tv Squawk on the Street CNBC October 26, 2023 11:00am-12:00pm EDT
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good thursday morning. i'm sara eisen with carl quintanilla. after a golden era of private he can quequity old dominion with an earnings beat. the company says they're beginning to see a slowdown in demand. speaking of earnings, a first on cnbc interview, royal caribbean ceo jason liberty is ahead. they raised guidance up 100%. markets continue to see some pressure nasdaq has fallen below the
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200-day joining the s&p and the dow. we'll keep an eye on the markets and see what all this means, of course, for the global economy rates a big picture with a lot of macro data. on the markets, growth versus value. growth has outperformed value in the last decade. is there a case to be made at these levels joining us at post 9, research affiliate and founder of the board, rob arnaut. $130 billion is managed globally using its strategies what did the gdp and core print say to you today >> basically, none of it comes as a surprise. we're in an economy that i think is going to be showing signs of slowing. we have -- there's no such thing as a recession without a housing slowdown there's no such thing as a housing slowdown without a recession. they're joined at the hip.
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right now we have a housing market that's severely restrained if you have a home and mortgage at 2.5%, you're not going to sell unless you have to. if you want to buy and you're going to have to borrow at 7.5%, you're probably not going to buy because you can't. and so supply and demand are both constrained, which is what allows home prices to remain high that can falter if there's any sort of move towards equi equilibrium. we talked in the past about inverted yield curves predicting recessions i think they cause rerescirecess >> do you take solace showing it is about to bottom >> i also take comfort in the fact you have two job openings for every job seeker people will say that recessions
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don't start with a booming economy. that's not true. recessions always start with an economy that's been booming. it's the nature of the peak and the rolling over so, i view the coming year as one where the bond market is signaling caution. the stock market is shrugging off a lot of that. and in any given year, the normal risk of recession or bear market is about 20%. for the coming year i'd say it's about 50-50. >> so, buy bonds, is that your message? >> no. bonds, i think, are much more attractive at lower yields stocks, i think, are vulnerable. u.s. stocks, specifically u.s. growth stocks. there's a couple of headwinds that play against growth and in favor of value one of those is relative valuation. when the spread in valuation between growth and value gets
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enormously wide, any mean reversion will work in your benefit if you're a value investor secondly, inflation is good for value relative to growth on two counts firstly, there's no such thing as high but stable inflation if you have high inflation, you have elevated market volatility, elevated macro activity, those all work in favor of value because people will start to look for a margin of safety. margin of safety isn't available in assets where you're buying a future that's 10 or 20 years out. it also plays into value in the sense that higher -- elevated inflation sustains higher bond yields we've seen that play out hugely in the last 18 months. higher bond yields mean a higher discount rate for long-term future growth, which reduces the value of growth stocks relative to value stocks.
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the same applies for small versus large small stocks are cheap the same applies to non-u.s. are cheap relative to u.s. stocks. >> do any trends in technology or innovation or a.i. come to the rescue in terms of growth? >> oh, absolutely. >> in terms of growth investing. >> in terms of macro investing, yes. markets are driven by narrative. narrative is a.i. will change the world in every way we could imagine. it will kill lots of jobs. it will also create lots of jobs it will massively change the world in the coming decade narratives have the advantage of being largely true we wrote a paper, breakthrough, bubble or both the short takeaway is both the internet bubble was a bubble, but the internet
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narrative was correct. the internet revolution was real. >> we naturally vershoot with every turn >> naturally overshoot. >> and that's where we are now >> that's where we are. >> how do we know which prices will settle or which companies will survive >> we don't. but we do know the broad sweep of market cycles includes broad sector based bubbles that mean revert if you look back at the dotcom bubble as of the end of 2017, zero of the ten largest market cap tech stocks in the world beat the market over a 17-year span if you look today, two of those ten have beat the market microsoft and oracle, but by a skinny margin, 1% to 2% per annum. >> do you think investors are underestimating the risk of what's happening in the world
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geopolitically >> geopolitical risk has me very uneasy let's not for get the yom kippur war set the stage for 15 years of inflation i'm not saying it caused it. it set the stage for it. and you have geopolitical instability in russia and ukraine. that set the stage for the burst of inflation, global inflation we had last year. >> but wars can also be helpful with growth and markets because they stimulate demand for defense equipment, cyber and - >> this is one myth, the notion wars are bad for stocks. they're not. wars are bad, but they're not bad for stocks so as we look at the global stock market and the increasing threats of war, let's not forget china and taiwan if i were president xi wanting to create a new chinese empire, i'd be thinking very seriously
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of taking advantage of current geopolitical instability and i hope he's not watching and taking this as a suggestion. it is not a suggestion i hope fervantly that nothing happens. geopolitical shocks come, surprise people, and yet they're part of the nature of the geopolitical cycles. >> this one certainly surprised the market if not the world in the last couple of weeks thank you. we'll hopefully continue this discussion in the coming days. thank you very much. >> take care. turning to the auto sector, ford and the uaw do have a tentative labor deal six weeks after the strike has begun. let's bring in phil lebeau the pressure on gm and stellantis. >> what usually happens after one automaker reaches an agreement with the uaw during these contract negotiations, that is basically the template that the other automakers are looking to with the uaw. it takes a week or two before
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those negotiations really heat up the focus today is on ford rightly so as the company has agreed to a tentative contract, 4 1/2 year contract with the uaw. it's a costly one. they knew it would be a costly one. 25% pay hike over 4.5 years for uaw members. it goes over 30% when you factor in cost of living adjustments. it will reduce and in some cases reduce wage tiers. the temporary workers hired by ford, that's an important component for automakers, their pay will increase under this contract here's uaw president shawn fain. >> ford knew what was coming for them on wednesday if we didn't get a deal that was check mate. on day 40 of the stand-up strike, we reached an historic agreement. >> by the way, the two strikes that were called monday and tuesday certainly had an influence on ford increasing the pressure to get a deal done. what about the people who have
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been picketing, about 17,000 they are putting away their picket signs some are returning to work today, some others over time and ramping up production. it will be gradual the expectation is we could see a full member vote on this contract offer next week but they still have some time to go in terms of explaining it to the membership, et cetera. take a look at shares of ford. this is an important day, not just because of this agreement but also because we'll get ford's q3 results after the bell like general motors, expecting strong profits for the third quarter. you had robust sales, transaction prices have not ticked lower, the f-150, the suvs are all selling in strong numbers. the expectation is, at least the analysts are expecting a 50% jump in profits compared to the third quarter of last year as for stellantis and general motors, those talks continue they want to get a deal done as quickly as possible.
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the cadence usually is, once one deal is done, takes a week or two before they pivot and another deal is close to being locked in. >> that's good insight once again, phil lebeau covering two large industries today at the same time. thanks, phil meantime, a rough morning for meta despite 23% jump in revenue. the fastest rate of growth in a couple of years. senior tech and media correspondent julia boorstin is at post 9. we knew there would be volatility i'm not sure we expected this. >> i'm not sure we exactly expected this. it's interesting because snap set the stage for this snap is obviously much smaller, much more exposed to brand advertising, which tends to be more volatility than meta. meta has the direct-to-consumer business locked down what we saw here is when asked in a question in the q&a period, this is not something they brought up right away in the earnings report, they did say, yes, they are seeing softness and volatility in the fourth quarter spending that's why the guidance for q4,
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the range was lighter than analyst anticipated. they say they're leaving the door open for a weaker q4 than they hoped before the year started. >> we were talking earlier with jason saying a bit of an overreaction maybe shares have come back for that reason. the fundamentals of the business haven't really changed. >> this company has massive scale. when it comes to digital advertising, it's meta and google when it comes to meta, they are growing much faster than youtube is 23% revenue growth, fastest pace in two years and we also heard a lot from mark zuckerberg about how a.i. isn't the future they are improving their ad results. it's driving increase in engagement both for facebook and for instagram thanks to the benefits of a.i. he laid out how a.i. will continue to boost their results going forward.
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>> meantime, reels, have they neutralized tiktok >> they have reels for a while was a popular thing that was a headwind to revenue growth because they were not making money on reels as they were in other formats they said for the first time this quarter reels is neutral and going forward it will be a tailwind and benefit them. it is a turning point and reels being an advantage for them. >> and driving engagement. >> and big win in terms of ad revenue. >> wppr, shares are down a bit more cautious commentary out of the overall ad community is that a liability for amazon >> the thing about amazon is that it's growing its ad business off a relatively small base amazon has quickly become the third most important ad player in the digital space behind meta and behind google. now this is a moment of transition amazon is about that direct-to-consumer business, direct-to-response they have a huge advantage and
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opportunity to continue to grow their ad business. >> i shouldn't even say the fundamentals are the same because the earnings growth was 168% >> the year of efficienty continues. they will be hiring more people next year because they held back so much hiring this year a lot of that hiring is, again, around a.i >> busy week we're not done yet thanks, julia. coming up, the ceo of old dominion is with us after the break. while he expects a strong holiday quarter despite the recent drop in shipping and demand. the federal reserve is terminating a consent order that citigroup entered into in 2015 the stock is getting a nice bump on that headline we're back in just a moment on "squawk on the street. dow is down 125 points
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and bottom lines they posted revenue growth across most segments with software leading the way they added push into artificial intelligence, generative a.i., is starting to pay off with customers adopting the company's watson x a.i. platform and also started to quantify it, at least on the call, where they said a few low hundred million revenue contribution between software and consulting from generative a.i. if they continue to do that every quarter, it adds up. one part to pick at is that the growth was lower in red hat, which they attribute to execution issues they can clean up in the coming quarters. overall, i think it shows you as a gauge of enterprise spending or i.t. spending from big companies, still remains pretty healthy and growing. growing above gdp, which is what krishna always says. now with increased demand for a.i. where companies like ernst
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& young will hire ibm to use gives to redo their generative platform >> up 5% today decent action in software. let's get the earnings conversation going our friend collin is here at post 9 with a special guest and state of transports. you told us yesterday an important 48 hours. >> inflection for the sector i want to welcome a special guest and welcome in marty freeman, ceo of old dominion freight lines. thank you for joining us to talk results and the broader state of the transports good morning >> good morning. thanks for having me >> the stock is trading flat today but down 4% since earnings despite the fact you beat on top and bottom lines what do you think investors are seeing that is making them sell the stock after a solid quarter. >> i'm pleased with our quarter. we were down 5.5% compared to last year.
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i think that was a good performance. and the slow economic times that we're still experiencing and that was mainly due to an 8% decline in our weight per shipment -- in our tonnage, excuse me. so, i'm pleased with what our crew did for the quarter and i think the stock should bounce back but we'll wait and see how that shakes out over the week >> the report certainly had a number of bright spots, including the fact your revenue per day, that increased by 9%. i want to talk to you about another metric, your operating ratio. in transports, the lower the better you talked quite a bit about this on the call you said it was higher because you're keeping more staff around because you were looking for a rebound in the transports and looking for rebound in freight volumes that hasn't come yet you do see it coming in the next few months what are you seeing when it comes to the macro environment >> we survey our customers this time of year every year because
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we use that data to forecast what type of equipment we'll need for the coming year we're seeing modest growth to flat growth with some of our customers, especially the customers, our retail customers. so we're cautiously optimistic we'll have a good rest of the year hopefully in 2024 we'll have a good rebound >> for edification of the audience we're talking tesla, walmart and a number of walmart suppliers. you and i sat down in august you said you were expecting a solid holiday season has that changed what does that mean to you >> it means flat to modest growth like i said, we're talking to our retail customers every day, especially our large national accounts, which is about 30% of our business they're telling us modest to flat but we're seeing additional
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shipments every day from those customers. like i said, i'm optimistic we'll have a good rest of the year and good first next year. >> i like to talk about the broader transports u.p.s. reported this morning they reported a soft macro environment. their shares down today. some of your other peers in the ltl space also reporting their shares moving lower. everybody thought your stocks and volumes would see a big boost. have you seen that play out? >> frank, as i probably told you earlier, we saw about a 3,000 shipment per day increase when rc closed their doors. we're still seeing that. we're also seeing an increase from others of our competitors where they basically took home too much of that business and we're picking up some of their business we're up over 51,000 shipments per day. and the previous months of this year we were averaging around
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47,000 shipments per day we're seeing an increase in shipments. the weight per shipment is down about 70 pounds. i think customers are still shipping orders. they're just shipping a lower quantity of those goods out to their customers. >> you've been with old dominion since 1992 but as a ceo you're over 100 days on the job when you started, rates were significantly lower. still elevated when you compare it to the last couple of years as we see the ten-year approach 5%, how is that impacting business >> it's impacting business we're not seeing a lot of rate cutting going on right now, even though the economy's soft. i think our competitors realized to have a quality service, you have to have great return to risk on capital. we're not seeing a lot of rate cutting going on, which is healthy for the industry we've seen our competitors already announce their increases
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next year. ranging anywhere from 4.9 to 5.9 rate increase. >> marty freeman, ceo of old dominion, thank you for being here with us >> thank you, frank holland, for that snapshot of the transports. another earnings interview coming up, ceo of royal caribbean raising guidance on strong travel demand. >> southwest says it will plan to slow its capacity growth next year they do cite moderating demand shares have rebounded a little bit this morning, but awfully ayitusinye ls. ne-arow st wh
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want to turn to the latest in middle east israel staging a ground operation in israel which they say could set the stage for a larger offensive jay gray once again in tel aviv. hi, jay. >> reporter: hey there, carl this is the biggest mission to date on the ground inside of gaza it included tanks, troops, even earth movers moving in to clear the way there and as you talk about idf commanders saying they are preparing, quote, the battlefield for the next part of this war we know they took out some operational structures, some anti-tank positions as well. the idf says they took out some
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of the terrorist cells around the gateway into gaza. clearly, they are working towards moving in. still, no indication of when that may happen. they continue to say it will be on their terms and their timing. the humanitarian aid situation is growing dire by the hour. fuel is running out. many of the hospitals and health centers in gaza say they will no longer be able to operate after today because they are out of fuel we know 12 more trucks of aid rolled in across the border with egypt. they had food, water, medicine and medical supplies, but no fuel israel has made it clear as they inspect those trucks moving in that no fuel will be allowed into the area until this war is done that's put a strain on the u.n. agency that offers so much aid to those inside as well. they are parsoning out their
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last bit of fuel they're taking care right now of 600,000 displaced people in gaza in 150 facilities. they have a dilemma. they don't know whether to continue to spread that fuel around or dedicate it to one of their operations that's something they'll have to decide in the coming hours a tough go there as the u.n. again has failed to have any type of security council measure, arguing at this point, carl, over language. they're talking about whether it should be a cease-fire, a humanitarian pause the other language in this is israeli's right to self-defense. as that goes on, the air strikes continue >> how can you do a cease-fire without releasing the hostages is there discussion of that? >> yeah, there's a lot of discussion about that. in fact, what we are hearing is from qatari negotiators is that if there would be some type of cease-fire, some type of pause
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in the air strikes, they would be willing to release all of the foreign hostages of course, this is something they've said in the past, but it's come to light again here as they prepare for this ground advance, it appears. >> jay, thank you. we'll come back for more, of course jay gray in tel aviv. let's get a news updwate wih pippa stevens. an arrest warrant has been issued in the manhunt for robert card, who is suspected of shooting eight others in maine authorities initially called card a person of interest in the case the eight counts are based on the identification so far of eight of the 18 victims. mexican officials say hurricane otis killed at least 27 people wednesday after it came ashore as a powerful category 5 hurricane in the beach resort city of acapulco. it knocked out power line and
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internet to tens of thousands of people, hampering communications after it hit mexico deployed troops to the area to help with clean-up and sent 1,300 utility employees to restore power. china sent its youngest ever crew to orbiting space station today as the country reiterated plans to put astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade. the comments heat up a rivalry with the u.s. which plans to launch a lunar mission by 2025 >> thank you, pippa. hedge fund manager jason mudrick on what he is calling a golden era. how to position your portfolio ahead of amazon's results. the rest of tech, though, taking it on the chin as the street continues to sour on mega cap tech apple not reporting until next week, but now below the 200-day on its own for the first time in since march. to duckduckgo on all your devie
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take a look at shares of hertz having an ugly session down more than 11% after earnings were down double digits i did speak to the ceo this morning about the quarter. what he's blaming is the expense side for missing earnings. and blaming the -- what we've seen with teslas and elon musk taking down teslas' prices in other words, cars get discounted by a third of the value. that hurts hertz's expenses because of depreciation. that and repairs are more coastly. they cost double than internal combustion engines, which has hurt hertz which has 10% to 11% in electric vehicles he told me he still believes in the electric future and thinks they'll be advantaged, for instance, when uber and lyft drives have to drive evs, they will rent. in the meantime, he calls it a controllable problem where it
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will cost more as long as these prices get discounted. a lot of people were looking for that on the tesla earnings call and we didn't get it. >> the headline on bloomberg is wall street sours on evs amid faulty demand. if you look at the drawdown on mag 7, tesla is the worst. >> that was a disappointing call that's where the world is going. that's where regulation is going. it's where demand is going the there are plenty of structural reasons to be bullish on that future and they'll be on with jim on "mad money." take a look at the distressed credit market, $5.5 trillion up for grabs. much of that debt was raised in the low rate era and remains outstanding. joining us is mudrick capital
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cfo jason mudrick. he's in town today welcome to the show. it's good to have you. >> good to be here. >> what does that mean, there's a generational opportunity >> the thing that excites us the most about the opportunity set is the sheer size of it. as you mentioned in your opening remarks, it's 5.5 trillion today. just to put that in perspective, in the 2001 recession, the noninvestment grade was $800 billion. it had grown to $2 trillion by the gfc. it's $5.5 trillion now that's what happens when you keep interest rates at zero and good economic growth not only is the size appealing, it's spread out across the industries as a distressed fund, we need to diversify across industries. what's interesting about this cycle is the over leverage is not isolated in certainly verticals. it's spread everywhere very few industries resisted the temptation to borrow in zero interest rate environment. even companies with no ebitda,
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venture companies tapped the credit markets and borrowed. you're looking at a deep market and very broad market. and the risk in the market is the highest it's been. one of the key metrics we look at to establish risk is total debt levels to earnings power and the debt to ebitda to the level of the credit market has been at all-time highs for the last seven years people aren't issuing bonds or loans for more than five years out. the entire market was issued at highest debt-to-ebitda ever, all issued at zero rates. >> we built up a lot of debt over that period but here's the thing the fed has been raising rates since march 2022 everyone expected a wave of bankruptcies and all of this distress it doesn't feel like that's happened. >> earnings so far have held up. there was an initial issue with inflation. that seems to have subsided, at least for now. what's fascinating about this cycle is the catalyst today is not an earnings contraction. it's interest rates.
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in 2000 when covid hit, earnings contracted it was a question of how long that would be. 2015 you had oil prices collapse 2011 you had a european banking crisis interest rates rising as fast as they've risen affects all borrowers. two-thirds of noninvestment grade credit market is floating rates. they're feeling it now the rest is fixed coupon but they have to refinance that. >> you expect a wave of defaults to come? >> defaults will be much more protracted in nature when you put six turns, seven turns, eight turns on debt to ebitda on businesses, and right now the market is seven times leveraged if you don't give companies credit to add backs to ebitda, that doesn't work in 13%, 14% you couldn't refinance eight turns today. let's say you could and you could do it at 12%, which you can't do, but you can do
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just do the math your ebitda and interest are equal. >> if you were to pick a year in terms of peak maturity, is it '25? is it next year? >> the phenomena we're dealing with now will make this very protracted most of the loan market is light in nature. that means even companies that have broken balance sheets, too much leverage, cash flow negative, can actually borrow more debt they can take additional debt and put it senior to the existing capital structure, which you can borrow and that will prolong the inevitable i don't know when the peak default cycle will be. it will somewhat depend on the economy but i think this is protracted in nature. >> is the strategy to bet on a wave of companies that do fold, crushed by debt, and you invest
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in the ones that survive and steal their share? is it that simple? >> no. this is very early innings, so i think the nature of how we make money investing in distress will change over the next three, four, five, ten years. right now we're very focused on senior credit instruments. i would refer to it more as stressed than distressed i think at this stage you want to focus on higher quality businesses, more economic resilient businesses we haven't even had a recession yet. the companies in chapter 11 today tend to be -- there are exceptions but tend to be lower quality businesses businesses that not only have borrowing cost problems but have operational issues we're focused more on stressed credit, senior debt and some overleveraged lbos you can get 15% right now, which in our neck of the woods is pretty good for now. >> you mentioned it wasn't industry specific this time like we've seen before when it was energy a few years ago real estate feels like a particular focus for a distress right now.
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is that a part of your strategy? >> we don't do a lot of real estate we're mostly focused on corporate credit operating businesses the corporate credit -- the commercial real estate market is a tsunami. there's something like 1.5 trillion of real estate related credit maturing in the next three years. that's going to be an absolute disaster if you look at office occupancy, it's at 50%. >> i wonder if that's a spark that triggers more problems in the market. >> i think it will be more real estate i think the real issue for the earnings power of the consumer, the consumer has been very resilient. you have credit card debt, auto leases that will come due, mortgages you took out at 2.5% five years ago with a seven-year that will need to get
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refinanced i think what we've seen is the u.s. economy is a ship, it's a big ship and it takes time to turn you've seen rates move up very fast that's affected the borrowing cost for these businesses today. earnings power has been resilient. i think it's going to take longer to fill out. >> the u.s. consumer is two-thirds of gdp. as unemployment starts to move up, as people spend less and less on goods and services and more servicing the debt they took out in the zero rate environment, i think you'll see lower growth. >> jason, thank you for coming on. >> thank you. >> even though it's a little doom and gloom speaking of big ships. >> royal caribbean ceo will join us to break down the most recent quarter. stock is higher after pretty good guidance. now up 70% for the year. don't go anywhere.
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this is spring semester at fairfield-suisun unified. they switched to google tools for education because there's never been a reported ransomware attack on a chromebook. now they're focused on learning knowing that their data is secure. ( ♪♪ ) when you're looking for answers, it's good to have help. because the right information, at the right time, may make all the difference. at humana, we know that's especially true when you're looking for a medicare supplement insurance plan. that's why we're offering "seven things every medicare supplement should have". it's yours free, just for calling the number on your screen. and when you call, a knowledgeable, licensed agent-producer can answer any questions you have and help you choose the plan that's right for you. the call is free, and there's no obligation. you see, medicare covers only about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. that's why so many people purchase medicare
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supplement insurance plans like those offered by humana. they're designed to help you save money, and pay some of the costs medicare doesn't. depending on the medicare supplement plan you select, you could have no deductibles or copayments for doctor visits, hospital stays, emergency care, and more. you can keep the doctors you have now, ones you know and trust, with no referrals needed. plus, you can get medical care anywhere in the country, even when you're traveling! with humana, you get a competitive monthly premium, and personalized service, from a healthcare partner working to make healthcare simpler and easier for you. you can choose from a wide range of standardized plans. each one is designed to work seamlessly with medicare and help save you money! so how do you find the plan that's right for you? one that fits your needs and your budget? call humana now at the number on your screen for this free guide. it's just one of the ways that humana is making healthcare simpler. and when you call, a knowledgeable, licensed
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agent-producer can answer any questions you have and help you choose the plan that's right for you. the call is free, and there's no obligation. you know medicare won't cover all your medical costs. so, call now and see why a medicare supplement plan from a company like humana just might be the answer. take a look at royal caribbean jumping up 70% on the
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year they did beat on the top and bottom line, they raised guidance they noted booking remains strong through the quarter, significantly exceeding 2019 levels and seeing demand accelerate for 2024. joining us for a first on cnbc interview, royal caribbean ceo jason liberty. it looks like bookings are solid and the guidance you can't awe gu with. we're trying to compare it with capacity moves we've seen from the airlines, for example. is there a reason to believe there will be a pass-through >> first, really great to be here, carl, and thanks for having me. i think there are much different dynamics than what we're seeing in hotel and airline as we don't have the business consumer so, ours is kind of pure leisure. i think when you consider what we're seeing in terms of this acceleration, a lot is driven by the value gap between land-based vacation, which is resulting in accelerated demand on the ticket
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side as well as the onboard side >> are you seeing, jason, any behavioral changes just in recent weeks here between the u.s. and europe and global customers because of what's happening, for instance, israel? >>. >> well, fortunately, we have great visibility into our customer we have about 130,000 people with us right now. and we take 30, 40, 50,000 bookings a day we have great visibility in terms of what we're seeing so far we're not really seeing any change in behavior as relates to the horrific situation that's happening in israel what we see is continued strength in demand and similar trends to what we were seeing pre the war happening in israel. >> i was talking to stephen scherer of hertz and he said he thinks the holiday season will be strong domestically in the u.s. when stuff happens around the world, it's scary. people do stay closer to home.
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you're not seeing it >> at this point, we're not. we're at the end of our european season, so our season picks up in may of next year in terms of our deployment in terms of timing, most of or focus is our guests will be americans americans or europeanh caribbean or people from australia going to cruises in australia and new zealand. we're not in that zone of where this will impact this point in time. >> that's been the threads some of the analysts have picked up in, over indexing on shorter trips to the caribbean is that a trump card so to speak at the moment? >> yeah. we certainly have benefitted by having more of our product in the caribbean and in the short product. some of that is because of the drivable market, our guests being able to drive closer we have a unique set of assets, besides our ships are extremely differentiated versus our competitors, but we have a lot
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of private destinations, one is cocoa kay, which has the tallest water slide in north america and an incredible thrill side and chill side drawing a lot of first to cruise and first to brand. >> i'm in the thrill side, carl in the chill side. >> i would do the slide. i definitely would dot slide. >> i'm going to take you up on that. >> what about pricing? how is pricing with the demand elevated on board and booking cruises? >> yeah. i mean, really, what we saw as we turned this year in 2023, we just saw an incredible acceleration in pricing as well as in volumes. again, i think a lot of pricing is being driven off the significant value gap, it's a land-based vacation. precovid 10 or 15% value gap and then earlier this year about 40, 45%. now we made a dent in that by about 10 percentage points, but that i think is a lot of what is resulting in the consumer looking to come to us, as well
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as, you know, all these demographics are putting us in a very positive position because these consumers look at cruise today as just an alternative product to going to a land-based vacation experience. that's coming what we see on board spend whether it's on culinary or spa or casino, or experiencing things on land, has been at a significantly elevated level versus 2019. >> until sara and i do the show live from an rcl boat, jason, we look forward to talking to you next time. thanks so much for guidance on the quarter. >> yeah. my machine sure. thanks for having me. >> i love a waterslide too. >> of course. >> up next mega cap tech ai spending plans including amazon which reports tonight. we're going to talk about that in two minutes a look at overall markets, dow down about 100 points. the pressure has been in the nasdaq all week long it's down 1.3%
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now over the last week, it's down about 4%. real pain there. it is related to earnings. microsoft, apple breaking key levels, meta, comcast as well, all weighing on the big tech heavy index. together, we built something truly beautiful. it takes years of dedication to get to this milestone. the new york stock exchange is a symbol of what america is all about the potential of an american dream. it is day one. a lot of work has happened to lead to this historic moment. the only way you can move a society forward is a true expression of freedom. (♪♪) ♪everything i do that's for my health is an accomplishment.♪ ♪concerns of getting screened faded away♪ ♪to my astonishment.♪ ♪my doc gave me a script i got it done without a delay.♪
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some disappointing earnings from big tech so far alphabet and meta, tesla slumping since their respective prints what's in store for amazon tonight as the focus of today's tech check with deirdre bosa. >> carl, the past few days they have not been pretty for big tech, but don't let that fool you. this is not a fundamental story. google told us the advertising
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market is resilient, meta that it can balance massive costs with profitability and microsoft showed the street that it can monetize ai in the cloud this is in the earnings and revenue growth rate this quarter. hard to find fault 40% earnings growth at google and meta doubling its bottom line over the last quarter except to say these may have been baked in. meta shares have more than doubled this year. alphabet and microsoft up 40% year to date the weak stock performance this week at least of google and meta, they're more of the fact of the broader sell-off in equities than because of it. part of that is the yield driven rut affecting the market as a whole which has investors why take a chance on risky stocks when safe bond yields are similarly priced this raises the stakes for amazon tonight it has been a mega cap laggard slowing cloud growth, logistics build out, playing catch-up in ai the bar is lower but will need
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to balance what we talked about a week ago heading into the earnings season the promise of ai versus the economics of ai. its cloud unit aws still the profit engine of the company and helps pay for the ai ambitions, but revenue growth has been decelerating six straight quarters and operating margins have shrunk. the street tonight wants to see that that slump has bottomed if andy jassy and his team cannot confidently say it has and it's back on the upswing, amazon could be another mega cap drag on the market with that outsized effect. amazon will need to guide for a strong holiday quarter ahead and that rests largely on its e-commerce business. no shortage of shopping holidays, no matter how many prime days we've got. >> it's a week where, you know, the slowdown in google cloud but the resilience of azure, kind of held this debate about why only
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raining on one side of the street as cramer likes to say, i wonder if aws breaks that tie. >> mixed signals here it's important to keep in mind that microsoft's cloud unit is still a lot bigger than that of google and it's more tied into its core proposition to serve enterprises. in that sense microsoft is probably a better indicator for an amazon because amazon is building off of its ai products into the cloud, so what i'm hearing as well is that he with need to return to that double-digit growth. if aws growth is 13% that's great news for the market. if it dips below 12% that is going to spell trouble the mixed signals. google says they saw customers optimize for spend aws could go either way. the largest of the cloud giants. >> we'll see what happens in a few hours. thanks deirdre bosa highlighting amazon tonight. we'll get ford and intel and chipotle. >> yeah. i just want to point out that
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apple is sort of breaking down right now which is not good for the overall market but below its late september lows, lower highs lower lows and doesn't report until next week which could be a catalyst >> nvidia too. almost a 3 handle which it hasn't had since the summer. to the judge and the half. >> appreciate it welcome to the "halftime report." i'm scott wapner, the good, bad, ugly of the market with the mega caps, economy and interest rates on the investment committee's mind joining me josh brown, shannon saccocia, bill baruch and jim lebenthal. a check of the markets where we have a little bit of a deterioration happening in the nasdaq as guys were just saying across the board, the russell is higher today, very much in focus on deals as well, that 5% level on the 10-year keep watching that josh, i go to you. it is good, bad, ugly. gdp was strong, pce lighter, rates towards 5% weakto
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