all proceeds go to charity cnbc has raised more than $88,000, $88,000 a nice back and forth there. john legere, mark cuban. that will do it for us on "squawk on the street. "techcheck" starts now ♪ . good wednesday morning welcome to "techcheck. i'm carl quintanilla with jon fortt, deirdre bosa and julia boorstin today, amazon buys mgm, a re-set on amazon's streaming strategy this hour. meme stocks making a comeback. by amc and ge are surging again. later john, what to expect from

nvidia after the bell tonight. >> yes snowflake 2. ahead this hour the ceos of intuit and zip recruiter one with strong earnings the other making its public debut as attention turns towards small and medium business. reopening with intuit noticing its ecosystem grew 28% zip recruiter, if you believe they're hiring you'll like the ipo. amazon talking small and medium business highlighting in a tweet 2 million smbs sell in the store, they want those to do well >> love to highlight those small and medium-sized businesses. we start with the deal of the morning, amazon buying mgm for just under $8.5 billion. this is amazon's second largest acquisition after whole foods, days after discovery and at&t, as those streaming wars continue to heat up, included in the deal the james bond franchise, the

handmaid's tail, shark tank, survivor and "real housewives" tata log netflix and disney are falling slightly would get people to buy more on its e-commerce platform, perhaps use its devices more with mgm, its second largest acquisition ever, jeff bezos called it one of his kids last quarter. is it emerging as the strongest competitor to the distance netflix? is it there considering 175 prime members viewed a tv show or movie on the prime platform last year? >> i would say that these two companies are playing for content for a different reason amazon as you mentioned wants to get people into the prime ecosystem, maybe gets the

attention of people with new shows, encourages them to sign up for prime what amazon is going for here, they want to have the kind of content that gets people to subscribe to prime and stick around, but not for the content itself the upside for amazon, as you mentioned, is really about getting those prime subscribers to spend more money. that's ha those prime subscribers like myself do whereas f you're talking about a netflix, every subscriber is really about the helping the subscriber sticks around they're looking at the land grab for different reasons. amazon in this situation is identifying there are a limited number of suppliers for them as a streamer you have all the big studios tied up with their own streamers, comcast, nbc universal has peacock, disney, disney plus, they have to figure ute where they're going to be getting their content from and mgm has a deep library i want to point out that today at the jpmorgan conference david

is zaz love, his deal putting more pressure on amazon to snap up some of these assets weighed in on this deal. take a listen. >> i don't think amazon got the idea for mgm from us we're happy about that deal. we look at what at&t and john stankey and warner has, it's the greatest treasure of global ipo that's loved by everyone in the world, together with the treasure we have i think you look at the value of mgm and you say, wow, and what does that mean we're worth if we could make this all come together we think we can. >> yeah. clearly here zaslav feeling good about the $8.5 price tag because he says that indicates how valuable their content deal is, jon. a little bit from zaslav he's

pleased that panned out like that. >> they have to spin it one way or another i want to know your perspective, why did they pay so much when the marquee title and brand in the portfolio is james bond, who arguably has aged the worst as far as heros in the metoo movement, some of the old movies, i don't know if you can show the kids. >> look, jon, i think the real issue with james bond is not how well or poorly he has aged and that franchise has aged, but the fact that amazon is only getting 50% of the james bond franchise. the other 50% is owned by the family out of the uk they are not entirely owning the james bond franchise which i would argue is still very valuable you might have to duke it out with wilf who is a huge james bond fan there is just a limited number of independent studio assets left if you look at sony, sony is tied up with netflix, so they're already tied up there. there aren't that many suppliers left i think that has really put

pressure on the prices if you look at who is left, lion's gate, amc networks, but aren't that many players what comcast, cnbc's parent company, said today. comcast cfo mike cavanaugh speaking at the conference said that they feel good about the assets that they have. they like the hand that nbc universal has without m&a, but he didn't rule out m&a entirely. sounds like they would be looking at anything that becomes available, but he said they're pleased with what they have right now, guys. >> maybe amazon is looking for more my question to that, jon, and carl spoke about this earlier, they have so much cash, amazon has money to do deal like this my question is, why they don't do them more often there was whole foods and mgm, but aside from that all their acquisitions have been around a billion dollars, perhaps as jassy takes over, we'll see more of the cash put to use to grow these growing businesses outside of e-commerce and cloud.

>> yeah. and you're right, the question about whether or not they're distorting the market and distorting valuations is one that's raging today. let's bring in more on this topic with editor and chief of "the verge" and cnbc contributor. great to have you. i wonder what you make of amazon's intentions and the competition because generally speaking in the past, when amazon starts buying in your space it's not a good sign for you. >> yeah. i think that's a fair read i think the broader strategic concept of making prime more and more valuable is correct that is more like very abstract reasoning. it is much more likely this deal ends in tears and say that because amazon isn't going to leave mgm alone. every time we've seen a tech company or a telecom company, in the case of at&t, go and try to operate a creative company, it has been disaster historically unless amazon is committing to leaving mgm alone, which they

are absolutely not committing to doing, i think you're going to see a massive culture clash. amazon executives are writing books about the legendary amazon hiring process the six pages of memos you have to write before every meeting. are they going to impose all that discipline on mgm, the oldest of the old-school hollywood studios? i think that culture clash alone is the biggest risk factor in this deal, let alone the fact that it still has to pass regulatory muster at a muffled up ftc. >> brad stone who has written about amazon has a chapter about bezos' interest in hollywood and apparently there was one meeting, stone writes, where bezos said, look, i know what it takes to make a great show this is the executive who goes to the golden globes whenever they're nominated, do you think they're really going to try to

muddle with hollywood? >> yeah. if you read that list it's hilarious. an english class list from high school about what the story is you need a hero, the hero needs to be in trouble those are the elements making a new show, building new i.p., turning beloved i.p. into something fresh for television, these are the challenges that all the content companies are facing yes, i gre there's actually a shocking limited number of distributors that can help you achieve scale, netflix, disney, now maybe amazon prime if they muscle up like this, but amazon has thus far failed to achieve success on the order of netflix after all the money and time spent, after making their own television sets which should be a win for them i think there's a real question of whether they can leave alone the creative side of the business while operating >> how do you know how do you know they failed? they don't break out prime video and jeff bezos said in the last

quarterly earnings that 175 million prime subscribers tuned into a tv or movie and why are you so certain it ends in tears? look at its success with twitch. bezos left that alone and it's continued to grow and thrive and looked like a pretty smart deal. >> i think they've actually meddled with twitch but twitch is a tech company. fundamentally that is a software engineering challenge that gets to level up software engineering using amazon scale there's a compatibility of the culture there that makes sense historically, if you look at tech companies or telecom companies, buying media companies, the culture clashes destroy the deal i'm going back to aol buying time warner, at&t having to spin off warner media because they tried tomess with the culture, bled all the talent and realized the margins weren't going to be there at the scale they wanted to be at, and who they sell it to, sold it to a media company i think at the end of the day, this is an experiment in trying

to buy something fancy at a 40% premium, because as you all have said, amazon has the money to burn, but can they execute the culture change to really get the value, over value they're paying, and history has said no. >> surprise, surprise, i can see a couple different sides and arguments here, right. on the one hand, they sort of messed with whole foods. anybody who shopped there pre-amazon, post--amazon could see that amazon efficiency, the looks on the workers' faces changing over the months and years, not the same. but on the other hand, bezos, not amazon, bezos bought "the washington post" a media company, kind of hands off, sort of left it alone and andy jassy and the culture at aws different from core amazon people at aws stend to say i wok for aws than amazon. maybe they're getting better and maybe jassy in particular does

>> yeah. look, you can always hope. i just think history says in particular the tech and media combination is really dicey and when you are paying the significant premium and you think the return on that value is going to be new kinds of creative -- i'm reading the press release, we're going to turn these treasured franchises and i.p. into new kind of entertainment, they're going in there to change it i think that change unless they have trusted creative leadership to execute that kind of massive change is dicey. "washington post," jeff bezos just owns it, gave them money, and said pursue a national strategy and i'm getting out of your way that is not operating a business like amazon operates its businesses >> time is going to tell us more about how they're going to handle this. it's a fascinating deal and certainly fodder for discussion with you we'll talk to you later. in the meantime cnbc's first ever nft auction is still going

said to close any moment now bids from mark cuban, john legere, the nft commemorates mark haines, his famous s&p bottom call in 2009, raising money for two great charities. the top bid is 61k bidding set to close any moment. the auction is automatically extended if there are any last-minute bids we will see if those come to pass >> if mark cuban is watching, come on, i know you can bid a little bit higher. still to come this hour, the ceos of clear, zip recruiter and intuit and the latest from washington as the nation's top bank execs testify in front of the senate we're just getted started here on "techcheck.

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the six biggest bank ceos testifying today got contentious. will fred frost has all the details. we talked about this being a wide window for discussion. >> contentious as expected though not too heated at all chairman brown started the questioning on lending during the pandemic and focused on the fact that overall lending levels have fallen during the pandemic while, for example, some money was still spent on shareholder

returns. here was brian moynihan's response. >> the reasons loans fell in the crisis are, a, businesses didn't need the credit, but remember the ppp had a tremendous impact on demand for our clients and we did $35 billion of ppp loans, that obviously caused less borrowing from lines of credit -- >> brown also asked whether the ceos deserved to be paid the hundreds of times multiples of salary of their medium workers and whetherthey should be supportive of their workers having a union a few of the ceo responses on that question. >> we would certainly be supportive of our employees having as many opportunities as they possibly can. >> mr. dimon >> no. >> mr. moynihan? >> no. we would allow them to have their voice heard and see what happens. >> mr. solomon

>> we would allow their voice to be heard >> does that mean you would be neutral on forming a union >> we would allow their voice to be heard >> republican ranking member focused pat toomey focused on a different topic in his opening remarks, raised the question of whether banks are being too woke and whether capitalism has become too focused on stakeholders a different angle from the first republican exchange. banks doing fairly well up a percent or so. >> wilf, that answer from dimon on being neutral to union and the simple word nowhere as his colleagues said we would let their voices be heard, some have taken as a reflection of his supreme confidence with the jpm board. >> that and a reflection of his style, no nonsense, we're always used to.

all of them kind of gave the same answer, which was no, but we would encourage our workers' voices to be heard he went with a simple no which as you say is a snapshot of his style and his empowerment perhaps not to -- to know he's not going to lose his position. >> even as we're talking, elizabeth warren at the mic, let's take as listen. >> so who never -- >> i'm sorry, mr. dimon, that was not the question >> the -- >> you had an automatic protection, so i'm asking, you were recommended the regulators recommended you offer that same kind of protection to your customers. >> we did. >> how much did jpmorgan collect in overdraft fees from their customers in 2020? do you know the number >> i don't know the number in front of me -- >> i actually have the number in front of me. it's $1.463 billion.

that's nearly $1.5 billion that you collect from your customers. now do you know how much jpmorgan's profit would have been in 2020 if you had followed the recommendation of the regulators and waived overdraft fees to help struggling ku consumers? without that overdraft mun money would your bank have been in financial trouble? >> we waived the fees for customers upon request if they were under stress because of covid. >> i appreciate you want to duck this question. do you know how much your profits would have been if you had waived as the regulators recommended? >> we waived the fees every time -- >> the answer is your profits would have been $27.6 billion. i is it the math for you so here's the thing, you and your colleagues come in today to talk about how you stepped up and took care of customers during the pandemic. and it's a bunch of bologna. in fact, it's about $4 billion

worth of bologna you could fix that right now, mr. dimon, will you commit to refund $1.5 billion you took from customers during the pandemic >> no. >> right now >> no. >> no. that's right over the past year, you could have passed on the breaks you got from the fed to your customers, but you didn't do it. everybody else here, those other three bankers, will any of you agree to refund the overdraft fees that you collected? >> i don't think so. >> so no matter how you try to spin it, this past year has shown that corporate profits are more important to your bank than offering just a little help to struggling families, even when we are in the middle of a worldwide crisis thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator warren senator kennedy from louisiana is recognized for five minutes >> chairman.

>> that was elizabeth warren going back and forth with jamie dimon. in warren's words you are the star of the overdraft show and once again, dimon with a simple one word answer. i guess we don't have wilf to chat about that with, but that was certainly an exchange and i'm glad we got to it as the hearing continues. we'll keep you apprised of further information we get out of the hearing wilf, are you there? >> i am, sorry i was plugged in to both ears of the conference still listen, i didn't hear what your question was, but my reaction to that is, a snapshot from senator warren back to what we are used to from her, but a little bit more of a blunt and feisty response from dimon than what hasperhaps captured him for most of the past decade where there has been a little bit more subservience as you were saying earlier, perhaps a reflection on

him feeling empowered, towards the end of his tenure, many years left, but not the start of his tenure either way he was hold nothing punches in his response and both of them had, i think, sort of grounds on what they were saying warren was being very simple with the numbers and dimon was responding to say, look, if people asked us to waive the fees, we did >> yeah. wilf, it seems to me to also reflect the times and how they've changed. a few years ago, banks and big pharma were being set up as the energy and they were back on their heels, but, you know, after a pandemic, right, when we've seen big pharma step up in interesting ways and banks being perhaps a key to a recovery, perhaps more confidence coming from their executive ranks >> yes some confidence coming from that by the way, for most of their responses when facing the tough democratic questions they have decent statistics to push back on what i would also say, could

differ from the sound bites so far, there is a bit more of a partisan divide. when we see the hearings with the big tech companies it's pretty universal against the tech companies five to ten years ago when the banks were facing these hearings it was universal against the bank ceos. the republicans are coming out a little bit more in support or maybe not in support of the bank, but critical of some of the questioning from their democratic colleagues. for example, there was a highlight that the biggest banks, four biggest banks in the world, are chinese banks do we want to hinder the u.s. banks from being the best in the world? a little bit of support coming for them or perhaps lack of outright criticism from the republican ranks that is a transition from where we were five years ago, ten years ago, even a couple years ago. >> from the diversity to the executive comp to loan growth to crypto, quite an hour. thank you, wilfred frost helping us make sense of the hearing in the meantime the cnbc nft auction is closed and our winner

is tillman fretita 22.65 ether, equivalent of $60,500. 35 tokens sold at $1,000 each. grand total raised for charity, $95,500. i'm sure the haines family will be proud to hear that and it was nice to see it got heated toward the end there. >> yeah. i love it. you almost love to see billionaires face off and for such a good cause. what does it tell us nfts, still got some mojo behind them if you have the right product and this is certainly a moment that has gone down in history. >> for sure and for a good cause. such an important part of this miss the voice of mark haines, wonder about what he would say about nfts and this move in crypto he was always so sharp in so

many ways. >> i think they're going to have fertita on "power lunch. we're proud to offer through auction. a news update. rahel solomon has that for us. >> good morning. here's the news at this hour a landmark ruling from a dutch court. it's ordering one of the world's largest oil companies to cut its greenhouse gas emissions the court telling royal dutch shell to slash net carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 shell is targeting cuts of about half that amount. tech conglomerate tencent told to remove its financial businesses into a new holding company so chinese regulators can better oversee those units the move would follow restrictions also imposed on rival ant group this year. canadian national railway offering to sell a 70-mile piece in louisiana that's to address antitrust concerns, $30 million merger with kansas city southern, the offer amounts to less than 1% of

the 24,000 mile network that the two routes operate. shares of dick's sporting goods shooting up 16% to an all-time high after posting earnings that tripled estimates and raising sales and profit guidance for the rest of the year this as people turn to outdoor sports back to you. >> thank you. before the pandemic, clear was known for letting travelers skip lines at the airport. now they're focusing on a health pass at number 19 on this year's disrupter 50 list. julia joins us with the ceo. over to you. >> thanks. i'm joined by caryn seidman-becker, the ceo of clear. caryn, thanks so much for talking to us today. i want to start off with a real transformation of your company over the past year from being about travel to now also really being about health tell us what is health pass and how has health pass evolved over the past year. >> great to be here, thanks, julia. clear's mission has always been

about making experiences safer and easier, and, you know, connecting you to the cards in your wallet. what we realized in march of 2020 was that there was going to be a new card in your wallet and that was a vaccine card or test results. so connecting you to your health insights that are covid related was just always part of our mission in what we were doing, right aligned with it. that is exactly what we've done, we have connected identity on the phone to your covid-related health insights and helping people get back to what they love and partnering with so many businesses and industries that it has been incredibly exciting and empowering to really help businesses and the economy reopen >> so caryn, before the pandemic clear was something that was a consumer product i would sign up for clear to ease my business travel, maybe i would get a deal, a discount through a delta or united, but this is reallity different becas you're offering health pass to

employerers. how are you figuring out which types are best suited and what's the business model there >> we're offering it to employers but we're offering it to consumers as well for free to connect their health insights to their clear health pass. we're partnered with walmart if you're vaccinated at walmart to connect, but we're also partnered with the nba to help people get back into the stadiums or, you know, offices to help them reopen. so quite frankly, this is a ubiquitous problem, making experiences safe he and easier, reopening your businesses an giving people the confidence to get back to what they love and hoping you loved your work before, right. and so it's really ubiquitous, it's global and it's a here and now issue and it's not really just us reaching out we've built a brand that stands for trust and delighting customers. so people have reached outs to us to be part of the solution.

>> so caryn, i have to ask you about who areas of hesitancy, one is vaccine hesitancy, we talked about on our show before. we've now reached over 50% of adults in the u.s. vaccinated but there is still hesitancy and historically some concern about privacy especially when it comes to health. do you think there's going to be reluctance among people here in this country to participate in something like a vaccine passport because of those issues >> so i think a really important point and when we named this last march we named it health pass right. actually only 40% of americans have passports so we are not talking about a vaccine passport what we are talking about is giving people control and access to their health care information which was something that was happening before so many trends were accelerated in 2020 and we see this as a material and, you know, sustaining trend that people should have access and control of their information we think trust is crucial and we are, you know, huge zealots on

we do not sell and share information that people should control their information and we actually think that you can do both you can help reopen by saying that i'm caryn, without sharing the information and just showing it i think it's important to drive the point of opting in and trust and people participating as they see fit and protecting that privacy. i think that's the only way you can move something like this forward. we strongly believe in the and it's not frictionless or trusted. it's and >> and just a quick point of clarification on the business model of health pass employers are paying you how does that work >> that is correct our partners would pay us so it is free to all consumers or employees. >> very interesting. we look forward to learning more as your business continues to evolve caryn seidman-becker, ceo of clear, thank you for joining us. >> thanks, julia >> thank you, julia, for bringing us that we are going to take a quick

break and we'll be right back. keeping your oysters business growing

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terry bradshaw: hi, i'm terry bradshaw rocky bleier: and i'm rocky bleier. col. greg gadson: and i'm col. greg gadson. terry bradshaw: on this memorial day, our heartfelt thanks, to all of our military veterans for their service. col. greg gadson: we honor our veterans, and those who no longer are with us. rocky bleier: to all of our military serving around the world, thank you for defending the many freedoms we enjoy. terry bradshaw: tune in to salute to veterans for discussions about the issues our military veterans face daily. salute to veterans presented by sap, navy federal credit union, verizon visit us online at www.salutetoveterans. org the tax software leader raising guidance, reporting revenue gains of 39% this is a stock that has quadrupled in the last five years. the ceo sasan goodarzi joins us now. i want to go into the small business angle of this you did a preannouncement around that this raise and this return to, i

don't know if we want to call it normalcy, but the trends you're seeing there, seem important to me what are you seeing as far as online adopting and transformation in small and medium businesses coming out of this pandemic? >> jon, thank you for having me. there's two dimensions, one is small businesses are still fighting for survival. when we look at our base and we look at the net deposits now compared to about a year ago, about 30% of our base, their net deposits are down over 25% small businesses are coming back, but they are still fighting for survival. with that said, if i shift over to our platform, we've really seen an acceleration and a need for a platform for small businesses to be able not only to retain their customers but grow their customers and get paid faster. we're seeing an acceleration in our key metrics, acquisition,

retention, payment charge volume, number of employees on payroll, it's up and improving, but it's important for us not to forget that we need to continue to help small businesses get to the place they can and prepandemic levels. >> peel back the cultural shift and mindset shift that might be underlying this. i think i remember five plus years ago, talking to your predecessor brad smith about the effort to move small businesses to the cloud and resistance there and having to step that back. psychology doesn't change among small business and their software use very often. is this a significant shift in what you're going to be able to offer and perhaps how you're going to be able to bundle it because of, you know, an embrace of digital technologies coming through this pandemic? >> yeah. well first of all, great memory, jon, and great insight you're spot on you know, small businesses, they wake up every morning to try to focus on their passion, which is delivering for their customers, focusing on their product, and unlike you and i that may have

infrastructure around us, there are they're a two or three-person shop and really hustling every day to deliver for their customers and so this notion of how they do it is sometimes through shoeboxes, paper, excel, google sheets and they don't have all of their money in and money out on one platform that's a big step change for them to ultimately go from everything being manual to everything being digital we've seen a nice acceleration prepandemic to just the notion of moving to run your business on a platform because, in essence, you can get more customers, get paid faster, you can reduce your errors when you take care of your employees. there's a lot of goodness that comes with it. we've seen an acceleration since the pandemic small businesses have realized if they want to get paid faster, much faster than check, it's better to invoice and get paid online if they want to be able to hold on to their money longer it's better to have same-day payroll so when they hit a button the

money comes out of their bank account and into the bank account of their employees the same day that cash flow matters a ton we've seen an acceleration around the globe and we think this is a behavioral and structural acceleration and we think it will continue >> speaking about acceleration, sasan, good morning, it's deirdre, we saw the rise of the retail investor last year by some counts 8 million brokerage trading accounts created so i'm wondering what you saw on your side? did you see a boost in terms of revenue per return >> good morning. yes, we did. we particularly in brazil, india and the u.s., although the majority of our turbo tax business is all in the u.s. and canada, we saw an explosion of retail investors and, in fact, our premier product both if you want to do it yourself with turbo tax or turbo tax live, where an expert can help you at any point or do your taxes for you, we actually saw a tripling

of the number of those that used our investor product it was a combination of new customers that came to turbo tax and also upgraders, folks that were using other products but this year dabbled in some investments and chose our premier product. our focus moving forward beyond ensure we're there for customers to manage their financial life and do their taxes is to educate retail investors one of -- those that are new to investing, one of the surprises we experienced they didn't realize how much taxes they have to pay based on their capital gains and part of what we're doing not only within turbo tax but the partnerships we have with brokerage firms, how do we educate on an ongoing basis so that this is a great experience for consumers and not a shock when it's tax time. >> right since we're talking about consumers, give us an update on credit karma i was worried about you doing that acquisition before the pandemic hit but you're seeing an acceleration there as well how does it fit into the

strategy and perhaps into some of the other products in the portfolio from here? >> you know, we've declared a couple of customer pain points across the entire company and the number one pain point that we've declared is, that we want to help consumers make ends meet we want to help them get out of debt and we want to help them save money the second thing is we set a goal for 2025 that anybody that is on our platform, we want to be able to double household savings. so this really informed our vision of we simply want financial assistant that's in the pocket of consumers to help connect them to financial products that are right for them, help them save mun and get out of debt and deliver expertise when they need it. credit karma does just that. they are a platform where they put the power of the data in the consumer's hand and deliver personalized experiences, whether it's credit cards, personal loans, home and auto insurance and now checking and savings accounts with our

partnerships with financial institutions to really help you manage your financial life we've seen a very nice uptick as we're starting to come out of the pandemic, primarily because financial institutions see that this is a great platform to be able to deliver for their customers and we make a perfect match on our platform to really help our consumers manage their financial life >> all right. >> we're really excited about the opportunity and we'll see how the future plays out >> we'll track you as you continue to try to grow it sasan goodarzi, intuit's ceo, thanks for being with us. >> thank you, jon. well, guys, we are still awaiting the ziprecruiter debut set to open any minute now first indicate 19 to $20 after pricing $18 reference price. this company going public by direct listing and coming at a time when the labor market is certainly front and center as businesses reopen. joining us now ziprecruiter ceo ian siegel ian, good morning. congrats on this milestone

let me ask you first because you have an inside look at the labor market which is becoming and has become more and more competitive. what are you seeing in terms of demand for employers that are searching for employees and also job seekers? >> well, first off, thank you for having me. the job market right now is really a tale of two completely different stories. on the employer side, the economy is reopened. the employers recruiting is white out. we're seeing in every one of our job categories, massive demand from employers for talent. when we shift our view to the job seekers, we see reluctant. job seeker activity is still down to pre -- to initial covid levels there's a lot of speculation that it has to do with the vaccination rates, with the schools still being closed in many states across the country, and also the extension of the stimulus we think that there is enormous

pent up demand on the job seekers side, not just among the 16 million job seekers who are either unemployed or under employed right now, there's also millions of people who are currently employed who didn't just shelter in place at home, they sheltered in place at where they're currently working. we think that that in the back half of this year and first part of next year you're going to see a surge of job seeker demand to meet the already existing employer demand. >> right ian, in particular, how is ziprecruiter addressing that imbalance? what can you sort of do better than your competitors to get ahead of an expected surge and if job seekers come back to the market in a big way, which they're expected to do >> well the thing about ziprecruiter is it's different from a traditional job board we use artificial intelligence to play matchmaker between the two sides of the market, so if you're a job seeker, rather than search for jobs on your own, our software will curate for you

opportunities for which you would be a great fit, most likely a top ten candidate, and make sure you never miss one of those opportunities. if you're an employer who is looking for talent we will literally pitch job seekers to you that could be candidates for that role who are highly qualified. you get to review them and decide who you want to directly recruit. job seekers hate applying to jobs, but they love getting recruited. when you look at the rating we've received on both sides of our marketplace we're the number one recruiting site according to g-2 crowd and we've been the number one job search app on ios and android for the last four years. we feel like we're getting these raves because that marketplace matchmaker is a new elevated experience >> ian, the enterprise hates complexity and they hate multiple vendors when you look at the landscape and you think about the career builders and glassdoors and linkedins, is the space ripe for consolidation or not >> you know, one of the

interesting things about the job category is there's such a broad diversity of players who are fighting for share of wallet when it comes to employers' recruiting dollars that's one of the reasons why at ziprecruiter we don't just focus on building great product, we also make sure that there is broad-based awareness of the product we've built. i'm proud of the fact that we have 82% brand awareness amongst employers. that was put on particular display during the pandemic when we were able to turn our marketing down and harvest significant profit we've really woven ourself into the fabric of how american business think about recruiting. it doesn't really matter whether there's consolidations or competitors. what you want is when someone thinks i need to source talent, what's the first word that pops into their head, it's ziprecruiter. >> so ian, talk to us about small and medium business competing for talent in this environment you describe where some of the talent is reluctant. are there strategies that they have that are more successful

than not are there geographic areas where they're faring better than others >> well, i mean there's one big overarching trend that is a consuming question for the job market today, and that is "what is going to happen with remote work." we all participated in this grand social experiment over the last 12 months, and the consensus view amongst job seekers is they want it to be here to stay the question is, will employers support that desire amongst job seekers or not for those that do, they're going to have a massive recruiting advantage because suddenly for every job they have open there is ample supply of qualified job seekers ready to do that job as long as you are willing to let them go remote it will be an interesting question to see as the economy reopens whether employers compel their personnel to come back full time to an office or if employers maintain this current balance where they're allowing employees to either be in a hybrid model working part time in the office or literally

allowing them to be 100% remote. those that allow 100% remote work, it also presents a significant economic advantage >> ian, wehope to have you bac soon to sort of break down what you are seeing on the ziprecruiter site also i want to ask about your podcast marketing strategy next time congrats on that milestone again. thanks for being with us >> thank you for having me still to come this morning, bitcoin is higher, trying to reclaim 40k. we will watch that today also, don't forget speaking of podcasts, check out the "techcheck" podcast. listen on the go you can like, subscribe and download wherever you listen to your podcast your podcast "techcheck" is back in a moment. a fashion first, (♪ ♪) a science first, (♪ ♪)

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as we said before the break, bitcoin trying to inch back to 40k and some meme stocks not doing badly either ind kate rooney has more on that hi, kate >> hey, carl some of the speculative crypto trades are back. game stop and amc are seeing double digit rallies as chatter picks up on social media game stop has been up another roughly 11% today. it is up, wow, about 17% right now, bringing its week-to-date gains 30%. amc has been on track for about 50% gains this week. guys, just a week ago game stop was still one of the most talked

about tickers but had fewer than 800 mentions on reddit this morning game stop has over 2,000 unique mentions, that's according to data firm quiver quantitative so why is reddit so fired up this morning one big reason, nfts game stop launched a new website yesterday under the domain name nft nft.gamestop.com, hinting at a move into digital collectibles in that area it is also hiring engineers for that nft division. guys, we saw a broader sell-off in some of the meme stocks last week and the other speculative assets, of course, cryptocurrency bitcoin is recovering a bit from the crash last week. it fell to roughly $30,000 last wednesday. it is back around the $40,000 level, about $38,000 today once again, a big driver, elon musk he tweeted about bitcoin and a mining council and plans to address the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining that is boosting some morale

around cryptocurrency this week. musk though denying he has influence over the crypto markets and doegecoin in particular responded to a tweet calling him the doge ceo he said his ability to take action is limited. deidre, back to you. >> i'm not sure we will buy that, especially as we track the markets in relation to every little thing he tweets kate, thanks for that. as we head to break, getting a check on shares of virgin galactic initiating with a buy price target up $35, says that as tourist space flights gain traction it will be a positive catalyst for the stock plus, tesla ditching radar, will rely on cameras for autopilot moving forward for more of the top news in tech, subscribe to cnbc probe that, cn.c/pbcomro

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the winner of our nft auction, tilman fertitta, will join "power lunch" today at 2:00 p.m. this afternoon and talk

about his winning bid of $61,210 for the nft. 30,000 tokers sold for a grand total of $98,210, all made for charity. do not miss that on "power lunch. carl, over to you. >> we'll look for that we have the exxon vote, invade ya' tonight let's get to "the half". >> thanks so much. welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner front and center, what could be an increasingly bullish sign for stocks as s&p 500 moves closer to a record high we will debite the direction of your money this hour with the investment committee joining me, kari firestone stephen weiss is here, pete najarian, joe terranova. let me take you to the wall and show you where we stand. green across the board, dow good for 62, s&p good for a fifth of a percent. russell is good for 1.5% ten-year note yield, big story today,