tv Tech Check CNBC August 5, 2021 11:00am-12:01pm EDT
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much they wagers and there are calculations that have to go on in that period of time you're handed a card that gives you an idea of if they get it right or wrong, you don't know what their total will be, but you need to prepare. there is no wasted time on jeopardy and no wasted time here either we're done "techcheck" starts now good thursday morning, welcome to "techcheck. i'm carl quintanilla with jon fortt, deirdre bosa and julia boorstin a number of big funds cash out their holdings after yesterday's sudden rally we're going to go under the hood on this week's volatility. etsy getting hurt in today's trade.
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morgan stanley turning bullish the analyst hbehind that call will join us and ann sarnoff is with julia. >> it is an all time high for the nasdaq the tail of red riding hood this morning. robinhood shares plunging after the company announced that some existing shareholders think venture capital firms with big holdings in the company would sell almost 98 million shares through convertible notes. there is a big difference here from the meme stock sales we have seen, like amc, robinhood will not go any proceeds from the transaction. while the ceo champ pond retail traders during that ipo last week, big institutions like andreissen, horowitz, rea capital, they're cashing in on yesterday's surge. and they're also some of the names who rescued robinhood earlier this year during one of its most controversial moments. >> yeah. a lot of controversy around the
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name our next guest just initiated robinhood at peer perform in the note titled why robinhood is uninvestable right now, warning clients don't buy the stock. steven chubak joins this morning. do i have you? >> yeah, i'm here, can you hear he >> good to see you i got you. your note is interesting, implying downside of 36% you say it is a tough short as well can you lay out the thesis >> yeah, sure. look, why it is such a difficult short really boils down to the fact that the float is incredibly small relation to the overall market cap, the cost to borrow is incredibly high, and we are incredibly sensitive to the meme finance mania we're seeing across many different names. our quant team looks at the names getting the most traffic
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on reddit, risky lo y longs or t and hood is a clear number one over the last few sessions, not surprisingly i think we just have to be a little bit sensitive to that we try to outline the fundamental case as part of the note, and based on the fundamentals, the bold case, you can underwrite something as high as 100 the bear case if you contemplate the real regulatory risks and worse case scenario, it could be as low as 15 we're shaking out somewhere in between. we're mindful that the valuation outcomes are, you know, pretty extreme, you can drive a truck through that range, so we have to be mindful of some of the sensitivities when we think about what sort of rating we want to ultimately publish. >> right and you're framing it in a series of questions about the business model and the industry that i guess are really unanswerable now, namely account growth, arpu, what is the regulatory picture for payment
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for order flow what is the new normal for new retail engagement those don't sound like questions that will get answered in the next couple of quarters. >> that's right. it is going to take some time for that to ultimately play out. but we do know, garies againler was on your program a few weeks ago, talking about the fact that trading is not free. they're going to be scrutinizing payment for order flow closely as investors contemplate, you know, some of the optimism around robinhood, potentially being able to build all the additional bells and whistles, being able to extend internation a little, being able to launch some sort of digital wallet and compete with squares and paypals of the world, that's what gets the bullish fintech investors really excited but you have to be mindful of the risks. the regulatory risks are acute i also note on near term basis, activity levels in the third quarter have declined dramatically downloads for robinhood are tracking 80% lower versus the year to date pace. so it is one of the top apps
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has some of the most edge gauged active user on their platform, but you have to be mindful there are some emerging signs of a slowdown here, particularly in terms of both crypto volume and equity volumes and needs to be mindful of that as they start to embrace some of the meme mania taking place. >> that's what i'm hoping you can help us sort through because the way i look at it, robinhood's interests versus its customers or maybe i should say the retail traders on the platforms interest is this robinhood makes money when retail investors trade frequently and use options and margin, right? but i think historical data shows us that retail investors tend to lose money when they trade frequently and use, you know, more risky strategies like that so what to make of that perhaps misalignment between the incentives of robinhood versus the traders on the platform and how does that end up playing out
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in the stock, depending on how robinhood pushes its strategy from here? >> yeah, it is a great question. and we actually did include it in our note today a section on esg and i think there is clearly an element where you look at robinhood and the management team and to their credit i had think they're very well intended they want to democratize finance, lower barriers to entry. they benefit from increased turn, increased options trading where the track record is spottier and engaging in more complex trading strategies that's going to drive more revenues on the platform, and there is some misalignment there. that's one of the key risks we outlined, the fact that, you know, they have good intentions, but at the same time that doesn't seem to be the behavior of the folks on the platform are inconsistent with what the intentions are of the founders here >> right, and steven, that
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misalignment, that current business model, that's what we're looking at right now but that may not be something that, say, a cathie wood is looking at in the longer term so what about that longer term proposition, the fact that robinhood is bringing in a huge young user base, introducing them to investing and they hope other financial products down the road that could prove quite lucrative and maybe align those incentives a little better >> yeah, no, it is a very fair point. and, look, i think that folks like anchcathie and others we h spoken to are able to dream the dream on the ability of a company that has a great track record of attracting young investors on to the platform and being able to monetize them better the one stat that did worry us a little bit but, again, it is only one statistic, you have some disclosure around accats, account transfers that happen
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from robinhood to another broker, and those that left the robinhood platform in the first quarter were $20,000 the average account size on the platform is 4500 so that's called graduation risk and as you become more affluent, as you -- your needs become more complex and you start to accumulate wealth, those appear to be the investors or clients that are trending. i think people need to be mindful of that. we think about what is really the bull case that robinhood can deliver is the ability not just to add all the bells and whistles and deepen client engagement, but retain the investors on the platform as they start to accumulate more wealth right? just one day -- a data point we have for that, we'll track that closely. if they can retain those people on the platform, we'll grow more comfortable underwriting some elements of that. >> that is fascinating i'm sure management is well aware of there is going to be a lot of
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behavioral psychology at play with this name for sure. steven, interesting note appreciate it very much. thank you. >> my pleasure thank you for having me on. >> consumer apps may be coming off the gas pedal a bit. etsy and roku plunging despite earnings beats on the top and bottom lines as investors worry about user growth. etsy's third quarter outlook falling below estimates. roku seeing a drop of 1 billion streaming hours since last quarter. this is a broader story in tech. the growth slowdown hit all kinds of consumer apps look at the numbers from amazon, facebook, pinterest, spotify, all five reported disappointing usage numbers that hit the stocks hard after big runs up. let's focus on etsy, despite the third quarter outlook that was kind of weak, morgan stanley is catching the falling knife, upgrading etsy highlighting, quote, durable growth and its recent acquisitions joining us now with that call,
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morgan stanley analyst lauren schenck. good to see you. etsy is still up almost 40% over the past 12 months and even though the comps are tough here, i wonder what it is that you see in etsy that gives you confidence that this wasn't a flash in the pan, what happened during the pandemic, but there is strength to come from here. >> yes absolutely so while net ads turned negative during the quarter, something that investors were worried about, at the end of the day, etsy still acquired 40 million new buyers of the platform last year that's one of the largest numbers we saw across the commerce broadly and we do think etsy has become more top of mind with consumers when they start thinking about that initial path to purchase, expanding the tamm, and makes them more relevant in terms of the overall broader e-commerce
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ecosystem going forward. while the tough compares are weighing on near term results, you look at what happened from 2019 to today, we think the structural top line growth is more durable from here. >> beginning of the pandemic, lauren, we saw a lot of etsy makers on the platform, shops making masks and for, gosh, probably two or three years now, amazon handmade was supposed to be a thing that a lot of people worried would threaten etsy, but it doesn't seem to have done that what is it about etsy what kind of resilience or innovation have they shown that has allowed them to fend off a larger competitor? >> i think the face mask is a great example of how they have been able to pivot to really make sure that supply matches demand they're one of the first people -- or sellers were one of the first people to recognize there was a desire for these products out there and there was a shortage of them available and so the community
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gathered together and turned on a dime to start producing those items. the broader trend of personalization is very important to what etsy does. when you're looking for that unique item you want to give as a gift, etsy is the go-to place. there is a lot of other platforms that do commodities extraordinarily well, but through that handmade, hand touched product is really where etsy excels. >> good morning. it is deirdre. it seems like both etsy and roku are making moves to bring it beyond that pandemic play. etsy with d-pop and roku with more original content. are you buying it in the case of e etsy, does bringing in d-pop and the younger generation make the case it can be more than this pandemic play? >> we do think m&a strategy is compelling we like that management is focused on these more asset like, peer to peer marketplaces
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that ultimately we think can scale faster and generate longer -- higher long-term margins than more managed market place businesses ultimately, you know, they're also expanding their tamm. while apparel is a large category on etsy, resale apparel isn't something they traffic in today, they're sort of building this layered cake approach if you think about the tamm opportunity over the next several years with d-pop, with reverb, so ultimately, you know, the core etsy market place will remain a key focus for investors, but aggregate, they're building what management has characterized as this house of brands and we think that could be an interesting strategy >> i wonder, maybe you can tell us how closely correlated they are to overall card spend. it has been a little noisy lately with some of the interruptions in flow regarding stimulus checks, savings rate has come down a bit. in aggregate, is etsy closely
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correlated to the way it is spending overall >> we think they're tracking relatively similarly to what we're seeing broadly in e-commerce obviously, you know, we -- two year trends are seeing accelerations and that's what etsy put up last night, a little bit greater than investors were hoping but we do think that ultimately as the world continues to reopen, as the anniversary stimulus et cetera, etsy will continue to see two-year deceleration, which is how we're thinking about e-commerce as well >> all right, lauren, thank you. some controversy around that name that has been doing so well >> thanks for having me. >> we're going to turn our attention to the world of streaming this morning roku stock falling despite beating earnings expectations. investors were disappointed by a viewing time falling a billion hours from q1. that could be part of a larger
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trend after estimates fell in the last week there is hope for the future they could get an upgrade from stevens the firm predicts all linear tv ad spend will eventually shift to internet connected devices, plus the content spend is only moving up. south park creators trey parker and matt stone inking a new $900 million deal with viacom cbs they go to overweight on roku, 475. but the south park deal is a big, big deal for viacom >> yeah, i mean, look, there are two different trends going on here when we look at the results of roku, and the fact that despite beating on top and bottom line is the user numbers weighing on the stock, to me that says something very similar to what we heard from netflix, there was a material pull forward because of the pandemic. there is no question the pandemic drew -- drove growth
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higher and we're seeing the results of that. going forward, especially for roku, the huge potential seems to be in advertising that's where we're seeing massive growth in average revenue per user, huge opportunity, behind a lot of the analyst bullishness on this stock, and it is interesting because that shows that maybe people aren't going to be wanting to spend on multiple additional subscription services, but the fact that roku does have all this free content is an advantage. in terms of the south park thing, the second $900 million deal for premium content really speaks to the fact that premium brands are in demand there just aren't that many of them so people will pay up. >> yeah. i know you have been all over that, julia. in terms of roku moving into its own original content, how does that bolster the advertising case >> well, look, i think that, you know, when you talk about content, the question is what do you have that is exclusive so interesting that roku made
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that move to buy shows from quibi, and then those quibi shows got so much attention in terms of the emmys, showing that maybe -- and also on roku, showing that maybe it wasn't the problem with the actual shows themselves that quibi failed, but just the format. so i think that we're going to see row ku look at investing and original content they want to be an open platform roku will succeed if all streaming succeeds and anthony wood talked about that yesterday. he sounded like reed hastings, he believed that streaming was going to continue to grow, even with these bumps in the road i think that it has two potentials here, one is investing this original content, growing its advertising revenue and also just being this open platform so as the whole market grows, rising tide lifts all boats and particularly lifts roku. >> and on that south park thing, 900 million -- that will buy a lot of cheesy poofs. that makes me wonder what would happen if the simpsons were in play during this streaming era
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because south park has been going on for a long time back to roku and particularly on the hardware side, interesting they noted that they expect the component issues to really be more difficult in the second half which seems to also echo what apple was saying about components in the second half. i wonder, to what degree investors, even who are looking at content, and streaming, need to factor in hardware bottlenecks at this point, since the hardware is strategically positioned to drive streaming adoption could that bottleneck follow through to streaming at some point? >> very good point, john we talk about roku in terms of this growing ad business and the fact that they're this open platform for all the different apps to access on your tv. but, yes they do have a hardware component and what was so notable this quarter is their margins declined for that hardware because their costs were going up and they didn't want to pass along the costs to consumers. they worried about not only are
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the costs going to continue to be higher in the second half of the year, but high ner into 2022 i do think that's going to continue to weigh on the stock but, jon, we have to remember that you can now access the roku channel and other places and a lot of people already have rokus and the company will benefit from those users, especially if they start watching more, we'll see what happens, if there are more lockdowns and people start spending more time at home this is not a company that necessarily needs to -- you know, the only way it is not like the only way this company generates revenue is from selling the additional hardware, it has the multiple revenue stream that protects it a little bit from the higher costs. >> right investors love to hear about julia, thanks so much for that take a look at shares of fastly they're cratering this morning we're going to get to more on that the better ter name to own bet uber and lyft.
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qua second quarter weighing on the business, shares today about 73% off the 52-week high you can see there it is down about 16.5% for the day so far >> ouch. let's get back to uber that stock has actually staged a huge turn around fell sharply after earnings. now it is up about 5%. our next guest says the bookings grew 174%, but watch out for the potential for renewed lockdowns and sharp impact covid variants can have on ride volumes. joining us now is jeffrey senior what do you make of this turn around even gross bookings for the upcoming quarter at the lowest end is expected to be flat. >> i think we're early in the turn around, deirdre this is like starting a cold engine on a car, right it has been a long year. drivers are coming back to work. we're wanting to get out beyond zoom and get out and explore the world and i think in the back
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half of the year thereis going e a much stronger tailwind around mobility for uber and lyft and seeing it in the booking.com numbers in europe. it is going to be slow it is not going to be dramatic overnight. i think they had to put the investments in that caused some concern with investors the stocks have really underperformed other names like facebook and google. sentiment is probably the worst of all the internet categories we cover so you have low multiples, most stocks four times sales, which is super cheap and a building demand environment that will be a tailwind for the industry going into the back half of the year so i think there is some big skepticism around the business model, long-term can the companies make money and be profitable? >> yeah, i mean, their ipos were two years ago and both the names at the moment are currently trading below those ipo prices i wonder why did you just
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compare them to dwoog google and facebook, very, very different, and one of the focuses on both of the calls was the driver shortage lyft saying it will have to continue to spend on incentives. uber said maybe it could pull back i wonder if they can deliver if lyft is spend moing more is this the new price war? >> when you have a trillion dollar market, you can have two vendors survive in the u.s uber is a broader platform, more engines of growth they can turn on so we think uber is in a great position long-term short-term lyft is in a great position, they're focused on the u.s. and we don't believe they have to kill each other on price. ultimately price has been too high anyone that has pulled up uber or lyft, the rides are too long to wait, the pricing is way too high, that's going to come down and we're getting to more of an
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equilibrium. we compare this to the rest of the group is that it is money flow, right? our job to help clooients make money and one of the questions is google and facebook and snap and where should i go now? we think some of the names are cheap enough to put some money to work. >> interesting there has been some discussion this morning about sort of how the investment cycles between uber and lyft have not coincided, haven't happened at the same time. i wonder if that disparity leads you to one name over the other at least in the near term? >> uber, long-term, for sure platforms, i'm not saying lyft is a points solution, but they're focused on the u.s uber has incredible engines of growth when you're a pilot, you want multiple engines, right? if you go back to another lockdown and pandemic and we see another flare in the virus this fall, they can go to the eats
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business, to logistics, they can go to other parts of the business they have a global business. so, again, i think long-term uber is in a better position as a business there is no question this looks like a platform, and, again, if you look at the tech history, microsoft, you go through the list, platforms will win, uber is a platform. >> brent, i know some may argue the opposite saying that focus that lyft has shown allowed them to get to adjusted ebitda sooner thank you for being with us. >> thanks. we will have a robinhood bear next. plus, how amd and snap factor into the mean trade. stay with us
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"techcheck." carl quintanilla with jon fortt, deirdre bosa and julia boorstin. julia has warner bros. chair and ceo ann sarnoff in a moment. first, an update with dominic chu. >> here's what's happening at this hour. a small decline in jobless claims last week, but the 385,000 new applications for unemployment benefits is still high however, continuing claims fell to another pandemic era low. the u.s. trade deficit jumped nearly 7% in june to more than $75 billion that's a new all time high, by the way. exports did rise slightly, but imports grew nine times as quickly. and insurance giant cigna falling 13% in trading so far. its second quarter results topped forecasts the company doubled this year's expected profit impact from covid-19 cigna gave full year earnings guidance below analyst consensus estimates. spirit airlines is canceling 400 more flights today, about
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half of its schedule this according to air travel tracking sight flight aware. spirit now in the fifth day of heavy flight disruptions that stranded customers across the country. they canceled around 1700 flights, carl. so those disruptions continue, the bumpy road back from travel still lingers. >> what a story. thank you very much. back to stocks, our next guest says the market is entered a key negotiation phase, warning that major tech companies like amazon and a mmd may struggle as the broader market sees more volatility, and ties it back to robinhood this week. sven, you're taking a bit of a 30,000 foot view here in terms of the ranges we have settled in and some of the unanswered questions that i assume you think are going to get answered at some point. >> interesting we look at the market, we have the s&p and nasdaq continuing to make all time highs every single
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month along with the fed balance sheet. and the meantime, underneath, we have a lot of rotation going on, and we have indices and individual stocks that are just basically sitting in multimonth ranges, small caps, russell hasn't gone anywhere in six months we see it with amazon. amazon was just in a multimonth range, broke out for a few weeks and now on the heels of the earnings report, right back down so i think this is where we are. we reached a point of peak recovery growth here and now the market is negotiating and seeing, okay, how are we going to get more liquidity or substantiating growth we saw that with big tech cap companies. they have been warning of slower growth, facebook, amazon >> right i guess how does this all tie to robinhood? explain that >> well, robinhood, to me, is an expression of a little bit of the gamification casino atmosphere we have had all year
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long along with amc and certainly gme, game stop, right? and the casino, you go to the hottest table. the retail investors have certainly taken advantage of being able to run up stocks and to the extent that you see people trying to short them or funds trying to short them, they make themselves easy we saw that just now with amd as well it had a multiweek big heads and shoulders pattern, classical technical warning sign, but that got run right over to the extent that everything is game phied in terms of positioning, you can get moves that are that extreme. >> and that's what kind of concerns me, you mentioned game stop and amc, those were two stocks that were in this depr depressed state, heavily shorted. but is what we're seeing even affecting amd now because retail traders are using options and
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margin at a rate that they have not historically, and kind of do some csi for us, are you able to see the mechanics that might be driving this i'm concerned, amd is doing great already. i think a lot of investors who watch cnbc understand the bull case there it is not like it was a depressed asset. >> not at all. amd has a fundamental story to back up. fantastic revenue growth and so forth, benefiting also from the chip shortages situation that is going on gives them pricing power the exacerbation in the moves we see in some of the stocks is simply also a reflection of a time period of seeing the most intense dip buying in markets in history. no one is waiting for 2 or 3% dip. it is almost panic buying. that's all related in my view from record retail inflows i think what's most fascinating
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to me is everybody's valuation insensitive meaning none of the runs have anything to do with fundamentals the valuations become incredible we talked about this last time i was on, with price to sales on tech or on s&p and record levels and the question always becomes fundamentally driven, while currently fundamentals don't seem to be mattered where everybody has rosy eyed glasses on, we have to see peak growth recovery going on, what is on the other side and when you see people chasing valuations, as we saw with amc and gme, these stocks come back and a lot of people get hurt. it is all fun and giggles on the way up. >> right as one guest, a few weeks ago, argued, you got to think about valuations perhaps creatively these days but, sven, i wonder, what would you tell retail investors that are trading robinhood like a meme stock not buying from hedge funds, but
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they are lining the pockets of venture capitalists who sold this company on its longer term prospects. does or should the reddit crowd realize this, should they care or have we moved beyond that sort of dynamic that characterized gamestop and amc earlier this year? >> yeah, i don't think anyone -- i'm just speculating here myself, in terms of the -- i can't speculate for what or pretend to think what people on wall street are thinking i think mostly it is from my perspective game phi, it is not about valuations or if you believe in a story, that's fine. talking about a stock trading for just a few days. i always say, watch what they do, not what they say, what they are doing is insiders are getting out hurriedly, taking advantage of the strength in the stock. maybe that's something that investors should be aware of in terms of the supply and demand issues you can run a stock high if you
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overwhelm it with buy orders the question is what comes on the other end. and the insiders that may have had certain expectations about growth in the company for a longer period or time horizon, when they will want to sell out, maybe that sends a message in itself >> we'll see we'll have the jobs number tomorrow as well maybe you can tell us whether or not the bond market is sniffing something out effectively or not. great to see you thanks >> thanks, carl. glad to be with you. hollywood in flux as more movies go direct to consumer we'll see it again this weekend with "the suicide squad. warner bros. is the studio behind that release. ann sarnoff will talk about that and the disney scarlett johansson lawsuit coming up next on "techcheck.
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marvel >> she's ceo and she made the controversial decision, remember last december, to simultaneously distribute this studio's 18 films through the end of this year in theaters and on hbo max for no additional cost she also made the decision to spend $200 million to compensate talent for lost bonuses tied to the box office now, of course, that looks prescient considering disney is facing a lawsuit from scarlett johansson for failing to compensate her for potentially cannibalized box office due to her movie also going on disney plus ahead of the suicide squad opening in theaters today, i joined sarnoff on the warner bros. lot, that film is projected to gross $70 million globally, despite the tfact it s free to watch for hbo max subscribers at home. this is seen as another test of the health of the movie going business >> we're very optimistic that it is going to do well in theaters and on hbo max we have seen over the last eight
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months that the movies have done very well and there was very little competition earlier in the year because a lot of our competitors were pushing their releases further ahead in the year. which is one of the reasons as when i spoke to you we wanted to have a hybrid strategy so that we could afford to release the movies in the middle of what was then a very, very spiky pandemic so we were able to have an alternative way to distribute so that people who couldn't get to the movie theaters or didn't want to go to movie theaters could watch it in their homes and we have been happy with the results so far. >> now that 85% of theaters and the u.s. are open, how much do you think offering the film at home is cannibalizing ticket sales? >> giving people the choice to go both places, i think you'll find that when you look at the overall box office, some people are just choosing not to go, even with movies that are only in theaters, i think the -- one of the reasons we did the talent deals that we did was to be able to give them fair compensation
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if there was cannibalization of the theatrical window in the box office that they would also be paid for the streaming element of it. so and then the good news about the strategy is we were able to have a full blown global theatrical release for all of those 18 movies, plus the 31 days on hbo max. one critical thing that the talent and the agents were very happy with was that we gave each movie a big shot at success because we didn't cut back on the marketing spend, and the global theatrical release of the movies, which is very hard to do in a pandemic. >> so scarlett johansson just sued disney, alleging that disney is not only breaking her contract by putting "black widow" not exclusively in theaters but on disney plus and also saying disney is more interested in driving subscriber growth than it is in the box office and that fundamentally the interest of the studio or the media giant are not going to be aligned with talent going
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forward. what do you make of that argument do you think she's right >> i'm not going to judge scarlett's strategy, but i will say for us, we -- both are very important to us. streaming, hbo max has been a big priority of ours, we're so happy with the growth, 10 million year over year, we added 2.8 million subs in the second quarter in the u.s and have exceeded 2.5 million in the last three quarters. it is really on a great role but the theatrical business is very important for us as well. it really puts a lot of jet fuel into the sequence of windows and so we know that the talent wants to seat movies on the big screen so we want to come up with the right kind of balance as we were just talking about in the structure of our deals, so that the talent feels fairly compensated and we're very transparent about what our strategy is going forward. >> interesting to hear her talk about balancing the distribution
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in theaters and and streaming and managing the demands of talent another key part of sarnoff's strategy is making more content for hbo max and more content to sell to other platforms that did produce ted lasso and other shows for netflix and has a total of 400 productions under way in the u.s. now. 25 films in post productions as for warner media's pending merger with discovery, sarnoff says she doesn't think it will change her content business. jon? my entire interview with sarnoff on cnbc.com/techcheck. >> i wonder in the sort of warner versus disney and in a way scar jo versus margot robbie hui, the back end of a marvel film will be worth a lot more in the back end of a dc film, so, you know, the actors expect more >> well, look, i think, jon in this day and age not
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necessarily. if you look at the box office of black widow, it was the biggest movie released so far this year, but it is still unclear what the total box office numbers are going to be. i think that the difference here we're seeing between disney and warner bros. with marvel versus dc comics is the strategy going into it. because disney was selling black widow for additional $30 and warner bros. was giving away its movies to hbo max subscribers, there was no upside for warner bros. to give to their talent based on how many people watched, say wonder woman 1984, they couldn't give them a percentage of that disney because they could give a percent, they could say, we're going to give you a percent of that and we'll figure out at additional box office bonus later. it is two different strategies in terms of distribution and also in how they're dealing with talent remember, jon, the other really interesting thing to watch is that warner bros. has said they're going to be putting
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their films starting next year, in 2022, giving them an exclusive theatrical window. that will be shorter, but that also means that that's a whole different way to calculate their deals with talent than what they did this year. >> right it will be fascinating to watch that play out to this whole evolution. julia, thank you >> take a look at shares of western digital, making a comeback this morning after strong results, plus, a huge profit beat. more on the movers at cnbc.com we're back in a moment if your money is working toward the same goals, why keep it in different places? sofi is a one-stop shop for your finances designed to work better together. spend with sofi and get cash back rewards that automatically go toward your goals. like investing in stocks, etfs, and crypto. that's better together. or pay down your sofi debt sooner. that's better together. and that's how sofi is helping millions get their money right.
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companies it from square to coinbase are fighting back against the definition of crypto brokers definition in a battle that could have wide ranging remember percussions for the infrastructure plans >> the entire industry is up in arms about this. we had brian armstrong tweeting about tp hundreds of crypto companies wrote a letter sporing amendments the idea is this goes beyond what would happen for a normal crypto broker. not all are brokers. we have coinbase, binance. saying we are completely okay with reporting to the irs. brian armstrong had a tweet storm describing in saying 1099s are good, but other companies shouldn't have report certain information to the irs saying it's choking and stifle innovation the argument fortunate kripo
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industry back to libra >> look at what happened to libra and then someone was making the analogy yesterday on the world economic forum panel talking about defy and one of the panelists said the internet, said if it was too regulated early on it wouldn't have developed but on the flipside of that, regulating later when the industries have become so large is also really difficult proposition >> absolutely. the libra example they clamped down and it's all about semantics. we were talking with a senator supporting the amendment and she said the rest of the senate doesn't necessarily understand the industry let alone what a word like broker would mean. it's so subtle and there are a couple of senators paycheck the way as crypto friendly and states going that direction >> that's the challenge, wide range of levels of understanding. thanks for being with us >> absolutely. "techche" llckwi go to quick break and be back in a moment.
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for $37 a share. muscles on a rival bid last month. equal come's off is billion dollars high are equal come after arriver software working with the company. the ceo leaning into life jond the smartphone, the earnings growth story he told us about a week ago, carl >> jon, one thing we haven't mentioned is the white house meeting with the maker of evs. phil lebeau has more >> let's run down what the president announces. the goal for the u.s., 50% ev plug-in hybrid electric sales or fuel cell sells pap 50% of the market by 2030 last year just under three hundred thousand pure electric vehicles made up total sales in this country that's 2% of the seattle and most believe only about a million of those sold by 2025, pure electric. we're a long ways from 50% look at the big three auto stocks moving higher on the ev
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commitments this year. you'll see the executives at the white house today, what about tesla? unclear if tesla is there. tesla is the market leader in er sales in the country selling, what, 145,000 in the first seven months of the year guys back to you >> walter isaacson getting to a new biography. welcome to the "halftime report." the big call on stocks from the top street strategist is your money about to go on a midsummer run. we'll debate that. jenny harrington steve weiss. steve weiss. jon najarian let's check the markets. nasdaq a new high. up five of the past six days we are talking about the new target for the s&p from david kostin however, more action from the committee on robinhood that we want to get to first now that options trading open for business pete opened for business yesterday. and you got some action on today. tells.
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