apollo's capital is locked up f this goes on for an extended period of time that, capital could be in jeopardy another interesting aspect he pointed to on today's call is that he said suggestions of blackmail are categorically untrue so this is in response to that "new york times" article showing that $50 million payment that was made, he says that any concerns there was some kind of blackmail going on not true. so it will be interesting to see what the lawyer comes up with. back over to you, carl >> guys, fascinating thank you for that leslie, david, we'll see you later on good morning, it is 8:00 a.m. at pinterest headquarters in san francisco. 11:00 a.m. on wall street. "squawk alley" is live.

>> good thursday morning i'm carl quintanilla with jon fortt and julia boorstin is with us for the hour. stocks in a whipsaw range, down a couple hundred up 100 here. s&p 500 up 25 or so after the dow's near 1,000 point loss yesterday. worst day since june on pace for the worst month since march. but then you get a stock like pinterest. good guide coming up, going against the grain. julia, remarkable price target increases. basically doubling what some analysts saw the stock trading to >> yeah. a lot of positive responses to those numbers there. really a beat across the board,

carl what is so interesting to me is what we saw in this quarter from pinterest is last quarter's results were not just a blip but that this is a company that could stand to benefit over the long term from some of these trends we're seeing during covid-19 there is some surprising, funny little things like the fact that pinterest grabbed four million new users due to the fact that people are going to pinterest to find inspiration to reorganize their iphones after that ios upgrade. so little things like that they did warn that the users are more likely to churn over the long run, they think they'll benefit from the fact this is a place where people go with intention, often to to buy things will all the investments they're making into shopping they see that paying off john, also, you have the fact this is brand safe content they may have benefited from that facebook and twitter ad boycott, john. >> yeah, julia so interesting that we saw that big surprise from snap which had been one of the companies where

the question was, well, does it really have a future under the shadow of facebook from pinterest, it will be interesting to see if this momentum and this kind of traction that they've gotten during this time continues beyond now or if the facebooks, googles who are -- well, there is really only two of them, are so influential in this digital advertising ecosystem are able to create copycat products or policies that lock the smaller companies out of the broader market >> yeah. of course, the larger question, jon, as you imply, is whether or not this is a precursor to what we might get to night when we get twitter, facebook, apple, amazon, and alphabet after the bell this afternoon. with us this morning is our ju in a capital natasha lamb the top five oldings include apple, amazon and alphabet great to see you >> great to see you.

>> pick a name of the ones we mentioned that you think might outshine we have companies that have amazing revenue beats this morning. but, you know, in this mixed tape, it's tough to see a strong stock reaction >> i deceon't think you can bea amazon's positioning right now everyone is anxious as we're awaiting earnings for all the companies which always leads to a lot of volatility, you know, add to that how anxious everyone is about the election and coronavirus. but there's a lot to like about some of the tech stocks and coronavirus is a boon. you know, users are spending more time online, makting spends going online if you look at what -- how amazon is positioned in terms of both cloud services, we saw microsoft report yesterday, 12% revenue growth everyone is concerned about

microsoft's report out because of sap and the alarm bells they set off with guidance for lower sales. but, in fact, their business was boosted by the cloud that's going to be a benefit to amazon as is the increase in retail sales retail sales just hit a precovid-19 high which is really incredible in this economy. so, you know, there's a lot to like about the positioning of these companies. you are know, facebook and google, of course, are going to benefit from ad spend. if sap was an outlier more than a canary in the coal mine, as the world goes back potentially to a work from home environment, where are valuations right now

how much of that have they taken that into account? is there any argument to be made that even with those positive dynamics that they're still rich >> i mean i think it's a fact that they're rich. they're trading in dsh30 times plus but, you know, they have been companies where there's been safety and where investors have been able to find, you know, safety in the balance sheet. low debt, high profitability and high growth. the companies that really benefitted from covid-19 trends. you know, i think the market ultimately outside of the volatility of the past few days is really looking 12 months down the road that will effect valuations and the pes of the companies i mentioned having retail sales

at an all time high. we're really seeing a divergence and in two economies there is a weak economy in the united states right now that is vulnerable to this virus and there's a strong economy that is resilient to the virus the weak economy we see at the street level every single day, it's the restaurants, it's the hotels, it's, you know, the malls that are empty but there's a strong technology in health care and manufacturing, in housing and all of those have just experienced these v shaped recoveries >> natasha, along the lines, we talk about a k shape recovery with the consume eastern the overall economy. i wonder if you're seeing a k shape recovery in tech you have cloud players, luxury consumer players like apple. they're doing great. but then you've got enterprise players like an sap and intel

and with the short fall in enterprise and government on data center and middle and consumer players that are not. so it seems like it's not just technology overall doing well. it depends on where you are in technology, right? >> i think that's true i think there is always going to be winners and losers. and the fact is that some of the largest most successful tech companies are well positioned, you know, for what has unfolded over this past year, this past six months so i think that that's right if companies are, you know, if they're dependent on that -- you know, on their products being in offices with these large contracts, you're just going to see weakness there there's going to be a divergence >> i want to get your thoughts on the shareholder resolutions you just filed for twitter, facebook, and google asking them to add human and civil rights experts to the boards.

these, of course, are also the three companies that were in the hot seat yesterday testifying on capitol hill and then they all, of course, have their earnings today. why did you file the resolutions now and what do you anticipate to come of that? >> i think it's clear on issues of human and civil rights these companies are flying blind they have so much power that's concentrated in the hands of a few people, particularly google and facebook where insiders control, you know, the company outright because of super voting shares and the people at the top lack the fundamental expertise required to tackle discrimination and hate on their platforms. as you mentioned yet again, we saw them being pulled out in front of congress yesterday. addressing, you know, some issues of disinformation and hate but i think it's also important

to be clear that yesterday's hearing was almost purely political theater ahead of a very contentious election where, you know, republicans allege that the platforms are biassed against trump and conservative views aren't being aired that is not what any of the studies have shown in fact, we've seen a prioritization of right-wing content on social media and it's the suppression of mainstream news outlets that really concerns us. and that's even why, you know, going back to 2016 we filed the first investor resolution asking the company to disclose what was happening with fake news and election interference because of that mainstream news suppression. so that's, you know, all of this is a big concern we mentioned the ad boycott earlier. you know, tend of the day from an investor perspective, this isn't about politics it's not about feeling good. it's about the bottom line for

shareholders and if the companies are putting users at risk with disinformation, vote suppression, sexism, racism, content that illicits violence like what happened in wisconsin, that is bad for business and the ad boycott led to 300 advertisers pulling their ads because of the failure to address all of these issues. that put shareholder wealth at risk we're seeing regulatory action against the tech giants. we're seeing boycotts and litigation and, you know, that is in stark contrast to how well positioned they are at this time. it's really important they get it together. >> yeah. your spoint a go-- point is a gd one. twitter is going to take you back to 2015

so we're watching that closely as the hearing yesterday natasha, thanks. good to see you. >> great to see you. thanks so much coming up next, the ceo of marvell technology on the company's $10 billion deal for inphi as they continue to consolidate. don't go anywhere, "squawk alley" returns in two. ♪ you can go your own way

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marvell technologies striking a deer striking a deal to buy inphi it will be $8 billion that deal if you don't include assumed debt with us now, first on cnbc, marvell's ceo matt murphy. matt, good morning this is just a giant deal just in relative size, more than a third of your market cap if i'm reading it correctly and inphi specializes in data center broadband moving massive amounts of data quickly inside data centers, between data centers why is this so important to do right now? >> good morning, jon great to see you we're very excited and you're right, inphi is the leading company in interconnect technology both inside the data center and to your point as well as connecting data centers worldwide. they also have a very strong and

growing position in 5-g for what's called backhaul and mid haul and front haul connectivity if you look at the combined company revenue of inphi, 70% of revenue actually comes from both cloud infrastructure as well as 5-g and, jon, as you know that, is very consistent with marvell's straty in teregy in t market focus cloud companies are still buying infratru infrastructure but there is downward pressure on the financing they have this pulse multitude modulation technology that is pushing cutting edge you know, along with optical allowing to move a lot more data, a lot more quickly is your sense that you can get not only continued and growing revenue but also better margins from the cloud giants with this kind of technology >> right

you nailed it, jon first of all, the transition and in optics and moving to this new modulation technique which is called pulse modulation, that is being driven by the cloud players specifically in inphi has a leadership position there. their business is extremely strong the most recent quarter they announced this morning, the revenues were up 92% year over year if you look to next quarter which they also guided, that would imply another 80% up year over year. this company has been growing about 40% a year they have a very strong outlook as well for calendar '21 that is really on the back of exactly what you said which is very strong demand in buildout in the cloud and in particular the optics that connect all of the key pieces of equipment in the data center. it's a key item in terms of how the data centers are architected

and defines the overall through put in terms of the margin center it is a premier company and the semiconductor industry it's no the normally a household name gross margins are in the mid 60s when is marvell. so it checks the boxes on four fronts and adds unique capability >> i'm going to do a weird thing and ask you to speak for inphi so why do this deal with marvell when they're growing the way they are, they have the margins they do? sometimes we see m and a from desperation. some of the m & a we're seeing is not that. what makes now a key time to do this and what makes marvell the right partner for them >> sure. yeah no, this is very much a

combination of two growing companies. he's joining the marvell board as part of this transaction. they were not looking to sell. the they have a great plan on their own. but as we got to talking, we shared our vision of being the leading chip company in the world that moves data, stores data, processes data and secures the world's data, the move piece of it fit extremely well and they're view that cloud and 5-g were the most important markets for inphi are very consistent with ours as we started talking, we came up with a number of opportunities to drive revenue synergies and incremental growth over the long term as well i think it's going to be a great fit. we're going to integrate the inphi team into the marvell

family and we can accomplish these things and with two of the markets and long term secular growth trends which is 5-g and the cloud. >> matt, to that point about the value of having these two companies together, now that you'll really be able to offer an end to end solution yshgs , s that so important from a competitive stand snoint. >> surtandpoint? >> sure, as we've seen this week and this year, m & a and semiconductors has been robust one of the reasons for that, it's not the only reason, is that there is a huge benefit, julia, in scale. not only in scale in terms of manufacturing and cost, but also scale in terms of product portfolio and offering and the type of accounts that we do business with, these are the large hyper scale accounts you know, in fact today, i think today is almost faang day. there is a number of results coming out today you're seeing strength from a number of these tier one cloud companies as well as the 5-g

companies h they're really looking for partners, julia, that can come to them with a total solution for a very long term deep partnerships and the types of products that we do both ourselves and inphi, they're fundamental to the architecture of how data centers are built or how 5-g networks are built or in the future how car -- the in car network is built. and so they need partners who have a full solution set and a broad set of capabilities that they can trust and that they can partner with for a long time i think the combined scale of the two companies certainly reassures our customers that that's -- that we're extremely viable in that regard. >> matt, one last quick question just onboard sentiment when it comes to m & a we've seen a lot of deals in the past couple of weeks and energy and in tech. is it a sense that we're going to go out and actively hunt for targets or is it more of our lines are open if you have something, give us a call?

>> well, i think you're -- carl, i think that's a great question. i think you're seeing certainly, you know, in 2020 and i have to think that some of this had to do with the pandemic as well it's really forcing companies to -- i think it is showing which companies are strong and growing and robust and in the right segments i think it's also showing where companies may need to decide to combine or merge up or scale up with other partners. we've been fairly inquiztive over the years and we have really sharpened our focus our view has been, you know, we want to be one of the leading companies in the space we want to find like minded partners and so from our board sentiment, we've been very much aligned around growth and growing the company. and there is a scarcity of assets, too, carl. if you look at the number of m & a deals that have gone on over the last four or five years and even into 2020, there is fewer and fewer, you know, pieces on the chess board if you will.

and so we viewed inphi and extremely strategic because they have revenue scale they're growing and they're in some of most attractive end markets. from a timing perspective, we see an inflection in the business and we thought this was a perfect time to join forces. >> well, a big move for you guys matt murphy, ceo of marvell. thank you for being with us. >> thank you adobe says another round of stimulus checks could boost online sales by more than $11 billion this holiday season. more data from that report next right here on "squawk alley. re-entering data that employees could enter themselves? that's why i get up in the morning! i have a secret method for remembering all my hr passwords. my boss doesn't remember approving my time off. let's just... find that email. the old way of doing business slows everyone down. with paycom, employees enter and manage their own hr data in one easy-to-use software.

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two years worth of e-commerce growth in one year and even more with a stimulus deal those are a couple of the big picture conclusions from adobe's

annual shopping forecast this prediction is based on adobe data from more than a trillion visits to retail web sites including 80 of the top 100 sites. some of the catalysts beyond the obvious and covid-19, large retailers, those valued at more than a billion dollars, are expected to offer deals earlier this year and smaller retailers are expected to have higher traffic and increase in customers. and another interesting note from this report, consumers are going to do 42% of their shopping from smart phones julia, this fits right in with the results we just got from pinterest and shopify over the past few hours the ones we're good to get from alphabet, facebook, and twitter. all these retailers need ways t drive eyeballs and this is the way they do it. >> that's right, jon also, if you look at what we just heard from pinterest about the importance of small business they saw a big boost from small and medium business.

facebook talked a lot about how much they have benefitted from small businesses as they given those smaller companies tools to not just reach consumers with ads but also to sell online. and it's notable here they say that small retailers will will see a larger boost to the revenue. 170 -- 107% increase versus only 84% increase for large retailers. carl, i do want to note that large retailers continue to dominate fwhut is goi but this is going to be the year that they have no choice but to shift online and that's going to be crucial to their survival, i think, carl >> i think everybody's onboard with that narrative at this point. especially small business and the major retailers too, julia when we come back, we have a big second half of "squawk alley" shaping up royal caribbean ceo is going to be with us just moments away. stock close to a two-month low today. and mossberg weighing in on

yesterday's tech hearing and why facebook, he says, is the greatest cancer on tech. when we return

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so you don't wait for life. you live it. welcome back, everybody. i'm sue herrera. french president macron visiting the site of the deadly stabbings

at a church this morning macron saying france is under attack calling for unity among french people macron announcing he'll more than double the number of soldiers deployed to stop attacks on schools and religious sites. at the vatican, pope francis's weekly audiences will go back to a virtual format after a participant tested positive for the coronavirus russia is reporting rub numb number of infections to day. there is a shortage of beds and a surge of serious coronavirus cases. and in wisconsin, hackers have stolen $2.3 million from a republican party account being used to help re-elect president trump. the fbi is investigating you're up to date. that is the news update this hour julia, i'll send it out to you >> thanks, sue it's a big day for tech earnings with among others, facebook and

twitter reporting after the bell now following pinterest and snap far exceeding expectations, we're watching to see if facebook and twitter also benefit from a surge in social ad spending or whether snap and pinterest surge was a boy cost the two giants and concerns about the political and divisive content. now facebook is expected to shrug off that boycott and grow revenue by 12% as it benefits from its investment and small businesses, e-commerce and starts to monetize twitter and amazon and whatsap. there is reliance on brand advertising rather than direct response advertising of course, for both of the companies, any guidance will very much be in focus. and then there is amazon and alphabet we have more on those two. >> all of the big tech is on a

terror this year alpha best, the worst performer with only a 15% gain this year amazon has been the best with more than 70% return for investors. now alphabet investors are counting on a rebound in digital advertising and with regards to all of that regulatory scrutiny we've been talking about, while you could argue that it's already priced in. amazon, though, price for perfection as it heads into this big holiday quarter. made even bigger by prime day following in october of this year the pandemic, of course, boosted everything from e-commerce to groceries to cloud computing, aws unit the bigger that amazon gets, guys, this could be the first ever $100 billion revenue quarter, the more tension it could attract from regulators. now guidance from both will also be key how alphabet views the digital advertising market and how amazon is getting the fulfillment network ready for that holiday boom. julia? >> thank you, d. and, of course, don't forget

apple. josh lipton has more on what we can expect this afternoon. josh >> so, julia, despite the selloff yesterday, it's been a strong 2020 for apple. that stock is up more than 50% so far this year it has rallied about 110% off the march low. though cooling recently, it's now off about 15% from the most recent high. the new iphone 12 and 12 pro arrived last week. faster processor, better cameras and they support 5-g investors are very eager to hear what early demand looks like which is the more popular model and does apple have enough supply to meet demand right now? the big number if we do get it would be q-1 revenue guidance. the important holiday period the street is forecasting $101 billion there. there is also going to be a lot of tension on the faster growing higher margin services segment, too. morgue an stanley predicting growth of 16% on the back they

say of strong app store outperformance back to you, julia >> thank you, josh appreciate it. it will be a very busy afternoon for all of us. jon, i want to bring new here and get your thoughts on alphabet in particular because to me this is the company that could maybe not benefit as much from some of the stay at home trends. you have microsoft's pointing it perhaps a similar search revenue decline at google. then you also have the fact that travel which is such a huge piece of google's search revenue still not really rebounding. what do you anticipate there >> i think, julia, on alphabet, we have to remember that google so diversified yes, while they're hurt in the ways that you mentioned, people are home they're watching more netflix and watching more google which means they are kind of streaming more of those higher value advertisements i think the commerce piece that we've been talking about and the big season that adobe expects, a

lot of people are going to be searching for products and google, alphabet, one of those beneficiaries of helping connect those potential buyers to sellers. i wouldn't count them out there. i think the most interesting, carl, this afternoon is apple. how aggressively do they guide some analysts aren't expecting much i think it's pretty clear so far with the iphone 12 that they can sell as many this holiday quarter as they can make and apple knows by now how many they can make. so the unknowns are more about the mix of iphones marginwise and attach rates of watches, air pods and the like. >> yep it's funny, jon. so many quarters, the mac, ipad, i should say, ends up being a second banana. but in the environment that we're in at home and every parent knows what i'm talking about, that may not be the case. also the relationship between alphabet and apple has come into very sharp relief for the past week

does apple have a such product that would somehow cut into google's market share on that? that's going to be something that gets talked about in the next couple of weeks we're going to keep an eye on some of the moves lower on names that have actually been high flyers for most of the year. zoom down 8% over two days we're still up 600% for the year ent a notable departure from the trd. "squawk alley" continues after the break. stay with us new projects means new project managers.

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royal caribbean wrapping up an earnings call a moment ago. we have the ceo with us now. >> yes, fresh off the earnings call for the quarter, the ceo of royal caribbean, thank you for joining us this morning, richard. >> thank you for having me >> potentially exciting time just around the corner, the cdc now expected to lift the no sail order on saturday. but you're not expected to bring your ships back to sea until december help us understand why why are you waiting that long? >> well, first of all, the cdc hasn't told us what the final outcome is going to be the current no sail order expires on october 31st. and obviously, we're working with them for something based on the healthy sail panel's report. but what we did starting about four months ago is bring together a panel of the leading experts in the field to advise us on how to restart and they came up with a very

comprehensive report including 74 specific recommendations. >> right. >> so bringing the ships back isn't just like turning on the light and opening the door we need to bring the crews back, we need to train them in the new protocols. we want to make sure we do this absolutely right we need to restock the ships and make sure the ships are in perfect condition. we also quarantine crews that are coming back so that we make sure that there's no virus on the ship so we have an extensive program. and then what we're going to do is we're going to do trial cruises. test out our new protocols make sure they work. show that they have the results that we expect and all that takes quite a while. >> yeah. also a tricky time to resume operations, richard, with covid-19 cases dramatically rising here in the u.s europe reintroducing lockdowns overnight. so it seems like you not only have to prepare for restart

sailings but also prepare to potentially stop if restrictions are unveiled in the state of florida. >> i think obviously we're very much anticipating and healthy sail panel was very much anticipating and the cdc is anticipating this second wave happening or this upsurge happening now. and i think we obviously will be taking that into account one of the things that we ask the healthy sail panel to help us with is we wanted to make sure that we were taking advantage of the fact that we control so much of our environment on a cruise ship that we wanted the cruise ship to be healthier than main street usa. and so that's also part of the dynamic of what's going on here. >> so are you confident with the 74 recommendations you'll be able to keep covid-19 off your ships? if you're an american, you want to book that sailing for this christmas, can they feel confident that they will be safe if they get on a ship?

>> well, no perfect safety anywhere i think what we're trying to do is make sure that your risk onboard a ship is lower than it is if you stayed home. and operated in a normal environment. and so we are doing that what we're trying to do here is do 100% testing. i don't know of any other industry in the country or in the world that does 100% testing. so the idea is to create more of a bubble around the ship so that the covid-19 can't get on in the first place. the other aspect of it is they have layers of things. so no one silver bullet solves everything but we have layers of protections in the 74 recommendations. and what we're hoping is that enables us to restart in a way, as i say that, is safer than being main street usa. >> yeah. the protocols are certainly extensive.

you can argue that maybe even the airlines haven't done enough there with implementing a testing solution the cruise lines are i want to switch the topic to the election next tuesday there are some avenlts saying, richard, that if democrat candidate joe biden wins the election and change in the white house that, is a negative for the cruise industry because biden in his administration will likely prioritize the recommendations from the cdc versus the trump administration. your reaction there? >> i don't think it matters which -- how the election comes out from that point of view. we really do believe that we have focused on a science based answer to this problem we brought in our healthy sail panel. and we brought in leading experts. they're guiding us to a science based conclusion and we think that the cdc, public health

authorities are all moving towards having a science based answer and, therefore, i don't think the outcome of the election will change our ability to come back in a health and safe way >> certainly something that we'll be watching. richard, thank you for your time busy day for you appreciate it. ceo of royal caribbean >> thank you as well up next, walt mossberg on what actually came out of yesterday's tech ceo hearing and why he is saying facebook is the greatest cancer on tech. don't go anywhere. we started goodrx in 2011 because too many people in the united states can't easily get to a doctor or afford the treatment they need. that's why goodrx has built a leading consumer-focused digital healthcare platform. we wanted to make shopping for healthcare as easy as it is to shop for travel or electronics.

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>> every now and then a market statistic comes along that makes your jaw draw. the market cap of zoom video exceeds that of exxon mobil. hard to believe in this day and age but that's where we are. by the way, exxon today saying it will cut 15% of the workforce by 2022. wires reporting they borrowed to maintain the dividend this quarter and we'll see what earnings look like tomorrow. our next guest says pay no attention to that tech ceo

hearing yesterday. the real story is the coming anti-trust cases for the big five and they should not be l p lumped together. joining us is walt mossberg. always good to see you >> good morning. love to be here. >> quite a day that we saw yesterday. what was your take >> another clown show, which is what these congressional hearings have all been a bunch of grievances and, i mean, they couldn't even pronounce sindar's name correctly. these hearings are mostly for political show and particularly now as we approach the election. the big sorry will be will they pass a new regulatory regime for particularly social media and as you pointed out, what will they do about anti-trust?

>> all right what do you think? why do you think justice potentially has real teeth this time >> well, i mean, justice and the ftc do have teeth under old, old existing anti-trust laws i think there's a question about whether the interpretation of how those laws are applied, which changed in the reagan years, needs to go back to the older interpretation, which would i think put the tech oligopoly, the five big tech platform companies in more peril. or whether we need a new anti-trust law but just as person i think we need finally to be the last of the developed countries to have laws actually regulating or

putting up some guardrails, not micromanaging but at least putting up some general guardrails for the web >> walt, it's always good to see you and i'm particularly curious for your thoughts on not the politics and the theater of the hearing yesterday but what the hearing yesterday was really intended to address. the idea that section 230, this liability shield for the tech platforms needs to be updated or replaced how do you address knothose concerns of wanting to protect the potential for free speech and entrepreneurship on and create a world where these companies were held accountable? how would you recommend navig e navigating that fine line? >> it's a great question and i don't have a precise answer. it's going to teak a lake a lotf

thinking and working by lawmakers and experts. i will say section 230 as it was enacted and in 1996, people have to remember it was all about compuserve and prodigy, which most of your viewers don't even know probably who they were. they were preweb online services it's time to come up with a new legal structure that doesn't necessarily strip away some of the -- all of the benefits of section 230 but replaces it with something that's more trip for where we are now and kind of takes away the complete and total get out of jail card that a company like facebook in particular has used to get away with all manner of destructive behavior >> yeah. walt, our viewers are hold enough to remember compuserve

and prodigy. i will give them that. let's talk a little iphone 12. carriers have gone back in time to grab the subsidy play book to sell 5g withthis iphone. it's phenomenal to me, there was sort of talk about 5g but not the kind of marketing push and the dollars that carriers are putting behind it, apparently not just here in the u.s what do you think that means we'll hear on apple's earning calls tonight on what they've done in the first few days of sales and what the guidance will look like? >> well, the guidance may have something to do with 5g but i don't think the actual earnings will have anything to do with 5g as you know, 5g has barely rolled out in the u.s., which is still, i think, either their first or second biggest market and the new phones weren't

involved in the earnings we're going to hear. you know, i expected them to be probably a little soft for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which is the pandemic these phones have gotten really great reviews from all the important and influential reviewers that i've read or watched, so i think the holiday quarter for the phones themselves looks prettygood fo people that either are just eager to get the latest and greatest or need to replace. but 5g won't be a factor for two years, in my opinion >> walt, i wish we had more time for another question we're coming close to the top of the hour it is really good to see you we hope we see with you more frequency. thanks again >> take care >> all right, walt

see you later. julia, coming out of that conversation with walt, we'll think more about twitter and facebook tonight >> that's right, though i do have to point out, carl, facebook shares up 5%, twitter shares up 6.5% and that whole social sector lifted by pinterest and of course alphabet up 2.5%, john. >> looking at apple, i got to go against walt mossberg on that one. i know that's risky ground but i think the fact that the carriers are offering subsidies for thes iphone 12s now is going to juice demand not only into the holidays but we'll see if people go for more expensive, higher margin phones.are trying to seee market with phones that people

will want. we'll see, carl. >> finally, on exxon, there had been a report about potential workforce reductions but 15% over the next couple of years is significant and we'll hear more about production trends when we get those numbers tomorrow and close out this weekthat has been chock full of news. for now, though, it's time for the judge. thank, carl. welcome to the "halftime report," i'm scott wapner. four hours to go until the most important earnings of season hit the tape, what will apple, amazon, facebook and google deliver? more importantly, what will it mean for your money? joining me are josh brown, steve weis, pete najarian and scott young. a little bit of a bump today, nasdaq is the outperformer into that print after the bell. pete, i begi