issues we talk about being addressed by the ceos, labor issues at ihop, commodity prices at kellogg or hanes brands or trucking and logistics fascinating to get that view that will do it for us on "squawk on the street. let's get over to "techcheck." ♪ ♪ good thursday morning and welcome to "techcheck. i'm deirdre bosa with carl quintanilla and julia boorstin jon has the morning off. today qualcomm surges. plus earnings take two and etsy. then, ford wants to beat tesla at its own game. the cfo will break down the $30 billion spending plan this hour. later, the case for why apple is the most overpriced tech stock

out there, carl. >> first up, our feed will start with qualcomm today. big earnings beat, strong guidance, 56% rise in smart phone chip sales powering those shares up almost 12% today turning the street bullish, too. goldman ups to a buy this morning, says there's still a 40% upside to the stock. piper moves qualcomm to its top large cap pick also overweight and takes its price target to 190. we talk to christian earlier in the 9. take a listen. >> by all accounts our diversification strategy is working and it's working because at the end of the day market is winning with a road map, winning with technology. if 38%, you know, doesn't indicate that the diversification is really working, i don't know what does. the important thing to answer your question is we have now many great vectors of growth in addition to hand sets.

>> shares of qualcomm, as we said, up almost 12% today. and by the way, nvidia as david was just saying up again today the best performing tech stock so far this year, deirdre, as the market really does seem to be coming around to understand these structure churl issues in which chips are getting use, the metaverse or better use in cars or the classic smart phone business the street really gotten positive. >> yeah for qualcomm the story is one of diversification perhaps prior to the chip shortage was seen as complicated. 38% of revenue coming from categories other than mode of chips for smart phone. and of course, you mentioned this, carl, metaverse, the new sort of a.i. buzz word for ceos these days julia, i was watching the interview with a friend, doesn't really follow qualcomm, but she said this conversation sound like it's from the matrix, a.r., v.r. devices and what i thought was so interesting, too, noting that this market could

eventually be as big as this smart phone market if you think everyone with a smart phone will eventually have an a.r. or v.r. device. >> yeah. i think that's a really good point. diversification but also he was talking about all these growth vectors, deirdre and it's really important to note that they have been investing in creating the chips for a.r./v.r. headsets fer years. of course we're calling facebook metta. talking about the context of microsoft and christiana amon making it clear that they have been putting their chips into these devices that all 50 devices, whether it's a.r. or v.r. headsets, whether for consumers or for enterprise include their chips. and that this is going to be huge growth driver for them in addition to, of course, smart phones and autos so carl, i think it's kind of exciting to think about how this could be an accelerator for a number of companies, not just the ones like facebook and microsoft who have been out there talking about wanting to create this software and hardware but also the component

makers as well >> yeah. absolutely i mean, think there is still that lingering risk of insourcing of course we saw it classically with apple and intel's business. and this morning vw, julia, talking about the long-term need to insource chips because they just don't want to make that a third-party issue and be so reliant once the supply chain gets squirrely so there will be losers if, in fact, they do lose business to companies that get more vertical over time. >> yeah. and it does seem, though, looking at those qualcomm guidance numbers that they're feeling more confident that they can protect themselves from some of those shortages we've seen hit some of the other stocks much worse. now shifting gears over to roku that stock falling this morning after the company guided to lower fourth quarter revenue than expected. and third quarter revenue was a slight miss. another disappointment as well, active accounts and streaming hours not growing as fast as

analysts had anticipated one key factor behind all those things, global supply chain disruptions hitting player sales, which fell 26% year over year and supply chain issues also impacting advertising ceo anthony wood and cfo steve louden telling shareholders that these head winds will weigh on the fourth quarter and will likely carry over into next year but they are optimistic about the longer-term opportunity in consumers continuing to shift over to streaming and advertisers moving on to their platform as well and on the upside, average revenue per user did beat expectations in the quarter. growing by nearly 50%. topping $40 for the first time so guys, there are definitely signs of strength but it's remarkable to see that issue of supply chain impact so many different parts of roku's business, deirdre. >> julia, no comment on the upcoming expiration of the youtube app separate from the youtube tv app which could, you know, hurt growth down the road,

user growth. roku's strength has really been as thissing ary gator, the switzerland of streaming by bringing all of the other content on but we know it's moving into this space and potentially losing youtube and who knows amazon prime that could weigh going forward >> yep and julia, you did a great curtain raiser on this yesterday talking about the challenges of the supply chain, whic certainly came home to roost but also maybe some lingering worries about the advertising business after what we heard from the likes of snap and we've talked about it at length on this show, the less marginal need to advertise if, in fact, you're worried about putting your goods on shelves. >> yeah. less marginal need to advertise they call that consumer products companies and automakers but there's also this question, deirdre, if they can just get more advertisers to come over on to their platform and to realize that it's a better platform for targeting than traditional tv and also, dee, remember when you're looking at the fact that companies like facebook are having a hard time targeting, maybe they can get some of those

advertisers on to their platform as well. >> yeah. that's a good point. it's a good place to start with dan niles in light of the apple privacy changes. fresh off of our cnbc pro talk yesterday. apple, our pro subscribers heard it yesterday you call apple, quote the most overpriced tech stock that exists tell us why. >> yeah. i mean, in terms of big cap tech, it clearly is in my mind because if you look at it in terms of how much they're growing, relative to the multiple, it just doesn't make any sense right? relative to the other megacaps apple's revenues compounded over the last five years including this calendar year, because we only have about a quarter left, has grown about 11%. microsoft is growing about 15% over this time google is at 23. netflix is at 27 amazon is at 28. and facebook, given all the discussion about the metaverse, they've grown revenues

compounded at 34%. you can buy both facebook and google at a lower multiple than apple. and don't forget, apple is a massive pandemic beneficiary and so, for them, their iphone revenues over the last five years, fiscal 15 to fiscal 20 were down 11% over five years before you had this pandemic benefit. ipad, mac sales were also down year over year before the pandemic hit so, you know, for me, it's -- we like facebook a lot. we like google a lot they're growing 2 to 3 times faster and buy them at a lower multiple with faster growth rates in the future. and we haven't even gotten into the risks around privacy and what that does to their app store or take rates. >> right, dan. how much weight do you put into the services piece of the apple story? still a relatively small portion of revenue, but if you think that during the pandemic, they were a beneficiary and were able to grow that installed user base, could that not provide

greater than expected growth >> well, don't forget, i mean, that's the whole reason the multiples has gone up so much despite the growth that they've shown. so, if you're looking forward in time, i think it's pretty clear that all of these companies are trying to get the take rates down they had that ruling against them with epic and you've got pressure across the globe, not just from europe but also in the u.s. in terms of what they're charging that 30% rate up front. if those numbers start to come down, this multiple is going to have a big problem because the core hardware business is, you know, flat to declining. that's just because of 4 billion people on the planet have smart phones so that's the big risk and that's only going one direction. it's going lower it's not going to go higher with those take rates >> dan, i'm curious about your thoughts on this clash that we've been talking about between apple and facebook first, whether or not you think that apple's operating system changes are going to continue to

challenge facebook and others through next year. and also, whether you think apple is really going to be investing heavily in the metaverse space that facebook has staked such a claim in now >> yeah. i mean, you have to sort of step back the good news is that alot of these companies have gone through and reset their targets. so for facebook, for example, you're now looking at 3% eps growth as the forecast for next year i would be shocked if the number wasn't a lot better than that because facebook when they report the september quarter, they always guide out and lay out what their expenses are. i don't think they've ever come in at the mid to high end of expenses they've always come in sort of mid or even below the expense guide given despite the fact that the revenues typically come in higher. so, i think, you know, from that perspective, facebook is clearly one you want to look at if we're talking about the metaverse and all those great things but you're right from apple's point of view, they're going to have to think about that if that's the next step.

they're going to have to think about how to invest in that space. and that's going to be expensive for them if that's the path that they're going to go down and i think that's kind of where every company is headed. >> yeah. dan, i'm also curious to get your thoughts on via come/cbs. i know you were bullish going into earnings. they reported this morning the stock is trading lower what's your outlook now? >> yeah. i mean, it's a very interesting take if you have momentum, there's no limit to what your stock can do, it seems like these days, whether you're talking avis or tesla or gamestop, amc, et cetera and if you're sort of in that category where people go, well, you're not going to do well. then the stock just sort of languishes until it finally decides to move. if you look at viacomm, their streaming business is close to 15% of revenues. it was up over 60% in the quarter. but investors sort of have this view, well, netflix is going to win, disney is going to win. these guys discovery, amc, you know, you pick it, everybody

else is going to lose. and i just don't think that's the case i think next year you're going to see viacomm get into the international market you'll see that subscriber momentum continue. and they're going to be another contender i think in the space at a 9 pe relative to a disney or a netflix pe in the 50s, you know, to me this is pretty easy to get very excited about relative to other names in the space. >> dan, to circle you back to apple, i'm just looking back at some of the tweets i've written since on your past appearances you've been repeatedly kind of skeptical about higher asps leading to lower service revenue, you didn't like when they pulled some disclosure on unit sales in march of last year, at a very good moment, you said who really feels rich enough right now to afford $1,000 iphone but i wonder, is the picture obviously is different than it was in march of last year. and is some of that long-term

skepticism just haunting these current calls of yours >> no. apple -- you got to remember we're a hedge fund as we've talked about before, carl, we go long, we go short. we made money on the short side on apple this year we made money on the long side, wish all my stocks were doing as well for us as apple is. but remember, it's -- apple has benefitted from the pandemic their iphone revenues went from down year over year to up 66% year over year in the march quarter and decelerating since then, but the long-term trend in smart phone units you've had global smart phone units down, you know, 3 to 4 years in a row before the pandemic hit. so, that's the long-term backdrop you have. and what's really happened is the multiples have gone up a lot. so from my perspective right now, investors are bullish because they go, oh, apple said we fore gone 6 billion in revenues and so we're going to get that back. so beginning of next year will

be better than seasonal. but a lot of us have gone out and bought new iphones, ipads, macs, et cetera, during the pandemic so you can work from home or my case my kids being at home needing some of those devices. >> sure. >> so, that's going to give back don't forget, amazon missed two quarters in a row. netflix missed two subscriber numbers in a row you've gone through a lot of the other companies that are giving back apple wasn't doing well on a revenue basis before the multiples expanding just like it is for the overall market, but that's different than how their core business is doing. i think that's an important distinction to make. >> yeah. it's also different from what others who are also cautious are saying that is largely about the app store risks to the model there, not just here but in the european union this 10k the other day which made morgan stanley a little bit quizzical i wonder, but is that your chief concern? or is it really units? >> well, it's really all of the

above because what i try to remind people and this is -- i think we talked about amazon before they reported and facebook and, you know, some of the concerns around advertising. you have to remember what the trend was before the pandemic and what the pandemic did to those trends and then what the normal is going to be. on top of it, the biggest risk arguably is what's going on with the app store fees because that's really driven the multiple because people sort of had this narrative of, well, apple is going to be this big toll taker and charge all these companies all this money and that's going to be very sticky all of a sudden you have to cut those fees, that's a very large problem because that's big portion of the reason the multiples has gone up so much is they have over a billion people using iphones and so you're going to be able to take a toll on all of that for any services they get that starts to change. you've got a big problem with the multiple looking forward

because that's very profitable business relative to hardware margins as well. >> right fits into that services piece. dan, we're kind of talking here about megacap teches as sort of this value play and if you think that the fed is going to raise interest rates, have to raise interest rates next year, that may fit into the idea of growth at a reasonable cost and not growth at any cost, right? i'm stealing from you. >> yeah. yes, you stole my line from me yesterday. so, you know, right now it's growth at any price. multiples don't matter you don't need to worry what valuations are stocks going up, just keep buying it because it's going to keep going higher. that really works well when you got a fed where the balance sheet is up 20% year over year they added 4.4 trillion in stimulus over a year and a half since the pandemic and environment where rates start to go up, i think people are going to start to look at growth at a reasonable price and so that's why for us, you know,

google and facebook are much more appealing than an apple where we're looking at via come and streaming for nine times p.e. so as rates go higher, companies that aren't making profits they're going to be i think looked at a lot more critically and you're going to start to see things starting to change i think as we get into next year because i 100% believe the fed is going to raise rates multiple times next year because inflation is going to stay higher than what people think. and all central banks are sort of headed down that path, one way or the other and that's going to make you look at market cap to gdp for the u.s. stock market sitting at two times and go, wow, the 50-year average is 0.8 peak of the tech bubble is 1.4 google and facebook look really interesting at near market multiples with two to three times the growth relative to some other names that aren't seeing that. >> right and dan just got a note, one of your other stock picks we have to talk about this another time

is the real reel, which i'm curious how that fits into your thesis, but we'll save that for next time. dan niles, thank you very much for joining us we'll talk to you again soon. >> my pleasure meantime, tesla was having a big year ford is also more than double. the cfo is going to join us on the other side of this break as they buyback some of this debt "techcheck" is back in two it's another day. and anything could happen. it could be the day you welcome 1,200 guests and all their devices. or it could be the day there's a cyberthreat. only comcast business' secure network solutions give you the power of sd-wan and advanced security integrated on our activecore platform so you can control your network from anywhere, anytime. it's network management redefined. 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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♪ let's get a gut check on gaming stocks. both getting a pop this morning on strong results. both up more than 3% as both companies raise their full-year outlooks ndp data shows overall spending on consumer video games was up 7% shares are not having a great year all three major publishers in the red since january. electronic arts the top performer, and well shares have done the worst, it's still not cheap trades at a higher valuation with the price to sales ratio of 8.9, take 2 is closer to 6 in e.a. 7, phil. -- carl. >> yeah. >> phil the next. >> worst stocks of the year so far. meantime ford is planning to spend nearly $30 billion on the development and manufacturing of evs. phil lebeau has the cfo on a

first on cnbc interview. >> let's bring in the cfo of the ford motor company joining us today to discuss a number of initiatives that you just announced this morning john, let's start off first off with the one investors are most focussed sed on which is the decision to buy back up to $5 billion in high yield bonds, bonds you took out at the beginning of the pandemic to ensure liquidity the this is a big move and a lot of people say a smart move does this get you closer to investor grade rating? >> absolutely, we think so you know, we're executing our plan you're seeing that come through the performance of the business. so now it's time to deleverage the balance sheet, reduce our interest expense going forward and with that, you know, we think it's another good step towards investment grades. so absolutely. it's a positive for us >> john, your capital expenditures over the next four years, now you already said you're going to put $30 billion, approximately, into electric and autonomous vehicle development and manufacturing.

$15 billion of that is capital expenditures that you guys also announced last week. is this the high water mark? or do you look at this rate of investment and say, we don't know what the future holds but we're pretty certain we're going to have to continue investing at least at this rate once you get back beyond 2025 >> yeah. i think that's just it you know, we're going to invest whatever it takes to drive our growth initiatives on battery and electric vehicles and our connected vehicles so right now we have announced the $30 billion for bevs we said last week that we invest half of that would be in capital expenditures and what you're going to see is a run rate of roughly $7 billion a year in cap expenditures now if we need to invest more because we have good growth opportunities that we think will give us a great return, we'll do that we're not capital sconstrained. we have the money to invest in our growth initiatives and we're going to work on the balance sheet and deleverage that. so we're going to make movers when we need to make to drive

this growth plan and continue to execute our ford plus plan >> john, the other piece of news from you guys this morning is essentially esg financing plan basically you guys saying, hey, we have a framework for funding, future environmental and sustainability investments, including potentially issuing up to $1 billion in a green bond. is that how you're going to likely pay for some of these ev and av projects in the future? >> well, a lot of the funding for our investments will come from free cash flows in our operations but this framework that we've announced first of accounting for usoem is really positive because we get to tie our sustainability plans and actions directly to how we're going to approach capital market and we'll have transparency straight through to what actions actually underpin any financing that we take around clean, clean manufacturing, clean transportation or work we might be doing to make people's lives

better and underserved communities or improve communities around our footprint areas where we have our facilities and our offices so, we really see this as a positive framework we're seeing a lot of interest from asset managers in this space. and so with this framework, we think it's going to be positive for us to satisfy the needs that they have and also bring us some lower cost financing for us as a company and lower our overall cost to debt. >> ey, john, it's deirdre. i wonder if ford can move even further down the supply chain model like tesla has done by produce potentially your own parts and potentially batteries. do you foresee eventually skipping the dealership model to increase your margins? >> so when you look at what we've learned from the chip shortage, we're definitely going down into the supply chain we're understanding where our capacities are down at the fab for semiconductors we're looking at securing our capacity down at that level. and then working back up through

the supply chain so you're seeing that semiconductor chips but we need to look at memory chips. we need to look at batteries all of our advanced componentry, we are going to go much deeper into the supply chain and look at vertical integration if we need to if we think that's the right move for the business. we're busy looking and learning and making adjustments i think we'll have a much better approach as we move forward. >> john, interesting debate going on right now regarding evs and tax credits and what's really necessary to grow the market obviously the economics of evs are getting better all the time. demand is already outpacing supply do you think they're deserved? separate from the infrastructure part of chargers, let's say, do consumers need to be encouraged at all beyond what they're already doing? >> well, we're seeing great demands as it is today for our battery electric vehicles. we think for the mustang is over

200,000 units a year we have 160,000 reservations for the lightning. so, we see demand being strong for these vehicles e-transit, our electric band we'll have out next year, that's sold out as well i think when you look around the world and you see where governments have supported the transition to electric vehicles, you see adoption rate being much quicker. so i think it's a combination of both that's going allow us to move forward and meet our commitments as far as co2 and some of the stakes that we put in the ground to move forward on that front >> john, it's phil again yesterday you guys announced to all of your salary employees here in the u.s. that they should be or will be required to be vaccinated by december 8th or they could potentially be facing some type of an unpaid leave how many people right now -- what percentage of your salary employees are vaccinated at ford and are you concerned that there's the potential for some

hiccups as you get towards december 8th and may have a sizable contingent of employees who are not vaccinated >> right well, well being and safety of our employees is our priority. 84% of our salary employees are vaccinated we're a federal contractor and we have to apply by the rules. that means december 8th majority of our salaried work force needs to be vaccinated those who don't have accommodation for either a medical reason or religious reasons aren't vaccinated, they could be facing unpaid leave so we'll have to continue to work this. but our goal is to have, you know, our employees vaccinated, safe environment for them and work through that as positively as we can. >> john law ler, cfo of the ford motor company joining frus the company's headquarters in deerborn thank you very much. deirdre, back to you but before i send it back to you, i want to show a chart of ford over the last 20 years. you might be saying why are we looking at ford 20 years ago

well, shares last topped $19 and they briefly traded above $19 today but the last time they closed above $19, september 10th, the day before 9/11. jack nasser was the ceo back then deerd rarks back to you. >> i'm focussing on that 16.8% number that's its return in 20 years, too. phil, thanks for bringing that interview to us and those facts. speaking of evs, let's get a look at deutsche says the stock is one of its top short-term picks despite materially underperformed just about all of the closest peers for the past three months raising the price target to 70 bucks from 60. shares are down 7% since august versus significant gains from competitors like tesla and exupon deutsche attributing the slump to knee owe struggles with the chip shortage and lack of new products the ramp up of flag ship et 7 sedan and unveiling of other new products is expected to be the catalyst that they need to turn this thing around. shares are rallying a little

this morning they're up nearly 3.5%, julia. >> and after the break, never before seen deposition tapes of elizabeth holmes live at the courthouse plus, watch nvidia, wells fargo hikes that price target almost $100 to 320 like the metaverse opportunity there and a lot more "techcheck" is straight ahead. at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner with access to financial advice,

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i'm carl quintanilla request deirdre bosa and julia boorstin. nasdaq and s&p hit all time highs. well off the session highs more on the sectors. first a news update with sue herrera. >> hello, carl here is what's happening at this hour moderna shares down more than 15%. the vaccine maker suffering production problems with its covid shots and sharply lowering its sales guidance people going back to the gym helping planet fitness blow past

estimates. the shares are up 9% the company reporting its highest-ever third quarter net member growth. some key economic reports out as well this morning worker productivity posting the biggest quarterly decline since 1981 as labor surge. weekly jobless claims fell again to a new pandemic low. and the u.s. trade deficit jumped to a record $80.9 billion in september thanks to a sharp drop in exports. and tens of millions of workers have until january 4th to get vaccinated or submit to weekly koe covid testing. the white house issuing new guidelines earlier this morning. those rules apply to firms with 100 or more employees. companies face fines up to $14,000 for each worker who does not comply and most healthcare workers must get at least one shot or an exemption by december 5th with no provision for testing you are up to date i'll see you again in an hour. carl, back to you. >> all right, sue. thanks very much. meantime, etsy shares up

double digits today after strong earnings with another consumer play square coming after the bell that's an all-time high on etsy. mike santoli is looking at this growing divergence within tech, mike. >> yeah. carl, etsy and square both within groups in general have been the have notes within tech. if you look at the ecommerce related etf ibuy, technically mobile payments etf have actually been significant laggards all year. you see these are the downside lines on the chart in contrast, semis and software, software dominated by sales force and microsoft as a sector. the money flowing toward more kind of enterprise and cyclicly geared type parts of tech. now, that's not necessarily the way it's going to stay i think it's worth looking at these groups here. they obviously were pandemic beneficiaries in terms of ecommerce and fin tech and the payments area is very interesting because it's been

profoundly weak. even visa and mastercard i don't know if it's too much capital crowding into that area, whether it's things like a firm and other disrupters, maybe kind of knocking them off course in terms of their motes but that's something to watch as we get square's numbers later to see if they confirm square has been holding up better as pays there pal as a stock. >> i noticed that. when you talk about disrupters, certainly square still making some big moves on that front buy now pay later. check out shares of ibm completing its spinning off of that legacy infrastructure business today now trades on the new york stock exchange under ticker kd shares are down more than 3.5% we'll be right back. stay with us in 2016, i was working at the amazon warehouse when my brother passed away. and a couple of years later, my mother passed away. after taking care of them, i knew that i really wanted to become a nurse. amazon helped me with training and tuition.

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alphabet is pursuing a new contract with the government now this is google's cloud business trying to get in on the mix on the next incarnation of that $10 billion jedi pentagon contract we talked about it a lot it was a contract that was supposed to go to amazon then went to microsoft and was scrapped entirely after legal battles. multiple reports describe alphabet's push for this business as, quote, aggressive and obviously carl this would help the growth of its share of the cloud market it still lags behind microsoft

and amazon significantly but of course you have to wonder what cost in terms of employee dissatisfaction and another theme that alphabet has been dealing with over the last few years. >> absolutely. we'll watch for that. meanwhile we have yet to hear a word from elizabeth holmes in court. now nine weeks into her trial in san jose the question is will she take the stand in her own defense cnbc's yasmine has been there everyday has obtained some never before seen deposition tapes an put this story together. >> reporter: she was the world's youngest self-made female billionaire who has never at a loss for words, but as you'll see, in this nearly four-hour deposition obtained by cnbc, it was a much-different elizabeth holmes who hardly said anything. >> yes >> the date, june 27th, 2018 just 12 days after holmes, the founder and ceo of theranos and company president were indicted on charges of fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. both have pleaded not guilty

>> no. >> listen as holmes repeated will takes the fifth on advice of counsel while being deposed by an attorney representing late stage theranos investors sued her, the company and balwani. >> are you going to follow his instruction not to answer. >> i'm going to follow my counsel's instructions. >> following his instruction. >> same response >> reporter: holmes won't acknowledge it's her when shown an appearance on cnbc's "mad money". >> do you recognize you on that video? >> same instruction. >> that investor lawsuit ended with a confidential settlement if holmes does take the stand in her own defense, she won't be allowed to take the fifth. and she'll likely face a barrage of questions from prosecutors about what she told investors and patients questions she answered in detail in this s.e.c. deposition from 2017. >> did you ever tell investors or potential investors in 2013 or 2014 that theranos developed

proprietary devices that can conduct blood tests central lab can use and those were ready for patient testing? >> i don't know that we said it in those words but generally those what we were working to do with many labs going into the fda in that time frame. >> reporter: holmes' defense signaled it's ball wanny, her ex-boyfriend who is to blame which he strongly denies 2017, holmes is seen acknowledging that the end of the day, she was the one in charge >> but were you the decision maker on behalf of theranos and sign the walgreen's contract or the amendment? >> i did i signed many of the walgreen's agreements i don't know if i signed all of them yes, i'm the ceo i'm the ultimate decision maker for the company. >> reporter: attorneys for holmes did not respond to cnbc's request for comment on these tapes or whether she'll take the stand. we all know the expression silence is golden, but it could

be the opposite depend ogen who you're talking to in this case elizabeth holmes has not spoken in court yet she wears a mask that could play in her favor with the jury. they have not been able to see any sort of emotion from her, so they might see her as a sympathetic character that's just sitting there legal experts tell me it's very risky to put elizabeth holmes on the stand. but her lawyers might do it if they feel like they're losing the case now, julia, that would open her up to the government using her own words against her. >> oh, yasmine, fascinating video and we cannot wait to see what happens next. thanks so much and after the break, scooter startup byrd goes public in a multibillion dollar spak deal. the stock is down 10% in early trading. the ceo joins us next right here on "techcheck. your shipping manager left to “find themself.” leaving you lost. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. indeed instant match instantly delivers quality candidates

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forecast than expected going into the holiday season. this stock has finally overtaken its highs from earlier on in the year trading at a new all-time high analysts there largely bullish despite that q4 guide and the move that it has already made, btig upping its price target to $260 and we've already taken out that level this morning. we're at 273 at the moment so they're going to have to get back to work says the stock is, quote, still rocking and rolling and massive 2020 gains are here to stay. so it's a post-pandemic darling, too, i suppose, carl >> yeah. fascinating reversal today, dee. we continue to watch the zillow story as well. it's bands of course home flipping business, lays off a quarter of its work force. cathy woods ark funds buying shares tuesday as the stock sunk but yesterday wood changed her position selling nearly 3 million shares cutting stake by 40% and joins buy and sell side

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electric scooter company bird is making its public debut at the new york stock exchange today. the company just announcing it has completed its spac merger and joining us now from the nyse is bird's founder and ceo travis van der zanden thanks for joining us this

morning. your stock trading down 10% this morning. what's your message to investors about what's next for the company? >> well, look, i know the stock price is going to be volatile in these early days i know we're up 14% yesterday and down 10% today i think for me, i don't pay close attention to it. i talked to the company about this we expect ups and downs and really the whole company is focused on execution, long-term execution and beating the forecast and that's really what matters is taking more electric scooters and more electric bikes to cities all over the world >> travis, talk to us about the competitive landscape. lyft just reported a 51% increase in the number of active riders and there's lime backed by uber. i've seen a lot of lime scooters i wonder if you're concerned about consolidation among your rivals >> yeah. there are a few players in the category doing electric scooters

and electric bikes bird's going after the 60% of all trips in the city that are five miles or less and we're looking at a massive market opportunity and some estimates put it at $800 billion tam in this market and when you think about 60% of all trips in the city bird is going after a massive market where most of the electric vehicle category is going after the 40% of trips and whether it's tesla or fordthat i know was on earlier and bird was going after this massive opportunity and it's way less competitive than the electric car space. >> travis, good to see you it's deirdre i wonder why you went the spac instead of a traditional ipo especially when there are public comps and the sharing economy for investors to look at did you think that you'd get more money, better price from retail investors and also did you get any assurances from your sponsor that they'd be holding on to shares for the long term >> we looked at all options as a company, and decided once we met

the switchback team, we really decided they were the right partners for us. we did the charge point deal and we liked what we saw there and they had similar vision and mission around reducing gas car trips globally and trying to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles in the case of charge point and in the case of bird and microelectric vehicles and we felt like switchback was the best partner for us. >> anybody who lives in new york city knows what the city has done to create lanes for bicycles and scooters, but i wonder, is that happening everywhere at that pace and do you see next year being even more dramatic on that front? >> covid really did accelerate the rollout of bike lanes and protected bike lanes all around the world. i know new york has certainly been doing that and the new mayor of new york is very pro-bike, i know he's pledged to roll out 300 miles of protected bike lanes and so we are seeing that across

the world and it's exciting to me to see the u.s. cities really start to close the gap on european cities. obviously europe has a lot more bike infrastructure and so in a world where we have these 3,000-pound gas cars moving people around and the roads can't handle the traffic anymore, we think it's refreshing to see cities really embrace more bike lanes and more microelectric vehicles to help people get around cities and i know the traffic in manhattan is terrible and on average i think the speed is 8 miles per hour and you can take a bird scooter from one side of manhattan to another going 15 miles per hour and probably get there twice as fast >> travis, while some cities like new york are embracing more bike lanes other cities have cracked down on the regulatory issues since you first launched this company in 2017 i'm just thinking about the limits on the number of scooter companies that can operate and how that's created some bidding

wars and there's this question of insurers who do consider these scooters more dangerous than bikes how are you addressing those two issues >> we built great relationships with cities across the world and for us, we go and we talk to a city and our mission and vision is very much aligned with every city every city i talk to wants less traffic and less carbon emissions and less parking problems and the immediate solution for that is the microelectric vehicle companies like bird. we don't need tunnels and autonomous cars and we need bike lanes and more microelectric vehicles throughout cities and now that we're in over 350 cities across the world it's a strong data point that city has embraced this form of transportation on the safety side, you know, if you look at bird, for example. we onlyhave one medical incident for every 50,000 rides. so on a percentage basis, it is

very low, 20,000 rides and for us, our mission is to get as many cars off the road as possible because we think cars are the dangerous thing and in a world with more microelectric vehicles like bird is a safer world and more environmentally friendly >> certainly, nobody likes traffic. travis vanderzanden, thanks for joining us today. >> thanks, julia another listing to keep an eye on and that is nerd wallet, nrds going public by a traditional ipo, that is and the stock is surging up more than 80% currently. i caught up with the ceo tim chan in a techcheck live stream. catch that live on cnbc tech check or our twitter feed. we are back in just two minutes. . but this is worth.

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pinterest, airbnb and uber all reporting later today. uber down in today's session and it's been benefitting from lyft's good results earlier this week so the stakes are high here they'll have to show some of those same trends of recovering driver supply and narrowing losses julia? >> yeah, and i'm keeping my eye

on pinterest reports after the bell and the big question there is do we hear anything about pinterest being at play and carl, will they be able to grow that user base? >> yeah. meantime, oil below 81, guys we continue to hear about potential supply -- surpluses in q1 hasn't closed below 80 since october 8th. let's get to the half. >> welcome to "the halftime report." front and center this hour the taper and the takeoff as stocks hit record highs following the fed's big decision and does it mean the so-called everything rally is about to take everything higher we'll discuss with the investment committee today and see the moves they're making following fed day as well. joining me for the hour jenny harrington and josh brown, jon najarian, founder of rebellion.com. the nasdaq 100, the russell all hitting new record highs again today. take a look at the bottom of your screen, too there are several ub