>> all righty, folks, thanks so much for watching "power lunch." glad you could join us on this monday >> closing bell starts right now. ♪ stocks are jumping to start the week as investors await tomorrow's key inflation report. nasdaq gaining back around half of last week's losses right now of 1.2%. this is the make or break hour for your money welcome, everyone, to cloebz, i'm sara eisen look at where we stand in the market overall dow is higher by almost a percent, 290 high of the day was 350 points or so. the s&p 500, up almost a full percent. technology's leading that's your best sector. information technology along with consumer discretionary and communication services what's weaker today? energy that's the only sector that's down utilities are underperforming as well the nasdaq is the center of the action tech stocks rallying yields are a little bit lower, at least on the longer end of the curve, 3.7 on the ten-year microsoft, apple, nvidia, and meta lead the way.

look at the nasdaq 100 and you'll see the story here with the strength coming off a down week last week, ilumina having an 8.3% surge of earnings. some of the chinese tech stocks like pinduoduo rallying today and the media names continuing a strong showing, warner brothers up another 5%. we're going to getting early read on inflation ahead of tomorrow's cpi report when we talk to the ceo of consumer products company edgewell, who says walmart is warning companies like his about raising prices plus we will speak to michael rubin, ceo of fanatics about last night's super bowl and the demand he's seeing for athletic wear, gambling, lot to talk about there. first, mike santoli, kind of a quiet, from a headline perspective, but path of least resistance is up >> it is today, sara, levitating a little bit volumes are light but not a lot to stand in the way of the s&p 500 essentially traveling a pretty high percentage of last

week's total range last week, we were down 1% plus but really felt worse. obviously are going to be waiting for that cpi number. that will render the near-term verdict on whether this makes sense. longer term yields, tame today, so that's leaving room for the growth stocks to work. also consumer discretionary doing well not to mention some of the names outside of energy we broke the down trend as we have been saying for a while definitely hesitation in the last week or so. pretty good two-sided debate on whether this rally has gone far must have or has shown some staying power and really sniffing out that the economy is in a firmer spot take a look at the one-year treasury build essentially, it's making new highs. it's started at the jobs report a little over a week ago and it's now the highest yield on the curve and we're basically pushed 5% at times today so, essentially, got the 4.97%

or something like that this is where you're capturing the possibility for the fed to go further than currently priced in and it's essentially the strong patch of the economy, maybe even the -- we're not going to land at all, soft or hard, for a little while type scenario and that's definitely reflected here >> we're going to talk about that in a second so, ahead of the cpi report tomorrow, how's the market position >> we're not really that -- we were overbought like a week and a half ago we went to those new highs and we've worked that off. i think you're a little more in balance at this point. clearly, yields are going to decide exactly how much stocks can handle from that number tomorrow there's been commentary that people are running the numbers in advance and are suggesting for statistical reasons there might be upside to the formal consensus on cpi as a matter of fact, the realtime tracker of inflation data is suggesting a little bit to the high side, so maybe people are already braced for that you could get a little bit of relief i would point out, the last on-target cpi report last month

did not create a big equity market response if you remember. it was kind of shrugged off because people assume we already knew inflation was going up. >> rewalwe rallied into it and w we're rallying off what, the disinflation comments from powell >> rallying to the range, not carving new ground to the upside just yet >> tomorrow's kprircpi report we a key indicator of the fed's next move. with strength in the labor market and consumer spending, could we be heading into a so-called no-landing scenario? joining us now is wall street jou journal who wrote about that topic. that has been the debate, hard landing or soft landing. what do you hear about no landing? what does that even mean >> no landing means you don't get the slowdown in growth that economists and policymakers at the federal reserve have been anticipated so i think a no-landing scenario is probably

just a delayed landing if you were thinking that you were going to have a recession this year and now looks like the fed isn't going to bring the plane down, then you're looking at something like that happening in 2024. no landing is probably a delayed landing and the longer you delay this, the more likely it is that you're looking at a hard landing. >> part of the shift has been an acceleration of the economy, something no one really expected to see at this point after so much tightening in the system. how do you think the fed would react to it hotter than expected inflation report tomorrow? >> well, they're going to have two reports, sara, before their next meeting, so they don't have to mark to market their reviews right away, and if you go back to the december fomc meeting, there was a lot of pushback from economists and from commentators to those inflation projections where they said they thought inflation was going to end this year around 3.5%, using their pce -- core pce measure.

a lot of people said, that's implausibly high i think you're starting to see data dependence does run both ways and powell didn't push back against the markets more benign view of inflation a couple weeks ago, and then after the jobs report, i think you've seen the market come closer to where the fed is so, that's sort of what i would expect to see if this does go on the high side tomorrow >> i was going to ask if you think that the market has been too enthusiastic about a fed pause, fed cuts, given what you're hearing and how you're reading the fed. >> i really think, sara, it has to do with data. if you think that you're going to see a lot more disinflation here, you're going to get the help on the shelter side, you're going to get the goods disinflation, then the market forecast from a couple weeks ago, you know, didn't seem absurd, and i think that's why you didn't see chair powell push back against it, but the fed, i think their view has been this

is going to be harder. last week, powell said this could be bumpy, and so you could almost interpret that as, they're not expecting progress in inflation to be in a straight line they don't think every report is going to break in this sort of miraculous melting away of inflation, and so i think that's where it's going to be difficult, because we're going to have these questions around how long does the sequence of 25 basis point increases go on for? >> right and so the data's going to tell it, and particularly it seems like the inflation data is going to tell it is a no-landing scenario that you write about, is that bullish or bearish because it's good if we don't go into recession, good for earnings, theoretically good for our economy, but it's bad if it keeps the fed at a more restrictive level for a lot longer >> i think the fed has been pretty clear here, sara, that they want to see things slow down they keep talking about a labor market that's out of balance, that demand is too strong, and so if they don't see the

slowdown, it means they're going to take steps to try to create the slowdown whether that means a higher terminal rate or just holding at a higher level for longer, i think that's what we're going to find out in the weeks ahead, but a no landing here is not consistent with what the fed says they want, and so that's why i go back to the first point, a no landing is probably a delayed landing. >> i wonder what -- i wonder what we think the bar would be for them to double up again and go 50 basis points again instead of 25. they've shown flexibility here relating to the cpi reports. >> they've shown flexibility, but really more in the sense of adding 25s, so i asked john williams, the new york fed president, last week about whether they would put a 50 on the table for march, and he really didn't seem to want to go there. anything's possible. but right now, they seem to be trying to get everybody to understand that their reaction function to hotter data is, you know, higher for longer, using 25s, and then, you know, getting markets to price out those cuts.

those are the two mechanisms, i think, you're more likely to hear about right now >> nick, thank you for joining me it's good to talk to you >> thank you, sara >> appreciate it with all these topics front of mind for investors. after the break, the ceo of fanatics joins us to talk consumer apparel demand following the super bowl, plus his thoughts on the environment right now for late-stage private companies and more we've got a rally today, up almost 300 points on the dow nasdaq leading, microsoft, apple, nvidia leading the charge here with the rally in the nasdaq of 1.2% you're watching cnbc we'll be right back.

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welcome back to "closing bell." s&p is up almost a full percent. we're battlegrorebounding from s last week. wells fargo is out with a new note today, saying the bear market is over, but warning that the bull is stuck in traffic joining me here at post nine is the author behind that note, wells fargo head of equity strategy, chris harvey why are you confident that the bear market is over? >> so, sara, there's a couple reasons. one, when you have -- when the wheels fall off in a bad bear market, usually what you see is balance sheets that are upside down and backwards that's not the case. balance sheets are pretty good second thing is you want to see things reflected a certain way in the credit markets and bond markets. what we see in the bond markets is typically what we see after a bear market ends we're seeing tightening.

the caost of capital for a lot o companies is much lower today than it was three, four months ago. what that also says is there's not a tremendous amount of stress the last thing is somehow we got here we think we got here because the cost of capital got much higher last year, so the underlying fundamentals are okay. >> doesn't that all suggest we could still have this recession or correction in earnings? >> so, we do expect, how do we say this we economic it an economic malaise, and we do -- our price target is 4,200. our eps number is 210, so we're expecting numbers to come down we're not expecting a great economy, more of an economic malaise, but all that said, what we think is the bear market is over because the underlying fundamentals or the systemic risk just isn't that high. and so now, what we're in is just your average, everyday garden variety tight market. >> itwasn't that high last yea when we were in a bear market,

was it >> what wasn't that high >> you didn't have the balance sheets that out of whack everybody kept saying corporate america is in a good place >> the cost of capital went much higher if you roll the clock back 12 months, people were talking about recession. that was very controversial. people talking about the fed going 75 basis points, even 50 basis points was controversial and everyone thought growth would never go down. growth has corrected a significant amount so, a lot of work has been done, and the underlying fundamentals -- that's the most important thing -- underlying fundamentals are okay. for a bear market to continue, you really need that systematic risk to be high. you need balance sheets to be bad on the consumer or the corporate side, and that's just not the case >> it's a call for the market to sort of march in place kind of for a while toward a little higher >> i think that's fair we don't see a ton of upside with large caps where we think the real opportunity is, down capitalization with small caps, mid cap. we think your best risk-reward

is mid cap growth. you have good valuations, numbers coming lower you have technicals on your side and you have a space where you can really power through this economic malaise >> and you like pharma as a defensive. >> we do like pharma we think valuation looks pretty good it has pulled back here. and unlike staples, you don't have to worry about a lot of inflation issues weighing on top. >> what was your target last year >> our target last year was 40 -- well, at the end of the year, it was 4,300 we came in expecting the market to be down a little bit. we were expecting a 10% correction but the market was down more than we expected so we readjusted down midway through the year >> got it. you're up 4,200 this year. >> 4,200 this year >> thank you for joining me to talk about the new call. >> thank you >> appreciate it chris harvey from wells fargo. coming up, the ceo of edgewell personal care, he's going to be here to give us his latest reading on inflation.

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so, the kansas city chiefs taking home the super bowl win last night in that comeback victory that came down to the final minutes. fanatics, the e-commerce sports merchandise giant, says kansas city products are on pace to be the second best-selling championship gear ever joining us now, a "closing bell"

exclusive interview, fanatics ceo michael rubin. good to talk to you. >> how you doing good to talk to you. >> tell us why what makes kansas city chiefs such a big seller right now in terms of super bowl champ merchandise? >> well, first, a little bit salty for me i'm a big eagles fan, from philadelphia eagles would have been a better outcome for fanatics and business, but that said, kansas city's still a great champion. i think they're 15% better than they were two years ago. they've got great fans kansas city has incredible fans. they love their football team. they're coming out and showing incredible support incredibly happy for chiefs fans, but as a strong eagles fan this morning, not waking up feeling very happy, but i'm looking forward to the bright future they have as well >> yeah, i know. i knew you were from philly. so, sorry for the loss look, i wanted to ask you just in general how the business is doing. you're a private company

we don't hear about it that much in general, how's it been going? you cover all the leagues across categories what does the business look like >> absolutely. yeah, business overall has been very good. i mean, obviously, look, we're a consumer company, and every consumer business is a little bit off from what it would have been but last year, we grew 19% organically in the merchandise business that's our biggest business. this year, we'll grow kind of in the low to mid double digits, so still tremendous growth for us sports is strong our business that continues to grow not only domestically but globally, just has tremendous demand we're approaching this year will be almost $8 billion in revenue, that's without all the trading card rights that kick in from the nfl, the nba, college, wwe, ufc, so for us, business has been really strong overall >> right, so, i was going to ask -- start asking you about some of the levers that you're going to pull when it comes to revenue streams. live shopping for these cards, for the topps business

i know you have made a big hire. what is the -- what is the vision here? i don't know that a lot of americans do their shopping in a live way, but i know a lot of companies like walmart or amazon or ebay have all been interested in it. >> yeah, well, first, live shopping in china is a massive business i think it's, like, about $600 billion of revenue this year, so it's pretty nascent in america today, but we believe long-term it's going to be a meaningful business, and what's so exciting for us about launching live and having the nfl join, is that trading cards and collectibles are the single biggest category in north america, probably 20% of the entire business. so fanatics today being such a strong player in trading cards and collectibles has an inherent advantage. you can really build something incredible for collectors. so we're excited to watch later this year, great vision for fanatics live, and we believe in the business long-term, and for us, we like to see how to

benefit our fans, be good for innovation while determining the process. >> i think of the -- like a modern-day hope shopping network. is that the right idea what even is it? >> definitely. yeah really think about -- if you thought about qcs or hsn, kind of with great brands through the internet, that's the most basic and simple way to think about it it's live shopping through the internet, and if you think about it, you've got so much great content, sports, that's a great way to launch live shopping, and i think you're going to see a lot more companies go after this again. today, in our china business, as example, it's about 50% of our revenue, so if you look at the nba's revenue in china, half of our revenue comes from live shopping, people watching different hosts talk about the products live and buying them. we have so this great people involved, whether it's the 3,000 athletes that we have under contract today that can host different content with us, and so i think this will be

something that will be incredibly exciting in the sports business. >> you're also jumping on the sports betting bandwagon, which was obviously really big for the super bowl, and there have been great high hopes about this, even though some of the stocks have been disappointing, like a draftkings what are your plans? wh when does that launch? >> so, we are big believers in online sports betting, ni gaming long-term. it's been our view that we have real inherent advantages today, fanatics has close to a hundred million fans that we work with, over 60 million buyers within our merchandise business alone then we have additional collectors in the trading card and collectibles business, and so we think if you think about online sports betting, i-gaming, it will be a big business long-term. we have a strength of brand, strength of customer base, so i agree, the stocks have been disappointed but they were way overvalued in the early days will this be a big business

long-term? the answer is, yes so, we have inherent strategic advantages so, we're going to launch in beta by the end of march i think by the end of the year, we'll be in every major state in the u.s. other than new york, where it's very hard to make money with that 51% tax. we're bullish for what this means for us long-term, and we're told people want to gamble with us, do online sports betting, that fanatics would be a great place to place bets. >> it gets to the overarching question you were recently valued at $31 billion, able to raise a few money million more i reported that in recent months, you hosted an analyst day of sorts, which is interesting for a private company. so, how are you thinking about an ipo and where you may be on this path? >> yeah, well, first, we actually raised over $700 million all common stock with the majority of shareholders that were new you know, for us, all that money gets used on m&a

we generate free cash flow today, all the businesses, other than gambling, are profitable business, so the merchandise business, collectible businesses, good profitable business we're obviously invested in gambling like everybody else but for us, we think going public will make sense it's not something we're doing in the near term, but it's something we will do in the midterm, and when the time is right, we're going to do it. >> are you thinking of yourself as an e-commerce company, sports betting company, how should future investors value you and think about your comps >> the way i think about this business is we're really creating a kind of digital sports platform for sports fan to get anything they want digitally, whether it's merchandise, place to bet on sports, whether it's collectibles, over time, i think there will be other things you see within this platform so it's a platform that will give the sports fan anything they want to buy. people think about fanatics as a merchandise business hey, i'm going to get my super bowl products or my nfl jersey or yankees products, my manchester united products, but for us, we really think about,

how do we get the sports fan whatever they want digitally i think that's a really big opportunity. there's really not another company that's going after this other than fanatics, and so i think that gets us really excited. sports is a really big business, and i think we wake up every day, and we're obsessed with how to improve the experience for the sports fan, and if we work hard for that with our associates every day, we got a big opportunity to give sports fans exactly what they want digitally, and we feel like we're just really getting going. it's crazy for a company that's going to be almost in the $8 billion range without some of these new rights this year we feel like a young start-up company. that's what's so exciting about what we're doing >> michael, keep us posted thank you very much. it's good to talk to you >> great to talk to you. >> i know you had a killer super bowl lunch as well with all the celebrities there. >> we had a fun weekend. you'd think that i didn't want to get on video because i was beat up by the super bowl, but we made it with 15 minutes to

get on video with you. my voice is raspy. i actually looked presentable today. >> i know. well, we were looking forward to having you it was a shot issue, not a hangover issue or anything like that it looked like a fun party michael, thank you michael rubin, ceo of fanatics by the way, fanatics was once a cnbc disrupter 50 company and we are now accepting no, mmination. if you're a private venture-backed company, you can scan the qr code or go to cnbc.com/disrupters to learn more we're continuing to build on these gains, up 330 now on the dow. s&p is up a full percentage point. only one sector lower, that's energy everybody else stronger today. information technology is leading the charge it's the best performing sector right now in the s&p 500 and that's thanks to a number of names like the solar edges, microsoft, some of the semiconductors like intel, nvidia, they're all rallying amd, up 2.5% as well

up next, we'll get a read on inflation ahead of tomorrow's key cpi report when we're joined by the ceo of edgewell personal care we're celebrating black heritage through the stories of our own cnbc teammates and leaders here is former b.e.t. ceo, debra lee. >> growing up in the segregated south emphasized to me at a young age the importance of being an african american woman. i've always been very proud of my heritage, proud of our history, proud of all we've accomplished, and one of my greatest desires in life was to be successful and to be able to give back to my community. i'm very proud of being able to do that, and i hope that it has had an impact on the rest of the world. lily! welcome to our third bark-ery. oh, i can tell business is going through the “woof”.

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tomorrow's inflation numbers will offer a look at how much consumers are paying for a range of of goods, but pushback has already begun. reuters reporting that walmart is warning suppliers, including edgewell, to avoid hiking prices because consumers can no longer keep up. joining us to talk about this and a lot more in a "closing bell" exclusive interview is edgewell ceo rod little. rod, welcome back. nice to see you. >> hi, sara. always good to be with you >> so, tell us what's happening with prices out there for the consumer >> well, i think we've seen a period where prices have gone up we have taken pricing, like all of our competitors have, based on rising input costs, both wage

and raw materials, chemicals and whatnot, and to this point, the pricing that we have anticipated taking has been executed, and so we've seen the consumer be resilient. our market shares are holding up we're holding or growing market share in most every category we operate in, and so i think it may be more difficult from here to take pricing, but we've executed the pricing we have in the plan for this year >> and to what -- to that report i mentioned, what are you hearing from walmart, which is obviously the -- i think it's probably your biggest, right, in terms of clients in terms of the retails that you work with? >> yes, walmart is our biggest customer globally, that's correct. and i think what we're hearing is the consumer is potentially coming into a period where they're going to be stressed, and everybody's looking to protect their own margin structure. and so i think we're in a period, though, if you have good innovation, good ideas, and you

bring something interesting to market and you can price for it, there's price to be had there. if you don't have that, it will be difficult from here >> so, how are you thinking about how to manage some of the costs when it comes to commodities? i mean, you've clearly done a good job on productivity savings and passing on prices to consumer, but you're saying things look like they're going to change now? >> yeah, i think we're at an inflection point in our business with gross margin percentage and where it heads we've come through a period where gross margins have been declining not only for us but our whole peer group in the industry, and we're looking at a period as we get into the second half of our fiscal year here, beginning in april, where we're going to expect gross margin to expand and become accretive. part of that's the pricing we put in part of that is the good cost productivity work that we have had, but also, part of it is moderating inflation year over year if you go back two quarters, we had 700 basis points of margin

headwinds. the quarter just finished. it was 500 basis points. and we're projecting 350 for the full year. so, moderating as we go to the back half and full year gross margin accretion we've got pricing power with our brands we've done a good job on the cost productivity work i think we set up, you know, for the future where we have organic growth, we have gross margin rate growth, and so we think it's quite interesting for the future >> what about discretionary spending or are you more of a staple are you seeing pullback in terms of customers spending on premium brands like yours for sunscreens or razors? >> yeah, we are not seeing a pullback, sara our categories have all continued to grow through this period men's grooming, for example, growing double digits, fem care growing, shave growing, and so we're in a period where the consumer has been very resilient, particularly here in the united states, and so with a healthy consumer to this point, categories that are growing, the other thing we look at is

tradedown. is there any meaningful tradedown happening? as you know, we have a private label shave portfolio. we're the leader here in the united states, and we're also not seeing any meaningful tradedown in our categories. not to this point. >> well, that, i mean, good sign on the consumer overall. i have to ask you about some of the sunscreen voluntary recalls with banana boat that seem to have expanded. why is this happening? >> there was one lot that we added into the recall that was from last summer, sara it was a specific hair and scalp formulation that we wanted to make sure that we were on the right side of safety so that when any time a consumer goes and chooses banana boat or hawaiian tropic, our two main brands, they know what they have is safe and effective. and we just wanted to be sure that we had captured everything in the recall. there's really nothing to recall there's no financial impact to this it was a smaller third-party batch that we had made so, really no news there other

than we just want to lean into safety >> all right, good outsize because of the brand is so well known, i guess, attention in the news. rod, thank you very much for joining me i appreciate it. >> thank you, sara go chiefs. go chiefs. >> oh, go chiefs all right. we had an eagle today. we had an eagles exec and now a chiefs exec. making everyone happy. i'm still upset about the bengals. microsoft rallying 14% this year it's having a good day today as well, up 3% on a number of bullish wall street calls we will hit straight ahead. plus meta surges and ford's new ev strategy when we take you inside the market zone be right back. i am here because they revolutionized immunotherapy. i am here because they saw how cancer

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custom scans help you find new trading opportunities. while an earnings tool helps you plan your trades and stay on top of the market. ♪ we are now in the "closing bell" market zone. cnbc senior markets commentator mike santoli here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day, plus we've got julia boorstin here and phil lebeau on ford's ev update mike, we're at the highs of the session right now, 352 on the dow, s&p 500, rallying nicely here into the close, and into a big cpi report tomorrow. where you said the set-up is looking better i don't know if you read the jpmorgan note. he's had a mixed record lately

but he was warning he thought a lot of the good news was being overly priced in on inflation and in the fed >> look, i think, arguably, the market has fed off a lot of relief both the inflation front and the idea that the fed is pretty well priced right now, that we know the destination, how fast they'll get there anything that upends that comfort is probably not going to be received that well by the market, but i do think last week, they had this very quiet sideways digestion type move, didn't do much to the charts, 1% below the highs from the week before last, so in decent shape. home-building related stocks today doing very well. credit markets are calm. you're not getting a new reason, if you came into work today, to be incrementally worried, so we'll see if that changes with cpi. >> i don't know. edgewell just said margins, inflection point for margins, consumer's going to push back against these higher prices. that might be consumer staple specific but i thought it was interesting color. let's hit microsoft because it is spiking again, leading the tech sector higher

the stock in the spotlight after relaunching its search engine, bing, with technology developed from that investment in open a.i.'s chatgpt analyst saying it's more than just a.i., and morgan stanley reiterating an overweight rating and stifel updating its price target both on strength of microsoft's cloud and office segments morgan stanley calling it one of the best secular growth stories in tech, mike. either way you look at it, another big move up for microsoft. >> it's a stock that the street loves to find fresh reasons to love in general. it is so well managed, well diversified, just this sort of very steady play on just the growth and the digital and then you have the public embrace of the story when it comes to a.i. after last week. so, i understand the momentum. what was interesting about the morgan stanley note is it was really just a lot of slicing and dicing of the existing guidance and how that's going to filter into the accounting for the next few quarters and in other words, coming to the conclusion that they can resume earnings growth faster than the market thinks.

now, the current fiscal year ends in june, supposed to be a flat year profit-wise, with last year, so they're basically saying, it goes up from here, which is required, if you ask me, for a stock that's already priced at 28 times earnings. so, definitely has the momentum. we'll see how much is left in the tank in terms of getting that valuation up, getting people to believe numbers are going high r >> adding 49 points to the dow by itself, salesforce adding 24, so all the cloud names are working today. meta is also on the rise after a report from the "financial times" that another round of job cuts could be coming meta eliminated more than 11,000 positions back in november among the first big tech companies to undergo layoffs julia boorstin joins us now. what do we know about this next round? >> we got a no comment from meta, but what's interesting about this "ft" report is they said that this pending set of layoffs that's in the works is delaying the ability for budgets -- for teams to set their budgets.

but i think what's most interesting here is a b of a securities analyst note out on this headline today, maintaining its buy rating, $220 price target for the stock, saying the year of efficiency, which is what mark zuckerberg called this year, may just be the beginning, and more layoffs are possible, and saying they're very bullish on this idea that there's more opportunity for meta to be far more disciplined when it comes to how they're managing their costs. so, that's the -- seen as a very bullish thing from bank of america, but i just want to point out, sara, that we had some other news from meta today, which is that marnie levine, who had been chief business officer, is leaving and they're effectively replacing her with two other executives who have been around for a while, and they're going to be taking on expanded roles so, more changes at meta >> yeah. and potentially, i don't know, is that a good thing are they trying to, i don't know, take out a layer of management is that unrelated? >> i think marny levine was the

one who decided to leave she had been at the company for 13 years she was very close with sheryl sandberg and one of the many senior women that's announced her departure, so i think there's questions about whether or not that's a good thing for the company, probably will be a tough transition there, even though the people replacing her have been around for a while she's certainly a valued part of the company. but it does seem like the sense that more layoffs could help the company be even more focused and more efficient it does seem like if there are these additional layoffs that have been reported, that would be a good thing. >> mike, how does meta look? it's had quite a comeback this year >> it has, but it did get very washed out, did look very cheap, even based on earnings before we were filtering through all the job cuts and cost cutbacks that we're seeing right now, so it looks like it's got the same valuation as alphabet. they have come at it from different directions meta's a unique situation in terms of the big communication services and tech companies in that they could win back the street simply by pulling the

lever on cost. you didn't have to do anything else, and i think investors are going to start to get even greedier about this. they're going to want buybacks and more profit protection right now, you know, it's still got the price momentum to go along with the fact that the valuation isn't yet challenging at this level. >> got it. julia boorstin, thank you. let's hit ford announcing it will partner with china's catl to build a new $3.5 billion ev battery plant in michigan. ford will own the plant, and then license the technology from the chinese company. earlier on "power lunch," the ceo, jim farley, discussed how this deal will help make evs more profitable for ford and more affordable for the consumer >> we're scaling up to 600,000 units by the end of this year, and these batteries are less expensive, as you said, for the consumer they're also better business for us, and they'll help us get to that 8% road map for profitable

evs. you know, scaling evs is great, but you have to make money on them >> phil lebeau joins us. phil, how does this fit into ford's ev strategy and what's new about it >> well, what's new about it is that lfp batteries, and that stands for lithium iron phosphate, that's the battery composition there. that's different than what they currently use, which is nickel, cobalt, manganese, and those are more expensive elements to have within a battery pack. lfp batteries, they're cheaper to produce they're a lower cost so you can bring down the cost of the ev that you're ultimately selling with that battery pack, and while the range is a little bit less, it's not a huge dropoff. so, for many people, lfp makes more sense in the long run to buy, and if you're ford, having lfp production here in the united states helps out a lot as they're ramping up to two million in annual ev sales globally by the end of '26 that's their target at this point. >> is that more like what

tesla -- how tesla uses the batteries? >> yes that's your standard -- that's the battery composition for the standard range model 3 and model y. so, you'll see this from all the automakers they're all gravitating towards, let's do lithium iron phosphate. you can still get, what, about 85%, 90% of the range that you would get from the other composition that is currently in use, and you don't have to worry about as much nickel, cobalt it just makes more sense, and i think when you look at what ford's decision is, this is a decision to say, we want to make more evs affordably priced, as affordable as possible, and bring down our costs at the same time >> and it gets produced in the u.s. importantly, right? so they can get the credits from the irs. >> yes, absolutely absolutely raw materials still remains an issue, but they've got until '26. this plant won't be up and running until 2026 in south central michigan, so who knows what the tax credit situation will be by then? and who knows what the supply situation will be?

>> mike, ford? over the last year, it's been tough. it's sort of straddled in between these longer-term plans that investors were excited about on evs and then the shorter term cyclical worries on the auto market and rates and everything >> for sure. that is really keeping a lid on the stock and the valuations and really, you know, i could understand ford has to constantly send a message that they are scaling up in the one part of the auto market that is growing and that they're going to be significant and, you know, lasting player in evs and it's not going to be just about cannibalizing their own market share. for the moment, though, it was a dozen years ago, and 23 years ago before that, and it's a six, seven times earnings picture so yes, it reflects a lot of concern about the durability of the current cycle and how they can remain profitable throughout it so, not a new story, but definitely one that's, i think, gotten an extra bit of urgency here with management at ford just to send a message that they're not going to be kind of

outmaneuvered, outinvested in this area. >> got it. phil lebeau, thank you very much by the way, tomorrow, we've got another big ceo interview, an exclusively with bank of america ceo brian moynihan from his firm's financial services conference that's going to be live at 10:00 a.m. on "squawk on the street" with me, brian moynihan, 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. mike, we've got about two minutes to go here in the trading session. looks like a strong day. what do you see in the internals? >> certainly has been strong, sara, about three to one advancing volume over declining volume so even though microsoft is up big and is having a big impact on the s&p, it's really a pretty broad rally right here, 2.1 billion shares on the buy side, although it is overall somewhat lighter volume. look at stocks versus bonds year to date. this would be the long-term treasury relative to the s&p they were going up together for the first month of the year, stocks outperforming since then, yields going up, longer term treasuries selling off that inflection point there was the jobs number in the first

part of this month, so clearly, stocks still taking comfort that the economy is kind of sturdy, not yet panicking over what it might mean for yields and the fed at this level. the volatility index is backing off only slightly, even though it's a monday and you have a little bit of a giveback the cpi tomorrow is something that is keeping it more elevated than it otherwise would be here, above 20, just given how calm and relatively firm the equity indexes have been themselves >> all right, mike, thank you. into the close, we've got the dow rallying 350 points, high of the day. we've got 28 out of 30 dow stocks higher right now. the only losers are disney and chevron. everyone else is gaining microsoft, home depot, and salesforce, biggest contributor to the dow gains up 1.1% on the s&p 500 again, rebounding from a week last week where we were down more than a percent since the biggest pullback in december or so every sector higher except for energy or so what's working best is consumer

depreciation, consumer staples, financials having a good day, up 1% two-year yield is higher, ten-year yield is lower. the dollar is stronger the nasdaq is up almost 1.5% thank you, microsoft, apple, meta, nvidia, netflix, a lot of the media names like our parent company, comcast, warner also having a good day. that's it for me i'll see you tomorrow, everyone. now into closing bell overtime with scott wapner. ♪ all right, sara, thank you very much. welcome, everybody, to "overtime," i'm scott wapner you heard the bells. we're getting started from post nine here. we're going to get palantir earnings momentarily we'll show you the stock move. it's up 10% in a month, so there's a lot that's riding on this report today. we've also got top-rated financial advisor richard saperstein here with me today. we'll get his best bets in this market we begin with our talk of the tape all that is riding on tomorrow's cpi and what the various scenarios could mean for