but fascinating to watch still rocking out there. i think you should take a shot at it. go for it, robert. get on the land. give us a close-up view of what he's going to knock down great reporting, robert. thank you. robert frank from miami. that's going to do it for us on "squawk on the street. thanks to mike and leslie as well that will do it for us have a happy weekend, everybody. "techcheck" starts now good friday morning. welcome to "techcheck. i'm deirdre bojesen in san francisco with julia boorstin in l.a. and editor in chief at the verge nela patel we're closing out the week with a look at the tech rally amazon, apple comes back within inches of its all time high. more on the rest of this morning's big movers, posh mark, shares plunging. toast is surging don't miss toast's ceo chris comparato later this hour. we'll look at china tech as well

the whole space seeing pressure this morning let's start off with the running with the bulls the nasdaq son pace for its fourth weekly gain in a row since november and some huge moves higher from megacap names like apple, amazon and microsoft. let's bring in elliott robinson. happy friday good morning to you. where are we right now there is a big debate. is this another bear market rally? that is becoming less loud over the last few weeks, especially a week like this. >> well, let's talk cloud a little bit despite a lot of uncertainty in the news, gdp growth, ongoing geopolitical conflict, the cloud economy is showing a ton of resilience as customers continue to leverage software and every ceo is directing their teams to do more with less. this impacts things we're seeing in these q2 earnings reports thus far, which is fueling some of the recovery that you guys opened the show w with so the emerging cloud index, up

28% in the last month alone. the average valuation for in cloud companies is at 9.3 today, up from its june low of 6. with that said, there is three key pillars i'm tracking in order to assess the current state of the cloud recovery. first, the hyperscalers, you mentioned some of them to open the show amazon, aws, $79 billion microsoft azure, $55 billion run rate, and google gcp at $25 billion run rate this quarter, growing 36% year over year the strong performance of the cloud hyperscalers, it does serve as a leading indicator when it comes to the underpinnings of the cloud ecosystem, and future performance. subsectors, data dog and the infrastructure space, they beat consensus on topline, generating $406 million of revenue this year, a huge 7% beat along with the beat on earnings per share and raised full year guidance cybersecurity cloudflare they

beat consensus by 6%, $234 million in revenue on the corner of 54% year over year growth more importantly, they also raised full year guidance. we're talking about shifting into the second half of the year and companies are giving us some guidance and lastly i talked about ceos wanting their teams and companies to do more, they beat on revenue, earnings per share, year over year growth, and both companies raised their guidance. so the last company that i definitely want to talk about and the vertical sass space, these companies touch real industries and economies that we interact with, toast they blew into the earnings call, gap revenue, recurring revenue, and all of these metrics grew about 660% i'm looking for companies that are coming out of q2 with a certain profile, a beat on topline revenue, raising guidance, also a beat on earnings

shrinking losses and that's fueling the recovery so far. >> you're painting a very, very rosy picture indeed. to me it feels maybe a little too rosy we did just get through the earnings season. it wasn't as bad as many were expecting. but it wasn't great either guidance from some of the companies was good even the hyperscalers, growth was better than expected, but it is still slowing and that's ultimately going to hit the tech ecosystem, right so what makes you say that we're already seeing this recovery, there is not another shoe to drop, when we head into the next quarter of earnings? >> so i spend most of my time investing in the cloud and i'm looking at 5, ten years out. when you think about where we're coming out of with covid 2020 and 2021, we saw a spike in enterprise sass that i don't think we may never see again so, yes, growth is slowing, but you have to put it in context of the period we're coming out of, growth like we have never seen before, really with the spike of

work from home, and, you know, all forced to engage with things like zoom to make sure that we could all get the work done. so, yes, year over year, coming out of the covid adjusted period, growth is slowing. if you look at a more smooth line, over the last three or four years, we're seeing a positive trend up and to the right. >> certainly we want to bring you in here, what do you make of elliott's bullish view here? do you think he's too bullish? are there parts of this cloud sector that are maybe perhaps more at risk >> what i think about all the time when it comes to enterprise software transformation, you're moving margin in one way, right? some businesses are going to get more efficient by buying software and automating processes, spend that money on that software and that's the cap. how many businesses are going to make that kind of radical move because the ceo is saying time to tighten our belts, go buy some software and how effective is that transformation and where does the cap -- that's the

question i have. how -- you can see it over five years, but at some point it stops. the businesses still need people to use monday.com and that's a fixed cost, doesn't go away. >> elliott, what do you make of that argument? the question is what comes next here do you see more consolidation in this space >> yeah, so, i'll make one quick point off of what was just said f you look at companies like monday.com, a big part of this their big q2 is their enterprise segment, companies 50k acvs or more, that grew 147% year over year there is still a big demand from the bottoms up, engineers and people that you mentioned that work with the companies, but also topdown, where they're buying full company wide licenses in terms of consolidation, we're still in a little bit of a wait and see period, we're coming out of really high all time high valuation multiples. the private side of big cloud companies hasn't necessarily adjusted

and we also have seen a bit of a tightening of the belt from folks like microsoft and salesforce so i think they're going to sit on the sidelines, see how things shake out through the second half of the year and then see a little bit more consolidation when we know what the new normal looks like. >> speaking of belt tightening, the other side of the coin here, that's big tech, is getting smaller. when it comes to head counts you mentioned microsoft but we're also seeing layoffs, dozens of companies announced hiring freezes and job cuts including the likes of meta, microsoft, twitter, snap, netflix, who put together a quick overview of what's been announced. >> what goes up must come down tech's supercharged trajectory of growth record stock highs and aggressive hiring during the pandemic now in a downturn to an accelerating wave of layoffs and hiring freezes across the industry, the belt tightening in tech is sending ripples through the public markets which are grappling with recession fears and ongoing

global supply chain issues here is a roundup of some of the most high profile tech names caught up in the turbulence. meta has plans to slow hiring of engineers by 30% as it weeds out corer formers across its team. google, apple, microsoft and snap reportedly pausing or substantially slowing hiring and cutting back on spending and twitter laying off 30% of its talent acquisition team amid its own hiring freeze. in june, musk, super bad feeling about the company, led to hiring pauses and job losses at tesla a little over 200 employees let go pay pal cutting dozens of employees in an effort to reduce costs. salesforce saying it will put recruitment on hold for certain roles. along with spotify, who says it is reducing hiring by 25% 450 staffers let go at netflix across may and june. the company citing slower revenue growth and just last week, shopify laid off thousands of employees, about 10% of its staff investors across industries are watching all this tech paying

very close there i with many characterizing tech's performance as the canary in the coal mine, leading some to wonder if the great resignation is giving way to the great recession. so i can't help but feel like this is a little bit of deja vu all over again remember at the beginning of the pandemic we saw all of these layoffs. it led to more operational efficiency, these companies had leverage, we're seeing it all over again but how do we square this with a nasdaq that is up 10% over the last month and companies that last earnings season where it was better than expected and in some cases like amazon, good >> yeah, i think we're seeing a lot of companies prepare for what they think might be a downturn and make sure they have the ability to get through it with high rate of cash flow and enough money to get through it the trend that i'm picking up, if you look across the layoffs, very rarely hitting engineering and product. very often hitting marketing,

sales, content marketing, the kinds of things you need to grow your customer base they're still innovating on product, and the demand side is -- the other companies want to cut their -- increase their margins by getting more efficient. they're naturally generating sales. i think it is an interesting dynamic. >> you hear from some companies that are, like, no, now is not the time to kind of -- time to go on the offensive. if they have done a good job with free cash flow and profitability, so this is kind of an opportunity, especially for some players with better margins than the cloud space >> yeah, i think that's right. the other thing is the piece that you shared, but i think it is worth noting that a lot of those companies have a lot of exposure to consumer tech. and as we talked about in the open, things like inflation are really making folks at home think about that next ipad purchase or next personal computer and on the other side, you got sass companies like shopify that are going to get hit by e-commerce, not selling

the goods themselves but marketplace value is coming down and lastly folks like meta or google, they're impacted by advertising businesses, which, again, is kind of touching on consumer markets i do think there is a bit of a bifurcation between those kind of core b to b sass players and those more broad tech companies that have a lot of consumer spend exposure. >> yeah. we have been talking on the show about the bifurcation between the consumer and enterprise spending i have to note, there does seem to be a big difference between the companies that are doing layoffs and then the companies that are just slowing hiring and i have to wonder, just sort of what your outlook is on whether things are in a sort of little bit of a fstasis but they may pick up in the fall. there is the uncertainty more than anything, it seems like, that is causing the pause. >> i think that's definitely

true a lot of the consumer focused companies are looking ahead to q4 and saying is there going to be spending like there has been? there was a report yesterday apple is placing as many orders for iphone production this year as they have the year before that stock is coming closer to the all time high. i think there is a big question mark whether all the dollars that still seem to be floating around the economy going toward experiences will come back to some of the software products and consumer products as the holidays approach. the underlying question for all of that is all these companies kind of overhire remote in a pandemic they all said it, we're not as efficient as we used to be and pulling back on that hiring freeze is an opportunity for them to decide how many people they need to efficiently innovate >> and where those people have to be, we're seeing a return to work in some of the sectors, more finance than in tech. we'll give you the last word here, elliott. talking about a bifurcation between consumer spending and enterprise spending. at what point do you think those two things will impact each

other, a downturn in consumer spending could really hit big picture enterprise spending? >> for sure. i think as the consumer tech exposure sorts itself out, i would go back to what i said a couple of minutes ago. we're in a little bit of a wait and see moment there are some good signs that the more b to b sass companies are raising guidance, but no one is hiring ahead of those numbers coming in. so i think we're in august now, it will be probably november, december, folks will know at the end of the year what it looks like and planning for next year will be more accurate. and that's when we're going to start to see ceos and cfos tell us a hiring freeze off or we're starting to all go into increasg over time. >> the ten year 286 this morning. elliott, thank you so much for being with us. we'll talk to you again soon. >> thank you, guys great to see you. riff vian shares up 50%

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check out shares of rivian, choppy trade this morning, up more than 1%, better than expected revenue, but huge losses here. perhaps most importantly for the street, it is about the future growth story nilay, rivian is holding on to the goal of delivering 25,000 vehicles by year's end, but to get there, it is going to burn an extra $700 million. expecting to bring this year's losses to what nearly $5.5 billion. this is the tough story though, right? in >> i had the opportunity to drive an r1t, somewhat irresponsibly, popped a tire, great fun. they're great cars the underlying architecture of the cars they design could be revolutionary. there are more computers in cars in many ways they have to build more of them. then you can see how they can

gain margin. it costs a lot of money to start one of these companies >> how did you pop a tire? what were you doing? >> they allowed me to go off-roading. it was a great idea for me i told them it was a mistake, but i popped a tire. >> sounds like a lot of fun. glad it all turned out okay. speaking of stocks moving higher this morning, disney shares up another 2.5% today on top of yesterday's gains. now that stock is up 13% this week and despite all the concerns about consumers pulling back and competition in the streaming space, disney is surprising many by hiking prices for the streaming services more than expected yesterday we sat down with ceo bob chapek in an exclusive interview here on "techcheck." he told us why he's still confident things will grow >> we suspect we believe that we're going to see growth accelerate for domestic subs for disney plus in the next quarter. we believe whether it is

international growth, domestic growth, with ads, without ads, across the board we're going to see growth we're pretty bullish. >> he was also bullish about the parks talking about pricing power there too. you know, it is so fascinating we're talking about inflation and pressures on consumers and layoffs and then disney so optimistic about the ability to raise prices, not only on streaming, but also potentially at the parks. >> yeah, the parks one is really interesting to me because the rumbles about the park experience not being quite all the way there anymore are actually pretty loud so i think there is more danger here than disney is letting on they have got to keep the people happy, especially as prices go up and up and up and consumers are spending on other experiences as we have seen from other companies. the flip side, i think disney plus is almost recession proof right now. >> maybe disney plus, yeah i'll pay any amount for that service. i've been having my eye on a disney trip. you and i have this debate this

morning, i canceled my trip, what you were talking about, rumbles that the experience isn't as good as it used to be, inflation, higher costs. i'm arguing the leading indicator. you think i'm the exception, though >> i think you're a counterindicator i think your kids are too young to be bugging you about it once they get into the equation, things change. >> they don't know what they're missing yet. the first episode is only 11 minutes. i hate to tell you, my 4-year-old went back to gabby's dollhouse. we have a few more episodes. >> netflix, there is life in netflix yet. >> there is. exactly. that's a netflix show. wall street warning software investors strap in, we'll talk more about this in the playbook ahead of results from salesforce, snowflake and more that's next. we're back in three. finding the perfect designer isn't easy. but, at upwork, we found her. she's in austin between a fresh bowl of matcha

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let's dive deeper into software with another slate of earnings coming up over the weeks ahead. how should you be positioned our next guest calls microsoft and service now his top picks, predicting we have seen the worst of the sector's derating despite a new note this morning taking the other side, arguing to stay cautious on the space. joining us now is tyler radke. explain to us why microsoft and service now? >> good morning. so obviously service now, microsoft, they have reported their second quarter results, they came out and issued some more caution on the guide. i think service now in particular, they saw some deal slippage in the quarter, missed their bookings number. and took down numbers for the second half. so we think they have already incorporated a much more realistic view of the macro environment, particularly with service now. as we get into the july quarter, companies whether that's salesforce or snowflake, you

know, we do see some risk that some of these issues that impacted microsoft and service now could cause some issues and drive a reset to their outlook. >> and so, give us a sense of infrastructure security we're showing some of those stocks right now. where is the opportunity now and then also on the flip side, where do you see the most risk in this environment? >> yeah, so one of the areas that has been a big topic of conversation among investors is cloud consumption models so you have companies like snowflake, elastic, where these are not purely subscription revenue models where you're charging based on the number of workers you have or sales people, but it is based on how much infrastructure are you consuming, how much database capacity, how much analytics are you running? and i think there is a lot of debate in how you value these things relative to these subscription models. our view among those infrastructure consumption

models is companies like elastic, they're tied more to security, they're tied more to politics that aren't going to see massive fluctuations up and down those are more defensive places to be. i think you've seen snowflake over the last couple of quarters have some issues, whether large customer exposure with some of the work from home beneficiaries, or just the fact that they are used for more analytics functions that can be more of a bull market type of use case so those would be our top picks in the infrastructure and cyberspace. >> tyler, i love you bring up this idea of the cloud consumption models they kind of are untested going into an economic downturn. although i think the street is thinking this is going to be more of a soft landing do you think that these kinds of models are more vulnerable to bundling what a microsoft or a google or a salesforce can do? where does that leave them >> yeah, so it is interesting.

if you go back to some of those names i mentioned, snowflake, elastic, they work very closely with the amazons, the googles, the microsofts of the world. those cloud infrastructure consumption models are actually running on top of amazon or microsoft's cloud. obviously there is a bit of a competition. you see things like microsoft and google and the amazon have their own data warehouse offerings which is what competes to snowflake but i still think that for the larger players out there, this is a competition, more of a cosell arrangement these public cloud vendors are trying to get more workload, more spending on their platform. anyone who can help them do that, they're willing to partner with. >> that feels look a generous take and given to the big players, especially when you see what microsoft has done with teams and taking on slack.

you think this is a friendly cooperation and the giantsant going to see a chance to move in right now? >> i think we can differentiate for a company like microsoft with teams, and especially for a company like zoom, you know. we're talking about more on the application side i think there are potential competitive challenges from company like microsoft i was referring to the infrastructure side, but, yeah, you're right, in this environment, the reason why microsoft is able to continue double digits is because they are bundling things like teams and they're able to cross sell these products that, you know, other companies are kind of -- that's their core business >> tyler, so interesting thank you so much for joining us we see microsoft shares up 1% this morning what is your response to this? what kind of volatility do you think we'll see in the software space going forward?

>> i think there is two things almost all interenterprise soft, you buy your software, the workforce is more efficient. that only pays off a little bit. we all experienced the new software appearing on our laptops and sometimes it is not very good. i think in this kind of spending environment, that has to pay off and some of that spend will come back because it doesn't always pay off. on the flip side, you see a big company like microsoft, their strategy is to roll up every feature set of their competitors might offer, and they're giving you more and more value for the dollar and in this environment, their margins might shrink they have to add more features and not raise costs. >> but they can afford it. they're sitting on so much cash. that's the argument versus the smaller cloud players. let's get a news update to frank holland. from a. ? >> news update for this hour

inflation eases. university of michigan's index came in at higher than expected 55.1 as it continues to improve from the all time low set back in june. inflation expectations fell to their lowest since february. another piece of optimism about inflation comes from credit rating agency fitch it is seeing supply chain pressures easing and says that could help reduce prices on a wide variety of goods, though there are still disruptions in the mix. they say shipping rates are declining, poor congestion is easing and backlogs are being cleared. ford says it is cooperating with a government probe of a 2020 recall. officials are looking into whether that recall to inspect front brake hoses was adequate they recalled 488,000 ford edge, lincoln, mkz models. but they're opening a recall inquiry into 1.7 million cars after receiving 50 complaints from owners about ford cars

about the same issues. restaurant fintech player toast seeing big gains after raising guidance the stock is now up some 24% on the week xtjos o chris comparato inus ne don't go away.

let's get to the stock-making a huge comeback, toast beating on the top and bottom lines,

raising the full year outlook. shares up double digits. up 43% in the last month alone let's bring in the ceo chris comparato. thank you for being with us. what a quarter i wonder if you can give us any data from the last few weeks since that quarter ended, regarding consumer sentiment, has it stayed strong in light of the numbers this morning >> yeah, good morning, deirdre thank you for having me on again. we had a strong quarter, and when you look at what we're seeing for signal, our team executed really well in the field to capture market share. consumer sentiment is strong restaurants are busy restaurants have been resilient and we're seeing demand in our customer base. so no material signs of weakness in the restaurant space. and that bodes well for the business >> chris, what are you seeing in terms of dining -- dine in versus take out and delivery >> we're seeing dining come back certainly. dining has come back during the

q2 and q3 time frame but there is still a steady amount of take-out and delivery. restaurants are adapting to make sure that they offer and support the dine-in volume and compliment that with off premise when necessary we're seeing both revenue channels hold up quite well. >> i saw you adde ed 6,000 net w locations for the first time ever you're growing so much as you look at the whole market, how many more restaurants do you think are ready to add your software right now this is all about the digital transformation play. but some companies may not be ready to make that investment or may not have the resources at the moment >> great question. first off, if you look at the bigger picture, the restaurant industry is a $900 billion industry in terps of sales restaurants are incredibly complex. we're helping them streamline their operations, drive revenue and drive staff productivity

so we're only 8% of the u.s. total addressable market, so at 68,000 locations, there is another 800,000 locations to go after within the u.s and we're only 1% of the $55 billion u.s. tam we're in the early innings of a longer transformation that is going to happen across the restaurant industry. so that gets us really excited about the future if you zoom out. >> i have to return to deirdre's questions about the overall economic uncertainty now are you concerned about a consumer pullback later in the year, and how do you think that could impact the ability for some of the restaurants not using your software yet to come over >> we think that our platform plays into their ability to adapt. so certainly at the macro level, look at macro economic conditions, like any ceo, i'm watching all of the signals that we can watch we have not even any material

head winds yet our platform is helping these restaurants adapt with helping them drive more revenue, we're helping their staff deal with productivity with less labor and then we're also helping them on the food front when it comes to inflation, understanding their food costs, and how that really maximizes their menu profitability over time. we feel like we're on the good side of helping restaurants adapt to the recession warnings that they're seeing in the market. >> i'm curious, the market is bifurcated huge chains to work with, there may be cios, and then a lot of small businesses for whom this is mission critical software i'm noticing you offer 24/7 support. are you thinking you're going to have to keep scaling that support organization is that something you're factoring into margin over time to buffer out your losses? >> good morning. good to see you. when you look at the business, any business like toast, that's

a sass platform, has to drive people efficiency, process efficiency, self-service and automation over time we continue to create more and more leverage in the business, and we're on that path to profitability. but certainly automation and self-service comes front and center i mentioned that yesterday on the earnings, toast shop allows the ability for customers to go on and order more hardware, software when you look at customers who are on boarding on our platform, many of our customers want to on board themselves roughly one-third of our customers are onboarding themselves on to the platform and that's becoming more and more efficient over time, you're going to see us drive more and more efficiency across people, process and technology so that the business gains even more leverage >> chris, when it comes to profitability, can't help but notice that the take rate continues to decline do you expect that to stabilize? how does that fit into your longer term profitability

outlook? >> we feel like the take rate is in a good spot and stabilized. credit versus debit had a little bit of an impact we think there is opportunities to drive even better improvement oz on margins over time with multiple processors and other partners where wie can reduce te cost of operating. we're in a good spot and we'll increase that over time. >> chris, you were asked on the call lastnight about that longer term profitability outlook and putting in actual target on it you didn't do so, but i'm curious, i'll ask you again, can you tell us when you're going to get to profitability or why the h hesitancy to put data on it. >> great question. rest assured toast has a plan and the leadership team is laser focused on executing that plan for profitability. we just don't think it is smart or prudent or pragmatic to stick a needle out there and say it is going to happen in this time frame when there is so much

macro uncertainty and we want to see how things unfold through the course of the year but rest assured we're executing to a plan, and at the right time we'll communicate more details on that. >> okay, make sure you let us know, chris. some other firms are doing that, though, given the macro environment, like uber and lyft. thank you so much. hope to talk to you again soon. >> thank you. key names leading the nasdaq higher workday up almost 6% despite a new sales call from guggenheim with chip names like applied materials, and amd

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let's get a gut check on yet another online retailer falling this morning posh mark slumping double digits after weaker than expected guidance sales came in better than expected for the quarter today's fall down nearly 12%, just adding to huge losses already in the year. posh mark is the outperformer, though only down 35% versus the realreal and stitch fix down 60% or more. looking like sales season for investors. is this a sector that is going to come back in the fall as consumers maybe look for better deals when they're shopping? be part of the retail ecosystem, the resale ecosystem

>> i was just talking to the runway ceo and she said i think fashion is recession proof, and especially because so many weddings were delayed and people are going to weddings and they need clothes for them. seems like that's not as true as she had hoped but something to keep an eye on as we talk about experiences versus goods experiences tend to require outfits. >> yeah. and we had this whole subscription model come to retail as well and you see those are the companies in a lot of cases ones that are suffering most and not recession proof despite that model. i guess she would say that, but the results say otherwise. >> we have seen rent the runway break from having just one or two sets giving consumers more openings if you look at posh mark and the realreal, consumers can buy higher end goods at lower prices, willing to get something that has been more of a force. maybe some optionality there. investors haven't made a lot of money with metaverse plays,

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well, shares of metaverse companies slumped this year, creators are cashing in and lots of them. steve kovac joins with us a deep dive on the newest leg of the creator economy. take a listen. >> reporter: samuel jordan may seem like your typical 23-year-old. his morning starts with coffee

he checks his phone. but pretty soon he gets to running his million dollar metaverse fashion business >> in 2019, i made $30,000 creating items on roblox and i thought this could be a serious career and then in 2020 i made $600,000 designing digital items on roblox and 2021 i made over a million dollars designing items on roblox. >> roblox is growing faster than ever before. >> reporter: roblox is the virtual world of choice. it is an open world gaming platform that claims more than 54 million daily users jordan's been in it since he was 11 >> at that age, did you think, wow, this is going to be my career a decade from now >> not at all. >> reporter: today, it is his full time job. he sold more than 25 million digital clothing items and accessories, hats, earrings, wallet chains, that players buy through a virtual currency called robucks and creators turn back into real dollars talk about the digital goods you make how much is one t-shirt, for

example, sell for typically and how does that translate to money in your bank account >> so when i sell digital items, they're typically between 50 and 150 robucks which translates to 50 cents to $1.50 for players to buy. >> reporter: he says people take their virtual image as seriously as they take their real one. >> when you see people in the digital space, you see what they wear and that's how you get to know them. you pay to express yourself in a way that feels authentic to you. >> reporter: the company says 5500 developers made real cash through roblox last year those third party creators keep 28 cents on the dollar roblox takes a cut of all sales and money also goes to app stores jordan is one of the biggest earners and bought his first home with his metaverse earnings with a pool in the back and a tesla out front. >> did you ever think you would be able to buy something like this by playing video games?

>> never. >> reporter: jordan isn't the only creator making it big in colorado, the clemens family runs simple games 21-year-old ceo nathan employs seven contractors around the world. but closer to home, in fact, in their home, he also has his siblings and parents working for the company. he has his siblings and parents working for the company. >> we've always done a lot of projects it's been amazing to see how the kids have grown and what they're creating. >> other projects are providing ways for creators to make money within their worlds. meta is pursuing developers. ceo mark zuckerberg or his avatar announcing this about his company's horizon worlds. >> people who are building awesome worlds where we're basically setting up some funds to help basically compensate and

reward the people who are just doing awesome work here. >> samuel jordan says for now roblox is the only platform that has the millions of users creators need to make money. >> roblox, they started in 2006. everyone trying to do it now, they're over a decade behind. >> meta is behind? >> meta is definitely behind in the 3-d virtual world. there is no new competitor. >> with forecasts that trillions of dollars could be spent ninsie the metaverse, it's no wonder companies are trying to stake their claims. >> guys, it was that last bit sam jordan was telling me about that meta wasn't a good platform to make money. the cremlemons family told me t same thing why? they just don't have the users to make money where in roblox they have 50 million people every month playing the game and spending real money, guys. >> steve, i'm going to ask a

skeptical big picture uncertainty question. >> because jon is not here. >> i'm playing the role of jon on the other hand here on the other hand, i'm curious whether there's concern that inflation and all the pressure on consumer spending is going to get people to spend less in virtual worlds won't they be more interested in paying for gas and less interested in buying virtual outfits? >> exactly, julia. that's what we heard from the video game companies reporting earnings they see a slowdown in spending and also deal with foreign exchange headwinds roblox is really popular in europe where there's a really strong dollar so it's hard for them to make profits on that on top of that there's the cuts. so roblox takes the cut of every transaction and they have to pay a cut in turn from google and apple. >> i was wondering if there's inflation in roblox. does stuff actually get more expensive in the metaverse

>> yeah, i think that's a great question for all these parallel economies that are controlled by one company. unlike the fed, they can do whatever they want whenever they want that thing steve is mentioning about apple and google, if you remember during the apple epic trial, there was a lot of conversation about roblox, whether it was a game, whether it was a virtual experience. both apple and roblox changed the category in the app store to avoid some of these questions about fees that's facebook's real problem they can't get on apple's problem with the metaverse app they have to get you into their headset and that's a long road to climb, i think. >> isn't that so interesting here that we're talking about the metaverse right here in roblox and the sand box and some of these other platforms this is still 2-d worlds i would ask steve this whether they think they'll get people buying things in the virtual world of the oculus headset and all these other headsets and start converting

people over to those platforms where there are going to be a whole other set of things to buy? >> the thing is there's a lot of friction here, julia, to get people -- first of all, to convince them to buy a headset that they just increased the price on by $100 and another more expensive one that's coming out this fall. one, they have to convince people to buy it two, they have to convince people to spend money in it and, three, they have to convince the creators to start making stuff and they have not hit that inflection point that roblox has where they have the audience, they have people spending money and they have creators and are seeking that opportunity to either make gains or sell those items. that's what that family i spoke with, the clemons family they saw an opportunity here they're not gamers or coders nathaniel said this is a huge opportunity to start a business and make money >> i think my question is kwaem philosophical. is roblox a metaverse?

it's not intra operable. you can't buy clothes from the famous designer or the celebrity and go wear them and the new madden is coming out in a couple of weeks the promise of the metaverse is you'll have a fully realized different self roblox is just a video game, right? >> that's exactly right. i was talking to analysts about this the true, quote, unquote, metaverse is going to be like a 3-d version of the web, more open and you can interchange items in between things. i was speaking to someone else reporting on the story and there was just such an opportunity here samuel jordan was telling me how people love to dress up their avatars. fashion really is a big thing and that's where the opportunity to make money is. >> wall street has cooled a little we know what's happened with the gaming stocks. it's also the gaming part of this picture we just got a bunch of results from companies in this steve and

we are seeing that slowdown. steve, great package those numbers are pretty shocking, a million dollars in one year on virtual clothing if you missed that and want to catch up on tech check, follow, subscribe to our podcast you can listen any time, emywhere, wherever you download th we are back after one last quick break. bubbles bubbles bubbles there are bubbles everywhere! as an expedia member you earn points on top of your airline miles. so you can go see even more of all the world's bubbles.

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one more thing before we go. that is some due diligence on delistings five chinese state owned companies will voluntarily step off of wall street as a feud over u.s. financial disclosure requirements escalates between beijing and washington more than 250 chinese companies risk getting banned now, including names like alibaba, jd.com, if the u.s. is not allowed oversight into their books for three consecutive years. the ones we're talking about today are the state-owned corporations some of the biggest there, like china life and petro china i've heard it a hundred times and said it myself chinese stocks the place to trade, not necessarily invest these days. >> it seems right. the one i'm looking at is

bidance. i'm dying to know if we get any insight how tiktok is. >> alibaba is down 1%. >> nasdaq and s&p on track of gains for more than 2% this week it would make it the fourth weekly gain in a row have a great weekend, everyone let's get to the half. >> thanks. welcome to "the halftime report." i'm frank holland in for the judge, scott wapner. the s&p and nasdaq on track for a fourth week of gains their longest weekly win streak in nine months are investors getting more comfortable with the idea of peak inflation plus apple less than 7% from 52-week highs and tech seeing its biggest inflows in months. what's next for this trade we'll debate that and much, much more with our investment committee. today we have bryn talkington, joe terranova and jim