jon fortt live at an apple store in new york city where the company is previewing the new watch.will begin, of course, with general electric shares rising after the company said it will sell most of its assets related to ge capital and put the bulk of the proceeds towards a $50 billion share buyback tied for the biggest buyback in history. david faber spoke to jeff immelt who joins us with more. >> thanks, carl. the stock as you said is up sharply today but the stock has been something of a hindrance certainly for many and a great disappointment for those who have been long-term investors in ge at this point. jeff im melt has been repositioning this company's portfolio for some time. he has sold off nbc, appliances, insurance, plastics, today the announcement most of ge capital will also be sold over the next couple of years. all of it, of course, in an effort to focus the company on its industrials business. now i asked him if he has been frustrated with the market's reaction thus far to the changing portfolio at ge? so are you frustrated that you haven't been rewarded for that?

. >> jon fortt and kayla tausche at post nine. watching the markets well off the highs.most triple digits but up about ten. big story in tech is the review of the apple watch out this morning and among them, c-net scott stein says the watch is beautiful, bold, but comes with some complications. joining us this morning at post nine is the senior editor of c-net scott stein. that's an echo of what a lot of people are saying. what are the complications. >> you know, i want to make my life easier, right, and i think that's the idea of the watch to make you life easier. and there are fantastic shortcuts, ways they've reinvented notifications but a lot of ways to interact, apps and subapps and so many ways to interact, that it's going to be a little hard to figure out. i've used a lot of smart watches and tech, so i've given this a week and i find it's not always that seamless to get from one part to the other and i'm playing with this on my wrist a bit. >> we are men of action, right. lives do not become us. you were critical of this. under whelming for you, compared to a lot

you can go into an apple store and check them out and that's where we've sent jon fortt, he is in nework city at the flagship. hey, jon. >> hey, scott. we've been collecting impressions from people throughout the day. most of the people who are in the store today, they are apple loyalists. some of them have preordered their watches already, just come in to get a chance to touch and feel what they've already purchased. the response has been pretty good. i did run into one guy, salt of the earth from north michigan getting a look didn't realize this was the first day that the watch was on display. he said not quite enough for me. i was expecting that kind. maybe in a couple years, year and a half, the price comes down to 199 and then everybody will buy it. keep in mind, i did a count, since the iphone 5 cycle through now, about 450 million iphones have sold. if you figure even 1% of people who did that also buy a watch, you've got 4.5 million right there before you get to the holiday season. you have to hope apple is looking for slightly better penetration than that. looking down at the

nevertheless, we did get a feel for the overall facility. >> jon fortt here.is usually context when talking about working conditions in china, difficult to compare them to working conditions in the u.s., whose economy is in a different place, but did you see what you expected? did you have any interactions at all with ordinary workers that you were able it to have there, either inside or outside of the facility and did it change your perception of what apple has been saying all this time about their efforts with workers there at foxconn? >> well, we did not have any opportunity to interview any workers or talk to any workers. i will say we were struck by the sheer scale of just this one cam pus which is one of their older ones, and which is one of i believe something like 29 they have in china. it was enormous over a square mile, over 100,000 people working just in this one campus. they, obviously, wanted to show us their best side. they showed us, you know, buildings where workers could play video games and a movie theater and some other things. we did take p

jon fortt at apple store in new york city at fifth avenue which opened at top of the hour. orning jon. >> reporter: everybody went inside. but before the people in line for the watch went inside there was another line over here people in line to get into the store but not for the watch, that line was actually longer. this is not the product launch type of experience. this is people who want to get a look at the watch. and for apple's strategically, there are a couple of purposes that this solves. one, to gauge demand. geographically and in terms of the designs of the watch. got to remember normally you've got two different sizes iphone, three different finishes and then three capacities. that's a lot. but not nearly as many as you have with this watch where you've got two sizes, three different finishes and all of the different bands, many of which are expensive and intricate. apple has to decide where to send those based on what the demand is. they're trying to figure out what questions people are going to have inside the store. exactly how they're going to sell the watch,

jon fortt, over to you in new york. >> thanks josh.ould use some of the moisture we got here over there in california. no line here either but we have seen several people over the last hour or so going up to the doors, asking whether they can go in. getting told no. asking when the doors will hepopen and they can see the watch. so no line to see the watch. but interesting, if you count back to the iphone 5 and you need at least an iphone 5 to be compatible with the iphone watch, they have sold 50 million units of the iphone since then. if just 1% or half of 1% of those people who already have a phone want a patch, you're talking more than 2 million, up to 4.5 million preorders for the watch now. if you look online since this went live the preorders went live around 3:00 a.m. eastern time, in about half an hour to an hour all of the initial allotment, we don't know how many, sold out. now you're waiting until june or july to get your hands on any of those units. of course, we don't know exactly how many apple had available, but we do kn

♪ look in my eyes what do you see ♪ >>> joining us john stein burg ceo daily mail north america, jon forttis off getting married, congratulations her. great show for you. imf managing director christine lagarde will join us in a little bit. first up talked linkedin moving lower after the company said it would acquire on-line learning company linda.com for $1.5 billion. the biggest by a factor of 10 and a lot of discussion about how the era of growing only organically, jon fortt, may be coming to an entsds. >> it's been over for them for a while. they've done acquisitions, they did slide share, card and others. this is big on a different scale. linda has been around it for 20 years, lots of people have used it. my mom used it to learn photo shop and illustrators and it charges individuals 25 bucks per month to learn things. they got a track record for providing a pretty good experience for that. they only took vc cash, about three years ago, for the first time. it was bootstrapped until then. they're based outside santa barba barbara. what this will allow them to do potentially is take adva

for "nighlty business report," i'm jon fortt. e program, we'll look at e of google's projects and how it is changing the game for start-ups in the midwest. >> and microsoft and google results could impact now the nasdaq trades tomorrow but after the record close today the first all-time high in 15 years. but the end of the trading session, the dow jones rose to 18,058 and nasdaq took the index to where it hasn't been since march of 2,000. at 5056. and the s&p is five points shy, up about five points today. >>> the nation's biggest automaker hilting a speed bump. the gm recalls are mostly behind it and solid sales in parts of the world and expectations are high but the automaker missed analyst estimates for earnings and revenue and that weighed on the shares. down more than 3%. phil lebeau has more on the road ahead for gm. >> for general motors another quarter of solid profits that left investors saying it not good enough. the automaker made over $2 billion last quarter. but fell short of estimates. blame it on currency issues in

jon fortt's been watching intel.ou, lindsay or nick i mean that's obviously a bellwether in this technology field. it will give us a sense of how the rest of the industry will go. anybody have a sense of which way intel will go here? nick? >> intel and many of the other semicon dishgts skonconductors are seeing weakening trends. it's losing positive momentum they've had over the past year or two. that's a reflection on intel and other semiconductors. the numbers for the s&p were 5% at the beginning of the year down to minus 3%. if you go back further, the s&p in september of last year this very earnings season was expected to be up 10.5% on september 1st. we hear one thing about a bullish argument with stocks right now and there's two parts to that argument. one is that the first quarter estimates are too low and stock prices will go higher. we agree with the first part that the first quarter estimates are too low. we do not think the stock prices go higher. >> all right. we'll see. somebody hear disagrees but we're

>> jon fortt, what do you make of it all?s to me like welling maybe it's not as bad as it looks. sandisk which had been beaten down, vm ware down about 20% over the past 12 months those are the two top movers among the stocks i cover up more than 3.5% more than 4%. then you have go pro also had a strong move up nearly 4%. that stock has been beaten down way down from its highs. blackberry also had a strong day. >> it's a contrarian day. whether it's tech names or macro things you are talking about. white is black, black is white. >> you have a lot of bad news but also you have a lot of expectations for more bad news with the earnings a lot of the expectations have come down. so i think a lot of people are thinking maybe it's not that bad. we see some good news and maybe that will start to bear out. >> dr. j, are we just distracted because it's opening day for baseball season a big basketball game. >> no i think it is that people were afraid that we were going to get another temper tantrum with rates going up perhaps in june o

. >>> let's send it over now to jon fortt. morning, jon. >> morning, sarah. controversial law and the tech world's reaction to it. >>> also can lasers improve the movie experience? imax's ceo will be here to tell us. >>> and finally, "mad men's" john slattery also known as roger sterling on the end of that esteemed show all coming up on "squawk alley." in my world, wall isn't a street. return on investment isn't the only return i'm looking forward to. for some every dollar is earned with sweat, sacrifice, courage. which is why usaa is honored to help our members with everything from investing for retirement to saving for college. our commitment to current and former military members and their families is without equal. start investing with as little as fifty dollars. >>> the reviews are in for the new samsung galaxy s6 and s6 edge phones. and they're pretty good actually. "usa today" writing the pressure was on to samsung to respond to feverish competition. samsung has met the challenge. "the new york times" not quite as positive. though did say that while th

. >> high time we checked in with jon fortt as to what is coming up on "squawk alley." ng. we're going to talk about apple. a angela airntss has a culture shift in mind. walt mossberg from re/code will join us to talk about what they found when they went inside a foxconn factory in china and finally, major league baseball will join us to talk about why they are banning meerkat and periscope and what other technology challenges they might be facing all and more coming up on "squawk alley." tune in. angela ahrendts . >>> good tuesday morning. it is 8:00 a.m. at uber headquarters in san francisco, california 11:00 a.m. here on wall street, and "squawk alley" is live. ♪ ♪ communication breakdown is always a sign ♪ ♪ having a nervous breakdown ♪ ♪ >>> welcome to "squawk alley" for a tuesday. joining us this morning kevin o'leary chairman of o'leary funds and investor on "shark tank." kayla tausche, jon fortt on a day where the markets are doing well for the third day in a row.

jon fortt running through the qualcomm numbers for us.i think they're benign. people are caught up in the revenue numbers. kayla tausche tweeted out, expenses up 83% year-over-year. big concerning. this stock can't get above 85. it's tried a number of times. i think the stock is fine. i think it's going higher. we'll see how it trades tomorrow. we talked about ibm fading move to the upside. that turned out to be right. you fade the move to the downside. you want qualcomm march 13th when they announced a $15 billion stock repurchase after the close. the stock went from 72 to 75 gave it all back the next day. hasn't recovered since. that that's been since july. >> burn guy. dr. j. >> i am agreeing with guy on almost every point, kelly. i think that facebook is a buy. i'm long upside call spreads in the name. i'm long next week's calls against this week's calls. it's a calendar spread. i'm doing that because i think after the noise settle down this is going to be viewed as a very positive quarter. daily active mobile users up 31%, almost 32%

i believe we have those numbers now with our jon fortt. >> hey kelly.ght. google revenue, gross revenue, coming in at $17.26 billion versus $17.5 billion expected. earnings per share coming in at $6.57 versus $6.60 expected. traffic being a which is costs were expected to be $3.48 billion. it came in a little lower at $3.2 billion, from what i can see. and paid clicks and costs per click. those are numbers we always look for. aggregate paid clicks up 13%. that is down slightly from last quarter. cost per click, down 7%. and that -- that's compared to quarter over quarter versus year over year. aggregate costs per click year over year down 7% that's down 5% quarter over quarter as well. i'll go through here and look for capital expense, as well because i know spending is something that we'll be looking for. let me dig that out and i'll get back to you. actually i see capital expenditures expenditures, $2.345 billion versus $2.9 billion last year. cap x coming in a little bit lower, kelly. >> google shares down then up on those results, now up about 4% af

good morning to you. >> good to be here. >> jon fortt and kayla tausche at post nine.he highs. the dow up almost triple digits but up about ten. big story in tech is the review of the apple watch out this morning and among them c-net scott stein says the watch

let's get to jon fortt for latest thon. >> it is over and the questions you've been asking and finding various answers to if they missed on the top and bottom line, why is the stock up so much? well, they had a number of items of good news. here is the cfo laying out a couple of key ones. >> two positive stories to tell here today. first, as i mentioned earlier, we're experienceing real strength in mobile search and the cpc in the core business is continuing to growth year over year so it's doing very well. second viewership and youtube videos and ads are growing significantly and youtube's contribution to our advertising revenue continues to grow at a strong rate year over year. >> in other words, facebook is not the only one that can talk about mobile and video. one of the more interesting metrics that they talked about or details that they talked about is the true view ads on youtube, the ones with the autoplay when you're starting a youtube video. well, it turns out people are actually watching the entire ads instead of skipping them which they have the option to do, and when peopl

. >> kayla tausche and jon fortt.t is essentially friday for us because the markets are closed tomorrow as the jobs number will hit at its regular time. meantime, we continue to watch indiana. lawmakers presenting a new bill this morning clarifying the state's religious freedom restoration act. the speaker of the house there says this new bill includes language with safeguards to prevent discrimination. our mary thompson's on the floor here at the exchange with the latest. >> hey there, karl. the reaction from the business community so far very positive. indianapolis-based eli lilly saying in a statement we believe that the senate bill 50 as it's called addresses key concerns with the religious freedom restoration act. and the state's chamber of commerce which represents almost 2500 indiana businesses and which also opposed the original bill said in a statement on its website, "our state has suffered tremendously the past week. the legislation amendment spells out that indiana will not permit discrimination based on s

see what jon fortt has in store for the next hour of cnbc. good morning, jon. >> good morning.tary fund managing director christine lagarde live with us and linkedin bought linda.com for $1.5 billion. like a 20-year overnight success. and we'll be talking to the stars of hbo's "silicon valley" on its way back. all coming up on "squawk alley." the pursuit of healthier. it begins from the second we're born. after all, healthier doesn't happen all by itself. it needs to be earned... every day... using wellness to keep away illness... and believing that a single life can be made better by millions of others. healthier takes somebody who can power modern health care... by connecting every single part of it. for as the world keeps on searching for healthier... we're here to make healthier happen. optum. healthier is here. >>> good morning. it is 8:00 a.m. at linkedin headquarters in mountain view, california 11:00 a.m. on wall street, "squawk alley" is live. ♪ ♪ ♪ look in my eyes what do you see ♪ >>> joining us john stein burg

. >> congressman, it's jon fortt. so what's the alternative here?hem and bomb the facilities and set them back a certain degree and take diplomacy off the table? is it to just try to put such onerous sanctions on, further sanctions that the country's economy completely collapses or do you think diplomacy could be done better? what is the alternative? >> the alternative to a bad deal is a better deal. we made a mistake from the very -- >> how do you get it? >> -- beginning in providing billions of dollars of sanctions relief because iran was hurting at the seem. that's the time you want to be stronger on the front because it's forcing them to produce concession concessions. we sent a signal we want a deal above anything else. iran was able to get a lot of concession. i'd walk away from this deal. you have people across the political spectrum recommend this. howard dean was recommending this. to go to a more coercive form of diplomacy, you're ratcheting up the sanctions imposing that. that's really the only chance you would have to have diplomacy work