not turn into stocks to watch, like whatever people happen to be talking about, you know what i mean i think we need crude, becky, i think you're ride, crude, gold, nasdaq, maybe bitcoin, we'll see if it keeps being a story, and the 10-year, and then we work around the edges but it can't turn into, just, you know, stocks to watch, right? are you with me? and it's sponsor-able. >> i like the sponsor idea. >> make sure you join us tomorrow "squawk on the street" is next good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla, with david faber and mike santoli cramer has the morning off dow set for a record high at the open, 92 points. as there's bullish news on the vaccine and the fresh pfizer data, jobless claims down a touch, some rate stabilization, too, on this one-year anniversary of the pandemic.

our road map begins with the rally moving on, big tech, adding to the record and controlling covid, renewed optimism as new pfizer data supports vaccine efficacy and antibody therapy moves toward emergency use. and we're also going to talk about verizon's $53 billion purchase of spectrum it is of course making a huge bet on the expansion of 5g, around the country, ceo hans vesburg will join us later in the hour carl >> all right, guys, unpack a pretty interesting morning, obviously coming off a pretty good action, david, headlines that are feeding multiple engines of optimism this morning, we mentioned that pfizer, "squawk box," and the israeli real word data and in addition stimulus bill goes to the president and although the la guard story is a little more choppy, clearly some dry powder over at the ecb having an impact today, too. >> a lot of different things to keep track of, as you said, and you also mentioned claims coming

in a bit better than anticipated which is good news and of course, mike, the focus will continue to be on the $1.9 trillion relief bill as they like to term it, but it is pouring an enormous amount of money into the economy and we've seen gdp numbers stretch into the over 6% range for 2021 what that's going to mean for the stock market, and perhaps as importantly certainly what it will mean for the bond market, continues to be a key focus. those options have suddenly become the focus the 10-year became the focus yesterday. a 30-year auction today as well? >> yes we do and a couple of weeks ago, the treasury auction, had got everybody clenched up in advance of all of the auctions to come yesterday. and a nonevent buying yields calmed down. it paused at least in their march hire and that's the only real known thing, i think people are very concerned about, in terms of a side effect of this tremendous growth momentum everybody sees ahead.

one of the implications, too, is what it has meant for the path of corporateprofits and you ca kinds of tick off a lot of things you might have been worried about in the last couple of months, one of which is maybe general valuations look too stretched. well, actually, the s&p 500 is less expensive on forward earnings than it was in june of last year. nine months ago, even though the market itself is up, you know, 22% since then because earnings estimates have come up to that degree and i think the shakeout that we have is 5% high to low in the s&p, and if you were really concerned about the overheated parts of the market, whether it was spacs, or cloud stocks, or all of the story stocks, or anything, they did get a big, pretty severe haircut up to 20%, and semis and software went down that much so i think it is sort of, you know, the market has kind of regrouped, and sentiment moderated and here we are in a whisper from an all time high on the s&p as well. >> yup and we'll talk more about reopening play, and there is plenty of news in autos today, and mobility and airlines, but this pfizer data is really interesting, it is a real world

study in israel, finding that 94% efficacy in preventing asymptomatic infection, as meg terrel said earlier this morning, truly astounding number, 80% of those tested involved the, one of the u.k. variants, you're 44 times more likely they say to develop symptomatic covid if you were not vaccinated, borla has an open letter and liberation in his words is on the horizon and eelaborated on that with megan on squawk this morning and here is what he said. >> looking at my relatives, my family, they're asking what to do, and i tell them, you get the, if you try to get an appointment for a pfizer vaccine, and they say they will give it to you in two months, or you can get an appointment for another vaccine this week, i urge you to go to the faster one

first. it's very important. >> the president will address the nation tonight on the one-year anniversary of the w.h.o. declaring it a pandemic and the other good news is the doubling of the purchases of the j&j vaccine with the help of merck, biden is expected to talk about that and really the only wrinkle this morning on the vaccine front is astrazeneca and these reports of denmark and norway halting administration of that vaccine on some fears of blood clots but we will see. in general, the vaccine trajectory of the news is pretty good today. >> a good week when you think about it even starting with the anti-viral news that we've covered earlier in the week, because those will continue to be potentially very important therapeutics, should they be approved and merck has actually moved on that and yesterday you may have seen ken frazier, ceo of merck and alex gorsky ceo of j&j talking about their collaboration, their partnership for production as well, being able to meet those goals in terms of producing that

j&j vaccine and then just get to the basics, which is i mean if you're 44 times more likely to develop symptomatic covid-19 if you don't get a vaccine, one would expect that would be a motivating factor to get one, not to mention 29 times more likely to die from it if you don't get a vaccine. people are getting them. and we can only hope that that pace continues to quicken. >> yes, and you know, it's another thing that is sort of locking into place, it's making it very tough to feel as if, you know, that people are wrong about their optimism for the economy, and the market, so just too much in the way of good news momentum, and also, consider the fact that we have jobless claims this morning, and better than expected, but still more than 4 million, continuing jobless claims so at the same time, everybody is very, very confident, increasingly confident about how much of an acceleration we'll get economically, how much consumers are going to be just prepared to spend in a very big way, through savings and fiscal support, and you have the fed focused on four million unemploy and the fed wanted to get that

down and get the unemployment rate to full employment levels and both those things kind of supporting the same view, that this economy is going to be allowed to run hot, the only thing that would restrain it from an asset investment perspective is a disorderly rise in yields, and that's why it's been, you know, when bond yields paused it allowed the tech stocks to take the lead in this rotational action. i do think also some of the cyclical stuff got maybe a little bit overdone and extended in recent weeks. that's also had a chance to cool off. so it's tough to really argue with where we are, in the market, and even if it seems like all the good news is pretty well acknowledged and often that's the time when you say, we have an all-in moment, and is that reason to be worried? but not really. >> mike, listen, i hate to ask you about tesla, which you talk about, i don't know how many times a day you're forced to discuss it but i always like to listen but because it is a reflection in so many ways of the growth trade in this market, you know, reference this morning

the zoo hub, not necessarily known as the greatest research firm, no offense to them. >> ouch. >> sorry but they came out this morning, tesla, 100-year disrupter, it's obviously a buy, and nio as well and tesla, i like to look, mike where they get their $775 price tag, ten times fiscal '23 sales and for nio down to a multiple of 5 about 1 times fiscal year '23 sales. sometimes people get mad, reminiscing of the late '90s where analysts, whatever you need to do, to justify a price target, you do, and i just wanted to get your take on that. and as it relates overall of course to what we've seen with tesla now down 5% for the year, but having been up a lot during the course of this week. >> yes, i mean and yet, how much is it down from the high so it hit 900 for a minute in january. and so it seems as if what we do

is goo zbo in these cycles of feeling like everyone got a little too overexcited and there is no down there is a lot of aggressive targets and the fact we're talking about a going rate for the company, 20, 25 revenues and the spacs are talking about five year out revenue outlooks that they don't necessarily have to be held to and that's what we're about, yes, there's a lot of real aggressive, maybe irrational stuff happening, but i also feel like that's a bull market acting like a bull market and there's always stuff that seems like it's getting out of hand, carl >> guy, we mentioned ecb earlier, interesting mix of news on that front, steve liesman of course has been covering jobless claims and what la guard is saying this morning. good morning, steve. >> let me check these off tick by tick and let's look at how the market reacted to what was said and first the ecb came out and said it was concerned about the rise in yields out there and

that would lead to tightening financial conditions as a result, it's going to tighten, sorry, increase or accelerate the pace of its purchases under its pandemic emergency purchase program la guard saying that an unchecked rise in bond yields could lead to premature tightening monitor the exchange rate as well, for any impact on inflation, and it stands ready to use all of the instruments. the market took the statement initially as pretty dovish and yields fell, fell around the world as well. but then they came back, when la guard started talking, i'm just wondering, guys, if you look at a two-day chart of the 10-year, we had a decline in yields, there was some anticipation of the ecb doing this in markets so perhaps that's what is going on here, a little sell on the news and at the anticipation of the lagarde acting, and one of the things that is interesting, is why not put some pressure on pow toll act powell has pretty much said straight up he's not doing anything about the recent rise in yields but now that lagarde

has acted, of course there are very different outlooks on the economy, lagarde saying the european economy about to contract in the first quarter and if you remember, carl looking at 6, 6.5% for the first quarter here in the u.s. carl >> yes, indeed it would be a massive number, steve. i guess we'll talk more about what she says as the press conference continues, but clearly a good slew of headlines coming out of ecb this morning david, we'll talk about sort of thing larger picture, too we were mentioning earlier, the macro front regarding the vaccine and it is actually manifesting itself into some pretty interesting sell side calls and i'm looking at a couple and one is dr horton, jpmorgan says absent an incremental 50 to 75 basis points rise in rates over the next few months, the faith in demand will be fairly strong in the housing sector, double digit earnings to at least 2022 so the

play book of home builders getting challenged a bit. >> yes, listen, it's still historically incredibly low rates, things have slowed a little bit i guess in terms of new mortgages, i believe, i haven't listened to the latest numbers from diane olik, but you can see dr horton share, mike, have been a place to be this year, as has much of that group to a large extent. >> they all have yes, there's no doubt that it's another one of those areas where the charts look great, the bull case is obvious, and broadly agreed upon, and so you wonder if it's time to say that it's all priced in. these are not necessarily the greatest of businesses over the course of an entire business cycle really but yet, when things are, you know, the tail winds are blowing, they do great, andyou know, yes, yields can go up, you have affordability issues, you have supply issues, but that all kind of works in favor of the newly built homes, so it's very difficult to sort of take the other side it's also relatively small part of kind of consumer

discretionary and the overall market and people feel like it's the one that they can really bet on, carl >> coming up, guys, shares of bio technology soaring on the news of the covid antibody treatment that it's developing with glaxo the ceo will join us in the next hour and we have calls on as we said, horton, a good one on costco, jpmorgan, on ge, and of course some earnings from the likes of amc, bumble and oracle. futures are green anloing d ok for a record high on the dow at the open hi, i'm a new customer and i want your best new smartphone deal. well i'm an existing customer and i'd like your best new smartphone deal. oh do ya? actually it's for both new and existing customers. i feel silly. but i do want the fastest 5g network. oh i want the fastest 5g network. are we actually doing this again?

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as we mentioned earlier this morning, this marks the one-year anniversary of the world health organization declaring covid-19 an international pandemic. ever since then, it has been all hands on deck to develop a vaccine. dr. anthony fauci remembers the first time he heard news about the pfizer vaccine here he is in his own words. >> i was outside in the backyard, with my mask on, of a friend's home, and i got my cell, my cell phone went off and i got up and took it and people who have my cell phone are people who i should probably talk to, so i got up, and i went

outside and into the street, and it was albert boula, the ceo of pfizer, and he said, you're not going to believe this but the results are absolutely amazing i said what do you mean amazing? i thought he was going to say well, it's amazing, 78%, he said it's well over 90%, and it was like oh, my goodness gracious, it was sort of like a bright ray of sun pushing all the clouds away the good news is that science that has given us the vaccines that we have, have been a spectacular success story, as much as the outbreak is historic, so has been the vaccine response never in anybody's imagination would you have thought that in less than a year, from the time you identified the virus, you would actually have doses of vaccine that was 94 to 95% effective, going into somebody's arm. so, you know, historic outbreak,

and historic scientific accomplishments, matching against each other, let's see who wins >> fascinating series of developments out of that initial phase of innovation, mike, you know, there's so many stories, we'll be talking about for years, the revolution in mrna technology but also logistics, the white house had a goal of doing 100 million vaccinations in 100 days, as it turns out it looks like they're probably going to get that done in about half that time. >> it is definitely good to remind ourselves that it was if, not when, in terms of having a highly effective vaccine back then, and really how it just turned the whole equation around and the fact that now we're getting a little bit of momentum in terms of implementation if you look back at that pfizer monday, when the data were first released, that's the moment when we had this whole shift that we talk about right now, just people pouring into the stuff about the economy is going to essentially come roaring back,

versus let's hide in the big software stock, and you know, november 9th is pretty much that day. we kind of peaked in the enthusiasm there for a minute but basically that proved to be roughly a turning point, david. >> yes, although not necessarily for pfizer stock >> no. >> when you take a look at that 20-year, despite what an incredible accomplishment, incredible, as anthony fauci makes clear. guy, of course, got to go back only a year, or not only, but a year, to this day, mike, when we were down almost 6% in the s&p, then followed by an almost 10% drop in the s&p. that was one year ago. of course we didn't know at the time we would be the bottom. >> yes, it was definitely, the action was, you know, the rules don't apply, we don't know exactly how to handicap a global economic shutdown, we didn't and what's really remarkable is we're going to start to in the next week or two get into these unbelievable year over year percent change, right? just obviously cosmetics, it's

just a calendar rolling the way it rolls but it's not often that you have the overall market, 60, 70% on a one-year basis, as you come into the quarter, as you have, people considering very long-term money figuring what does that mean for how we want to be navigating this cycle so that's why i think a lot of people have looked at this idea, the s&p hit the 4,000, the very moment we have the anniversary of 4,000 or there-abouts, as soon as we get to the anniversary of that cataclysmic low and maybe that's a time to stop and reassess. so i do think that's something to keep in mind. the comeback, so much faster than anybody thought it would. and you know, markets, the bottoms used to be rare, and basically people said don't count on it, they've actually become the last couple of major sell-off, the way the market works now, i probably just jinxed it, carl. >> all right, we'll see. still to come here, we will have a lot to talk about with verizon ceo hans investberg, a morning after a company's investor meeting where they talked about

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tesla will lead your s&p ga gamers pre-market and david did mention the initiation, target 775, but also some stories on the wires about tesla raising the prices of the y, the 3, the s, by about $10,000, citing the tesla web site it looks to gain about 4.5% at the enop more "squawk on the street" and the opening bell in a moment

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we mentioned tesla being an s&p leader pre-market before the

break, mike, looking at mdx components for the week to date, tesla is number one along with a lot of other names that are familiar like the pelotons and the docu-signs, a lingering skepticism over semiconductors that's been the drag this week. >> it has been a drag. that has been pretty pronounced, you have to acknowledge the fact that if you were saying when semis lead, it's great for the market on the way up, when they give some back, it is time to take pause and notice and big tech, if you want to talk about faang type stuff has done very little since labor day but they have since look the better on a relative value basis and when the yields come down, the question is will it be something zae sustainable, and it is not clear it is all about yields and you mentioned the docu-signs and pelotons and other names that seem completely associated with the pandemic economy, the things that were beaten down the most roared back the most on tuesday.

massive amount of shortcomings and the question is when the market as a whole becomes more integrated in terms of growth and value, and do what they do, and it is not always a one or the other type market, and which it has been for some time right now, but final point is, when tesla comes back, when the animal spirits start to get going again and they are, as we've seen in some of the small name, some of the recent ipos as well, david. >> something else to keep a close eye on today, of course yesterdays it was roblox with the direct listing going public and today, coupon, the south korean e-commerce company, the largest offering for a foreign company since alibaba, $4.6 billion, 35 a share, 130 million worth of them, and we will be keeping a close eye on those shares, then they do open. you may have seen the ceo and founder joining andrew this morning, assiduously avoiding many of his questions, but doing quite a good job in doing so, i would say, carl, but it is an impressive company with 91% top

line growth and another potential win for the vision fund, it wasn't that long ago, i guess a year or more at this point, where we were talking about the vision fund and what was seemingly a number of failuring on its part, not so any longer for softbank which will own 35% of coupon at least at the time of this public offering >> mike, you mentioned names that are closely associated with the pandemic costco definitely is one of them wells comes out and tries its best to defendit saying the return to pre-pandemic levels seems to imply that costco keeps none of the upside, which seems wrong to us, and in fact, the title of the report is shouldn't at least so covid benefits stick, and they go to overweight, 370, and it will be interesting, as we have already seen some guidance on comps from the likes of campbells that the guidance this year will be tough to match. >> no doubt. and because unusual the way

costco got punished as much as it did, a premium valuation and that also probably is a company that doesn't try to maximize margins, so costs are going up and maybe not get the full benefit of that with labor costs and things like that [ bell ringing ]. >> it has been quite a dramatic climb for costco the opening bell at the new york stock exchange and the nasdaq at the big board, it's a korean ecommerce giant celebrating the ipo. the largest this year. and the nasdaq, it's the landos bio pharma doing the honors. and a direct listing roblox i think overall considered a generally successful first day as the market cap got to $45 billion and i noticed that cathie wood's ark did snap up some shares. >> it's funny, i didn't get my readout of everything they bought at ark, which is something the market follows so closely and you can see following the back of that, with at least right now, up another

8%, we'll watch it though, mike, there tends to be a lot of volatility in trading of recent listings in this case, a direct listing, they did not raise new capital, they had been recently valued as much as 30 billion in the private placement, not very long ago but far beyond that, right now, and again, we will also keep an eye on shares of coupon, and watch that open today. >> we did want to get to oracle and see how that is opening because there was a revenue miss there. numbers were up, revenues were up 3%, to 10.1 billion, cloud service license support revenues up 5%. but didn't mike seem to be good enough, to me, at least the analyst estimates, a couple of downgrades as well, and they do increase the buyback by another 20 billion, but it can sometimes be a bell weather. what's interesting is oracle along with the other, what you would call cheap value-type legacy tech stocks like hp, like

ibm, like cisco, had actually been very strong in recent weeks, as the high multiple growth stuff went the other way. so it did, you know, have this great run, the wall street heard on the street, said the hottest new tech stock is called oracle and i think that's one of the reasons you're getting some give-back because the mood has change and re-priced a little bit in terms of valuation and still inexpensive but also low growth so it is more of a cash flow, return of capital type story, as opposed to let's get excited about what's happening this year, each though cloud exposed businesses are doing well, and so it is almost back to the norm right now, if we're buying the teslas, and all of a sudden, let's look around cloud to see what's punished too much, you will probably be selling oracle on the other side of that, carl. >> yes, the cloud revenue number was a tad disappointing there. guys, quite a bit of news in aviation not only did we see boeing's order flow go positive earlier in the week, david, as you well

know, american with that capital raise of 10 billion plus, that's going to be the largest ever, for an airline, and then southwest, the max is not only back in service at love, but also these reports that they are close with boeing to a fresh order, what would be the biggest order for the max since the grounding, on a week where boeing david, actually put out a release reiterating a apologies for those crashes and i think ken fineberg will starter inning some compensation to victims, families of victims. >> yes, boeing shares are higher this morning, as we see, and that offering from american, debt offering, was truly amazing, just sort of showing the ability of these capital markets to soak up whatever you're bringing, i think what was it 5.5%, i think on the five-year, i'm not sure, i got to go over the numbers again, specifically, mike, but it was extraordinary. i would mention, by the way,

speaking of aviation, ge shares not showing much of anything, one day after the announcement of course of that sale of its g-cass unit to aercap and own 46% of the combined company. it is selling off. remember, it did move up based on reports of the potential deal, but it's given back everything at this point, i think ge, as we think about aviation, we do think about that name, mike, and then there is the one for eight for one reverse stock split at some point that will take effect. >> and ge took back three years worth of stock declines in a few months so i think you have to kind of draw out the angle a little bit on that, on that chart, and see where it came from, and so it's not too surprising, you have the somewhat expected or handicapped sale, and then the reverse stock split is an interesting idea, people say what's the point, why do we want to do this, i always feel like we don't give enough weight to what the ceo is trying to signal to the employee base,

and trying to have a fresh start, and trying to set new kind of mental markers of what achievement is i remember when, after steve jobs, tim cook split apple shares, and they split it to a level that would make the former high in the stock 100, right so it had gone below 700, i think it was a seven for one split so it is almost where it rewires everyone's brain as opposed to anchoring ge stock back when it was 60 or whatever price, employees have, and on that basis, who knows, maybe it makes sense and it's going the other way because we used to be in this high share price fetish and maybe we've come away with that with tesla and apple splitting again. and carl, sorry, ed garden, board member of ge, co-founder and ci off of trian, a large shareholder there, will join us in the next hour, will join me in the next hour as well and talk to him about a lot of things including ge given he is of course a key part of helping

oversee that strategy as a member of the board, carl. >> yes, make sure you mention this new note out of teve tousa today, which we would probably talk about jim if were here, reiterating the $5 target, saying we're always interested in creating the part valuation, but they're no longer capital assets around which sell side bulls can argue there's enough value equity to support related debt, he says we see material down side from here. so we have a record high on the dow and let's get to rick santelli hey, rick. >> hi, carl. indeed the projected high is not lost on the treasury complex yields kind of do a u-turn looking at intra-day of 10s, yes, we've moved a bit lower but now we're coming back, and you may ask, u.n. a, what was the issue that pushed yields lower there, and certainly it wasn't the claims data, as a matter of fact, you know, we made some progress on initial and continuing claims, but as we discussed this morning, if you looked at the pandemic emergency assistance program, it was up

1.1 million, and i believe it is just shy of 8.5 million, that is post-pandemic high, and of course, that doesn't get released with our normal initial continuing claim, since it's in a special category, but nonetheless, every bit as important. now, if you look at the boon on top of 10s, now you have your answer, drop, redrop, and started to come back, we came back with a vengeance and was there any significant change to the ecb, lagarde will maybe alter the intensity of the buyback program without actually expanding the buyback program, but do keep in mind, it's really about looking at rate, and if it starts to trade much under minus 30, it seems that bugs ecb a bit, remember we're not really looking at risk versus reward on any of the interest rates, on all of the sovereigns, we're basically looking at managed rates or as jim pointed out recently, on the "squawk box" show, that if you look at u.s. 10-year, it's sort of a corrupted rate, it really doesn't reflect the type of risk

that one may take in the grand scheme of things, considering where rates are. now, let's look at the 30-year, because we have 24 billion of auction today at 1:00 eastern. and if you go back to christmas area of 2019, what you'll see is we've gone from basically the highest level since the end of 2019, and more of a consolidation mode and by the way, not only 24 billion of 30, we also have a big verizon zeal that is coming in, and right now, it is considered 30 billion, 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, orders may reach as high as a billion and we could be looking at two and a half times potentially of bid to cover ratio, so we want to pay attention to all of the supply and finally, what's going on with the euro, considering the ecb's announcement this morning, well, it is actually starting to do better. look at one week of the euro versus the dollar and the main reason the dollar index is under pressure today david, back to you. >> thank you, rick. and so glad you mentioned

verizon of course and the large bond offering because they're going to use the proceeds of that to pay the u.s. government the 53 billion, and we will talk to hans vestberg, the company's ceo about all of that in a few moments. stay with us

on pace for the dow's fifth straight gain, on pace for five positive weeks in a row, and a record high this morning, not so much on the back of industrials or banks but mega cap tech, apple, salesforce, microsoft, mellowed not too far behind by nas like intel take a break here. be back in a moment. ♪♪ ♪♪

verizon last night giving further details into the results from the s.e.c. c-band auction at the investor meeting and $53 billion for the spectrum licenses and joins us is hans vestberg the chairman and ceo of verizon, hans, great to have you. you said in your opening remarks last evening, as you entered into your investor day, so to speak, that it was one of the most significant days in the history of verizon, in the 20 years since the modern day verizon was created. why is that? >> well, for several reasons, of course we have had some really

big moments in verizon, of course the formation, 20 years ago and i think we also bought the voda phone years ago and i think this is another one of those moments where we are extending our leadership, and pulling away, and of course, adding the spectrum, the c-band spectrum to our overall strategy, we are going to delight our customer, and that's why we also talked about, that we can actually accelerate our growth and accelerate our business cases and amplify our business cases, so it is a huge day for our company, and for our shareholders. >> you talk about amplifying your growth, and you did give some targets that do show revenueguidance accelerating, think 2% this year, and then 3%, and then 2, but then to 4. give me some details on how you get there, is it adding more subscribers, or is it really bringing more people up to basically paying you more for your premium 5g service? >> david, you know we have talked about this for a long time, you know, we have the

network of service in a bottle where we are basically ork traiting service for all our customers and we have seven vectors of growth and one is the adoption, and looking at the access for the home and also for the mobility, and then we have the net performance compensation where we're working with the in the know partners and then we have also, what is benefitting from the c-band, where we do the mobile edge compute, and that's what we've talked about before, and finally, we have this mix and match that we've done before with our partnership, with the best brands in the market, and finally, we're targeting new markets. and some of them are where we already have with the brand here, and the pending acquisition of tracphone and the pre-paid market, so all in all, we have now some five vectors of growth, and all are in play with this acquisition on the c-band. >> i see, but i just wonder, is there a way to understand how much of the 3 or 4% of growth you're talking about coming pretty soon is new services, you

know, wireless home broadband, or self driving cars, as opposed to just the continued getting more revenue out of a mature wireless market? >> i think we'll get from the base, first of all, we compete for activity in the base and we talked about it in the fourth quarter, how more and more customers are taking on limited, unlimited premium, but then of course, is new market, the fixed wireless market, we can now play broadband nationwide and that's why we increased our targets for whole households and we have a million this year, and 2023, we will have 30 million, and then up to 50 million households, sort of penetrated with our footprint, so that's a new market, and then the mobile edge compute, which is basically giving the cloud to the edge of the network and a new market we are actually defining the market, because we are the only ones offering that service all of that is helping our 3%

growth, for years to come, and we feel really good, we feel good about the strategy that we have for a couple of years right now, and this is just amplifying it, accelerating everything we have, so that's what we're looking at with our shareholders >> you're going to need to pay all that interest on those bonds that you're offering, apparently, a lot of people want to own them, of course, to pay for them, for much of this and you know, when it comes to the building of the network, and this is something we've talked a lot about, i think you're saying that you're not going to need more densefication and that is adding more cell sites and your competitors say that's nonsense and t-mobile says their engineers looking at 50% more cell sites from meaningful and continuous coverage and in some areas for example in building, the required denseification could be four and a half times higher for 2.5 gigahertz how do you respond to that from your competitor? >> i think we responded clearly

already, that we're the most network already, the best 4g network in the nation and the new band that we're buying is the best band spectrum in the market and it is continuous, not a lot of holes and of course, very consistent for is using fo handsets, for infrastructure that's why we can say that with the growth we are going to have with our ebidta as well they can follow suite with the growth we have we feel good about the build spectrum is one thing. we have the best network and the best engineers in the world is the reason why the last 20 years we have been sort of awarded basically all of the awards you can get for our networks. >> we know that. right. but again, back to this point of more cell sites, you are saying you are not going to need to add them, because, obviously, that would increase costs no yeah and that's why we talked about yesterday because we are already very dense in our network and that's why we cover most people in the nation with the 4g

network. right. i want to get back to pricing and everything else. i think you said that as many as 50% of your subscribers you expect will be on your premium unlimited plan by 2023 i think you are sort of in the low 20% now. that's a big move. what is going to motivate that kind of movement in terms of up to as much as half to your premium plan over the next couple of years, hans? >> we have been encouraged the last year what we are seeing we said in the fourth quarter all new net editions in the fourth quarter, 90%. so with compelling offering with the best network and with offerings we have and the partnership we have created and the mix and match where you as a family can pick whatever sort of plan you want. that have shown that we can grow with these customers into those different plans and we give them more value so that's why we're connected over that and we are committed to it. >> yeah. on the subject of c-band

spending, the fcc i think scheduled another auction for early october of 100 megahertz, mid band spectrum. is that something verizon would play in, or are you done >> that's the first of all i have to say we have now the best position in the markets. we are happy with that as i said so many times before, we will always vaevaluate more densification, all other software coming in what is the best way to deal with the growth or data we will have but i have to say with the position we have right now, with the network, with the team, with the go to market, with the new services and with the spectrum position, i think we are already in an extremely good position to extend our lead in that market. >> changing course a little bit. you have some interesting perspective here into some of these streaming services you partnered with disney and discovery in terms of helping them roll out their direct to consumer i am curious, what are you seeing in terms of verizon customers' willingness to take discovery plus

disney+ was quite successful are they different consumers how do they differ and what are your expectations for those rollouts. >> this is our strategy. we have a network service, we are the best distribution and we have a great brand that's why we partner with these fantastic partners at disney and discover we reveal in the fourth quarter that more than two-thirds of our premium customers start to pay for disney+. it's unheard of. i think that is what we are bringing to the table to these customers am and we are making money on it and disney at well discovery need to talk about how they are progressing we are happy with that partnership as well as they are just adding in and i think what you will see in the future is optionality for consumers, they will have different streaming services we they up to three to four streaming services easily and what's what you see in the market and we are the natural and best partner to these guys. >> well, keep an eye on those

discovery numbers because that stock has moved up strongly and perhaps in the hopes for that. you mentioned the streaming services home broadband is certainly a possibility. but you still have a cable company essentially embedded in. your fios tv what's the future of that? you've got to have truck rolls, got to keep people's boxes up to date it can get expensive why not say we are done and maybe sell that asset? >> if you look at our fios, it's just been fantastic the last half hour. our growth on fios is the best sings we are start with it we are going to have optionality for our customers. as we're building network, we got the edge, a different type of distribution, could be 5g, could be fios. so they have the options of different type of broadband possibilities. and remember also fios is in the northeast for us and that's where we have our franchise.

but ultimate lyly with the c-band and millimeter wave we can do the full nation. given optionality for the consumers in the market. we don't talk too often about your media assets, yahoo one of them if you find a buyer for them, you would sell them. is that true >> first of all, these guys in verizon media group has done a fantastic job. we changed the whole business model and business plan in 2018. they have changed all the -- taken out cost and starting to grow in the fourth quarter, it shows what we have i i am very pleased with that asset and how the guys have been executing. we are supporting them they are a farpart of the family and very important part of it. >> that wasn't a no though finally, you mentioned millimeter wave. we are almost out of time here there was a time you were talking about reaching as many as 30 million homes with million meet early wave sec sprum. you seem to be pairing that back is it still really a part of your strategy?

>> absolutely. as we said, we're now accelerating it. we are actually going to penetrate more house holds earlier than before and use all of the assets we have to give that opportunity for our customers and ultimately that's how we can grow and that's why we believe we have a good goal trajectory in front of us. and even 4g when it comes to home, we are using today we are going to use all the assets and the great engineers we have. >> hans, always appreciate your taking time. that's a big number 53 billion word is your bond offering is going very well you will be happy to know, 40 billion in demand thank you for joining us >> thank you. >> hans vestberg, chairman and ceo of verizon we are not done with this topic. we are lucky enough to be joined in coming days with john stanky, the ceo of at&t, and mike seavert, the ceo of t-mobile if you want a sense for the competition going on here, what

they have spent on their c-band spectrum, t-mobile well below verizon and at&t, what they spent. keep it right here that's "squawk on the street." carl >> all right david, pretty good market action here nasdaq's up 1.5% boeing 52-ekwe high. more "squawk on the street" continues after a short break.

boeing 52-week high.

♪ good thursday morning. welcome to another hour of "squawk on the street. i'm carl quintanilla with david faber and morgan brennan a dow record high at the open. the s&p only needs about 17.5 more points for the own intraday high plenty of good news record pfizer vaccine data and the president addresses the nation tonight on this one-year anniversary of covid that's where our roadmap begins. the dow a new record high, on pace for the fifth straight day of gains nasdaq erasing march losses. >> biontech are soaring after reporting positive data for the qr code antibody drug. we will talk about the ceo this hour. >> and ed garden of trian, their

stake in ge after that deal yesterday and a lot more. >> yeah. we start with stocks the major averages on track for the best week in five, as you can see right there, the s&p up 0.9% joining us oak mark portfolio manager tony coniarias your take on what we've sean in terms of a rotation in this market in recent days, in recent weeks. the rotation into value, h sustainable is it and what does that mean for the funds you oversee. >> as far as valuations, they are higher than normal today but the dispersions between valuations in the stocks are also well above normal late last year, we hit three, four standard defviations above normal today that's one to two standard deviations above normal, which is still very significant. the market doesn't always just go back to normal.

it sometimes overshoots the other way. we are still finding very attractive opportunities in a somewhat expensive market. >> in terms of this debate around treasury yields and where we go from here, do you expect those to continue to rise? and i guess whether you do or don't, how does that play we can tease given the shakeout we have seen more broadly? >> at oak mark, we do not make macro forecasts. we take a more passive view on what the market gives as far as interest rates it's our belief some point in the future the bond market will very likely offer a positive real return. when that is really anybody's guess. i certainly don't have an intelligent view on that. >> i am just looking at the performance of some of these funds in the fourth quarter as well when i see a name like airbnb, that is in oak mark's select fund, i wonder how you are thinking about the possibility of some of these new companies that are coming to the public markets and whether there is

opportunities there. >> well, airbnb was in the fund for minutes, not years, which is typical for oak mark and we believe we owe it to the investors to look at everything. airbnb is run by great people, it's a great franchise and the ipo price was well lbelow intrinsic value. we determined it met our criteria for investments, so we put in for a position. unfortunately, we were given a trivial allocation and then the stock price sold at or expected value within minutes of opening in the market. and so we sold it. >> yeah. international versus domestic. this year, and i realize that for you it's not either/or, but when you do see that the u.s. could on the heels of more stimulus in the process of being passed and signed into law right now could lead the world in terms of economic growth this year, how is that shaping -- and

i realize you are bottom's up -- but how is that shaping your investment thesis here >> we are focused on bottom-up valuations valuation in europe are statistically lower than the u.s., but it should be less given the nature of the growth profile. we would say that valuations in europe are slightly lower than in the u.s that's reflected in the global portfolios we manage where we do have an overweight in european stocks today >> are there specific names that you really like right now at these levels >> yeah. i will give you a couple of examples of names we bought the last couple of quarters or two the first one is keurig dr. pepper it's about a 50/50 coffee and carbonated soft drinks and it's got an above average growth profile, above average returns, relative to its cpg peers, and trades at a 15 to 20%

discount and 35 to 40% to private transactions why is that? number one is more technical in nature there is an overhang on the stock you will see from the original holders of keurig who own around 50% of the company. i think short-term investors are worried about them selling more stake and what that may mean and pressure the stock price at oak mark our time horizon spans years, not kwaurgs, and so we're not worried about that we are worried about intrinsic value. strangely, it's an odd positive in that now that they've sold their stake down below 50%, keurig dr. pepper is probably the largest u.s. company that qualifies for addition to the s&p 500. that's not in it yet, which is fairly interesting the second reason it's undervalued is thi think the coffee business is misunderstood particularly the growth rate if you look in the rearview mirror, it looks like a low-single digit grower because when it was private the management team made the smart

decision to reprice the pods, the single-serve pods, to make them more competitive with a pot of coffee or starbucks that was the right move to drive penetration. penetration in the u.s. is 20%, europe it's over 50. we see a lot of runway there but that pricing on the multi-year contracts for the pods with the starbucks of the world has depressed the growth rate that pricing pig is just about through the python here and we think that the growth rate in the coffee business is going to accelerate and force a closure of the gap between keurig dr. pepper and its target values. >> thank you for joining us. >> thanks for having me. a remarkable week for labor data we got the jobs numbers, jobless claims today and now jolts back to santelli. >> yeah, carl, the january read on jolts is really very strong it was up 165,000, which was

revised higher, it was the best read going back to the summer. this is the best post-covid read shy of 7 million 6,917,000. and this is from the low of covid that was under 5 million a very good number it was mostly services and retail, which one would expect expect them to get hotter as we move forward with reopenings carl, back to you. >> all right rick, interesting. got to take note of that by the way, an update, guys, to a story we featured a couple of weeks ago. the christie's action for digital artist beeple, whose real name is mike winkelmann, coming to a close a few moments ago. the final bid, david, $69 million. as of six months ago, beeple had yet to sell any work most of america and the world are trying to understand how

nft fits into overall asset valuations. >> carl, help me understand. help me. i'm relying on you and morgan to explain this to me i can say non-fungible token, but that's about where my understanding ends. >> yeah. >> all right $69 million. winkelmann way to go, winkelmann. make it happen beeple. >> this is incredible. i mean, this is just -- this -- the nft situation has exploded on to the scene and the numbers behind it, i mean, just to see $69 million. i'll tell you this it's tied to the etf theorem blockchain if you look at ether, which is the cryptocurrency tied to that, that's higher today, too in fact, we have even ether outperforming bitcoin as of late because there are supply changes happening to that cryptocurrency but, yeah, this is -- it's like you google nft right now and i know they have been covering it intensely on "squawk alley,"

carl, but you google it right now and there are explainers out there. it's still, i have to say a, little bit confusing. >> i know the blockchain stuff carl, they use a lot of electricity. a lot of consumption for this and bitcoin. it's enormous. and people got to keep that in mind because most of this stuff is not going to be worth 69 million. >> no. the marginal electric load is equivalent to at least a couple of -- the u.a.e. is one country you put on top of grid demand. it's amazing by the way, we will have more on this in the next hour. but congrats to beeple who likes to watch his shares on cnbc. if he is watching, congrats. the ceo of veer biotech. we're back in a minute tax-smart? -well, audrey's expecting... -twins! grandparents! we want to put money aside for them, so...change in plans.

alright, let's see what we can adjust. ♪♪ we'd be closer to the twins. change in plans. okay. mom, are you painting again? you could sell these. lemme guess, change in plans? at fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan.

welcome back pfizer out with new data on the covid vaccine in the real world. results from israel show 97% effectiveness against disease. 94% in preventing asymptomatic infection. pfizer's ceo joined "squawk box" this morning. >> this is important, not particularly for you because you will not have the disease, but for society because the asymptomatic carriers, the symptomatic patients are the ones, they are spreading the disease. >> meg tirrell joins us with more hi, meg.

>> hey, morgan one of the really remarkable things about those pfizer results is they come from a time when the b.1.1.7 hyper transmissionable variant was dominant in israel showing that the vaccine retains strong protection against it. but there are other variants causing more concern in particular, one called b.1.351 associated with south africa now, we talked with dr. fauci about how the vaccines can stay ahead of these variants. >> it is conceivablee that we m have to, and we are preparing for that, to both boost people against the wild type virus, namely, the standard non-mutated virus, or actually making variants vaccines. >> now, all the vaccine makers say they are looking at updating their shots in case needed for the variants and moderna announced yesterday it had dosed

the first participants in a trial of its updated vaccines. we spoke with the leader of infectious disease research there, who said each time a new variant is reported their team immediately assesses the risk it could pose to the vaccine's protection all in a bid to stay ahead of this virus in the second year of the pandemic another tool though, of course, drugs for covid, and some positive news last night from vir biotechnology on its antibody drug sending shares soaring today. their ceo joins us now george, great to see you the long awaited results, not disappointing. you guys were a company founded to fight viruses just a few years before this historic pandemic hit how prescient can you. tell us about the results and what your first drug, if it gets authorized, could do for the pandemic right now. >> thank you, meg. thanks for having me on this morning. we are thrilled with to see the data yesterday 85% reduction in

hospitalization or death in patients who are newly diagnosed and we're very pleased with that number a very high level of reduction the antibody has other characteristics we think can give us some advantages. the data we have so far suggests the antibody does retain activity against many of the variants that are circulating, and we selected the antibody right from the beginning to have that property. so we're very, very pleased about that as well and our dose is smaller than other antibodies that have been given to patients and the dose is small enough so that we can formulate it and give it intramuscularly as opposed to intravenous. we have to, of course, do the trial to make sure that the intramuscular version has the same properties as the i.v. version. if that's the case, i believe it can be more widely available and used than antibodies have been up to now. >> what role do you see antibody

drugs like yours playing as more and more people get vaccinated against covid? >> i think we don't know the full extent how much this virus can change certainly the variants that are circulating are taking over the population and they will soon be the standard strains, the new standard strains it's possible, perhaps even likely, that there will be variants of those that further esca escape the immunity. i think the next few years we will need constantly updated vaccines and we will need drugs because people continue to get covid. so in order for us to regain some semblance of normal life, the vaccine efficacy is fantastic. have to give credit to pfizer and moderna and j&j, all the companies who developed those in record time but they, by themselves, are not going to bring this pandemic to an end. we need those in addition to good drugs we are pleased and hopeful that we will be able to contribute to

that. >> george, it's morgan i am curious one of the things we have been hearing, as exciting and as successful or, i guess, seemingly successful antibody therapies such as yours are turning out to be, that it's actually very challenging to administer them to enough people given the fact that they are intravenous. will that change or evolve over time >> definitely. ithink that's one of the main factors that has limited the use of the antibodies. so if there is a more convenient route of administration, i think the use will become more widespread we have a dose, 500 milligrams, that is small enough so that you can formulate it to be given just in an intramuscular injection, just a shot and so we are working on that as we speak we hope we bring that into clinical testing very soon now and if that intramuscular form behaves like the sintravenous

form, think it can provide a benefit to many more patients than the current antibodies can do. >> what is the timeframe to getting those data from the intramuscular administration, the shot one do could envision, and tell me if this is the right way think about this, patients have to get the drugs early you have to get positive test results. as an antibody iv treatment it's tough. but let's say you get a positive rapid test result, you are high risk, you get a shot right there. is that how this could be administered so long until we get those results and to could possibly be reality? >> we certainly will have them the course of this year. i don't know whether it's two months or six months but somewhere in that timeframe we should have data to tell us whether the intramuscular form is behaving in the same way as the iv form. so, in some ways that's a long

way away, in other ways it's very short i think it's important to remember that it's only one year and two weeks ago that we discovered this antibody and then we have results from the phase 3 trials so things have gone incredibly quickly. and we hope to get this new trial done with the intramuscular form in the same kind of time pace. >> tell us about the evidence that the drug retains protection against the variants which variants have you been able to test it against? and you say it's a highly conserved epitobe of the spiked protein. are there any situations you can see the virus can evolve around your antibody? >> it's dangerous to underestimate how a virus can do and how a virus can mutate sure, i don't know that we can say anybody will be effected forever. what we can say is that the current variants that are

circulating, u.k. variants, south african, brazilian, californian, the ep taupe is the same the testing with pseudo viruses, the spiked proteins from the various virus types, have been put on another virus and then we test whether our antibody can inhibit those what are called pseudo viruses it does. and so that's not prove that we have retained activity against the variants, but it is certainly suggest i have that we could be having activity against the variants i think in the trials that we are currently doing, the one we reported on, other trials ongoing, there will certainly be variants in there. once we get all those viral isolates sequenced we will have pretty direct evidence to tell us to what extent we are

covering the variants. as we sit here today, we are quite optimistic we will be able to do so. >> are you worried, you know, if and when you get emergency use authorization for this antibody, it's a weird market to be launching your first drug into because the lily antibody and regeneron antibody have been purchased by the government and are being provided for free. how does a young company like vir launch a new drug unless the government purchases it? are you expecting that is this a real market for you? >> we are working with jsk we are not a small company we have the resources of a really good partner for this we have been asking questions with governments, u.s. government, other governments around the world there is a lot of interest in the antibody i can tell you that. because of the properties that it has and now that we have data, i think those discussions can go to the next level. so we are certainly having those discussions. nothing is concluded yet >> all right

george, thank you for joining us on a big day for vir we look forward to hearing about more progress. >> thank you. >> and thanks to you, as well. still to come, don't miss an exclusive trian partners he had garden lots to talk to him about. stay with us this is worth. that takes wealth. but this is worth. and that - that's actually worth more than you think. don't open that. wealth is important, and we can help you build it. but it's what you do with it, that makes life worth living. principal. for all it's worth.

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snoop oracle is giving back about half of what had been a pretty nice two-week run on the earnings print they beat by a nickel. revenue was ahead. cloud revenue was seen as a tad disappointing, morgan. still a hike of about 33% and they are adding 20 billion to the buyback. shares down about 8%. >> yeah, as you said, that cloud in focus time for our "etf spotlight. the ticker epv, hitting all-time highs. up fractionally, no, starting to begin. up 1% because the $1.9 trillion covid stimulus bill poised to be sign into law, investors are turning their attentions to the next piece of legislation that is focused on spending what is expected to be a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan. top holdings like deere, eaton,

parker, ern e gh iemsoarhiern today's trade. we will take a quick break with the major averages in the green. stay with us ♪ ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ welcome back i'm rahel solomon. here is our cnbc covid update at this hour. president biden will address the nation tonight at 8:00 eastern it marks the one-year anniversary of the world health organization's declaration that the covid outbreak had become a pandemic cnbc will carry his remarks live in a special edition of "the news with shepard smith. and this morning dr. anthony fauci recalled what he was doing a year ago as the u.s. death toll stood at 33. >> at a congressional hearing i

made the statement, things are going to get much worse before they get better, and that was at a congressional hearing a year ago today. it was march 11, 2020. i said that. but i did not in my mind think that much worse was going to be 525,000 deaths >> and former presidents obama, bush, clinton and carter and their wives are appearing in two new public service announcements urging people to get the vaccine when it becomes available to them the former president trump and his wife don't appear. when asked why a spokesman for the ad council says one of the spots was filmed at biden's inauguration which trump didn't attend. and the variant rages. 2,300 deaths have been recorded over a 24-hour period. the first time they topped 2,000 in one day david. back to you. ge yesterday announcing $30 billion deal to combine the

aircraft leasing unit with ireland's air cab. joining us ed garden, co-founder and chief skrinvestment officer trian partners let's start with that company giving the news. stock has not reacted particularly well. to be fair, it had been up in anticipation it's down sharply. speaking to larry culp, the ceo yesterday, he talked about simplification, being what's the market getting wrong first of ar having me. i would say it's transformative. think about when you were an employee of g.e., 2008, they had borrowed half a trillion dollars in g.e. capital. half a trillion dollars of debt that was guaranteed by the industrial parent and they took that money and they made loans

and that business inherently is risky. you introduced credit risk you introduce interest rate risk and all of that is gone. right? there is no more g.e. capital. this is epic it's the end of g.e. capital g.e. now is a pure play industrial company, and i think importantly, we delevered the company to the duntune of $25 billion with this transaction, de-risk the industrial company and by the way, we still own 46% of the new aircraft leasing business, which i would argue is a better, bigger, better because it has more scale, aircraft leasing business that will participate as the industry comes out of the trough. >> the stock may be down in part today because steve, that good old analyst at jpmorgan says it isn't a full cleanup

he was talking about $21 billion of intranet debt at year end '21 and the final cleanup of insurance and g.e. capital is being ignored to a certain extent by other analystst lists. is he not getting this right >> i think what people need to realize is while the remnant of g.e. dcapital, $21 billion, is coming to the industrial balance sheet. we are getting it 21 billion in assets by the way, 11 billion of that is cash and the stake in aercap. most importantly, ywhat we've done is de-risk and delever it's part of the plan to make this a focused, simpler, pure play industrial company with leverage in line with its peers, you know, namely, 2.5 times leverage rmgs. >> on g.e., you have been a

shareholder there for a long time i am looking back at the announcement from october 5th of 2016 when g.e. talked about your $2.5 billion investment back then it hasn't gone as well as you hoped. you also sold stock through the summer, i think, at levels far lower than here. are you done with g.e. as an investment has it run its course for you given the sales that took place through august of last year? >> no. so, let me touch on a few things number one, g.e., i was not what we expected. i think we were very much a catalyst to go into g.e. and throw the windows wide open. the shades wide open and let the sunlight in. okay and we're very proud of where g.e. is heading.

this management team, larry culp and the board, have, obviously, made real progress, changing g.e. and creating momentum across the businesses. restoring the pride in g.e., the credibility to g.e this is now our culture that i would describe as one with humility and transparency and customer-centric the lean transformation is making g.e. faster moving, more efficient, again customer focused. we've paid down, what, 70 billion of debt since the beginning of '19/end of '18 and on our way to two and a half times leverage we have set g.e. up for long-term success and we are very proud of that at front line-trian, proud at the m management level we last year, some bank of new york, we sold like mason, invent to fund our new positions in asset management in comcast,

which have done extremely well. >> let's get to them let's talk about investment management you raised as much as $1 billion with a long-term lockup, point to new purchases you own 8% of invesco, 9.5% of janice, those are the latest numbers i have what's the play here what are you trying to achieve are the long-term locked up money you have invested in the two key asset managers. >> we have always thought of ourselves as hybrid private equity, as you know. >> yes. >> we become typically the larger shareholder, get major influence, bring in ownership pentality. very p.e.-like we don't buy 100%. we also don't use leverage and we basically are able to buy companies that i don't think private equity would ever be able to buy. so we think it creates a better risk/reward and it's really the

convergence of public and private equities so we raise the fund with ten-year lockup money which gives us the duration to really accomplish what we want to accomplish so what's that the asset management business is a place where i think we have a lot of street cred as a firm we were on the board of mason last yore, which was sold to franklin nelson on the board one time before very successfully. i was on the board of bank of new york where we owned the eighth largest asset manager, been in street, so forth we know the industry well and we have a real view where this is going. there is going to be a handful, we believe, of very large players with scale across the investment spectrum, scale across geographies who have the cash flow to invest in technologies and new products and new teams. nelson and i have gone on the

board of invesco and our job, our goal is to work with management and board to make invesco one of those long-term winners in asset management. >> all right that's consolidation when will we see some of that take place >> so i would say this invesco today, 1.4 trillion of aum, right lots of capabilities fourth largest asset player. big fixed income business. you know, big in active equity 200 billion of alternatives, mostly real estate the third biggest player in china. great distribution 40% margins. 2 billion, close to 2 billion of ebit so a great platform. great for us to build a formidable competitor to the scale players. i think the first order of business is growing organically.

that's what we're very focused op but i do believe that over time you'll see one or two very strategic transformative deals. >> given -- all right. i want to move on to comcast i reserve the right to come back to asset management for a moment timing, obviously, is always important. you bought it at a very appropriate time the stock was in the low 40s or so it's moved up parish appreciably. what do you want out of comcast at this time the roberts family controlling kwl what it does of the vote you got it right in terms of the stock price, but what were here? >> which is the most important thing, by the way. >> yes, it is. >> so my partner matt phelps identified comcast as great. as you know, 75% of the ebidta is from cable broadband, right

only 25 is nbc u we bought the business at eight times ebidta by the way, we started buying in the high 30s if you put a charter multiple on the broadband ebidta, were basically getting nbcu sky for free it was a great value proposition for us brian has, obviously, built an amazing business remember, you know, brian's dad, you know, i think the first business was a cable business in mississippi. what they built is truly amazing. and so, you know, we have very high regard for brian, the management team, the board remember he hed is a lead direc who we know from before. >> sure. >> gerald hassle is on the board, chairman and ceo at bank of new york when i was on the board. so a lot of close relationships with a lot of respect for the

management team and the board and it's been really fun, interesting to talk to them about, you know, where the business is going and how fast it's going there so we all know the cable bundle is going away over time. the world is going to streaming. dhou you navigate that what's the pace at which you am devote more and more exclusive content to peacock those have been sort of the essence of the conversations. >> yeah. finally, ed, i do want to give you a chance to respond. you may not even want to b a couple of weeks back, a guest came after trian a bit he said when a company is in a tough cycle leaders need to motivate their people and activists build a culture of blame. they dominate the media and excel at vilification. their voice drowns out those of other shareholders he said you went after him personally, often unfairly, an pit board members and top

managers at g.e. against each other. how do you respond to that against his book >> i am not going to respond to that we look forward and we're very proud, as i said are of the progress we've made restoring the culture, bringing new a"a" players with new perspectives. we are proud of fixing the balance sheet. our reaction to the pandemic i thought was outstanding. the most important thing into my mind is we've set g.e. up for long-term success. it's going to be a critical player in the energy transition. it's going to be a critical player in the future of flight and it's hugely important as the u world moves in health. so very proud of all of that. >> and that one reverse split, you are okay with that, too? >> look, you know, i -- david, i am usually against a reverse split. i think in this case, we had 9

billion shares it was, you know, simply impractical, right we were such an outlier. i usually think of reverse splits as a bit gimmicky but in this case it was really impractical, 9 billion shares. it was not the right thing for a company our size so i think in conjunction with the g cass deal, it was the right time to do it. >> it was the right time to have you on i look forward to being in person at our next sfinterview. >> i can't wait to be on the set with you thanks. >> i am looking forward to having you as we talk about our incredible parent company, of ours ed garden from trian thank you. carl >> pretty good market here s&p gainers, the vix under 22, almost every sector in the green sillfls or financials, which i bacay at back in a minute

incredible parent company, of

a special chart reveals that the ten-year yield is headed higher from here adgnk out trination.cnbc.com more "squawk on the street" straight ahead

welcome back a as of yesterday, masks off and back to 100% capacity in texas as the state lisfts its mandate. kate rogers is live from austin with more about that move back towards normal kate. >> reporter: hey, morgan, that's right. we are here in austin, with which is known for live music, festivals, barbecue and party scene, of course but both the city and the state as a whole have been greatly impacted by tourism declines the last year. estimated $37 billion in economic impact has been lost for the texas travel industry through the first nine months of 2020 cord torg the texas travel alliance in austin alone, close to $1 billion has been lost in hotel and lodging revenues over the last year, and big events like south by southwest going virtual for this year.

some bar owners and patrons seem like they are ready to get back to normal as capacity increases and they were expecting crowds this weekend and then again next week for spring break. but there is a new and interesting wrirngle here in the city as leaders are saying they will continue to require masks going against the state's orders some people say they cake their cues from the governors. mask won't be required but guests can wear them if they'd like. >> it takes away the enforcement on our part. this is really important it's been difficult, too, is enforcing that people wear a mask when can i take it off if i take it off and i sit down, now i'm okay to have it off? if i stand up or don't have a drink in front of me, do i need to make my mask object what difference does it really make >> reporter: the city is keeping masks in place for now last night the a.g. threatened to sue the city if the city and county didn't apply to the

state's mandate lift whether it's masks on or off, eights lot of drama here, guys carl, back over to you. >> yeah, you can say that again, kate great reporting out of austin this morning. keep your eye on some of the cannabis names moving higher today as mexico now moves ahead with a bill to legalize for recrea recreational use still more man 30% from the high last month "squawk on the stree cties in men aomt.t 30% from the high last month "squawk on the street" continues in a moment. ha 30% from the high last month "squawk on the street" continues in a moment. n 30% from the high last month. "squawk on the street" continues in a moment. it's a thirteen-hour flight, that's not a weekend trip. fifteen minutes until we board. oh yeah, we gotta take off. you downloaded the td ameritrade mobile app so you can quickly check the markets? yeah, actually i'm taking one last look at my dashboard before we board. excellent. and you have thinkorswim mobile- -so i can finish analyzing the risk on this position. you two are all set. have a great flight. thanks. we'll see ya.

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market action is uniformly positive the dow fresh record high. s&p 5003940. you need 3950 for an interday of its own, and then, of course, nasdaq composite 2% gain is pretty impressive as we get all sectors, morgan, in the green. and the vix below 22, which going back a few weeks, was generally seen as a proxy for overall fear and risk sentiment. so that's going to get some traders' attention today. >> to your point we are seeing the gains start to accelerate, the russell 2000 and dow transports also hitting fresh highs in the stayeding this morning as, of course, all eyes

continue to be on bond yields and the treasury market given what we saw come out of the ecb as well this morning, carl >> and, of course, 30-year option, of course, all this week the auctions have had people chewing their nails in advance we'll see what happens in the meantime clearvision, a global initiative to inject capital to underserved minority and women owned businesses announcing capital commitments of more than $100 million from several of the nation's largest corporations including apple, our own parent company comcast, constellation brands, and ebay today. christopher williams is a chair and joins us in a first on cnbc interview. christopher, great to have you thanks for the time. congratulations. >> thank you great to be here really appreciate the support from all of our corporate partners >> i'd love to hear more about what the mission is overall and the commitments themselves thinking back to last summer where we got a lot of these commitments, are these fresh or

are these sort of last summer's commitments being put into practice >> well, these are commitments that reflect the objectives and goals of many of these corporations to support the communities that they serve nationally with a recognition that they can't continue to thrive long term if so many across america are not thriving and are, in fact, struggling threw conversations with each of these companies and many others, we came to a recognition that there's a real opportunity to invest in companies that can help support the growth and help communities thrive that have been underperforming because they lack investment in those communities, because the entrepreneurs who had businesses

have suffered from a lack of access to capital and we felt that as a result they weren't able to provide jobs they weren't able to provide training they weren't able to provide opportunity for their citizens many looked at the circumstance and said it's a great opportunity here to put money to work not just to earn the return but to put it to work in a way that actually supports these communities and helps them thrive and grow going forward. that's really what clear vision is >> that's a great point. i was looking at a report out of goldman yesterday that focused on black american women who on average are, i couldn't believe this statistic, 24 times less likely to own their own business, separate from being paid less and having to forgo medicine more often because of costs. what types of business or i guess geography do you think you'll center on >> well, we're fortunate in that we will have a broad range --

the key is unlike many of the investment partnerships that have an industry focus and rely on many of their opportunities for them, we actually have the resources internally because of our broad footprint. and a range of industry activities that touch bases with communities across the country so let me give you an example. we have a very strong municipal effort in municipal bonds for over a decade and that's across the country. every major pocket in every major city we do have an effort there and a local presence and knowledge of what business opportunities exist. so that's one. we also get input from minute of our corporate relationships that

have supplier relationships that might be diverse owned, minority owned. >> okay. a broad range of opportunities and sources of -- for transactions and investing >> so, chris, i'm just curious what is the parameters for lending going to be? what are we talking about in terms of the loans themselves and what are you able to offer to some of the small business owners that maybe a traditional bank couldn't? >> these are -- it's a debt fund it's interesting we're not asking someone to give up ownership of the entity we are looking at ways of lending money by a competitive and attractive rate by being thoughtful about lending because, to date, almost all of these companies have not been able to get access the traditional means of lending and traditional sources of capital

so we would lend to them we'll provide technical expertise where we can we can even leverage some of our lps and other corporate relationships to provide subject matter expertise in the appropriate industries and then we look to also provide connectivity we want these companies to grow. so we'll connect them with our relationships and help them grow their revenue. >> christopher, congratulations again. great having you and helping our viewers understand appreciate it veucry mh. "squawk alley" will begin on the other side of this break an office commune. not a security concern around for 50 miles. unless you count the wolves. and all the llama milk you can drink. you know at cdw, we can design a security solution using hp elite devices with real-time threat intelligence to help protect your data from new threats, anywhere you work. anywhere? ring the bell thrice, we're going back to the office!

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