jon fortt has more on where the stock may be headed next. >> nine years ago, yahoo! was the most visited site on the web with nearly twice the u.s. traffic of google. apple stock was an on ipod-fueled comeback of $17. facebook was just getting started. then google started by bringing in larry page, offered stock to the public markets for the very first time, at $85 per share. a lot of people thought that was too expensive. >> what a difference nine years makes. yahoo! is now struggling to say relevant. it pinned its hopes on a former google exec. apple stock is higher than it was and facebook is the most visited site on the web, nearly 700 million users touching that service daily. google, still chugging along at ten times at $85 the ipo price. it's a very different looking business. it's enormously profitable. it's got youtube for video. it's got motorola. and launched androids and tablets. the most popular operating system in the world. the entire internet feels a chill when they have an outage. >> the funny thing is, 40% of the internet didn't go down, but it feel

jon fortt joins us from san jose, john? >> one of the things that john chambers said on the call is that cisco is having fits reading the economic data and that summarizes the after hours action analysts questioned about what exactly cisco is doing. john chambers said the global growth and lack thereof shows inconsistency. the switching business looks good. the routing business except the edge looks bad. certain geographies, northern europe, north america look good but japan, china don't look as good. what chambers said is cisco is commited to delivering on the financial model they put out around 61, 62% gross margins and growth overall in earnings faster than revenue in most quarters. that necessitates these cuts. there is lots of questions going forward about whether cisco will be able to grow most of the time in that five to seven percent revenue band john chambers promised. >> tomorrow a lot of investors will wonder how cisco is saying translates to other tech companies, which might be impacted by comments tonight? >> s

thank you very much, jon fortt. the stock down almost 3%. >>> lessons learned. coming up, the former head of investment banking at lehman brothers, skip mcgee, now ceo for the americas barclays. we'll have his reaction to the federal reserve. >>> plus, ken is my special guest co-host for the hour. we'll talk housing, regulation, and what he thinks of today's activist investors. you're watching the "closing bell" on cnbc, first in business worldwide. 20 years with the company. thousands of presentations. and one hard earned partnership. it took a lot of work to get this far. so now i'm supposed to take a back seat when it comes to my investments? there's zero chance of that happening. avo: when you work with a schwab financial consultant, you'll get the guidance you need with the control you want. talk to us today. and then another. and another. and if you do it. and your friends do it. and their friends do it... soon we'll be walking our way to awareness, support and an end to alzheimer's disease. and that? that would be big. grab your friends and family and sta

jon fortt.ds, i know you're out there, and coming up next on "street signs," we have a really fantastically nerdy nugget of the u.s. deficit. don't close your eyes because it's really interesting. why it matters to you, plus, can you name this mystery celeb. this celeb went on a full-blown twitter rant about larry summers possibly heading up the fed. which star did it next but first bill griffith, tell us what's coming up on "closing bell." >> busy couple of hours, the bull rally hitting a bit of a resistance level but the name of five companies that could spark the next rally if they would only split their stock. you briefly touch on it. but it's base chi putting something up forring is and who could probably want to buy the company. maria is out and wicking raspberries in the hamptons today. kelly evans is here with me. stay tuned. ♪ make it happen with the all-new fidelity active trader pro. it's one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. get 200 free trades when you

jon fortt has the love triangle at google.ening. >> good evening, sergei brinn and paige founded google, when they set up shot in a garage. many years later, and her little sister ann is married to brinn. that's where things get complicated. they are no longer living in the same space, according to a record from all things d. and he runs google x-lance is set to be dating a google employees whose job it is to market google glass. the impact on google is unclear. it seems they're dealing with each other amicably, and investors must be used to whispers. but i've hearty some concern from employees about mr. susan will be affected at all about the state of her sister's marriage to brin. i imagine it's never nice to have your name or your family member's names in the headlines. >> i want to get back to this, but i want to go to mary thompson. we're going to the cfo, zurich insurance committed suicide. zurich insurance. now the ceo is resigning, because he thinks family members of the cfo and others are going to blame him for the su

>> let's wring in jon fortt and seema mody from silicon valley. jon, let me start with you. what are you hearing that blackberry may ultimately may do? is it a go private situation? what does the smart money say? >> going private from a couple of people i've talked to today is actually not a bad option, but a lot of people don't care too much about blackberry. attention is on ios, on andrade, maybe even windows 8 windows phone. not on blackberry. the developer community has never really materialized in a significant way, though they have been trying to pump that up with blackberry 10. have almost 3 billion in cash and eke violence on the balance sheet. got to wonder what do you get for the other 2 billion if you're looking at this strategically. it's not hardware. is it something in software or the network? that's what people will have to suss out. >> seema, this seems to me to be an object lesson in the fact that you can never take your eye off of a stock or a company that you owner that you can't fall in love with a company that treated you well because five years ago this

we want to get to jon fortt to go through the numbers. jon, what else can you tell us? >> reporter: the numbers look solid, maria. revenue came in at $12.4 billion, what about what the street was looking for. net income at $2.8 billion which, again, is about in line. looking for cash. let me give you a little insight into dividends and stock repurchase. cisco paid cash dividend of 17 cents per common share, about what you'd expect. repurchased 47 million shares of common stock. last quarter, they repurchased 41 million shares of common stock. we're going to have to wait for the call to get a lot more detail on guidance. but at this point, the numbers seem pretty much in line. i also want to get the gross margin number out of here for you. >> all right. we want to get to some analysis on this, and join eric from jmp securities and mark. good to see you both. eric, your reaction to the numbers? >> well, i was hoping that we would see some better upside. cisco was pretty upbeat on their last release, and we've seen good indicators from a number of other vendors. so i was h

jon fortt, thank you very much.orter number three with our third topic, steve liesman, what's on your radar for next week? >> three things, guys. data, data and more data, a big week for economic data. a big week for the fed to figure out if it's going to taper at its september meeting meaning it's a big week for the third thing, the markets. ism, manufacturing index, 53.8. first one out of the box. expected to decline but still well above 50 vehicle sales, right in line where they were the prior month, adp in at 170 and jobs at 173 with the unemployment rate unchanged at 7.4% and five public appearances from four presidents, two of them voters at the september 17th and 18th meeting we'll all be following. data could be enough to prompt the fed to reduce its quantitative easing. second quarter was revised up more than expected 2.5%. some of that will come out the next quarter and consumer spending in july rose less than expected 0.1%. that is getting -- that's causing people to cause the third quarter is off to a we

jon fortt has the story. >> reporter: hewlett packard's come back has a snag. the ceo saying she no longer expects to see revenue growth in 2014. that disappointing news sent the stock down about 12% in it's worst trading day in two years. now that made hp just the latest big business focus tech company to give a disappointing report. revenue came in short at ibm and/an and or kill. whitman in an interview today said things are still on track closing out year two of what she's called a five-year turn around. >> the reason i said five years is that is what i actually thought. i didn't say five because i thought it was three. when you do turn arounds, this are bumps in the roads, ups, downs, they are not usually linear. >> reporter: she said things went awry with slow sales of pcs and other factors. >> my view is we have a lot more work to do on supply chain, log gestics, enterprise group side and frankly, we have to make sure we have the right product for the right market segment. >> reporter: the question now, can hp fix the problems with new leadership. she re

for "nightly business report," i'm jon fortt. >>> on wall street, microsoft was the biggest gainer in the blue chip average today while facebook closed above $40 a share for the first time ever. that helped stocks end the day higher after shaking off early losses on disappointing new home sales data, but still closed lower for the third week in a row overall. the dow today closed 46 points higher and settled back above the 15,000 mark. the nasdaq added 19. the s&p was up 6 points. >>> as bill mentioned, the drop in home sales was bigger than analyst expected. they plunged 13.5% in july, the biggest decline in more than three years. that meant home builder stocks suffered big losses with names like ryland, kb home and more. until now, the booming sector was a strong sign the u.s. economy was on the mend. hampton pearson has more. >> reporter: july new home sales may be a test for what higher interest rates can do. sales are down double digits to 394,000 adjusted annual rate, the slowest pace in nine months. june also saw a downward division to 455,000 from 497,000, that's according to

. >> let bring jon fortt, our tech reporter. what do you make of all of this?eally interesting in the context of tim cook getting criticism over the past few months for being too shareholder friendly and now you have the ultimate shareholder activist carl icahn coming in and saying there's a lot of value in a. interesting to see how this plays out particularly in the weeks ahead of this september 10th announcement where we expect to see a lot of excitement over perhaps not just one new high-end iphone but some lower cost models. i do expect to see lower cost models. this is the sort of rumor apple would have knocked down by now if it weren't going to come out with lower cost iphones and tim cook did hint at that back in may, that such a thing could be coming. this is a real interesting dynamic leading up to that. apple has done well to take on debt. it has some wiggle room to do this sort of thing, if they did want to do an additional buyback. interesting to see this interplay between tim cook and carl icahn. >> let's bring in tim gillis. what do you think this

for cnbc, i'm jon fortt. >> joining me now is crawford dell fret, the chief research officer with idck you for joining us this morning. if dell were still to give guidance, just how bleak would it be given the decline in pc sales? >> well, thanks for having me. i think what you're seeing in dell is really interesting. you're starting to see that while the pc market is incredibly difficult, we're starting to see signs that it may be reaching -- close to a near term bottom. so from a guidance standpoint, dell had minus 5% units, which is significantly better than we saw for the overall market. and we're starting to see now that signs of progress may be in the early stages at dell. you're starting to see that, again, pcs hitting a bottom, enterprise computing, servers, networking and storage actually grew 7%, 8% in the quarter. that's a very, very good sign for the company as they start to attack that enterprise, which is a margin rich area. so, again, you know, it is very, very early to say. but this quarter was very indicative of the challenges the company faces and their argument for

jon fortt speaking with sony entertainment a few minutes ago. jon? >> reporter: hey, maria.e a release date. it is smack dab in the middle of november, right as the big holiday season is kicking off, november the 15th. now, this is important, first of all, for sony, the global console business is about $75.2 billion a year. the u.s. is a third of that. jack trenton, who i spoke to, just about an hour ago, leads up those efforts. take a listen to what he had to say. >> and i've personally been biting my bottom lynn, and heard the advent of tablets, and that's additive, bringing new gamers into the ecosystem. >> reporter: and that's the big question with the new iphone expect, ipad, new kindle fires from amazon. will this ps4 be able to compete in this mobile environment? we expect to see a big battle for the living room on the internet this season. we just saw tivo coming out with new boxes this morning. we have the ceo on "squawk on the street" talking. but tretton says sony is ready for all of that. listen. >> i realize that we're competing for people's free time, and we re

jon fortt is in san jose, california, with the latest. jon?> reporter: bill, yeah, the stock's up more than 7% right now. a hopeful cheer from investors who watch microsoft missed boat with huge categories like smartphones and tablets. microsoft did have successes. the xbox console came into its own during ballmer's tenure. the server and tools business became a consistent and profitable grower. and analysts tell me its latest cloud effort is establishing itself as a number two behind amazon. it seems this isn't the way ballmer planned to exit, though. he told people at microsoft he planned to stay until around the time his youngest son finishes high school. that's about three years from now. >> all ceos have the same job. i don't have a different economics situation to deal with than the guys who run our competitors. so in a sense, you could say whatever happens to the economy happens. we've got to win with great product, great brand, great innovation. >> reporter: you could argue he hasn't always done that. in a statement today, he said the

let's get jon fortt. who are people making this, back to the 500 mark, jon? >> yeah, mandy. is that the stock moved on very little product news. a rumored date for apple's next iphone event september 10th but that's when we expected it anyway. last year it was september 12th. the bulk of the move was, of course, tuesday from those carl icahn tweets pushing for bigger some buybacks and at the moment shares are hanging in there, just about 500 bucks. share are up about 100 bucks since the beginning of july and you know what this is really about? the buzz i'm hearing out here, the idea that investor sentiment might be turning back in apple's favor. might be catching a break. >> hearing about apple may be launching a usb adaptive trading program? heard anything about that? >> yeah. this is after that incident out in china where the claim was that a woman was electrocuted using an iphone connected to a charger. apple's response was we don't know where she got that charger from, and it's going to be hard to trace its origins. partly to deal with that issue and any others like it t

jon fortt with quick analysis on microsoft.e'll have more on steve ballmer now officially retiring from the company within the next 12 months. we'll talk about who might be in line to take that gig. and john williams will talk about rates and tapering. live from jackson hole. and also ahead, cfo of pandora and get his first reaction of that company's results last night. one more look at futures. what a week of news. for the time being, futures relatively tame. i turn ed 65 last week. i turn the math of retirement is different today. money has to last longer. i don't want to pour over pie charts all day. i want to travel, and i want the income to do it. ishares incomes etfs. low cost and diversified. find out why nine out of ten large professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. ishares by blackrock. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus, which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it carefully before investing. risk includes possible loss of principal. >>> it's been talked about,

jon fortt has been studying the company's options and joins us now. >> reporter: it comes down to thisy've got to either gain major share, get bought, or go private. and gaining share doesn't look likely. blackberry shipped 2.7 million units in the spring, which should have been a big launch quarter. and nokia did far better with almost 8 million units in its lumia line. get bought? hard to imagine who would buy it. apple and samsung already have leading platforms. they don't need the hardware help. microsoft's beating blackberry on store shelves lately. and dell, it has plenty of challenges without buying a canadian company for $2-plus billion, and it's not known for a company having trouble with government contracts would be taken by a chinese buyer. there's lots of money out there that seems willing to take resks. if take blackberry private, you probably have to make it a software and services company to make the math work. guys? >> all right, jon, thank you. this is one of great water cooler games going on. what do you do with blackberry? we know there are members of the "closing b

jon fortt, what's the latest? >> reporter: a remarkable bunch of statements.weeted he amassed a large stake in apple. apple issues a statement saying they had a positive conversation. after icahn's tweet, the volume in apple shares shoots up 300% over the hour before. now, icahn says he wants a bigger stock buyback. he wants it now. what would be the impact of that? it would, obviously, boost earnings per share. unclear how apple would pull off a larger buyback. apple's board has already authorized $60 billion for buybacks, spent $16 billion last quarter for that on the open market. and take a step back. part of what this is shaping up to be is a showdown for tim cook. commentators have wasted no time on twitter talking about what steve jobs would do in this situation. i can tell you this, jobs did not like the idea of apple being pushed around by shareholders. apple doesn't want investor activism to deter, and carl icahn has moved the stock, and he's moved it more than the rumor mill can. >> yes, thank you very much, jon. can you imagine if steve jobs was sti

jon fortt has the preview now of the one number investors need to watch for. jon?: maria, gross margins. once we've gotten past revenue and eps, we'll get guidance on the call, the x factor will be gross margins. mark, who i know will be with us in a little bit, pointed out in a recent note that at cisco, the p/e multiple has tended to track margins. so if the highly profitable services business outperforms or if cisco has relative strength in mia, the americas, which tends to be higher-margin geographies, that will be a good thing. we won't get q1 until the fall. he guided to a 61%, 62%, nine-gap gross margin range, and a year ago, cisco guided to the same range for the fiscal first quarter. so if revenue and eps come in as expected, that gross margin line may be above 62% if it's good, as the next place to look. bill? >> all right. we'll keep an eye on that. jon, thanks. we'll have that for you at the top of the hour. >>> another dow stock that could move the market tomorrow is walmart, which reports earnings first thing tomorrow morning. courtney reagan with a p

jon fortt with us.ity. >>> markets riding high on the latest round on global economic and u.s. data. interest rates, the fed, housing, all impacting the market. good topics to ask our next guest about. want to bring in our friend from morgan stanley, gary kaminski. >> good to see everybody. >> you have been traveling the country. >> i have. >> what do they think about what's going on? >> i'm glad to see the stock market continues to act the way i anticipated it would act when i left this role in a full time role back in april. i think as i described last time i was here, it's a very normal -- things continue to be very boring but normal. one moves into equities, people are anticipating continued good performance in the equity markets, but more important it seems very normal for the first time in five years and that's a good thing. think about the last five summers. think about halfway through this summer. it's a positive environment for people to think about long-term investing and they're doing so. >>

jon fortt with a rundown on a big day for tech. the markets in europe are closing. there and the effects on the united states after this short break. ♪ make it happen with the all-new fidelity active trader pro. it's one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. get 200 free trades when you start using active trader pro today. >>> the european markets are closing now. >> well, obviously with the dow down 172 points, it's not going to be a pretty picture in europe. sure enough, you will see that you've got a sea of red there. i should tell you actually that its assumption day, a public holiday for italy and other countries. in general then, it is holiday thin, but bear in mind where you are coming from. let's have a look at a chart recently of where we've traded united states against europe. yesterday, of course, we were talking about the great data. coming into today's session, here in this country we've been down for six of the last eight sessions. in europe they've been up for six of the last eight sessions. now from a lower base but you get

jon fortt is back here on set with his reaction. tacticcle move?m thing for a very long time. >> for other reasons. >> yeah. it's interesting. microsoft is saying this has nothing to do with ballmer's retirement. they've been setting up smaller financial analyst meetings where press haven't been invited. i've managed to sidle up a to a couple of them anyway, but they don't have a ton of exciting, big news to announce these days. if they were unveiling a new iphone, maybe they'd want everybody there, but i think they -- >> i keep thinking back to when they were rolled out the surface with you. that was a splash. thanks for stopping by. let's get to headquarters, scott wapner and "the halftime." >>> carl, thanks. welcome to "the halftime show." four hours until the close. we're off the lows of the day but we're still pushing a nearly triple digit loss for the dow. there's the s&p and the nasdaq negative as well. >>> crude reality as a syrian strike looms. we head to the pits to find out how high the commodity could go. >>> just wing it. is it time fo

cnbc's jon fortt has more on the story. >> cisco had a rough night after its q-4, fiscal q-4 report yesterday first of all, at the numbers. revenue came in at $12.41 billion, right in line with expectations. earnings per share actually a penny better than expected at 52 cents, but the guidance, cisco guided to a soft q-1 revenue wise, below what analysts were looking for, and went ahead and said the global economic environment was so shaky, so inconsistent as far as their ability to see gdp and sense demand, cisco is going to go ahead and cut 5% of the workforce, 4,000 workers over the next couple of quarters and take charges to that effect. nongap eps will be off of gap eps by 16 to 20 cents. gap eps will be down 16 to 20 cents because of the charges they're going to take based on the cuts. so what is the cause of the inconsistency? well, cisco saying, for instance, the switching business is doing pretty well. the routing business not so well. except at the edge. geographically there is also a lot of inconsistency. in the americas, things are going pretty well as they are in northern europe.

jon fortt is live outside an apple store in new york with more. g, carl. it's big news because this is an absolutely huge market in smartphones, and apple is in effect legitimizing kind of a newer market in used phones. this is launching nationwide today at apple stores. the iphone, of course, is apple's highest margin device. so this isn't something to just be messed with. analysts peg iphone gross margins in the 40%-plus range. what are the pluses and minuses here? well, this program could be a win for apple if, a, iphone users upgrade sooner because they know they can turn in their old phone and get the new one even if they have to move in on a carrier contract and take a little bit of a hit. perhaps the used phone can cushion the blow. if the used iphones go to people who would have bought android phones otherwise. it's a loss for apple, however, if the used phones end up going to people who would have bought new iphones. i tried to go into that apple store and get them to value my iphone. but they saw me out here on tv and said, no soup for yo