good morning it is 8:00 a.m. at apple headquarters in cupertino, california it's 11:00 a.m. on wall street and for the last time, "squawk alley" is live

♪ good friday morning. welcome to "squawk alley." i'm carl quintanilla with julia boorstin and deirdre bosa. jon fortt has the day off. at this time onm monday, you'll be watching a new program here on cnbc. tune in for the premiere of "tech check," where we'll cover all the bases on all things tech on our very first show, not a bad way to start out two big guests including uber's dara khosrowshahi and linkedin's founder reid hoffman d., we cannot wait >> we cannot wait. i remember when you guys launched out of one market now to have a home there is very exciting and carl and julia, it wouldn't be a final "squawk alley" without a little bit of breaking news we have some we're starting with the amazon union vote count unofficial results are now amazon clinching the win with no votes unofficially hitting a simple majority. with us now to break this down is cnbc contributor and editor

of the big technology news letter, alex can trowitz. unionization efforts are long and difficult. the organizers would tell you even getting to this point to a vote is a victory. more than 70% of votes were in favor of amazon. how much should we read into this employees recognize that, hey, compensation and benefits are actually pretty good at amazon, relative to the rest of the sector >> yeah, we should read a lot into this. it does feel that amazon is indestructible right now i mean, find me a company that handled a union drive worse than amazon did over the past few months they had employees, you know, basically sending photos of them peing in bottles on the job. the workers have come out and provided that proof. and yet they crushed the union

in this effort it really just goes to show you that the state of american labor right now is pretty weak and amazon -- that was the biggest challenge to them. were they going to change the way that these fulfillment centers work and it doesn't seem like that's going to be the case anytime soon if you're amazon, you're in a pretty entrenched position right now. >> yeah, i mean, you have a point. there was peegate, traffic lightgate, mailboxgate, so many pr missteps. the way thaey handled it on twitter came under a lot of criticism. but at the same time, that's not yet over they may have received a victory here in this vote, but it's far from over. there will be challenges, there could be appeals, there could be more sort of pr issues that come out of this. is it possible that this sort of slowly erodes amazon's reputation and let's not forget that this has really captured national attention. i don't think the lawmakers that have spoken out against amazon's labor practices are going to

move on so easily. >> yeah, you know, it's a great question, because what's happening at amazon isn't happening in a vacuum. you have fulfillment centers in the united states that are standing on land that was once occupied by steel plants so the fact that we've moved from a country that used to produce things to one that distributes things shouldn't be lost on anyone here and it largely has to deal with some political decisions made be some of the very same bodies that are now criticizing the country. so the country is really looking right now and saying, we're now in a distribution economy versus a production economy and how do we change that? and isn't it sad right now that workers are looking at a $7.25 federal minimum wage and looking at the $15 minimum wage at amazon and saying, hey, we're actually in a great job right now. well, $15 an hour translates to around $30,000 a year compared to the 50 to 70 or $80,000 that people might have made in those steel plants that used to be on the same land. at a certain point, you ask yourself, what's the future of

the middle class in this country going to be? >> alex, it really does speak to a transformation of the american economy. and i'm wondering how you see gig workers really fitting into this we've seen battles over whether to categorize gig workers as employees or not as employees, how do you see that playing out, especially for some of these tech giants going forward? >> oh, absolutely. i view this union loss in the same category as prop 22 here in california, which wouldn't classify gig workers as employees. and you think about this from the perspective of the american workers, right, where there used to be a place where they could depend on well-paid or decently paid, steady work. and now they're looking at the political system, and the way that it's treated them recently, right? where they have to struggle for rights that they haven't gotten here in california when it comes to gig work. they can't get a unionization drive together in the face of pressure from amazon you know, out in alabama -- and you know, you ask yourself, if you're a worker, who's really on

my side? and i don't know if there's any strong, clear answers to that right now in the united states which is really good for these companies bottom line, but if you think about the health of the country moving forward, you have to start asking yourself real questions about it. >> amazon is also under regulatory scrutiny, antitrust scrutiny, and i guess my question there is, do they deserve any credit for how they've handled this is there anything they've done worked and how do you see amazon shifting their approach to this threat of unionization going forward? >> yes, so the regulatory stuff is really interesting, because, you know, while i think short-term amazon might have defeated this union push, long-term, they're probably not going to get too much from the politicians, although congress does seem to be interested in action but the place you really want to look at the ftc, which lina khan has just been nominated there. and there's a case that the ftc

might bring some action against amazon we already have cases against facebook and the ftc meanwhile, amazon and apple have been hanging out saying, i hope they don't look to us. but it does seem that these regulatory agencies are going to start looking at these companies. and it always comes down to the question of funding, do they have enough resources to do that so congress allocates the right amount of funding, wing there's a chance that there's going to be some repercussions. in terms of credit that amazon is going to get, i don't think the way they acted during this union drive will win them any points with the ftc or the people that are tasked with oversight of the company >> you know, alex, you talked about the impact on the country given the fact that some of these wages and union benefits are not forthcoming. others would argue, an uber job allows you to supplement your income these amazon workers have gotten lots of incentives, including stock. and to a large degree, if you lost your job in a restaurant or if you lost your job at a hotel,

an amazon warehouse was a place to go and try to land on your feet are those things legitimate? >> yeah, i don't want to blame the companies here as was said in the previous hour, amazon's added 400 to 500,000 jobs in a year the country needs those jobs uber definitely has, you know, sources of income where if you lose your job, you can boot up the app and get driving right away that provides some real flexibility to the american worker and that's good but the real question we need to ask ourselves is, what about the broader system, right? because amazon and uber, they're big companies, but they're just players in a system that the united states has opted for, which has created much worse opportunities for labor. so, you know, i look at amazon you know, you can basically chart the company's growth in terms of the way that some of our free trade deals have gone, where you have these inexpensive products coming in and a glaring need in the company for a country that would be able to

shift them to the company's doorsteps. so they're playing a role in the system, but the system itself is something we need to start working towards and asking ourselves, is this really working? >> we know that change comes to the system very, very slowly and if we look overseas to europe, they've been ahead of america on regulation, in terms of gig labor laws. you certainly see unionization at amazon in europe. you also see in the uk, uber drivers being treated now as workers. so should we read that, alex, as a sign that that kind of mentality is eventually and will eventually shift over to america. >> yeah, i don't think there's any question that at some point, an amazon fulfillment center is going to be unionized. this was the first union election in an amazon fulfillment center and the company's uploaded over the past couple of years just a few years ago, they would under 100,000 employees. in ten years, they've added

about 1 million. so this stuff is just interesting. tech moves so fast, these companies grow beyond our wildest imaginations if you look at what the pandemic has done, it's put all of that stuff into overdrive and regulatory stuff comes afterwards but the question is, even if the unionization drive did succeed inside this plant, what would it have actually done and you know, does a worker that's unionized in an amazon fulfillment center come anywhere close to what the worker in a production plant used to be in this country the answer, i think, is squarely "no" >> alex, thank you for being with us and breaking it down so succinctly as we get this news we'll see you again soon for sure and carl, also hearing from the retail union, the r.w.d.s.u. saying they demand a comprehensive investigation over amazon's behavior in corrupting this election, closed quote. they have already filed objections and unfair labor practice charges we knew this was coming, so it's

not over yet we will see more headlines this morning, certainly, carl >> yeah, absolutely. we'll talk about it a lot. meantime, we're getting more details from the white house skinny budget, including implications for the defense sector kayla tausche's got that good morning, kayla. >> reporter: good morning, carl. the biden administration is taking the wraps off of a $1.5 trillion budget request for the 2022 fiscal year that begins in october. it includes a request for a 16% increase in nondefense discretionary spending up to $769 billion and a more modest 1.7% increase in defense spending, up to $753 billion. the discretionary programs that are seeing the biggest boost under this request is a $20 billion increase to a total $36.5 billion request for title 1 schools that operate largely in low-income areas. a $14 billion investment in

climate change policy efforts, and $8.7 billion in funding to the centers for disease control and prevention, which the administration calls the largest budget authority request in nearly two decades, as they work to prepare for potentially future pandemics now, officials noted that this budget is intended to right the ship, so to say, in a lot of areas, with this official saying, i think both parties have shown a lot of historic interest in this area. and they note that this is a separate, but complimentary request to infrastructure proposal and the tax proposal that the white house and treasury have unveiled in the last week or so, but they note that both with play a key role in the months-long process to appropriate funds for all of the administration's priorities. administration officials saying that these numbers will help guide that process and a more robust budget blueprint that is going to include details about what they hope to spend on entitlement programs will be out

later this spring. and as bittersweet as this is, julia, i'll send it back to you for the final time on "squawk alley" >> thank you so much, kayla. and fascinating to see the biden administration's priorities laid out like that. and still to come, the chip shortage continuing to hurt the auto industry. we'll discuss with former ford ceo mark fields. bak le wl rhtig ck don't go away.

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gm, ford, and today unday cutting production at several plants as a result of this ongoing chip shortage in the automotive sector. mark fields joins us this morning, a senior adviser at tpg capital. mark, always great to have you thanks so much for the time. >> thanks, carl, great to be here >> it seems like every morning there's a new headline or at least one line or two getting shut i was not aware of this and you point this out that the shutdowns are not approaching the lockdown shutdowns that we got through covid. >> yeah, if you do the math, you know, covid took out probably about 3 million units, plus or minus or production last year in the u.s. through the first quarter, it looks like about 700,000 units were lost in the u.s. due to the chip shortage among other things second quarter, you can argue, you're going to see the peak of shortages, so let's just say that's another 700,000 units

you're already at 1.5 million units. the situation should get better in the second half, but if it doesn't, for whatever reason, you can just do the simple math and you can see that the losses could approach the level of the covid losses for last year although there's still a lot of work but the first half, you're about halfway there. >> every headline from the big guys indicates that it's still accounted for within their guidance for the year. i'm not asking you to play sellside analyst here, but at what point do you think you have to start visiting the guidance that they have given >> i'm sure the auto companies gave them a white swath in term of the financial impacts and the volumes it could have on them, but keep in mind, it's this is a moving target. and to put that in perspective, the oems don't purchase these semiconductors directly through the foundries.

they go through their tier 1 suppliers. so they're not giving them as much visibilities as ethey used to have in their production planning, because they're not getting that visibility from the foundries. in addition to the general chip shortage, there was a fire at a plant in japan, a company called renaissance that provides the auto industry the most advanced and smallest chips which power a lot of the latest features that fire occurred in early march and they said that they're probably not going to get back to pre-fire levels of production until the end of june. so you have a whole another quarter of shortages for very key chips. and this is a little bit of a moving target and a little bit of whack-a-mole for the auto companies and their production planners, because they're trying to maximize the highest margin vehicles but it depend on the supply they're getting, and that is change literally every week. >> mark, good to see you it's julia here. i think it's interesting that

elon musk just tweeted out, "thanks, tesla suppliers for supplying us with critical parts. my question there is will we see tesla and elon musk have an advantage in this ev space these are critical for evs in particular what will this shortage mean for the lead that tesla has on some of these new entrants from some of the other automakers? >> julia, i think you always have to take tweets from elon musk with a grain of salt. but assuming that he does have and tesla does have a good amount of chips, for electric vehicles, they do require more semiconductor content than an internal combustion engine vehicle. but i think what you're going to see are the automakers that are launching their ev products, they are probably most likely going to be prioritizing launching them and getting the right volumes out there. you have products like the ford

mach-e which is doing extremely well in the marketplace. i don't think it would be too much of an advantage for tesla and elon musk, because it looks like the folks at ford and vw, they'll prioritize those in the marketplace. because what it means for their brand and their business >> good morning, mark. i understand you've got to take many of the things that musk says with a grain of salt. but at the same time, tesla did seat record deliveries last quarter despite the shortage what does that say about tesla's supply chain versus some of the other automakers does elon musk have a better grasp of it? have there been blind spots when it comes to some of the other competitors? >> clearly, when covid hit last year, all of the automakers, including tesla, brought down their production and their production forecast, because they just didn't know what the visibility would be in the market from a marketplace demand

standpoint but, you know, keep in mind, tesla has much less volumes than the traditional oems so clearly, they may have some kind of advantage where they ordered these semiconductors and kept those shipments coming to them during the shutdown period and covid. that may be one aspect but i think you have to put entitle perspective of just the magnitude's difference of the volume that the traditional automakers are producing versus tesla's. so it's going to remain to be seen, particularly in the second quarter, if we start seeing production, you know, stoppages, if you will, at some of the tesla plants and obviously, we've seen on a weekly basis, the traditional oems playing a little bit of whack-a-mole with their production and trying to prioritize their high margin products >> which kind of reminds me, mark we've seen a couple of examples of where they've said, okay, we will produce the vehicle, but it

might not have, for example, the fuel management software that tells you how much gas is left in the tank. is that sort of a legitimate workaround what sorts of features or options are they willing to kill at this point? >> well, again, from a production planning standpoint, what are the products that provide you the best margin? you're right, carl, some manufacturers are installing older chips, which impact things like fuel economy. i think the key is, they're going to have to obviously disclose that to their customers. i think the bigger issue is to watch out for manufacturers who are saying that they are building their products and then storing them in storage lost until some of the semiconductor chips become available and some of the components become available, because that can have

an impact on quality, ultimate quality. there's a couple of different workarounds, but there are obviously second and third quarter order ramifications of doing those types of things. >> unbelievable twists and turns coming out of this horrible year, this horrible pandemic and now this, mark it really helps to get your take on how to understand this whole issue. we look forward to talking again, thanks. >> all right, thanks, carl as we head to break, watch shares of fubo tv. they are surging after winning the rights to the world cup matches. shares are up nearly 20% "squawk alley" will be right ayitus st wh

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netflix reaching a multi-year agreement with sony pictures securing the streaming rights to its upcoming films, including future installments of

"the spider-man" and "yjumanji" franchises it will give netflix access to valuable content at a time when other studios will no longer supply the streamer, because they're sending their content to their own platforms, such as disney plus and universal's peacock. it also gives sony, which does not have its own streamer, that valuable platform. deirdre, it's interesting, as we're seeing all of these alliances made, you know, we saw so much consolidation in this space, so much investment in streaming and deirdre, now, these alliances of the remaining studios, you know, sony talked about being an arms dealer and now it's dealing exclusively, if you will >> julia, i love this story so much it is so contrarian. who would have thought that we would have a big tech company these days without its own streaming platform sony does a lot of things, and

it's interesting, as you say, they want to be the arms dealer. you have to wonder, is that focus or complacency we all have seen what disney has done with disney plus, how much investors love that direct-to-consumer model i love that sony is standing back and saying, hey, we're going to collect some money for this instead of trying to compete with this field that is so cluttered >> indeed, especially given some of the comments out of warner this week, and the expectation for big pictures, it's going to be interesting to see whether or not a return to full theatrical capacity takes some of the edge or some of the shine off of streaming release. let's get a news update and turn to rahel solomon this morning. hey, rahel >> hi, carl. good morning, everyone president biden is creating a bipartisan commission to look at possible changes on the supreme court. among the possibilities, adding more justices or install term limits that comes after president trump

filled three seats during his term a volcano is spreading ash across the sky over the eastern caribbean island of st. vincent. evacuation orders were issued last night and due to covid fears, uk officials are asking brittons not to gather and leave flowers at royal residences following the death of prince philip at the age of 99 this morning that still didn't stop some mourners outside of windsor castle prime minister boris johnson also offering his condolences. >> it is to her majesty and her family that our nation's thoughts must turn today because they have lost not just a much-loved and highly respected public figure, but a devoted husband and a proud and loving father, grandfather, and in recent years, great

grandfather. >> and you are up to date. that is our news update for this hour "squawk alley" will be right back the world of investment will never be the same. the old guard swept aside by tech innovators who can't stop asking “why not?" why not direct indexing? or crypto? fractional shares? or digital clearing? there's a place where all these things come to life. a platform where the biggest names in fintech are changing the world. so, if you've got the guts to dream,

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amazon workers in alabama have voted down efforts to unionize after a months-long campaign, but regardless of the result, our next guest says this is a seminole moment for the entire ecommerce industry. and joining us now is the ceo of

commerce iq, guru hurihuran. thank you for being with us. what does this mean for the logistics change for labor efforts in the u.s.? more evidence that amazon is invincible or perhaps a setback for unionization efforts, which happened not over months, but over years >> that's right, we believe this a seminole moment for the industry as a hole, for maybe two reasons. one is that it represents the lives of the amazon workers and democracy in action. but on the other side, amazon that has written the blueprint for how ecommerce operates in the u.s. and having this go yone way or the other would have provided the model for almost the entire ecommerce industry to follow and from that perspective, having this going in the direction of amazon basically

tells us that the industrial supply change is not going to be touched by unions for a few years to come, at least. and is not the model of companies that are operating the ecommerce market >> so debuguru, has labor been overstated you have said the most important thing in amazon's logistics change is not necessarily its warehouse workers, but based on its data and technology, do you think that amazon moves further in that direction? makes any changes based on the labor issues that it is facing >> at the end of the day, amazon have essentially created and invested just a tremendous amount in r&d and especially supply chain r&d to be able to operate efficiently. like, at the scale that we're talking about, they're 45% of

the muamerican market is buyingn amazon it's not possible to have humans man it it's algorithms at work. if you look at how these things feed in, this would have taken the unionization mpact, it would have had an impact in terms of the variable costs that amazon would have operated u under, roughly about 15 to 20% of top line, of amazon is spuppl chain costs. think about the purchases that you cost if you ordered a $100 widget, 15% of that is being spent on supply chain costs logistics and warehouses this work would have gone in favor of the union would have increased that cost by 500 basis points, maybe to 20%

and that would have had a pretty significant impact on not just the shoppers in terms of prices going up across the industry, but also on small businesses and large consumer bands who will have to bear the cost of all of this >> certainly, guru, there would have been meaningful impact had this vote past, but i'm wondering if you can reflect on what the union president, stewart applebaum saying, depending on no matter how the vote turns out, they believe they have opened the door to more organizing around the country. do you think he's right, or do you think the defeat of this proposal means that this shuts that down? >> i don't think it shuts it down i think he's right in that it does create some some insider of warehouses amazon will have to take a deep look in terms of warehouse conditions, in terms of how employees are treated. if you'll remember, there was a

few years ago when there was in fact some controversies wrapt to how amazon was treating employees in the headquarters. and now of course, the limelight is on the warehouses they'll have to shift it and of course, they are very well set, as you'd know, in fact, the supply chain head, who is dave clark, has not taken over the reins as the ceo of amazon's mutual business and he knows the pulse of what's happening. but certainly, this does race a lot of, everyone would have to start looking deeper into the e-commerce operations and make changes so this doesn't start to bubble up all over again >> the way you're describing amazon as a giant algorithm

reminds me of what bezos said as a young man and why he first chose books because there were so many skus i wonder what you would tell people who are constantly worried about amazon getting into new silos, completely new businesses if this algorithmic thinking is going to limit those choices. >> not necessarily i think the way that the company has always operated is creating mini business units all across the board. there's a lot of test and learn philosophy that's applied on a day-to-day basis and teams are allowed to essentially experiment and make mistakes, come up with some ideas, try them out in the market, and if it fails, come back to the drawing board and talk about the learnings that they've had. so i don't believe that this sort of limits the ability for amazon to innovate

if anything, algorithms are doing a lot of the work that the human teams would have been doing and that has freed up the human resources to start to think strategically and think about what's next. >> some of those more mundane tasks. thank you so much for being with us, guru harirahan, thank you so much robinhood's crypto business is booming ahead of its ipo. kate rooney has the numbers. >> robinhood is the latest company to benefit from bitcoin's bull market. in march alone, the start-up saw 3.5 million clients trade crypto for the first time that was both new and existing users. robinhood has seen about 3 million new cryptocurrency traders per month to start out this year. for comparison, guys, the monthly averages last year were in the low hundred thousands it now has 9.5 million people

trading bitcoin, etheorem, and even doj coin in some cases. that's up six fold from the end of last year this could be welcome news for robinhood ahead of its ipo in recent months. its main profit engine are essentially customer trades have come under fire, especially during that gamestop saga. crypto trading could help diversify that research. and for other companies, crypto trading has proven to be extremely profitable this week, coin base roeported n estimated $1.8 billion in revenue for the first quarter, that was almost entirely from trading feesand it was more than the company made in all of last year. brian armstrong gave credit to bitcoin's rally for that windfall meanwhile, square if its fourth quarter reported about the same revenue level, $1.8 billion just from bitcoin trading that was a 10x increase from a year earlier and square executives have said that those users who do trade

bitcoin tend to be more engaged and they tend to spend more overall. square's stock is up about 12% this week. analysts are expecting to see a boost for the payments company, as bitcoin prices doubled in the first quarter. guys, back to you. >> kate, this is quite the prelude for the coin-based direct listing next week what's the latest that you're hearing in terms of its valuation in the private markets and what we could see. i mean, is there even a way to know you have this hot sort of listing market and then you get bitcoin enthusiasts in the game as well. what do you think? what are you expecting it is the perfect storm. you've got bitcoin and coin base going public first of all, for the crypto environment, this is really a seminole moment, really the first big crypto companies to go public but there is a huge risk here and coin base has pointed that out. bitcoin prices, their revenue is extremely correlated to where

bitcoin is trading and that's what they've said is the biggest risk in addition to regulation and things like that. so the way that they are doing guidance is basically based on the price of bitcoin, trading everyone, and so it's extremely volatile analysts are expecting the first couple of months for coin base or potentially couple of years to be tightly correlated to bitcoin prices and very, very volatile >> that's something we're going to be talking about a lot more in the coming days, kate thanks, as always. the great kate rooney. by the way, april is financial literacy month and cnbc is committed to sharing messages about financial information. this issaltrahio >> math is at the center of financial literacy i love baseball. i used to keep track of all of the players and their batting averages and rbis and all the statistics because i did math. i had to learn it. i id edit manually

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these moves. kate >> hey, deirdre. good morning, restaurants have long invested in their own internal technology systems, but in recent weeks, some big names are making acquisitions and also revealing new investments. yum brands, the parent of taco bell, made two tech acquisitions in march the first, its purchase of kv anar antum, and the second the tictuk digital ordering has really become key for fast food and qsr brands over the last year. year on year, up 45% up for yum, up 174% for chipotle half of those sales coming from delivery chipotle revealed an investment in the autonomous delivery company that works with kroeger' and domino's kirk garner says the company could change the traditional

delivery model and add that any new tech investments would really need to enhance its mission. take a listen. >> technology investments need to be things that can be co-created and create a sense after separation or difference in the marketplace and it's a crowded marketplace right now in many technologies and there's really appropriate places to partner. the places where where we need to invest are really where we can do something that's novel and unique and potentially break through. >> financial terms of all three of these deals were not zl disclosed. and restaurants are really eager to hang on to these new customers. analysts say these investments help to differentiate the experience for customers and investors and both of these companies, yum and chipotle, seeing really big gains over at last year. julia, over to you >> amazing stuff some day, i'm sure, we'll have

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heavily in audio story telling our next guest struck a deal with amazon valued at $300 million to sell his podcast platform, the name responsible for hits such as "dirty john." joining us is the founder, hernand lopez. thank you for joining us i am in your target demo i have to ask how your business in particular is going to change once it is owned by amazon. >> well, thank you so much for having me on the show. business has been on amazon already for a little over a month. without speaking too much to what their plans are, they already announced publicly they're going to increase staff significantly over the next year and over the coming years, and they're going to expand beyond this late wondery has produced in the past. obviously wondery is known for

the best quality immersive story-telling shows, the shows that make people feel they're in the middle of the story, like- business wars" or "dirty john. i think that amazon will take that direction even further and will expand beyond what we have done in the past >> i'm curious what your response is to the success, the recent success of clubhouse and the phenomenon of live audio conversations. we saw spotify move into that space with an acquisition it made recently. is this a space that's interesting to you does it seem competitive to podcasts >> i don't believe it seems very competitive with podcasts. i think, i have been using clubhouse for a couple of months now, and i have seen people who are in the podcast industry hang out in clubhouse, but i have not heard or seen any evidence of that listening coming at the expense of time spent listening to podcasts. remember that 41% of americans

are lessening to podcasts every month, and the weekly listeners are listening to eight episodes a week that's a lot of time, and the time they listen to podcasts keeps expanding. i look at clubhouse as a promotional medium, a medium podcasts will use to get the word out and, secondarily, that audio is in the space. when wondery was created, a lot of people thought of audio as music and talk radio it was in the very early days of 2016 and 2017 that we started to develop a podcast as a thenarrav cli story telling medium so many formats continue to develop into audio that i think we are at the early stage, even what the podcast community can create. >> right hernan, good morning it is deidre

it feels like the battle in podcast right now is over talent, less so studios. you saw amazon buy wondery, the studio i wonder, how are you making sure your top talent now that the deal has gone through doesn't leave for other platforms like spotify, which is offering big money for big names, or leave on their own to be paid directly by advertisers. you saw it happen with bar stool sports, penn gaming. >> of course, i can't speak for wondery because i'm no longer the ceo, that's a question for them i am just an adviser what i can tell you is that talent in general looks at the size of the platform, how big their audience can be, the economics and talent relations there's not one component of the relationship with their platform partner that is always more important than the other there's some talent that prefer having a wide audience and a team that will really get their show to number one, and that's the reason to partner with a

company like wondery wondery was the only company to get 32 shows to number one on the apple charts, and that's something that every creator wants to see with their show >> you know, hernan, people always ask have we reached peak podcast or not, and some argue it could end up being like the book business where it is so fractured, almost like a cottage industry that it is kind of not a huge deal to have a book but the book publishers live for the megahits, is that a good way to look at the podcast space? >> i don't believe so. i believe the biggest difference between books and podcast is that podcasts will have a recurring -- there's a recurring listening experience people will come to a podcast and then they'll subscribe to it and come week after week, whereas in a book, if you read a book it doesn't necessarily mean you are going to read the same book, the next book from the

same author. so there's less of a built-in habit in books that there is in podcasts. >> fascinating time for this growing space. i think it is amazing that still just 55% of the u.s. population has ever listened to a podcast we will see how that grows in the coming months. hernan, thank you so much for joining us we will be rhtacig bk. stay with us ves fast... get decision tech from fidelity. [ cellphone vibrates ] you'll get proactive alerts for market events before they happen... and insights on every buy and sell decision. with zero-commission online u.s. stock and etf trades. for smarter trading decisions, get decision tech from fidelity. everyone wakes up every morning to a world that must keep turning. the world can't stop, so neither can we. because the things we make,

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coming up monday, don't miss the premiere of our new show "tech check" at 11:00 a.m. before we close out the final "squawk alley", we want to thank those that have been a part of the show for the last seven year, kayla tausche, all of those that steered the show. monday will be a big one. >> yes, you guys did such a wonderful job over the last, what is it seven years, getting us to this point where we can have this show also shout out to the san francisco one market team that beefed up our coverage over the last few years and sally schenn, the one and only josh lip ton.

julia, tons of people in l.a. working hard to get to this point. >> yes it has been great to be part of "squawk alley" over all of these years, and it has been so much fun, deidre, to be able to co-anchor the show over the past year of covid. i am really looking forward to what we have coming up, carl we have rick dara, we have others it will be great. >> we will see you all on monday let's get to "the half." >> all right carl, thank you so much. welcome to ""the halftime report". i'm scott wapner front and center this hour, the third inning that's where famed market watcher jeremy siegel says the boom in stocks is. it is a big call we will debate if he is right and what it means if he is joining me for the hour, shannon shikoski, jim lebenthal along with pete najarian and kevin