future of microsoft. not just in consumer search, for example, the bing platform, but enterprise and things it could incorporate, chatgpt into for its products alphabet down 0.5% that's going to do it for us on "squawk on the street. "techcheck" starts now good monday morning. welcome to "techcheck. i'm deirdre bosa along with jon fortt and carl quintanilla tensions in the sky with u.s. penn dual with a super bowl ad cyber security company checkpoint beating estimates and in positive territory. we'll talk exclusively to the ceo. is the nfl that keeps linear tv alive we'll discuss that. we are watching inflation

closely this week with the cpi and ppi reports both due out right now we're higher across the board with the nasdaq leading those gains. microsoft a big winner today, as you were just hearing up more than 3%. one of the top five performers on the s&p and nasdaq 500. let's start in china despite rising political tensions over spy balloon, the country is advertising itself as open for business. and the kweb is holding gains. "the wall street journal" reporting that apple's tim cook and pfizer's albert bourla plan to visit next month. joining us on what to expect from this reopening is eunice yoon back on the beat, live in beijing. hi again, eunice >> reporter: hey, carl

because of the strict travel restrictions as well as onerous quarantines, very few executives have made it here to china over the past three years it's really no surprise to hear that ceo tim cook or others might be considering coming here to speak to their local staff or meet with government officials in order to get a better sense of their business. there are a lot of opportunities that are coming up a big business conference, such as the china development forum, are going to be held here in beijing. at least that looks like the plan and from what we're hearing, it looks as though it's the ceo of tim cook as well as others are considering joining that forum in addition to that, not only here in beijing, but there's the guangzhou forum in april auto show in july that a lot of business executives have come here for but have been put off for the last three years the questions coming up among

business leaders are a little different this time. a lot of that is because there's been a big reframe over the past three years due to zero covid and the rising tensions between the u.s. and china the latest balloon incident it just the latest reminder to that business leaders are going to have to rethink their china strategy some of the questions that have been coming up have been, one, how much exposure do i really want to have to china? what kind of future investment should i have here, for example? the supply chain, what do i want it to look like? another big question people are asking is how do i account for the risk of the conflict, not over, say, this incident of the balloon but larger issues such as taiwan. finally, there's been a lot of discussion here not only -- well, similar to the way that there's been increased pressures on government, there's been an increased concern about the scrutiny that businesses will

face here, including on their brand image. what kind of reputational brand damage could potentially happen if they invest bigger here in china? a lot of questions, guys, that executives are thinking about these days because of this latest balloon incident as well as other issues. >> if you're tim cook, you're apple, even if you're trying to diversify away from china in the longer term, that's going to take a lot of time you still need to go in, check in after three years of being shut out because of the pandemic do you think the tenor could change a lot of ceos meet with government officials, but is that going to look bad in the current environment? could they go under the excuse of we have employees there, offices there, that's what we're going to check in on and meet with government officials on the sly, or would that be too much given rising geopolitical tensions >> reporter: i think most people here, especially who are in business and have been here for a long time, know that it's

essential to meet with government officials and with local authorities in order to get a better sense of the business so, at least for those who understand the business, they would see it as a given that this is going to happen. on the other hand, as you're bringing up, especially in the tech sector, there's a lot of sensitivity about coming to china and your exposure. if you're in, say, tech, any type of technology as well as aviation, high-end manufacturing, these all were areas that in past years weren't that sensitive and now are increasingly so. >> maybe the celebrations get a little more subdued, less bijo drinking between execs and government officials thank you for that. >> reporter: that's not a bad thing. >> i'm sure for them it's not a bad thing for them at all, if you've ever tried it. meanwhile, china was having a big on the big impact.

the chinese seller advertising during the super bowl. for more on china's e-commerce in the u.s., let's bring in our cnbc tech reporter joining from us london. great to have you on the show. chinese companies have tried to go west and there hasn't been a big success, aside from tiktok what does tiktok tell us in terms of the ability for chinese companies to gain an audience here but also sop of the perils of that as well? would anything be learned from that, have they learned anything from tiktok? >> tiktok has been a success indeed great to be on this show timely. tiktok has been a great success so far internationally clearly this is a company bytedance, the parent company, who's very much been a company focused on the international markets. when i was in china, ispoke to a lot of execs at bytedance and

they were focused on the global push i think that mentality is filtering through to a lot of chinese tech companies you're seeing, when they have that appetite to go abroad. temu, baidu, commerce sector and looking at a model that very much was modeled by shein, the other chinese fashion company that's found success in the u.s. the fact that the parent company in china has a strong supply chain. it understands e-commerce very well so it's able to get products on its international platform temu out of china at a low cost that's what the super bowl ad was about. look at all the things you can get for next to nothing. i think the difficulty is brand

perception and the quality it needs to make sure the product its putting on its platform is high quality so people don't see it as a cheap company offering bad products. that's the key, can they build that brand perception? clearly that's what that super bowl ad was about there. >> it's jon. so, the geopolitical tensions are rising pretty quickly, especially with this balloon focus now maybe a little more on tiktok what's been the successful chinese tech and e-commerce playbook to operating in the u.s. and, perhaps, staying above reproach or has there been one? are they able to answer the kind of questions that need to be answered when it comes to data sovereignty and surveillance that politicians here are certainly going to want to hear answered >> there's been very few success stories, jon, quite frankly, in the tech sector in particular. one i would say is tencent, the

chinese gaming and social media company. it's been gaming gaming studios and taking a hands-off approach. that's one model that's been successful so far they have pretty much flown under the geopolitical radar to a large extent in that gaming section tiktok, the other big player that's come in, owned by chinese parent bytedance, has found success. we are now seeing this caught up in geopolitical tensions between u.s. and china there are a number of tech companies out of china caught in the crossfire, huawei, a number of chip companies, drone companies out of china i think it's very hard for pure play tech companies to find success. the model here, e-commerce, feels very unpolitical, very safe and that's, perhaps, why a lot of companies are aiming for that e-commerce root.

>> thank you as he was just saying the u.s. might bring china's pro-business push to a screeching halt, u.s. lawmakers are reviving efforts to ban tiktok in the u.s julia boorstin joins us with the latest on that. >> well, jon, there is a growing call from congress to ban tiktok nationwide chuck schumer saying on abc news over the weekend, quote, it's something that should be looked at this comes after senators marco rubio and angus king reintroduced bipartisan legislation to ban tiktok and other similar apps from operating. they just announced this in the u.s. last friday now, the goal would be to block and prohibit all transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of china, russia and several other foreign countries, unless these companies divest of their foreign ownership. tiktok responding, giving us a statement saying, senator rubio

continues to push deliberate misinformation about tiktok. tiktok is not owned or run by any government and we do not share u.s. user data with the chinese government or the chinese communist party, nor would we if asked. there's going to be a lot of attention on what the ceo of bytedance testifies. >> who is leading any kind of defense tiktok remaining open in the united states? i know the president was asked about it last week he said, i'm not sure. i know i don't have it on my phone. what's the other case? >> i think the defense is coming from tiktok. they've been saying they've been working with the treasury's committee for foreign investment in the u.s. and working with them on a solution to make sure that all of the data, all of the information is housed here in the u.s. they have this project, texas is what they call it, in partnership with oracle to oversee all of that data so, tiktok has been working with

cifiu suchlt for so long they're upset they haven't come out with an announcement that they have a deal in place. i think the longer -- the longer this drags on and the more time that passes, the less likely we are to see that plan they agreed to last fall be actually implemented. >> julia boorstin, thank you. the u.s. fed is out with consumer expectations survey ahead of tomorrow's crucial cpi report rick santelli with some of the highlights rick >> yes, jon. as we're talking about the highlights, let's throw a ten-year chart up there. rates have ticked up just a little bit, as you see on that interday chart most of the report is pretty good news, especially in front of tomorrow's cpi. the january read, the big headline is that inflation for one year moved from 5% to 4.95%. now, that doesn't seem like a huge change, but it's still the

lowest level since july of '21 if we go through the entire report, spending down 0.2. what's notable about spending down 0.2%, it's at the lowest level, 5.0%, since early '22 income dropped 1.3%, jon that is the biggest drop since recordkeeping goes back to 2013. and it's left 3.3% we want to pay particularly close attention, i pointed out the one-year inflation target of 4.95%. the three-year is 2.7%, ticking down 0.2%. five-year is the only metric that ticked higher, up 0.1% to 2.5% gas, food and education remain historically high, according to the report good news, rent and medical care remain largely unchanged between december and january i do think that the one read that moved up only 0.1% on a

five-year outlook may have been the fly in the ointment but there's a general nervousness in the market in front of tomorrow's cpi to begin with carl, back to you. >> indeed, rick, although we are holding onto session highs in the wake of that data. thank you. rick santelli. still to come, the ceo of checkpoint is with us after results, nice beat, buyback increase, billings coming in a tad light. five known activist investors with reportedly stakes in crm what's next for marc benioff and salesforce nominations are open today "techcheck" is just getting started. jooifshg for businesses of all sizes, there are a lot of choices when it comes to your internet and technology needs.

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. welcome back take a a look at check point software shares are fractionally higher after beating top and bottom in q4 guidance in line with estimates. what is the read-throughfor cyber security in 2023 let's bring in check point gill shwed for a cnbc exclusive welcome. solid results on top and bottom. got to start with the billings, though, and the margins. what do you see happening with

demand out there and what's happening with costs, perhaps, that's affecting you in the margins? >> so, i think our margins are very healthy we're always been in the 40-some percent of operating net margin. actually some in the 50. so, our challenge is not the margin our challenge is always to provide better security and grow the business and i think last year we did that very well it was the fastest growth, i think, since 2015. >> okay. but what is -- what does have those operating margins down from last year is that just higher costs of employees at the same time is that something that you see easing heading into '24? where are those things going to normalize? >> the main thing is investing in our business. it's more cost for employees we hired a lot more people last year i mean, the market has been last year very competitive so people are getting paid more. and we are getting into more

markets. that's the main one. some additional cost in the supply chain the devices cost more and i hope that will go down a little bit we are supplying more cloud-based services and they cost more, but mainly it's our employees. we're a software business. >> two thing i wonder when it comes to cyber security and threats in 2023. one has to do with when the economy turns down, it seems like sometimes that opens up new attack vectors are you seeing anything different where that goes? then with ai, conversational ai, it strikes me that if this gets into the wrong hands t could be good for social engineering. is that something that, perhaps, is happening or that you're already beginning to build and guard against? >> the answer to both questions is yes we saw attackers, the worldwide

average is 38% in cyberattacks again, it's for many years in the u.s. i think it's more in the 50s. you can see top sectors that are being attacked by the way, the reason that education, government and health care are being attacked is sometimes because they are less protected. ai, by the way, is a big new trend that we all see and all experience i think it's great it can be used by cyber criminals, too it can be used for social engineering, so hackers find it very easily to communicate and, i think in the future will be able to create bots that behave like human beings. also the new tools we have can write actual malware it can write code. it can create malicious code our research agency has shown it can be done but also found in the wild cyberattacks which were

created by chatgpt >> gil, what's the risk that companies should spend on something for cyber security for buzzy new technologies like ai you said you were seeing some software in december do you think companies are starting to spend on other things because we haven't had a huge cyber security attack in the media for some time? >> i think right now companies are facing a lot of pressure to manage expenses. i think we've seen it with the big tech giants, and i think we're seeing it in almost every industry what we're hearing from customers that cyber is the last area to cut back on. they feel the demand for cyber will last for long again, it doesn't tend to last and grow in the same numbers it grew in the past yes, we've seen some softness at the end of the year. too early to say what will happen next year for sure the mid and long term, demand will be high. yes, we need more cyber. >> talk about israeli politics,

but it is worth noting some of these workers that have gone on strike in israel judicial reform in israel. do you think it holds liability for tech companies based in israel >> i think every company wants to be in a place with a stable economy, but just to be -- i mean, 98% of our sales comes from outside israel, so the big impact on check point is what is the economy like in america and the economy like in the rest of the world. some that are not so good for the citizens of israel, like stronger dollar and so on, are good for exporters do i want the people -- i want it to be good in israel, but the economy sometimes work in the opposite ways. so, i don't wish israel's economy to be weak, but -- but for business results it's not necessarily bad for us >> gil, thank you. gil shwed, the ceo of check

point. when we come back today, five known activists have positions in salesforce. when could any changes be coming check out octa, b of a saying there are elevated risks of slow growth and limited margin upside resulting from competition of the like. "techcheck" will be right back so, am i still on track to reach my goals? the plan we created can withstand uncertainty. lately everybody has opinions about the economy, but i count on personal financial advice. my ameriprise advisor understands the markets and me. she knows my goals and can help me reach them with confidence. the markets may fluctuate but you're still on track. no wonder more than 9 out of 10 clients are likely to recommend us. because advice worth listening to is advice worth talking about.

welcome back salesforce has attracted the attention of five known activist investors. what change could these activists be pushing for in the coming weeks and months? frank holland has more it seems they've got to get their wants together because it seems like they could cancel each other out how do you listen to five activist investors at once >> a lot going on. five activists at the same time is very unusual. one or two would be a lot. let's start with the numbers

salesforce has outperformed since starboard value announced a significant stake. starting yesterday the five activists, yes, five, can nominate board members salesforce has engaged with these activists but no word on those talks. we do know back in september salesforce released these financial targets for fiscal year 2026. valueact ceo was just added to the board and starboard value believes crm makes profitability in growth. but i'm telling you, there are so many other questions around this situation ken squire says we shouldn't expect much more public information but we could see nominations very soon. >> the issue here is you have to settle with one activist so they're all happy. the last thing you want to do is settle for a board seat and then have a different activist run a proxy fight. you're probably not going to settle until after the nomination window to make sure all the nominations are? >> those nominations could come

sooner the nominee window is open until march 14th s.e.c. rule changes allow for all shareholders, even if voting remotely, to mix and match the slate of directors they vote for. previously restricted unless there voting in person which not many people actually do nowadays. >> i don't even know where to start with this. it seems they could cancel each other out. maybe this increases benioffs pulling an iger and -- right unless they can agree, why are they all in there? >> first and foremost, this is a test of some of the star power i've talked about marc benioff having deirdre laughed at it, i talked about him having a big orbit just the ability to bring attention to himself and bring attention to the company his ability to work with some of these different activist investors is going to be a key part of this they settled very quickly with valueact a former microsoft board member, former adobe board member, now

on the board how do other activist investors feel about that? i spoke to analysts in pe, a lot believe mason is a value add in this situation it remains to be seen, though. >> we're looking at a chart of crm up 30% year to date. is it possible some activists bowed out, made money in the trade and gone away? to jon's point, activists like to dictate terms and build up positions so they can make their aims known that seems really, really tough with so many in the room, plus benioff, as you say. >> that's a big question we won't really know until it's time for different activist investors to nominate their directors. one thing that has changed is the targets salesforce put out didn't make starboard happy. other activists believe there's nor profitability in there salesforce, about 48% of their revenue goes to sales and marketing. i'm sure some activist investors are looking at that number the target for 2026 is to get

that number below 35%. salesforce does not pay a dividend they announced a big share buyback, their first since august is there another way to make them more profitable and for activist investors to get more money out of the company, to deirdre's point. >> this reminds me of the jungle we'll see who plays the role of what animal. thank you. after the break, retail investors appear to be chasing momentum again ai stocks and tesla are a couple of the hot picks we'll look at whether this run can continue. meta reportedly considering more job cuts. 11,000 employees already impacted how far will tech's cost-cutting go back in a moment i'm so glad we did this. i'm so glad we did this. i'm so glad we did this. i'm so glad we did this.

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welcome back to "techcheck." i'm bertha coombs with your cnbc news update. portions of a grand jury report on former president trump's trying to overturn election results will be made public thursday most of the report will remain sealed as local prosecutors decide whether to bring charges against trump or any of his allies, but its introduction and conclusion will be released, along with a section on jurors' concerns that some unnamed witnesses may have lied under oath. had qatari investors are planning an initial bid to buy manchester united by the end of

the week, according to bloomberg. british billionaire jim ratcliff has been working on a potential offer for the english premier soccer team owned by u.s.-based glazer family. what appears to be a joking response to a tweeted question asking what he was talking about with news corp.'s rupert murdoch at the super bowl, elon musk had a one-word response, dogecoin. the cryptocurrency briefly surged, and down nearly 90% since he joked about it back in may 2021 on "snl." >> i'm shocked it got a bit of a pop but it's dogecoin, why should we be surprised thank you. retail inflows are soaring again, benefiting tesla and stocks in the ai space joining us on the heightened risk appetite, fomo is back.

>> fomo is back. >> and dogecoin is back for a minute. >> good throwback for dogecoin the action has been concentrated in just a handful of stocks. the first area you have artificial intelligence names, thanks to some recent buzz around this technology according to vander research, c3.ai saw a surge after they updated search engine with chatgpt unveiling its own chatbot. and the pace of retail net buys spiked last week you see that on the chart. it's slowing a bit which typically foreshadows a loss of that price momentum. also a notable rise in net inflows to microsoft and nvidia as well, and smaller cap ai names like big bear and soundhound ai. tesla is consistently the most bought stock by individual investors. last week it saw what vander described as unprecedented flows. tesla attracted a quarter of single-stock purchases

likely to chase momentum and recoup losses from last year also, there's been a lot of hype ahead of tesla's investor day. jpmorgan points out a similar trend they have seen from older and younger cohorts of retail investors. added risk year-to-date, a lot of buying hit the highest level since last summer. vandall says it's driven by fomo, fear of missing out, and retail investors remain most vulnerable. >> if anything would happen in the macro -- >> exactly. >> i know we were talking about this, too, hedge funds are following retail investors and keeping that momentum going, institutional investors less so. is that typical of what happens? did we see that back in 2021 as well >> it's interesting. the hedge funds will look at some of the sentiment indicators, some of what's going on online in the chat rooms. they'll try to chase that momentum as well it's interesting institutions, so mutual funds, pensions have been on the other

side s&p global sent some data that we just got this morning that shows institution divested at roughly ten times the amount of hedge fund and retail investors. it's not this broad-based buying you're seeing mutual funds, pensions getting out of the market different sides of this trade. we'll see who wins here. >> thanks as always. carl guys, let's continue that conversation with our next guest, who is also seeing large inflows into estesla, meg ka -- mega cap joining us, steve. it's great to have you it's interesting to watch tesla lower in a pretty good tape today. i wonder how much year-to-date momentum you think is sustainable? >> good morning, carl. the momentum is fickle it can kind of come and go i think today, you know, tesla, as kate noted, remains one of the most -- remains the most

active stock here on a daily basis for i don't know how many months straight. it looks like more of the momentum is moving to microsoft and moving to the ai plays investors do vote with their feet from time to time tesla has had a remarkable run since its lows at the start of the year it's understandable, if after a pretty much doubling, they're moving onto something else and possibly reallocating some momentum-chasing strategies. >> an official doubling as of last week. the options volume that we mentioned in the lead, do you think that's introducing risk into the market or is this sort of just a different story that history's repeated over and over >> it's -- on the macro level, i'm going to say no, because, you know, there's nothing really fundamentally changed. what changed is we now have daily expirations in most of your key etfs and indexes, spx,

ndx, qqq, spy, et cetera and so we've seen -- last week when options volumes were hitting a record, we saw volumes roughly 2 1/2 sometimes what we saw prior to the introduction of zero dated options you're going to get what i call microbursts of volatility. we're going to see volatility moves as people chase momentum trades in spy and qqq. we saw what we called the gamma squeezes during 2021 we can start to see those in qs and spys not necessarily every week but actually every day in theory but in terms of the broader market, we come to deal with this it's not a new financial innovation it's just a change in the way we've been doing business. markets adapt to that sort of thing. >> steve, we've got to talk about the ai effect. not just on smaller stocks but on some of the very biggest.

in the alphabet, i mean, what is going on here. microsoft is up about 6.5% over the past week. google, parent alphabet down 8.5% is this really a sentiment shift? how should investors think about the way this is likely to continue playing out, perhaps even after this risk-on trade, at least for the first few weeks of the trade has petered out >> jon, this is where -- this is where the fundamentals meet the momentum we can certainly argue that chatgpt purchase has been a huge boon to microsoft. if nothing else, it's more or less paid for itself depending on the time frame. 15 times over in terms of market cap. but, these trades get overdone the relative performance, let's say, of chat ai and bing -- or chatgpt and bing versus the failed attempt google had, is

this going to change people moving from google to bing that's a big hurdle to overcome. microsoft you're paying a pge, price earnings over growth ratio 2 whereas in alphabet/google you're paying more or less one times growth there's definitely an expensiveness to microsoft that you have to wonder, you know, it's fun to chase momentum of pretty much any chatgpt related time frame microsoft has outperformed alphabet by 12% to 15% i'm doing work on that literally as i'll have on our website. you know, it's been a trade. >> that's for sure something we've talked a lot about. we'll see if this event they supposedly have planned in march is anything we might talk about next month, too. steve, that was great. thank you. steve sosnick. the glue that keeps network tv together.

we'll look at how much nfl viewership matters across broadcast and cable. evercore says zillow could surge as much as 25% the analyst with that call is with u n'goway.s. ♪♪ choosing miracle-ear was a great decision. like when i decided to host family movie nights. miracle-ear made it easy. i just booked an appointment and a certified hearing care professional evaluated my hearing loss and helped me find the right device calibrated to my unique hearing needs.

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this weekend's super bowl reminding us more than ever how important sports are to network

television nathanson with a note saying with the nfl making up 82 of the top 100 telecasts in 2022, it's clear that sports, and particularly the nfl, remain the glue to the linear bundle. he notes average viewership for the season dropped 4%, if you exclude thursday night where viewers flocked to amazon, ratings were actually up 1%, on top of a 9% jump from last year's season. as the media landscape continues to shift with the rise of streaming, what is in store for the future of live sports? dee, this is what we're all asking and to what degree does big tech act as a marginal buyer inflating values even more >> people are sticking with linear tv because that's how the majority are still going to watch it things are changing very, very quickly. youtube tv spending billions on the sunday night ticket. it's likely only going to increase the question is, what are they going to pay for it? amid the back drop of layoffs and some macro uncertainty, do those rates come down a little bit or does big tech keep

splashing out for it it feels inevitable. >> also for investors, this is a little bit of a cautionary stat. to me it speaks to with live sports that are popular, this is something that ai and something the metaverse cannot replicate they're not creating these must-watch, mass market moments. because, if a computer made it, yeah, it can make it at any time so, there are limits to what this technology can do and sports is actually using some of this the augmented reality. there's so much of it. it's augmented a lot of these times with the humans. >> fair enough i like the commercials, by the way. i had canadian friends over this weekend who enjoyed seeing all the american commercials i don't know if you saw the tubi one, we were all freaked out everyone sitting on the remote. >> do you think american commercials -- >> very much so. years and years of subpar

commercials, i'm thrilled about it >> i mean, canada owes everything to crown royal at this point that was amazing. >> that was a great shoutout. mark mahaney is with us upgrading zillow to outperform back in two. go emerson software. go science people. go breakthrough meds and safe science. go space age welds for super silent cars. go big. or go home. from software that delivers new cures at warp speed, to technology that makes clean energy reliable, emerson innovation helps make the world healthier, safer, smarter and more sustainable. go boldly. emerson.

let's take a look at zillow. shares are up some 42% year to date our next guest likes what he sees upgrading the stock to outperform this morning and

doubling his price target to $61. evercore isi mark mahaney joins us now this is essentially a macro call what makes you confident the housing market is recovering or will recover this year and a 42% rise, this isn't already baked in >> yeah. thanks, deirdre. so, this is a part thanks. so this is part of macro calls, and our home building analyst thinks part of the fund is that existing home sales and home prices are likely to trough out bottom in this march quarter and then recover so we lead with that what we know historically is there's a high correlation between zillow's revenue and its profits with existing home sales. this should fully participate. we look at the traffic data. zillow has become synonymous with residential real estate

property for years, so much so "saturday night live" did a skit because it's so popular. prior to the kind of major correction we saw in the market last year, zillow was rocking along with 45% profit margins, and that's why we upgraded the stock. that may be our mistake, here, but if there's a recyclical recovery, zillow is good >> zillow was faced with a lot of volatility and share price because it did not do that well, and if the market is going to recover, would that make zillow's business bigger versus an open door, which is down huge over the last 12 months but has been on an incredible rally this year >> let's see

i-buying is a difficult and challenging business the bin fenefits acue to a scal leader, and zillow was not a scale leader, but they went in and they avoided massive losses. there are other parts of zillow that i like. they have been getting deeper and deeper into mortgages. they are trying create more value for consumers that come to the site this is a leading website for consumers that are using to buy or sell homes. there's an enormous amount of information in there and allows people to get information on mortgages via data, and on the real estate agent side, they have a wonderful tool called showing time, and i like that product. i think there's a little more than a cyclical call here and i think the product development could help them gain more share

of the overall market. >> lots of attention to costs these days, so lots of top line potential that you see from them on the housing market, but how are they doing on costs? do they need to cut? have they been efficient up to this point >> no, they have not been efficient. they have done two sizeable layoffs, and now they are more setup, and it's a high-margin business again something like the with 70%, 80% gross margins, yes, they over hired and they did when they made the i-buying bet, and when they peeled back from that they had to take cost cuts.

some have already taken cost cuts, and szillow is one of the. up next, 11,000 meta employees have already received no tuesday of being let go are more job cuts ahead? plus, management changes coming. we'll rhtacbeig bk. is more than a trading platform. it's an entire trading experience. with innovation that lets you customize interfaces, charts and orders to your style of trading. personalized education to expand your perspective. and a dedicated trade desk of expert-level support. that will push you to be even better. and just might change how you trade—forever. because once you experience thinkorswim® by td ameritrade ♪♪♪ there's no going back.

meta announcing its chief operating officer is leaving, and it's bracing for another wave of layoffs. let's bring in julia to dissect both items >> it's interesting here levine had been at the company for 13 years and she's planning to stay on over the summer to help the transition, and they are elevating two people who have been at meta for a long time, and they say that this new structure will help bring the business and product teams together and operate more ae

fishantly, and there's no doubt levine's departure is a big loss she was coo of instagram she held various key roles at the company. i will point out, she was close to sheryl sandberg, brought in by sandberg, and i would point out these are three senior women that left the company in the wake of the transition from facebook to meta just keep an eye on that there >> julia, you are eluding to something i wanted to ask you about, is it clear now that sheryl sandberg is gone, who is the center of gravity at facebook now, and to what extent they have buy-in across that crucial portion of the workforce? >> they are spreading out that center of the business

relationships. levine was in one of the key roles, right she managed a lot of the key business relationships and she was elevated to be another se sheryl sandberg, but they are splitting up marney's role that will report up to the coo. >> i would add one name to that list, and what does this tell us about succession plans do we care about succession plans at facebook? looks like they have lost a lot of high profile people that could have stepped into that role >> you are right, those are four senior women that have left, but what is interesting is when you look at succession, meta, facebook, it's a different type of company, and not only is mark zuckerberg young compared to the companies reckoning, and he does have voting control over the company. >> pretty interesting moves there.

meta, one of the big s&p gainers today. thank you so much. dow close to session highs really not too much worry. circulating cpi tomorrow and tomorrow earnings will pick up a bit, we will get coke let's get to the judge and the half carl, thank you very much. welcome to the "halftime report." with tomorrow's cpi now looming large, we get to set up with that with fresh moves from the investment committee joining me, everybody is at the table. happy to see everybody here. let's go to the wall 12:00 noon in the east, and green across the board as you will see nasdaq outperforming today