good morning it is 8:00 a.m. at levi's headquarters in san francisco, it is 11:00 a.m. on wall street where levi's is expected to start trading any minute and "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪

good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk alley." i am carly fiorina with julia boorstin and jon fortt levi strauss set to go public in moments. that ipo is where we begin this morning with bob pisani at post 8. bob? >> the important thing here, we are getting close, really getting close. let's get to the man with the answers. patty, when is it happening? >> getting very close. fine tuning the price. it is a little above $5 on the range. we have plenty of volume very close all systems go >> how do you decide when you cut it off you're talking to the desk at goldman, you're trying to figure out the right price. when do you say enough, the book is closed.

how do you make that decision? >> when the price pairs off with buyers and sellers and comfortable with both sides of the market, applying our technology, feel comfortable desk at goldman is comfortable all the asset managers and brokers are comfortable, almost to that point now. >> this is a die that maynamic people are like we're ready and another bid comes in not only apply technology but glen and mike, we make sure everybody has a chance for the print. full transparency on price and volume we're very close >> i heard people yelling out a short while ago as you were saying, we're getting close, and again people -- it is a poker game that's going on it is an interesting game theory. >> we are trying to do the best job with goldman for the company to make sure we get the right price and right depth of book. stability. they're trying to do a great job

for their consumer when you get to crunch time, everybody is yelling it is fun. we're very close, very happy with the price at the moment and close. >> 2175, split the difference, say $22, 30% premium to the 17 that was initially announced >> perfect start to the ipo season. >> i think the customers are happy. gts, new york stock exchange are happy. looks to be a success. >> we'll keep an eye you think you have the moment and it's coming, somebody yells out, get another order from the goldman desk and this as i said, it is a game theory process. i think -- how long, ten minutes? he is trying to make a deal. let's give it a few minutes. if i get anything close, i will call immediately back to you.

>> bob, put this in context with the other ipos we have seen somewhat recently. it doesn't seem to be dragging out too long, i shouldn't speak too soon we never know how long the last stage of the process will take, what does it say about reception for the company and the ipo given how far above the range the prices are indicating right now? >> this is a general rule of thumb on these things. when you get past about 10, 15 to 10, 30, that's a lot of demand it is buy low, sell high they want to see what's going on we have a slowly ascending price here that tells potential buyers it is unlikely to go to 17. slowly in the last hour and a half, go from 17, then 19, 20, 21, 22, you see what's going on, it is not jumping around that's a sign of very slow,

steady demand and the fact we're sitting here at 11:00 means a lot of people are still doing it the old rule of thumb were if you opened 10% of volume, that's a decent range, that would be 3.6 million. patty, where are we at on volume >> 5.4 that's high. we're going to open with 20% of the overall amount of shares offered. that's an indication of strong demand we're seeing, john. >> the question is how much do you take strong demand for this ipo and extrapolate what it means for other ipos in the pipeline, lyft, uber, pinterest that could be in the works there could be a record number of ipos in terms of volume do the same rules of demand apply to those they're such different companies. >> no. to a certain extent, first ones out of the gate have the advantage. here, with a four month drought, now we're very close

it is very close and very, very close. they're trying to close the book goldman is going out and gts is saying this is it, we're going to close it. so to answer your question, it's a good sign for the people first out of the gate. look at lyft lyft is talking 30.8 million 62 the book is frozen it is going to open in about ten seconds if you go by the normal rules. it's not frozen. it really is an auction. they keep yelling. they're going back and forth on price now. we're not there? so at lyft, 30.8 million shares, 62 to 68, take the mid point of that deal, that's about $22 billion. last round of funding was $15 billion. we're talking 50%. move to the up side, when you have this 40% above initial price, that sends a signal to

everyone, heavy demand levi's has opened at $22.22. levi strauss, the first ipo of 2019, substantive ipo of 2020 opens at 22.22 the price talk was 14 to 16. stock was priced at 17 opened at 22.22 on heavy volume. folks, this is just a start of a potential record year. 234 ipos out there potentially could go public. $700 billion valuation, likely try to save or raise $100 billion. if we get anywhere near those numbers, this would be a record year that's why there's so much excitement years of watching unicorns bottled up in the private market, a lot of them are now

ready to go public next friday at the nasdaq, lyft, 38 million shares. that's a good signal whapg here for lyft the issue is going to be two, three, four months down the road when you get another 50 or 60 of them and a lot of them try to push valuations. that's when you see people push back for the moment, certainly successful ipo the ceo is going to come talk to you in a moment. back slapping and about to ring the bell here. we have a beautiful ceremony where they open. we'll be ringing the bell. guys, back to you. >> bob, in terms of the duration we had to wait for the opening trade, i'm thinking back visa was the famous case that took forever and ever to open. this was close >> yeah, snap, alibaba, twitter, big names with big demand take

awhile some are careful, they want to be sure everyone that wants to put in a bid gets a chance to put in a bid it makes a difference between whether you buy 10,000 shares at 22 or buy them at 21.50. people are waiting at the end saying they're going to drop the price, they're going to drop the price. i want to buy low, that's the game, and it didn't. this was a slow steady upward progressi progression throughout the morning. there was no point they saw drop in interest and had to lower the price. that's a sign of pretty strong demand and at the end they got it essentially at the high end of the indication. back to you. >> bob, thanks on days like this, we pay attention to the price action for obvious reasons but we are going to increasingly keep our eye on the business model and growth for that, we turn to courtney

reagan court, your thoughts >> reporter: hey, carl, this shows the power of a brand we talk a lot in retail about the future of it, what it will look like as far as where we're going to buy what we buy that's when brands become really powerful, especially if you're looking online you're going to search for a brand. levi's has done what some of the other brands have done when it comes to embracing someone like amazon they sell on amazon. that's where shoppers are, that's where they want to be they also have beautiful stores like this one in very key areas like right here in times square. i think that this is a very interesting trend for us to watch as far as how the brandy volume fs and where it sells some 50,000 different retail outlets around the world they have seen strong revenue growth, 14% and 8% and operating income of 15%.

levi's has been growing stronger than the broader denim market and they're diversifying the offering it is not just jeans, men's bottoms is the growth in category but there's a lot in women, in tops, iconic american brand, iconic american product >> courtney, when you look at levi's and dependence on amazon and department stores and other retailers, while levi's has its own relationship through the stores and website, it isn't entirely owning that relationship how much does that put the company at risk as amazon takes over more of the retail market and disrupts other outlets that sell levi's products >> great point, julia. 57% of where levi's sells is wholesale, that's what you're talking about, that's department stores, a target, a walmart, amazon, sort of anything they don't own. in the prospectus they talked

about expanding in both reaches. what i mean is whether you look at those relationships expanding, they call nordstroms and bloomingdale's as a distribution point they want to sell more in, they also talk about exclusive brands for target and walmart they're trying to be everywhere, anywhere denim is sold, levi's wants to be, but there's a risk as you talk about what's going on in the nature of the sector of department stores, if shoppers are shopping less there, that could definitely be a risk the wholesale relationship has fallen as their online presence has grown, but it is still the majority of their revenue. that's a risk we should be watching for f we will continue watching it. l levi strauss trading, up 32, 33%. be right back. we can do the screening at her house.

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at 17. joining us at post 9, chip bergh, levi strauss ceo joining us to talk about opening trade and business at large. congratulations. >> thank you, carl great to be here, very exciting day. >> you helped run gillette, what is it that makes denim possible? >> well, we are denim. we are the market leader globally a lot of people as we were doing the road show said aren't you just riding the denim wave, my point is we're denim, we're creating the denim wave, have been driving the category with innovation across the men's business, women's business, we expanded toddler categories. last year finished the year with 14% growth coming off 8% growth the prior year and the business is really humming. >> not a cycle story, not a fashion cycle story? >> no, i believe it is sustainable for the long term,

maybe not double digits forever, but clear runway for growth, we are building share in core categories, expanding to new categories last fiscal year when we finished the year, growth was broad based. if you look at it in categories, we grew every category if you looked at it by geography, grew every geography. by channel, we grew across wholesale, including u.s. wholesale, a little bit of a melting iceberg now. our own brick and mortar, and e-commerce very broad based growth last year and we are confident we can continue that. >> chip, the challenge from where i sit is omni channel, the story that so many brands and retailers are trying to tell about selling online and selling in store less than 2% of the locations where levi's are available are your own owned locations, which raises the question of data. how are you getting data on the

customer you need to be nimble, to be fast enough to compete in this environment >> two things. first of all, to be successful it does come down to strong brands customers love an emotional attachment with their brand. we recreated that love for levi's we have built a very big platform on big data in fact, a couple of weeks ago announced we hired ahead of advance analytics and machine learning that will sit on the executive team and report directly to me, we are mining data we do collect and turning it into revenue. >> is part of the plan to move more sales to the direction relation to customers through the online channel or through your own stores? because to jon's point, you said it yourself, it is a shrinking iceberg. you don't want to be so reliant on those stores. >> our strategies are working. one of the key strategic choices

we made 7 years ago was to become a leading omni channel retailer when i joined, it was 20% of the business today it is almost a third it is faster growing in the wholesale business and continuing to investment in it most capital goes into retail, e-commerce, knitting that seamless consumer experience together. >> you have raised a fair amount of money 623 was the 17 price they say general corporate purpose, but what are you using the currency on? >> it is not a lot of primary, at the 17, it was $150 million the balance sheet is very strong we paid down a billion dollars in debt in the early days. it is going to go into continued investment, building out the omni channel footprint both brick and mortar retail as

well as e-commerce business, and then knitting it together with technology for example -- pretty exciting >> they do put on a show >> we're also investing in technology as well we're implementing a new instance of s and p, investing in rifd. we implemented that across our business in the u.s. and the uk and that's turning into money. >> explain that. rfid meaning. >> radio frequency identification every one of the products in the store is tagged with rfid. i had this experience happen to me myself at the new times square store, there was an item i wanted to buy, didn't have it in my size, stylist could see my size was available in the back room two minutes later, i was trying it on. a year ago before rfid, that

would have been a lost sale, it wouldn't have happened it gives us instant clear visibility to inventory in the store, front of house and back of house. >> women as a category have to be key to growth 14% growth rate in women, but it is a small part of your business. >> it is >> and denim for women notoriously difficult in terms of different body tapes aypes ad shapes what's your strategy to continue growing that at this rate or maybe faster, given the challenges >> back in 2014, 2013, headlines were the death of denim, it was all about athletic types, lululemon types. we have an innovation center a couple blocks from our office. brought our suppliers, the mills that make denim into that innovation center and understood what women were telling us by wearing tights, that used to be a denim occasion

they wanted soft, stretchy comfortable material that made them look great and gave them confidence that's what was driving that conversion so we innovated around soft, stretchy, comfortable denim which we can now do, developed proprietary four way stretch so women don't get baggy knees, their biggest dissatisfier we have grown 14 quarters in a row, last three at double digit rates. it is a huge part of our growth. we were under $800 million on women's bottoms three years ago, we're over a billion today we are number one globally but not number one, that's what the 9% market share, and not number one in a number of markets including here in the u.s. so i believe we can continue to grow at an accelerated rate on the women's business there's lots of what i like to call share donors out there to build share while we build the category. >> while you look at a friend

like that rise of athleisure, do you think about diversifying just being just denim and having that iconic denim brand, about more different products for the next time the trends shift again, because it's going to happen >> that basically is a strategy. we have the profitable core business, men's wholesale in the top five markets and growing at accelerated pace tops is a good example we grew the tops business 38% last year. we don't even buy market share data on tops, not even a 1% market share and have done it behind the bat wing t graphic tee and fleece we doubled that business in less than the last three years. >> two last questions. first, we asked mcdonald's this all the time is there any backlash to being an american brand internationally? >> haven't seen any. no this brand stands for everything

good about america freedom, democracy, allowing people to express themselves, authentic self expression is what levi's brand is about we have not seen any backlash, none >> finally, are there cautionary tales in diesel or in the fact you went private to begin with long ago >> i would like to say maybe what happened to diesel is they were one of our share donors we think there's lots of opportunities still for us i am not worried at all about denim, as i said at the opening. we are denim, and we'll continue to drive this category through great innovation and marketing that connects with consumers and se sends them to our stores >> come back i am sure we'll see you again. >> thanks. >> baggy knees, that's the one sticking point for women. when we return, an exclusive

with mark hurd, and later, apple up more than 3% on top of the world's most valuable companies by market cap. the analysts behind this morning's upgrade joins us next. stay with us what do you look for when you trade? i want free access to research. yep, td ameritrade's got that. free access to every platform. yeah, that too. i don't want any trade minimums. yeah, i totally agree, they don't have any of those. i want to know what i'm paying upfront. yes, absolutely. do you just say yes to everything? hm. well i say no to kale. mm. yeah, they say if you blanch it it's better, but that seems like a lot of work. no hidden fees. no platform fees. no trade minimums. and yes, it's all at one low price. td ameritrade. ♪

welcome back, everyone i am sue herera. here's your cnbc news update at this hour. national guard troops have been called in, residents are being fold to stay inside after elevated levels of benzine were detected near a facility that caught fire earlier this week. the suppressive foam is separating, allowing dangerous vapors to escape. secretary of state mike pompeo meeting with the israeli president in jerusalem as part of his middle east tour. he pledged continued support for israel >> you should know that you have no better friend than the united states your point about the priority of our relationships is very real we don't just talk about it, we

execute it every day and it benefits each of our two nations. and jimmy carter has the title of oldest living former president, at 94 years and 172 days, he passes george h.w. bush who was a day younger when he died last november only a handful of ex-presidents lived into their 90s including ronald reagan among others you're up to date. i will send it back downtown to you guys, jon? >> thank you, sue. and levi strauss shares surging after its debut, up more than 33% lyft is expected to debut next week plenty more coming down the pipeline, including uber, palantir and others. some major ipos, several in tech with us on why companies are rushing to public markets,

denn dennis burman and jacqueline strive what does the levi's debut tell us about the appetite for ipo, sometimes it is more about growth and revenue, sometimes it is about profit, sometimes about tech savvy i'm not sure what this is about. >> i think of the game behind the game the game behind this game which was super exciting, when you take a calmer look and see what's going on, asset management, there's so much money going into etfs, we had $350 billion going into etfs one of the provisos for those, you cannot have dual class listed stock there's a whole range of investors, pension funds that don't want dual class.

companies like levi's can go public with dual class structure. why are they able to levi's may be a different example but some tech companies don't need the money, they need liquidity. when i look at the game behind the game, the big changes in the asset management business, the de-equitization of both companies buying back stock and companies leaving the listings area, you don't have options other than to buy. >> i remember when snap went public, there wasall of this concern, snap, facebook, they're companies controlled by the founder ceo, lyft, dual class structure. seems to be something that other than levi's is more of a tech company thing. how is this going to change in terms of investors are people going to get over -- >> i don't believe it is going to change, one, because they have the market power. two, they only need generally speaking liquidity more than they need the money. and three, there aren't that many stocks to buy

wilshire 5,000 is 3800 stocks. 2016, 2017, the amount of equity in companies was going never overall. every day you put money in the 401(k), i think generally speaking dual class probably persists >> jacqueline, your thoughts on whether this is an open window in the best way in terms of the appetite investors have for different types of companies with different types of stories to tell in this environment or is there a type of skepticism you expect to emerge as we see other known brands come to market >> good question first of all i want to say congratulations to the levi family i got to listen in it sounds like they're doing great. i think we're going to see a lot of great ipos. what levi showed us is that the

american public is excited for the ipo season to happen i think we're going to see a lot of great ipos. it popped 30%. i listen to the ceo and i think the thing he said most that spoke out the most to me was growth they grew the most they've grown last year in a quarter century, and lyft is probably going to do the same thing next week people want to keep talking about their net losses but 80% of companies that ipoed last year had a net loss and 80% of companies that did ipo last year, they either were at the price target or higher and usually popped 16% in the first day. lyft is growing, revenues grew 100% from 2017 to 2018 they are quarter by quarter from 2017 to 2018 are growing twice as fast as uber.

i think the growth numbers speak volumes for companies that want to go public and i do think you're going to see a lot of great ipos coming down the pipeline and investors are excited about it i'm excited. >> i'm looking at estimates. 234 companies are targeting 2019 ipos with valuation of nearly $700 billion is there a question of capacity? bob pisani talked about this earlier, said companies first to market are going to do better because of the issue of demand is that going to be a problem? >> you know, i think there's always that concern. i do agree with him. i think the sooner you get out, the better it has been what, four months since there's been an ipo. so people are ready to put their money to work and see these companies succeed. not every company is going to be able to sustain their valuation. that's why companies have to continue with their vision and growth i think that's one of the

reasons the tech companies do do that dual class structure. it allows them to not worry about hostile takeovers or market volatility, it will allow them to focus and continue to grow their business. that's what you need to be successful and maintain and hold onto the valuation >> best of both worlds public capital and your own rules. >> this is what we deal with every day. shareholder adviser for companies. what you see for so many public boards and managements as they have become not deathly afraid but insensitive to what activists are doing. the bristol-myers, to veer it a bit afar, is an incredible moment for the reality in which shareholders have voice in what goes on at companies if you see that reality now and you have the opportunity to have a dual class share structure and the market will still give you

its money, i think conditions are ripe for more of those it is all interrelated between asset management, etfs shareholders have more voice if you can put up a wall to give them a little less, you'll do it >> levi's, an interesting case the family that controls it not directly involved in management, several generations away from founding, still voting control dennis, jacqueline, thanks when we come back, oracle's mark hurd. back after a break

it has been a busy morning as we have been watching not just levi's but apple and boeing phil lebeau has more phil >> reporter: earlier i heard you talk with jim cramer about the "new york times" article that was discussing why some airlines, lion air, the ethiopian airline didn't have sensors with the m care software, how it may kick in with both flights that ended in crashes. we have an update in what's expected with the 737 software fix. this is the plan at this point, it could ultimately be amended as they go through certification process with the faa first of all, the software fix, we expect it will start going to the faa for some type of certification process perhaps as soon as next week. an important point is it will make it so all airlines flying the 737 max will have sensors in

the cockpit that will clearly alert the flight crew if there is the anti-stall technology kicking in in addition, that m cast software or the ability of that system to bring the plane out of potential stall, the data being fed into it will come from two of the angle of attack sensors, not just one as was previously the case with the 737 max. also, there will be increased pilot training, more explicit directions in the flight manual. all of that going into any software fix shares of boeing, should point out the faa needs to sign off on the software solution. there's no timetable for when that might happen, although one of the lead marketing officers was saying monday they've done some flight testing and work with it in the simulator they're getting close. we should point out, not only does the faa need to approve the

software, but once that's done, that doesn't mean the grounding is lifted. they want to look at the overall safety of the 737 max. no indication how long it might take some i talked with in the industry think we're looking at a plane that could be grounded several weeks if not several months >> wow, thanks so much, phil i'm sure you'll keep us posted on these important issues. moving to apple. shares of apple moving higher. a number of bullish sites making a case for a $225 price target, one of the highest on the street apple shares up 3.4% now with that move to the up side, apple is the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. joining us, laura martin thanks for joining us. you predict apple will benefit from the announcement monday about the new streaming service but it seems like there are a couple different pieces that

reduce apple's churn what's your case for the significant up side? >> right so the basis of it is we did a survey, users of apple products think they're buying into an ecosystem, if it was valued like an ecosystem, shares would rise up 40% secondly, the most important aspect of an ecosystem valuation is churn the lower the churn, higher the lifetime value per user. monday, we think they'll announce two services that lower churn. and that will add to the value overall of the ecosystem at apple. >> laura, two services you're talking about are streaming video service which is from what i understand going to compete with an hbo and new service. do you think these services will add incremental revenue or about keeping people in the apple family. >> you want to lower churn so they have 900 million users.

10% of them pay that, if they create services that get adopted by unique users they have and or attracts new users to the ecosystem. >> laura, my concern would be apple is still an iphone company by and large when it comes to revenue and especially profit and they haven't really proven their chops in services. yes, in app stores, retail, digital transactions, yes in software, certainly in design and hardware, but is it safe to value them in that way considering the iphone and sales cycle are still somewhat in question >> right i mean, i think you're espousing the consensus view that they're -- there are a lot of services that are only in existence between iphone owners

and there's a lot of social pressure not to leave that ecosystem when you try to go to an android that creates stickiness, in addition to whatever services that are unique to iphone. back to the ecosystem idea, i don't think it is the specific iphone device that's at play, it is add on devices and features like sharing photos and new services like monday's announcement in addition to apple music. >> laura, south side colleagues are busy today i want to throw numbers at you, see if you agree one is 100 million subs for apple, realistic in the medium term yes or no. >> 100 million subs for new services they're announcing monday you think yes, fairly reasonable, 10% of the total base, yes. >> how about $100 billion buy back >> yep no problem they said, they stated they want

to get to net cash zero on the balance sheet. today that position is $130 billion of net cash. assuming they're going to keep their word, the problem is this company generates $60 billion a year of free cash flow it is hard for them to keep up with cash flow to get to net cash zero on the balance sheet >> good problem to have. >> laura, i want to pivot you to facebook, another company that you cover. the company just admitting it found that some of its user passwords are being stored in a readable format which means accessible to thousands of employees. reports as many as 600 million passwords were stored without encryption this is just the latest in a string of negative headlines about facebook how concerned are you about this and everything else that facebook is dealing with, the latest live stream of the new zealand mosque shooting. >> right as we said monday when we downgraded facebook, headline risks keep making body blows to facebook which then gets more

and more senior talented employees to exit facebook, which then creates a negative flywheel or what we call network effect of value destruction. so apple must get a hold of privacy and security issues to stop the negative trend. washington, d.c. is up in arms about this company and it really increases the likelihood of regulation, every time you see one of the headlines where privacy or security was invaded of consumers. >> laura, seems like there's a risk of getting too negative we should point out it hasn't been alleged that servers with unhashed passwords were actually breached, phenomenal, this is the ultimate treasure trove of passwords that facebook had, nobody was able to get into it in a way there are positives in the story for facebook it would have been awful, like amazingly bad. >> assuming we know everything at this point? >> i am not assuming

>> right. >> but if it had happened and that was the headline that came out, that would be different people should realize it is not yet a head line about a breach >> the problem is people are accustomed to a friday night blog with worse news. >> if the password is unencrypted, what does it say about security there's a question of whether it is a bigger issue. >> would you be surprised if every company had the same announcement come out? >> in this day and age, companies should be more careful. >> would you be surprised? >> at this day and age, nothing would surprise you. >> not a marriott situation yet anyway >> i think the point is that every time -- i was going to say i think the key point is that every time one of the headlines are announced, facebook has to add costs, bad for p and l, and then has to pivot from moving forward and go back and make sure that nothing was breached

and set an investigatory team and fix this now they have software engineers from moving forward to fixing a problem. when you do that, it slows facebook from competing with people like google and apple which are moving forward with new value creating things, their software is unimpeded from the headlines. >> you went to hold was it monday >> monday you and i were doing this same gig. >> on negative network effects >> yep very good. >> and so what is the message you think that other companies can take or run with from this apple just this week coming out with a marketing campaign seemingly tailored for this moment, about privacy, arguing the iphone is a place for that does that narrative fit into the positive read on apple as well

>> i would say so because i think washington, d.c. is really locked down on privacy and security, headlines like facebook's today jununderscore this and consumers worldwide, apple refused in the past when the government demanded they disencrypt iphones, refused to do it for them apple is in a good spot when it comes to privacy and security because of encryption on phones. that plays into the tail wind of more and more careful thought about security >> laura, thanks so much for joining us today to talk facebook and apple oracle stock, lower after dipping sharply following earnings last week josh lipton joins us now exclusive. oracle ceo, mark hurd. josh >> thank you, julia and mark thank you for taking the time to chat we appreciate it >> can you hear us

>> i can can you hear me? >> thank you, mark i have you now listen, first time we had a chance to catch up since you reported results march 14th. better than expected mark on the top and bottom i want to drill down into guidance, mark q4sales, you expect that to be flat to down 2% a lot of investors listing just want to know how do you expect to get this company's overall growth rate back to the mid to high single digits from here and why are you confident you can make that happen >> that's a usd number usd being in dollars and we have currency that goes against us. we'll have more positive revenue growth than you described in local currency as i said on the call fy19 overall growth will be positive. that will be higher than fy18 growth and f yp 20 growth will be higher than fy19 growth it's all due to the fact of our bookings just frankly the fact that our

growth businesses are growing and becoming bigger as a part of the total company. and the businesses we've been exiting are becoming smaller as part of the total company. our applications business, our any set of apps that is grown 35%. fusion grp growing 4%. net business 28% i could of could go on and on with growth rates. those become bigger and bigger parts of the company and they then tend to drive the overall growth rate higher. >> i want to drill down into your database business, the bread and butter we did have mango see you and he suggested oracle's technology was outdated he told us that the world has moved on to a more modern data platform like his. what's your response to that, mark >> i just think look at the numbers. look at our growth relative to the market growth. we have roughly 50% of the

market every other database dollar is spent with us. and if you look at, don't take one quarter. take 12 quarters we're growing faster than the overall market which is a $40 billion market we've roughly gained a bit of share and just introducing the most exciting database release in our history which is autonomous database which brings a whole set of capabilities from artificial intelligence being integrated to the database from a feature set perspective, whatever this guy is you're talking about was saying, this is you know, i don't know, 15 years, 20 years ahead of sort of that technology. so again, i just think the best thing you can do when you get comments like that is look at numbersen and the facts and see what they're telling we're growing faster in the market and gaining share i predict for you, it's going to accelerate with autonomous debate. >> and mark, warren buffett recently on cnbc

i want to bring you those comments he said he quickly sold berkshire's stake in oracle. the reason, he said i don't understand their business. my question is whether you think,ing whether you're concerned that other invests might feel the same way. when i talk to financial analysts who cover the company, they say at least right now, we're not getting enough metrics to have a clear line of insight into how oracle's cloud business is performing. how do you think about that? >> well, i think again, we're trying to give metrics that align to our strategy. license you can bring to the cloud or to work in pur data center, traditional if you will premise. we now report that as a separate line and we did that because much of our currencies that when you buy a license you can use that in the cloud or any way you

would like so we're trying to report in a consistent way that we think gives investors transparency to what we're really working on my view has always been reporting numbers that aren't exactly what we're driving internally is not a good thing, not helping -- more metrics isn't always good if they're not giving you true indication where the company is headed. we're trying to give just as much clarity to our strategy it's about the alignment of the reporting to our strategy overall and we think that's what we've done with our reporting over the last year. >> i want to switch gears abit you're focused on capital return, right? you bought back another 10 billion in the quarter it is occurring against this backdrop where there's this arms race in tech rivals out there are going out, making meaningful acquisitions why not spend more money on m&a, roll up some real companies. is there a reason you're not

more active? >> we're not capital constrained. it isn't a choice where you're saying hey, do this versus that. we could you know, do more of each we're certainly investing in the process of rolling out more data centers than we've ever rolled out in our history as we speak. now the ability for us, we've reduced the cost of rolling out those data centers so it doesn't really affect our capx there is no capx increase. our stock on the other hand is a have an attractive buy at this price. and so we continue to be clear that we're going to invest as we think appropriate ascertain prices and you know, this is sort of one of them. you saw us simultaneously increase the dividend. and we did ha simultaneously with the buyback if we saw an m&a target, it's a lot easier to talk about m&a in the generic sense, but in the end you have to find a specific

target that makes sense strategically to go buy. so i would not rule out that we would buy somebody but it has to be somebody that fits in the context what we're doing we spent multiple years here and just about to flip the switch 0 driving to increased organic growth based on the changes we've made in evolving our portfolio. for us to buy somebody that doesn't fit into that strategy probably not a great idea for us we continue to look. we continue to evaluate. if you thought about this or thought about that, the answer is probably sure yeah, we thought about a lot of things it doesn't necessarily mean we'll execute upon them but then again, the answer would be it depends. >> final question. investors have a range of potential concerns here. brexit trying to trade tensions. you run a big international company. customers all around the world i'm interested to get your general sense of the broad macro haven't, mark. >> you know, i think the u.s. is good when you're inside the u.s., if

you look at just one surrogate for your question, our net suite business which sells to medium and small businesses and has a very big u.s. business, our growth rate has doubled over the last year. we've doubled the growth rate. and that's on heels of bookings that are even higher than that growth rate. and so the net suite performance a very good indicator of what small and medium business i think in the united states is thinking when you go around the world, it's a different story the implication on technology as you get to some of these concerns really gets down to one of the reasons we're doing as many data centers as we are. some of this translates into data privacy the ability to keep information in the country and so you know this causes us to have a bit different investment profile than we might have had three or four years ago. but i'd say western europe is what it's been a few challenges there. you know the story in china.

we've had tremendous performance in latin america and some latin american markets i still when you knit it all together, it's been roughly the same with a little bit of encouragement i'd say in the united states. >> i got to squeeze one quick last one here. i got to ask about jedi, that cloud computing contract at the pentagon you're battling amazon are you confident you're going to ultimately prevail there and win a piece of that contract. >> i think we'll just let it play out i mean, the dod is a huge oracle customer we'll continue to support d op d every way we possibly can and do the best we can for them and we're committed that and i think i'll let the jedi question, i think i'll leave that alone. >> you can't blame me for try. we appreciate your time. carl, back to you.

>> great stuff, josh thank you. thanks, mark it's turning into an interesting market day nasdaq up 1% we are now at 2850 on the s&p. dow up 233 apple adding about 50 points which means that it is pretty broad based. most of the components in the green only financials disney and boeing are in the red. >> semiconductors booming. micron just had sanjay on early this morning up 8.5% amd continues to surge up nearly 6. western digital higher, as well. >> lie vi first day of trading up 33.5%. >> of the 15ipos that price this had year would make it about the fourth best opening day of the year after some names i'm not too familiar with. >> what's interesting to me about levi's they're on paper the wrong side of so many trends they have an omni channel challenge. they fell out of favor kind of

after the '90s they're trying to really build this brand with a younger and female audience. but investors are biting on this ipo. >> apple did get above a 200-day for the first time since november on pace for the ninth positive day in ten. let's get to the half. back at hq carl, thanks so much i'm scott wapner at the feds double down, just what the rally needed to hit new highs or powell's latest pivot an ominous sign for your money it's 12:00 noon. this is the halftime report. >> the dovish surprise the feds latest move the halftime report investment committee weighs in. financials in focus. that sector is back in correction plus, we'll hit biogen, apple, chipotle and more and call of the day. citi is ringing the register on micron after its nearly 40% rally thisr.