i'm becky quick. a lot happening here we'll talk to plenty of big leaders today. let's look at what is happening with u.s. equity futures dow futures down >> is this a conversation actually happening here with the coronavirus. we continue to follow growing fares. china now confirming 571 cases it has killed 17 people. in wuhan, they've suspended outbound flights and departures in a bid to contain. another city near has been put on lockdown. health officials in washington state are monitoring 16 people who came in contact with the traveler from china believed to be the first u.s. resident with

the virus. they postponed the decision yesterday. this has been a conversation here at davos and has been affecting markets in asia. more are down this morning looking at the red arrows there. off close to 3% for the hang seng >> the mortality rate looks low relative to what we've seen in the past 3% versus 17% for sars the idea of shutting down wuhan. imagine that happening in an american or european city and the panic and up rising. >> what is the population of wuhan? >> it is a major city. >> if you've heard of it, it is

probably 10 million. >> i think >> we'll get you some is numbers. we have another block buster lineup of guests >> 11 million. >> the woke economic forum it was kind of a joke but now second nature for me the world economic forum, including the ceos of honeywell, liberty global, goldman sach, pay pal and more steven mnuchin is still here everybody else left. >> air force one is gone but other members of the administration is here >> he came on air force one, everything else is a step down except neil.

>> the government has some of those, by the way. >> let's get to our first guest, neil, how do you start a company in 2005 that's worth $45 billion. you are still young. you learned at people soft >> i did >> why weren't they doing enough ceo at workday to talk about the latest of cloud and ai >> what a great story. >> you are a leader in terms of ai and machine learning for all these human resources. i don't see how ai makes it that much better to plan out a career, does it? there was a bit of a slow down

that you saw about three or four months ago that has lessened now? >> yes the world is so hard to predict. there is uncertainty in the air at all times it is the world settling to business as usual. that's the sense i get for this week for workday in particular, what is the nexus of what you are attempting to do right now >> transitioning from being an hr leader to finance, planning and procurement. that part of the business is now 20%, the non-hr piece. that is growing in the 40% to 50% range. it is great. it gives us another leg of growth we have happy customers. >> is most of your growth coming from existing customers putting new lines into what they already

have >> it is pretty split equally between new hr and existing hr customers buying into financial and planning >> why do you need ai for that >> i like to talk about machine learning artificial intelligence gives people a picture of the terminator that's not it. it let's you sift through mass amounts of data. humans are not great at making predictions but they are good at making judgements. these will predict the next right move for you in your career it will automate audits. if it has been through enough audit cycles, it will highlight

transactions as you know auditors sample the books, this will speed up auditing >> did you say it will help me make the next move in my career. >> you guys are already at the top. there is nowhere else to go. >> one of the issues is the power of the cloud suppliers aws, google, azure talking about this topic, worry about the cloud provider themselves trying to provide new products >> we try to work on all three >> google and amazon are customers. >> do you see them as becoming

frienemies >> i would say welcome to the swamp. you need to know hr and payroll rules in hundreds of companies great companies try to offer horizontal services. going to the world where you've got different accounting standards. you have to have another disruptive technology to free up the market again >> are you too big for them to buy? >> i don't think about that. all three of them are friends and partners >> you've got a big market cap >> they've got bigger. >> they do you are at 45, you want 90, probably i know you >> i just want to see this out and build the best company we

can. we are still so early in the cycle of cloud deployment and machine technology >> five years from now, when you say you want to see it out, what does workday look like >> i hope we are one of the true erp leaders. not just hr but transitioning to finance and procurement. we are more global than we are today. i think the hr world for cloud, finan that might be 20% penetrated, finance might be 5% penetrated a lot is still in front of us. >> what if customers wait to see. >> every company needs an hr system at what point does the old system break down and they need a replacement.

they want to run finance differently. that's on the agenda of every ceo here it is budget cycles and the highest productivity these are necessarities. you can't run a system without the financial systems. >> who runs those? >> sap and oracle. they run people soft >> we'll have carmine on from ei zha anything close to consider >> i think blockchain is looking for problems to solve. we found one to solve, which is credentials. an employee should be able to go

from company to company and carry their credentials with them it would be captured by blockchain rather than edited. >> is that personal information and reviews from you it is one of the verification i worked with. so people can't fake their linkd account or whatever they are doing? >> no. that's the whole idea behind credentials and other companies that are doing background checks as well. it gives the employee power over data >> work with universities to make sure those diplomas are real >> absolutely. >> you started off the top i know you said back in october, you were seeing delays >> i have to be careful.

that was our quiet period. we were worried in october but that did not pan out we had a strong q 3. a couple conversations with big-time ceo can get you worries. one was a industrial company being impacted by tariff issues. you can draw too many conclusions. we wait until the quarter is over >> that's good to hear >> so happy employee makes happy customers. that's really nice how do you keep your employees really, really happy i'm thinking, you've got some nice food court or something i was thinking, you know what, maybe you give them shares in workday. you need share holder and i'm back to shares going up and

helping the other stake holder dependent on the previous stake holder >> is this your new analysis >> this is our final day here. we are all a little punch drunk at this point. >> if you are going to help the stake holder, ie employee, you make them a share holder and you are back to square one do you agree with me >> will you stop talking if i agree with you >> there are different ways to do it. >> and doing the wrong thing >> absolutely. economic growth and thinking profitability. it still helps that the shares go up. >> it still does almost every employee in the company owns shares in workday

>> thank you for be eing so kin to play along. we are just getting started here, we have three more hours of this. >> not four. >> true. former commerce secretary penny pritzer to talk about trade. ceo of honeywell on manufacturing in america we are live omfr davos, switzerland. we'll be right back. sfx: [phone ringing]

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welcome back to "squawk box. we are live from davos, switzerland. a few stocks to watch this morning. let's get you caught up to speed on what is happening st microis on track for the best day since october. reporting better than expected revenue. that company supplies chips to apple and tesla. guiding first quarter sales down 14% from the first quarter that stock is up over 6% shares ofcitrix system on the rise fourth quarter profit rose by 25%. cloud computing is raising guidance for 2020. >> coming up, former commerce

secretary penny pritzker will join us. you are watching "squawk box" this morning live from the world economic forum in davos, switzerland. >> annnc: iltoouerstl come, the ceo from honeywell on the health of the world economy hey you dang woodchucks, quit chucking my wood! geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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that like each other again it was getting pretty nasty. >> joining us now is penny pritzker what is your take on where the relationship is between the u.s. and china? >> the good news is, it seems like tensions are down at least this week. sos that good. we've been through a lot of pain to get where we are at the question is, was it all worth it we didn't get any structural change and it cost us about 10% of wisconsin farmers are gone. >> i think this is hype? >> i think it is not as far as long as we are being told we are. >> we haven't dealt with china

security there is a lot of work we've had people take that it was more than they thought for phase one. >> having worked with the chinese, the proof will be in the pudding. the good news is tensions are down that's good for the global economy. >> do you think the relationship fundamental fundamentally changed. this is a genuine detant do you believe that? >> we'll see who knows. will the chinese live up to their end of the bargain >> one of the big issues here.

what was it, the woke economic forum, rather than the world economic forum what is your sense on the woke economic forum there is so much emphasis on esg. >> i think you can do both what people are talking about is focusing on sustainability is good for the planet, which is absolutely essential our customers want companies it do that and our employees. >> is this a sign of the top in an abundant world, we can have these conversations when things have terrible, it is complicated to talk about issues that might feel like there on the side.

>> if you think about clean energy it is enormous opportunity are people feeling okay with the growth talking about other issues what are we doing for employees to be skilled up and deal with the fact that we have so much more technology at work. >> you made news last week when you endorsed joe biden you are the sixth cabinet minister from obama to have done this it still looks like a pretty open race. are you concerned about what happens to the party with maybe more moderates and those much more far leaning left? >> it will be interesting to see what happens and i think healthy to have the conversation what is going on in the democratic party is a recognize

that while wages are rising, it isn't enough we have a lot of people struggling we still have a manufacturing recession and challenges to deal with because people are being laid off how do we address that there is a big spectrum you point out. let's try and make the system work for everybody >> if it turns out to be bernie sanders or elizabeth warren nomination, would you support them >> i struggle with a number of their policies i don't believe in a wealth tax. should someone like me pay more in taxes i pay more, yes. i don't think the wealth tax is the way to get there i don't think blowing up you are

health care system is the way to get there? >> would you vote for president trump then >> i can't go there. >> so you won't vote what would you do? >> president trump for me has been a real challenge for our country. that's why i'm supporting joe biden. he's the man with the experience and respect around the world i still stay in touch with many of our friends around the world. they tell us you are off the playing field. you are asking they are doing whatever they want regardless of consequence because we are unreliable i'm a friend of mike bloomberg he's trying to make an important

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welcome back we are live this morning from davos, swriitzerland. we are on day three here >> day last. >> our next guest, ceo from honeywell. good morning to you. >> thank you >> thank you for being here. on our last day, do you have a big take away. something you learned? a lesson for all of us >> for me, this is my first time in davos >> even better some fresh eyes on the situation. >> i think there is some mi

misperception on what this is about. i'm up at 7:00 and go until 10:30. none of that is fun oriented it is fun because i see customers and we get to dig into problems or solutions. it isn't a social hour >> not at all. >> it has been a great experience for me. >> so you are coming back? >> yes i'll be back >> you've been talking to customers? >> my schedule is loaded >> all your customers are here >> you think about all the trips i would have to take whether mideast or china, they are all

here >> give us the pulse then. a lot of people seem to have a sense of optimism. >> the industrial outlook might be slightly cooler we have our short cycle business promising. short cycle is more iffy i just don't know. the outlook is 30-45 days. slightly in the ballpark of 2019 there are some real tail winds i like what is happening around trade. we have the election coming up

>> you think capital spending will be slow >> i don't know. i see this year a little different. better on trade fiscal policies. >> how important is china's growth in this picture if china does better than anticipated, that helps other countries around the region. >> for us, it is very important. we are 10% in china. we do everything there in terms of innovation, manufacturing and selling. china is very important. signs are positive i'm an optimist. people are picking at the faults any time you get two parties negotiating, it builds poe memom

>> i'm curious what you think about boeing, what you think will happen? >> i think boeing will solve these issues they are a great american company, they are a great brand. i know 737 max is getting a lot of attention there has been wrong steps i'm confident that plane will fly again. >> we had glen hutchins on yesterday talking about the spread 50 basis points trying to suggest there is something genuinely a miss >> i talk to a lot of the airline ceos, that's the person that really matters. they will tell you it is a great aircraft they have issues that have to be fixed. once they are fixed. >> you make components for that?

>> yes we are 90% of air transport large aircraft, we have some presence on. >> i didn't realize you have 25% of the world's buildings controlled by honeywell systems too. that's a massive number. >> this underpins our digital strategy called forge is the basis we have. whether aircraft install, buildings, industrial plants, process plants, industrial workers, that underpins our whole strategy when is the digital transformation >> when are you going to be able to heat and cool 25% of buildings with hydropower? >> maybe the year after. >> hurry up. honestly >> i can't tell you a number i can tell you we can do it a

lot more energy efficient. >> which is a great way. >> 10 to 20% savings in energy >> you can do that with your eyes shut, problably >> some is efficiency, watching patterns and patterns >> what does it cost to remapla the system and put a new one in? >> i don't care if they are honeywell or not we can provide for others as well the may back is a year or less it is a compelling value proposition for customers. i'm a little frustrated because i think honeywell doesn't get

the credit it should from the foot print perspective >> it is a huge initiative for you. >> the key initiative for us >> you'll join us again next year >> i'll be back. >> you won't have fresh eyes i like the idea of first timer coming up, vista energy partners on the next generation of americans >> wealthiest african-american in the world not in the world, united states. you can watch for us live on the go on the app. i'm told there is no video it's broken. we'll be right back. at leaf blowers.

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well come back live at the world economic forum in davos, switzerland on day three. i caught up with robert smith, chairman and ceo of vista partners and i asked how he sees the future of capitalism >> we are seeing the biggest disparity of wealth. in the world of enterprise, we are pretty good on the e side.

we use power and have carbon foot prints. for the most part, we are pretty clean. the s part call it the social how do we make it a more inclusive environment. we have had to do it by necessity because we need more talented people. i've got 75,000 plus employees, 5,000 reqs if i go to the normal source, i can't fill those reqs. >> i'm curious to ask you how the african-american community sees the market. >> that's a long answer. in general, we go up but we have individual pockets that don't participate. african-americans have traditionally not participated you look at the homestead act, red lining around communities.

inabilities to gain a foothold in the capital part of capitalism they've always been the labor part that's the dynamic how do you move them into capital. some are policy, some individual, some philanthropic we have the first time in the history of this planet where you can actually generate capital not owning capital intellectual profit, using technology you have to get on ramped to this technology solution internships, getting into technology >> president trump has talked about record unemployment for african-americans in the united states under his administration. do you think the african-american community appreciates that >> i think if you didn't have a

job and you do now, you appreciate that. we have got record employment. that is true now is it leading to income or to wealth. land openership is what leads to wealth buying a house using that capital to send your kids to school to improve that base in your family. we have to convert that income to capital and these communities. >> tell me about the morehouse >> when you see a child liberated. you took the initiative to go to a college, take on debt, your family, mother, grandparents took on debt so you could be the first one in your family to graduate and you have a burden

of debt that may prevent you from buying a job for the next 20, 25 years when i thought about my capacity as an african-american male business person whach, what is d way to liberate a spirit after 1619, i thought this is a good way to do it. >> robert smith, i love that story. one of those great inspirational stories in terms of what he was ability to do for students we had a longer conversation you can see on line about whether politically we should wipe out student debt across the board. he's not totally for that. he thinks it is more complicated. his oern personwn personal stora great one. former goldman sach.

>> we'll have to have him on "squawk box. very interesting guy love to hear more. when we come back, the hottest investments of private equity we'll talk to the cochairman of bain capital >> announcer: don't forget to subscribe to our podcast you'll get interviews, original content, behind the scenes access look for us on apple podcast or your favorite podcast app and s subscribe to pod squad today im.

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welcome back, the private equity industry recordedly began t -- reportedly began 2020 with

record cash pile great to see you steve because of how we introduced this with the amount of cash out there and how hard it has been to find deals. now are there opportunities for buying what do you think of the prices you're seeing. >> markets are at an all-time high globally. it's very hard to find good investments. what the good private equity firms have done and certainly our heritage is from the consulting business where we really go in and add value, transform businesses, you have to find a businessthat you can grow and transform take a small company and take it global buy two companies at once because there will not be much multiple expansion left out there. you have to have a plan and a strategy i have been doing this for 30 years. we started out with that valuvalue value-added focus. we have gone deeper with vertical markets groups and created digital marketing people that go into our companies and

get them on the internet and improve their marketing. five or six firms in the 1980s now 4,000 companies, the big ones, have the resources to really drive growth. there's a misnomer out there with all the politics, private equity is not about cross-cutting. it's about growth. no one wants to buy a company that is shrinking. how do we grow companies how do we invest in new products for example, in trying to find these deals, we have done a deal where we're putting 350 million into a company that has bought 13 central nervous system drugs from pfizer. >> right. > we'll commercialize those drugs. that's great capital that's growth. that's what you need to do in private equity we're building brand new cruise lines, investing 3 billion behind that. so private equity i think has gotten a bad rap out there politically. it's a big part of the economy,

a big success and employees 9 million people about thisgrowth, our own bane capital portfolio, we increased jobs by 1.1 million since we bought the companies that's a fact. >> bad rap now, wait until your senator gets in. >> hopefully we can get the news out there that actually private equity has been a great thing for america. >> it feels like the private equity industry is on the offensive because of a worry that this election is coming and the industry will become a target if it hasn't already? >> i think more reflects the maturation the companies are big enough to try to get the message out and there has been so many false messages. >> you were sensitive and defensive. you brought this up. you're trying to counter something that you see out there. >> well, i feel -- >> we didn't say that all you have to do is cut costs. >> i'm very proud of what the industry has done and what i do. certainly you see a lot of negative advertising out there. >> yo do.

>> funded by different politicians. >> i think it's time to set the record straight. i don't think i'm being defensive straight. >> preaching to the choir. >> it's been a great thing. >> you interviewed robert smith. he gave millions to charity to put kids through school. if i look at my partners at bain capital, they're filling charities. >> let's talk about one of the companies you have trying to put addition additional capital into that's canada goose what do you want to see happen. >> well, it's been a great story. my partners work with the founder danny reese and the found every is still there driving the business and has a big ownership percentage in the business it was a wonderful situation he wanted to grow the business he looked around for private equity firms he thought our retail group had taken companies global and opened up stores

he partnered with us and has done a fabulous job. i don't know if you have gone to the stores recently, but started out with these jackets i started wearing it seven years ago at davos. >> i was wearing it before you, eight years ago. very puffy, though >> seinfeld coat. >> they've slimmed it down this is the new black label slimmed down one. >> slimmed down fashionable. >> i need to slim down myself a little bit, too. when we looked at the business with danny, this is an incredible product they developed 25, 30 years for canadian expeditions to the arctic now it's gone global from $3 million company to $3 billion company and has a wide product line go into the stores now, fantastic sweaters millennials in today's market want something that's going to last and that's functional canada goose built beautiful, lasting products that's functional and selling like hot cakes. >> the stock was down after an

analyst thought they were discounting the coats over the holidays the company denied that. >> i have not personally seen any discounting. we have to pay full retail for the jackets. >> not cheap pretty pricey coat. >> it is but you think about it, he's had his for eight years. they'll last 20 or 30 years. they started out in europe buying things that are sustainable, they wear for a long period of time. >> but isn't that a problem for the business model >> it's not a problem because it's still so low penetrated, high quality jackets that protect you in 70 below zero weather are not really penetrated out there so there's a long room to run. canada goose will come out with boots and other products they have the highest quality material there's a long way to run. >> how much has to be fashion? fashion is a dangerous business. >> it's interesting. we did one of those heart charts, word charts. and the biggest word describing canada goose was warm and

functional and so the world, the millenials want a product that's warm and functional not that it's not fashionable. i'm not a great model, but you can see on you this coat would look incredible. you could model this coat. >> thanks for coming in today. it's great to see you. >> it's great to be here. >> far too long. come back and see us soon. >> i'll be back. >> can i model this coat >> you're a great analyst, joe you're a great announcer. >> it's a demo situation >> is that what it is many. >> becky could. >> for sure. >> sure. okay coming up, our parent company comcast earnings are expected momentarily. those numbers and instant reaction when they are released. then we're going to talk to our company ceo brian roberts will join us about those results and the new streaming service peacock. and from davos, the ceo of liberty global, heads of nasdaq and the new york stock exchange will join us big hour ahead

that's all coming up on "squawk box" right here in davos, switzerland.

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"squawk box" is live in davos with insight you won't find anywhere else. >> there's uncertainty in the air at all times but at the same time, i think it's the world you settle into, business as usual. >> announcer: up next, a "squawk box" power hour. comcast brian roberts. the nyc stacy cunningham and the nasdaq adie that freedman. this is a special edition of "squawk box" in davos. ♪ good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. we are in davos, switzerland want to take a look at u.s. equity futures at this hour. 2:30 before the markets open let's show you where things are headed right now the dow looks like it would open off 14 points

nasdaq marginally higher 5 points s&p off about 1 point. >> we have earnings. we do. comcast quarterly profit was 7 cents a share, that was 3 cents above what the street had been expecting. revenue came in at about $28.4 billion and that was also well ahead of what the street had been forecasting comcast also announcing a 10% dividend increase. we are going to have much more on comcast quarter at the bottom of the hour when we'll speak with comcast chief executive officer and chairman brian roberts. looking through some of these numbers -- >> we're already sitting down. >> he'll sit down with us from philadelphia. >> yeah, from philadelphia numbers are interesting. and they're full-year numbers, too, that we can use don't you think the most interesting thing is 372,000 new customer relationships. >> yep. >> including high speed internet, best fourth quarter ever adding 442,000 customers but then you go to the video

subscribers declined by 149. >> that's not surprising. >> but much higher than last year the total year it was 700,000 or somewhere up there >> right. >> comcast emphasizes they're not chasing customers that are not profitable >> the empty calorie customers. >> right but when ever anyone talks about comcast, everybody worries about cord cutting in the new era, but they all point out, calm cast has unbelievable broad band business we'll ask brian about it, it's a stand out. you know, comcast augments it with the sky acquisition and peacock and everything else. >> the stock is up by 2.1% that's an all-time high for comcast shares some of the other numbers that the street will be looking at because again it's the fourth quarter, they'll be most focussed on free cash flow $2.5 billion in the quarter compared to $2.1 billion a year ago in the fourth quarter 28.4 billion that was consistent

with the year ahead. and ebit dob was up. you're right, joe. the ads and the broadband additions will be the big focus for a lot of these things. but also if you want to look through some of the other numbers that are out there, sky is a big part. >> i don't think we should talk about "cats". >> there was a mention of "cats. part of it was a comp issue relative to a year ago. >> we have to talk about 1917. >> yes. >> which was a great success. >> film business is just -- the film business. >> it's the film business and there are some big franchises coming later this year, minions 2, troll. >> minions was a sequel of -- >> "despicable me". >> minions sequel is minions 2.

>> we could stalk about this forever, too we'll speak with brian roberts at the bottom half of this hour. yesterday i spoke to president trump, asked about the trajectory of the growth in the united states and here is what he had to say on the strength of the u.s. economy >> i want this dollar to be strong i want it to be so powerful. i want it to be great, but if you lower the interest rates, so many good things would happen. >> right. >> one of the things i do want to do is pay off debt. we're poised for tremendous growth that will kick in towards the end of the year. >> joining us now for a broader look at the growth of the global economy is carmine, ey ceo and chairman we'll talk about the economy i eventually want to talk about the way you're trying to do public networks. you need to explain to me, to go from private because it's daunting. what were you a chemical engineer or something?

>> i was a chemistry major undergrad. >> so that helps, i think. but can we talk about public versus private first, overall, what are you hearing here what are you seeing with customers and clients? >> economy is pretty good. you said no recession a year ago. >> you're right. i absolutely did yeah the first part of davos was all about climate. but now in the last day or so i think we're back to normal conversation around the economy, around growth. look, our clients are pretty bullish. one of the things you all said to me was can you come back if you see a slow down in terms of what your clients are seeing i would say end of november, december i was going to call up and say maybe i should come in because we started seeing -- >> really? >> you should have. >> the uncertainty piece around the china deal, around brexit was starting to weigh things down with those two things behind us,

i do think it's clean sheet of paper and we're ready to go again. >> that's really interesting anil was here from "work day." he spoke the entire cloud industry all the stocks back in october when he said they had seen some potential slow down in things. he told us this morning that it was really -- he was hearing it from a few big -- from a few ceos in particular including one big industrial ceo and he may have extrapolated some incorrect sort of inferences from some of those conversations he was having at that time. >> yeah. i would say it was broader in terms of what we saw november/december. i do think people were starting to get nervous on the china deal in particular. >> ready to stop spending as much money. >> ready to slow down a bit, yeah now that's all behind us so we're seeing a lot of transformation going on with clients, in particular in technology that obviously is good for us. it causes work for us. and you know, you have to be on top of a.i. cloud.

you have to have your business organized right today. those are all things that are creating work and creating jobs also. >> what would a public network do for you, and a lot of your peers think it's too daunting or too many problems. you think a lot of problems are imminently solvable. why would it help you? >> what do you mean the public networks >> the public networks using block chain infrastructure. >> block chain. >> on block chain. i guess what is the drawback for private networks if you could make it ubiquitous it would be much easier for your clients, right >> yeah. there's a whole school of thought, joe, that open network, a public network would work well for everyone it's like the internet, okay. >> but is it doable? there's a lot of draw backs, right, that you're trying to address. >> there's a lot of drawbacks but we think it's doable. >> it's a big bet. it's like swinging for the fences. >> it's a big bet, joe think of the internet.

think if the internet was born in small pieces all over the place. it wouldn't work well. the same thing with block chain. we believe in an open block chain. >> have you looked into this sorkin >> yes but what do you make of the argument by anil, by the way who was just on, that actually block chain is a solution looking for a problem? >> look, i don't think block chain will be the savior to everything but i do think in particular situations it's very, very helpful. we do a lot of work in block chain when it comes to authenticating food, authenticating wine. we actually have done a lot of projects in italy. we do projects in japan around sake authenticating that the grapes are where they are all along the way, using ops chain. >> how does that work? >> basically along the way and along the supply chain, if you use ops chain, you want to make sure that that is really that

takes away anything that's going to come in between so, it really helps -- think of it, the supply chain, all the way from grapes all the way to coming in a bottle and your bottle will have a little thing that says it's gone through ops chain and that ensures that those are actual grapes from where they grew. >> i look at who you're up against. it would be interesting if it's actually possible. i was just fascinated that per transaction it was too expensive $9for something small so you couldn't use it, bundle together hundreds at a time you could get it down to pennies wonder if you're actually looking, chemistry major, you understand the actual technology and what needs to be done. >> to be honest, joe, i don't understand it as well but our people understand it very well. >> you have people. >> and they're very bullish on it but again, i agree with the person before, this is not a macro. you have to have a particular

reason. >> all right so australia went 28 years without a downturn how long can we go >> right now i'm pretty bullish. so i think we can go a long way. i mean, i do worry about, look, i think you are going to see increasing wages if you really look at jobs. >> you worry about that? you're not supposed to worry about that. >> monetary policy if wages are increasing so that then will put pressure on the equity markets. >> it's going to be so strong the feds will be forced to raise rates? >> that's the question will it be strong? or will it be very moderate? >> you think in a presidential cycle that could happen? don't you think the powell said hands off the wheel, i don't want to deal with this >> well, no, i don't think so, andrew wages are increasing really dramatically it has to happen. >> yeah. >> thank you. >> thanks, joe. >> call us next time did sorkin not take your call. >> i'm always -- i pick up my

phone. >> it was close. it was close but i wasn't there. >> well, we thank you for thinking of us keep us in mind. thank you. coming up when we return, comcast chairman and ceo brian roberts will join us to talk about the company's quarterly results literally just out very big investment in streaming. new peacock service. the ceo of liberty global will join us "squawk box" returns right after this ♪

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simple. easy. awesome. call, click or visit a store today. welcome back to "squawk box," everybody. a couple of corporate headlines to tell you about this morning caught up to date with earnings out. dow component travelers 3.32 a share. 3 cents better than expected revenue for travelers beat forecasts. that stock right now down by about 2% it was a mixed quarter for another dow component, procter & gamble the consume products giant beat estimates by 5 cents with quarterly earnings 1.42 a share. p&g raised its full year earnings full cast as well as the lower end of the organic sales outlook. stock off by 2.5%. china put two cities on lockdown

because of the outbreak of the coronavirus. it's killed 17 people and infected nearly 600. officials fear that transmission rate will accelerate as hundreds of millions of chinese travel during the lunar new year holidays coming up right now take a look at the asian markets. they've been falling amid worries about the spread of the virus and overnight hang sang was down by 1.5% nikkei down by 1% and shanghai composite down by 2.75%. lockdown in wuhan and another city that's pretty significant when you consider wuhan has a population of 11 million people. >> unbelievable. 1,000 cities with 1 million people or something. coming up, the future of entertainment in media with the ceo of liberty global, mike freeze. and comcast brian roberts is going to be on with us today to break down the company's quarter and strategy in peacock and everything else. this is "squawk box" on cnbc >> announcer: still to come, the

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>> announcer: now the answer to today's aflac trivia question -- which company turned down an opportunity to purchase google's pagerank for $1 million in 1998? the answer, yahoo. cable and broadband giant liberty global making waves in leadership changes as part of its broadband push joining us right now, of course, the company is also talking about the shares that lost about 10% just over the last year. it's having a little bit of a rough start to the year so far for more on those growth plans, we're joined right now by mike freeze, the ceo and vice

chairman of liberty global mike, it's great to see you. >> great to be here. thanks for having me. >> let's talk about what some of the big issues facing the cable industry are you're seeing across the board when it comes to cable cutting comcast announced this morning some of the issues they had with video and why they're adding in broadband. we have seen video subscribers drop >> there's pros and cons in that we have always been a videoing ary gator going way back cable channels, saturday lite channels the industry the moving into ott app. we're now aggregating netflix and amazon prime and youtube and consumers are happy about that we're not losing as many customers in europe. the streaming wars have come they're not as viral or problematic. broadband is the killer app for us if you think of companies like charter, for example, they're not giving up on the video business, but they're pointing to 99% gross margins in broadband and declining gross margins and video saying we're a healthy company. that's the way we look at it as well. >> isn't the transition -- there

is a transition cost to you, right? >> yeah. >> sure. >> it may be fabulous if you're just running broadband, never get to that place, but all the stra infrastructure and everything that comes with as that business diminishes. >> in europe we're losing 1 to 2% in the year, u.s. 4 to 5% if you include satellite. we're declining more slowly but certainly frictional costs in that it's a revenue stream we want to protect and the way we're protecting is doing the same thing comcast is doing, launching an advanced verks of our box, speak into, go to bbc, amazon or netflix. consumers in europe don't want to work that hard. >> i don't want to work that hard. >> 80% still lean back and watch the big screen so there's a chance for us to be an agoragator in content we use the same platform as comcast rdk. we think we're in a good place you're right there's friction there you lean into broadband. in our case, we're leaning into

fixed mobile convergence we have been part of those 5g in 1 gig is a killer combination. that's the dream team. mobile and fixed assets in europe and have in many markets, that's a long-term plan. connectivity is where it's at for us. >> you're a little skeptical about 5g getting here quickly as some people say. >> i think it's happening but i don't know that everybody is happy. operators aren't happy, it's expensive, spectrum is exspencive and i'm not sure there's a business case yet. 4g in europe is a fast, great product. works well here in davos nobody is complaining about speeds it's going to happen we're behind it. it will never replace fixed in my mind because the average mobile operator -- mobile customer consumes maybe 5 or 10 gigabytes a month. >> speak to that what about this idea of fix line wireless 5g. >> i think it's a marginal product. it might be working well in

rural areas where you can't get fiber or cable but fixed wireless is not a great technology i don't think anybody even verizon is that serious about it as a replacement product europe not that much as well. >> at&tis praying and hoping that it is. >> well, they don't want to spend on fiber we're heavy into fixed we're building the 10gig network. we'll be 10gigs probably in the next seven to eight years. even ten years we go up tenfold. when i was on stage ten years ago i was bragging about a 100 meg. really is that for real it's going nowhere but up. you need to have a wire. you need fiber to get that done. >> you've got, what, about $10 billion on hand that you can put to play if you were interested in buying anybody. >> yeah. it's a good question last year we bought about 3.2 million of our stock we had some issues with our investors which we are addressing everybody wants to know what we're going to do with it. we'll be patient, make smart

moves, look at buying back stock. europe, it's not like it was ten years ago. it's not that rush for consolidation anymore. so we want to look for the right transactions. >> just with the stock drop, what do investors not see? what do you think -- >> i think it's all about the uk you can buy your stock today you get virgin media for free. there are concerns uk market is very competitive. there was a whole brexit issue that i think was behind us we've got some head winds on the regulatory front that are not great, but fundamentally it's about driving free cash flow and that is going up and operating free cash flow we feel good about the uk market and have great strategic options there. our network reaches half of the uk boris johnson wants 1 gig in front of everybody by 2025 we're there for 12 months for half the country we have such a robust network. for us there's lots of optionalty. >> we'll talk to brian roberts in a little bit. what do you make of sky? >> sky is a great company.

they're effective in broadband effective in content and video we're partners with them we carry their content we pay them a lot every year for that so i think they've done a nice job. jeremy and steven are great operators. i'll be there tomorrow meeting with them. i think we're all kind of figuring out what the future looks like in the uk it's sort of musical chairs. we're figuring out when will the music stop and who is standing >> we are often talking about netflix constantly. >> right. >> and they now talk about how 90% of their growth has to come internationally. >> yep. >> it has to come to your customers. >> yeah. >> what do you think the up take is really going to be for them >> it varies remember, they're global so a small number multiplied by a big number is a big number it's 5% across the planet that's a big number he's as high as 30 or 40% in some markets, as low as 5 or 10 in others. it's a market-based situation. i think it's a great product we love carrying it. we love distributing it to consumers on our box

he's going to have some challenges with disney plus and peacock and others getting into the game and holding back content, but netflix, he's very specific about his strategy. he's not going into sports he's not doing advertising spending 15 billion a year on original content that will work for a period of time it's a great business. >> you feel belter >> i'm feeling really good right now. >> you own the stock >> you have had me petrified it will be a 5g world and comcast will be out of business. you had all these -- >> no. >> now i hear the truth. >> hold on, hold on. >> two years. >> if you swapped him out with randall stevenson, he would tell you the opposite story. >> 75% of the time you're on your phone you're on a fixed network. at work, you're on wify. >> you know who is coming on next, you want to talk him out of fixed line. >> as a proud employee of comcast, i feel very good. >> you've been making me worry. >> you have some of your friends come on here and scare us.

>> mike, thank you for joining ustion. >> great to be here. >> really great to see you take care. still to come, you have to see this, yes, he is our boss, but he's got big news this morning, comcast chairman and ceo brian roberts will join us to talk about the company's latest quarterly results the new streaming service peacock and so much more we'll be with him in just a little bit adena freedman and talk to new york stock exchange's president stacey cunningham. yes, you're watching "squawk box" live this morning from davos, switzerland

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welcome back to "squawk box," everybody. we have a big lineup still to come this morning. from the world economic forum in davos, i switzerland david solomon will join us at the top of the hour. treasure secretary steven mnuchin and chevron ceo david

worth. also, let's tell you about some stocks to watch this morning. st micro is on track for its best day since october the european chip maker reporting better than expected revenue in its latest quarter. the company supplies chips to apple and tesla. sales down 14% from the fourth quarter but that is still above what the street had been expecting. as a result, that stock is up by 7.4% shares of citric systems are rising this morning as well. it's fourth quarter profit rose 25%. helped by a big tax benefit. and the software and cloud computing company is raising its earning guidance for 2020. that stock up by 4.25%. comcast beat wall street estimates on both the top and bottom lines in its latest earnings report. comcast shares on track to open at an all-time high this morning. joining us now, comcast chairman and ceo brian roberts looks like 2.2% mr. roberts, it's great -- mr. roberts, it's great to see you

this morning i know we might have a delay we have things shuttling between different areas. >> no, we're all good. i wish i was in davos with you we're perfect. >> we wish you were here, too. when i look at comcast, i wouldn't call it a conglomerate but there's so many moving parts that we really have five or six different things to talk about let me just ask you first off, the fourth quarter, was it a good year to start with, the first three quarters fourth quarter in line with what you thought for the whole year, did it end strongly for the company? >> absolutely. so, if i look at -- if i just step back to the question you started with, let's look at the company from, you know, the big picture, start there so, we've got three businesses and they're great businesses start with the cable and broadband business that really, i think, powered the quarter. we had 441,000 broadband net ads. one of the best over 12 years. and for the whole year we did

1.4 million. we're really excited with the cable results led by that broadband number if you look at nbc universal, a great business and we're growing. we have multiple parts of it i'm sure we'll talk about some of that. but we have last week unveiled our peacock streaming strategy as well as one of the record years for nbc being number one for the sixth-straight year, film had a strong year, parks wasn't a perfect fourth quarter, but overall it's been one of the fastest growing parts of our company. we have great investment plans there. and sky, first real year of us owning sky, the leading platform in europe. we're really thrilled we've got it you put it all together, i think our company has tremendous momentum it had a wonderful full year and fourth quarter and we're set up to make some investments in 2020 that we really want to make to build growth for the years beyond

that so all in all very happy with the quarter. as you say, our earnings beat expectations and the momentum is probably the most important thing that i look at and i'm really pleased with all three businesses >> well, as an employee, you know, we always hear about the daunting future for cable and we hear about cord cutting. you do see it manifested in video losses in the fourth quarter versus a year ago. but if you've got something, you know, behind that in terms of broadband or a way to replace those customers that rnts as valuable as they used to be any way, kind of alleviates the fear or the overhang that the whole industry had for a number of years. is that fair to say that, brian? >> i think that is i think the way i would describe it is we made a pivot to a broadband centric cable company, that whether it's for streaming

or gaming or any other app that you're interested on your television, the best wify, that's the number one product. that's what we go to market with we now have a mobile product and multiple video offerings in addition, for people who want broadband only, which is now a very big growing part of our customer base, we wanted to invent a product for streamers and that's we call flex. i can tell you that in the fourth quarter we launch flex. it's a voice remote. it connects you to the apps. it's free now to our broadband only customers and we couldn't keep it in stock. in fact, we literally had to slow down and get more inventory so we could hit the ground running in 2020. so i think there is a by fur indication in the market some people want a real premium video experience and those customers are very stable and we're very satisfied with that business at the same time, we need it to pivot the whole company to the streaming world. and i think what's exciting is

how well our cable company has done that. over at nbc, the same thing. we see the effect of declining number of bundled households, so what do we do? we invented peacock. peacock will go right back for the advertisers and get you in a growing market, taking advantage of streaming with a free product as well. so, i think both companies are set up to help consumers sort out this changing time >> it certainly helps to be able to pivot and i see the strategy as far as the sky acquisition, and the long-term future of comcast, how was that additive did that emillurate concerns >> first of all, it was the sky technology team that's helping power peacock. right off the bat, terrific integration. i think the sky europe has been a tough time and you're probably

seeing that being at davos but the sky team has invested with the superior product. so we grew ebita we have grown our customers during the year. again, they have a streaming product and a direct to consumer product already. they're the leading platform in europe i'm impressed by their customer service, their customer experience, their management culture and their ability to now lean in and grow so what we're thinking about in 2020 for all three businesses is looking for investments in really three different categories first and foremost is we want to invest in broadband. so, we announced a consumer electronics show, the fastest wify multi-gig speed and best router and moe dumb. we also have giving security clearance free to all of our broadband customers. innovating and broadband, we then take that same product we

call it x-fy and taking it to italy in sky's platform. so the first big 2020 initiative is investing in broadband. the second one is helping people sort through apps and streaming and aggregation and whether that's flex or peacock we have talked a lot about that last week. and then the third are theme parks. which we think have tremendous opportunity given where universal is at. so we have a big attraction coming out in osaka, japan, this coming summer with nintendo, never been done before, a technology with augmented reality, really exciting potential opportunity we're then planning to take to every park we have in the united states then we're opening a brand new park in beijing in 2021 and brand new park in orlando, epic universe, in 2023. a lot of investment to build growth, to have the kind of results that we just had in 2019, which is what gives the

company a real bounce in its step >> hey, brian, question about peacock. some analysts have asked the question effectively, how much value do you think you can get per customer on a relative basis on peacock to a customer that's living as part of the bundle >> well, what we said is that we hope in the next four, five years to be able to get to the kind of advertising revenue per customer and therefore the value per customer would come from that that some other platforms are getting today. so i think we've given ourselves a long runway to scale up, take back some of the content that's on other platforms, make some original content, engage with consumers. but as we talked about, peacock will be very different we think we have a unique and different approach than a lot of the other streaming platforms, which gives us the wide side to invest and whether that's sports and news and cnbc all being part

of a streaming service and offering different levels of that service and engaging with our other distributors to build that value, so it's part of a strategy at nbc universal. it's not just an isolated separate business completely on to its own it's very integrated same, it will be enter grated with comcast, cable customers will all get it free very different approach that i think will build value for our shareholders and will be fantastic for consumers with a very light ad load, very limited interruption, sponsorships but yet very valuable for those advertisers because nobody is offering anythingwith the high valued premium content with an advertising experience in that kind of way. so we're pretty excited as we unveiled last week >> hey, brian, this is the first time we have gotten to talk to you on air since steve burke announced that he would be leaving nbc universal. i know he talked to you about

his retirement, long in advance you two planned that out i just wonder what it means to you because you have been working with him for the last two decades or longer. >> i appreciate your asking. he's been a real partner with me for 22 years he will definitely be missed i'm happy for him. he's excited to do other things. i think he will always be part of the comcast family in helping me and helping the board and others he has a very able successor in jeff shell and deep management team working with jeff jeff's been with us, you know, almost 15, 18 years working for steve that entire time so, while it is -- change is hard, i think doing it at the beginning of the year makes a lot of sense steve talked about wanting to do other things, but i can't thank him enough for the culture, the integrity and the momentum and the great businesses we have

compared to where we were 22 years ago. but we're excited with the team going forward. i wish steve well and thank him profusely. >> the peacock, the whole roll out i don't know just in my view vintage burke. it had to be designed a certain way, it had to be rolled out, those boxes are checked perfectly. it's an important part of the future but it is the future, it's 3, 4, 5 years before profitability just the way the whole thing was handled. that to me looked like vintage burke. it's a daunting future brian, just to thank you stake holders, they were all talking about other than shareholders i think about -- i'm about six different stake holders at comcast, shareholders, employees, consumers, customers, everything else. i'm really for the whole stake holder thing for comcast, brian. >> we talk to your financial stake holder we upped our dividend this morning for the 12th straight year 8 cents, 10%.

at the same time, i believe that our company has a chance to continue to redefine the products and the services and have employees who have the kind of passion that we're thankful you guys do. i appreciate the support and the questions and we look forward to having a great 2020. >> fantastic brian roberts, chairman and ceo. thank you. thanks for all the time this morning. adena. >> i'm great. >> home team to home team. >> you have to go slow with this with air bus, subsidiary of airbus, to provide core technology for the company's derivatives trading venue. recently established it's a venn chur from airbus to enable the trillion dollar global air industry to hedge revenue risk with indeseize

so, you can actually quantify what a c cost and hedge risk for the industry and it's a joint venture announcing today with airbus can you explain. >> sure. >> is that it? >> so nasdaq has been working very hard to make sure we expand our strategy and our market technology business. we've come on to the show before to say the technology that supports the capital markets really should support markets beyond just the financial industry this is a great example of the type of marketplace you can create to really help other aspects of the economy hedge risk and to manage through and create liquidity in certain parts of their business. airbus came to us with their idea and they have asked us to partner. we provide the trading technology the surveillance technology and using our clearinghouse in europe to clear the trades and what they've done, they've done a partnership with a company that tracked every ticket price, every pretrade and post trade so before the purchase and

after. and they're able to look at certain routes, certain regions in the world and they can say, well, how much is that price changed. new york at some point in the future they can do this on a broad basis or for particular airline. and it's also really helpful for the travel agency business, too, because -- >> really? >> you have a natural alignment of interest between the travel agencies, the airlines and all of the people and consumers obviously in terms of how they manage the risk of ticket prices. >> do you see consumers doing this >> they are not offering this right now to consumers it's a professional market they're able to hedge out some of their ticket price risk and pass that benefit on. >> adena fears of a pandemic in china. >> a slow down with wuhan being shut down. >> i think it would allow you to

hedge a lot of different risks if you're an airline industry. and one of the things that they talk about is the fact that any given month the price of a ticket or the cost of a ticket can vary by as much as 20% which makes it very hard for airlines to create and manage their revenues create more stability in the revenue base by having hedging products like this one, then obviously gives them more confidence in making capital purchases like airplanes. >> do you see corporations using this i'm thinking of apple, for example. there was a number that was given out a couple years ago, but just how many people fly literally out of san francisco from apple to china in a given year just because they're constantly going back. employees constantly going back and forth. would you go hedge that risk >> yeah. if they have an internal travel agency, they could do that or work with their travel agency to see if they could create some hedges against that risk so i actually think exactly what you're thinking about is how they're thinking long-term what's great about working with air bus is they are a very -- they're very focussed on the long-term. because of course building an

airline takes a while. so they have a long-term orientation to this as well to make sure it does change the face of travel and makes it so there's more stability in the industry going forward. >> while you're here, let's talk about the ipo market and what you expect this year what's 2020 going to look like >> well, right now the pipeline of prospects ipo prospects is very strong, very interesting. i would say that both in terms of private equity companies private equity held companies as well as technology companies the bio tech industry continues to be very strong and fin tech and other parts of the ndustry. so we are having a lot of meetings, a lot of interests, a lot of companies looking to tap the public markets in the first half >> because it's looking better than we were a year ago at this point. >> yeah. i think also the resiliency of the economy has been very strong and so you're seeing that. i think there's more and more confidence coming into the markets and so i believe that people feel like it's the right time for investors to take that equity risk as these companies

are coming out. >> adena, thank you. >> thank you >> good to see you here. not just at home. >> see you back home. >> great thanks very much. >> we'll be there monday >> we will >> you will. >> i'll see you tuesday. suckers. when we come back, head of the big board is here to talk about some of the most anticipated ipos of 2020 later, david solomon, goldman sachs ceo will join us to talk about the economy and changes happening at the storied investment bank right now. plus, we'll be joined by steven mnuchin and tackle everything from taxes to trade this is "squawk box" and we are live from davos. sri location te, you can see relationships. connections. patterns. you can see what others can't. ♪

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awarded the best professionally installed system by cnet. simple. easy. awesome. call, click or visit a store today. year with slack. joining us right now for a look at the ipo environment for next year, we're in there next year, by the way stacey cunningham, the president of the new york stock exchange very good to see you again. >> great to be back with you guys. >> we did our panel earlier. >> yes. >> a little bit on this very topic. give us a sense of when you look at so many of these high profile ipos that frankly did not go as well as expected with the exception of a handful. >> yeah. i think on average the ipo market performed very well

they're a handful that got a lot of attention that didn't perform so well. >> what do you think happened? how relevant is that >> let's take a step back and think about this for a second. 2019 was the best ipo market since 2014 it was a good year we shouldn't cat gar gorize as a bad year investors asked questions that they hadn't been asking before as we saw the difference between companies performing well when they had strong profits or path to profitability or those that had more explaining to do as to how they were going to get there. investors are looking for not just growth but profits. that's what we started to see at the end of the year. there is some retrenching from companies look to push their time lines out recognizing they might get different questions. >> so in terms of pipeline, what's it look like for you. filed with the s.e.c., many more talking to us and looking to list in 2020 and you see a lot of interest in coming out to market, tapping into what's there, but you see a

slight shift in how they tell their stories. that's going to be an important part i think the first couple that come out of the gate will really set the tone for the year. so we're excited to see that happen >> are they really strong ones that are coming out the first couple >> yeah. i think there are a lot of great companies in the pipeline. and it will -- there's a lot of companies that are looking -- one of the things that i talk a lot about because i think it's a real drawback to where we've been heading, companies are waiting so much longer to go public that they're much of their rapid growth is happening in the private markets we talked about this on the panel, there's a lot of challenges with that because the private markets do not value companies as sufficiently when the public markets do when you're bringing an ecosystem together they have more information because they're transparency and disclosures that the public markets deliver. >> that's what i was going to ask you about. some people look at the failed wework ipo great example of a market working. right? >> i heard somebody say that.

>> yeah. >> and i agree actually. >> well, but the flip side is you could argue that journalism worked or that there are lots of things that worked but it was really only after the s1 came out and after people could see what was going on. so the question is whether so many investors got fleeced who were in the private market. >> i think it is really critical for us to not undervalue the transparency the public markets deliver. s1, a document full of a lot of information that you're accountable for. >> but at the same time, the exchanges and others have pushed in part because you make it less onerous for companies to go public to be less transparent in that public process for a period time. >> more balance. so that's not about removing information. that's about focussing our disclosures on investor protections and giving information to investors so they can make informed decisions. but we don't want to layer on disclosure after disclosure of what investors might just find

interesting. then go have those conversations with issuers. >> the other question i was going to ask you, we talked about on the panel, but this ideal of dual class shares every company going public these days is having a dual class share. >> challenge not every company that's going public uber, they had a single class share structure. >> particularly unique scenario. >> i would say there are increasing number of tech companies going public with dual class. you're seeing that trend increase because companies are saying private longer. >> would you advocate for a sunset provision so that when companies go public, maybe there's a reason early on that you want them to have that runway that dual class would allow but that over long term you want to actually force the issue and turn it into a single class. >> i personally stacey cunningham would want to have the right to vote in a company i feel like i'm empowered when they're public and i know what their structure is i have access to that opportunity. if we were to say they can't be listed or they must still have a

sunset provision, they're likely to stay private and investors don't get access at all and that balance is what i'm focussed on. >> stacey cunningham, thank you. >> thank you. >> great to see you. >> great to see you, guys. >> coming up in the next hour, we have another continued great lineup of guests including the chairman and ceo of goldman sachs. u.s. treasury secretary and ceos of paypal and chevron. you are watching "squawk box." we're live from davos switzerland and we'll be right back we're carvana, the company who invented

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the biggest names in industry are talking to "squawk box." >> the momentum is the most important thing i look at and i'm really pleased with all three businesses. >> everybody wants to know what we're going to do with it. we'll be patient, make smart moves. >> announcer: this hour, treasury secretary steven mnuchin and the ceos of goldman sachs and chevron on the economy, the markets and more. this is a special edition of "squawk box," live from davos. ♪

good morning and welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc, live from the world economic forum in davos, switzerland, i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin i think it's becky, someone with sunglasses we have a big final hour on the show we'll hear from the chairman and ceo of goldman sachs that's big >> big. >> that's exciting might be the biggest of all of our -- well, not bigger than brian roberts, but important >> where does trump rank >> he's there. today i meant. >> just today. you have the secretary of treasury. >> secretary of the treasury, steve mnuchin. >> he's big, too. >> yeah, right and then the ceos of paypal and chevron and chevron guys over here in disguise he came walking upholding his head up in davos at this point with all that dirty energy u.s. equity futures at this -- right, sir huh? world economic forum. >> just keep going >> it's punchdrunk time here

it's been -- >> that's why we have our coats off because of the chevron guy it's hot here. >> dow jones indicated down 56 points -- god, sullivan is leaving. stay. >> stay. nothing could go wrong stay nothing could go wrong. >> i haven't said anything. >> i already introduced you. >> you can go through the time. >> treasury yields treasury yields take a quick look, 175. >> all right, here are some of the stories that investors are going to be talking about today. we should tell you about comcast beating analyst expectations for the latest quarter on the top and bottom line. parent said its cable division saw record quartly rate. we asked about peacock, the company's newly-revealed streaming platform. >> wehope in the next four, five years to be able to get to the kind of advertising revenue per customer and therefore the value per customer would come from that.

that some other platforms are getting today. so i think we have given ourselves a long runway to scale up, take back some of the content on other platforms, make some original content, engage with consumers but as we talked about, peacock will be very different >> along with earnings this morning, comcast also announced a 10% increase in its dividend earnings also out this morning from dow component procter & gamble the consumer products giant beat street expectations coming to the bottom line and company raised its full-year earnings outlook. however, sales missed expectations for the first time in five quarters hurt by a stronger dollar. the stock down by 1.4% and then the european central bank left key interest rates unchanged at its policy meeting this morning it also announced that it was launching a strategic review of its monetary policy strategy ecb president christine lagarde will talk about the bank's latest move in just a few minutes. >> okay. now, we get to our guest

we're going to call him our biggest guest of the day. >> biggest so far this hour. >> so far. until now. >> until steve mnuchin is next >> downgrading himself >> all this week in davos speaking to the heads of america's biggest banks. joining us now is perhaps one of the biggest. figure out how to say that right. goldman sachs chairman and ceo david solomon is here. >> great to see you guys absolutely thank you. >> you're one of the great barometers f you l of ceo confidence and market confidence in the world in part because you get to spend so much time with so many different clients and here you have -- how many meetings all in? >> a bunch >> a bunch >> probably 30, 35 >> okay. so what was the big take away from those meetings in terms of that confidence? >> sure. well, it's nice to be here and one of the things i really enjoy about davos is the opportunity to get a sound bite for how people are feeling, what's on their mind certainly i would say from an economic perspective and just kind of looking forward to 2020,

people are relatively confident that global growth will sustain through 2020, the chance of an economic slow down barring some sort of an kpoj nis event that's not defined for us is relatively low. in the u.s. in particular, the underlying strength of the consumer continues to be very, very strong. that's making up or carrying the economy through some weakness on the manufacturing side where capital investment has been slower than we would like to see. but there's no question that things feel relatively good. i think we saw at the end of the year little bit of an acceleration so we head into this year with some optimism, but i do think as we look forward we had earnings acceleration last year my guess is we get into this year, we'll have a little less earnings growth in the u.s., which obviously could weigh on investors and had a strong year in the market last year. we have to watch and see. >> will this be the year that we see additional capital expenditure put to work? >> i don't know if this is the year i think over time we will see some progress. i think the phase one china deal

is a positive just in terms of confidence but there's no question that the manufacturing sector is still a little soft. >> how much do you worry that davos is a contra indicator. >> it's one of the things i've observed i've come here for over a decade every year and there are certainly years where i would observe that the consensus when you look back with a view of hindsight tends to kind of miss the mark last year i think was an interesting example because i do think that participants here have a tendency to look through the rear-view mirror at the most recent experience. if we remember a year ago december was tough but i also remember being on your show last year and saying i know everybody is so pessimistic because of december, but when i listen to the meetings i'm having with people, thebusinesses are performing pretty well that's not synching up for me. i wasn't predicting but i wasn't hearing it this year we obviously are coming from you know a period that would breed more confidence but still as i get around and talk to people, people feel relatively good but they're worried about the length of the cycle. people are watching very

closely. >> we just talked to stacey cunningham from the new york stock exchange and adena, you were on the panel as well we talked about these ipos. are you as confident as they were or they are about next year >> well, ipo performance last year was good. and you know, we had the discussion that we had about a handful of ipos or potential ipos that didn't work. but when you look at the overall performance of ipos last year, the basket was up 34%, with a strong performance versus obviously excellent market performance. the market is still open and receptive. i think there's a little more focus on earnings and long-term business models and profitability, the sustainability of profitability in businesses and little less focus on growth. i actually think that's healthy. but i would expect to see if the environment stayed as benign as it s i would expect to see a relatively robust ipo market this year. >> you sold out of uber. >> we did. >> why

>> we made an investment in uber very, very early stage we had met the company when it was very young we made a small investment and turned into a very large balance sheet investment so for the first time since we made that investment we had an opportunity to monetize it as we do with any public equity that winds up on our balance sheet, because we would rather not have the market to market in that we reduce those because they're financial investments as we move. i spent time with dar yesterday, listening to him speak about the forward view of the company. it's an investment we put a few million dollars six, seven years ago and turned into a very successful financial investment. >> there's videos making the round of, i don't know, on planes in china certain provinces and people being tested reportedly being tested on planes for this virus, this coronavirus, is that on the radar screen >> it's definitely on the radar screen. >> who do you go to with that? do you have people to talk to about that type of risk as well?

>> we have people that monitor risks like that inside the organization obviously our team in asia, you know, is focussed on it. we have a large number of people in hong kong and beijing and shanghai so obviously first and foremost w we're concerned with our people as everyone should be with their people. we're monitoring it very closely. it's an example of the kind of thing that if it did progress in a negative way, it's one of those exoginist events you remember sars. it's too early to call that or expect that, so my hope is it will get resolved in a positive way. >> i want to ask you about the other big theme here, stake holder capitalism and governance and the role in all of these things i'm curious what you think the role of banks should be in all of this. do you have a greater responsibility to actually use your own influence to put pressure on companies to make changes? >> so, look, i think this topic

of stake holder -- you know, i think it's an interesting topic broadly. i don't think we have a greater responsibility we vaul a responsibility we all have a responsibility in the context of our platforms and our businesses to serve our stake holders well you know, our first priority is to serve our shareholders, to drive long-term returns for our shareholders but i'm a big believer that unless you take care of your stake holders more broadly and the medium and long-term, you won't deliver outstanding returns. so i think it's very, very important. we think a lot about our platforms and things we do, and we try to contribute in ways that we think improve market structure and the capital markets broadly. in fact, i mentioned something that we've been thinking about that we're going to roll out here publicly, which speaks to our kind of using our platform and our position i think from a governance perspective, diversity on boards is a very, very important issue. we have been very, very focussed on it. so we're trying to find ways to encourage that

i come from a position of my own experience where i look at the goldman sachs board. we have four women out of 11 a black lead director and i really value the diverse perspectives i'm getting which are helping me run the company i look back at ipos over the last four years and the performance of ipos whether it's been a woman on the board in the u.s. is significantly better than the performance of ipos where there hasn't been a woman on the board so starting on july 1st in the u.s. and europe, we're not going to take a company public unless there's one diverse board candidate with a focus on women and we're going to move toward 2021 requesting two. we realize that this is a small step but a step in a direction of saying, you know what, we think this is right. we think it's the right advice and we're in a position also because of our network to help our clients if they need help placing women on boards. and so this is an example of our saying how can we do something that we think, you know, is right and helps move the market forward. >> that's a big move that's a breaking piece of news right here. >> is that what you were talking about last year when you said

you would tell us one thing. >> you said to me would you tell us one thing we didn't know. i told i'll tell you one thing you didn't know. when you prompted that last night, it sounded like a good thing moving forward. >> i like it. >> you said you're going to move towards requesting. >> no, no. we're going to start >> when you look at this, there's a process to something like this. so, july 1st, in 2021, 2 we'll start the die with our clients. we might lose some business but in the long run this is the best advice for companies that want to drive premium returns for the shareholders over time. >> you mentioned that you can help, that you have networks and you know a lot of people, so you can help some of these boards if they can't find diverse candidates is that something you do for a lot of companies, you take private now? or take public >> we do help companies. people come to us often asking for help with respect to placing board members. we're going to continue you know to do that we have tried to put more of a formal process around identifying strong pipeline and

perspective candidates one of the things that we're trying to do, and i think this has been a constraint to more diversity on boards, there's been a bias toward if you're going to put somebody on a board they have to be a ceo or cfo or had public board experience. and so just looking to gender, for example f you put that hurdle there, then you're eliminating an enormous number of women with decades of experience that can really make a perspective. you can bring a positive or diverse perspective to the governance of companies. and so, one of the things we're trying to figure out is how to broaden that apture and also to accelerate a much broader appetite for the kind of diverse candidates that can make a difference >> how much of this is being driven by the experience of wework and the reason i mention that is you were one of the underwriters of that company. obviously it came out with that s1 originally without any diverse board members at all and added a woman very quickly when it became clear there was going to be pressure for that. is that what drove some of this? >> to be perfectly honest, wework is one of many data

points that have led us over a number of months to talk about this, but it wasn't specific to be honest, it never really -- until yesterday, you reminded me of the fact that that's the way the s1 -- it wasn't in the thought process as we debated it what was in the thought process the last couple years in the u.s. and europe, 60 companies that went public without a diverse broad member when you think about where we are today and what we're trying to accomplish and what the right advice is. this is rooted in what we strongly believe is the right advice for our clients, we thought it was time to find a way to contribute more aggressively to that. >> you're just over a year in. it's been a year and three months that you have taken over the helm and you made changes. you're changing the way the company reports earnings making it less opaque, giving more clarity to investors. what's the feedback that you got after just doing this for the first time this past week? and what did you hear back from investors? >> well, the feedback we're getting particularly on transparency is positive i think you know we have our first investor day ever next

wednesday. so obviously we'll take a bunch of feedback after that investor day. but i tried. to really think about certain principles that are important for us to deliver for our shareholders and also drive the organizations forward. and, i think transparency is important in business. i think it matters i think for us to be giving that advice to our clients and not be a role model in the context of that doesn't make sense now. >> how pleased are you with the relationship with apple and the credit card business. >> very, very pleased. we have a long history with apple over a long period of time interestingly we did not take apple public in 1980 but we -- our relationship with apple really started in the mid 90s when apple got into trouble and needed capital and actually the time we did the first-ever overnight convertible bond that was ever done for apple in the '90s and that started our relationship other a long period of time it's been a good partnership and

because of that partnership it allowed us to expand the partnership to do the card and we're very pleased with how it's going >> the reason i ask, though, one was jobs back yet? who was the ceo? >> it was right when jobs came back after scully. it would have been around -- don't quote me on exactly, right when jobs came back around '97 or something like that. >> the reason i ask, i think there was an expectation that apple was going to promote this product in the same way, for example, they're promoting the apple plus tv products you would see billboards you would see -- it would be on your -- everybody was going to have to get one of these credit cards. i don't think we have seen that kind of marketing at this point. >> so, there are a couple of things i think to think about with that. first of all, we're five minutes into this. this started four months ago and when you actually look, we haven't disclosed the number of cards, but as i said to you once before when we had this conversation, the take up in cards is multiples, multiples

what any co-branded card has had in the early days. we're building a platform, for us, from a risk management perspective, it's growing plenty fast and continue to grow plenty fast >> you don't want the heavy branding just yet. >> we want to make sure we're delivering for the customer first of all and the customer is getting great experience credit risk management perspective we're doing the right things and i think they're supporting it in exactly the way they should be and i'm very optimistic about the long-term partnership. >> final question, bernie sanders went after a guest sitting right here just yesterday, jamie diamond took a shot at him, said he likes corporate socialism because of the amount of money that the banks took during the financial crisis i don't know if you saw many claimed that the bank taken $416 billion. what do you make of that >> you know, what did jamie make of it? >> i don't think he made much of it. >> yeah. i'm watching the political process like everybody else. and i'm staying focussed -- i'm staying focussed -- >> i hate to see this.

first hillary said something about bernie now you're in a spat defending damond you guys have to get along if you think you're getting anywhere. >> on the other side. >> you guys don't need a lot of dissension if you have to go up against trump. if i were you -- >> i see. >> have you spun here? >> no. i'm focussed on my day job here. very focussed. >> no spinning there's a lot of parties how many -- have you got any invites to spin here >> i'm focussed on my day job here >> what about you'll be there? >> i was lucky enough to be invited to play at a party at the super bowl and what's nice about it to make a very, very significant contribution to a charity i support, shadow proof, terrific organization that helps people and families with big addiction opportunities. to play for an hour and make a nice charitable donation is terrific. >> i was thinking about getting into do this, this business. if i were to spin some jeffthro, or blood, sweat and tears. do you do the music i know

>> what do you spin? what are you spinning? do you know new muse snick. >> yes, he does. he's deep into it. >> can i do that >> give me what's the hottest new artist out there that you love. >> lots of artists out there i love i'm working on a track that's going to be out with a new british singer whose name is hailey may who put a few things out. >> can you find it yet >> it will be up soon. >> very cool appreciate it. >> great to see you. coming up, the u.s. treasury secretary steven mnuchin will be here to discuss the possibility of more tax cuts also the phase two trade negotiations with china. reminder, you can always watch or listen to us live on the go on the cnbc app. stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc a golf course is designed to be difficult.

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it's very early but it seems to be spreading to some extent, i guess you could say that's fair to say and there's other developments coming that we're hearing out of china. people being tested on airplanes. >> city of wuhan shut down. >> it's a big city, too. >> 11 million people. >> no more trains or airplanes coming in and/or, i think another city in china as well. at the same time, continue to pick up these cases in the united states and then in singapore now, too we'll continue to monitor the situation. in the meantime, though, let's talk taxes tax levels and the rates that corporations are paying are perennial hot topics right here in davos yesterday joe spoke with president trump about what could be next in terms of taxes under his administration >> we're going to actually probably lower taxes, if you want to know the truth if you take a look at what we've done, we've cut taxes in half and we've taken in more revenue substantially than we did when the taxes were high. nobody can even believe it, but we take in more revenue with the big tax cut.

you were paying really 41% we run down to 21 and sort of lower than that. >> that will be a priority. >> absolutely. one of the reasons i would like to see the interest rates lowered frankly i would like to refinance the debt and pay off the debt ♪ joins us now to talk more about taxes, trade and the economy is u.s. treasury secretary steven mnuchin sir, great to have you here today. thank you. >> great to be with you as well. i didn't bring any snowballs to throw at you. >> there's plenty of snow right over here. you make some in the way out hit him. not me let's talk a little bitabout what the president told joe, just this idea of additional tax cuts coming. i was thinking this was something that you were gearing up and potentially thinking of if there's another four years that that would be something happening now. but the president has since said that this is going to be something that's probably coming to congress in 90 days can you explain about what this plan is and how quickly you think you can move forward on it. >> sure. let me first just put this in perspective because there's no question that the president's economic agenda is working the

combination attacks cuts, regulatory relief and trade getting the two big trade deals done last week. and the president has asked us to start working on what we call tax 2.0. that will be additional tax cuts that fuel the economy. >> what will they look like? >> they'll be tax cuts for the middle class and also be looking at other incentives to stimulate economic growth. >> can you give us any hint as to what that is yet? >> i won't preview them here today. again, they'll be focussed on items that will increase economic growth. >> why looking at the middle class as tax cuts there right now? >> again, i think the president feels that we need to continue to incentivize the middle class, that their taxes have been too high historically. we had big tax cuts already. and that's an area we'll continue to look at. >> this is all happening as the deficit looks like it's crossing some new high levels when do you expect that deficit will be tackled and how are we going to do that >> that's a good question.

let me just step back for a second and comment on the first tax cuts i stand behind my comments that the tax cuts will pay for themselves despite "the new york times" disagreeing with me today. we've tracked the numbers. we're right on track for the first two years. again, what we've said is kind of with the appropriate growth and we're running above those numbers that we'll have in excess of the trillion and a half dollars that was the static cut. now, let me just say, aside from tax cuts, we also did have increased government spending. and the reason for that was the president felt it was important to rebuild the military. it had been underinvested. and to get that done, we had to agree with the democrats to increase non-military spending so if you look at the increase in the deficit, significant component of that is additional government spending. we did a bipartisan deal this year but there's no question, we need to slow down the rate of growth of government spending because we can't sustain these deficits

growing at these levels. >> can i put a fine point on that so given the additional spending, you still believe that on a ten-year run rate that we will be flat or better in total as a result of those tax cuts in terms of revenue in to match what also was the additional spending. >> no. put the spending -- >> that's where the debate is. >> put the spending aside. when people focus on the deficit this year, okay, what we said is the tax cuts, which were a trillion and a half dollars over ten years, again, front loaded with things like capital expensing. so we've never said that kind of in year one the president is absolutely correct revenues are higher. so we're talking about higher revenues but as we look over ten years, we're two years in we can monitor this every year we're following our projections. and we think it will pay for itself now, that's different than you can't spend the money on tax cuts and spend the money on increased government spending. so over time we need to slow

down the rate of growth of government spending. >> you're trending nationally. and some of your comments about the environmental -- 17-year-old environmental activist greta thuneburg. you were joking about some comments but i think it's a serious issue and what i think is somewhat serious is that she has been elevated to a position whether it's from "time" magazine or finalist in the noble peace run. whatever you want to call it, she's hear to great fanfare. is that a commentary on anything, do you think about davos or where we are in the world in general in terms of climate alarmism, et cetera? >> well, let me just comment because obviously the climate issue is something that is being talked about this week and i think quite frankly our environmental policies are misunderstood. the president absolutely believes in clean air and clean water. he supports a clean environment.

he announced this week the support of the trillion tree initiative which will have an important impact on emissions. and what the president has said is he got out of the paris agreement not because he doesn't like the environment but because it was a bad deal, it was unfair for the u.s. if you look at the real environmental issues right now, they are in china. they are in india. if you look at what the u.s. has been doing on its own without government intervention, industry has gotten a lot more efficient on carbon emissions. and i just want to put this in perspective, again, climate change is something that should be discussed but there are a lot of other important issues i just put this in context obviously. >> the president actually said the profits of doom that have been proven wrong again and again in the past referring to some of the alarmists. we do see -- we've had -- i mean, long ago the ice casts were supposed to be melted by the year 2025. our children weren't going to

see any snow the bets have not paid off so is the current we have a two-year or five-year window to prevent the total demise of civilization i mean, do you believe that we're that close >> no, i don't believe we're that close and what i would just comment is there are a lot of other important issues obviously this health issue and what's going on. the potential of health issues spreading. nuclear proliferation. >> clean air >> particulate pollution clean water. >> iran can never have a nuclear weapon nothing against the climate issue. that's a much better risk, much bigger risk today. and i think that the youth needs to understand, climate is one issue that needs to be put in context with lots of other things. >> but let me ask you a question we had jamie diamond sitting in the seat that you're in right now just yesterday he said that he was an advocate for a carbon tax with a dividend, for example. a program will cost that company

material, real money, to produce a carbon negative corporation. do you think that they are mistaken if not worse given the commentary the president and others have made >> look, i respect both of them in running of their businesses i would say they have different policy views than we view. we don't believe there should be carbon taxes we want to cut taxes we think that industry can deal with this issue on its own, is dealing with this. and this is a worldwide issue that's a much bigger problem outside of the u.s. than inside the u.s. >> the president said he does not believe that carbon dioxide is ultimately the problem and the thing that i was trying to understand is then he obviously signed on to this trillion tree program. why would he do that >> again, it's both correct. he doesn't believe that's the problem. on the other hand, obviously planting a trillion trees is a good thing for the planet. so, there's no question. >> but if carbon is not a

problem, you wouldn't need to be planting the trees. >> first of all, trees are being cut down at paces all around i mean, having forrests, creating trees, these are all good things. but i go back to what you said, this is not the doom and gloom issue, okay, that is going to impact everybody in the next ten years. it is an issue that should be considered along with a lot of important issues the national security issues of what's going on the middle east and the president's addressing this again, we're much more focussed on iran not having nuclear weapons. >> were you surprised at the tone in davos. did you come expecting a lot of the sg stake holder discussions and instead it became more about the story of resurgent growth in the united states versus the rest of the world? it's been more about that? >> it really has first i would just say, we were very happy to have the president back here. it was a great opportunity for him to talk about the economic program we've had in the u.s

and you also had the opportunity to see lots of ceos, both americans and europeans who were investing in the u.s and there's no question the u.s. continues to be the bright spot of economic growth around the world. europe, although it may have bottomed out, still looks slow china still looks slow, and the president's economic program is clearly working. >> does the president talk to you about his plans for europe and whether that's going to be the next front in where we take a really hard line and certain unfair trade practices that we view are still in place against us in europe are we going to push back hard >> of course he talks to me. >> so tell us. he said that >> the entire trade -- >> said you don't want to scare anyone that we're going to do anything sounded like they've been put on notice. >> the president has been very clear, okay, now that we have usmca done and china, the president is focussed on europe. we had a good bilat this week

with the eu. he also had an important meeting with the head of the wto where we talked about wto reform so the president is very focussed on trade. and he's very focussed on europe now, the good news is we have seen a lot of investments in the u.s. from the european car companies. but the president wants to make sure that we have free and fair and resciprocal trade in europe we're very focussed on a uk free trade agreement which we hope to get done this year as well. >> i want to ask you briefly about our country's relationship with saudi arabia and specifically in the past 48 hours these reports that mbs, the leader of that country, may have been personally responsible to some degree for hacking jeff bezos' telephone what do you make of those reports. >> i only know what i've read in the paper. i can't comment. >> if true, how concerned would you be >> i don't want to comment or speculate. >> which paper >> what i read in the paper. >> which paper first, let's get that out of the

way. >> i think there's a real question by the way -- how about this, if you're an american ceo today, should you be inclined to do business with saudi arabia? >> absolutely. so, we do a lot of business with saudi arabia they're obviously a big component of energy. we have an important defense relationship with saudi. and that's not going to change based upon one article in the paper. again -- >> but if that proved to be true -- >> i'm not going to speculate on what ifs and everything else. >> ask him about the dollar. you support a strong dollar sector >> i support a stable dollar >> mr. secretary, let me ask you very quickly you recently aannounced just last week we'll be seeing 20-year bonds. a lot of people anticipating maybe see a 50-year bond we talked to you about the very long-term things at one point. does this mean we will not see a longer term bond any time soon >> not necessarily

again, this is something we studied carefully. there's no question we want to look at expanding our borrowing capabilities we've studied 50 and 100-year bonds very carefully we actually got what i would say reverse inquiry on the 20-year and when we looked at this, at least in the short-term, from a technology standpoint we can do the 20 year very quickly it would take us a little longer to do the 50 and 100 year. also in terms of duration in proceeds, we can raise a lot more money in 20 years and 50 and 100. we can extend the duration more efficiently. >> i know you have to run. the fiscal and monetary combination of where we are, craziest thing in history. do you think it's explainable in ways that doesn't indicate we're in some type of bubble. >> i do. what i would say on a monetary basis, although u.s. interest rates look low by historical basis, relative to the rest of the world, they're high. and the deficits reasonable relative to gdp, but we have to

grow so that we shrink them over time. >> always a pleasure to have you. >> thank you. >> snowball during the commercial break thanks. >> yeah. when we come back, the ceo of paypal is here to talk digital payments we'll talk to him about the strength of the consumer ayending and so much more. st tuned you're watching "squawk box" live from davos, switzerland turn on my tv and boom, it's got all my favorite shows right there. i wish my trading platform worked like that. well have you tried thinkorswim? this is totally customizable, so you focus only on what you want. okay, it's got screeners and watchlists. and you can even see how your predictions might affect

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our next guest is someone who sits right at the intersection of technology and the global economy, two very big themes here in davos joining us now dan shulman, ceo of paypal. it wasn't long ago we sat in times square together. >> couple months ago. >> you've been here for the duration what are you coming away with this year from davos >> you know, i think there are some themes going on, joe, probably a lot of people have talked about and those themes are around the environment, they're around kind of multistake holder advocacy from corporations. but the thing that i seen that's

a little different, it just seems to me like there are a bit more winds of change blowing right now that seemed way more serious. people have talked about this for a long time on different things but people are talking about putting metrics in place and measuring our impact that was somewhat hopeful for me. >> it will be expensive. i hope it's all justified and doable we've made the point that when you're trying to tackle anything, if you have growth and you've got financial wherewithal to take care of things, that it can make all these problems a lot easier to manage you don't want to start managing the problems to where the economic sustainability of what you're trying to do makes it impossible to do it based on the head winds you face from doing some of these perceived issues, right? chicken and egg thing. you need growth and you need a

strong economy and you need a successful business, which you have before you can become a just business. >> yeah. well, first of all, thank yo for that here is what i think i think we have constituents that we're responsible to. we have customers. we have regulators we have shareholders we have employees. they're all extraordinarily important. but just like sometimes when you say revenue is an important indicator. what are the drivers of what produces revenue it's like number of customers, how much engagement you have per customer, how much they're spending and the thing that i want to focus on is sort of from my perspective, investing in employees, getting the best employees to want to work for you, paying them fairly. paying them so they have financial health enables you to move from being we're arguably a good company, we're not a great company yet, but we can be a great company by having the best employees.

and if you have the best employees, then inevitably you satisfy those other constituents. >> i think we can all find common ground. we found it earlier today when we realized if you give your employees stock and you are focussed on shareholder appreciation, suddenly stake holder and shareholder appreciation are exactly in synch and they're aligned and they move at the same time right? so we're talking around each other. people that disagree with each other on these things, we're really all trying to advocate for the same thing. >> i think that's right. it's multistake holder and if you invest in one area, inevitably you serve customers better when you serve customers better, regulators are happier and then obviously shareholders benefit from that. but i think you've got -- >> the community and everything else. >> you have to start somewhere and not say everything is the same for me, investing in employees is the thing that can move our company. >> you need to start with the successful business, which is what you've done you need to start with that. if you go out of business,

you're not -- >> exactly. >> dan, can i ask you very quickly about cyber security jamie diamond said that was one of his top three concerns. you guys are constantly under attack what do you see? are things getting tougher out there? >> i think jamie is exactly right. cyber security has to be one of the biggest concerns that any business has the average american business gets attacked 4 million times a year the average consumer around the world loses an identity or identity theft every two seconds. so, this is a major problem. financial firms get attacked millions of times practically everyday so, what you really need to do is not only have very high mote, walls and towers and wide motes to prevent people from coming in, but inevitably people come n you have to have very sophisticated data analytics to prevent money from moving out and data moving out. it's a two tier defense system

you have to continually invest in that. it's one of the issues that we spend a lot of resource a lot of time on and do a reasonably good job. >> dan, thank you. we'll see you again soon >> thank you very much. meantime, want to bring you an exclusive interview we talked about tech companies in the world right now. one of the top ones in the world of defense is palantir just last year the company signed $1.5 billion in u.s. government contracts they also have a controversial business relationship with immigration and customs enforcement. earlier this morning i asked ceo alex carp about his work with i.c.e. >> we started this contract under obama. obviously there's a lot of concern legitimate concern about what happens on our border, how it happens and what does the enforcement look like. certainly it's a de minimis part of our work. finding people in our country are undocumented but it's legitimate complex issue

my personal position is we acknowledge the complexity the people protesting whom i respect should also acknowledge the complexity this is an issue that's controversial and complex enough that the small island in silicon valley that would love to decide what you eat, how you eat and monetize all your data, should not also decide who lives in your country and under what conditions there are elections. there are rules. they should be enforced. a transfer of one presidency of another. the view of silicon valley that we get to decide should not be the way these things are decided. of course, this led to protests, my house has been protested for many months, almost everyday our office has been protested. many palantirians are critical people, not only follow what i say, protested internally. some people were upset they left these are very hard decisions. i respect the people who decide they can't be involved in this, but we have a position. >> you comfortable with the trump administration's approach on the border? >> look, everybody who knows me

personally like you knows i've been a card-carrying progressive my whole life. my family is progressive i have a degree in what amounts to progressive thought obviously many things i would do differently. i've never stopped being critical of this administration. i'm not planning to vote for this administration. so there are things i would do differently. the core issue is who decides. to the people who want to reduce the complexity, it's commonly known that our software is used in operational context at work do you really think the word fighter will trust a software company that pulls the plug because something becomes controversial with your life when you're a war fighter, your life depends on your software. they will never trust you if you pull the plug if you're. >> saudi arabia clearly considered an ally of this country. yet just over the past 48 hours a huge question about whether the leader of that country was using malware in jeff bezos' telephone. >> first of all, we've always made the decision not to be involved in intrusive software

so offensive attacks inside the cyber of this context. the cyber context, intrusive infiltrations are questionable often and done almost ubiquitously if we were involved in that country this would be a very serious discussion it happens we're not involved so it's not a serious discussion, but we do talk very seriously and with consequences with our non-western ally countries. >> do you think it's plausible he sent malware to hack jeff bezos's phone. >> i don't know the details. i know it's plausible a nation state can hack your phone fairly quickly, any phone >> let me ask you a separate question you have reportedly taken over project maven from google, a very controversial program in silicon valley. >> i can't discuss the specifics of a classified program. i can say if this were true i would be very proud. i have to say, you know, it's like now many people have criticized google. my version of it is a.i.,

military a.i. will determine our lives, the lives of your kid this is a zero-some thing. the country with the most important a.i., most powerful a.i. will determine the rules. that country should be either us or a western country it doesn't mean your adversaries. would you rather have them with the equivalent of tech nuclear arms or us if a company decides not to work with the u.s. government on this, i think we all need to understand why and they need to guarantee they're not implicitly or tas italy transferring. this program will quite lit lirl determine who is standing here and what they're saying in five years. were we to be involved in it i would be enormously proud. >> we had long conversations about privacy over the years there's a new debate about apple's phone and whether that phone should be opened in the context of terrorism where do you stand >> well, first of all, the government i believe that the government should decide things in with the checks and balances

involved in a court. the government needs to provide clear rules. tech companiesneed obey those rules. if there's a problem with those rules we should go to court and all companies should basically -- part of the problem is we need a clear code x of what you're allowed to do under what context, when data can be encrypted and when it shouldn't. we'll reach a consensus around this but quite frankly partly for the wrong reason the consumer internet companies this is not apple but the other ones have basically decided we're living on an island and the island is so far removed from what's called the united states in every way, culturally, linguistically and in normative ways we would rather be regulated as a foreign island than be part of the united states proper. that's the core problem. you are part of the united states proper. regulation is part of the problem. part of the problem is you are part of a larger hole that made your company possible that is protecting you against tariffs protecting you against regulation that is allowing you to build your company you cannot create an island called palo alto island only subject to regulation, much like

a canton system. silicon valley wants the canton of palo alto we have the united states of america. not the united states of a canton, one of which is palo alto that must change >> let me pivot real quick there has been so much has been speculation for so many years right here in davos and elsewhere about when your company may go public. how do you think about it now, especially in the context of the success or, dare i say, failures of some of the ipos that took place over the last year >> well, what i can tell you is in the past we talked about externally and internally. we said, look, we're going to defer. we've told the company we are going to ipo and are preparing internally ipo i think we will do very well in that context. >> and when you look, though, at some of the other offerings taking place. >> here's the thing, you can basically look at this last ten years as a -- the typical way to look at tech is that it was a bull market. the way we look at it and have for the last ten year, it's a

bull market for monopolistic companies and a bear market for everybody else i don't finance growth with the sweet vapors of foreign funds you focus on growth with high quality revenue. that's what we've done for the last ten years we've told people internally ipo will happen and you'll see the results. >> alex never one to hold back you can watch the full interview on cnbc.com. it is worth it >> that guy is great. >> every second of it because he says things -- he says what he feels. >> love that. >> he says a lot of interesting stuff. the chevron ceo, mike wirth, will join us live on set you're watching "squawk box" live from davos, switzerland, right here on cnbc you take a lot of trips to the islands, phil? pretty great, right? oh phil's legally dead. fell off a boat. going by denis now. celery. long story. what do we got here. oh. not going to want to see this. i don't think this is going to work.

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welcome back, everybody. a big theme here at the world economic forum this week has been sustainable investing it's a conversation that tends to focus attention on the world's biggest oil companies, even as they try to deal with tensions in the middle east and volatility in prices joining us to talk about all of this is chevron ceo michael wirth. great to see you. >> good to see you, becky. >> does it feel like it's been a hostile crowd given the sustainability, given the clean energy, all the talk that goes

on here and what's been taking place in the united states do you feel like you're under siege at times >> i wouldn't say hostile, but there's kind of a pessimism in a lot of it that, frankly, i'm a little disappointed in you look and by any objective measure, the state of human well-being today is the greatest it's ever been infant mortality, life expectation, poverty, health, et cetera and so the state of human being is the best it's ever been you look at markets and innovation and they're the human energy that drives human progress and so i am an optimist about these things we need -- we need prosperity in order to address the big -- and there's challenges out there. >> you're in a safe space here you know, on this set. i know andrew is here, but you're in a safe space because i've got your back on this. >> let me ask you. you have larry fink writing his larry last week about fossil

fuel companies you had satya nadella, you had salesforce and the president with the trees we'll give him the credit if that's what you want to do you can go down -- you can go down the list. >> what's your point are you ready to go off fossil fuels tomorrow >> you have jamie dimon talking about carbon tax no, the question is are all of those people wrong >> no, i don't think they're wrong. look, we engage with blackrock and larry all the time on a regular basis. there really wasn't anything in that letter that was a surprise. he talked about transparency and sustainability and resilience. those are things we believe in. >> he believes there should be a transition and there has to be a transition >> look, the energy system is enormous and is growing. we need everything and it's always in transition. it's always been in transition from the beginning it's always moved to a more reliable and affordable and cleaner state. that will never end. that's the history of our industry. >> between that reasonable answer and a reasonable

discussion and a 30 or $40 trillion aoc or bernie sanders green new deal those are bonkers. and the alarmism that they express is pessimistic and probably not based on any type of scientific facts. >> okay, but then turn around. i'm going to put that off to the side. >> why >> i want to talk about real business executives. satya nadella with microsoft. >> blackrock voted against 80% of the climate proxies >> tell me about microsoft >> i talked to satya before they made their announcement. look, they're trying to become more efficient they're trying to move from using offsets to actually integrating renewables into their business. >> right >> and, look, that's all good. there's nothing wrong with what they're doing. we're making our business more efficient. every business is looking to be more energy efficient? >> anything at all are you doing personally >> we've got two and a half minutes left mike, what do you see happening with oil prices? a lot of people were surprised they didn't see a bigger spike

in oil prices after the saudi arabia incidents. >> oil markets have really changed over the last decade or so we moved from a period of time where we were approaching peak oil and now we've got -- we're in an era of abundance it's really the u.s. and it's the unconventional horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing which has changed. so you have a market that's less prone to these volatile excursions so the prices today are not that different than when we were here a year ago. >> does that mean we never see $100 again >> we may not see it for a long time it's not just in the u.s the advent of shale has forced every other asset class to become more efficient. but this is the age-old story of our industry is efficiency it's a commodity business. you have to run your business with capital discipline, with cost discipline and a real focus on maintaining that through the cycles. >> peak oil is -- i mean is it 50 years from now? there was a guy who,

unfortunately he's passed away, one of the biggest proponents, it was supposed to be 2010 now you're talking about peak oil ever >> i don't think we'll ever run out of oil the price signal will come into the market -- >> we do it again and again and again and we think that the crisis is right before us, right before our eyes and it never is, right? >> i think, joe, the human ingenuity of that solves problem is something i find inspiring. climate is an important issue, there's many other issues as well the human race has a history of rising to the challenge and solving these things. >> we need obviously a strong economy to deal with whatever the contingencies are that arise. i'll fly over you swimming back. andrew how long is it going to take you to get back over that? will i see you next week >> mike, thank you

we'll see you soon you are our final guest here at davos. happy to have you here that does it for us from davos and the world economic forum we've been watching the futures and we'll show you a very quick look you'll see right now the dow futures are indicated down by about 83 points. you're also seeing some weakness, i believe, when is comes to the s&p at 7.5 and the nasdaq off by 10 we'll see you guys next week back in new york right now it's time for "squawk on the street. ♪ it's a beautiful day >> good thursday morning, welcome to "squawk on the street." coming off the first back-to-back losses for the dow in more than a month and futures suggest another drop as china has at least two cities on lockdown over the coronavirus. earnings pile in from the transports and more. oil is at its lowest since december 3