tv Squawk Alley CNBC April 29, 2020 11:00am-12:00pm EDT
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legislation that brings people together in a way that saves lives, grows the economy, and protects our democracy >> madame speaker, thank you so much for coming on our show. great to see you. >> good to see you i wish it were under other circumstances. take care. stay safe. >> carl. >> jim thanks for that thanks for sticking around it's good to have you the extra hour welcome to "squawk alley." dow up 500 the shooting for the best months since 1987 and the s&p shooting for its best month since 1974. tons of news today regarding guillard, a statement coming up at 2:00 from the fed, and facebook, microsoft, tesla tonight, hopefully we get lots of questions answered about
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teams and teams and delivery of cars for 2020 and so forth. >> we're starting to get a clearer picture on what's happening in technology as well. this is a big earnings week in general but we got the alphabet earnings last night. and one of the stark things was the difference between direct response advertising and general brand advertising. we heard direct response is doing better we heard it from snap. here's the general idea from alphabet, gives you a read through what's going to happen with facebook. there were other numbers that alphabet talked about that could have implications for apple, certainly for amazon and microsoft in their cloud numbers. so that data, that intelligence we're getting not only for what happened in q 1 but the trends in beginning of q 2, morgan, are so important. >> yeah, potentially read through for apple when we get those results after the bell
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tomorrow, too. we started the week talking about the outsized leadership of these names, microsoft, facebook, amazon, alphabet, apple and how they led the s&p higher in recent weeks and accounted for so much of the gains. and now really in the last couple days the shift has focussed to the rotation under way as well as investors sold out of those names ahead of the results we've gotten we've seen industrials, materials and in particular energy be the best performing sectors for the week so far, similar for the wrestle 2000, up more than 8% today and the dow transports up something like 6%. they've engaged more in the rally recently, something we haven't seen until recent days, something that strategists and traders say is potentially positive, at least from a technical level. carl >> indeed.
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meantime we'll continue to watch the pace at which the economy reopens. testing wide, in terms of nationwide testing we've doubled it in ten days, likely to go 3x in the next four weeks or so, according to projections the new york daily case count is below 2,000 for the first time in about a month and then you have the vaccine chatter from oxford university and j&j and pfizer and dr. gottlieb this morning saying that maybe late 2021 for national scale vaccine, but you could be looking at millions of doses available to deploy in areas where there is an outbreak we'll see depending on trials but that time line in his view is more accelerated than we might have thought in the past. >> absolutely. i'd throw moderna in there in the vaccine discussion as well but it's treatments, vaccinations that are driving
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the market action. you mentioned gilead before, and potentially how quickly some of the different economies around the country can get up and running in the meantime. one of the important things since we got the first gdp read for the first quarter, 8.4% decline, bigger than anticipated, is that this was a recession we knew was going to come as the government and as people shut in and basically shutdown the economy, so the key is how quickly that comes back online, where it comes back online and speaks very much to some of the commentary we've gotten from ceos on the heels of earnings this morning. >> the gdp being driven by health care declines, strange in a pandemic but the non-covid procedures that didn't happen down 4.9
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we asked when experts thought the economy would begin to reopen, here's what they said -- >> we have different shifts coming in at different times so there will be productivity penalties associated with that, probably for a quarter or two. and then i think we can achieve the kind of stability and maybe even better stability than we had pre-virus, simply because of the reduced rates. i'm feeling a thought and i'm hoping it's a thought and we're going to continue to work towards roopening. >> in the first quarter we saw softness in china because they were shutdown. but in april, i would say all things considered we're fortunate we're in markets where people need more computing, that's our focus >> starting next week here in the u.s. we're going to open a significant number of starbucks stores, by early june plan to have 90% of our stores open in the u.s. >> we're talking about something
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with billions of consumers around the world now moving their behaviors online something like covid will accelerate that trend. for us we're in the growth stage of trying to capture the growth. >> i think traffic will continue to improve and i don't think we need to have the economy back to 100% to have reasonable returns. again, subways are much smaller. >> it will be a challenge in a thousand different ways, right, as we rethink the way work is performed in a factory, at a job site, in an office but again, safety will be the overarching priority here. >> interesting, jon. you look at some of the mobility data out of google and apple all around the world in the past couple of weeks. it is clear you're sort of past the peak of the health crisis as we have been talking about it. now is the time we're going to start paying closer attention to second order effects like cost cutting, layoffs, like employment the way we would in
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typical recessions. >> not only that, but this earning season is bringing us new layers, new nuance in data, not just on individual company's results but how results in different segments break down and shed light on the types of businesses doing better than other, and maybe even a little bit about the types of businesses that will be able to reopen and give some sort of guidance or at least metrics on how they're doing. speaking of which, steve scott joins you now to discuss alphabet's results scott good morning >> hey, john >> i want to start asking about those different segments of google's business. google being the part of alphabet that makes the bulk of the money. now direct response, they were saying, the sorts of ads that prompt people to download stuff, those are doing better than brand advertising overall.
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the cloud business also generally doing well, this echos a bit of what we heard from snap a few days ago what's your sense of how much of google's revenue remains relatively stable in this crisis and how much is seriously at risk going forward. >> so direct response particularly within youtube was strong relative to brand but google does have 70% of revenue that's really tied to gdp growth if you look at the search business where buyers are buying key words tied to specific commercial content, that business was very directly impacted, even though that's direct response as well. in fact, q-4 to q-22020 was a 5% percentage point deceleration in the business and on the youtube side as well meaningful deceleration.
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but direct response within youtube, buyers in different category, someone can come behind that and spend in the academy you're not very way fair purchasing travel key words. within cloud, it's interesting, cloud overall grew 50% in the quarter, the gdp grew faster but yet google is pulling back on data spend here we sit, you know, despite these decelerating trends in the business stocks basically flat year-to-date we're optimistic long term on google but it's odd with the stock so strong and healthy and stable, given the der tier rating trends that begin in the business. >> scott, what do you read into that cloud guidance, especially given that intel said they expect the spending from
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mega-scale cloud providers to continue into q-2, though the second half was a little bit hazier does that mean you think the others might be spending or allocating resources differently than google is or do we just have to wait and see? >> i think it's a wait and see it's hard to know exactly why google is pulling back on data center of course, they're pulling back on head count, marketing and buildings as well, so it's across the business. some would say maybe this is an opportunity to trim fat in an organization so google still leaning into growth in the cloud business but being more disciplined, and it's as simple as that. but if you were to hear this commentary in the normal economic climate you would see a sell off across the tech supply chain because it would be indicative of a slowing in the cloud business which revenues are extremely high >> to that point, scott, looking at the scott, it's up 9% right
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now and obviously there are a lot of different businesses and key metrics within alphabet overall, and this is not a company that even in the best of times is issuing guidance, but that being said, what do you think is driving the move right now. is it that commentary and the fact that it's seen as positive relative to the doom and gloom of recent weeks? >> i would say, one, it's better than feared, it's a little bit of rate of change meaning things are not getting worse, and then it's investors hearing what they want to hear versus what is being said because the ceo didn't say the search business isn't improving, she said it's not getting worse. which is rate of change, it's not getting worse but it's certainly not improving at a rapid rate if you look at our estimates for the year, we have a gradual improvement for the business throughout the year. my visibilitile and anyone's visibility for the year is limited. so you're making a significant
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bet on improvements based on the commentary in that call, it's debatable. we're a little bit more cautious at the moment even though we love the stock longer term >> there was a universe of investors who loved this name, and maybe still do, because of the optalty behind the other bets we call them moon shots for lack of better word. when you hear ruth get disciplined on costs, what does that do to the picture they would bet on, even with a smaller chance of success down the road >> i think the spending habits at google and alphabet broadly will recover over time i don't think there's any longer term project that's impaired by this period. but at the same time, it is important to focus on what's happening at the company right now. particularly given what's happened with the equity and equities across the board.
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relative to those longer term themes, so you can be constructive in the long term and the near term, fundamentally i don't think anything will change at alphabet and the projects will get the funding that's required to allow them to grow. >> a lot of these subscription based businesses, including the cloud ones got to scale during a decade long bull market when gpd gdp, as you mentioned earlier, was growing. i wonder what specific metrics you think are going to be most important over the next couple quarters whether it's bookings revenues or revenues in general? >> speaking on the cloud side now? >> the cloud and perhaps other businesses in ecommerce that are subscription-related similarly, maybe not specifically cloud but people buying -- customers buying something over a longer period of time where there might be booking related revenue and not just transactional
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>> you want to be cognizant of churn and the health of the underlying business. you know, i think in google's gcp business it has a subscription component to it or recurring revenue. i think looking at the changes in that business will be very predictive in terms of the future health, you know, product. but everything has a price and so there are different companies that we cover that are priced differently for expectations around recurring revenue growth i would argue google is not that aggressive in that regard, but certainly the cloud component of the story needs to continue to stay strong. >> we're going to be talking a lot about cloud this week. scott devitt thanks for being with us. >> thanks so much. thank you. still to come, markets getting a boost from positive 'll eaut of gilead webrk down the latest next stay with us
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from remedesiviremedesivir. we read that it met its primary goal, and we intend to hear more about that today in a briefing maybe later today, including a white house briefing that's not currently on the schedule. we're learn more about that. gilead did give an update on the study showing the two treatment courses, five day course and ten day course were similar in the outcomes they produced, that was not a placebo controlled study so hard to derive any information on how the drug worked there, but half the time worked in the dosing means the supply of the drug can potentially be doubled scott gottlieb saying this morning he thinks the fda could grant emergency use authorization immediately based on these results we reached out to the fda, they gave us a statement saying just now as part of the fda's commitment to expediting the
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development and ability of covid-19 treatments the agency has been engaged in disuses with gilead regarding making remedesivir available as quickly as possible. gilead has said it can make 140,000 treatment courses available by the end of may. but that's the ten day course. so that could potentially be doubled based on what we're seeing today and guys, we're going to be looking for any more details about the nih trial that we think should be coming later today. that will be a huge one to watch. meanwhile we'll take a quick commercial break and give a check, the dow at this hour up 500 points, that translates to just over 2% s&p up about 2.5%. nasdaq up 3% travel names and tech doing 'lbeig b mnithisorng wel rhtack.
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welcome back now let's get to rick santelli, who has a special guest. rick >> thanks, morgan. i'd like to welcome harvard professor ken rogauf fed's balance sheet we'll know more tomorrow afternoon but approaching 7 trillion and arguably, japan, debt to gdp around 250%. what have we learned from japan? what can we learn from japan and
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the big question is, can we get growth at a time of debt, the type of debt we need, not bailout debt but survival debt >> i think we're trying to sur fi survive right now and do whatever it takes. i think the fed is a little bit different issue, how far should it go in guaranteeing private credits, municipal credits if we come at it quickly, it'll look great, but if it drags on, which seems likely, that game plan is not going to work, they're going to need something else, i think negative interest rates but i don't know what they're really going to do >> now, in negative interest rates, obviously, something that you and i and many have discussed and not necessarily in a positive light in the past, but maybes there is no choice, i'd rather not go there but once again we have seen japan, we've seen europe deal with these
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negative issues. it doesn't seem as though they're having any better effort trying to keep their economies afloat >> well, they haven't done serious negative interest rate policy and they haven't prepared for it but that would be a market based mechanism for at least -- if you're not making it when the fed's cutting to minus 3% and minus 4%, then we can do surgery, but right now, we're looking at possibly having to do, you know, massive restructures through the economy in a way we're not really set up to do. so they're really opening up a huge floodgate of problems, if we don't recover quickly and we don't do something about the debt markets, besides try to guarantee everything >> now, this is the toughest question of all, and it's always the what if that i discuss with many of my friends that follow markets. what if interest rates down the road actually increase
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many think that's not possible with the central bank being able to buy so much, but in the end servicing the debt when it's this big, gets to be quite scary if growth is slow after we get our arms around the coronavirus. >> absolutely that's a risk. a real interest rates going up if just inflation goes up and the interest rate follows, then tax revenues will go up, i don't think it's a problem that's a risk but what are you going to do? i think we're in a situation where everything is collapsing, worst natural catastrophe, whatever you want to call it, recession in generations and this is when you want to have the ammunition part of the reason when you have high debt, growth tends to be lower over long periods is you don't have the ammunition. we're fortunate that the dollar has become the center of the universe, there's a lot of capacity, the rest of the world is, even europe, not so
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fortunate. >> we have about a half a minute left the dollar has been much stronger than many would like it, especially some of the weaker economies around the globe but you hit a bright spot quickly, the dollar being the reserve currency around the world helps our central bank being able to bear in the economy, your final thought? >> it helps us, but it's a problem for emerging markets and the fact that our debt seems so attractive to everyone again is a case for negative interest rates which would temper the rise in the dollar we want people holding dollars but we don't necessarily want this big appreciation of the dollar, so very top -- >> professor, we're out of time. i thank. be safe. jon fort back to you. >> thank you, rick european markets set to close at or near session highs in a
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moment >> markets in europe overlooking a sharp decline. fixated on the encouraging data out of gilead, stocks higher by over 2% ahead of today's fed meeting and tomorrow's ecp meeting, it's been an eventful month for the european bank, while helping euros own banks as demand for loans continues to rise across europe as countries finalize a fiscal response, the question is what can be done in the coming months we've seen the currency weakened by 3% against the dollar this year fich downgrading italy's credit rating, citing a rise in debt levels from the coronavirus. they expect the gdp ratio to store to 160% this year. the downgrade sending italy down as low as 1.8%
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>> thank you so much. let's get a coronavirus outbreak update this morning with sue herera across the room. >> thank you, carl good morning, everyone here's what's happening at this hour, a new study of coronavirus patients in china shows men are twice as likely to die as women. although both men and women had an equal chance of catching the virus. a german airline is making mouth and nose coverings mandatory for all passengers monday. travelers need to bring their own mask gs. jetblue announced it will also require all passengers to wear face masks china's national people congress in beijing now set for may 22nd after the initial march 5th date was postponed z. as many as 5,000 delegates will vote on laws and appoint new officials. you can get more on coronavirus coverage going to cnbc.com back to you. >> sue, thank you so much.
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we turn to julia, who brings a special guest. morning, julia >> good morning to you carl. we're joined by michael roth, the ceo of ipg interpublic group. michael, thank you for joining us this morning. i'm not hearing you, michael >> it's my pleasure. nice to see you. >> yes okay now we've got you. now we've got you. when you reported earnings you warned of a very difficult
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second quarter and more layoffs ahead, when are you expecting a recovery and what does that recovery look like for an ad market widely expected to go into a deep recession? >> i think ipg, the rest of our sector and many companies at this point, we really don't have visibility into the rest of the year my comment was referring to the significant impact, the immediacy that many companies, particularly our clients as well as other major corporations, took action to protect their p&l and liquidity, and the biggest hit will probably be in the second quarter we're basically looking at the second quarter as a sign of what's going to come for the rest of the year but i do believe we're starting to see, working with our clients, our model is a consulting model and we work with our clients in terms of how they should spend their money, where should they spend their money and what the content of
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that spend should be and 95% of our people are working from home, but that doesn't stop us from communicating on an everyday basis with our clients to see when they can best reach their c consumerin consume consumers, if you will this recession is a consumer driven recession so it's very important that the overall economic health, if you would, recovers and we're sort of looking at that more towards the end of the year, if not a little bit later, but it depends on the sector, and where our clients are. obviously, airlines and travel and cruise lines we're not going to see a big recovery in those markets. sports and marketing took a big hit in terms of events as well, until we can get back safely to those venues, if you will. so it e'll be a mixed bag in tem of how the recovery comes back,
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but we do see it coming back, now more than ever the advisory model we have is important because the clients are looking to spend, like many, we're spending a lot of time on tv, but we're also continuing to use search and social in a big way so all of these -- >> speaking of search, michael, speaking of search, we just heard from google last night there were declines there, but they were less steep than anticipated. do you think we'll hear the same thing from facebook this afternoon? >> i suspect you will. look, as i said, it's a consumer-driven recession. so certainly people are looking online for ecommerce if you will but they have to have money to spend. so until we see a recovery in that front we're going to see cutbacks from advertisers. so i suspect you'll see a
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pullback just like many marketers are pulling back until they have clarity in terms of where the economy is going to go and how soon people are going to be getting back to work. >> so as you advise your clients, where are you telling them to put their advertising dollars right now to have the biggest impact are you recommending they shift more into facebook and google and away from tv which are the sectors here that are going to suffer the most and potentially those that are going to benefit as dollars move around through this crisis >> even before this crisis we saw a shift, as you know, from linear tv to digital and we believe that this crisis is accelerating the fact that this is a digital world and will continue to be so there's no question that working from home, consumer behavior in terms of ecommerce are all going to change dramatically and it's all been accelerated. our goal is to find the
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consumer, whether they're watching tv we know they're home, on social media or search. that's why data and analytics are so important and working with our creative teams to get the relevant message out to the right consumer and more importantly to the right audiences. we have the capability right now using axiom offerings to really target market that message to the right consumer with the reliable, trustworthy message in terms of connecting the brands and brands are going to be more important now than ever. especially on ecommerce platforms. because if you don't have brand loyalty and brand purpose, why would you buy one brand over another in terms of the ecommerce platforms that we're seeing so much growth. i think it depends on the sector and it depends on what the clients are looking for. the good news for us is that that's our sweet spot in terms of how we advise our clients
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>> michael, one of the more bearish outlooks about advertising,an even though viewership is up, is that clients didn't want to be placed next to virus-related content. is there a stigma to that or not? >> there's no question that's an issue. in fact, i've spoken directly with the senior executives of google to be specific about that concern. because, you know, clients are looking to us and looking to navigate we have in our media brand organizations achieved safety officer who helps us find where on youtube, which is what you're referring to, some of these ads can be placed, and it's very important to us that they get that right. we certainly go on our client's brands being associated with any of the negativity and offensive work that is shown on youtube,
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and google and factual basebooke committed to working closely with us to make sure that doesn't happen we see a good partnership with both those organizations addressing this issue, but it is a concern. >> michael, this is morgan daniel ek of spotify was on our air a bit earlier today, one of the things he noted he sees trend lines around advertising being accelerated, so specifically linear to digital and on demand and he believes as we get through this crisis that you're going to see those trends move more quickly. is that your expectation as well >> yeah. >> are the conversations you're having moving in that direction already? >> as i said before, there's no question the world is shifting more dramatically to a digital world. it was already starting and we knew that was going to happen. one of the other things about digital right now, it's more
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flexible in terms of how the ad spend can be, frankly, cancelled, one of the things we were facing, once this crisis hit and the canceling of sporting events olinier tv, which is a big deal, the question is what do our advertisers do with those dollars and whether they can be shifted into the third or fourth quarter, and how can they reach their consumers right now. so therefore the ability to use our data and analytics tools to help them reach it lends itself to the addressable market on the digital side of the business but that said, tv is -- more time is being spent on tv now than ever. and it's chasing content so in the end, we're agnostic in terms of where our clients spend their money, and we want to find the best value and reaching the right consumer, with a great message, which is why all of our pr services and our creative
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services really come into play as well as the data and analytics. >> michael, about that, this is jon fort i'm wondering if you're sighing particular bright spots in what your clients need marketed i'm thinking about our parent, another portion of it, universal had trolls world tour do well, espn's "last dance". also work from home furniture and equipment doing better than some might have expected, are there things like that that you're seeing that clients need marketed in different ways digitally because of the situation we're in >> there's no question we work closely with your parent company, by the way, and, of course, they're launching peacock and all the different offerings. some are ad supported, some aren't so there's a whole host of opportunities for us to reach those consumers. the key is finding the right
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consumer the other part is, if brands aren't investing in their brands now, to produce a brand purpose and a loyalty, i mean, that's what's going to drive the relationship with the consumers. in 2009, when we had the financial crisis, we found that brands that didn't spend, going into 2010, were at a disadvantage with respect to the recovery we saw in 2010. so there's, you know -- i'm a little bias, but there's no question if you spend behind your brand and your brand has a purpose and loyalty -- and of course the efficacy of the product is critical but now is the time brands should be spending because their competitors are spending and they don't want to lose out on the market share they don't want to lose out because of the demand cycle and some of them are running out of supplies, but even though
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companies realize the sporimpore of maintaining that loyalty and that's where our message becomes paramount. >> i'm wondering if if you can give us a sense how your business is changing because of this, you're changing from home, and it looks like the advertiser world is changing, how is your business going to be transformed by this? >> no question about it. just as an example, the other morning i had a global teams meeting. where we can, real time, i was speaking to our associates in india, china, brazil, all at one time, and the same thing they're telling me the same thing is going on with our clients. we're developing closer relationships with our clients as a result of us working home and using the digital tools that are available. now the question of how we produce work, and we have global
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production facilities all over the world. so, for example, in china we're back at work in china but still 95% working from home. we've done some surveys, and frankly, our people are enjoying and think -- they're actually more efficient working from home so we've already started at looking at what our footprint should look like going forward there's an interesting dichotomy here on one hand you'going to say if everyone is working from home, we don't need what we had before but on the other side of it when people come back to work, those agencies are going to have to follow social distancing, so the space is going to need is basically going to be more if we're going to have the same amount of people in that location so we're looking at staggered work hours, so all of these factors. i can tell you one thing, we're not going to bring back our
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people until we're assured of their safety frankly, there's no need to, given how well our people have pivoted to using technology to work from home, we're just not going to bring our people back until they're comfortable. some of them may not come back anyhow because they're concerned. so we have to deal with that reality, and how many people can fit in an elevator safely? so we're addressing -- >> well -- >> we're addressing that as we speak right now, actually. >> certainly so many questions about what the future, not just of advertising but the future of the work place looks like. michael roth, thank you for talking to us this morning. >> my pleasure, thank you. new york state meanwhile out with its latest numbers on covid-19 here is governor andrew cuomo a few moments ago. >> hospitalization rate ticks down, good news. net change, down that's good news
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intubations down that's good news covid hospitalizations, new ones per day, just about flat that's not great news. actually, up a tick. so that is not good news what we're watching now is how fast the decline, how low does it go. we don't want to see 1,000 new cases every day. we like to see that in the low 100s, ideally, of new cases every day. death rate, terrible news. 330. you see the decline has been slow, at best, and still disgustingly high. so we're making progress that's for sure but we're not out of the woods yet. >> that is new york's governor,
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disgustingly high as he points to metrics on a new cases on the daily basis. the markets stuck in a narrow range with a gain rehe, we'll take a break we'll be back in just a moment an insur ance you might say against the paper dollar. that's why i bought gold. it's not for my insurance, but it's for my daughters and the grandchildren's' insurance that i felt like that generational aspect of passing down gold is securing them a future. of course, nothing is without risk. and that being said, i feel that by diversifying with precious metals, that i am covering my bases. it's a hard asset. you can turn it back into cash. whereas keeping a lot of cash in your bank account can really almost end up being nothing.
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you have these dollars over here sitting in a bank drawing practically zero interest. i think gold and silver has a greater potential for increasing in value. i mean, you have to keep cash. but you don't have to keep everything in cash, and you don't have to put everything in the stock market, and you don't have to put it all in a bond market. you do a little bit of everything. and then you sleep at night and don't worry about it. in fact, i sleep better with gold than i do with the stock market. because it's tangible, it's there. - if you've bought gold in the past, or would like to learn more about why physical gold should be an important part of your portfolio, pick up the phone and call to receive the complete guide to buying gold, which will provide you important, never seen before facts you should know about making gold, silver, and platinum purchases. - with nearly two decades in business,
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over a billion dollars in transactions, and more than a half a million clients worldwide, u.s. money reserve is one of the most dependable gold distributors in america. welcome back luxury new york real estate taking a hit from the coronavirus. our robert frank has that story for us robert >> hey, morgan new listings in manhattan down 89% compared to a year ago that is one of the worst numbers ever, luxury getting hit the hardest. only one co-op contract has been signed in the past five weeks, also the worst number ever all the action is in the suburbs as wealthy new yorkers look to leave the city for rentals and for permanent homes. this home in fairfield county, connecticut is up for rent for $65,000 a month, even at that price there's a waiting list of 18 people right now.
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>> even with the vaccine and being able to go some place not far from home, have your home office, be able to keep your family and friends safe is number one >> and the hudson valley right now seeing a flood of second home buyers from the city. this stone house in high falls just went into contract last week to a new yorker, listing price $839,000 in west chester where sales had been hit hard by the millennials staying in the city now seeing a big bump in demand, this home in new rochelle headed into contract this week, the list price just under $1 million. as we heard, the most requested amenity right now for new yorkers leaving the city is a home office. not surprising >> not surprising and robert, a lot easier to get in the suburbs than i think in new york city in
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a manhattan luxury condo, just saying robert frank, thanks for bringing us that story >> thanks, morgan. >> elon musk demanding the reopening of america while states continue to discuss the forward, palantir cofounder, john lonsdale. joe, thanks for being with us today. >> thanks for having me. >> a lot to talk about, but first, i do want to start with palant palantir the company's been on a roll in terms of some of the contracts it's gotten in recent months, particularly on the defense side i think there was a space force contract just last week. but it's also been teaming up with increasingly and working with other agencies in the federal government, as well, including the department of health and human services. i realize you're not necessarily involved in the day-to-day, but your cofounder, you're an investor, you're an adviser. tell us about how it is working with the health departments
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right now, where coronavirus is concerned. >> sure. well, palantir really has amazing business momentum. in 2019, it grew over 30%. this year, so far, since being in this crisis, it's working with over 34 countries, over 115 major agencies around the world. and what it's doing for the health and human services group was announced in the uk and the u.s. and in other places, very similar to what it's doing in general to help leaders of the virus, which is, it's helping to create a common operating picture. it's bringing together hundreds of data sources or reall putting things in one central place where leaders can help make critical decisions. >> how does this work in terms of the collection of that data, how it's being used, and i think, perhaps, most importantly, how it's actually influencing the government's decisions right now on reopening. >> yeah, so palantir itself, of course, doesn't sell, doesn't have access to the data. palantir is a core technology infrastructure and the government decides what data it's going to sakaccess, where s
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going to get it from, depending on the country, there's different rules. but what's really similar, in order to make those issues, in order to know where the ppps are going to go and when and where you're going to reopen, you want all the analytical models and all the pieces of information all in one place where everyone can have a single model of the world and you can build, model, discuss using that single model. and it's actually very hard to do if you were to do it with traditional technology, it might take you six months, 12 months of i.t. services to hook up all of these things and put them in one place. palantir is designed to thrive in a crisis because it's able to do this right away, in a couple of days, you have this giant thing stood up with all of these things hooked up >> i really want to hear your perspective on opening up the economy again. and i know it probably differs by various states, by various localities, but what are the either testing or contact tracing capabilities that you think should be in place before the businesses that you invest in and their customers should
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feel comfortable opening up and welcoming people back? >> sure. well, this has obviously become a really emotional and political issue. and i have smart friends who are on different sides of what we should be doing here i think contact tracing is extremely promising. the leading safety network in the country, citizen, is an app that has millions of people already on it. and i know they've been coordinating closely with google and apple and a lot of governors and are looking to do some big launches next week and i'm involved and really excited about that i think we're going to get some real serious contact tracing out. the key thing is to be able top to have a platform we can all work together. if we can get a coherent, single platform where they're all talking together, we can start getting young people out back on the workforce in the coming of weeks. my personal bias is young people who are less vulnerable or not working with vulnerable people should be working in the next few weeks, but i know there are people who disagree, so that's a tough issue. >> yeah, joe, i mean, you mention citizen, which i know
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you're invested in, there's also palantir and some of the other tech companies and silicon valley stalwarts that are looking at all of this and developing capabilities right now, as well it seems like it's a really fine line or a balance. and i'm curious what the conversations are at some of these companies around that balance between health and safety protections and being able to help enable the economy getting up and running again versus the surveillance piece of this puzzle and what can that mean in terms of civil liberties, privacy, data protections, even constitutionality. >> yeah, well, i know a company like citizen, the idea is that people only opt in and then the data is completely deleted after 30 days. i think that's generally the right strategy, is people should control their own data should be able to decide how it's used. and you have to be really careful with that. i think all of these companies that work with data, the whole framework is they are privacy engines and they have to be very, very clear about who gets to see the data, what's done with it, and make sure that's being controlled by the people
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making the loss. and make sure those people are being watched, as well >> yeah. and i know you've been pretty critical -- go ahead >> joe, i'm curious what you're doing as an investor during this period i have heard some investors tell me during difficult periods like this, the volume of deals that they're looking to do actually goes up. maybe they're smaller deals. they feel that discipline wise, during good times, you should do fewer. during bad times, you should actually do more what's your take >> you know, i think there are some really great companies that are selling way too cheaply right now. we don't usually play too much in the secondary markets i'm the chairman of an exchange called zimbato and it's interesting, airbnb, for example, i think it was trading at 165 on that per share before this, it's now trading in the 70s. and there's a big question of, you know, have some of these big names sold off too much? on our side, we're mostly doubling down on our favorite companies we know well you know, it's really hard to make a decision with a company you don't know well, because we
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like to get to know people in our space. we're betting on the team. for us, it's mostly about companies we know well and doubling down on the best things in our portfolio in a lot of cases, you see companies reopening from a year, year and a half ago. which allows them to get enough runway to put off the next conversation for another year. because series bs and cs are not looking very good in this environment if you're on the entrepreneur side. >> joe, great to get your insights we'll have to leave it there, we're getting some breaking news joe lonsdale, thanks for joining us >> we're getting some comments from the president regarding gilead, but we will turn to eamon javers for more on that executive order regarding meat processing plants yesterday. >> i've been talking to labor about this they're expressing real concerns here about what happens to the workers in these meat processing plants that are caught between a government on the one hand, which is now ordering those meat processing plants to stay open,
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and employers on the other hand, who some of the labor leaders feel are not serious enough about safety of the workers here i talked to rebecca rendell, who's the safety and health director at the afl-cio just a short time ago over email. and what she says is, this is absolutely awful she says, there will be absolutely no accountability in these settings where workers are already paying the covid-19 price with their lives she says, the administration is telling them they have no expectation of safety when being forced to work and no enforcement to hold their employers accountable for unsafe working conditions the workers are pinned between the two. what she's concerned about here is the department of labor guideline issued yesterday, talking about osha and cdc guidance for workplaces. and what they're saying as of yesterday is because of this new executive order by the president, they say, to the extent employers determine that certain measures are not feasible in the context of specific plans and circumstances, they are encouraged to document why that is the case.
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in the event of an investigation, osha will take into account good faith attempts to follow the joint meat processing guidance. that is, they're going to be lenient here with plants that say that they simply can't follow all the safety guidelines that they've been given by the federal government because of this new order now from the president in order to stay open. so some concerns here from labor about what happens to the workers in all of this, carl back over to you >> yeah. and the osha inspectors themselves, eamon, whose ranks have been hurt over the years, really i've seen some statistics that about a quarter of pork processing capabilities have been taken offline, about 10% of beef but i did read some lines from senior administration officials who said that would have been closer to 80% if the order had not been put in place. >> sure, and the question is now, what do the workers do? what is their resource if there are these liability protections put in place that have been discussed, if you can't sue to
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enforce the safety procedures, what do you do, right? and then the question is, will the workers vote if their feet that is, will they simply stop showing up for work if they feel like they're putting their lives on the line here that's a real problem in terms of the meat supply in the united states, overall, john. so the question here is, you know, what happens in the wake of all of this and we just don't know uncharted territory. >> eamon, thank you. meantime, ride hailing company lyft cutting 17% of its workforce. deirdre bosa has more on that. deirdre? >> reporter: hey, john this comes after uber report yet that they were considering cuts of up to 20% of its workforce. this is according to a filing. lyft is cutting nearly a thousand jobs. as you said, that accounts for nearly 17% of its workforce. so nearly a fifth, and it's due to declining demand for ride sharing amid the pandemic. as we've been reporting, as we know well, those ride sharing numbers on a year over year basis are way down and in some
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cases, for some weeks, down as much as 80 to 90% year over year so clearly, these ride sharing companies are struggling lyft cutting nearly a fifth of its workforce. back to you. >> yeah, just in the past 24 hours, tripadvisor, boeing, lyft, and we'll keep our -- juul, according to the journal we'll keep our eyes open for others we'll watch these fauci headlines on remdesivir. >> our breaking news coverage of the markets continues right now. welcome to the halftime report i'm scott wapner very good to have you with us on this wednesday stocks, as you know, nicely higher after gilead reports positive news on its drug to treat the coronavirus. that is overshadowing a very big drop in gdp. at the same time, the s&p now on track for its best month since 1974 we're going to discuss and debate the markets with our investment committee
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