>> and who does that remind you of, by the way, with twitter we're waiting for news pending we don't know exactly what that news is, but we should point out that none of the subsequent tweets from mr. musk has poured water on his earlier tweet that c thanks for watching, everybody >> "closing bell" starts right now. it is the 7th of august and it's time for "the closing bell." tesla's ceo elon musk suggesting he wants to take his company private. could that really happen we'll discuss coming up. activist and investor car icon comes out swinging against the cign groups. disney and snap will report earnings in about an hour. i'll tell you the key numbers to watch. and a new report says the

administration is telling technology companies that their trade policies are going to help their businesses we have that story coming up "closing bell" starts right now. good afternoon and welcome to "the closing bell." >> happy birthday, wilfred >> thank you very much great to be here and ware e're g to get to all those stories in a moment but first let's check in on the markets. the dow is up 0.6% as we speak s&p up a little less than that as is the nasdaq but green across the screen. we're watching s&p very particularly to see if it touches a new high it hasn't been above 2,872 since back in january. but we begin with that shocking tweet this afternoon

from elon musk saying he's considering taking tesla private. stock now halted >> what we've got right now, michelle and wilfred is the idea that tesla shares are at 367.25. all of this happening because of a tweet that happened at 12:48 p.m. eastern time. let's take you through the time line that first tweet setting off a fire storm in the markets, am considering taking tesla private at $420. funding secured. now, there was a little bit of hemming and hawing about maybe this was a hack, maybe he was serious about it, whether or not he was joking about it but all of a sudden things became a little bit clear as he responded in drips and drabs to people tweeting him on twitter the next one in response to a question about whether or not he would retain control of the company. i don't have a controlling vote now and wouldn't expect any shareholder to have one if we go

private. then he followed up with a couple other tweets. high hope is all current investors remain with tesla even if we are private. would create a special purpose fund enabling anyone to already stay with tesla. already doing that with spacex investments. another follow up with a twitter user out there saying would tesla shareholders be able to participate? absolutely and super appreciative of tesla shareholders will ensure their prosperity in any scenario at that point 2:08 p.m. eastern time is when trading was halted for an official news pending announcement from tesla. 2:13 p.m. he comes out and says again shareholders could either sell at $420 or hold shares and go private i would also point this out in just the last couple of moments or so another tweet came out with elon musk saying in response to a question saying basically, yes, liquidity events

would be limited like in spacex if the question was could we still invest in tesla once it goes private yes, musk says, but liquidity would be limited to every six months or so 2:08 p.m. eastern time the last time they put shares in trading out there. elon musk just tweeting out a response we will tell you when this story comes to a head when the actual announcement comes up. but let's not forget prior to this tweet storm that was setoff the shares actually traded above where they were halted right now because of a financial times report saying that sources familiar say that the saudi private investment fund has taken a stake upwards of nearly 5% possibly in those share and that's what propelled those shares up more than 8.5% at one point, and then of course the tweet storm from elon musk came

out. back over to you >> and the author of that financial times report will be joining us in just a couple minutes. before we get to the ft reporter joining us as always cnbc market commentator michael santolli for more tan what this special fund could look like, and there's still a lot to be found to have it fully funded as he suggests >> so the idea he puts out there there might be some kind of private special fund where existing shareholders could essentially move over their existing in tesla and not move over to take the company private, presumably he mentioned fidelity has one with spacex, they are just one of the venture capital investors in spacex and other companies you see. uber and all the rest. and they allow retail investors to participate in that through some sort of a fund. wouldn't be that complicated

but here's where it would burke potentially in favor of this, any investor that would move over their shares therefore reduces the overall cost, he's not buying their own shares out. it's not as if he has to take the entire market value versus debt >> the entire market cap at $420 is almost $72 million, right we assume oh, this is going to be an lbo. not necessarily, right but the biggest lbo in history is only $44 bellion. you're only getting up to $60 billion. this is tremendous amount of money he would have to raise where do you get all this money? >> there's already a trillion dollars of debt on the balance sheet. not only that, let's say something like this happened and

you found a consortium of investors to buy the company out, he still needs billions of additional down the road wouldn't it be easier to raise new money for business purposes when you're also doing this other transaction? i think bottom line he says he just doesn't want it be a public company anymore. >> we're going to talk about the saudi angle. if he was buying all the shares himself because he felt it was super under valued if he's not doing that it's because he doesn't want to face questions on the earnings call and face the short salers. >> he probably feels he's able to do more things, take more risks, operate in a long-term way than deal with public investors and their constant demands. >> he sounded miserable in the last two conference calls. as you might imagine musk got hundreds of replies to his

tweet. he tweeted, no and he's bluffing, great poker play, total gambler. and can i buy private shares using bit coins, please say yes. and role pd tweeting is this a weed joke, because $420 the price is also a reference to pot i am told, wilfred >> nevertheless the tweets have continued to the extent that is almost certainly not it case we should say he's continuing to tweet. we'd love to hear from him if he's watching. mr. musk, please call into the show i'm sure shareholders would hear from you directly on this extraordinary afternoon. >> john told you about the ft investment into tesla which initially moved the stock. also joining us is james from consumer edge research for more on today's tesla action.

good to have you here. arash, tell us what you know and do you think is there a connection between the saudi investment and tesla and his desire to go private >> okay, let me start there and give you some background on our story because that's fundamentally what prompted all of this. i've been working on this for several weeks and what we learned if you remember when the crown prince came to the u.s. in march he did a tour of the country, went to the east coast, the west coast around that time or soon thereafter the saudi sovereign wealth fund which is his vehicle to drive economic change in the country and oil wealth, they expressed an interest in buying primary shares, newly issued shares from tesla at that time for whatever reason elon musk did not act on their interest and so they decided with the help of jp morgan chase as their

banker to buy shares in the market and they quietly built-up to close to 5% in tesla stocks, which i haven't done the recent calculations because of today's move, but that would be somewhere in the range of 2 to $3 billion of tesla share. there had been interest in buying primary shares, but as far as what we know now, there's not been any further discussions about funding any kind of take over or anything of that matter. we gave mr. musk a few hours to respond to our story this morning, we did hear from him. and about 30 minutes after we published he went on this tweet storm. >> do you feel this tweet storm was in response to the news you broke that the saudis were building their own position, or whether this kind of move is in concert with each other? >> i can definitely tell you that tesla and mr. musk were well aware we were planning to publish this story so whether the timing is coincidental or not i don't have direct evidence of that.

but they had several hours notice we were published this story. and therefore his actions followed and we asked for comment and tesla declined to comment. >> it appears he's tweeted again. definitely know for shares all shareholders remain, will be smoother and less disruptive as a private company. goes to what we were talking about with mike santolli did they even have any discussion, musk and the saudis or did he just ignore them any details? >> my sources tell me musk is in touch with the saudis. he's been messaging. he's fully aware of their share holding. and another person i spoke with today also in the know remember they brought a $3.5 million worth stake in uber a couple years ago and ever since that caught musk's attention and

they've been in touch since then according to my sources. if you follow the saudi investment model, they've promised $20 billion, up to $20 billion in the infrastructure fund >> i was going to ask you about soft bank, when the news came out the first thing i thought was musk and soft bank because they've got those billions and billions available right now within that vision fund. >> i do cover soft bank. i don't think this is something they're looking at i know they've done this higher up with gm earlier this year but i do not believe they're looking at tesla based on my reporting. >> james, what's your take on all of this where and particularly that price level of $420 >> first of all, thanks for having me. good afternoon and happy birthday i want to be very careful here the only thing i can say for sure there are a lot of busy lawyers. so you want to be very careful

about reading too much into it that said we cover the automotive industry. you almost can't pay somebody to talk about the f-150 or silver rodo right now everyone is focused on the next generation if you go back for the second quarter conference call, elon was very clear to put his software team and new hires around that often in the forefront of the conversation. he had them on the call with him. so i'm not surprised to hear there's this profound interest among i would imagine an international community of futurests to take part in ev revolution but really a mobility revolution in which tesla is extremely competitive. so there absolutely is something to this, i think, and this is the argument that going private might make more sense than remaining sort of a very volatile conversation in the public market. >> james, clearly your price

target before today was 3.85 what do you think was the motivation here? is it purely to escape things like earnings calls, as it is we're sort of learning the structure wouldn't involve mr. musk buying more shares himself. >> again, we're trying to solve the puzzle here with very little details. so i don't want to go too far in terms of the structure, whatever would be contemplated or not contemplated look, what i would say is at the end of the day it's very difficult and takes a lot of time and many billions of dollars to serve the mass market even among luxury brands in the $35 to $55 million price point to do that globally requires more time and lot more money, obviously. i just don't know that the markets -- even when companies like this show progress who haven't seen the bears

capitulating if everyone's kind of stuck in the mud on the conversation what's the benefit of being public anymore and the discussion we have even with those that agree with us, you know, it's so long-term in nature when we talk about valuation and our outlook. it almost again speaks to why being public >> arash, that's a big question we ask a lot here as we see the number of public companies in the world shrink and shrink and shrink when he talks about going private, it's going to take a lot of billions to do it and yes, the market gives him a lot of credit already with this massive multiple bought got any theories where this money would come from or what's going on here >> my colleagues and i have spoken to bankers very close to tesla. no one was aware of this based on our sourcing so far so this would come as a shock to people in the know i saw alex sherman tweeting something very similar in the

last hour as well. no one in our network and people who provided funded loans knew so that makes a difference and i believe 27% of its growth is on loan to people who are betting against share price decline. if this is half-baked plan it's not real if it's a joke, there would be serious consequences based on our reading of securities law. so that's something you can't lose sight of. this is company that's a battle ground between bulls and bears and at the epicenter of this is this wild entrepreneur that's achieved a lot of things and pulled off things no one believed in. but there's still questions if it's real. >> it would be one of his motivations. >> james, with all that in mind and the uncertainty around whether this does indeed happen

or not, your price target before today was 385. you've had a huge bump up to that for free if it were what would you advise clients to take some profit given that we're halfway there? >> well, look, i want to be clear as well what consumer edge is we're not a trading house, don't have any banking business. we are strictly speaking research only. our 380 target price is predicated on a future paradigm on call it $380 a year production which is stated goal for 2020 for approaching a million units per year we do think to the extent they outperform our expect eggs on the profitability side, on the cash flow side there's certainly room to run here and when you do talk to bulls, i think there may have been some on earlier in your show today talking about the $420 price target quarter to quarter, though, it's

strarld tricky again which is why this such a compelling question to ask again, public versus private we think as long as they remain on track, there is a lot of runway to scale globally in the mass market luxury brands. >> okay, gents, thank you both very much. arash and james joining us there to discuss tesla let's get back to the broader markets which are higher 162 points on the dow. joining us today, good afternoon to you all matt, i'll start with you. another sort of pretty positive steady summer day which is encouraging. >> when you get a slow day like this and get a market up 162 on a quiet matter, this is good sign for the market. that's where the market seems to want to go so why get in the way of it? we've got a lot of head winds

we've been able to go through. we keep saying what happens if trump does this with tariffs, it doesn't. what happens if technology fails. it doesn't this is good news for the market >> taking tesla private, it highlights this issue in like really bold, stock buy backs, the elimination of equities or reduction of the number of equities out there period. to what degree are you worried when goalman sax says there's going to be a billion dollars worth of buy backs is this worrying >> thanks for having us on the show you mentioned earlier in the show the number of companies has declined and it's true in the united states the number of stocks available for purchase is down by half. we're value investors and also global investors and outside the united states, however the phenomena is the exact opposite there's been a 50% increase in

the number of securities available for sale so the choices are greater overseas it's been a little easier to find stuff overseas to purchase. that said the tesla kind of highlights the dichotomy between here and overseas just in terms of the number of available options for you. >> rick, switching focus a little bit, what do you make of that japanese real wage growth and the implications it's got for it broader shape of the yield curve globally >> i think that's optimistic it's nice to see the japanese and their economy generate some good news, but i think it's a long way from success. and i think the real issue is not that they haven't made progress, but to think of it more from a benefit cost analysis strategy. how much they've invested, how much they're going to be able to unwind from any foreseeable time frame in the future and what they're actually getting what's more, how much would have occurred naturally versus the big help from the bank of japan.

i don't know those answers, but from an investors standpoint those are the questions that they're most likely thinking about. the dollar index did kind of reverse just a bit today, wilf but a minor pull back at best. and what i think is fascinating is we have a drift on the long end towards higher rates we're only 2.5 base points away from 3%, but narrow isn't a bad thing as we get ready for the two biggest pieces of data this week after the unemployment reports. of course i'm referencing ppi and cpi, these will be important at the end of the week and my guess is if they're even mildly on the hot side we should be able to cross into the 3% zone >> you mentioned outside the u.s. is where you're looking we don't have much time, give me one or two countries outside the u.s. where you think there's opportunity. >> sure, mostly in europe. japan has kind of played out as far as i can tell.

in europe we purchased a couple of companiess. one is merlin. merlin is probably unfamiliar to most of you, but you'll know their theme parks which they operate, and there are midcaps we're finding particularly in asia and latin america where we're able to deploy some assets >> matt, very quickly, tesla up to 420 or are you not certain enough on the news >> oh, wow, this news here really conflicts a lot of us as far as traders go or what you're getting as far as the price target goes as the chairman of the company. but i certainly think there's some arm situation when the rest of the people say 380, 390 and now you're getting a 420 price target, there's definitely some volatility >> guys, thanks very much. thanks have joining us still to come, white house whispers that is what tech firms are hearing from the trump administration about the trade

tesla with china what silicon valley is hearing elon musk rocking investors today about his tweet about possibly taking his company private. ahead we're going to look at just how big a potential lbo leverage buy out would be, where it would rank in lbo history ulhectllgeit done? here's a quick check on tesla as we go to break

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shares of tesla are still halted it's called news pending we assume they're going to put out a press release of some kind after elon musk tweeted that he's thinking about taking the company private. >> it was halted just after 2:00 p.m so we're looking at the best part of an hour and a half now some what of a surprise it's taken so long to get this news out after a halt but we await it. 367, the price being touted by elon musk, 420 the white house held a private meeting with tech leaders last

week >> good to have you here, david. what diz the administration tell them what were they concerned about >> thank you for having me this meeting was last thursday according to sources in the office building on the white house grounds or next to the white house. and tech went in and they had a whole wide array of white house officials to talk to from treasury to commerce to the ustr and they want to talk about tariffs. these tariffs on china, they're very concerned about the effect it might have on their business. and the white house essentially told them, don't worry, we've got a long game, we're trying to do this to help you out. >> is the prize here, david, is the story here that tech is much more worried than perhaps is being let on or that the trump administration is much more worried about how they're framing it publicly to investors? >> i think what's very clear here that is a major concern of these groups and companies that went in to talk to the white house. and we obviously are in news landscape where there's a lot of

concerns for large tech companies and i obviously think this is big one and not one that always gets the front page headlines, but it certainly did. i think the white house understands they need to be liazing with the big tech companies. all these issues are what clearly why the white house is trying to do more outreach >> what did they say, like you will eventually get what or what's ultimately going to be good for these tech companies? >> so the case that they're making is that these tariffs will essentially help them and give them sort of more heft to work with china and get china to change policies like forced intellectual change policies and essentially the tech response to the tariffs so far has been listen, there's other ways to address these issues we've had with cheina for a long time it's essentially a dispute how you go about doing that.

>> do you know about the representatives from the companies, i assume apple was there. who else was there >> we didn't report that what i can tell you the trade groups involved were from the major tech groups and there were some individual companies as well >> but you can't confirm any of the names? >> not at this point, no >> david, thank you very much for joining us from axios. let's take some individual stocks to watch today. dean foods, the announcement overshadowed the company's earnings beat so that's stopped their dropping, not popping. down some 14%. >> hertz global soared after posting a narrow than expected loss for the second quarter. revenue jumped >> and chinese web giant baidu,

and shares are lower for baidu you can see down around 3%. >> i think that's one of the most interesting stories of the week, google considering going back into china with all the search gen. >> with all the restrictions >> after sergei pulled them out in 2010 because it reminded him of soviet union when he was little >> that chinese protectionism means they have global rivals. no other country in the world does china was able to get in that position because of -- >> what we have is the news now, guys, because weave now an e-mail that was sent to tesla employees from elon musk and the title of it dated today is "taking tesla private." i'll start with a couple of excerpts here. earlier today i announced thathat i'm considering taking tesla private at a price of $420

a share. i wanted you to know my rationale for this and why i think this the best way forward. first a final decision has not been made but the reason for doing this is all about creating the environment for tesla. he goes onto explain some of those aspects. he says i fundamentally believe we are at our best when everyone is focus on executing. then he goes through how i would envision being private would mean for all shareholders including our employees. first i would like to structure this so all shareholders have a choice either they can stay investors at a private tesla or be bought out which is 20% premium for our stock price following a 2q earnings call. if they were to be bought out, this would be at a premium

third, the intention is not to merge space, and tesla they will continue to have separate ownership and governance structures. finally, this has nothing to do with accumulating control for myself i own about 20% of the company now and don't envision that being substantially different after any deal is completed. this proposed -- this proposal to go private would ultimately be finalized through a vote of our shareholders if the process ends the way i expect it will a private tesla will ultimately be an enormous opportunity for all of us. either way thefuture is very bright, and we'll keep fighting to achieve our mission thanks, signed elon. now, i've read what we consider to be some of the relevant aspects and excerpts from that you can go to cnbc.com right now for the full text of that particular letter. but that's the news pending.

it turns out elon musk was certainly serious about this, now the fallout remains. >> we're going to bring in mike santolli >> he doesn't make reference to how he would fund this >> there's no referencing here how exactly the mechanics would actually go. just this kind of broad strokes macro picture of the reasons why he has the philosophy of running a company the way he wants to, what he determines to be in the best long-term interest of shareholders without the distractions of short sellers or public company shareholders. but there's no mention with regard to capital structure, financing, bank debt or otherwise or what the actual kind of move would be. i mean details are still sparse but that's what we read from this e-mail right now, guys. >> don, stick with us. mike, one of things that stands

out to me are phrases like this where he says here is what i envision my hope is basically what i'm trying to accomplish is. nothing is definite on this yet. and does that surprise you, therefore, we have this announcement by tweet earlier today when it seems there's still a lot up in the air. >> you, it doesn't come off as a corporate plan where essentially there's been a process under way where they can talk about exactly what the state of that process is of potentially taking this company private and by the way, michelle, that's exactly what i honed in on, which is there's nothing in this statement from elon musk that makes reference or substantiates his initial tweet which says funding secured. so that really to me thbig open question here. is that true, when he said initially the funding is secured? if not, where does that stand. so really a lot of questions and i completely understand the objectives he lays out here. it was just like we were talking about a while ago, he doesn't

like a public company, and he thinks it would be detrimental and really not be distracted by being accountable to the public markets. but for now he's accountable to the public markets and whatever he puts out there should be -- >> and speaking of the public markets tesla is set to resume trading at 3:45 p.m., and we'll see how the stock trades after we see this letter that confirms >> 3:45 p.m. eastern time is the time they're actually going to resume nasdaq trading. 367.25 the last trade there. i would also point out something that was interesting, just back on june or i want to say july 17th thereabouts on that weekend, you remember a tweet from elon musk in reply to another tweet saying the shorts had about three weeks until they

were in trouble. it's curious, the timing isn't exact there but he'd made hint of this idea in a tweet last month he put out there as well so just something to keep in mind as we talk about this discussion here. >> talking to us that they gave tesla a couple of hours to respond before they broke the story about the saudi investment in the company and of course these tweets from elon musk followed pretty soon after the publication of the story, as you said, claiming it was funded and now we don't have details of that funding. do you think this is knee jerk reaction, these tweets from elon musk, potentially to ward off further investment from the saudis >> it's interesting. i wouldn't be surprised if there's some other kind of tactical motive there. it's hard to say exactly what it is if you look at the expans of how much capital is going to be required, if this is ever going to be taken private, if you can really contemplate it it's

really going to require large strategic investors somewhere else a lot of people think it didn't have the cash flow to support the data it had right now. banks are not allowed to lend just any multiple of cash flow anymore in the regulatory environment. so you would have to think it would be large believers, and of course he'd probably be counting on existing shareholders not wanting to exit the stock. it's pretty complicated and a lot moving forward >> it would explain i think $420 cash, isn't it trade closer to that price if in fact the world believes him when it reopens at 375, does it get any closer to that number? >> i don't think it's going to approach 420 if there's questions about the financing, with regulatory backdrop or anything else they don't trade close to the deal

price. so in this instance i don't know that it really gets up there it's really a statement of intent and really a plan to make a plan as far as we know right now. so i don't think the market is going to price that in >> mike, particularly on that it says in the final paragraph, it's a vote for those shareholders to essentially give up their share at an arbitrary price. it doesn't really matter what the number is if there's no cash changing hands >> sure. you'd have to have some kind of offer out there formally speaking for a vote to take place presumably i don't think we're going to jump the gun on that look, i mean worst-case scenario this public wish to take the company private could shakeout some shorts, it could exert some pain on there. he's got a certain market threshold. he's got convertible debt that goes in the money. if the stock gets to a certain price, there's a lot of things

that could be helped out probably from his point of view and maybe a deal could be struck in the end >> mike, you know what, we've got a guy who knows about financing lbos elon musk has just tweeted investor support is just confirmed. only reason this is not certain is it is contingent on a shareholder vote jim stewart from "the new york times" also joins us martin, you know all about lbos, leverage buy outs. this would be the biggest ever do you believe anything here what do you make of this situation? >> well, if it gets done as a classic lbo it will definitely be the deal of the decade. we won't have to wait for a vote on that one. you know, you're talking about, you know, in a classic lbo financing, a very heavy load of debt which is uncern given his talk about all the shareholders wanting to stay in, another talk

about a strategic investor coming in. w so we really know-nothing about the classic structure. but it were to be a primarily debt financing, you're talking about a very large slug of did the. you know, the biggest it -- >> martin, and i'm a simple person there's 171 million shares out there, i think multiply that by 420 and i get to nearly $72 billion. >> that's right. >> is that roughly what we're talking about? >> that's right. and the biggest lbo in today's dollars is still the rjr nabisco deal which would be about $60 billion in todays dollars. it's not something you could say is absolutely impossible what's going for it is that the private equity firms are sitting

on a trillion dollars in cash. this will be the biggest lbo year since 2007. and as far as financing in the higher bond market the higher bond yield supply has been shrinking in the last few years, so there is demand for paper >> jim, i want to bring you in here we've got a full page and a half letter from elon musk. a whole slew of tweets throughout the afternoon, but still a lot of questions to be answered >> well, frankly, i'm kind of flabbergasted by the whole thing. i realize we're in a new era of tweeting but to make a major buy out offer for a company of this size is typically an extremely choreographed set of steps, which involves lawyers, outside counsel, investment bankers, fairness opinions, valuations, and there's usually a massive amount of work that goes into this and a massive amount of information disclosed. even if he does follow up with a letter i have to assume the sec

is going to be all over this >> and jim, we remind you that the stock is expected to start trading again in about three minutes time of course we'll have that live for you. it's been suspended for about an hour and a half. what is your take about saying it's funded, no details of that funding in the letter but saying the investors are there, but saying we're waiting on a vote from shareholders? >> first of all, i would say this had better be true because that is something that would be a securities law violation if it turns out he made some kind of false representation in here so i'm going to assume that part of it is true, which means there has been a fair amount of work going into this. but i still have to question his judgment and the way he's been saying these things. a couple weeks ago he made a forecast it was going to be profitable highly speculative it's not profitable yet.

and now he's talk about something else that hasn't happened occasionally, you know, he has complained about speculation in the press and he might have trouble financing this venture he got curious over some suggestions like that. and this is kind of putting a thumb to his nose and, you know, rubbing the faces of the doubters in this by saying, oh, i've got, you know, bank financing for a massive by outherou out here i think it does point clearly to getting the stock price up, which is fine as long as everything he said is true and i think it is important to separate what is an actual fact, which he says he has bank financing, that is fact. two, there will be a by out, that is speculation. that requires many events that are out of his control and we just don't know yet whether that will happen >> we're a minute and a half away from tesla reopening. on that point from the ft, he said thatbankers that he spoke

with in theory should know if elon musk wanted to take the company private, really had no idea and they were surprised as well and so that's kind of how you normally get your funding, right? maybe he's got some other route, but certainly we don't have an answer yet on where the money would come from. >> sure, if it's a taking money private transaction, you're either lining up investors alongside you or you're going to pbuying the money somehow. really, this is too big a nult for that he would have bankers involved bankers would bridge your way to that also his latest tweet saying investor approval support confirmed, what does that mean if you had a plan why did it dribble it out in a cryptic tweet during market hours and only later when the market asked you to put out a broader statement did you put this letter out there >> let's look at this intraday price chart as we wait for the

stock to restart trading the price he put out in his tweet is 420, opened the day at 341 and we are awaiting the resumption of trade. >> the biggest spike is still on the news from the ft that the saudis had taken a stake that spike we saw just between 1:00 >> i should point out the indications around that 3:45 open and thereabouts ended the day up about 8.5%. but the indications going into that open was about 370. >> mike santolli we're at 375. it was at 367.25 so people are believing it

this up to 380, but we're not up to that 420 price. >> look, the stock traded, if i'm not mistaken check what the all-time high is the stock trading here kind of on its own steam at some point in history, and so you have to at least build into your probability set he gets a deal done, gets some investors done and all the rest gets thrown in the myx. >> i want to go back to the most recent tweet we had from elon musk he said investor support is confirmed. only reason this is not certain is its contingent on a shareholder vote so clearly shareholders could still block this but if the money is there to deliver a 420 price target, then perhaps he does have all the things in line you were talking about were necessary >> i don't know exactly what he means by investor support is confirmed. but it certainly is suggesting that he has the financing and

participation lined up and like i said that better be true you can't just make claims like that if you can't back them up and by the way the shareholder vote, that may be a very big if, a big contingency. i don't know nearly enough if i was a shareholder i would have no idea yet how i would vote on this if that's true, this valuation may be low the shareholders are going to need their own opinion, their own set of investment bankers to come up with valuation here >> joining us on the phone, a shareholder of tesla how will you vote if this comes to fruition? >> well, i will vote along with what elon suggests, and i'll tell you exactly why there is no fundamental

valuation for this company shareholders like myself or some of my clients or even my kid, we don't own tesla because we can do a discounted cash flow and come up with some valuation. we own tesla because we believe in the entrepreneur, the visionary that is elon musk. and i got to be honest with you, i think everybody should have having like that in their portfolio. it's a visionary play and we're betting on that. we want to own this stock for a very, very long time if it's private, fine. as long as we can remain shareholders, fantastic. >> what do you think of $420 >> i think he as a very unique sense of humor -- >> is that a pot reference >> that's my first -- yeah, that's what i would think for sure, don't you? >> i don't know anything about

420. >> i can't believe he's suggesting a buy out with a price and using a joke around the price. the price will be what you have to vote on when you as a shareholder decide whether to approve this or not. 420 -- if you decided not to keep your stock within this special purpose vehicle, would 420 be enough for you to give it up >> no, remember if it's a cash offer then i would be discouraged. hefollowed those tweets up immediately saying that shareholders could remain investors as they have done in spacex privately >> they could, but they won't all necessarily do that. so do you think those investors that would rather have the cash would take $420? would that be enough for ayou? >> i'll tell you what i would do i would sell part of my client shares, and hold part. that's what i would do >> do you known any of the spac

or fidelity funds? >> i do not. >> why is that is it that you're more into the cars >> no, we just started trading publicly traded shares >> quint, stick with us. ware near the record day high for tesla. we're at 381 either way this news is certainly push things much higher for the top jim, i want to bring you back in what's your take on the news earlier in the day which was the initial reason the shares jumped about this initial investment from the saudi wealth fund and then the timing from elon musk soon after that story hit? >> i still have a lot of questions about that, but i could understand why the stock would jump a big equity investment like that is a huge vote of confidence in the company.

and i can readily understand why people would want to jump in on that why he then would immediately follow up with the tweet, i have no idea. unless the saudi investments was actually part of the going private deal you know, i'm just speculating here, but it seems possible to me that they would have been approached as equity investors as part of the buy out and somehow that got garbled on the news release i'd like to know more. i think there's a lot of questions tesla is going to have to answer. the sec will make them answer it if they don't volunteer it themselves >> what did you think that the reference may actually be in reference to pot >> that's ridiculous we're talking about potentially a $72 billion deal here affecting many investors, employees, investors this isn't something to be

joking about if indeed there's been bank financing, there has been some valuation models to come up with a price. i assume if this was plucked out of thin air as a joke, that is outrageous >> let's get some reaction now from tesla short seller gabe hoffman from capital management. what are you thinking today? >> well, it's interesting. your last guest talked about out of thin air, and plate tracker information on elon musk's jet which was private, indicates it was in the air until 1:50 p.m. eastern time headed to rio now that is not indicative of a company that's about to undergo a serious by out that indicates they have made plans to use the 420 reference when he also talks about funding secure ind his tweet you then compare that to the statement on tesla's blog where there was no

mention of funding whatsoever in that statement >> so, gabe, just talk us through, though, the feeling that the fact the share price is $8 or $9 off its all-time high regardless of what you think about some of these tweets and the statement you must be hurting and how fearful are you that this does get taken privately? >> i'm adding to my short flow as we speak. i believe that the former chairman of the sec was correct saying this could be market manipulation and could be market fraud. elon musk tweeted that funding was secured. and unless he comes up with some proof that funding was actually secured in some kind of subsequent filing then he has committed market manipulation, and he has committed market fraud. finally i would note that there's no mention ven of hiring investment banks as investment advisers or hiring outside legal

counsel to even advise on a prospective transaction. so it is clear to me elon musk made this tweet while he was on his private jet without much of a thought and then the sec called the company and told them you better halt the stock and make that disclosure >> we have no idea if he was on that plane or not or how accurate flight tracker is or not. but to you, would that have to mean he knew $72 billion in total was present or much less than that given the structure he's at least mooted about >> well, legally it means that funding secured, he has to come up with how that $72 billion will come about, i e more debt, committed bank lines, committed equity furthermore there is not even a mention of any approving shareholders in this potential transaction. and note that many of his shares

are owned by mutual funds who could not own private companies in this size or this structure >> mr. hoffman, he clearly wants to hurt people like you. this is something very personal for elon musk. what would you say to him? and you read all the analysis about why he might be doing them, and one of them always comes up squeezing the shorts like you >> i have been a hedge fund manager for 18 years and owned my own firm for 16 and in all that time i have gone long and short many thousands of stocks the greatest frauds have always been run by chief executives who are obsessed with short sellers rather than running their own company. >> quint, just quickly as a long shareholder your response. we've got 20 seconds before we have to take the break >> i think he is obsessed with shorts and that's a mistake. and i think going private will

take that completely off the table. >> all right, everybody. thank you so much for coming in, joining us, getting on the set we have six people involved in this conversation. really appreciate it it is a tremendous story in so many way coming up next, the closing count down and then a huge hour su earnings featuring disney's relts and we'll talk more tesla, too, i'm sure

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welcome back to "the closing bell." about 90 seconds left of trade opened add 343.84. hovering around 375 at the moment of course the quoted price elon musk was set for a buy at is 420. we got to about 380 and we're around 375 right now as we approach the close fascinating story. more to come after the close today. very encouraging solid gains throughout the day we held onto them and up about 0.3% not resounding but has been consistent and also bring in the sector purchase what stands out for you today? >> historic s&p small cap historic, moving in that direction on the nasdaq 100 and only 12 points away from

historic highs on the s&p 500. what we need is a break out on the new high list is apple, some railroads and a few pharmaceuticals, we need to have a broader break out. >> there goes the bell at the nasdaq is nextgen, and that does it for the first hour of "the closing bell." michelle, back to you. welcome to "the closing bell." i'm michelle cureearuso-cabrera. here's how we're finishing the day on wall street the s&p 500 2,858. the nasdaq composite higher by 0.3% it's going to be another busy

hour for earnings this afternoon. kate rogers is on the fast food beat with wendies and papa john's seem amody from match, avis, and hostess just to name a few. >> let's have a look in on tesla shares soaring on elon musk announced he's considering taking the company private >> what we have guys right now are shares closing at 379.50 so far today nearly 30 million shares of tesla have traded in the open market. that's versus an average of around 9 to 10 million on an average day over the course of the past maybe two weeks or month or so. trading was halted when a block post came out with regard to a memo, a letter elon musk sent to tesla employees. in that letter he explained the

rationale for wanting to take the company private for 420 a share. what was sparse on details, the actual structure or financing on it what we do have are the broad strokes or all shareholders have a choice either you sellout at $420 or remain a shareholder in the company. and the third is not to merge space, and tesla together. and they wanted to do this under the overall theme of wanting to become a private company to avoid short sale distractions and elon musk feels as though that's the best thing for the company and its stakeholders in the long-term. i should say, though, this whole thing kicked off in a tweet storm at 12:48 p.m. eastern time when he did say i'm considering taking private, funding secured.

and the saudi private investment fund had reportedly according to sources familiar with the ft taken a stake nearly up to 5% in the company. so many moving parts of the tesla story. what do we have is a stock closing just shy of $80 a share. back over to you >> great stuff thanks very much joining us to discuss all of this now is carrie and mike. i kind of thought when we got the tweets early in the day this might put to bed this almost polarized we polarized bear debate. >> the fundamentals as we know them today don't support a share price of $420, which he has said in jest or not is the target for taking this company private.

a lot of the questions that dom mentioned remain the big outstanding. i view this all as a statement of intent by musk. it's a subjective, an aspiration to run his private business. no details, are we talking to lawyers or bankers, do you truly have funding secured, even a letter from a bank in the old days it was called a high highly confident letter. none of that is clear. it's just about do you think the business long-term is actually going to change the world and be a massive market ev maker, electric vehicle maker or is it really just kind of a financing scheme in search of a long-term business >> carrie, what do you think >> well, i think it's amazing that you have two very popular media celebrities involved in the news on the same story so elon musk has a tendency to speak his mind when he wants

about his company and about people who own or do not own his stock. he's built something, he's built something before it has nothing to do with valuation. and he may or may not be interested in spending $2 billion or $20 billion i'm sure he's got $100 billion if he wanted to he could devoted to tesla it doesn't change how people who look at the company fundamentally see it but it does change those who are execulati ex speculating or -- >> you don't have a position in tes all, right >> no, we don't. we don't >> charlie, weigh in here. what do you think of about everything we've talked about for the last two hours which has been this tremendously atypical way of announcing that you'd like to take a company private

>> so i was an investment banker for 21 years and i did a lot of leverage buy outs. and i have to say i find this irresponsible and disturbing >> i'm sorry, we've got to interrupt you -- excuse me, earnings are out >> disney earnings meeting wall street estimates the company reporting adjusted earnings of $1.87 per share versus estimates of $19.05 per share. revenue also coming in below those wall street estimates. revenues of $15.23 billion just a share below the $15.4 billion estimated. i'm going to tell you what the quote is from bob ooiger here. if you look at the factors that were driving the disappointing results at the film studio they say growth was partially offset

by film cost impairment related to anime films that won't be released no mention of solo there's some speculation there could be right down on solo. and looking at one surprising area of strength was actually the broadcasting business. broadcasting operating income, and revenues both growing much better than expected revenues up 11% in the quarter while revenue grew 43% in the quarter. cable revenues up 2% cable revenues operating lost 5% so the one segment that outperformed expectations was broadcast which drove media networks higher whereas cable was higher than expected i'm sure we'll hear more about cable and the outlook et cetera on the earnings call and i'm going to continue to dig

through here >> stock is up 2.5% at this point. >> but all that is doing is getting back the august gains, august 7th so a week ago it was trading at 113.360. they didn't miss their own numbers but missed wall street numbers. it looks like it's a little bit sloppy this is a quarter where they were fighting a hostile bid for a big strategic asset. and going forward it's all going to be about streaming strategy and whether that's going to work >> as you say streaming is the future, media, media networks still ahead. but the theme parks a bit of miss that's been a very important source of growth to offset the declines >> without a doubt as i said a bit softer around the edges i think in aggregate the numbers wouldn't make too much of it just because of the run the stock has had.

i think people have chased their way back into the this stock after the fox deal didn't escalate further >> charlie, sorry to cut you off earlier on tesla what's the number on disney is this an opportunity for you to buy >> i think it is interesting that broadcast is strong i think that's coming from political spending around the country of how strong that political advertising is on it be as opposed to cable nets which are very weak. espn continues to lose subscribers who are paying for programming. recently they've been good at taking their off cable and looking at theme park and broadcast and today we'll have to look at what people are focusing on. >> julia >> it's interesting here looking at the disney results and that cable network division which is always under so much scrutiny for the question of cord

cutting. it says here there's some additional costs associated with the launch of espn plus. we're hoping to learn more how it did in that earnings call they said the increase of espn was due to affiliate revenue growth and various other things, et cetera. they say lower advertising revenue at espn was due to decreased depressions from viewership partially offset by higher rates this ongoing thing where fewer people are watching in part because of cord cutting and then you have the higher rates and also the nba final games there were a couple of these things in the quarter, but still the overall numbers slightly less than the wall street expectations i think it's worth noting disney does not give guidance so a lot of an les would like for disney to be giving that guidance but a lot of these topics are going to require follow up questions in the call.

>> did i hear you earlier say it sounds like a lumpy number for spending when it comes to rollout? >> there was that tech company they bought that specializes in streaming live sports. they said there was an operating loss in the quarter because of that investment, higher marketing costs but also that investment to create that direct to consumer espn plus service which launched in april. interestingly this is the first full quarter where we could get results on how well that service is doing no indication how many subscribers it has, but hopefully one of it analysts will ask that on the call. >> mike, a lot of people have said, yes, this is what they need to do they've got to go director to consumers. but in the meantime until they get there it will be expensive and it will be bumpy >> sure, absolutely and to julia's point of bam tech, since they took control of

bam tech it is a loss making sort of start-upy type business are in the cable networks revenue and income line. it's a little bit of an accounting line. but it's no doubt about can you make this transition from the bundle to the skinny bundle to the direct to consumer spending in all those sequence? the rule has been the sub losses have slowed down a bit >> it's snap and julia has got the details for that julia? >> snap beating expectations on the top and bottom line. adjusted earnings per share 14 cents. revenues beating estimates at $262 million versus estimates at $250 million. for that all important daily active user number, the company says that it has $188 million

daily active users now, that's down from the $192 million that were estimated and also down from where the $191 million from the first quarter of the year. so lower daily active users than expected and also fewer than the first quarter of the year. but it's worth noting that for the first very time the company actually announces monthly active user, $100 million monthly active users and for the first time they're giving revenue guidance they've never before provided financial guidance saying they expect 264,000,290 million for revenue q3 this is at thelower end of the range for what analysts had expected but appears the adjusted guidance for q3 is above estimates. so that daily active user decline does not seem to be impacting the stock which is now up about 8.5%.

but we're going to continue to dig in here as they provide that financial guidance on the company. >> julia, thank you very much for that and mike, it did impact the stock right away and fell initially. but clearly has rallied on the focus of this revenue beat and more importantly this guidance, which is new and that's kind of in line >> and keep in mind a 44% revenue increase so you're talking about a huge top line growth story on a very small base that's still burning a lot of cash. so it's kind of like you have to believe that the user base is going to stay pretty strong and it can obviously ramp revenues at a similar rate for a while to come >> keri, what do you think of snap or business here? >> interesting on disney, the one place they beat the numbers was broadcasting, which i think was only 8% of operating income. so not to get too excited about the a part of the company that

isn't as meaningful. and we are where everyone thought the revenues would be i believe they had $3 million movies that were out in the last four months or five months, the incredibles 2, the avengers and what's the other one black panther. so i think it's disappointing, and they've got a lot now to work onto prove that they are spending $71 billion wisely on the fox deal on snap it's a company that has lost its identity and doesn't have core comp tense perhaps if they can talk through on the call what it is that they've rectified, why going forward they do have a place as a platform or as a hardware company. it's a little bit of a mismatch. i'm rooting for them we don't own it, but it's nice to see the stock is up it looked to see the stock would

move sharply one way or another on the news. >> julia has got some more details on those snap numbers for us >> i spoke to tim stone who is snap's cfo, recently joined the company from amazon. he said the snap community continues to grow this quarter, strengthen our advertising business which grew 48% year over year demonstrates the progress we're making to scale our business for the long-term tim stone also talked about that monthly active user sharing they have only 100 million monthly active users in the u.s. and canada just to clarify they've never revealed how many monthly active users and now saying they have over 100 million users in the u.s. and canada. that's compared to 180 million daily active users they have worldwide. he says that's already quite large in the world's monetizing

markets, kind of spelling out the fact they have more room to grow in revenue and compared to twitter reach, twitter reach has less than 70 million active monthly users just in the u.s. and some interesting commentary from evan spiegel in his prepared remarks which are already published explaining the 2% decline in daily active users is what he calls the disruption cause by our redesign. so attributing that drop to the redesign and in terms of the increase in revenue what's driving that, they said it was increase of global international sales in terms of digital sales from small mid-sized businesses and the fact they now have automized systems in place >> very busy 20 minutes or so for you julia. thank you very much for that charlie, even if revenues at

snap are growing at 4.5%, the fact revenues are down how concerning is that >> this doesn't pass the rip van winkle twes, which is if you go to sleep-in five years could you be confident if you woke up in five years would this business be around? there's nothing to say this business will be around. >> because facebook will eat all of its bite. >> right, there's nothing to stop a new service from coming in that's exactly right facebook can offer a competing product. lots of these people like my space has gone away. so these ups and downs in the quarter is just not going to mean that much i just don't think this is an investable company >> we have earnings on poppy john's >> this looking to be a pretty ugly second quarter for papa

johnny john's analysts had been looking for 425.5 million. system wide north american comps are down 6%. the street had been looking for a drop around 4.9% comps had been down for two quarters since the founder and ceo made comments on a conference call. their new range from $2.05 and the stock is down around 5% and their conference call to the new ceo steve richy will be on the call and taking questions from analysts and now moving onto wendy's eps coming in at 14% adjusted. they beat on revenues 411

million versus estimates of 408 million. comps up 1.8%. the restaurant point out this is their 22 nd of positive comps and that stock isn't doing much right now, guys. back over to you >> kate, remind me the whole drama, the ousting of the cfo, all of the stuff you've bip coffering now, did any of that happen within the calendar quarter we're talking about here so that's not an excuse in theory for what are very bad numbers? >> that's right. this is for the quarter that ended june, that forbes article about the founder and ceo john snater using a word on a conference call, that posted on july 11 and the stock has been falling sense then comps had been sliding since last november. obviously this quarter isn't impacted by the most recent drama with the company, but they

clearly have more work to do we'll hear from from their leadership today >> if it happened after the quarter close -- >> the guidance was erratically lower. so they know right now almost a month's worth of business and what the run rate is following all that bed reps. so maybe that's what's essentially not giving the street any reassurance sort of the franchise is holding up in the face of that >> charlie, you a pop a john's man? >> i wish you had asked me about some stocks i liked. this is just a list of problems. absolutely not you've got no barriers entry in this business, a horrible brand that's been really tarnished it's going to be tough to bring back we love the stock market in general, but you're picking some stocks that's got real problems. >> including disney, charlie >> just quickly tesla, this reminds me of 1993 when telecom

companies were doing $10 billion bond deals this is really, really irresponsible on musk's part to be talking about that way. >> but he asked you about disney >> well, let's continue to talk about tesla. more details on the tesla story. >> there's been so much conversation already about the pain short salers are feeling today as a result of this news on multiple fronts from tesla and elon musk. probably the most famous short seller in the tesla story is jim chanos who i did have a chance to speak with not that long ago who tells me of musk and this whole story really of musk taking on the short sellers. this is quote from jim chanos. the short position is the best thing the stock has going for it musk versus the shorts is a far better narrative than tesla

versus mercedes, audis and portia delivering alpha we spoke about it on our program at noon, the halftime report where he reiterated all of the reasons why he remains short this stock. i think it's fair to say he and perhaps there are many others out there who are highly skeptical that a transactions like this could take place for many of the reasons ayou guys have already talked about, the enormous price tag whether it's $80 billion or even north of that once you roll in the debt and banking fees and stuff like that, you start getting into what was already uncharted territory, really the stratosphere of lbo-type tranan actions. we're waiting to hear what he thought about all this breaking news today the short positions the pest

thing the stock has going for it, reiterating what he said wilf, michelle >> scott, even if that's still his view, of course, that tesla versus mercedes, audi or portia is not an argument tesla can win, didhe sound nervous overall? even if he still believes his ultimate position by shorting the stock was the right one, did he sound nervous he could get squeezed out altogether? >> if you're asking me to read his temperament or his voice, it's awfully difficult to do that you know, i can't say that he sounded nervous to be quite honest with you. it was more can you believe this sort of an idea from chanos that he throws this type of news out into the marketplace in the manner of which he did, and on top of all of that, such a lofty price tag? i think there's a bit of fair

skepticism to say the least from the chanos camp today. >> mike santolli, your push back >> yeah, the shorts relish this sort of engagement as well whether they're correct or not, the fact he goes through all these hoops -- look, he seems to think getting to 5,000 model 3s a week maybe was going to take the pressure off he seemed to think maybe making the numbers on the earnings last week was going to be enough. and not having to raise capital and still the short position remains there. and it's interesting because the way he's contemplating this supposed effort to take the company private and allow paem to still have holding in the company if they wish to, it's probably still going to require he report public financials, he has public debt out there. he really want to be free of the short sellers pressure and the idea they're challenging the fact -- they don't trust him

he wants people to trust his vision and come along for the ride as opposed to juteinize along the way. >> it's got to be painful for them today, right? >> it is but it's painful in a way that we don't talk about when a stock is down 10% wow, those long mutual fund managers must be hurting today. i think it's interesting how we look at short salers being uniquely up. >> uniquely vulnerable because a short can go -- >> i think it's interesting that it's become this shooting war virtually between musk and short. >> he will again because he's a regular guest and for good reason thank you both to them for joining us and scott as well for bringing us that information from jim chanos.

the earnings is not over we'll have more next as they discuss whether to buy the media giants' stock on this dip. it's down 2% and later we're going to hear from two analysts on snap results including one who says you should stay far, f aarway from the social media stock from the social media stock despite its big earnings beat. ooh. it's up 13%. ches? who says they don't? coach mcadoo! you know, at td ameritrade, we offer free access to coaches and a full education curriculum- just to help you improve your skills. boom! mad skills. education to take your trading to the next level. only with td ameritrade.

welcome back let's have a look in how markets finished the day on wall street. the dow was up 0.5%, 126 points. s&p and bit less than that but similarly attractive chart with gaeins at the open and russell a little behind up 1.25%. a busy day for the saudis. he's acquired a 2% stake in snap chat this comes after snap reported better than expected results the stock building on its gains here, up nearly 11% on this news back to you guys >> yep, and they released their numbers after the bell mike santolli, the prince

alwaleed famous for his investments in twitter interesting, though, that social media does attract these people who think this platform is something you want to own forever. hard to know how that's going to play out >> exactly, and we'll have to wait to see. what he's back in the investing game after a period for him. and ed lee from "the new york times. david, what's your take on these numbers because clearly the stock price reacting to the beat on revenue and the guidance on revenue. but the daily average users is down >> yeah, we think the economics of this business are in real trouble and the valuation is really untethered to the fundmentals. these are people who invest in stocks like snap who just don't care in fundamentals and that works until it doesn't if you really care about risk or

fundamental risk, you've got tastto stay away from this stock. there's almost from a risk reward wr reward perspective nothing good you can say about the stock at this price >> do you read anything into that >> i think they're trying to sort of paint the forward looking picture, you know what, we're going to get there and going to get there soon. i agree, the numbers aren't great. they lost their -- 2 or $3 million on daus for the first time since they went public. this is supposed to be a growth company. we're not seeing that at this moment they did go through a redesign to make it easier for newer users to come on clearly that hasn't happened i want to hear more and get a

better sense of what's happening to the way new people are supposed to use it, how they plan to combat instagram my 13-year-old spends most of her time on instagram and doesn't spend any time on snapchat that to me was the biggest sign. >> what do you think about innovations taking place at their rival facebook >> i think one of the most difficult challenges in the world of business is to have a large firmly established incumbent with more capital resources and users than you that can simply follow whatever issues you do do make whatever in investigation you create effectively not profitable or now at least in 2007 snap lost $6 in every dollar of revenue so cash flows are significantly poor they got a take on this firmly established incumbent with a

worlds more advantage. it's a noise trader stock. people who are in the stock don't care about fundamentals pure and simple. that can be a good thing in the short-term usually in the long-term it ends up being a bad thing >> we should point out the stock there was up 10% before we started the conversation and only up 6% now time now for a cnbc news update >> here's what's happening at this hour, everyone. rick gates continuing his testimony in the paul manafort trial. he spoke about how he setup offshore bank accounts so manafort could be paid for political consulting work he did for ukrainian businessmen. he also admitted they did not report their foreign bank accounts or income to the irs. the u.s. attorney in manhattan in the nypd announcing charges against fbi individuals in a massive counterfeiting case the defendants are charged with attempting to sell more than

380,000 pairs off nike sneakers. white women made 82 cents for every dollar or about 13,600 less in annual earnings than men. and 2013 triple crown farrow had nine yearlingsu for sale you are up-to-date that's the news update michelle, back downtown to you guys >> when you've got good genes, you can charge that kind of money. coming up next we're going to have more reaction to disney

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welcome back to "the closing bell." breaking news on trade kayla has the details. >> we've just gotten news about the second set of tariffs set to go into effect against china those set to go into effect august 23rd just put ow by a u.s. trade representative. this is going to be a 25% tariff on $16 billion in imports from china, a list of which has been studied for the last month plus

by the administration. so this is yet another item that the trump administration is going to try to put on the table to try to force china to negotiate. we will see if it works or if it juste just escalates the situation further. back to you. >> bringing us that from d.c meantime disney shares reporting moments ago. >> guys, good to have you here you disappointmented ed by a mi revenue and the bottom line? >> yaim happy for the studio people are still watching the movies on the other hand, there's something for the bulls, something for the bears. the biggest negative surprise, i think, was the high cost of launching espn plus, the digital over the top

and disney's future is disney over the top obviously launching the disney over the top channel next year and that's why they're launching these fox assets i think it's a net positive and builds the strategic value of this franchise >> robert, your take on these numbers. if you look at the studios dwig division, it looks like a bit of a miss same thing to be said for parks and resorts but then you look at the calendar with easter not falling in there like it did last year, and also there's a lot of construction going on the real big news for the theme parks with galaxy edge star wrz with disney land and also three cruise shapes that will be coming online two years after are the pipeline that investors should be paying attention to. if you look at 2.5% down after hours that takes us back to

where we were on the fourth of this month i wouldn't make too much of this and if you haven't looked for the stock here, i think you're looking for an opportunity >> mike indicated the stock had a big run. >> i got a kick out of the fact in explaining espn's number advertising revenue suffered for one final nbas game versus a quarter ago and the cavs got swept four games to nothing. if they had won just one game -- >> we might have been talking about disney flag as positive. >> i think it's a small piece of espn although i think it's good to ask the question, a lot of focus on the cable networks is going to go away and shift >> so much breaking news i'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there. and jim kramer tweeting time to buy disney i'm sure we'll know why on mad

money coming up. >> wendy's it moving lower by nearly 2% after reported earnings moments ago joining us to discuss karen and tim. how do you trade these >> i think sort of these barbel strategies, on the one hand, a terrible hand, papa john's i think you're going to see investors puke up that stock in the next couple of days. they have a giant pr problem, i think they can address it but you don't need to jump enrigin t away mcdonald's, they're killing it it's cheaper actually than wendies. that's where i'd be for burgers. >> we all know what's going on with papa john's operationally this company was making a difficult time making investments in digital and at

the same time their comp, they've been declining comps for over a year. in the case of wendies ys to me' just a really a valuation sector i think it's not a terribly compelling time to get into a sector when you have much higher labor costs. they're all trying to get into online ordering and the entire digital expenditure is something where the operational margins are down year over year. i don't do anything with either stock. >> got it. thank you, lady and gentleman. and tonight on fast money a top tesla watcher will explain while elon musk's desire to take the company private is the best possible move for the auto maker. >> and i think the important question for gene is if it's something likely to happen or

not. and the kmarmchairman and c and the kmarmchairman and c papa john' fidelity. open an account today. earnings miss.

welcome back we've got a news alert on papa john's let's send it over to kate rogers. >> that's right former ceo and

founder john snatter saying as i communicated to board i am seriously concerned about the company's declining sales, financial performance and most importantly the direction of the company head under the stewardship of steve richy and the financial results announced today further explify that concern. he goes onto say poor performance began declining as richy assumed responsibilities back in december of 2016 so he was saying before richy made ceo he was acting as ceo for a full year, and that's when sales started to decline richie of course was officially named ceo in 2016. he also attached his own chart here to. the stock is off of its lows down about 8% right now. >> thanks very much to that.

meanwhile cigna urging shareholders to vote against its merger coming up next.

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we have a news alert on cigna. seema modi has the details. >> cigna has a proposed $54 million merger with express scripts calling out investor carl, kahn in the letter in which he urged shareholders for

the merger it demonstrates an uninformed view of the marketplace and cigna's strategy mr. icahn appears to believe that a multi-year partnership with an existing pbm provider would be preferable to the announced transaction. there are a number of issues with this view the stocks, cigna and express scripts unchanged after hours. michelle >> all right thanks for that update, seema. >> coming up, we'll get the after-hours earnings movers including why match is shoring, have you seen it going by? big mover. don't move with tripadvisor, finding your perfect hotel at the lowest price...

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we've got more news. becky quick is on the phone. becky? >> hey, michelle hi, wolf if you wonder what the tesla people are saying about this or most say they continue to believe in this and one of these

is rod baron from baron capital. baron capital has 1.6 million shares of tesla and their buying price was similar to $317 to $320, when i asked him if he would sell at $420 said no way he said, in fact, if he goes private i want our firm to be a part of any deal he points out that this is a company that he thinks has a bright future. baron capital has five different stocks that they've made over $1 billion in profit in and that would be charles schwab and it's co-star and that he's made almost $1 billion and when that matched up to what he sees in tesla, and i think they've made more money in tesla and he does have a lot of faith in this. >> did he -- becky >> uh-huh? >> did elon musk approach ron baron about some of the financing? do we know about that? >> no, he does not and he does

not know what's going on with this situation in particular if he's taking it private or not, and i asked him if he'd sell at that price, and he said no wah i don't have term as to whether or not he's financing at this price, but he did say he thinks it's a company that will make a lot of money and he would want to be one of the partners where musk tweeted out that he hopes the shareholders would want to stay in. >> becky, thank you very much for that becky quick joining us with news on ron "barron's" view on tesla and what a fascinating day it's been for advertitesla. >> it's been a busy hour after the bell and we'll recap the big movers next.

wilf is afraid of horses. >> when i tried to do that segment. >> i want to go back to your horse phobia, and i don't think you'd stand where he's standing. >> that's too close particularly when they're running and they're so big and powerful and they kick you and that's it the one animal scares me. >> so wilfred, closing bell viewers know all about your horse phobia and we have a very special gate happy birthday i like cake more than i dislike

horses i am happy to take this with both hands and say -- that's beautiful! >> thank you, guys for this wonderful birthday cake, what a good team for rubbing it in and saying happy birthday. >> i have been assigned, however, to mention it is also sarah's birthday. >> not just sarah's, it's a quartet of cnbc 7th of august babies so happy birthday. >> i've only been assigned to mention sarah. >> think she's in san diego. happy birthday, and happy birthday also to bill griffeth who is coming up later on -- >> happy birthday, bell. an youd standing team and i'm a little bit scared of the cake. >> it's delicious. >> 18 hands tall. >> that's the big of the horse and that's terrifying. >> just to round things off and it's got to be the story of the

day, tesla mike, what would you make of the news becky quick just brought us >> there are several investors, big ones who might actually be interested in owning this company forever. the banks would never finance this kind of a deal. >> because there are other people who could >> if he tries maybe there will be at least a process to see if that can happen. >> and also showing great breaking news throughout it and thank you guys for the birthday wishes and that does it for "closing bell," "fast money" begins right now. "fast money" begins right now overlooking times square scott wapner, along tim seymour, karen finerman and guy adami tonight on fast, a big night for earnings and disney volatile after hours. laughing over there. we'll bring you all of the headlines from the c suite as those conference calls are under way. plus, the s&p 500 just inches away from its all-time high. >> what -- >> what's wrong? >> so is the recor