8.5 million shares of the theater chain and then reportedly sold them for a profit elon musk in focus the tesla ceo tweeting about "baby shark" overnight while a new report calls into question his relationship with the s.e.c. i don't know what that stands for but i don't think we're allowed to say it. plus, the world's largest meat supplier looks to bring production back up to full speed after a cyber attack hit and hit his plants not those plants manufacturing plants wednesday, june 2nd, 2021. and "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin.

let's check out u.s. equity futures. a mixed picture just like yesterday with the markets right now, dow futures indicated up by 36 points. s&p down slightly, less than a point. nasdaq is off by 14 points yesterday, the dow was up by 45 points it was goldman sachs that was the biggest. 16 points to the dow overall s&p was down by 2 points yesterday. nasdaq off by 12 taking a look at what's happening in the treasury market we have seen higher fields there. the ten-year still at 1.6% sitting at 1.606%. look at the transports on the dow. only 2.5% from a record high in fact, it's been up for six over the last seven sections financial and real estate, both of those sector closing at highs. and coffee, guys all of us need a little in the morning closed

166.7. it's up another 1.5% this morning. wti was up by more than 2%, settled at 6772. it's up again, 68.30 that's the highest since october of 2013, there is a lot more demand out there in places that we're seeing it. >> why did we run out of everything >> it's a great story. >> why have we run out of everything >> because manufacturing was set up for this just in time delivery >> why the world has run short of everything. >> that is true. >> you know, i thought it was interesting, you know, perusing this quickly, eurozone inflation surging, not just here either. i thought it was just, you know, just the fed, in this country. it's not that would make it tougher for it to be transitory, i see oil hit 70 bucks

>> right >> but tariffs do play a role for things like steel, aluminum and lumber, you're paying higher prices here than in europe tariffs in combination with this worldwide inflation. >> a global phenomenon seems like it would be less in control. the fed would have control over it less likely it's transitory. and means that rates just don't reflect reality. >> right >> right now and if rates don't reflect reality, you wonder if the stock market reflects reality. >> because the fed is buying everything. >> right, buying no price discovery. we'll get a santelli starter on that totally another big guest lineup among those on the list some very special names we have former avon product ceo andrea jung is joining, bob carter former s.e.c. chairman, jay clayton, we got to talk to him about emon lusk.

and ceos of etsy and staple. and the energy energy jennifer granham is with us zoom's create, back to work and school, back to everything we'll talk to her, and strauss zelnick. before we do all of that, we've got to bring you up to speed on today's top stories. it's start with amc because it is wild. shares jumping again this morning. 23% pop yesterday. just 24 hours ago, we told you that the movie theater operator raised $230 million in shares to a hedge fund this morning. and immediately sold those shares at a profit mudrick owns the debt. they're actually distressed debt investors. when people saw this first trade, people thought, oh, is mudrick buying in? no, mudrick is not buying in at all. it's actually very smart for

them their view is, look, if the thing goes bankrupt, we're going to own it. >> and flip it and make money. >> and we're going to flip it and make money and i still don't understand these retail investors who don't seem to fully grasp what's happening here >> i think what the company did was incredibly smart with the underwriting, instead of taking the time to go through a traditional wall street underwriting it would have taken time and risk whether the premium could come out of the stock. you can flip it instantaneously and make good on that. i agree if you're a retail investors i'm not sure why you bid it up. it's 42 bucks today. >> do the investors truly understand what this company can do as i said, i think they're doing a brilliant job with a bad hand i think is probably the best way to say it. the question is how do you transform this company can you transform this company >> i'd like the theme to go

back >> okay, can i consolidate i've merged with others and can we cut costs >> alcohol >> alcohol is -- >> it's not everywhere >> it's not everywhere >> there are plenty of places where you have that -- >> they're actually pretty nice. >> instead of those nachos >> and the nachos -- >> with that cheese. is it -- it's not any natural substance. talking about something that didn't come from something that was ever alive >> but the question is, do you think you could ever get to that share price under any circumstance >> it's already there. it's already there >> no, no, no, could you get the business that would support that in a natural world >> where's jme -- is that validating the share price >> it's going to be very hard to do the same thing, too >> there's a lot of them >> there's a lot of them you're going to get crypto

>> and the question i asked, are the retail investors that are popping this out, are they doing this because they believe -- i believe the people that own gamestop genuinely believe there's an opportunity, somehow, to transform the business. >> yes, that's amc doing this or -- >> i'm not sure. >> it's the same thing as gaming and going to a discrete location to buy it. i don't know whether that comes out with streaming and everything else, 80-inch tvs, does that ever get back, as a date thing, bringing the kids thing? it seems like it's slowly declining, doesn't it? >> well, it was before the pandemic >> it's secular. >> that's the part i don't -- >> but there's the other piece which is there's other investors out there to manipulate the market if you go on reddit, there are people manipulating the market

they show they can manipulate the market it's a demonstration that they can manipulate the market. it's not based in speculation. >> that is the best stock, when you dilute the shares to see the upward surge >> conundrum for amc is there's very few shares they can still sell at this point without a shareholder vote that was the other piece there was no shareholder piece to do this >> why wouldn't shareholders do that >> there's two issues, they're all retail it's so disburse it used to be you call a blackrock, a vanguard, you make the case and that would be that. this is a whole other operation you have to basically truly canvas that's what you're seeing going to twitter and speaking to investors in that way, whether he's able to convince them, i don't know because, again, it's a different type investor. you think he's smart enough to

understand that the stock would drop if there's a major sale of that kind of thing >> getting them to send the vote in >> to vote, right. >> i want to get this "baby shark" story out of the way because i want to get to the real story for elon musk my kids are too old, but apparently -- another day, another story about selon musk and the first has to do with a video that most parents know well as "baby shark. it starts with a tweet from south park and video clip that reads, the memes star battle it out. thus responds to that with a tweet "baby shark crushes all, more views than humans." and the producer of that stock, samsung, publishing it has no affiliation -- is that how it goes ♪ >> okay. no affiliation with samsung.

[ whistling ♪ baby shark do do do ♪ >> the story is how many influence on the streets i want to talk about this with the s.e.c. and i want to talk about one more think, speaking of elon musk, last year, a report that the s.e.c. told tuesla told mus it must be preapproved by lawyers. the tweets in question involve musk claiming that stock price was too high and discussion of solar rooftop production numbers that's another one and the third point, for me, the most important is yesterday, tesla became clear they had filed a new trademark for the tesla brand under three restaurant services categories pop-up restaurants, self-service restaurants services and takeout restaurant services. so they've been talking about

this since 2017 with restaurants. and if you harken back to 2018, on my birthday, january 5th. do you believe that's my birthday, january 5th. but it is. back in 2018, musk said i'm going to put an old school drive-in, roller skates, rock restaurants at one of the new tesla -- >> bingo, this is what adam aaron needs to do. amc and tesla. drive-ins. drive-ins. elon can make it happen. >> waffle house. but he's doing it in a different way, but he's not affiliating himself with waffle house. he's going to build his own restaurant he's in it for convenience stores, that serve food. there's a picture here you got to see this on yahoo! finance, it looks like one of those '50s "american graffiti" type diner where you pull in and

there's a charging station a tray here, old-fashioned coke glass. that sounds good to me i don't know why, the '50s there's no pandemic in the '50s it was a good time and there's something for everyone >> good old days >> so, do you honestly think tesla does something like this restaurants? complete with charging stations? >> no. >> do you think they'll do it with -- >> i think they do a joint venture. that's what i'm saying in adam aaron does a drive-in -- >> are they using bitcoin? >> but this is -- >> this is your suggestion >> right he can partner with different shopping malls which they're already doing and other places sure why not. >> i just think it doesn't take a full two-hour movie to charge, though, right? >> right, but if they had it at the drive-in, it's a brand

>> let's also tell you about another developing story, jbs expects the majority of new processing plants in australia will be operating today. the white house said jbs notified the u.s. government of a ransom demand from a criminal gang likely based in russia. jbs is accounting for at liter a quarter of the country's beef production again, there have been so many reasons that beef prices have been higher. this will potentially add to that they open it up quickly today, maybe not prolonged. >> i just got a tweet, the truth is the screens are so big in a tesla, you could have your own drive-in your own car. >> that's true >> oh, the movie >> the movie >> the drive-in restaurant -- >> the idea is if you could drive autonomously, you could watch your movie, while you're moving >> not a good idea >> not a good idea right now

>> but roller skates on the waiters -- yes dressed like buddy holly pulp fiction like. he never tweets to us, though, does he? can you -- doesn't he follow you? >> i don't think he follows me >> no? you can't dm him >> i don't think so. i can email him but not dm him >> send him an email >> we could. i don't know if he'd respond enough of stocks to watch, zoom revenue topping more guidance as more people return to the office we're going to talk to the zoom ceo later this morning coming up, stephanie link will join us about what investors should know about the twists and turns in the meme stock frenzy first, before we head to break,

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning, a check on crypto.

and coinbase it's going to set inbound transfers to coinbase will term trading tomorrow, but trading is sta staggered. i don't know, we're taking a joke coin and making it a serious coin that's what happened >> okay. xrp. as long as it doesn't say ripple anywhere i don't need it. life's too short, you know what i mean life's too short >> i've seen your twitter traffic. the reopening trade meeting up, energy, banks, all higher, outpacing the s&p. joining to us discuss the best places to find value, stephanie link, chief strategist, high profile manager, more importantly, she's a cnbc contributor. stephanie, good morning. >> good morning. >> why still -- devil's

advocate, why still talk about this trade, since markets are nine months discount into the future why isn't this already based in? just across the board. >> that's a good question to ask, joe, quite frankly. we talked about this a year ago. i remember giving you picks for reopening. everybody was wide-eyed. right? how you cannen investing in this theme? fast forward, i think the stimulus is working and it's not going away even if the economy is taper the economy continues to grow. inflation is real. it's not all transitory. some is transitory, but not all. if you believe in growth, a little inflation, the fed is going to taper and rates higher. you want to own more value, more reopen names because these areas

are still very depressed, quite frankly. i think you'll see a shift from the goods names going well to the services there's a ton of demand. you and i talked about this, savings rate of 4%, if it goes to 5% which is almost a meme, that's $3 trillion in spending i think you want to invest in reopen memes >> but you did distinguish between the entire group and certain -- >> yeah. >> -- certain parts of the group. do you think some of these have already moved to the point where they're no longer cheap? and some have not because they're overlooked or do they doll different things? what makes something more viable here than something else if they're both in arrears >> yeah, that's a good question. you want to find questions that are kind of down and out look, i'm picking boeing as one of my reopening names.

it's still down 40%, right, from four years ago the air traffic returning to normal, we're still a ways to go there, right but then you want to pick something not just in reopen you had airbus make announcements about production increases. what does that mean? an additional 400 planes on top of what they're making for 2024. that's momentum. 21% of their wide-bodies are over 20 years ago. so think of energy efficiencies that these companies can get if they actually group grade. you've got production going up deliveries and that means cash flow goes up oh, by the way, you have a catalyst with china by the end of year if they recertify the 737 max. the same thing with ge larry culp has done a great job.

right sizing the company focusing on health, focusing on aviation but they, too, will benefit, especially airbus. all of a sudden, airbus raises production and ge sees a windfall that's something they do very well it's a restructures and a combination and combination of that kind of thing we can go on to marriott and wynn, those are obvious names. with regards to marriott, i don't think we've seen earnings inflect at all because you really haven't seen occupancies really improve they're improving sequentially, but still down and when it's all about macao, macao gaining over may, up 400% year over year i know easy comparisons but it is what it is, the traffic is returning. kind of like a hodgepodge of names.

>> steph, you mentioned, one indication the stimulus is working. that's a positive. i want you to put your macro hat on just for a second, included in president biden's budget are a lot of estimates for where we're headed in terms of growth. they acknowledge that, you know, we spent a lot fiscally, and monetarily, we spent a lot for 2021, we get 5.2% growth 2022, 4.3 is the estimate. who knows whether it's true. because of the spending, the next eight years average 1.9%. and the administration is almost acknowledging that demographics and productivity will make it hard to get anywhere above that. is that okay will that be okay for the markets? will that be okay for financial eights that we go -- sounds like malaise to me. and we can do so much better and it sounds like we're going back to splitting the pie up better, but not growing the pay

as much as we could. >> yeah, i mean, look, the stimulus is working for this year the stimulus will work for the following year then we have to see what the fed does, right? and how aggressive they will be in terms of raising rates. and that is absolutely, in addition to tax increases. and that absolutely is going to slow growth. as an investors, and i am a long-term investors, but i think for the next year or two, this theme of getting -- owning cyclical and owning economically sensible companies because the economy is doing well. owning companies out of operating leverage that are reopening. all of those things are packaged into my portfolio for this year and beginning of next year at some point, we have to figure out maybe we have to shift i don't think it's bad for the markets that you have 1, 1.5% quotes we don't want that but the way we run the portfolio has to change.

>> right >> so this might be all about rotation so it might be about rotation next year in different parts of the economy. by the way, if you see inflation growth and you see it dampen, but for the time being, you want value over growth. small over large, mainly because the economy has juice and there's more operating leverage in those names >> the other part i didn't mention, i was looking, reading from "the wall street journal's" lead editorial, they use the word "secular stagnation." so they're not saying that the lower growth causes inflation to moderate they say it comes in combination with that. so that definitely is not the greatest -- we'll see. it's not the greatest environment for financial. we've got time we've got two years of above trend growth, which you're going to try to take advantage of, stephanie. >> thank you >> and enjoy it. >> enjoy it. thank you. >> you're up, anyway, aren't you? coming on here is no big deal,

right? >> yeah. >> money never sleeps. >> yeah, kramer and i we email at 4:00 a.m. >> wow, i bet you do thanks coming up, amazon backing legal pot. i don't understand that, you don't want the drivers wasted driving. they already park in the middle of the street. these guys park in the middle of the street, hey, i've got a package i'm delivering it's your problem, go around me. we'll tell you what the company is saying about employee use when "squawk box" comes back retirement income is complicated. as your broker, i've solved it. that's great, carl.

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welcome back to "squawk box," everybody. it's time for today's "executive edge." amazon says it's going to stop testing job seekers for marijuana use. that change comes as more states legalize marijuana and legalize laws banning testing amazon will still test workers for illegal drugs. it's probably a sign of the times. you can't test people immediately to know if they're doing it anything that tests will show if you smoked pot in the last 30 days or something. they used to do it at ge you could cut hair or ask for a urine sample it's not going to tell you if someone is high at the moment, it's going to tell you if they smoked >> i feel like there's a story here >> what did you do >> i didn't do anything, except it didn't start until i was already here that's my only -- i'm fine i'm talking about 1991 or something. and i might not always been

perfect, but i remember, ooh, man. in 1991. so it had not -- >> different time. different time >> it was. it was but it could be -- to be perfectly honest, i don't know about amazon drivers >> well, you can't be high when you're at work >> that's like dui that's driving while intoxicated, isn't it? >> i think. >> i was going to say it was a fine good morning. walking around in the morning, the high of people walking around here at 5:00 a.m. >> i'm ready now i'm fine decades fine >> welcome back to times square. >> except for walking through there it might be clinging to my clothes. otherwise, i'm ready i shouldn't have said that -- as a matter of act, we've never - i'm fine now

>> i wonder what the statute of limitations are. a huge line coming your way. first former avon products ceo an koreade and the creal of etsy and you don't want go go anywhere. we're back after this. hey lily, i need a new wireless plan for my business, but all my employees need something different. oh, we can help with that. okay, imagine this... your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown, your sales rep lisa has to send some files, asap! so basically i can pick the right plan for each employee...

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♪ welcome back, everybody. g gramene america is committing $1.3 billion in loans to 80,000 black female entrepreneurs over the next ten years grameem ceo andrea jung joins

us she's the former ceo of ceo. let's talk about grameen, the nonprofit has been operating 11 years and handed out a lot of loans already. how does it work >> yeah, we are the largest and fastest growing micro financial in the united states grameen in six months, june of 2021 will pursurpass $200 billin in loans mostly to women has been will be able to train, asset-building for savings and build credit for them which will prior to joining the program, they basically have been nonincluded. basically in the past year, the pandemic, coming out of the recovery period, we know this capital is even more are even

more important than equity that the country has. >> you've given out more loans but the average price of those loans has probably gone down is that the case have you been tweaking how this works and found maybe what is the best ratio >> well, the average loan is about $4,000 a lot of it is mixed because what we've been doing is giving out a lot of first time loans. those are no more than $2,000. it starts at $2,000 for a member's first loan. but it goes up quickly some of our largest loans are close to $20,000 but the very first time that you join the program, we have learned that women want to be able to pay that back within six months most of them have a good credit score of 650 plus. and many have a prime credit score which is incredible, because they either had no credit score or poor credit

scores coming into the program this is an extraordinarily important thing. >> if it's a loan of $2,000 at least for the first loan what do they do with it? >> it's pretty amazing, we have 140,000 stories. that's one of the stories people ask me, what can $2,000 do it's extraordinary to help them with working capital buy inventory, pay their rents it has move them out of the pathway out of poverty to help establish businesses so a little bit of capital can go a long way. >> just in terms of -- >> part of this initiative and why it's so important is due to that long-standing impact of systemic racism. you know, especially the black community has had really insufficient access to even a little bit of affordable capital. and before the pandemic, i think black women were among the fastest growing demographic of

entrepreneurs. representing 42% of new women-owned businesses which is three times their share in terms of the female populations. but then the compound in inequity has not given them that access but we find when they do have their opportunity to open their businesses the success rate is huge >> you mentioned most of them want to pay this back in six months what kind of loan repayment numbers and statistics can you share with us? how are they able to pay that loan back and did that change during the pandemic? >> it's pretty extraordinary, becky. over 99% has been the historic record. >> wow >> and to be honest with you, we certainly expected with the recovery and rebuild loans that we were giving out during the pandemic that we would see downfall but since august of last year, when businesses opened up, the same historic rate over 99% repayment on noncollateral loans. it's been extraordinary. they are truly inspirational

they needed the capital. they trusted the organization and that's why we're excited to be over 2030 offer $80,000 black entrepreneurs $1.3 billion of loan capital we look to do our part in terms of erasing some of that systemic racism that has not allowed and afforded fair capital and equal capital to this community. >> i know that you're starting in newark, new jersey, new york and memphis tennessee. your plan is to branch out how do you do that and where do you branch out >> i mean, i don't think there's a city a major city in the country that doesn't have this need so we're starting with an intensification in 2021. and again, the new york city area greater new york and memphis a little later as we start the summer but we've identified communities all across the country some that we are in already. some that we aren't. but we are currently in 24 cities soon to be 28. and we see that going to 60

cities over the next several years. >> andrea, it's amazing to hear. i want to thank you for your time today and wish you best of luck with this thank you. >> thank you so much for having me still to come, former s.e.c. chairman jay clayton on meme stocks, elon musk's swtweets and crypto so much more check out the nasdaq biggest winners. you're watching "squawk" on cnbc ♪ try to believe though the going gets rough ♪ ♪ that you gotta hang tough to make it ♪ ♪ you're the best! around! ♪ ♪ nothing's gonna ever keep you down ♪ [triumphantly yells] ♪ you're the best! around! ♪ [ding] don't get mad. get e*trade and take charge of your finances today. ♪♪ (vo) while you may not be running an architectural firm,

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this morning take a look at u.s. equity futures at this hour the dow lost about 54 points s&p 500 up marginal right now, nasdaq off by 10 stocks and sectors to watch. check out nucor, the stock at more than 100% as metal and mining stock continue to rally the xm etrading at its highest level since september 2012, if you can remember that. here's the number one story coming up, consumers are vaccinated, ready to go out to eat to restaurants struggling to find workers we're going to talk to one restaurant owner about how these trying to fill the vacancy later, don't miss legendary investor mario gabelli he'll join us at 8:00 a.m. eastern.

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on friday, our total of 4500 associates as we call them, we'll be down to six, 17 days ago. i thought our business was in great shape and today, it's closed >> well, what a difference 15 months makes in march of 2020, cameron mitchell's restaurants were hit hard by the pandemic every other restaurant out there. but today, business is back. demand is rebounding but workers are difficult to find cameron mitchell is ceo of cameron mitchell restaurants he's with us again cameron, i want to say thank you and congratulations. we've been with you throughout the pandemic and seeing the ups

and downs along the way. how are things going right now >> well, becky, it's a pleasure to be here with you today. thank you very much. listen, a year ago ago we were looking at restaurants to carry-out andlater here we are today, first of all, we're ecstatic we're ecstatic to be back. almost full, 100% and close to 100% profitability even as the pandemic here in the united states. we're getting there. yes, workers and worker shortage has been something we didn't forecast, of course, coming out of the pandemic. here we are. these head winds along with rising costs of goods are head winds compared to the hurricane force winds we dealt with last year we're going to make it through american restaurant industry is extremely resilient and resourceful. we'll figure out ways to go. >> you mentioned that workers

are tough to come by when we talked to you last march, march a year ago, you had said that you were about to furlough 4500 employees. how many have you brought back >> we are back to about 4,000 today. so here in another couple weeks we're almost 100% full seat capacity in our restaurants. we will be in the next couple of weeks. certainly by the end of june we're short about 500 people, about 10% of our work force currently to be fully staffed within our organization. >> i take it that's not by choice how do you serve when you're almost 100% full but you're 10% short staff? >> you have to deal with what you have so we had saturday night, for example, out of our 56 restaurants, we had 12 restaurants with some seating restrictions in place because we didn't have enough staff to serve. we had another 7 of our restaurants that are closed on mondays currently because it's

simply easier to staff a restaurant six days a week than it is seven. then we have another seven or eight restaurants that are waiting to open additional meal periods whether it be lunch, brunch, saturday lunch until we get fully staffed. the good news is we're getting close to 100% sales even with these headwinds. so i suspect when we can get through the labor shortage -- we were short labor precovid. this is the worst labor environment i've ever worked in in my career hopefully by the end of the summer we can get a little better traction, get people back to work, back to school, get child care back up and running, et cetera. so i'm optimistic about it over the next few months. certainly it creates somewhat of a difficult working environment today. it's to be put into perspective for us from the armrmageddon, we

went through, i'll take this and rising food costs for the time being. we're just glad to be back in business. >> how do you deal with trying to get employees are you offering higher wages, other benefits >> yeah, we have we certainly responded to the market with higher wages along the way. i think ultimately that's a good thing for industry eventually this work force shortage will ebb and reduce and we'll be back to hopefully a little bit below normal. we're not going to lower our wages. this will be a permanent increase in labor costs. we're a resilient business we'll figure out how to deal with that down the road. it's good. our business, we've got a great company culture. we're associates culture first our company is built by its people for its people. we keep doing what we're doing and we have some of the highest retention rates in the industry. we'll get through it i'm pretty confident. >> cameron, in terms of the

employment picture, there's sort of a -- as you know, a national debate about why people aren't coming back to work. from your vantage point is it a wage issue in terms of unemployment insurance unemployment benefits? is it school kids who need their parents around because people are doing things virtually they can't figure out how to get care takers for the kids what's the distinction here? >> i think it's a combination of all of those there's no doubt that the unemployment insurance is hindering to get people back to the work force we have 25 different states pull those benefits ohio, for example, our home state, those benefits end june 21 21st that debate will be ended here soon coincidentally, we've had a

pretty good uptick when that was announced by our governor. we'll see. we've had 2.5 million people move out of the labor force in the restaurant industry. we've got to get those people back spread the message of what a great industry we have here. we have hundreds of stores of people in our company who have been very successful started with us as an hourly worker one story i have a gal start with us as a server 17 years ago. just graduated college and today she's vice president of human resources for the company. people will get back to our industry and come back to us and we'll continue to thrive, i'm quite confident. >> cameron, i'm really glad to hear how well you are all doing. you mentioned inflation. how much has that increased your costs? >> our costs have increased a point and a half since the pandemic that's a double edge sword

last year one of the things that helped us through the covid because demand was so low, our cost 6 goods was so low. now as the supply chain comes back up and cost of goods are probably a point higher than they normally would have run where they were probably a point lower last year. you have to take the good with the bad. i think according to our purchasing people and so forth, this is a six to nine month situation until supply chains get ramped back up, et cetera. we'll work through this compared to any of the problems they worked through last year. >> exactly i'm so glad to hear how well you're doing thank you for taking the time and being with us this morning we'll continue to check in. >> my pleasure take care. bye-bye. >> coming up, two big hours ahead. ceos taking to twitter with company announcements and moving markets. is that hurting retail investors? former sec chair jay clayton will join us etsy ceo josh silverman will

join us. they're making a big push for the gen z consumer a fashion marketplace for $1.6 billion. check out futures as we head to a break on the second trading day of the month mixed picture with the dow up and you're watching "squawk box" here on cnbc we're back after this. wondering what actually goes into your multivitamin? at new chapter, its' innovation, organic ingredients, and fermentation. fermentation? yes. formulated to help you body really truly absorb the natural goodness. new chapter. wellness, well done. pain? yeah. here. aspercreme with max-strength* lidocaine.

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futures pointed to a mixed open after a muted day on wall street we'll get you up to speed on what to watch. amc ceo looking to cash in on his company's stock run taking to twitter torally investors and taking some heat we have the details coming up. will this be the summer of crypto jeremy allaire joins us with his outlook for stable coins, bitcoin and much more. second hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

good morning welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and joe kernen. u.s. equity futures at this hour the dow opening up 59 points higher nasdaq off a bit and s&p 500 up 2 points a couple of other headlines. elon musk may be running afoul of the sec "the wall street journal" said regulators told tesla that musk had violated the condition that his tweets be approved by the board. the requirement was part of a 2008 settlement. no response from musk or tesla as of yet. jbs is expecting most plants to be functioning normally today. that follows the weekend cyber attack which temporarily crippled operations. white house told jbs that it likely came from a criminal organization based in russia.

two separate pieces of news it's announcing the prime day will be held on june 21st and 22nd the company will no longer test job seekers. more states are legalizing marijuana use. it will continue to test for illegal drugs. i don't know smoked out on prime day. >> premo day, dude this is premo. let's get prime -- prime, different. the drivers, we're not endorsing -- >> we're not endorsing. >> -- not endorsing wasted amazon drivers. >> now let's get to eamon javers for more on jbs and whether we were hoarding -- i remember freezing some stuff. i never ate it, eamon. ground beef and stuff in case i was ever going to need it. it's still in there. so we don't need to do that.

>> some people eat it, joe. >> we don't need to do that. things are okay. >> yeah. the company is saying -- they're issuing a cautiously optimistic statement. this is from last night. he's talking about getting up and running today. the ceo saying given the progress our i.t. professionals and plant teams have made in the past 24 hours, the vast majority of our beef, pork, poultry and prepared food plants will be operational tomorrow, that is today, wednesday jbs's status, on tuesday jbs usa and pilgrim's were able to ship product not necessarily process. they're making progress in resuming plant operations in the u.s., australia. several were operational as of tuesday. the canada beef facility has resumed production take a look at the dramatic

changes in production. cattle down 22% week over week tuesday over tuesday hogs down 19.6%. that is entirely due to the cyber attack so there was a real impact here on production but presumably with the plants getting up and running today, that impact can be mitigated over time we're not looking at any major shortages or anything like that. they said that all of the beef processing facilities at jbs were impacted by this yesterday. we're getting information that some shifts are going to be offline today. it appears there's a gradual ramping up here. no information from the white house or company about the ransom wear attack and whether or not the company has paid the ransom you saw colonial pipeline pay off the hackers. is that what happened here to open this up is there a technical solution? we're going to be pushing for

new details to find out exactly what happened. >> because you were hesitant to call it ransom wear when you didn't know it now it's called ransomware >> the white house confirmed it was a ransom wear attack and likely emanating from russia this coming a couple of weeks between the summit from president biden and vladimir putin in geneva, switzerland this puts a lot more on biden's plate vis-a-vis putin. the russian country broadly, not the russian government, are putting a lot of pressure on a lot of different supply chains inside the united states it feels like a demonstration of power. we've talked to experts yesterday who said they're licensed to operate independently by putin they're doing this and they're not aware of the threat of depth

and they don't know what the impact of that is going to be downstream all the way into american citizens. >> it's another crypto another entry into a crypto discussion, too, eamon. >> right yeah this could not be happening without crypto >> yeah. >> i have a hard time, they didn't understand what they were doing when they hit the colonial pipeline it's the only pipeline i know the name of. >> right their cyber security experts will tell you they're out there gooping up everything. if you look on the dark web you see every day there's a handful of these, smaller companies that they don't necessarily notice them and they don't get the headlines. they're finding soft targets this could be mob guys getting greedy, but there are skeptics who say maybe there's a strategic employment that they're hitting vital supply

chains, fuel, food is this a demonstration of capability is this a test of what their systems might be capable of? we don't know that that's not what the reporting is reporting is these are criminal gangs operating independently. clearly putin could shut it down given the control he has. >> eamon, i think ben messert should blow off the gm thing he's buying. criminal gangs, ransomware, paying off in crypto i have great plots this is all so cloak and dagger. it's interesting >> what's interesting is we actually know -- >> they don't ask for more than they're going to get either. we know we can get -- but it's big money. >> they know how much cyber security insurance you have because they're in your systems and they're reading your policy. >> such a good story such a good story. >> look, i'll tell you, in some

cases we know exactly who these people are there's a group called r evil who's involved in this there's dark side which is allegedly involved in a lot of this evil corp in russia which is run by malcolm yackelvecz. he has a camouflaged lamborghini he drives to clubs in moscow we see the money coming out on the other side we see them driving around -- there's video of the guys from evil corp doing donuts in l lambos. >> this is american corporate money. >> someone has to have gotten rubbed out for doing this. maybe -- >> that's how these things go history would show >> eamon, thank you. thank you. no wonder you're doing this stuff now.

it's at least interestingeamon it is. >> are you suggesting -- >> can you do fiction? >> fiction, nonfiction. >> try. >> do you think there's a gme movie in there versus this do you think so? >> i'm working on one. of course. >> no, i mean they're popular. i don't want to see it but i don't think i want to see a socialist movie either. >> it was a good movie. >> as i said, i like jesse isenberg as mark zuckerberg. >> you think he does a better mark zuk kerr sfwherg. >> tell me justin timberlake wasn't a better that guy than -- >> was he not? yeah, much better than -- >> sean parker. >> much better sean parker than sean parker. when we come back, the ceo of amc going all in on investors

from reddit using the buying frenzy of a stock to boost the fin tech strategy. we have more on the stock move and possible implications for adam aaron right after this break. before we head to the break. let's get a check on the markets. dow futures indicated up 50 points s&p futures up by 1. nasdaq up fractionally green arrows across the board. "squawk box" will be right back. or the one where nothing does. with comcast business you get the network that can deliver gig speeds to the most businesses and advanced cybersecurity to protect every device on it— all backed by a dedicated team, 24/7. every day in business is a big day. we'll keep you ready for what's next. comcast business powering possibilities.

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welcome back to "squawk. amc announcing it is officially launching what they're calling amc investor connect it's an initiative that will put amc in direct connection with its individual shareholders to keep them up to date and to provide them with special offers the last several months they've seen the retailer share base grow investors who sign up starting today will be awarded with initially free popcorn when attending a movie in the united states the offer will be made available in their amc stubs awards account. it's an interesting move what you're seeing is amc cannot raise additional capital and

sell shares directly to the public in the future without a shareholder vote so this is a way to connect them with the retail base which right now is so dispersed it might be hard to get that vote. it looks like this is a first step in that process meantime, the shares of amc rise amid the retail trading seeing his wealth grow. robert frank joins us with more on that. robert >> reporter: good morning, andrew praising his army saying he's going to grow your company that army has helped grow his fortune. aaron has about 4.2 million shares, either owned or granted. those shares are worth 8 million at the start of this year. they're now worth more than 130 million as of last night's close. so his total gain during what we can call his reddit rally now total $120 million

those shares up over 1400% this year aaron hasn't sold any shares in march he did give shares now valued at over $15 million to his two sons other executives of the company have been selling, cashing out of almost $4 million in shares since march. the top seller, according to sec filings, is their chief content officer. she sold more than $1 million of shares back in march general counsel selling just under 1 million in march and the cfo cashing out more than $400,000 worth back in april amc did not respond for requests for comment on the sales now, guys, if this pre-market price now which is up, i don't know, another 23% holds, adam aaron would add another $30 million or so overnight. so we'll see where this crosses today. again, he has done a great job, an andrew, as you mentioned managing this new shareholder base and benefitting from it

>> i just want to have an honest moment here. he's not selling the shares and if he doesn't sell the shares, he's not really making the money. if he were to sell the shares today given the kind of message that he's trying to put forth to all of these shareholders about the growth opportunity ahead, which he needs because he eventually needs to share more shares not necessarily for himself but the company to pay down the debt, is he really going to get wealthy >> we'll see how long this lasts. you're absolutely right. he hasn't sold shares. these are all paper gains. we'll see where it lasts some members of the company have sold. >> right. >> you know, again, this is now kind of management by meme his compensation is tied to the stock price which is now tied to this whole sort of social media phenomena. he's seizing the moment. >> so fascinating. robert, thank you. appreciate it. speaking of adam aaron, last night he tweeted yet again

speaking to the retail traders helping to power the stock higher and giving his reasons for yesterday's sales share. he has the best interests of the amc shareholders top of line joining us is jay clayton, the former chairman of the sec and cnbc contributor it's great to have you on the program. i want to get your thoughts on this we've been trying to make sense of what's happening here they sold some shares to the public through mudgrick. they are a distressed debt investor they bought the shares and turned around and sold them to the public if you were running the sec today, what would you be thinking of all of this? >> let's take a step back. i think framing this makes a lot of sense we talked about rallies driven by communications among retail investors and the like and we've been talking about that i think

back in january we started when you add to the mix companies and what we can say is distributors of stock, the responsibilities of those parties go up under our law and they have disclosure obligations, not only through telling the truth but to be comprehensive in their disclosure what i'm thinking about as we see companies participate in this is ensuring that they have discharged those more comprehensive disclosure obligations to the public. we frame this by saying we don't regulate prices, we regulate information into the marketplace. and it's just -- this is a moment where people should stop and think and make sure that their disclosure is comprehensive, whole and fair.

>> jay, i don't think there's anything wrong thus far with amc's disclosure i would praise adam aron to some degree for doing what he is doing. it is in the best interests, i think, long term of the company to try to raise money and to do it the way he's doing it the question is whether shareholders should be there on the other side of it. >> well, andrew, i think you framed it very well. and i'm not saying there's anything wrong here. what i'm saying is look at the comprehensive body of information and you're right we count on investors to make judgments about whether in light of that information this is a good or bad investment and, you know, one of the things that does concern me about the retail community, and we've talked about this a number of times, is, you know, are they investing or are they trading? and -- >> right. >> -- as we know, retail, when

retail gets involved in short-term trading, the odds are they do not do as well as the professionals. >> meantime, i want to get your thoughts on another ceo who's also taking to twitter quite often. he might have pioneered this in many ways. according to "the wall street journal" which cites the regulators have told tesla it failed to oversee the elon musk tweets violating a court ordered policy after tesla and musk settled the case that you oversaw back in 2018 what do you think? >> well, andrew, you know i'm not going to comment on a specific case or settlement. what we are seeing with social media and these communications is the ability of a -- what i would say is a very short piece of information, a small piece of the overall mosaic move markets and, you know, as just a person who looks at markets, that does

concern me because what makes up a good investment is never that one piece of the mosaic. let me just say, taking one of those pieces and amplifying it without updating the rest of the picture, that's not something we should be encouraging. >> jay, has the sec -- is the sec being defaanged to some degree by social media and by the courts i ask because you look at that elon musk case if you look, the judge said effectively trying to get you guys to settle the case rather than actually bring -- you know, go fully to trial. you haven't seen the sec actually then go after elon musk again based on this new information or these more recent tweets and i imagine one of the reasons that people are bringing these cases is they're not sure whether they're strong enough. >> look, one of the cases that

you have to realize is they're not at all static. they're seeing the rise of social media for communications with the investing public. we're seeing the digitization of processes and assets across the board. they have adapted to technology before as i always said, i have great faith in the sec to do so. you're right, we have to bring forward our principles in the law and make sure that these new technologies are captured by those principles. >> what's your sense on why that hasn't happened? >> i think it is happening, andrew i think dramatic change is never smooth and predictable, okay you know, what we're seeing with the digitization of processes across the financial community i think is pretty darn significant. and regulators are going to need

to look at the principles that we've applied over the years the segment before this was dealing with bit coin and illicit payments we've dealt with illicit payments, money laundering, know your customer before need to step up and do this again as the technology changes. >> one final sort of public policy question. there are so many viewers who say hedge funds are manipulating the market all the time. the sec doesn't go after them. can the sec go after some of the retail investors that are on reddit or from a public policy perspective is that just impossible >> i think people throw the word manipulation around somewhat carelessly manipulation is a true effort to, you know, in its classic form raise the price in the short term and then get out. buy in low, selling high and doing so by trying to cause

short-term price movement. again, the women and men of the sec are looking for that i think -- and it should continue to do so and we should continue to use technology to do so as trading technology increases the prevailing technology needs to increase. >> thank you so very, very much. talk to you soon. >> thank you, andrew. coming up, toyota taking a special guest after the break. and later etsy ceo josh silverman on the acquisition of depop. i buy a lot of clothes along with my generation z cohorts on this i love y 2 k fashion really used. buying it for $1.6 billion

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>> of all the technologies we're bringing it's a small period of time. we'll never see that it's beyond that. >> the entire industry, here's the piece. we only had 115,000 units in

stock. >> toyota north america, thank you. and just for understanding of what nine day supply is, that's essentially it that is amazing. still to come, "squawk box," a fashion area etsy mario gabelli.

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cnbc equity futures seeing it this morning. down to etsy

we have 26 in so long. explain it. >> it's the most exciting. >> in the market people under 26. 1.3 billion.

it's been growing like crazy 100%. >> vintage clothes >> yes, you're right 4 million active buyers. 75% of sellers the engagement how many times per month on the app, which we think is it. just how powerful.

it's hot vintage is absolutely right. street ware is really hot. >> we're talking about the community of people that are 145irg how does this help with etsy just based on it >> how does etsy help depop.

it's incredibly powerful in search of it. they really unlock it. we did that with our rebirth and 18 months ago. then take that in the industry we think that

playbook of value creation will also apply it's a very difficulties year. 100% in 2020. to put that in perspective, the same quarter of 2019, q2 2019 before the pandemic etsy did $1 billion. we're coming to the pandemic 3 times bigger than we were before the pandemic

we think millions of buyers have come to etsy, loved what they founded and it created all new shopping habits. >> hey, josh, i know that etsy has been incredibly strong it was the worst performer in the s&p 500 for the month of may. what happened? is this concern that people think they will get back out there and stop shopping on etsy? what do you think the street's reaction is? >> etsy's been the -- etsy was one of the top five performers of the s&p in 2020 by the way, it was one of the top performers of the nasdaq in 2019 and 2018 as well. we don't measure our success based on one month of stock price performance. we look at are we delighting customers? are we delighting buyers and sellers? there's no doubt etsy has had an enormous amount of growth and success that we think positions us really well for the future. the great thing about a two-sided marketplace is they're really hard to get off the ground but once you get them off the grounds, they get better as

they get bigger. etsy is three times bigger than 2019 we think that positions us super well >> you said you know this stuff, becky. you've got -- >> being out there for vintage stuff is really, really big. the teenagers want the concert t-shirts out of closets. everything vintage. >> josh, i saw something my kids were buying. do you have jimmy chew shoes i can buy used i saw a couple of pairs of those recently on my credit card i needed to try to do something about that do you have anything used that goes for like a 20th of what those cost >> joe, you'd look great in jimmy chew shoes and i'd pay it. >> do you believe what they cost have you seen it >> yes. >> what i love, kids now -- >> what have you got >> ebay.

>> no, i know they don't i'm asking well, some kids are buying vintage clothes for 20 bucks i'm buying these for i don't know -- i'm not even going to mention what they cost. >> custom shoes on etsy, right >> a pair for 200 bucks. >> there's hundreds of thousands of custom pairs of shoes for you on etsy. the best brands. >> 219 for used -- >> yeah, 325 for these. >> amplifiers and guitars i can see. thongs, underwear, i don't know, that's a little weird for me, josh thank you for -- to each his own, right thanks for playing along >> thanks for having me. >> when we come back, circle ceo jeremy allaire on the wild ride of crypto and stable coins mario gabelli will join us to talk about the markets. jennifer granholm, kelly

steckelberg and straws zell neck all of them coming up. reminder for you, you can always watch us live on the go on the cnbc app we'll be right back.

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning take a look at futures this hour the dow looks like it would open up 44 points higher. the s&p 500 up 2 points. the nasdaq was in the red now in the green. up next, circle ceo jeremy allaire with the move in bitcoin and other cryptocurrency we'll talk stable coin with him. he is the pioneer in this space. a look at this morning's winners in the s&p 500 we're right back after this. never just another day. bus it's the big sale, or the big presentation. the day where everything goes right. or the one where nothing does. with comcast business you get the network that can deliver gig speeds to the most businesses and advanced cybersecurity to protect every device on it— all backed by a dedicated team, 24/7. every day in business is a big day. we'll keep you ready for what's next. comcast business powering possibilities.

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning there is a new breed of companies around stable coins. the value is tied to an outside asset like the dollar. circle raised 440 million from investors. the largest for a vc round joining me is jeremy allaire, ceo of circle. good morning, jeremy we've watched the rise of bitcoin, ether, all of that. stable coins in the last two months has been quite dramatic what's happening >> i mean, look, what we see obviously is what we saw when we started working on this, which is the internet needs native

coins and digital money and native coins and digital currency there's obviously pure cryptocurrencies like a bitcoin, but so much of the world trans acts in an every way, every day dollar what stable coins represent and dollar digital currencies represent is how do you take the price stability of the dollar, the simplicity in terms of this unit and with the attributes of global reach, extraordinarily cheap, very secure transactions and that's really appealing. it's sort of a true digitization of money and so on. >> right jeremy though, "the wall street journal," i'm sure you read this story and were unhappy when you read it, bitcoin's reliance on stable coins harkes back to the wild west of finance stable coins create a major vulnerability for crypto and the system >> yeah. >> i'm assuming you don't agree

with that. >> i certainly don't i think first just for orientation, when we look at things like usdc and we look at this technology, this is fundamentally a payment system innovation this is, you know, taking the existing future banking system that we have, taking the regulatory rating we have around electrified money around the united states and around the world and marrying that with the power of public internet, public blockchain so it's a payment system innovation i think critically usdc does operate under a regulatory standard and that's a high standard that's been set in the united states. >> jeremy, let's talk crypto more broadly dogecoin being greenlit, if you will, into coin base for these professional traders right now you have had the price of bitcoin come down quite dramatically ether as well, now people think

that ether is going to outpace bitcoin. let's talk bitcoin first what do you make of what's happened and where it stands right now? >> i mean, i think at a very high level obviously these kind of crypto assets have grown very significantly. everyone knows how significantly they've grown. i think there is wide acceptance that these are here to stay and these sort of major assets like bitcoin, ethereum, had a lot of investment in them any time there's that kind of growth and speed, you need to pull back on that. >> in terms of value, when you look at the value of bitcoin today in the 30s, 30 thousands now, do you say this is a cheap buy? this is 500,000, $1 million of coins? do you say, you know what,

$30,000 makes sense to me or maybe it doesn't make sense and i think it's worth $5,000? >> i think each one of these crypto assets has its own valuation pieces i'm extraordinarily long on things like bitcoin and ether. i think these are going to become more and more important as digital commodities i think the multi-hundred thousand dollar assets are unlikely i think ether and what is happening with ethereum is phenomenal an very distinct from bitcoin as well and has an enormous amount of potential for many, many different types of allocations. >> jeremy, given the amount of technological innovation in the space, even in the last couple of years, why don't you think it's possible that some other currency comes along, a cryptocurrency comes along that is better than a bitcoin, that is better than ethereum? why doesn't that effectively

push down the value of those things in favor of the better innovation >> i think it's plausible, of course, that competition changes these dynamics i think we only have to go back to, you know, the late 1990s or different generations of the internet to see incredible companies, if you want to use these digital assets as proxies for thinking about ecosystems that are built around the platforms. there is a lot of competition. there's a huge amount of competition in the next generation of blockchain and the underlying assets of those so, you know, generally speaking i agree. there's going to be continuing cycles of new innovations that are going to grow and create a lot of value i think people are certainly looking at things like bitcoin and ethereum today as long term very likely to be here. >> jeremy allaire.

great to see you appreciate it. >> great to see you. >> you bet. another big hour of "squawk box" still to come this morning. we're going to talk to mario gabelli, energy secretary jennifer granholm and kelly steckelberg and straws zelnick [golf sounds] so, what do you think? i'd go with the 9 iron and try to lay it up by the yetis. i like those. [golf sounds] hey, charles. how's it going out there? good. almost done with my list for father's day. [golf sounds] he's gonna like those.

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shares of amc popping again. a 20% jump operations coming back online for the world's largest meat producer the white house has signaled there's not much time to reach a deal we'll bring you all the details as the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on

cnbc live from the nasdaq market site entire show is live like it used to be. yesterday, first day for the rest of our lives. hopefully. i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin marginally higher. the nasdaq has been in the red most of the session. it's turned positive slightly. up about 4 points. and the s&p a little bit above the flat line to the 10-year 1.603% this morning. we've got a big final hour mario gabelli. we'll speak with energy secretary jennifer granholm about the infrastructure and we might talk about $70 big oil as well which we saw yesterday as

well is it good or -- i wonder if she thinks it's good or bad. assuming the administration wants to -- >> alternative energy. >> that's what i mean. we'll see how much they like that when people are really squawking. this is "squawk box. people do squawk when we get up to $4. zoom cfo kelly steckelberg on big earnings from zoom and take-two interactive ceo strauss zelnick. he'll talk about gaming after the pandemic but also how to stay eternally young >> always. i mean -- unbelievable >> he looks good remember dick clark? dick clark -- he was like 30 until he died basically. it was weird here are some of the stories investors are going to be talking about today. meat producer jbs is expecting most plants to be functioning normally today that follows the weekend cyber attack which temporarily crippled operations.

jbs says it's made significant progress in recovering from the hack the white house told the government the attack originated from a criminal organization that was probably based in russia if you missed eamon javers report, you've got to go back and check that out apparently these guys are so rich they do donuts in lamborghinis with the ransom money. online marketplace etsy is buying fashion retail company depop for a little more than $1.6 billion a london-based depop will continue to operate as a separate marketplace once the deal is completed. around 90% of depop's active users are under 26 years of age. and what did he say? by 2030, like 60% of the work force is going to be under -- is there any way to stop that

that's impossible. >> china a one child policy. >> they've got three now. >> they learned the hard way >> so benevolent >> demographics. >> softening up over there did you see, president xi is trying to reframe himself as a really nice, cuddly guy. did you see that article got some work to do. elon musk may be running afoul of the sec "the wall street journal" reports regulators told tesla that musk had violated the requirement that his tweets be approved by company lawyers. that happened twice, once in 2019 and once last year. i think that's major fines you know what i mean >> getting under control. >> twice in three years? >> i think the hard part is i think the sec is scared to bring a case against him. >> in case they lose >> in case they lose >> in each case tesla has a defense for why they did it.

if they were to lose these cases it becomes a much bigger problem for the whole sort of social media enabled ceo communications. >> right >> you're throwing down to the sec. you're daring them to have the -- >> i'm saying if you're gary gensler, these are hard cases to bring. >> hard cases to win. >> easy cases to bring, right. hard cases to win. that's sort of why i was saying to jay has social media affected -- >> yes. >> defaanged effectively the sec. the original case the judge said we want you to settle this case. go settle it because i think the judge knew that it was going to be a tough case for both sides >> better to settle. if you aren't familiar, the requirement that we're talking about is part of that 2018 settlement we don't have a response from musk or tesla as yet someone wrote in that that -- one of the first restaurants that opened will be in santa

monica drive up, charge your car and someone on roller skates will bring you a milkshake. >> such a low margin business. why in the world would you ever want -- >> convenience store and some food and some charging stations? >> why run it yourself >> it's not all about money, andrew. >> it's not? >> elon musk you think you're making money going to mars? when he says, yeah, most of the first 100 people are going to die but, hey -- >> first of all, spacex is making a fortune why? government contracts right? your tax dollars are helping elon musk, that's how this is happening. >> they're not helping with tesla? >> helping with tesla as well. too low margin of a business to get into the restaurant business for elon musk, right >> my guess is it will be a small number, right? vanity >> you need to dream a little more. >> i do? >> yeah, not just about dollars and cents. dream about changing the world ♪ ♪

>> okay, kermit. >> still has young kids. >> never mind. shares of movie theater chain amc are once again surging. retail investors have helped the share prices nearly double over the last week. this morning's pre-market move in fact amc has an implied market cap of $18 billion. that's roughly 2/3 of what viacom cbs is worth. the latest developments for amc, it sold 8.5 million shares to mudrick capital. it turned around and flipped the shares for a big profit. a short time ago amc's ceo adam aron shared investor connect it has an extraordinary base of enthusiastic and passionate shareholders they make up 80% of the float right now. if you sign up for that, you can

also get a free popcorn and invitations to special movie signings if they sign up joining us right now to talk about media and the meme stock madness is mario gabelli he's chairman and ce off of gamco investors. where do you put everything that's happening right now, what you think of amc in particular >> well, let's talk about the pluses of amc over the last several months first, zaslav is going to change back the windows warner put in place. he's going to use a better model than cutting them off and going directly to streaming. secondly, you do have an ability to take what they generate and consolidate the theatrical theater market by buying other chains third, you saw from quiet place -- i like your new digs there. i hope to some day stop by and see you on the second floor, but -- and all of you.

>> we look forward to it. >> we love it. so you have a lot of positives, becky. then you say, what is a smart guy like adam aron going to do when he has the capacity coming back to the occupancy? he's got a 25 million customer base that he knows the data on and then what else is he going to do? so those are the pluses. on the other side as you point out, there's like 500 million shares selling at 38 and they still have about 5 billion in debt what does the business do? what happens long term over the next five to ten years will they -- because of the paramount decision, 1928, was changed, what does that mean with regards to his ability to create content is he going to get a piece to stream those are the pluses from my end i have an old saying that i learned years ago, either you make dust, that is you buy

the stock, that is buy the stock, you short it right now, get out of the way we don't own this. we have a conference tomorrow. we have markets showing up we have reddit showing up and other theater chains we will look at other companies and see what they think about the revenues at the box office that's it. >> mario, what media and entertainment stocks do you own right now? >> let's step back and say the following. we have content streaming. let's talk about streaming spotify has 400 plus million subscribers and they're getting more paid subscribers, but i like the content producers in music area they're doing something in terms of spinoff there's some arm wrestling over how they handle taxes. clearly they're putting let's not say helping his cause through his ownership of the stock because of the french taxes, but i like it it does 1 billion shares of

selling around 30 euro then i like sony music sony itself is about $100 a share with 1.3 billion shares. 130 billion market cap they have a lot of things going for them including play station 5 and a streaming on that part so that's part of it then the theatrical. i have to tell you, zaslav has done a terrific job. look what he did immediately he changed it back to warner brothers and under it discovery. what that tells the entire content ecosystem, guys, gals, we know what you're doing. we're here we're going to be working with you. that's a totally different feeling out in the content producers on a global basis. plus he has a pretty good handle on the global marketplace. do i want to own it right now? you've got 600 odd billion shares outstanding going to get 1.6 billion shares and i hope they use it as a cap

shrink but we won't know it for a year out two years out he'll have good numbers even though he's starting with $48 billion in debt i do like what they're doing at viacom clearly paramount plus and the content production and the ability to cherry pick their content, the stock's around 40 with about 650 million shares and they were one of the few that took advantage of the hype of the stock when you had that stock up so that's it in addition to that, comcast and disney are terrific but they are 350 billion type market cap on the equity i law the morsels that are part of the dynamic. >> what do you own >> i -- they reduced their voting stock down from 40 million to 30 million, we own

3.5 million. so that's about 35% of the vote. and of the voting stock not controlled by national amusement. we own that one. we like everything that malone does we created something called media mogul fund obviously like the way he and mafay's fingerprints are on a lot of things. they've done a good job. in the television area, linear television, there are a lot of things going on. nextstar has done a good job terrific earnings over the next year next year is another election and great for broadcasters in particular i will single out two companies, one is sinclair with 70 million, sbgi and it has a market cap you have to separate the regional sportsnet works from the broadcasting it's not collateralized. we'll figure out what they're going to do. sports are back. live entertainment are back and

knicks are playing tonight down 3 to 1. in addition to that, group televise they're located in mexico city 550 million shares outstanding and they're taking their content prod production, news, becky, putting it into univision. univision is run by wade davison, out of viacom, the cfo. hopefully they're going to go public maybe in six months. then we'll own 25% of univision and you get that free. they do $1 billion in cable in mexico you're not going to pay 18 times cash flow for mexican cable, but you're going to pay more than 7 or 8 times televise, their stock is up and you have a 50% mover

>> you like what malone is doing and it's just about anything you're hesitant to get into this stock because you want to wait and see what happens >> becky, there's 600 million shares outstanding no no no no there's 1.6 billion shares that at&t is going to dump on the -- somehow extract themselves for every share of at&t i think there's 7.1 billion shares of at&t they will own 1.6. you get almost .23 share of discovery. discovery can be hedged up for whatever reason to 40. you've got almost $9 a share of telecom, discovery in telephone. the stock's 30 i like it. i think you'll make 50%. you have to make that speed bump and beware of it >> also, we know you are somebody who is always looking for love make when it comes to media mergers. you have the mergers master book behind you. >> is that -- >> i know. we know, mario, but you like

viacom and what they're doing? is that because you see then as either a potential suitor or someone who gets bought? >> no. think of it another way. why did amazon buy mgm and the content? what's brian going to do with comcast on a global basis? what is amazon really up to? are they feeding prime or trying to get into the content business if you are willing to pay that for mgm, what do you pay for paramount. what do you put on economic value? all i know is you can make a significant amount of money in viacom and with a limited down side you have to worry something about the corporate global marketplace. you have to worry about tax. there are a lot of pluses there. >> what do you think more broadly about the markets there? a lot of people complain about valuations but then again i'm not sure there's another game in town >> you take the global marketplace, the u.s. economy is

booming. 10% nominal return and that drives a lot of volume that volume covers a lot of the problems you have on a cost of inflation either from wages or materials. it's no different than the consumer march, april of last year, think about how everybody panicked and said i have to run out and buy toilet paper, i've got to buy towels, paper towels and stock up on food and we had a shortage of refrigeration the managers of businesses have the same challenge they throttled back on what they were doing, trying to keep their working capital working on the balance sheets and all of a sudden demand started accelerating now they're rushing out because they say, oh, my gosh, if i can't get the inventory so you have a surge in that wage inflation, when that occurs, the fed has to lift it

on the accelerator and the market had a speed bump four weeks ago. that will happen again earnings are powerful, very strong pre-tax tax rates are going to go up let's assume it's 25%. cash taxes will go up. then what you'll do, the question is the multiple ten year cannot stay 161 inflation rises 2%, 3% talk about a headwind on multiple with the market daily activity he flipped 8 million shares. good luck. >> good luck he turned it pretty quickly and it seems like he made a pretty decent profit. >> no, but the fact is that he had a pipeline into the company. he did a deal back in december, you know -- >> they -- >> bottom line, they had a knowledge of what's going on and they have some debt.

gary gensler, i saw jay clayton on before, andrew asked a good question about social media. i used to call it pump and dump. hedge funds played that game you have to look at what the short sellers file on their 13s. there's a lot of regulatory challenges that gary has to play in addition to spacs and the order flow and so on from the stock market's point of view and in addition to that, we have congress, the president proposed $6 trillion and he's taking in 4 trillion and we have to deal with that. so let's assume we get an infrastructure bill, a conventional one and then you get companies which benefits from the farm agricultural ecosystem. beans, corn are the news for the price for farmers.

they're dancing in the aisle they worked their fannies off and they're going to need it they need equipment. equipment is provided by john deere, john deere, john deere and case i like the stock it's around $17. case has 1.3 billion share and xo the holding company owns 25% of that. they're going to earn a buck a share. the guy from polar ris will run it and he did a very good job at polaris. >> mario, always good talking to you. >> good to see you see you in person. >> we'll do. see ya >> i knew all of that stuff. >> knew everything. >> everything he said. yeah yeah so yeah didn't you >> taking notes. taking notes >> he's look a machine. when we come back, our big final hour of "squawk box" rolling on with three more big interviews u.s. energy secretary jennifer

granholm will be with us to talk about infrastructure negotiations in washington and what it looks like the biden administration is getting impatient with congressional republicans. then we've got zoom's cfo on blowout earnings and then the ceo of take-two interactive on gaming post pandemic stay tuned bck"n watching "squaw o cn (vo) nobody dreams in conventional thinking. it didn't get us to the moon. it doesn't ring the bell on wall street. or disrupt the status quo. t-mobile for business uses unconventional thinking

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president biden expected to hold infrastructure talks today with shelly moore capito she's been leading efforts from the republican side, but the white house has signaled in recent days for a bipartisan deal joining us now energy secretary jennifer granholm. madam secretary, it's great to see you. i can tell you republicans are expressing some optimism in the past, the president has talked about deal making and some gop senators are saying you know what, this guy has been around in the senate for 30 years he knows how this works.

we've done deals in the past they're complimenting him on he knows what it will take almost as if they're setting him up to where if he doesn't follow through, that they're going to say, see, you really weren't going to do it would a trillion do it at this point, just what we think of as infrastructure, roads, bridges, throw in the broadband do you think there's a deal to be had, madam secretary? >> oh, there's definitely a deal to be had and there's definitely optimism on both sides that both the administration and the republicans have moved closer together but it is also true that the jobs plan and the country needs to be globally competitive. they've got some key things that i think republicans -- i know republicans agree on as well, including in my world, right secretary of energy, republicans and democrats are talking about investing in the transmission grid that's a big piece of

infrastructure that ought to be one of the places where we have some bipartisan agreement on the floor at the moment. similarly, nuclear that is an area that republicans and democrats have agreed on and expanding that, advanced modular reactors, that is not part of what has been agreed to so far the good news is they're back at it today there is an honest and earnest desire to reach bipartisan agreement so, you know, we're going to continue to work at it. but as has been said, there is a time commitment on this. you're not going to play this back and forth for much longer there is a limit the only red line the president has said is inaction. >> i wonder about the political calculus and whether individuals are in the president's ear and

saying a bipartisan deal will get a lot of things done theoretically that you can't do through reconciliation there are some things that might not pass the bird rule you score some political points and if you don't go that route, you have to deal with a couple of democratic senators who yesterday, i don't know if you were listening to the president, he called them out and said they'd vote with republicans more often, manchin and sinema, he called them out would the deal still be watered down in the far left's viewpoint because of what you have to do to satisfy manchin and sinema? you might as well go with the bipartisan deal? is anyone encouraging that route? >> let's just be really clear, in terms of the president's preference it's a bipartisan deal, the default.

can you get 10 republicans to go along with shelly moore capito hopefully you can. there has been a bipartisan group that has included at least 10 republicans on the republican side they have their politics to deal with, but i think because some of this is just not controversial everybody agrees we've got to have roads, bridges, basic infrastructure, including electricity that comes into your home everybody agrees you don't want to turn on the tap water in your home and be poisoned by lead the bottom line is there is the shape of a bipartisan deal and that is by far the president's preference you know, it's not going to drag out beyond this summer so we need to make sure that it happens quickly. but i think that there is a sense of optimism, i'll say that. >> madam secretary, i don't know where you come down in terms of the spectrum of people but you're energy secretary. we want to transition away, i

understand that, to renewable. did you know that monday was memorial day did you know -- i noticed but it went so fast that almost escaped me that means driving and at the same time we have $70 oil. we have oil as high as it's been in a couple of years would you prefer to see oil go sharply higher to hasten the transition to renewable? do you think that's the way to accomplish it? or do you have a problem with what would happen to american consumers and to growth if we just abandon fossil fuels too early? you saw what happened to colonial that could be a harbinger, warning, omen -- not an omen, you know, a bad omen for what happens if we move too quickly. >> for sure there is no way that anybody in this administration, myself included, wants to see people paying more at the pump we want to see people being able

to afford the travel that is necessary. but you're talking to somebody who's in charge of energy department which has under its umbrella 17 different national laboratories working on the greenhouse gas emissions this is another area that we have agreement on with republicans, is the technology that reduces co2 emissions that technology could be applied to a lot of the fossil fuel industry, particularly in natural gas, and that investment, which includes pipes, which includes, you know, big equipment that needs to be manufactured, that could be included as part of the american jobs plan. >> madam secretary, we've go the a lot of blue states that -- first off, have you seen the controversy about natural gas and powering the grid? are you in there are you saying what are you doing? this makes no sense. natural gas is clean what's your best idea to power the grid

what should we use >> let's just be clear we need to add a lot of resources to the grid. they have to be clean. when i say clean, i mean removing greenhouse gas emissions. so natural gas can be a component of that, but what we want to do is make sure we remove the greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas that includes methane which is a hugely powerful greenhouse gasc. there's technology to do that. by the way, put people to work, including in natural gas so it's one component. nuclear is a component wind, solar, those are other components geothermal, that's another component. we've got to have a variety of pathways to get the president's goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. 100% clean electricity by 2035 100% clean means you could include fossil fuel like natural gas as long as you remove the c co2. >> no way around it.

this is renewable right here and this is what we use down here. i don't know, i just think that the people are facing reality. they tell me we can't talk anymore, you have to go. where do you have to go? do you have -- huh >> who's telling you that? i'm right here, man. >> that's what i thought what do you mean she has to -- see, i knew you didn't have to go anywhere. i knew you'd rather do this. >> i'm here with you as long as you want. >> madam secretary,thanks. >> you bet. >> we'll see you soon. see? told you. >> they were lying to you. when we come back, what's the outlook for zoom now that zooming isn't the only option for in-person meetings the company's cfo will join us live straight off the earnings report. as we head to break, check out the price of crude oil wti hit the highest price yesterday and guess what it's up from there 8.ining another 52 cents to $624 per barrel. "squawk box" will be right back.

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welcome back to "squawk box. a strong quarter for the quintessential pandemic company zoom the q1 forecast on the top and bottom lines revenue soared 191%. this was the smallest ever joining us right now on cnbc first is zoom's cfo kelly ste steckelberg. i called you the classic pandemic company i don't know if you like that description, kelly. >> we're thrilled to have the -- a household name and to support businesses, communities and individuals alike during the pandemic we have aspirations to do more we have a central collaboration hub for everything that you do

every day. especially as we start to get in >> what does that look like though what does the reopening look like i have to imagine people will use it less. schools are not going to be using it as much i imagine in the fall what does that do to the business >> well, i think the thing that we all know is we're never going back to a world the way it was before, right? companies are thinking about hybrid and flexibility and what that means is zoom is the way to accomplish that. so of course there are meetings. there are zoom rooms think about as you go back into an office in the future, i think every conference in the future will be video enabled. we have smart gallery which is a great way to continue this democratization of communication that's happened over the last 15

months where everybody's square on the screen is the same size there's also zoom phone which is our cloud pbx solution which had an amazing quarter in q1 which enables you to take your phone number with you on your mobile device, laptop, wherever you are. that's how we're going to get them to evolve on the platform going forward. >> in terms of product innovation, are there more things you can do that you are going to need to do? >> yeah. we're really excited last week we announced zoom events which is our corporate events platform which you've seen how virtual events have become mainstay during the last six months as well then also later this summer we're going to have the general availability of group apps the apps are creating an immersive experience in the meetings and they're partnering

with third party developers like service now, asan na, drop box and ww and arianna huffington's company thrive those are the types of innovations that you're going to think of. >> how much of that is going to come from work you're going to do on your own versus on building the economy on top of your service >> it's a combination of both. we are continuing to invest in r&d. >> it's our video or meeting into their applications.

the investment as well as application. >> what kind of stuff are you looking at what kind of stuff would you want this is developer, this is a real do you develop this on top of it. >> of course we see that marketplace.

are there opportunities for tighter integration, tighter partnership for some of those companies and we have done very little in the way of m&a yet but we have spent a lot of time getting to know companies that are out there and i think what you'll see over time the natural exexpansion for zoom is into work activity, into phone or contact center >> have a great day. >> thanks. you knew that. take-two interactive video games, more people are in it

great for video games. first, as we head for break, a bit of news on caterpillar speaking at an investor conference saying demand is increasing quite strongly. he expects higher dividends to continue for shareholders. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc hey lily, i need a new wireless plan for my business, but all my employees need something different. oh, we can help with that. okay, imagine this... your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown, your sales rep lisa has to send some files, asap! so basically i can pick the right plan for each employee... yeah i should've just led with that... with at&t business... you can pick the best plan for each employee and only pay for the features they need.

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joining us with more of what he sees is strauss zelnick. chairman and ceo of take-two interactive. always nice to see you. >> thanks for having me. nice to be back. >> we probably have a bigger universe of people who are into gaming these days as we went through the pandemic they'll be spending a lot less time in front of their screens what does that work out to what does that mean? >> we have a bigger universe of players. take-two interactive is amazing. bigger than $160 billion annually it's a massive business.

as we said many times, we expected that post pandemic levels of consumption would be greater than pre-pandemic levels probably somewhat lower than during the pandemic as you would expect that said, we've given our initial guidance for the fiscal year you're in we expect to have net bookings of 3.2 to $3.3 billion our second year over $3 billion. we certainly expect to have great performance. >> you guys must dig down into these numbers pretty closely just in terms of the average number of minutes and users are spending with your games what's happened over the last six months or so how has that come down what's the average time? >> well, in the last six months demand has been very strong indeed we did expect and we're now in our first fiscal quarter that we would see moderation of demand we have seen some in the first quarter that's actually lower than our expectations, which is to say our results are lower than expected.

we did expect to see some moderation demand is much higher than it was pre-pandemic. >> how are things going with nba 2k it started in the last two weeks. esports has been a huge growth area for lots of video game companies. >> we're really excited to be in the fourth season. we have a great and exciting lineup of games to come. the season's in the second week, i believe, and it's still a small business, as you know. in fact, esports in general is a relatively small business. about a billion dollar business. it's a great area of development, an area we very much believe in and we think that an esport that's based on an actual professional sport is incredibly well positioned for the future. >> i know you did a deal this morning, $225 million for nordius, mobile game company -- mobile game developer. what about mobile? is it important? how much time are people spending on mobile devices versus in home

>> mobile is a huge business, rapidly growing. it speaks to a different demographic than our historical business of making console and pc games it tends to skew older it tends to skew female. it is a meaningful and growing part of the business. and growi part of our business, the mobile market is nearly $80 billion so we do need to be represented, this is the third meaningful acquisition in the space and this brings great team, great leadership and of course the world's most successful soccer manager title with 250 million registered users the name of the game is top 11 and there are more soccer titles in development so we are thrilled to be getting into that business. >> so i wouldn't imagine, you said that mobile users tend to skew female and older, i'm not sure that soccer would necessarily be their thing what do you offer for women who -- >> we have loads of games that appeal to women. i'd say two dots, which is a casual title brought to you by the team at play dots definitely

skews more female and a bit older. >> in terms of competition, people are looking at the industry, and it's gotten incredibly huge. you're now looking at potentially a $200 billion market by the year 2023, and that's a big, big jump from where things are even right now. but there's also new competition that's coming in players like netflix, who are going to be offering games and they already have 200 million subscribers, active subscribers, what do you do in terms of competition? how do you protect yourself in trying to defend your moat >> the good news and the bad news about the business, it is really, really hard to make a hip video game it's incredibly difficult. and capital and subscribers can help a lot it's always great to have an audience certainly great to have the resources to make a game but the talent is what ultimately wins. and our strategy has always been to be the most creative, the most innovative and the most efficient company in the space we have the ratio in the business, we have the best

collection of owned intellectual property in the business, that means we have to get up every day and make the highest quality entertainment business, it's really hard to do that some companies have tried and not done so well and others have tried and done very well so the entertainment business, we compete every day with everyone, no one and ourselves, i'm worried about everyone who comes along big or small that just makes us double down on creativity. >> we just spoke with zoom, and because of both stocks that really took off during the pandemic, i think up 70% for your shares, off the pre-pandemic, or the lows of the pandemic but if you're looking for year to date, the stock is down more than 11% what is wall street missing? or do they have this right, that really, it was worth much more as people were more engaged? what do you tell investors when you're trying to tell them that right now, this is the time to be jumping in?

>> well, first of all, i never really, i don't look at the stock and i don't argue with the market and ultimately all securities trade on their fundamentals if we deliver the result, we will trade in accordance with those results and the results of the company have largely been excellent, but we have to get up and do it again every day. i think at the end of the day, our collection of intellectual property and the revenues that we generate, cash flow that we generate, tells the story and the story is a really positive story and it's a positive long term story probably the most exciting thing is our investments over the next five year, bringing 93 titles to market, 21 new titles in this fiscal year, 40 in the following two years and we've already said there would be expected to deliver record operating results in the coming years. >> we got a couple of minutes left and we can talk more about this. i needed to ask you, what's the latest, vegan stuff, or are you getting blood transfusions from young people, or what is your latest thinking on red wine,

which i would like to, i would take a glass of that every night, it is probably important. but what's your latest thinking? any new ideas with the fountain of youth you're ever 60 >> i'm 63. i am >> 63. >> i have great ideas. >> i don't drink any wine at all. and i don't follow the vegan diet look, i think at the end of the day, everyone knows what's good for you, right get exercise five days a week get enough sleep you know, eat a balanced diet. >> that's the problem. can't do that. can't exercise can't sleep. anything to make up for those two things >> andrew's going to tell us about being young. he's 35. and that's why you look young. >> and he looks younger than that andrew and i have talked about this actually, he's pretty good at all of these things, sleep, exercise and diet. >> i try to be good with sleep. >> you have that aura. >> the morning show doesn't help >> strauss, i want to get your thoughts on, you can't help me,

basically, on the epic apple trial, and what you thought of it, and where take-two stands on it in terms of the app store >> for a couple of years i've been pretty outspoken about the believe that take rates, the cost of distribution would have to decline historically the interactive entertainment business exists in an institutional oligopoly, we all know what that looks like in terms of what the rents look like, and we are no longer in that space, distribution is broad and getting broader every day and every one of us has direct to consumer operations as well so with that, economic theories going to tell you that take rates will decline i didn't expect that, you know, a lawsuit would come along i did expect the regulators may come along, and my belief is that like most lawsuits, this will settle, and the ultimate effect will be that take rates will decline and therefore our margins, our margins will go up. as they ought to because we create the

properties >> if you're the judge, who are you ruling in favor of, apple or epic >> you know, i went to law school but it's been quite a while. i will stay away from that one. >> we'll let you off the hook this time. come on in next time and we'll continue this conversation we'll talk sleep and aura rings and that stuff. >> fair enough. >> appreciate it. >> when we come back, we will get you geared up and ready for the trading day ahead. futures, take a look at where we are right now. 84 points up on the dow. the nasdaq up 14 points. and the s&p 500 up a little erov 7.5 points stay tuned you're watching "squawk" on cnbc wealth is shutting down the office for mike's retirement party. worth is giving the employee who spent half his life with you, the party of a lifetime. wealth is watching your business grow. worth is watching your employees grow with it. principal. for all it's worth.

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welcome back to "squawk box. check out the major cryptocurrencies coinbase allowing pro users to trade doge coin starting immediately, inbound transfer to coinbase pro, so you have to be a professional if there's enough liquidity trading, doge coin will begin after noon eastern, happening tomorrow and trading will be staggered and you're looking at bitcoin right now, 37,300. >> and doge is up on that. >> and final check of markets drifting higher in this session. and what is it, it didn't pan

out when all was said and done, but up 80 points on the dow. >> back to the close. >> yes. >> and the s&p up about 8. i was going to say something i told you, i called it i knew it couldn't get the five seconds. join us tomorrow "squawk on the street" is next good wednesday morning, welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and mike santoli. david faber has the morning off. opening, inflation conundrum and hp and lots of news in the auto and retail space and amc, free popcorn. >> plus elon musk twitter trouble. the s.e.c. reportedl