we want to welcome shawn matthews, ceo of cantor fitzgerald. the news of the day with ge as one of the largest, independent financial services companies, i'm curious to hear what you think of ge's move to get out of the business. >> i think people are going back to core competencies. ge makes great products but a finance company when they thought earnings power was there earnings power not as significant as it was in the past. they go back to core competency which is great for us more opportunities to build out our franchise and get into the origination side on asset based alignment. >> shawn, arguably, it was a core competency the seventh largest bank, still, i think, in this country by size. they were the seventh in the world, if memory serves me correctly. there's an issue here about shadow banking, they want to exit because it's not the business it was. you from notes are looking to expand into shadow banking. why the different approach? >> shadow banking, it's not a bad word. we are the originator and securitizer of the product and sell to

brian white in cantor fitzgerald. you like what you saw. >> yes. good quarter. >> why would you say that? >> if you look at eps they gave up side in the quarter. margins expanded year over year. in constant currency sales were flat. if you backed out the fx impact relative to january when they reported last, sales showed a little upside versus the street. >> obviously, the ceo is attempting to turn the company around. she is trying to invest in growth areas. as far as larger core business atlantic equities believes if you look at the figures, it's worsened, consistent with their expectation of a protracted turnaround and in fact potentially free cash flow under pressure. >> i think nothing has changed in terms of free cash flow guidance for the year. i think that's unchanged. when you look at a company going through major transition from the cloud, transitioning from traditional areas to cloud areas. it was very strong. >> i saw free cash flow for the first quarter was $1.1 billion which is approximately 34% below consensus. they only guide for the

cantor fitzgerald is looking at what kind of impact that will have on the second-quarter forecast to stop first quarter total payments 22% versus one year ago. alix: lots of numbers coming out after the bell. officials are meeting with comcast representatives today and they are not likely to be swayed by promises to change its behavior. that is a far cry from back in 2011 when the doj allowed comcast to buy nbc universal. what is so different right now? i'm joined right now by our washington correspondent, peter cook. any new developments? peter: i do have some breaking news, but the meeting has begun. we saw a short time ago our crews saw the comcast attorneys arriving for these conversations. this is an opportunity for comcast to make a place to the justice department. it does not reduce competition and there is no overlap between these two companies and the deal should be able to move forward. there are concerns about the scope of this combination, so the question is what is happening in that room? what is it the justice department wants to see in terms of letting the move go forw

joining with us more, cantor fitzgera fitzgerald, brian white, good morning to you. >> good morning,arl. >> everybody was out over the weekend visiting the stores trying to gauge how the experience is for people trying it on. when it comes to production, how many of these can they make and how quickly? >> well, we've always said, you know, we think they have ambitions that are much greater than our model reflect. so, you know, for fiscal '16, we've got 25 million units, and i think they have ambitions that are much higher than that. so what i like to see this weekend is lead time stretching into june, that's great. apple doesn't want june shipments, and that tells me they were surprised in the upside this weekend. >> brian, based on what you're hearing and seeing in the stores, what's your sense of who's most interest, enthralled with the watch. i was there at the fifth avenue store at the sort of launch on friday. i went back on saturday night with my wife to check it out at around 10:30 p.m., they said no appointments were available to try it on, but we were still able to try it on

joining us now is brian white head of technology software at cantor fitzgerald.iously, a lot you like in this. >> it was a great report. it showed a couple things. this iphone cycle has legs. they're really starting to see a lot of momentum in emerging markets. we're up 60%. margins continue to perform. and we have a new product category that just launched in april. so, i think there's still -- >> product category being the thing on your wrist. >> apple watch, i think, you know, they weren't able because of supply constraints to put this in stores. actually last friday. so i think, in the next month they probably will be able to. and they'll probably start to launch in additional countries. we said we think this is the best new product selling history in its history. surpassing ipad. >> did they give any guidance or any information about sales of what they've seen for orders? >> they didn't. so, you know it's a little bit of a conundrum quarterly basis we will not update you on apple watch. initially they'll give you some type of view on how sales are trending, b