s. tariffs on steel and aluminum against them, not in the context of the bigger u.s./china discussion. >> right yep. difficult to keep all of these straight coming months are going to be key. wendy, nova, hope you'll come back to help us make sense of it all. thanks for your time. >> thank you. >> sounds great. thank you. and betting on atlantic city the gaming city had been written off but is a comeback in the cards. we'll have all the details when we'll have all the details when "squawk alley" returnstion on t.

♪ hawaii is the first state in the u.s. to have 100% renewable energy goal. we're a very small electric utility. but, if we don't make this move we're going to have changes in our environment, and have a negative impact to hawaii's economy. ♪ verizon provided us a solution using smart sensors on their network that lets us collect near real time data on our power grid. (colton) this technology is helping us integrate rooftop solar, which is a very important element of getting us to our renewable energy goals. ♪ (shelee) if we can create our own energy, we can take care of this beautiful place that i grew up in. ♪

>> atlantic city once a gaming hub has seen better days with two new hotels and casinos, could the city be getting the lift it needs? contessa brewer? >> reporter: do i know how to plan a show or what? this is the big show where the hard rock will take over where the former taj mahal used to be. this theater will play a crucial role in whether they can make this venture a success the thinking goes that if you can draw people with entertainment, big acts like pitbull and carrie underwood, some 300 this first year, it doesn't matter what kind of competition you'll get from regional casinos and that regional competition played a big role in atlantic city's downfall pennsylvania, delaware, new york, connecticut, all offering an opportunity for visitors and that really drove atlantic city into the dumps over the last decade or so

gambling revenue dropped by 50%. half the casinos folded. 11,000 people lost their jobs. the city on the brink of bankruptcy there were deals to be had part of the reason you're seeing this big grand opening right this second, hard rock came in and bought this place for four cents on the dollar for original construction costs down the boardwalk, ocean city opens this afternoon where the rebel open and closed within two years. a colorado developer there bought it, sight unseen, for $200 million it was a $2.4 billion property so now some 6,000 new workers have been hired between these two casinos where 11,000 have lost their jobs in the great depression as you might imagine, a lot of optimism and excitement. analysts tell me 3,000 new hotel rooms here creates a lot of competition and, in fact, morgan stanley is predicting 20% c

cannibalization. and they mention specifically competition in atlantic city there, guys. >> what a story. i'm not convincedcontessa can hear a word i'm saying. >> i can. >> i'm impressed she's -- what a live shot. she can do anything from anywhere we'll watch that closely, the impact on jersey and the northeast. >> absolutely. in 2014, this time 2014 that i was out there myself, reporting on four different casinos closing in that marketplace. this is really quite a turn around to see two opening on the same day. >> amazing half past the hour let's get to seema mody. >> with today's loss, germany, spain and italy have fallen into correction territory they're down 10% from their respective highs the eu two-day summit kicks off

and brussels and migrattion, specifically people trying to cross the mediterranean sea from africa, a heated debate inside the eu the hope is that at the summit, leaders will be able to carve out a migration strategy also, president trump and russian president putin will hold their first summit. they've met twice before on the sidelines of international gatherings back to you. >> all right thank you, seema mody. now let's get to sue herera for a news update. sue? good morning, jon. good morning, everyone here is what's happening at this hour deputy attorney general rod rosenstein facing tough questions about his department's independence he says the justice department needs to correct errors and prevent future violations. this came in testimony to a house committee, probing its conduct during the 2016

election. >> inspector general conducted a thorough investigation, found that some bureau federal investigation employees deviated from important principles in 2016 and 2017. we need to correct errors, hold wrongdoers accountable and deter future violations. a u.s. military team has joined the rescue effort for 12 boys and their soccer coach who have been missing for 12 days inside a thailand cave the search has been hampered by days of heavy rain russian president vladimir putin along with fifa president infantino attending a soccer event in red square. they took the time to kick the ball around with children attending the event this morning. that's it for your update. i'll send it back to you, jon.

>> thank you, sue. amazon's big move in health care, sending stocks of pharmacy sinking. we'll spk eato an early investor in pillpack when "squawk alley" in pillpack when "squawk alley" comes right back so i'm more than confident. how's your family? kayak. search one and done.

welcome back to "squawk alley. shares of walgreens, rite aid and cvs taking a hit this morning on the story of amazon

acquiring pillpack george zachary, former board member and general partner with crv. thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> you tweeted not too long ago a picture of signing a term sheet in may of 2015 and you joked it's probably not as monumental as the one they might have with bezos signing that deal what can you tell us about the deal with amazon, either on terms or where you think amazon wants to take it >> well, those are both much more interesting questions than the fun picture of pj and i. unfortunately, i can't say either because i'm constrained about providing any details about the acquisition. and i don't have any idea about what amazon wants to do. i just know why i invested and what amazon has basically said

from their press release. >> you got in on a series c in june of '15 and i believe a series d as well about a year later. >> yeah. >> what did you see in pillpack at the time? >> well, what i saw was i recognized the problem early on, which was there's a lot of people, basically average person above 50 in the united states takes five prescriptions and it's a difficult process you have to wait in line you have to get to the pharmacy. you have to wait in line then you have to manage your prescriptions. and i have had family members who have had to deal with this problem. my mom had dementia and she didn't remember when to take certain pills. she had to get them into pill boxes, dropping the pills down the drain. all these things were problems pillpack basically packaged the pills. and i knew that this was a real solution for people.

so that's why i invested and the key reason was that tj worked in a pharmacy his family business was a pharmacy and he understood what people needed. he just wasn't selling drugs he was basically focused on people and what they needed. and that's what i found compelling, was that tj, as a founder, knew what people wanted and i always love that in founders. >> george when you lay it out like that, it's obvious. i have a very dear friend who battled cancer for a long time and to have a service like this would have been extremely helpful for her. it seems to me the tricky part of this is logistics that whole idea of picking and packing the pills, putting them together and shipping them to people what goes into that process and how is pillpack tackling that in a way that i'm sure looks very attractive to amazon as well

>> operationally, it was intense business to scale. tj understood that, he described to me how they're going to obtain the licenses and that made me feel much better as an investor i did not know how that process would work i did know that the supply chain would be complicated and that they would have to scale that up and that was the trickiest part of the business. i do know it is definitely a scale business if you want to serve hundreds of millions of people in the united states, you have to be a big company with big capital. >> george, what is the secret sauce here technologically is it pharmacy os? do you think they have a sustainable advantage in how they are able to analyze these multiple medications and get them to people quickly what exactly is the secret sauce? >> well, i think at the beginning the secret sauce of

the company was always tj's insight into people. they basically designed the entire product around that and i always found that to be true with founders they always designed the, quote, unquote, product around that and that's everything from user interface on the website to the software, to things like the pharmacy os that you're bringing up and those are what build competitive management the fact that they had a full service offering is what was key, while a lot of other start-ups for the delivery service business, where they were delivering for pharmacies and all of those start-ups ended. consumers didn't really want full service -- didn't want delivery service they wanted full service, to feel like they were actually getting a medication and didn't want to have to deal with multiple parties. >> makes sense. >> i think that's the competitive advantage of being a

full-service company. >> right and that's one reason we're seeing red on the screen on those pharmacy names in general. we hope you'll come back, george a lot of people will get very familiar with this name in a hurry. thanks for your time today. >> thank you thanks for inviting me. >> george zachary, board member, early investor in pillpack big day for ipos, meantime number of ipos, bjs and another ceo of a company bredview, that's up next dow is up. rick, what are you watching? >> how the u.s. and all the other major markets have been behaving not only today but over the last couple of weeks. there's some interesting conclusions. we'll discuss them after the break. thglobal markets,f the rhythm of the world. but to us, it's the pace of tomorrow. with ingenuity,

nologies, and markets expertise we create the possible. and when you do that, you don't chase the pace of tomorrow. you set it. nasdaq. rewrite tomorrow. i've got a nice long life ahead. big plans. so when i found out medicare doesn't pay all my medical expenses, i got a medicare supplement insurance plan. [ male announcer ] if you're eligible for medicare,

you may know it only covers about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. call now and find out about an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, it could save you in out-of-pocket medical costs. call now to request your free decision guide. i've been with my doctor for 12 years. now i know i'll be able to stick with him. [ male announcer ] you'll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. plus, there are no networks, and virtually no referrals needed. see why millions of people have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp. don't wait. call now. with tripadvisor, finding your perfect hotel at the lowest price... is as easy as dates, deals, done! simply enter your destination and dates... and see all the hotels for your stay!

tripadvisor searches over 200 booking sites... to show you the lowest prices... so you can get the best deal on the right hotel for you. dates, deals, done! tripadvisor. visit tripadvisor.com i'm melissa lee in for scott wapner expect these stocks to move later today when key data is released plus, did a.mazon just give investors an incredible buying opportunity in the pharmacy and shipping sectors we're trading nike, plus three big calls, sales force and ibm that and much more on "the half time report" at the top of the hour. >> a lot to get to melissa, thank you rick santelli is at the cme. rick >> thanks, carl. so many things now that investors need to try to get a

handle on to keep their positions profitable, to limit risk, to potentially neutralize some positions in the face of uncertainty. boy, that's really a tough one nowadays one thing i can tell you is if you look at what's going on in the u.s. economy, present and future against what we know now about europe, china and japan, and even forgetting all the trade issues out there, it really is quite a teeter totter with respect to the u.s. holding up so much better and all the other large economies really sliding in a variety of ways let's take europe, for example now today's an important day in europe in brussels, they have a big eu summit and in the summit there's a lot of unhappy campers let's start with one deputy secretary of italy, salvini. he grabs a reporter and starts talking to a german newspaper --

magazine actually. and his comments -- i'm paraphrasing -- he wonders what the longevity of the entire framework of the countries that formed the european union is and, obviously, italy is making some ways. but it isn't limited to that macron from france had some very harsh words for prime minister may of the uk, serious and grave rebuke were the headlines. he's just unhappy with the progress on brexit take brexit. the secretary of brexit, david davis. he's supposed to be there. nobody knows if he is there or not. why is any of this important it certainly seems if you read between the lines that the deadlines, the issues over the irish border, all of this is starting to melt away and brexit is turning into crash exit and this isn't going to help the broader economy, whether it's the uk specifically or in a macro sense, europe. on china, fx at some point -- today is the

sixth session the dollar is higher, the yuan is lower. we have to really start to look at what china is doing and why. when you handicap what the u.s. sends over versus what they send over and look at the following chart and how things have changed for their markets this is a very interesting battle in the u.s. -- and maybe we shouldn't be in it it's impossible not to think that we're winning and with regard to imports, soy beans is always pulled out yet they'll probably need all the beans around and probably more and quickly, japan's deputy governor, wakatabe, yes, he said this there's no limit to monetary policy yikes! carl, back to you. >> rick, thank you rick santelli at the cme today the nation's largest employer of workers entering on ipo. we'll talk to the new ceo about how it could impact his business "squawk alley" is back in a

"squawk alley" is back in a moment you always pay your insurance on time. tap one little bumper, your rates. what good is having insurance if you get punished for using it? news flash: nobody's perfect. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise your rates due to your first accident. switch and you could save $782 on home and auto insurance. call for a free quote today. liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance. when it might be time to buy or sell? with fidelity's real-time analytics, you'll get clear, actionable alerts about potential investment opportunities in real time. fidelity. open an account today.

even at session highs today really no relief for the pharmacy names reeling in the wake of amazon's announcement of pillpack dow losing 70. up 20 points overall back in a minute o all the thing. which is what we do. crowne plaza. we're all business, mostly.

welcome back taking a look at shares of brightview today andrew masterman joins us now. andrew, thanks for joining us. >> yeah, thanks for having me. >> just a little background in

terms of brightview, looking across the market there doesn't seem to be many appearances in terms of publicly traded across the market how should investors are thinking about it? >> you're right. we're the only publicly traded landscaping company in the world that we know of. we engage in single properties every single day around the united states. >> i want to get your thoughts on immigration you're the biggest employer of folks with visas. the u.s. just raised the cap not soolg too long ago to allow people to work understand that visa. is it enough >> no it's not enough. we have a deep demand across the country, people who are here and guest workers who come in through the htb program. legal immigration, guest worker

program actually creates more american jobs. >> why aren't wages rising faster >> why aren't they raising faster >> yes. >> we've seen significant wage pressure, there's no doubt about that we've seen across the board in our markets a 5%-plus wage increase for years we've seen that across the country. >> you were talking about the mix of maintenance and development. >> right >> it's mostly maintenance >> mostly maintenance. >> but where's the development coming from, what sectors? >> we cross a lot of sectors whether it's hotels, casinos, municipalities parks, we build parks, the national mall in washington, d.c., we redeveloped that. >> so, from that standpoint when you get a final reading on gdp today of 2%. economists 3.7% for the current quarter. from your vantage point does this feel like an economy that's growing at almost 4% >> you know, it's interesting, our vantage point at brightview,

grass will always grow, trees will need prunes and go up whether or not the economy is doing great or slowing down that's one of the beautiful things about our business, you still have to have the services performed. >> to what degree is automation impacting your business? a lot of stuff still needs human hands but probably not everything >> when you come down to the maintenance and/or development what will you do need needs hands on there's electronic tools to look at efficiencies. and when it comes to actually doing the work, it's still people that need to do the work. >> in terms of biggest opportunities right now, is it housing? is it portions of your commercial real estate >> yeah. really, when you talk about growth, it comes to general looking at new buildings going in and really every sector when we touch every sector, we're only in the commercial state, though. so, whether it's hotels, office complexes, corporate headquarters it's a steady growth business, steady growth environment, but it isn't going to be a drama mat

swing one way oar another. >> have you ever looked at residential and said no, and if so, why? >> we will do residential, if anybody has $10,000 a month more, we're happy to talk about those residences in general, it's a single point of contact very high service level. our account managers our branch managers every single day who go out there and a lot of personal touch in the complexity of what we do, residences don't go well >> it just doesn't make that sense. >> it just doesn't make that sense. >> all right well, i guess before we let you go here, going back to this idea of economic growth and where are you seeing growth. within your business in general, and a lot of focus on tax reform and how companies are putting that money to work has it impacted you? and are you seeing that in terms of more business with companies? >> we actually see a tax reform as a big benefit for its we're u.s. play, we're only in the united states. so it obviously benefits us and

allows us to continue to invest deeply across all operations across all states. >> andrew masterman, brightview ceo. thank you for joining us >> thank you very much it's an been interesting session from a price action standpoint dow's down 42. look for nike and final stage, ccar tonight let's get to melissa and the "half. welcome to "the halftime report," i'm melissa lee in for scott wamer ipner amazon, a giant opportunity and that's coming up trading ahead of the market moving comprehensive analysis otherwise known as ccar, those numbers done out, with us, jim lebenthal, steve weiss and cnbc contributor, ali mccartney, managing directo