watching with bated breath richard, thanks for joining us ceo of royal kcaribbean. >> that does it for us here on "squawk on the street. "techcheck" is going to start right now. ♪ good thursday morning. welcome to "techcheck. i'm carl quintanilla with jft j jon fortt and deirdre bosa. is there a bear case to be made facebook shows often its own results. why that stock is ripping higher later, qualcomm's incoming ceo joins us first on cnbc another tech stock spiking today as the rally, d, in big tech gets legs today.

>> carl, just a massive day for mega tech cap apple and facebook lifting the phang index. nasdaq, intraday high. not all a party to that. a little, though individual names like servicenow down sharply on the back of earnings hitting more of those names throughout the show. >> have we mentioned it yet? most important thing in tech today. earnings beats start with apple listen to the numbers reporting double digit growth in every category sales up 65% year over year. ipad, 79% same period and shot jot to mark morrison who called it 25 years ago. march 1997 return of the mac. mac sales, up 70%. apple just one impressive quarter in what's a series of long results for big tech this week amazon ahead tonight bar is high, i guess, but quell coming up in a few minutes as well

qualcomm charl talking for weeks and months about a chip shortage qualcomm, apple, so many others, interesting who's managed to work around that or be so premium, high-end in offerings they're at the front of the line in terms who gets the chips and who gets the profits in the earnings season just reported? >> yep also helps when your ceo, in the case of apple, d, literally made his career around supply chain logistics and comes in handy and paid off in a quarter they really didn't have a material shortage the way a lot of their peers have. >> yeah. good point, carl very, very well taken. jon, what do you even call this? an "everything supercycle" the street as usual looking for iphones and services growth instead what we got mac and ipad stealing the show. a lot have to do with that m-1 chip you've talked about seems to be a game chinger >> it's only started, carl, to, i think, make its presence known

in apple's lineup. they just announced it, expanding into the imac line, the imac pro line. margin impact, just seeing it now. tim cook hasn't talked tab much. an interesting affect on the product line, i think, not dominated by cpu by much interesting to see how apple differentiates the product by display technology, by memory, by storage, by the software itself. >> yep and the degree to which they pass that baton on to developers, jon. you talked about this morning on "squawk. sticking with apple, bring in bernstein's reporter to talk about the quarter and the stock. i think -- you put it best said it really doesn't get better than this, but more serious point that it might have been too good. can you explain? >> sure. no you're absolutely right. a fantastic quarter on every single dimension. but we do think that apple is

benefiting from consumer spending shifts through the pandemic consumers were not going to restaurants. they weren't traveling they were staying at home, working from home and learning from home. that's apple's sweet spot. sold a lot more apps and ipads because of that. had more money to spend on more, on the highest priced iphones. those spending types might change over the quarter and people start opening up, people start going out to dinner and more exposable funding to go on holidays apple will face not the same demand the big question and why the stock isn't doing anything, despite big, big earnings revisions. it was almost too good sets up tough comps and i think because of the secular spending

shift, i'm not so sure there's going to be as many people lining up to buy all of these products a year from now >> hmm now, that line of thinking has gotten some on the street, goldman's a good example, of taking that too far and ending up having to turn tale to what degree would relative out performance op the chip shortage, for example, offset the concerns you just lined up >> well, look. i think the next couple of quarters will remain strong, because the trends are still in place. big lacklogs for pittscs and we think for remote learning-type devices like chromebooks and tablets. so i think that will persist, but, again, it's really important to put this in context. ipad has not grown in five of the last seven years it grew 79% this quarter doesn't that seem to be a disconnect mac on average has grown 3% a year the last five years it grew 70% this quarter

i mean, clearly, those numbers are -- they're not only fantastic, they're just stratospheric and frankly disconnected from what the secular growth rates are of these businesses and the explanation is, it's that, you know, they're a really, really favorable tailwinds that are at work right here >> yeah. you're indredcredulousness is nt going unnoticed. you mentioned shares up only 6/10 of 1% if this can't move the stock, among the big tech names what will >> that's the debate among investors. you know, the stock entered year expensive for apple trading about 30 times earnings. and numbers have gone up so the stock has gotten less expensive. but it's still trading at about 25 times or 26 times next year's numbers.

2022 when we compare that with google and facebook who had blowout quarters, facebook's trading at 20 times, you know, bernstein's 2022 estimate for facebook. it's trading at 22 times google's estimates, and i think some investors would say, look those stocks maybe have better secular growth stories the pandemic has actually structurally improved advertising. the pandemic has certainly improved work from home for now, and improved people's disposable income for iphones, for now, but i think, you know, there's a question mark about whether that will be sustained in apple's business and a question mark whether apple can grow next year and yet for some other tech companies trading at similar or cheaper multiples, those questions don't really exist that's why you see facebook up 4% you saw google up 4% all three companies had blowout quarters, but i don't think there's the same concern about

what might happen next year as there might be for apple, i'd say. >> toni, the other side of that. doesn't that mean you just got those amazing apple results for free pretty much. i mean, based on what the stock is doing today plus a $90 billion added to the buyback authorization. talking multiples now in a way will change probably over the coming year, if apple's as opportunistic as they have been about buying their own stock and you can see the man has been there not only for an iphone supercycle, also for this new chip of theirs that's going across the mac and ios lines which on paper seems risky, but we can already see those playing out? >> i think great questions, jon. look, apple has become a lot cheaper, because earnings have gone up a lot. so it was about 30 times earnings now it's about 25 times earnings but many other tech companies have as well and this is a

relatively well known portfolio picking those they view most attractively, among the top ten biggest tech stocks as portfolio manager you can't own all ten. you're probably picking six to be overweight and four or five underweight. so there is that relative gain, but, look, it's a fair point the market may wake up later this year and say, you know what these high-quality tech stocks are really doing well. they're you know -- they deserve more love. they deserve a better multiple with apple, the multiple now being 25 times is still the highest point other than the last year at any point in the last seven years so it's still -- it's still expensive. just very expensive enters the year you're right on buybacks we think continue about $20 billion per quarter on a go-forward basis i think that's more status quo than an acceleration.

>> toni, thank you for joining us your insight's always appreciated. >> thanks for having me. well, carl and jon, he mentioned it facebook's only blowout quarter, a beast his own and boosted by year over year ad prices went up. that's behind the surge today and a game of wait and see with regards to apple's privacy changes on the platform with the company bracing for "ad argumenting headkwinds in the future." doesn't seen investors are too concerned. shares up more than 5.5% this morning. >> right one thing that cfo david wehner said that was crucial. he said impact on our own business we think will be manageable talking about apple's operating system change. now really saying that this is going to have less impact on facebook and more impact on small businesses so reassuring investors there, but also, deirdre, making the

point they now have a road map, a plan, to make that impact manageable by investing in commerce and also investing in getting content creators to really work on their platform and do more on their platforms. >> hmm julia, some of the frustration of those listening to the call last night was that there hasn't been a crystal clear discussion with the company what percentage of u.s. revenue is exposed to the change in apple's ios privacy policy have you gotten a good number on that >> well, look. i think the problem is we still don't know how many people will opt in and opt out i've seen so many different estimates, carl, and they range widely some say that 90% of ad targeting, others say 50% will opt out of ad targeting. a huge difference there and it's still too soon to say where this is going to pan out nep said obviously only launched monday and rolling out slowly so too soon to say there, but i

think is teams what the company is trying to do, plan around that figure out how they could keep people on their platforms. if they have influencers on their plat perform, creating content. follow the influencer, immediately make a purchase within instagram do that in the facebook ecosystem they won't have to worry about tracking you when e go do things outside the facebook ecosystem. >> could it be, julia, this isn't really going to matter that much to facebook's bottom line at all this ios change? apple, after all, gave the companies time to figure out their workaround we were tont, really, he doesn't see it as a big issue and adobe has a big marketing business 9 benefit to facebook, get to say look at this even bigger eco company than us having an impact on our ecosystem when government's trying to look at

apple as most dangerous and facebook saying, somebody's beating up on us >> making the point they are not a monopoly, have competition and forces limiting their success. i think we'll see an impact of the operating system change this year, but seems by end of this year, that impact will be mitigated. >> yeah. julia, on that point, too, if these ad changes, in our saying they're managerable. will we see them back down on the stance they've taken they're sticking up for small businesses, but it's unlikely doing them any favors with users. right? kind of putting them on the other side of privacy when you have apple, even going mogle now saying they'll fight for more privacy controls >> look, i think they made a shift from saying this is bad for facebook to saying this is is bad for small businesses trying to keep the two separate. facebook look goods, if it seems like an advocate for small businesses especially when it's in opposition to apple and its

protection of privacy and that being apple's stance i don't know if we'll see them back down but i think they're changing the narrative with investors certainly as they try to reinsure investors about the impact of this down the road. >> speaking of reassuring investors, julia, the revenue guidance for q2, street at 35. facebook's guiding to 48, at least. so their view must be that, i mean, at some point we're going to decide that being targeted to some degree is acceptable and interesting? >> yeah. i mean, carl, i have to point to some of the things mark zuckerberg said last night about the future of facebook not only did they say revenue growth was going to either be stable or accelerating beyond the 48% revenue growth reported from the first quarter, but put out a road map of other things generating revenue down the line shopping, ecommerce, i mentioned. also inventioned in the greater economy, getting people to make content for facebook and figure

ho to may money this way for facebook and instagram and virtual reality. we talk about it a lot but seems very much early days and something that could be a real moneymaker for the company i think that there is a lot of reassurance. talking about reassurance investors. not only the revenue road map is there in terms of advertising, but advertising demand there as well it was the 30% increase in price per ad that really drove the revenue up 48% in the quarter and they said ad demand looked strong rest of the year. >> yeah. as discovery said yesterday, i think szazlof said if you sell ads. a great way to understand a difficult and complex story that is facebook. as for apple, what's not to like crowdsource. you tell us. up on twitter. scan the qr code on your screen.

make the best bear case. >> want to see that. qualcomm's ceo on earnings is next as that stock goes higher big hour of "techcheck" straight ahead.

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see what we're up to at xfinity.com/commitment parent company comcast beating the top of the bottom line this morning. quarterly results with a 55% rise in profit driven by strength and broadband and wireless streaming platform peacock with a boost adding 9 million more users to the sub mow 42 million as cable continues to lose subscribers across the industry. despite shares being more than 60% off 52-week lows still underperforming in the s&p and nasdaq since january >> and now shares of qualcomm getting a nice pop beating analysts estimates the company's revenue jumping 52% boosted by strong handset shipments in china joining us, incrumbing ceo

cristiano amon taking over june 30th cristiano, good to see you we were just talking last night. chip supply shortages a theme this year, and yet we get these results from qualcomm. results we just talked about from apple is it just that companies with resources and good planning are able to work around this and allocate in the areas that are most popular and profitable? >> hi, jon good to see you. good morning. you know, i think you're right at the end of the day we have been you know, utilizing our scale. utilizing our planning capabilities, and trying to navigate this crisis sent in the call we have line of sight to seek significant material improvement to supply and get mobility to match supply and demand close as we can as we get to end of the calendar year still with this very challenging supply environment we continued to generate growth in the quarter in the guide and very happy with the company performance. >> take over in just over 60

days, give a preview, smartphones a maturing market. with 5g, though, get akting a bigger share in wallet overall devices. what's the plan for qualcomm to continue growth, profit growth in particular, in a significant way when the bread and but the main thing driven you to this point recently at least is maturing >> well, the way to look at qualcomm, you need to think about us like in two different areas. start wiere with mobile strategy pup don't see this happening a mature market like phones and all of a sudden within a fiscal year a $10 billion sam becomes available. so weight volume starts to move to other customers created incredible opportunity for goethe can grow fast in a mature market underscores or strategy which is

our mobile strategy is really focused on premium and high snapdragon, qualcomm's snapdragon premium now is equal to an ddroid premium experience and we are going to really folk toys capture this opportunity. as i said before, it doesn't happen often that you have a mature market that all of the sudden a $10 billion sam becomes available within the fiscal year. >> cristiano, good morning it's deirdre china a bright spot this quarter. how much the export ban on huawei and its contribute there and how is that playing out in future quarters? >> the way to think about it, right? as huawei was a very successful oem in volume, focused on premium here, and qualcomm has been serving all of the other chinese oems, vevo and others. volume ye declines as a result

that volume picked up by other vms. if apple wins, we win, samsung wins, we win vevo wins, we win. very well hedged that is showing up in the opportunity we have ahead. it is also getting new oems. one of the spinout, honor. our customer and expect to have significant business with them going forward. that's how it is materializing and great opportunity for us even in fiscal '22. >>crhrysrcristiano, there are wo don't win. ways investing, putting cash into things, one thing trying to do, build up their san diego workforce right in your backyard and part is trying to compete with qualcomm, at least for apple's own internal business on 5g modem how are you going to approach

that competition what level of confidence do you have that you can present them with a better product and they're going to be able to create for themselves that internally >> look, not surprised san diego is a great place to live i guess they want to get closer to qualcomm. i don't blame them no end of the day, if you really want to work in communications technology, in technology in general, qualcomm is the place to be. that's what we do for a living you know we're the world's best at communication with wireless. always have been first in every technology and it's the place to be ask you a question two pieces to that first of all, it's our key mobile strategy going forward with 5g. it's about premium and high tier snapdragon you know, it's about -- snapdragon equal to android, you know, flagship experience, and with our front end attached. number one experience. as we kind of indicated in the

call, when we see, for example, some softness in -- in that spry constraint environment, in, for example, in some products with replacing it with higher value products we sell a premium snapdragon platform it's multiple times revenue and earnings from selling a modem. i think we're very happy with this huawei address for market most of the huawei volume, absolutely majority of this volume, is going to companies like vevo, opo and honor sustained within china, and we're -- the design is strong across the board second part of the question. we're just at the beginning of the relationship with apple. we have still a number of years to go, and, you know, as you would expect a company like qualcomm to say we're confident of our leadership in technology. >> let's talk about qct and the guide. a lot of that strong guide was

owing to the chip business at the same time we're in this environment where at the detail level, geography level, difficult to predict what's going to happen. these uncorrespondent covid surges in india. in places in europe as well. how much is covid itself and the degree to which its under control or not geographically impacting the demand that you're seeing and expecting >> look, this is a great topic of conversation. that's allowed me to talk about the second part of qualcomm's strategy look, there is very clear signs that there's demand for qualcomm technologies beyond phones and that is reflected in how we've been diversifying the company, and we have more than one growth factor as we think about outside phones the good thing about that, it's not demand that is just base and people staying home watching tv. it's a whole different-dash whole different environment.

i break that down. automotive car companies realize, especially think electrification. cars are going to be computers on wheels. to get a traditional car company plus qualcomm you get a tesla at the other end. that's what's happening. we're becoming the preferred partner of the digital chassis asset of those companies and reflected in adding a billion and $9 billion and other transformation of enterprises. with the pandemic, sent everybody home realized after they connected with everyone, they needed connector assets we have seen an incredible speed of acceleration digital transformation reflected in the i iot. provideded $1.3 billion nap is just the beginning revenue iot so broad we're just

scratching the surface of this opportunity. >> cristiano amon, look forward to watch you take over on june 30th. >> me too. thank you for having me on the show. >> deirdre. a check on endeavor. hollywood powerhouse just opening tore frayed. i -- for trade i spoke with the ceo here kwhap he told me. >> we're the largest company, the only company that represents content in the entertainment space. owns content entertainment space, owns sports and many others nobody like us in the world and i think we're the real thing and have all the experience of a company. we're a unique company in the marketplace and perfectly primed for where the reopening's going. >> investors clearly reacting to the company better than they did about a year and a half ago. shares up nearly 10% carl, ari says he's ready to be

a market ceo and promise won't be swearing on the earnings call >> a reality check on amazon is coming up next first, more on that apple blowout quarter and goldman uprates from neutral to a long-term cell admitting it got the cycle wrong. looking for apple bears, after this break.

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welcome back i'm rahel solomon. time for cnbc's news update. and bill de blasio looking to drop restrictions in just two months no word from andrew cuomo who says the decision is made on the state level. de blasio says the city is ready. >> our plan is to fully reopen new york city on july 1st.

we are ready for stores to open, for businesses to open offices, theaters, full strength because, look. what we're seeing is people have gotten vaccinated in extraordinary numbers. 6.3 million vaccinations in new york city to dancte. >> and the rise far less than expected driven in part by ongoing tight supplies of homes for sale. the busiest day of earnings season among the big movers caterpillar shares seeing profit-taking. results by higher demand for construction and industrial equipment. that's our update at this hour carl, back to you. >> ceo on "mad money" tonight. thanks, rahel solomon. welcome back to "techcheck." i'm carl quintanilla along with deirdre bosa, and julia boorstin and up 5% on facebook. the rest of faang higher

ebay down more than 9% at the home, at least as the company is december appointing guidance preciousers they're under. apple, jon, opened nice. basically flat after what we've talked about all hour long, a blowout quarter. >> yeah. speaking of, guys. i'm looking at our twitter feed, because of crowdsource a little disappointed. answers today on the bear case for apple, but not enough. let me prime the pump here, poke the bear, as it were how about this this quarter from apple looks amazing but actually a little less amazing on second glance. iphone just reached supply-demand balance in the quarter meaning apple doesn't have to shift as much product to meet demand when we get third quarter results. and tim cook said on the call, more issue for mac and ipad from here we could end up, next quarter, guys, with something that looks like we saw from netflix this

quarter. all of a sudden, oh, maybe for of a full forward than everybody thought. >> jon, first of all, amaze swramazeing we have a shortage of twitter skeptics where are they i'll add to that courtroom battle with epic investors seem to have forgotten about that over the last 24 hours. th that's set to kick off with service as key part. 660 million subscribers across its services al'sal cut is critical, carl, and the next product is that going to about home run? tim cook and others talks about vr and ar. we foe facebook is working on it. >> indeed. apple turned to katie, from morgan stanley takes price target up a few bucks from 158 in katie's view, really the september quarter that is going to put to rest, as she puts is,

any fink thscal risk and couple quarters out to make the case for those who aren't still convinced. >> no the saying we believe the bear case. it's thursday, it's on the other hand day keep it interesting. right, deirdre >> keep it a little balanced anyways, tweet at us i want to hear the bear cases or totally disagree with us, assess you often do. meanwhile, surprising stat what it's like to work at amazon, next. plus we look ahead to earnings tonight it is not over. and later, do not miss cnbc's annual stop gap who's taking part this afternoon in a bit all-star lineup. "techcheck" returns in two. i have an idea for a trade.

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you like in-it-? >> yeah. great money. that was frances mcdormand in "nomadland" playing a seasonal worker at amazon, and that is what referring to a bump in amazon announcing increasing hourly pay up tos $3 to operato

many employees in the united states and linkedin naming the company top place where americans want to work keep in mind earlier this month, amazon faced its biggest unionization effort at an alabama warehouse. covered that closely guys, we'll get a look how and if these labor issues are impacting the company's financials after the bell when it will be releasing earnings. i don't expect it to show up much, carl, but you know, that "nomadland" reading, depiction, a generous one the book it's base and actually talk and some of the struggles that these gig workers face. seasonal workers it's not just about pay at amazon yes, it pays well, but as the company has become more efficient, we've seen demand spike during the pandemic. there are real concerns about some of the labor practices and perhaps safety practices at amazon. >> yeah. we're going to find out a lot about the degree to which the company, jon, is following through on, really, the

framework base sez set up in his letter that labor structure at the company will change, and the degree to which that's going to add friction to a company famously adept as using scale, you know, in all silos. >> yep got numbers. they're important. linked linkedin is based on opportunities to advance training that's offered. pay is a piece of it, and by the way, i should mention microsoft isn't on the list because microsoft honors linkedin and think that would be unfair, but, yes. frontline work is hard there are legitimate issues explored here, but that unionization effort failed big time, and this list, it's an interesting feather in amazon's cap on day when they're also raising wages, d >> same time, not like amazon is saying, okay we feel confident that our workplace is, you know, gives

everyone everything they need. they did actually act, carl mentioned. bezos' annual letter not just a customer-obsessed company anymore. take care of employees encouragement in bump up in pay and probably more talk about it, carl interesting to see, because investors in terms of the share price haven't really asked for this this is proactive on amazon's part that's probably encouraging for work toers see also. workers to see also. >> yes and those linkedin numberance, jon said eye-opening. a lot revealed tonight after the bell. >> yep now, to the market in general. one of the spacs doing well this well, alt energy play trades to today. that is next goldman sachs says wrong about apple. too much of a bear case over there especially after this quarter. want to know why subscribe to cnbc's probe for

that and a lot more. "techcheck" returns in two. po, we can harness the energy of the tiny electron. we can create new ways to connect. rethinking how we communicate to be more inclusive than ever. with app, cloud and anywhere workspace solutions, vmware helps companies navigate change. faster. vmware. welcome change.

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when you post your first job at indeed.com/promo smart energy storage company going public by spac pap merger valuing the company including clients of facebook and u.p.s. and abouts 3ds.5 billion i sat down with the ceo john kerrington to talk how the company planned to put the money to work. have a listen.

>> we've built the market leader in the ai space for energy storage, and this will allow us to now finally grow into new markets that we really didn't have the balance sheet as a venture-backed company to do in the past what really exciting about it, all of those great partners that got us here are rolling their positions. so they will help us grow in into new markets these are large energy, fortune 500 companies in europe, south america and asia so it really helps position the company to go tackle this massive addressable market. >> with stock up more than 160% since the announcement, it's beating cnbc spac index by a huge margin, but shares are almost 50% off their highs of the year and sharply lower today. check out that full interview at cnbc.com/techcheck jon? >> great stuff. now a quick neote on ibm

turbonomic, more than a billion, ic automation. could be ibm's biggest buy since red hat. 11th hybrid ai acquisition under the ceo. after the break, verizon looking to sell for about half they bought them for not long ago. what went wrong, after the break. did you know that petco, is now a health and wellness company? i adore their groomers and their vets our physical, social, and mental health cared for in one place. ♪ petco. the health and wellness company. shiny coat, clear eyes, good energy. we handsome boys need high quality dog food to live to be old, distinguished boys. petco. the health and wellness company.

ebay falling ing more than 10%. the outlook is is concerning investors today the company warning that the pandemic sales boost it saw could soon begin to fade away. a similar story to pintrest or netflix. how much 2020 growth was just a pull-forward of future sales the ceo will be on ""squawk on the street"" monday. jon. >> i look at this. you don't count these companies out necessarily, i mean look at gamestop but you look at ebay, it is now worth a quarter of shopify once seen as the ecommerce retail, perhaps number two to amazon, now not so much. i keep thinking back, carl, to when ebay kind of spun off, sold off gsi commerce the business was supposed to be arming smaller businesses and

larger businesses, too, with ecommerce tools to compete against the big guys sounds a lot like shopify. it is a good idea. maybe they shouldn't have spun it off but innovated. >> we will see what jamie says on monday. to cramer's earlier point this morning, the degree to which they're willing to make the expense of investments in some peers to catch up. we'll hear more about that later. in the meantime, once again the poster child of the first internet bubble is back on the block. julia bo julia boorstin is back to talk about this verizon story. >> no comment from verizon but a source close to the situation says they're giving up and in talks to sell them my source says they're in talks with apollo and two other private equity firms and is expected to arrive at a deal worth $4 billion and $5 billion as soon as next week with verizon likely maintaining minority stake in the company.

we reached out to apollo and got no comment they are looking to invest in spectrum for high-speed wireless offering verizon bought aol and yahoo for more than $9 billion and has already written down about half of the value that is a long way from back in january of 2000 when the two companies, then both public, had a combined value of more than $300 billion verizon's media business which includes news sites such as "tech crunch" last year reported nearly 6% decline in revenue jon. >> julia, it is interesting to think what went wrong at yahoo, baug because it is easy to think it was doomed to failed yahoo could at least have been that jeff weiner, a lot of people forget, he was there jimmy pittaro, who you just had on a couple of days ago.

he was at yahoo. they had good people what happened? >> yes well, there are so many different stories wrapped into this news today, but also just more recently, jon, the question is what happened to build up as yahoo media assets as a real alternative to facebook and to google and that digital duopoly as it is called in the space i think the effort to build up the advertising alternatives couldn't compete amid an overall ad contraction and couldn't compete with facebook and google on that sale we saw them sell off huffington post they sold off tumblr, so it is a combination of the two companies they purchased years ago. >> is this too much skating to where the puck was there's a lot of action in the businesses, not focusing just on advertising but diversifying into subscriptions, into courses, things like that. yahoo would have been in a really good position to do some

of that. you know, iac has done it, venmeo did it, maybe not enough creative thinking when you get to be a bigger company and they just want you zwroegenerate cas. >> when you look at verizon versus at&t, these are two companies at their core selling broadband as well as wireless. they've done in different directions i think verizon trying to get rid of these speaks to how different the strategies have become at&t made the massive deal with warner media, now have hbo max as a key part of their portfolio. on the other hand, verizon is saying, no, we're going to focus exclusively on our core competency, which is wireless and buying up spectrum. >> julia, fascinating. it will be interesting to see developments as they happen.

watch roku this morning as well. getting an upgrade at web bush they get an outperform 475, more than 100 bucks from where we are now ahead of earnings next week after the break we will resolve today's crowd source and try to find the apple bear case in a minute. best deals on all smartphones.r let me break it down. you got your new customers — they get our best deals. you got your existing customers — they also get our best deals. everyone. gets. the deals. questions? got it. but, why did you use a permanent marker? because i want to make sure you remember. i am going to get a new whiteboard. it's not complicated. only at&t gives new & existing customers the same great deals on all smartphones. get up to $800 off our latest 5g smartphones.

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take a look at shares of uber, lyft, doordash, some other gig economy companies. president biden's top labor official telling reuters most gig workers in the united states should be classified as employees, deserving of related benefits guys, a reminder that this is still a huge issue for these platforms, and any policy shift could raise cost for the companies that depend on these independent contractors such as uber and lyft. there have been court battles already on this issue and some victories, but still so many unknowns jon, both companies will report earnings next week i do expect to hear more from them on this topic >> for sure. it is an important issue now it is the final countdown to cnbc's 2021 stock draft. returning at 2:00 p.m. eastern today. you can catch names like tiktok

star josh richards, three-time nba champ andre iguodala each will pick two stocks. which two performed best between today's close and the super bowl, february 13th of '22 carl, always interesting to watch, fun to watch whose picks go up and down. >> it is going to be good. with cramer as a ref, it will be good to watch this year. time for answers to our crowd source today we asked you to make your best bear case for apple. multiple responses today saying the company's big beat means higher expectations and, thus, easier misses in the year to come and what user missed the dip calls an expectations treadmill. another few users pointed to china as potential weak spot alongside the epic gain spot finally a different response, the pandemic ending meaning fewer virtual meetings and more traditional non-iphone forms of

entertainment. jon, without rod we have to turn to someone. >> yes even on the expectations treadmill, carl, you can still use your apple watch so maybe that's okay >> yes stay tuned tonight for amazon and twitter and energy names in the morning. let's get to "the half." >> thanks so much. welcome to ""the halftime report." i'm scott wapner whether the great reports from microsoft, facebook and alphabet mean the much-talked about correction is now cancelled. we are debating the markets with the investment committee joining me the chief investment officer of decatur capital management jenny harington. asset management, jon najarian, josh brown good to see everybody. let's go to the wall the dow is higher, barely. s&p is higher, barely. the nasdaq is down 56. the russell is negative yields on the ten-year,