so this is really an opportunity to take care of what's still low interest rates, which of course, is something we have been talking about so much, david >> yeah. keep their costs of capital low. morgan, thank you. that will do it for us right here on "squawk on the street. "techcheck" starts now ♪ ♪ good thursday morning. welcome to "techcheck" i'm carl quintanilla with jon fortt and deirdre bosa today the nasdaq quickly moving lower here, down 1%. taiwan semi, managing to hold on, lifting the entire chip sector back to new heights at the open can you continue to bet on the winners or is it time to dip in chips? snap crackles. shares get another downgrade why the ios changes may be to

blame. later, the ceo of chegg. why one firm thinks this name could garage late to record levels in 2022, dee. >> we'll start with the chips, carl taiwan semi, shares, getting a nice pop this morning after the iphone supplier reported a record profit in q4 and provided up the guidance. the move good enough for new all-time high. shares up more than 6% and this comes as the chip sector continues to outperform software the sharp divergence that started in late october. check out this chart semis were one of the strongest trades of 2021 you see that divergence take place around november. we're seeing a boost to other names in the sector as well. very interesting setup heading into earning season. semis continue to outperform will software surprise to the upside j jon, there's bifurcations within bifurcations what we hear from the chip ceos across the board and we talked to several of them over the last few weeks is that demand is not going away we're not talking so much about a mature smart phone market,

we're talking about all of the new trends to pick up demand, whether that be high performance computing, autos, 5g and iot all the ceos say that they don't see any sign of that easing. >> yes but i think what investors might need to think about also, be cautious about in these tsmc results, yes, it shows a big player is confident in the stability of demand overall for chips heading into the future, but within that, i don't think it's necessarily good for all chip makers. just, for example, look at qualcomm they're looking to expand their addressable market, which means they're eating into somebody else's i think about what the automakers have been saying lately, based on their trouble securing chip supply, the problems that they've had. they're looking at tesla going maybe we need to standardize chips across vehicles. maybe we need to design our own chips so we can be more flexible in these situations where, you know, maybe we can't get supply of the standard issue stuff.

we shouldn't have 1,000 chips in a car. maybe just, you know, a few hundred that we very specifically pick. carl, so, i think as those shifts happen and the likes of qualcomm and marvel move into spaces where very specialized chip makers might have existed before, not everybody wins so you see a whole sector moving, maybe some names are moving higher than deserve to and others not as much. >> it's true, jon. of course, when you think about the sheer power and scale of tsm at this point, inevitably, and this is sort of the bearish argument, it's going to make some governments uneasy around the world when we're relying so much on one country and one country's player that will be a discussion for another time at some point, does that boil over into policy >> maybe we have a bit of it now. joining us now for more on tsmc and outlook for the sector, knbr investors investment principal joseph chen. good to have you

joe, when i look at these results, one of the things i see that might not be popularly seen is that pat dellsinger's tragedy at intel is actually getting validated more and more when it comes to foundry and overall chip demand, whether he can execute on that is a whole different question but the idea that there's going to be stable demand for chips and possibly while likely demand for foundry manufacturing outside of asia, that seems to line up with what tsmc is saying, no >> yes and good morning thank you for having me. you ask a really interesting question and i'll answer on a couple different vectors. first of all, relates to tsmc, very strong quarter demonstrating continued accelerating share gains, pricing power and importantly a major increase in capital spending which is indicative of strong demand visibility into the future we're bullish on tsmc and believe this quarter confirms our long-term view more importantly, i think what's happening at tsmc is that they

represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of the many interesting and transformational things that are happening in the semiconductor sector you asked the question regarding intel, and the attempt to get into the foundry services business overall and it's indicative of an overall industry structure where manufacturing of leading edge semiconductors is frankly very difficult, more difficult than it has been in the past. and it's -- the value extraction from this ecosystem is increasing as a function of the supply demand function in the business you layer on a question around the strategic nature of foundry services and this is a whole new element to the industry which frankly we could spend the entire segment on. but i think it's important to recognize that there are number of companies in the manufacturing ecosystems that represent arm suppliers to this overall theme. if you believe that resuring and the strategic nature of manufacturing is a long-term trend, many companies will benefit from it. >> asnl being one that i think

about a lot. there's some risk there geopolitically especially as various governments try to lock out china and asml from dealing with them, but maybe talk about the equipment makers and some of those other arm suppliers as a play within this environment of what tsmc is calling stable demand and the degree to which that's priced into those names now, are there some names that perhaps are being underestimated >> it's a great question so, we did a podcast on this issue in december, which if your viewers would like the long version of it it's available online, but in short what we believe is happening at the semiconductor industry is nothing less than a multi-year, perhaps multi-decade super cycle akin to what happened in the energy cycle against that backdrop, one of the favorites of investing is the ecosystem. industry they address this issue of

morris law stress increasing tran sister. these businesses have been some of the most deeply discounted businesses in the sector and to address one of your questions do we believe there's still upside, absolutely this is an industry that we believe can go through cycle, low double digits and depending on the individual companies you're talking about with the relative share opportunities we believe some companies can grow well in excess of that and we don't believe the market is properly discounting that long-term cash flow potential. >> joe, the difficulty in finding anyone who believes we're at risk of overcapacity, does that worry you at all especially for those who covered this business in multiple cycles for decades? >> it's a great question and i mentioned earlier the inefficiency in this sector due to traditional, cyclical concerns i think it's important to point out that this industry was very cyclical in the past just as energy during certain paradigms is extremely cyclical

as well. the fundamental supply/demand equation in the various sectors that we're talking about are going to dictate how cyclical these businesses are through cycle, how high the highs are, how high the lows are and the amplitude of the cycles. we believe that the semiconductor industry and the manufacturing ecosystem in particular is fundamentally a better business today than it has been in the past and so while it's very fair to talk about cyclicality, i think it's important to think about cash flow generation through cycle. as i mentioned earlier, these are businesses that can generate 15 cash flow growth through cycle in our view over the long term. >> joe, you talked about the manufacturing ecosystem, but on the design side, i wonder broadly if you think that we're going to see more tech companies bring that in-house like we have for the likes of apple, microsoft and amazon do you think that in 2022 that moves down a level, you see smaller cap names sort of doing that or even other industries like auto? >> another great question. and something a topic deserving

of its entire own -- we could dedicate an entire segment to this issue this is in the industry we call this the rise of heterogeneous computing. it's the rise -- it's the idea that the days of one size fits all off the shelf x 86 as the de facto computing paradigm, those days are over. and in the new era of cloud data, of cloud, big data and a.i., heterogeneous computer architectures are the way we're going to optimize for the increasing workloads so answer your question directly, do i believe that trend is slowing down? no, quite the opposite actually. i think you'll see more and more custom and semicustom designs that will put even more impetus on the manufacturing ecosystem to keep up. >> yep buckle up, investors joe, thank you >> thank you for having me meanwhile, big test of the ipo market as we await the first trade of tpg leslie picker has more hi, leslie >> hey, carl

out with the new, in with the old. that's the sentiment surrounding the ipo market right now as the selloff in growth has refocussed investors on fundamentals. case in point, today's calendar, 30-year old tpg set to make debut shortly with billion dollar ipo founder and executive chairman jim koumter described their deal as, quote, back to the future ipo. what he meant by that is that the interest is stemming largely from traditional institutional investors versus the robinhood crowd we have seen throughout 2021 growth oriented deals seen more hurdles this week, however just works a decade old venture backed software company postponed its debut initially scheduled for today. recent ipos in general have been on a losing streak for investors down 24% over the last year. that's the ipo-etf now, only one in five ipos were actually profitable last year but we saw a record amount of capital raised ipo advisers tell me, though,

this year may look different with a focus on more of the stojier, cyclical sponsored back exits in the industrials and financial sectors. for its part, tpg's business model is private equity, but about 20% of the assets management are in growth investing. if you recall, tpg was an early backer of uber, box and spotify among other big exits for them guys >> yeah, many of those names, leslie, that we covered their journey to public markets. this idea that being a back to the future ipo, so interesting implying that perhaps this is more of a value play that would also be such a stark contrast to what we've seen over the last few years these high-growth tech companies like get, big pops in the early days of trading. what does it mean for some of the names like instacart and stripe and reddit that are eyeing ipos if tpg does well and sort of indicates that investors may be looking for more value? >> so, if you talk to bankers about this, which i've been chatting with some and getting their thoughts on it, they'll

say that good companies can go out in any market. now the question is what constitutes a good company in this market? of course those names that you mentioned we have yet to really see their financials and dig into to see whether they count and constitute that quality, profitability, some of the more fundamental drivers that investors are looking for in this market, that said, i don't expect us to see kind of the same level that we saw in 2021 tech will always be a big part of the ipo market, but i don't know if it will necessarily be the case that it pushes us over into new record territory in 2022 just because there's such a different dynamic in the market right now. and retail as well you brought up retail as kind of the this next marginal buyer for so many deals in 2021 that we're able to help kind of ensure that there was a successful debut even when constitutional was kind of tapped out that may not be there this year, especially if you have more deals that are maybe older, less brand name, less well known to kind of the average person out

there. >> all right, leslie picker, thank you. now still to come, apple a top pick goldman believes in love plus the ceo of chegg is with us nasdaq, meanwhile, reversing early gains. you see it there down about a percent. snap leading it to the downside. "techcheck" just getting started. ♪

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they use stamps.com all the services of the post office only cheaper get a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/try and never go to the post office again. a gut check on apple here. shares are lower after being named one of bank of america's top picks for 2022 boa bullish on apple releasing headset and charging for immersive apps and looking to the launch of a new iphone se is the catalyst rating the stock a buy with a price target of $210 jpm and b of a now the highs on the street at 210, carl. >> meanwhile, dee, the metaverse has gotten a lot of investor focus but those stocks clearly are not safe from the market volatility the round hill ball metaverse etf down more than 13% in the last two months although did see big inflows in the last couple

of months of 2021. joining us this morning founder of etf matthew ball and former amazon studios head of etf welcome back. >> good morning. >> i want to talk fundamentals but i wonder how you're handling or thinking about the macro risks regarding rates and the fed and everything else. how -- at what point do you think fundamentals make more of an assertion about the future? >> look, i think most advocates and believers in the metaverse believe this is a multi-trillion dollar, multidecade transition i'm not paying attention minute to minute nor even month to month, even if you were to purchased the peak of the dot com crash you would be up 3x now 20 years later i don't think that's anyone's target return profile. but it just shows you what the perspective is when you take the right time. >> it will mean you'll need to be nimble on names individual, individual names, doesn't it, if we're going to use that dot com analog >> no, i disagree.

avenue passive rules based methodology. not to pick unity when it's particularly low when the valuation compresses, we're picking names based on the expert council's belief in this multitrillion dollar, multidecade return we are not tweaking based on who performs on a quarterly, quarterly basis but instead who is positioned to benefit most over the long-term >> matthew, it's deirdre good morning to you. my question to you is why is there so much metaverse pushbac lately it's not just my colleague jon fortt. we're hearing there's so much overhype in this space the evernote founder called gloss uncreative people and companies put over fundamentally a lack of good ideas how do you respond to that and help our audience separate the hype from the real opportunity here >> i would position it in two ways we have gone through two major transformations over the past 40 years. the rise of pc devices and the fixed line internet and the rise

of mobile and cloud. in most instances we understood what was coming before we had services available for them. in 2004 mark zuckerberg created facebook but there was nothing preventing that creation in 1999 or earlier it does take founders. but having gone through two different revolutions, the industry is now attune to the fact that we need to prepare for what's next. in this instance, i would agree that preparations and hype has now preceded the innovation that will actually make it real right now we can understand some of the names such as unity or matter port, epic games, but it's absolutely right that we're talking about it more than we can experience it and that will lead to fair pushback. >> so, matthew, whydidn't arvr headsets take off before this point, for example, and why will they now i mean, they've sort of gone the path of google glass where it's initially the projection was they would be in the consumer mainstream by now but they sort of backed off into military and

industrial use it seems to me -- i fear that part of this metaverse marketing gloss is going to sweep up ideas that haven't succeeded up to this point along with some things that were already on a great trajectory and fool investors into thinking, well, it's different now when it might not be is that part different now and if so, why >> i would certainly agree that the term is being used to wrap together all nature of special projects and boondoggles in some instances. but to argue things aren't different technologically speaking is flawed much the way the apple newton device released 14 years before the iphone the iphone of course the most successful product in history. when you take a look at the early rise of a-r/vr devices we identify really important differences. for example, we believe that to avoid nauzuation with vr devices we need roughly 120 frames per second and 8k resolution per eye. if you do back five years, we were roughly one quarter of the

former and one eighth of the ladder we're now about 50% or 75% on both variables we are now able to identify that by 23, 2024, we will have overcome that minimum viable product threshold that was not true five years ago. it is going to be true now and we can already see devices from sony and others that will cross that barrier shortly >> finally, matthew, i noticed your tweet about zynga great day for zynga shareholders i wonder how you're thinking about sort of the blurred lines between mobile gaming, as we saw with this deal, and what we think the metaverse will eventually become. >> i think the important thing to recognize here is that we can see that mobile is the primary gateway for all virtual experiences. much as we think call of duty war zone or fortnite battle royal, the early ind cay tars of multipeople participating in virtual worlds, we have billions

doing through mobile ip and mobile only games networks a company like take two makes tremendous gains, grand them auto online is one of the most successful titles in history and fundamentally capped and so is to take two and we see in zynga a company with deep bench of mobile games, ip, multiple different studios a and burgeoning ad network to support that version >> we'll see what opportunities arise from it and how that deal evolves. we have to stay in touch with you, matthew that's for sure. appreciate thank you. we head to break, check out shares of tesla and rivian naming both top picks for the year by mizuho bullish on ford and gm. coming up, investors continue to put money into fintech and the private markets, that is. a billion dollar funding round for check out.com as they look to expand in the u.s to expand in the u.s ceo is next.

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♪ welcome back to "techcheck." i'm carl quintanilla with deirdre bosa, jon fortt and julia boorstin after getting a higher open, the nasdaq was unable to hold gains. peloton, moderna, jd.com, some of the laggards, many of the chips continue to outperform dow is close to session highs much julia will look into tech shi shift hiring outside of the the market good morning here is what's happening at this hour falling gas and food prices helping keep wholesale inflation to a gain of just.2% in december however, wholesale prices also jumped a record 9.7% for all of 2021 jobless claims ticked up to 230,000 in the latest week claims have now risen four of the last five weeks, but they're still low by historical standards. continuing claims drop below 1.6, the lowest level since

1973 shares of delta are up around 3% after the company posted strong profits and its highest quarterly revenue since 2019 delta expects that omicron will drive it to a loss in the current quarter. but ceo says that travel demand is on the rise what we do see in the booking data is that president's day weekend forward looks really robust our numbers and the bookings continue through this period people are ready to travel they're ready to book their spring plans theyknow omicron will not be a threat to them at that point they want to get out and they want to reunite with friends, family, the world. get on with their life >> the omicron variant, however, does remain a challenge, the worst of omicron it appears may be behind us here is to hoping. deirdre? >> absolutely here is to hoping. rahel, thank you. fin tech is falling behind the broader market, a rocky year look at the key players block, formerly known as square and

paypal 19 and 25% down. but that's not keeping bullish investors out of the sector when it comes to the private market valuations that continue to soar checkout.com announcing a defunding round placing the company at new $40 billion valuation, making the third largest private fintech company behind stripe and klarna giullaume joins us now great to have you on "techcheck." thank you for joining us given that setup, do you think that private markets are giving you not just a better price in terms of valuation but better terms as well. you only had to hand out 2.5% of the company shares for that billion dollars and does that sort of make you push out plans to go public >> hey, so first of all, thanks very much for having me. i think the real question is as a private company, our investors get to see all the numbers it's very different from the

public company and the investors that have invested in the round all public investors for the most part. so, if they wanted to invest in public, liquidity, i think what the reason investors have decided to invest in checkout, we had an extraordinary year we're gaining market share against both the incumbents and the new players and i think this reflects an evaluation in the numbers delivered last year and if anything, we're super excited for the year that is coming because we have new products, more merchants than ever our press release is clear we service the world's biggest company. and so if the investors are coming in, it's probably as a reflection of our performance. >> that's a fair point in terms of the crossover funds now you said in the past when you talk about your different, that checkout.com is different from players like stripe and ad because you capture more of the enterprise market, but don't they especially stripe eventually go after that market and how will you keep ahead especially if stripe plans to go public and that gives them more visibility with some of those

enterprise players >> so first of all, yes, we're absolutely 100% enterprise focussed this is in our dna and since the beginning. then i think competition is a good thing for the internet and consumers in the first place stripe, us just to name them as well, we're just new players competing as the incumbents. most of the today sitting jp morgan chase, b of a with lack of incumbents sitting on platforms. competition is good for us i think in regards to us and our offering, there's three things thatpeople choose checkout from price to quantity and performance, i mean, we're really top tier there. but also relative new features we really focus only on enterprise and this is where the focus goes is that we're not like henry ford only black cars. we really go deep with our customers. build meaningful relationships finally service. if you have only 1,800 customers, you know all of them and give them that extra mile service. if you put all these things together, great outcomes and we'll keep going

>> guillaume, given that, what's your approach to deep eng engagement, if your focus is enterprise, having a better relationship relatively speaking, then some of your competitors with developers in that class is going to be important. so, what have you done what do you plan to do to invest there? >> so, absolutely. developers are now key the buyer in our space has changed completely if you look at five, seven years ago the buyer would be in the cfo trade, think about only pricing. and if you think today who is the buyer of pavement solution, he sits in the product tree, user experience, checkout conversions and ultimately all decisions are led by product people you have to capture that audience we have sent boxes to test every scenario again in the u.s., only a few payment methods. you go outside of the u.s.,

there are a lot of different pavement methods and being able to play with this and what we call send box environments is a huge plus for developers to really try something before they buy. it i think it makes a big difference. >> that's really interesting i think it was 12 months ago you did a raise at a $15 billion valuation and here you are january of '22 at a $40 billion valuation. so, that's quite a shift frame for me how different the story was 12 months later? did it have to do with the trajectory changing that much? or is it more just a shift in intensification of interest and the space overall. >> so, i think there's a few things first of all, yes, we delivered our numbers. we overdelivered the numbers and if anything, the investors will have invested this year have beater multiple than the investors who invested last year because the closer you get to public markets and you start correlating with public markets

that's the first the second thing is really in the numbers and the validation by the world's largest brands. from 2019 when we did our series a to last year, we tripled volume three years in a row. that's like 27x. more than 100 billion in e-commerce last year and we'll do several hundreds this year. and so fundamentally, in the business like ours with enterprise no churn unless we do have a bad job and did a good job of multiple years investors have the confidence that business will continue growth. we notoriously focus only on the digital economy. something that is really important to us. if you think about this, all our merchants are growing. we're growing. we're opening new geographies for them we're gaining wallet share against the incumbents and nearly triple tail wind in our portfolio. very strong metrics that support the growth and i think smart and savvy investors can understand and underwrite this and project future revenues with a fair amount of accuracy. >> yep and you also have some big customers in the crypto space which we don't have time to get

to today but we hope you'll come on again soon. thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you very much quick programming note as we go to break, do not miss another addition of "crypto night in america" tonight our sara eisen will sit down with michael sailer and sam bankman freed. begins at 6:00 p.m. eastern time. meanwhile, "techcheck" is back after this.

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comcast business. powering possibilities. a number of ceos with fintech have been disclosing just how much of their hiring has shifted geographically companies from coin base to airbnb tenth annual disrupter list, julia is taking a look at the trend that fast-growing startups are increasingly driving julia i can't believe it's been ten years. i love d 50 season >> oh, thank you, dee. yes, ten years of d 50 this year now, deirdre, there's growing conversation among the ceos of companies that have graduated from the disrupter 50 list about the tech industry shifting away from silicon valley stripe ceo patrick kolson tweeted that 74% of stripe's hiring was outside the bay area in seattle last quarter. that's up from 39% just two years ago.

airbnb respond on twitter, yep the place to be was silicon valley feels like now the place to be is the internet. which is everywhere. brian armstrong adding to the conversation that 89% of coin bases hiring in q4 of last year was outside silicon valley, up from 30% two years ago now, these ceos are pinpointing a growing trend. the first time in more than a decade, the proportion of seed and early stage capital invested in bay area startups this year is on pace to drop below 30% down from more than 40% in 2014. that's according to pitch book and steve case's revolution, a firm that invests with the thesis that the next great startups are outside coastal tech hubs, what he calls the rise of the rest bay area investors are increasingly looking elsewhere over the past decade they've invested over $24 billion in seed and early stage companies in los angeles, nearly 6 billion in early stage

companies in seattle over 4 billion in austin and 3 billion dollars in the washington, d.c. area. now, we have seen this trend play out in the disrupter 50 list last year 29 of the 50 companies were outside of silicon valley and it's a trend likely to continue on this year's list the nomination process is under way, so to nominate your company, scan the qr code that you're seeing on this screen right now or go to cnbc.com/disrupters for more information. guys >> yeah, julia, we have seen more companies in recent years that's out of silicon valley and also seen the rise of chinese tech companies that should prove sbes interesting this year with the government's crackdown on tech companies but they have mostly cracked down on the megacaps, the big guys i wonder if that can lead to perhaps more names, more startups in that country >> yes perhaps more startups in that country but remember of course disrupter 50 are only private companies when you graduate means you have gone public or sold, so it will be really

interesting deirdre to also see with the huge number of ipoed we had last year how many new spots are now open because frequently we have companies on the list year over year so now that a lot of those companies are no longer eligible for the list, i think that's a lot more room for startups and maybe more startups outside the silicon valley region. >> julia, i wonder if companies have started to talk about worker satisfaction over the longer term when workers are either remote or not gathered together geographically, like it's one thing to have a lot of hiring outside of silicon valley, say, but eventually we have to ask how much promotion is outside of silicon valley versus, you know, somebody who you promoted then decided to move i wonder if there's any talk about that yet >> well, we are hearing a lot about how hard it is to hire workers, jon i think thatplays into it. you need to make sure that you can get employees. that's one reason we're seeing so much more hiring across the

country because living near san francisco is still incredibly expensive and so a lot of these companies are finding they can reach a wider variety of potential employees if they cast a broader net from a geographic perspective. i am hearing a lot about moral and culture. how do you maintain a startup culture in a hybrid environment. and this idea of bringing people into the office for regular get togethers so maybe people are far flung flying in for regular check-ins. but this is something that's going to be fascinating to measure to see how it all plays out. two year fwrs now, jon, i think we'll have tons of data on how these different models work. >> i hope so julia, thank you. now as we head to break, we want to get a check on a few dating stocks. goldman says they believe in love upgrading match and bundle recent dropoff makes these names attractive ha ha, from a valuation perspective at least stay with us stay with us ♪

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♪ a gut check on snap today. stock is falling fast this morning. they do downgrade to market perform. cuts the price target from 75 down to 45 the advertising head winds due to ios reasons biggest to bet against. they worry that the market valuation is too high. they cite their own ad buyer

survey in the call they lower their price target on twitter as well on those ad worries and they boost alphabet, dee, interesting it all comes despite the fact that they see the overall trend in the ad tech very strong for '22. >> yeah. some of the big players in ad tech continue to be well positioned, but i thought it was interesting about this, jon, it's all focussed on the ad case for snap we've often talked about the a-r/vr metaverse case for the company maybe it's an underappreciated play here they have sort of this young active user base and they've been experimenting more in open some of the big tech players in terms of ar and vr. >> yeah. i don't get sometimes how these analysts boost their price targets way up, you know, in a market where there's a bit of a frenzy, right, and then, you know, when the stock doesn't get there, not necessarily because the fundamentals are falling apart or there's some new information, we knew about the ios changes, then they cut -- i

don't know you know, okay coming up, cheg looking to expand through m & a after 70% stock drop over the past year. the ceo is with us next. don't go away.

♪ chegg shares have been on quite a trip huge rally in to 2020. the online learning platform launching new consolidated service learn with chegg this

week and today, closes its nearly half a billion dollar acquisition of language learning company busu joining us now president and ceo dan rosenweig. dan, good to see you start us off on learn with chegg because you're bringing a bunch of the things that you do together it's a bit of a different model and approach to your end customer how does this change things? >> well, first of all, thanks, jon. and happy new year to all of you. it changes things a lot because what chegg has been doing since the beginning is we're trying to build a giant platform to help people who need to learn things get unstuck, learn them, master the subject and then perform better, whether it's academically or professionally now with skills or language. and so the ability to create a platform that personalizes each student's needs based on whether or not the student, what subjects the students are taking, what school they're in, what professors they have, where

they are in the semester, how well they learn, whether they learn through video or through text, using machine learning, a.i. and all of the data that we have of tens and tens and tens of millions of students over the years, allows us to of studentse years allow us to personalize the journey so that the student can now go from having to guess what to ask or have to understand what they need to know and be able to present to them and what's likely to be coming next and what will be on the journey earlier, longer and create more value for them and we think this is the next logical step of education and we're surprised that education itself hasn't understood the value of personalized learning and they are starting to which is k through 12 and we will higher educational and a professional and they need to be faster, more efficient and that is with the chegg new personalized platform does >> chegg has gone from being sort of a tool for renting other

people's resources to a provider of digital tools for learning and you seem to be moving into being a platform where learning takes place overall. moving deeper into actually being sort of a classroom yourself how deep are you going to go into that? >> well, that's very astute perception, john, because what we've come from understanding students better than anybody look, we reach more students on a global basis particularly than anybody and particularly in the united states we are growing significantly outside of the united states, and what we know is that more and more students need more and more help, and so they are looking to affect their lives in a positive way by mastering a subject or learning it and most students if it's not for money that they quit the other reason that they quit is because they're stuck and have no one else to help them and so we have to go deeper and deeper into the information that

we need to learn we need to go back to the basics and need to help them with job skills and it may surprise people to know that 40% of our students say they want or need to learn language in order to be successful in the next chapter of their lives which means it is an excellent acquisition where we can extend into the united states more rapidly than most people could during the personalization platform so we'll keep going deeper and deeper you're right, we started out as a third-party provider and we knew that prank was not going to be around so we started to build over the last 12 years a large, popular platform for learning and mastering the subject. >> it's carl it's good to see you there was a piece in "the washington post" about enrolling trends in colleges and losing half a million students this fall the longer this continues the more it starts to build a momentum of the cultural shift and not just the short-term momentum they look at their friends who

didn't go to college and seem to be making good money as you point out and what's the risk that we don't get some of this back >> from the chegg perspective, our expansion outside of the united states and our expansion outside just academic support by going into skills and to language is because we understood those demographic changes were going to change anyway, and language itself is a $17 billion market and has more people learning language than people going to college in the united states. so we've always anticipated that was going to happen, but carl, what we believe is happening is not that people aren't learning. they're just not going to the traditional places to learn because they recognize they're too expensive. they take too long they're not designed for the modern student the modern student is 25 years old, has a job 26% of them have kids. need for the learning to be less expensive, on demand, come with more support so chegg's platform extends just beyond the

traditional marketplace into online learning and skills-based learning and non-traditional pathway. i do think there is a natural momentum that will hurt a lot of schools that don't prepare people for the job marketplace and that has been something that we've been talking about for over ten years so chegg is in a position to take advantage of the trend that's happening, but many people aren't. >> dan, it's deirdre i have a question over the wild stock correction you've seen over the last year i wonder if you wish you'd done more, perhaps, when the stock was trading above 100 bucks. i know you did raise capital in 2021 or do you wish you raised more or used your stock as currency with more and bigger m and a like the meme stocks did at the height of their stock journeys >> no, it's a fair question. we have a philosophy, you never know the road not taken and you may as well make the range successful we have over $2 billion in cash

still even after a $434 million acquisition of a company growing faster than we are and we're extending our presence in europe that we can bring to the u.s. and we were able to do that with money we did raise at $100 a share and that made it very efficient and we're very good stewards of capital and we're also buying back $300 worth of our own stock and we still have $2 billion we are the best financially positioned company in the education space. so we can't go back and revisit what might have happened we certainly did not anticipate what happened in the fall to happen that surprised everybody because the pandemic expanded, extended and beyond that, people were making so much money that as carl pointed out earlier they chose to make money rather than go back to school. some of those things were unknowable and we are happy with the position we're in and we're utilizing our cash position as a

leader should. >> ed tech, as you know is a subject near and dear to my heart. i hope to talk to you soon dan rosenzweig from dchegg. >> thank you, guys >> don't forget to follow and subscribe to our podcast, download anywhere wherever you download podcasts. "tech check" is back in just a moment

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one more thing this morning, adam aron cashing in bringing his total proceeds to 42 million since november tweets that he's done selling for now and still has plans to invest and own and plans to invest 2 million amc shares saying i'm in. the stock has seen a 60% boost since the frenzy began and it is down since aaron began unloading shares from the likes of musk, zuckerberg and bezos know john. >> you have to watch what they do and not just what they say. meanwhile, we are seeing a lot of chip stocks benefiting from

the bump earlier lam research up almost 6%. >> and the nasdaq underperforming witness again, down 0.6%, carl, as we head into earnings season. >> tomorrow, citi, jpm, wells and black rock let's get to judge and the half. ♪ ♪ carl, thanks so much welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner, front and center this hour the state of the markets earnings season, a mere hours away now the investment committee debating all of it they'll tell you the direction of stocks and they're making key moves in the portfolio and you don't want to miss those kerry firestone along with jim lebenthal, ways and pete najarian, co-founder of marketrebellion.com. >> the nasdaq under pressure and almost a triple-digit decline and