rocket, for what that's worth. record annual profit expected at tesla. intel we get results on the heels of that news for that major investment $20 billion in ohio for more chip-making capacity so a lot to be watching for after the bell that does it for "squawk on the street." "tech check" starts now. good wednesday morning welcome to "tech check." today three 1% swings in the first hour of nasdaq trade where do you look to for buys? microsoft beating estimates again thanks to strength in the cloud from gaming to pcs, a breakdown of where things are headed from here and check in on the bitcoin band wagon after a

slew of celebrities agreed to take their salary in bitcoin during its rise as prices are cut in half, who pays that bill? coming up this hour, john. >> checking in on the markets, stocks on pace for their best day of the year so far perhaps, given the nasdaq's recent performance index still down about 12% since the start of the month and the year, its worst january performance on record ever, but we are seeing some life today with a bunch of yesterday's biggest losers looking to claw back some gains, cloud names, semiconductors, fintech all up this morning. >> a long session ahead of us, john, and we have seen serious volatility let's kick things off with microsoft in the green this morning helping power the nasdaq higher after beating estimates thanks to some big strength in the cloud, revenue for the overall segment coming in 32% higher year over year, azure growing by 46% and huge number but that is down slightly from last quarter's 48% investors are also keeping an

eye on comments around the company's planned acquisition of activision blizzard as its subscription game pass hitting 25 million subscribers another double-digit growth area for the company. choose your own adventure, john. so much to digest, the afterhours swing on guidance, gaming, revenue up, makes up almost 11% of microsoft's total revenue now also that nadella talking about the pc renaissance, did you see that coming >> i think we've seen that pc renaissance narrative taking shape for a while with windows 11 coming out, not a surprise but the afterhours swing caught my eye because that 46% azure growth number was a little bit better than stated expectations, but light of what the whisper numbers were we saw the stock down a little over 5% at one point afterhours but then it popped on guidance

we're not necessarily used to getting this kind of guidance consistently from microsoft, but the idea they're saying in the current quarter, you're going to see better growth, better growth apparently particularly for cloud is what investors wanted to see and you had a strong reversal there so count this inconclusive for me, because carl, i wanted to see microsoft beats but just not enormously, that would impact kind of sentiment we saw a little bit of an impact afterhours but then they sweetened it, and we saw even more of an impact. i'm looking forward to apple for sure >> yes, hopefully the call begins a little bit sooner than the print than it did for microsoft, but got some new metrics on teams, 207 million marx, maus, 20 million more than in july but as you point out pcs, gaming, cloud security we'll find out about the metaverse and activision but all

roads lead back to the one name, a lot of people argue carried the market on its back for a long time. >> there's always so much to digest with the set of earnings in particular. teams, carl, we'll dive into as well todd mckinnon yesterday said despite what the popular narrative may be, the competition in this space with zoom and slack, a lot of his customers are using all of them. what does that mean long-term of budgets sort of detract and do you have to choose between them, is teams as strong as it is on the surface? what does it mean for zoom and slack, all the interesting questions in many different spaces, from enterprise to gaming that microsoft brings up each quarter >>is historically meant consolidation for strength for companies that have a broad portfolio of products saying you're buying this and this from us why not stick with that as well. but you know, now the mega scale cloud providers, the hyper scalers also had platforms where

they offer multiple different pieces of software maybe the calculus changes let's zero in more on microsoft and bring in citi senior equity stratiest tyler cadkey, raised his from 376 to 386. what do you make of the afterhours move if anything as it indicates what investor sentiment, how it's reacting to a big reliable stock like microsoft? >> yes, it was quite the aftermarket performance on the stock yesterday. i think what you're seeing is a bit of a sigh of relief across the tech sector, and as you mentioned earlier, i think the key was that azure growth, while disappointing in the quarter, was expected to actually reaccelerate by one to two points next quarter, and one of the metrics that really stood out to us on the quarter was the commercial bookings number, so that's kind of more of your leading indicator in terms of what customers are expected to

spend in the future. that number was up 37% year over year, constant currency. one of the strongest performances we've seen in years, even if you normalize for the easy comp. so we think the combination of the strong commercial bookings, the acceleration in azure really just proves that the tailwinds that are driving microsoft business should continue into q3 and beyond and i think that's why you're seeing a little bit of a relief rally across the software sector. >> the price target that you have on microsoft is higher than its all-time high, but to what degree do you think these tech stocks are getting re-rated? >> yes, well it's interesting for microsoft. there's a lot of concerns out there in the software world of high multiple stocks that are trading on, you know, revenue multiples without any earnings microsoft has a great

combination of growth and high margin businesses, and i mean, you just look at this past quarter, north of 20%, revenue growth north of 20% earnings growth and this is on a $200 billion a year revenue company, really, really impressive numbers, and i think if you zoom out and just compare microsoft's growth rate to the average s&p 500 company, it's about three times higher, depending on where we are in the cycle. if you're not paying three times the multiple on their free cash flow, so we think there's room to rerate as big of a company as it is. we just see the tailwinds powering the business is durable so we think it should continue to re-rate higher going forward. >> tyler, we're seeing this increased focus on gaming revenue, now makes up about a tenth of the total of course the activision blizzard acquisition, how high do you think that number gets, and does that prove, you know, does that improve profitability in the longer run?

>> yes, so activision obviously is a big acquisition it's by far their largest acquisition. assuming that goes through, that will, you know, increase the gaming revenue mix into the teens. i think it's tough to say where does gaming evolve in five, ten years? i think there's a lot of interesting dynamics that can play out, you know, as you mentioned earlier, their game pass revenue kind of more of their subscription style gaming has been a big growth driver for the company and our thought is that with the activision suite of studios eventually that moves to a subscription model where we think they could potentially drive even higher revenue in terms of in-app purchasing and wherever this thing with the metaverse evolves to definitely interesting to watch but i like the direction it's headed more toward subscription, away from kind of the hardware console business, so we do think

over time that gaming margins can increase >> tyler, you know, they talked a lot about pricing, clearly a run for pricing. nadella made the argument several times technology in his space is disinflationary how long can that argument go before those two things collide? >> yes, so i think the price conversation's a tricky one. it ultimately comesdown to value created. i think most enterprise companies that microsoft is doing business with today, they have seen their microsoft bills go up, no dquestion that's why the company continues to grow at impressive growth rates. the difference is what is the value that they're getting they're being able to exit hosting their own data center and their own server and storage by moving to azure on the productivity side, you see things like teams. you even in security with their

office business, driving a lot of upsell there, you know, i think customers are finding that roi is really high, despite the higher price, and i think over time, our view is that i.t. budgets are going to continue to grow faster than gdp, just as companies continually digitize more manual based processes and microsoft is really well-positioned to take advantage of that. >> all right, tyler radke, thank you. >> thank you meantime, turning to chips, texas instruments beating the top and bottom line for the fourth quarter sending the stock up more than 4% this morning, the company planning to increase spending on industrial and automotive, which already make up nearly two-thirds of revenue. however, the semi industry as a whole is having a rocky start to the beginning of the year. the philly sox index off to its worst start since 1949 q1 revenue, john, looking for

405 to 409, treat at 404 yesterday we looked at demand over 2019, double-digit increases as chips are making their way into more and more devices. >> yes, as i talked to chip ceos lately, i just get this feeling investors need to be careful on the narrative here there's some very good demand signals. for example, from microsoft last night, talking about their capital spending cycle in the cloud, they're planning on building out a ton of data centers across a lot of regions, but at the same time we see a shift in investment and process technology and potentially where that demand is going to go is it going to go toward more sophisticated process technologies, more sophisticated fabs, and away from some other fabs what does that do to equipment makers who are used to supplying one area or the other? i don't understand that, and i

think investors need to be careful. >> you know, so many of these companies are talking about auto being the next opportunity, texas instruments on the call last night saying again, what we've heard from many others that there's just going to be more chips and more cars than we saw five, ten years ago currently. but john, it's good to put it in perspective, as we look at the sox etf down 13% year-to-date, relative to the rest of the tech sector, guys, not as terrible in this market environment, 13.1% meanwhile, microsoft and texas instruments not the only names on the move today. we've got names to target in this volatile environment up next and plus on the heels of positive results from parent company at&t, warnermedia ceo jason collar "tech check" is just getting started.

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its fiscal '22 guidance. credit suisse likes it as a buy but cut its price target, the stock is down 20% year to date, carl at&t reporting earnings today. the company updating its time line for the warnermedia and discovery deal saying it now expects to close in q2, company reports over 4 million new hbo and hbo max subs last quarter for a total of nearly 74 million global subs. julia boorstin has more with the ceo of warnermedia hey, j.b >> thanks, carl. sayso jason kilar, thank you for joining us on the heels of the at&t report. great to have you here >> thanks, julia >> jason, i want to get to the numbers but the deal is set to close in the second quarter, so my question to you is, how soon could we see the warnermedia and discovery streaming app assets combined and what is this combination going to mean for you as an executive?

>> so that's what we call a leading question here in the industry, julia, as you know it's too early to answer that, either of those questions, candidly in terms of what a service could look like or services could look like post close, but clearly when you look at the results of hbo max, which i'm hoping we get into, i think the facts speak for themselves, which is hbo max is a leading streamer and clearly 2021 was a big year for it. >> yes, and you added a better than expected 4.3 million subscribers in the fourth quarter, but what's interesting is we're just coming off of netflix's results and they added twice as many subscribers in their fourth quarter but it was their guidance of lower than expected numbers for q1 that sent netflix shares lower and a number of other streamers as well what are you seeing for the first quarter and for this year? do you think you'll be able to maintain your momentum >> great question. i think what's most important say little bit of context first, which is netflix is in 190

countries. we're in 46 countries, hbo max is in 46 countries in the u.s. market, where we rely for the entirety of 2021 we grew much faster than netflix. to your question of how do i feel about hbo max and into our growth in 2022, i feel very good and i say that most importantly because of the stories you're going to see from us in 2022 i feel great in terms of the product and the technology we've been building and finally, we have a whole lot of geographic expansion that's coming in 2022 as well. and those things are unique to us >> yes, certainly opportunity to expand more internationally. a question about the content spend that's necessary to sustain that kind of growth. you mentioned on the call that 2022 will be a peak spending year but don't you have to keep on investing more and more not just to help add subscribers but to really compete as the likes of net flick and disney+ also ramp up their spending >> when it comes to investments, there's obviously references to

bottom line impact, but when you think about the next 10, 20 years in streaming, i do believe, julia, you're going to see a very small list of services and of course, i believe hbo max is going to be one of them, that will continue to grow, and as it grows, the investment levels in the content will grow as well. that's separate from the bottom line impact, and so when it comes to your earlier question about how we feel about our investment in hbo max stories, there's no better team in the industry at translating investment dollars to stories that matter and i say that based on third party data points, whether it's critical nominations, critical awards, audience scores, et cetera hbo max is absolutely leading the field compared to netflix and to disney+ when it comes to the reception of our slate >> jason, it's deidre. good morning another guest last week brought up this idea of content that streaming hits like "squid games" and others are short-lived because there's so

much content how do you think about the lasting impact of your hit series i think about a succession you can go back to in terms of podcasts and the sort of universe that surrounds them and the characters, or whether that be gaming? how do you extend the life time of series? >> yes, so i think it comes down to one simple word, which is quality, and i'm not disagreeing with you, deidra, there are certain series that have a rapid decay. our approach, and this really goes back 50 years in terms of the birth of hbo has been very much a focus on quality, and you mention succession i think that's a fantastic example of a series that has grown in relevance over time, not reduced in relevance over time so with each successive season we're seeing a lift on the first season, the second season and obviously the just completed third season it really comes down to the choices you make when no one is looking in terms of the stories you choose to tell and how ambitious you are in terms of the quality bar in terms of how you tell them and i feel very

good about that for us >> jason, as for pricing, i love this line that stankey gave to "variety." "lo and behold we're no longer the high-priced offer in the market after netflix's move. is there a sense the market is coming to your pricing strategy? >> i think for a precious few, carl, yes, and i don't think there's many that can enjoy that position, but we're certainly one of them and netflix is certainly one of them, which is we have a $14.99 price point for the ad free version of hbo max, netflix is above us given their recent $2 price raise. i don't think many services have that value proposition right now there's two, maybe three worldwide, but it's good to be in that group for sure >> jason, i want to get your thoughts on the theatrical business last year hbo max got a boost you did simultaneous distribution why your film's first run as soon as they were in theaters they were also on

hbo max. this year is different looking at the box office right now, do you wish you were continuing to do these simultaneous he releases and how much do you think hbo max will suffer from not having access to the films? >> i'm glad you asked this question this is something i love to talk about. i feel very, very good, julia, about the choices we've made for 2022 and let me explain why. first and most importantly the "batman" will start our theatrical year, coming in march, i believe it will be a fantastic day for us, and also keep in mind that our entire slate across warner brothers motion pictures is going to come to hbo max as well so we're going to have an exclusive run in theaters, that's the only place that you'll be able to first see it, and then they will become available on hbo max, and to your second question about how do i feel about the performance of hbo max in 2022 with that strategy, well, geez, i just point out the first couple of weeks of 2022 already,

which is return to hogwarts, euphoria, peacemaker, the gilded age which premiered last night we are on a creative run unlike any other period in the history of this company so i feel very good where we are and where we're going. >> well, jason, thanks for joining us today to talk about all of this and we hope you will come back and talk to us about what's next as warnermedia and discovery complete that merger thanks so much, jason kilar. >> thank you, julia. we mentioned at&t, talk about another telecom name, jpmorgan turning bearish on verizon, downgrading the name to neutral on "increasing concern about subscriber growth for post paid phones and the industry overall. plus the top tech names you should look at, at a discount, next don't go away.

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welcome back to "tech check. stocks up 350, we were up 500 and change on the dow a while ago. taking us back to levels of about a week ago, all three indices on pace for the best day since the beginning of the year. top nasdaq gainers got some cloud and semi names in there, okta, marvell and picks from david katz in a movement first news with rahel some on. >> boeing shares are falling after the company took $4.4 billion for 787 dreamliner delays and other problems. ceo dave calhoun said they made progress and optimistic but omicron has paused the industry's recovery. strong comments on price aring help push corning shares to their biggest one-day gain in eight years, the stock up 13% after the company predicted glass supplies will be tight this year and pricing for its products will improve throughout

2022 rising costs hurting profits at kimberly-clark, quarterly results topped estimates but earnings guidance form the year well below forecast. the company expects gradual margin improvement later in the year and new home sales shot up nearly 12% last month to their highest levels since february. at the same time, the median home price fell below $378,000, that's the lowest in six months. carl, i'll send it back to you >> rahel, thank you very much. let's get back to the rally this morning, nasdaq's almost 2% but still more than 14% off the record high as you know. our next guest says buy the sell-off, bullish on microsoft, alphabet and meta. joining us matrix asset adviser cio david katz great to see you again good morning >> nice to be here >> to what degree is your interest in mega cap tech driven by the valuation reset of the last few weeks >> it's basically the fact these are really good businesses with good growth prospect

the stocks are off 15% and now at valuation levels that make for a very attractive entry point, facebook and alphabet are selling under 20 times earnings. microsoft had a robust quarter yesterday, robust outlook and about 27, 28 times net earnings. you're able to get good businesses at the most attractive valuations they've been at in some time we went into this year cautious on technology, but these names have come down to a point that all of a sudden they're attractive outside of the mega cap, there are a lot of companies knocked down to 15 times earnings, te connectivity announced earnings today, very good outlook, the stock is off sharply today we'd be buying on that weakness. it is a second derivative electronic vehicle, they make chips for all of these cars. you're getting it at agreat price so there are opportunities. we are worried about the really high pe stocks, the 50 times earnings are the ones we avoid >> right i wonder, do you think it's a little silly that the market is

so finely tuned to a couple of percentage points on an azure forecast or do you think that's to be expected in this period of churn regarding the fed? >> it's a low conviction market, and there's tremendous momentum either good or bad, so yes that's clearly driving stock prices so unless you have a great conviction before company reports earnings, we'd be a little bit wary about stepping in, but into any weakness, if you like a business and it's at a good valuation you definitely can point. if you're at a lower valuation, you tend to withstand slight misses or beats much better than a company that's at 100 times earnings that lowers their expectations by a few percent. those are the ones that are going to get creamed >> david, give us more insight into your gauge here, because i mean, you're saying 27.5 times earnings is an attractive entry point from microsoft i remember a time that wouldn't have sounded so attractive even for a stock that's got some decent growth.

>> well, we would agree with that, so everything is relative, but within technology, we think technology is going to still be a growing area, and you want to look at it in terms of the playing field. so there are lots of good businesses at 40 and 50 times earnings we think those are suspect 27 times earnings for microsoft we think over time will do well but for sure, we bought microsoft probably at 25 years years and years ago. we loved it down there and still like it here i'll point out an interesting stat the russell 1000 growth just had its third best decade on rolling four quarters since 1979, so that's out of 133 observations, you had the third best typically after great decades, growth in technology does not do nearly as well, sub par returns, sometimes even negative. you're right we're worried about overall growth over the next few years because we think it's pricey but there are opportunities within it >> david, isn't this exactly what the market is doing we're seeing re-rating in the

high-growth tech names, cathy woods said innovation is on sale how do you know where the bottom is and when valuations start to look attractive? >> in terms of the high flyers, you're not going to know until you look back three months later. in terms of companies that are good businesses but you can get them at the 20 times earnings, they have good prospects we think that's worth the leap. why a google or a facebook you can step in here 12 months from now you'll look smart, two weeks, two months from now who knows what's going to happen we don't like to pay 100 times earnings, we don't like to pay 20 times sales for something that you're buying on what's going to happen in a year or two. we like good earnings now growing and not pay too much that's the best way to navigate what's going on in the technology sector. >> david, how are you approaching semiconductors and are you looking differently at the different names within it, depending on where they play in process technology and how you expect the shift across

different customer industries, including automotive, to play out? >> so we're looking at less in terms of the various subsectors, because we think the overall group is going to have some good momentum we're mostly focused again on valuations, so i had mentioned the te connectivity, great prospects. they are a play on the automobile market and you're getting it at a good price the other one we like a great deal we'd be buying is qualcomm, another semiconductor doing great in terms of 5g but moving into automobiles, they've had two or three very good wins there. we think it's a very good company and the key here is it's at 16.5 times earnings so again, very good prospects and you're not paying too much. again, there are a lot of good semiconductor companies that are going to grow great over time but you have no margin for error. >> david, great stuff. very actionable, appreciate it always good to see you >> thanks a lot. good to be here. we just heard the top picks.

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bitcoin was on its way up, pro athlete celebrities, ceos, el sal vador and miami jumped into payments for crypto with bitcoin cut about in half from highs, what happens to those decisions? kate rooney has a rundown of who is feel the pain on the way down kate >> john, let's start with government officials new york city mayor eric adams was the recent leader to convert his paycheck to crypto, roughly $6,000 biweekly paycheck after taxes was down by at least $1,000 just over the weekend miami's mayor francis suarez also said in november he would take part of his sally in bitcoin. announced that when it was trading near an all-time high and both mayors have vowed to make their cities crypto hubs

and trying to show they've got skin in the game speaking of skin in the game, let's talk about pro athletes. l.a. rams wide receiver odell beckham, jr., headed to the nfc championship on sunday, a lot to be excited about but his salary was also recently cut in half. obj agreed to take his $750,000 paycheck in bitcoin back in november, and since then, guys, bitcoin's value has been pretty much cut in half, and that's not including taxes or fees. you got aaron rodgers as well converting part of his salary into bitcoin number one draft pick trevor lawrence, he took his signing bonus in crypto. there's at least seven other nfl players doing this, and a handful of nba and mlb players and for individuals holding crypto, they owe taxes on the price they bought it, that can cause more pain'price goes down. for companies there's at least 27 public companies now holding bitcoin on their balance sheets, micro strategy is by far the biggest. they have the biggest holding

followed by tesla, galaxy digital, block, formerly square in the top ten as well if the price of bitcoin drops below the price where the company bought it, they have to take what's known as an impairment charge so look out for that during quarterly earnings finally el salvador, the president naqib bukele last friday scooped up another 15 million of what he called really cheap bitcoin and changed his twitter profile of him wearing a mcdonald's outfit, very vocal bitcoin bull on twitter. the imf recommending el salvador remove bitcoin as legal ten der krig tender citing the risks. >> you need to make the imf happy if you need loans and you are they in el valusalvador's position it raises the question of the store of value idea behind

bitcoin. we'll see where it ends up longer term, but at least in the near term, the value here is questionable >> that's right. cautionary tale here, too, it's one thing to invest in crypto currencies but to take your salary in bitcoin is a bigger risk, tax imply indications and the nfl players and celebrities getting into the crypto space, they've got a lot of influence this is a good reminder even athletes and celebrities who might be making more than the average american who may be setting the trend by either investing in crypto, taking their salary in bitcoin, it's a good reminder to people there are risks and those who have been in the space for years and years have been reminding people, this is the way it goes. there's a lot of volatility. a few years ago the price dropped by 75% so just a good reminder of the risk here. >> though you can imagine you do hear a lot of these bulls saying they're going to be laughing 5, 10, 20 years from now. who knows, kate. i wanted to ask you as well

about the reported unraveling of dm if the fed was uneasy with the facebook-backed crypto currency, stablecoin rather, what does that mean for the rest of the space, and i know there's like two ways of looking at this. the people that use stablecoins don't want it to be regulated but how will it continue if it's not regulated? break that down for us >> another cautionary tale of working with the regulators, they were a first mover in stablecoins, diem came up before circle and before tether had gotten traction. they were early in the space but they got on the wrong side of regulators because it was associated with facebook, a lot of the big companies backing out. redomiciled to switzerland took the approach if it's not going to happen in the u.s., we're going abroad people look at that as an example of that doesn't work in this case. if you're going to build something from a u.s.-based company, try to get it approved

by u.s. regulators, you need them on your side and facebook and diem sort of proved that through this so that is the take away from people you talk to in crypto and a reminder, these things have to be regulated, the approach circle is taking we talk about tether they might be taking a different approach here but it seems like the long game is central bank-backed digital currencies they may make some of the private ones obsolete and that was sort of what the fed paper suggested. if there's a dollar-backed version, why do you need the private sector puts pressure on names likesirking. >> circle >> that's a great round trip of the strategies that have a lot invested and interest includes cities, corporates, countries. rooney on crypto today markets we're sitting just south of 4,430 which is the 200-day on the s&p "tech check" is back in a minute

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turning back to microsoft, all eyes are on the company's recent blockbuster acquisition of activision blizzard the

$68.78 billion deal aims to close next year. it could face major regulatory hurdles. our next guest served as cfo of candy crush maker king digital overseeing its own by activision blizzard in 2016 joining us managing director hope cochran it's great to have you on the program. i wonder if we could start broadly. where are we in terms of consolidation in the gaming space? could we see even more m&a perhaps involving roadblocks or unity part of the sell-off perhaps look more attractive or is the regulatory environment tooive for potential acquirers >> yes, those are all great questions and hard to speculate on it was really exciting to see this effort by microsoft it makes so much sense in this industry when we think about the whole gaming industry, there is so much forward-looking thinking in terms of tech that's been adopted. i love this metaverse and being

able to join into a game and building a community i think there's a lot of opportunity for corporations to really utilize that technology, so definitely could see more acquisitions in this space, as it's becoming more and more it's becoming more and more valuable and more throughout the whole community, but in general, you are right to point out the regulatory environment is difficult and we'll have to see how that goes with the acquisition. >> hope, given those two opposing forces, the scramble for the metaverse and the regulatory scrutiny, as well what do you think is the sweet spot where could we see acquisitions? what ballpark are we talking about in terms of valuations >> it's interesting to look at the valuation of this one. it was about 8x revenue. i think that is a really nice valuation and i think it's a tremendous vent to microsoft as it looks to utilize those properties within the activision environment. activision certainly has a lot of properties that can be well monetized and when you think about areas that could continue

to evolve in gaming i think with the media platforms, how are they going to involve and how are they going to include their watchers and users to continue to grow and it could be interesting there. >> hey, hope, you know, so much of the conversation surrounds chip latency and high-speed graphics, but you ride the subway i ride it every day and there's someone inevitably playing candy crush. i wonder if it's simpler than the hype around the technology >> no, i think gaming is a big category and it can serve the different constituents there is a place for the casual games such as candy crush to take the moments of time that you're underutilizing because you're in the subway and you have the immersive experience and want that high-fidelity experience you certainly don't want to be involved in a combat-type gaming

situation and have the latency problem. so i do think the technology in gaming is always forward thinking it's always the best in class, pushing the envelope, but there are, as you point out, lots of different sectors in gaming whether we're talking about joining in the metaverse and building things together or playing casual games on the subway on your own two very different experiences >> hope, it seems to me that those aren't strategically, perhaps, the most important pieces for microsoft activision blizzard throws off a ton of cash, and then you've got things like gamepass and cloud gaming that are just starting to take off and having those sort of tent pull assets within microsoft's control can help them so i get that, too, but isn't that parts of the issue with regulators where they're going to say, hey, microsoft you

can't withhold those from sony >> right that will be an interesting evolution as to what microsoft does with the activision properties clearly, they have stated and reached out to sony to ensure that the games can be available on all platforms and we'll have to see how that evolves. it makes tremendous sense to have the games accessible to many, many users one of the assets that i think has been underplayed that microsoft acquired with the activision asset is the amount of users we see monthly active users. activision has 400, and i think 250 million of them come from the king games this is a tremendous asset that they're gaining and they want those to be engaged and those player players to utilize the games and use them in any way they can from a business perspective, i think it makes tremendous sense. they continue to allow those games to be accessible through all different platforms and

distribution mechanisms and we'll have to see how they continue to evolve with that strategy. >> hey, hope, finally, as a vc focused on gaming, where are you deploying capital right now whether that be developers or in-game payments or the chip space. where is the opportunity as the big get bigger like microsoft and meta >> that's a great question in general you have to step back and say that the premise is that gaming is getting bigger assuming that this is a vertical that has a lot of growth in front of it which i fundamentally, do then you kind of go where do i want to play? i don't even want to use the word metaverse because i'm not sure anyone understands what that means yet, but the ability to join into a digital environment and build things with friends and have a social experience, i think, is really an important thesis right now in gaming, building up this creator economy so people can go and build their own games within a game environment is an area that

we are really looking at currently, and we mentioned reblg room i'm involved in that company that is exactly what that is a place for people to come to be social and that's an area we're excited about. >> thank you for joining us and hope to see you again, hope cochran. >> intel, tesla, samsung more reporting results after the bell today. first, take a look at peloton down again today in an up market it bounced slightly a little more than a percent. it is now down 30% in january. tech check back in a moment.

getting some breaking news from the supreme court let's get to eamon javers. >> carl, that's right. nbc news is reporting that supreme court justice stephen breyer will retire he's 83 years old and he's resisted calls to retire from liberals who want president biden nomination slot that he can use this year.

stephen breyer has decided to move forward with that retirement and it sets up a political battle for president biden who will have the opportunity to nominate a supreme court justice as a result, but won't have the opportunity to reshape the politics of the supreme court. that's because breyer who is viewed as a pragmatic jurist is one of the members of the liberal wing of the supreme court. so if biden appoints a similarly-inclined supreme court justice there will still remain the same number of justices on the supreme court. this was apparently a tough decision for breyer who had agonized about it in public for several months and published a book earlier this year on his life and his experiences he was someone who was anxious to be on the supreme court he was appointed by bill clinton back in the 1990s and he was so eager to be appointed on the supreme court, guys that when he was interviewed by bill clinton he was in the hospital due to a bike accident at the time. he left the hospital in order to take the interview with the president of the united states

showing how determined he was to get on the court and stay on the court until 2022 and we'll see what the politics are now for president biden in selecting a successor to justice stephen breyer. >> a long talked about and so many different dynamics regarding roe and ginsburg and so forth, eamon. thank you. holding on to gains. tesla tonight. let's get to the half. carl, thanks so much welcome to "the halftime report," i'm scott wapner. front and center what might be the most important day for your money in years a fed decision just two hours away and now stocks hanging on the edge in what's been an incredibly volatile week the investment committee here with me to debate the road ahead. here for the hour today, sarat, jim lebenthal and joe teranova and pete najarian, co-founder of market