phil lebeau, "nightly business report," chicago. >>> we are just two weeks into the first quarter earnings season and you've probably noticed that many companies have been reporting earnings that are better than investors expected and there are also weak forecasts for the rest of the year like the one we got fro apple tonight. with 20% of s&p 500 companies already out with their quarterly numbers. how is corporate america doing? here's bob pisani with the earnings scorecard. >> it was a good day for earnings, and most importantly, big, multinational industrial companies like united technologies, ingersoll-rand and illinois toolworks affirm their 2013 earnings guidance and if there were significant signs of an ongoing global spot of it. it may be a little bit below expectations, but we expectest mo of the way through. here's the good news. almost 70% of the company's reporting have been reporting expectations. the only 42% are beating on the top line, on revenues and that's way below the 62%. this has been a problem for several quarters and it means the companies are able to do well on earn

phil lebeau has more from shanghai. >> reporter: here in shanghai, u.s. manufacturers who have set up plants here in china are facing a new challenge, rising costs. in fact, a new study out today finds that the total cost of manufacturing in china will rise to the same level as the u.s. by 2015. for prince industries based in illinois, costs for its plant here in shanghai are rising faster than expected. for example, labor wages are jumping 12% every year due to the competition to attract and retain skilled workers. they've got 110 employees here in china, making components companies sell to firms like caterpillar and honeywell. and the ceo says those rising allyove t force him to >> we'reg at different areas in china. shanghai has been high cost to manufacture, but that was where we initially went to, and all of our customers were in that area, but in the next five to seven years, i would say we'll definitely be somewhere further inland. >> reporter: take a look at how fast hourly wages have climbed here in china compared to india, mexico and the united

so a couple things to consider, but for now i want to send it over to phil lebeau, a top member of the air travel controllers union. >> imto bring in dean yakapelli, in charge of the association, the new york office. dean, your people are the ones who staff the traffic control center at laguardia. you saw the numbers in terms of the numbers of flights delayed. can you give me a sense of how much different the job is for air traffic controllers? how more chaotic is it? >> it certainly changes the perspective when we go into work. we're used to walking into work and having -- normally we have a full staff the air traffic controllers so we can move 100% of the airplanes and passengers can be on time and the airlines can keep their schedules. what we find now is when we get to work now we're short 2, 3, sometimes more people depending on the locations, and working combined positions. we're hearing on the news about the delays. delays are not something we tailed pride in. what we want to do is get back to the business of moving the nation's travelers around safely and on time. >> dean, do y

phil lebeau has all the numbers. >> solid auto sales numbers for the month of march as the automakers posted a third straight month, which made the first quarter one of the strongest for the oughtest industry since the beginning of 2007. across the board the automakers posted solid gains in the range between 1 and 5% depending on the automaker. for the most part, they were in line with expectations. what drove sales in month of march? a coupe of things. first of all, there is the improving economy and pent-up demand. remember, the average vehicle on the road right now is close to 11 years old. crossover utility vehicles also surged last month. gm and ford both posting double-digit gains. and pickup trucks were also solid. sales improving due to the improving housing market. a couple of things stand out about march sales. first of all, look at what happened with the luxury auto brands. all up substantially. in fact, outpacing the industry as a whole. cadillac leading the way with a gain of 49.5% in large part due to the demand for the new entry level cadillac ats. and also take a look

phil lebeau is live in abbe goldstein. >> the manufacturing boom continues here in the deep south.t's air bus breaking ground on a final assembly plant. how much will it help the european play maker? we will talk about that when we return. >> thank you >> thank you very much. boeing's arch rival, air bus, breaking ground with a new assembly plant, and there is a lot at stake. phil lebeau taking flight in mobile, abbe goldstein. >> when air bus made this decision, after it lost the competition for a military refuelling tanker plane, that was a huge competition they thought they would win. then they said maybe we should build commercial planes in the united states. 3700 will be connected with that plant here. and alabama's air bus plant and potentially military planes. >> no comparison. up 85% compared to boeing. >> all right. thank you very much. >> mike rice berating his players and lost his job. his boss, tim perneti was pressured and is walking away with a pretty penny. $1.2 million to be exact. plus an ipad, a car allowance for one year and more than two years of paid health ins

let's get to phil lebeau.nding up all the action in the auto world. >> march auto sales coming in at a snail's pace of 15.72 million. that's roughly in line with most on wall street in terms of what they were expecting. when you look at the individual automakers, generally speaking, we saw positive gains in the range of 1% and 5%, honda leading the pack with an increase of 1.7%. what drove sales in march? an improving economy. obviously, the pent-up demand. some are starting to notice it when it came to crossover utility vehicles and also with pickup sales. that's an increase that's due in part to the improving housing market, contractors needing new vehicles. take a look at shares of gm, ford, and toyota. we're putting these up, because these are really the three leaders when it comes to pickup trucks. clearly, gm anded ford, way ahead of toyota, but in terms of stock performance, toyota getting the better of the other two over the last year. and finally, you mentioned tesla at the beginning, maria. take a lo

phil lebeau has been breaking down the numbers in chicago. phil?ink that's one of the reasons we're seeing a bit of the sell-off. people saying i'm not exactly sure i agree with what they're saying. we put that up and said we have got big news coming and they announced the new financing or lease option. they want to be equal to the mercedes s class. they believe it is comparable. ela n musk says you have got to make it more affordable. they have got to open it up to more people. you have got to believe that they are coming up with the monthly savings. they say average state varies state to state. if you don't pay $5 a gallon, you save. and then there are the other calculations that some people are looking at and saying what? if you use it for a business you get $227 a month deduction. and that's how much they believe you spend going to the gas station and filling up. take that off of what your monthly payment would be and you get a monthly cost effective cost of $469. keep in mind that's not what you're paying. that's the effective cost. he was ask

phil lebeau's got the details. phil? >> i'm sorry, melissa, tesla is starting a lease to own program. and essentially what this is going to be is for the model s car. here is how it's going to work. u.s. bank and wells fargo will finance the first 10% down payment for a model s. tesla says after that happens, for people who are credit worthy, their out of pocket monthly expense -- this is important, not just your monthly payment, but your out of pocket monthly expense when you factor in the cost of fuel, insurance, deappreciation will be less than $500 a month. that's an important distinction, because it sounds like the monthly payment is still going to be over $500 a month. after 36 months, if you have decided this is not right for me, i want to unload my model s, they are guaranteeing that the residual value on that model s will be equal to the residual value of mercedes s class. 10 that's the details behind the tesla lease to own program. what will be interesting, melissa, is whether or not this spurs new buyers, new

phil lebeau joins us with details on that. phil?ll, we usually don't see the airlines with a profit in the quarter, but both delta and us airways did. delta earned 10 cents a share on a strong first quarter. and when you take a look at us airways, coming in 3 cents stronger than the street was expecting, earning 31 cents per share, that's the good news from today. now the troublesome news or potentially troublesome news, and it involves what's happening with delays due to sequestration. in the earnings call for delta, say expressed concern about the sequester delays and the faa staffing hurting business down the road. by the way, yesterday, 1,200 flights were delayed due to low staffing and today on "power lunch" when we talked with the secretary of transportation, he said, guess what, it's going to get worse. >> it's probably going to get worse, phil, because we haven't experienced any bad weather. we know there are going to be thunderstorms in chicago. we know there are going to be thunderstorms over the new york air space. we kno

for "nightly business report," phil lebeau, alabama. >>> how do you feel about your trip to ireland later this week? >> i'm going to be going on united so they've got four days to get it together. i think one of the things phil said to me offline earlier was that one of the things that crept up with united was that last year when they integrated their systems with continental, there were major snafus and that got a lot of people angry. >>> coming up, tax changes are coming in. they could impact your nest egg. new retirement strategies to consider. first a look at how international markets fared today. >>> if it's monday, it must be belgium. jack lew is on his first trip to europe, meeting with the leader of the european union in brussels. lew says that struggling european countries should try to ease up on austerity measures and adopt instead more growth-friendly economic policies. >>> the white house is preparing to release its 2014 budget proposal with thousands of copies coming off the printing press today. the republican controlled house passed a different version. last week the presi

and our own phil lebeau joining us as well.equester was meant to be a worst case scenario. nobody wanted to see it happen, but it has. is this the worst case scenario for the airline business right now in your view? >> not the worst case scenario, but it's certainly very frustrating. for the all the things we can't control in this world, certainly in the airline industry, it's not a blizzard, it's something that could have been avoided but here we are. for some perspective, you know, the most impact, it tends to be on the shortest flights. flights where people could, for example, choose to hop in a car instead. or maybe take the train in the northeast. that's about one out of ten travelers who take those kinds of trips. the other nine out of ten are on those longer flights where, you know, you can't exactly decide to drive to europe or asia instead. >> that's an interesting analysis. phil, what do you think? how significant will this be on the airlines? and who do you think gets most impacted? >> well, clearly the airlines that

our very own phil lebeau is there and he joins us on the telephone. phil, how significant sh? >> it's incredibly significant, ross. for the first time, north america, it's not that they've struggled. but i think that they would look at this market and say we can do better. the gain of american airlines as a key customer buying the a-320 neoand placing that large order that we saw two years ago, that was a significant step. now they would like to go further and say we need even more orders here in north america, but we need to further ramp up our production of narrow bodied jets. as a result, by putting this plant in mobile, alabama, adding about 1,000 jobs, pumping 600 million into this new plant here, they believe that it accomplishes two things. one, it gives them the production capacity that they're going to be needing over the next five to seven years and, two, it is going to help them not only in the commercial market here with north american airlines, but also when it comes to gaining military contracts in the future. remember, they pretty much had the tanker deal here i

we have phil lebeau on the line from chicago with a preview.nd of these two companies the one that will get more attention today is boeing. primarily because what they say during their conference call and what they show during their report in relationship to the dreamliner and the grounding and how much its cost the company and whether or not we see any special charges with the quarterly earnings, i think that's what wall street is going to be keying in on. remember, we are probably within a day or two of the faa lifting the grounding on the dreamliner. boeing never had to bring down the delivery schedule. further out investors are having more confidence and more comfort with boeing. on the ford story, the issue here is whether or not ford can give investors confidence that things in europe are improving. they're going to report a loss. they're going to lose $2 billion in europe this year. that's their forecast at this point. north america is really the engine that's powering these guys right now. think about this, kelly. we expect them for the

phil lebeau will join us to tell us more after the break.ll leave you with pictures of the funeral of former u.k. prime minister margaret thatcher. that procession is now making its way down fleet street. we went out and asked people a simple question: how old is the oldest person you've known? we gave people a sticker and had them show us. we learned a lot of us have known someone who's lived well into their 90s. and that's a great thing. but even though we're living longer, one thing that hasn't changed: the official retirement age. ♪ the question is how do you make sure you have the money you need to enjoy all of these years. ♪ all stations come over to mithis is for real this time.. step seven point two one two. verify and lock. command is locked. five seconds. three, two, one. standing by for capture. the most innovative software on the planet... dragon is captured. is connecting today's leading companies to places beyond it. siemens. answers. with the spark miles card from capital one, bjorn earns unlimited rewards for his small busine

phil lebeau is here. we're all acting like it's 80 but it's not. >> i'm not.0. we're going to actually go over and look at the stingray eventually. i want to talk first about some of the stuff you told me about, the caddy. where are the caddy commercials filmed? is that in iraq? >> morocco. >> amazing. and cadillac has, in my view, has really helped g.m. regain some of the lost luster. this new one is a beautiful car. and you said you wanted something to compete with some of the euro -- like the the 300. >> we wanted a small luxury car to compete with the very best that the german and japanese have, specifically the bmw 300. this was designed to do just that and it will. >> it outperform the beamer on just about every metric. >> that's right. this is american ingenuity, american innovation at its best. you think about the storied history of cadillac. you don't know this but cadillac was the first car to have an electric start. that kind of liberated women. even the old crank would break men's arms. lighting. air-conditioning. we let it go steal in the '60s and

phil lebeau, nightly business report, chicago. >> the frustrations about the esr cuts have the chief executives thinking about their spending cuts and what damage they may do to the overall economy. here's what choice hotels and gulf oil had to say on the spending cuts and the responsibility of lawmakers to change things for the better. >> the american people pay all kinds of taxes, aviation taxes that go directly to fund the faa. we pay more in taxes than we get in services from the faa. so, perhaps, if we're going to have a furlough of the services, maybe we ought to have a furlough in the taxes that the american people pay also. >> you have a situation with a manufactured crisis, where they are playing games at the expense of what is a fragile economy. we're talking about even based on the faa's numbers, you're talking about potentially $9.3 billion of loss economics not including the airlines. 1.4 billion in revenues, and 83,000 jobs just based on what they're saying today. >> production continues very, very strong with the dollar relatively strong. imports are well priced to com

cnbc's phil lebeau. >> this is not something where the automakers are goosing the market with outrageous incentives. this is people coming into showrooms and saying i need a new car or truck and this is the time to buy. >> reporter: the average car on the road today is more than 11 years old. something else helping the economy, gas prices down 30 cents from a year ago. and while many areas of the country are still struggling with real estate foreclosures, and decreased home equity, the overall housing market seems to be recovering. existing home sales now at their highest pace since 2006. among the cities showing the most improvement, denver. >> in this neighborhood i would expect properties to go under contract within a week. >> reporter: where ty docken is a realtor working one of the hottest areas of the city. >> buyers need to be ready to jump on a property when they find it. if they think about it, that property will be gone. sellers need to be ready to move when they put the sign in the yard. >> reporter: with many cities now facing a shortage of new homes, construction is slowly s

phil lebeau is live in chicago.ith more. >> brian, lots of talk about how tesla came up with its calculation of the effective cost for owning a model s at roughly $500 a month. here's the math according to tesla. depending which state you live in you're going to get an ev incentive, $53 a month is what you're going to save. not paying $5 a gallon for a gas-powered vehicle saves you $284 a month. if you use the model s for business, there's another $227 you're going to be saving. and then tesla says you will save money by using the carpool or not having to look for a gas station and filling up your old gas-powered car. they say it's $100 an hour. that brings your monthly savings to $851. you take that off of what the payment is every month, which is $1,320, and you come up with $469. that is the net effective cost according to tesla for owning a model s. remember, tesla is not saying that you're going to be writing a check every month for just $469. they're saying that your effective cost over time when you factor in

phil lebeau is here to preview the airline earnings ahead this week.g what they are going to say in their commentary about all of this issue. >> mandy, there's going to be plenty of commentary. we've already heard from some of the airlines they do expect sequestration to have some impact, probably not in the first quarter but definitely in the second quarter. delta is reporting before the bell tomorrow morning. now, a couple of weeks ago delta came out and said, listen, there will be an impact on earnings because of sequestration. although they didn't say how much. again, that's likely in second quarter. tomorrow we're also going to be hearing from us airways. they are expected to earn 28 cents a share in the first quarter. and, finally, hawaiian airlines will also be reporting tomorrow. again, a profit expected from hawaiian and really across the board we're expecting a profitable first quarter which is unusual in the airline industry. it typically is the slowest quarter of the year. one thing to keep in mind, the commentary tomorrow in particular, no

let's go to phil lebeau on the airline stocks that stand us up for the most because of the cut backs. buckingham research out today. due to the impact bringing it down for a couple of pennies. that's really where you're going to see most of the congestion problems. that's why ual is another one where jet blue or buckingham is out today. they have the exposure to newark, chicago, la. remember delta came out a few weeks ago and warned that the sequester could impact its profits in the first quarter. the that's where we will see the impact of the sequester cuts. >> phil, thank you very much. take a look at gold. it is moving higher supported by strong physical buying after hitting a two-year low last week. >> four big cap stocks getting a lot of attention today. first, ibm dropped elements 10%. the stock is down another buck and a half on the trading session. general electric also disappointing investors with part of its outlook on friday. jp morgan downgraded the stock. it is trading down better than 2% at 21.27. investors breathing a little sigh of relief that it wasn't worse. right no

phil lebeau, "nightly business report," chicago. >>> manufacturing is one thing the federal reserve looks at very closely. today central bank policymakers began their two-day meeting. it's expected the fed will keep borrowing costs low, but a bigger question seems to be whether the fed will keep pumping more money into the economy through its bond-buying program. meanwhile, the parlor game has started in washington and on wall street over whether fed chief ben bernanke will stay for another term, and if not who might replace him. our next guest is the author of "the alchemist: three central bankers and a world on fire clotfire ." welcome. >> the economy is not growing very fast. the march jobs number was terrible. yet i don't see virtually anyone who thinks that the fed is likely to expand its bond buying program to stimulate the economy. you're in that camp. why not? >> yeah, they've been doing $85 billion in bond purchases every month, trying to pump money into the economy, keep mortgage rates low. and they're going to stay the course on that. if you remember just a few weeks ago after

phil lebeau covers both companies. >> when you look at boeing, a lot of relief on the street from investorse stock coming in, doing well. they beat the street the focus is on the dream liner. two things are important. one they are not changing their guidance in terms of production and two they are not taking a charge. and then delivery starting in mid may. well above. if you look over the last five years, going over the time frame. now that's the story with boeing. now let's talk about ford. stock is not moving today. it's lower. despite the fact that ford posted better than expected rodeo. they did slightly better than expected on the revenue side. that helped offset europe. they lost. >> that was a great start, phil, thank you. let's turn now to a story that we have been trying to cover. that major flooding in illinois and chicago. you have been there. what's it like? >> a lot of people had or have water in the basement. i was in china and i got a lot of panic calls from my wife saying there's water in the basement. there's water in the basement. everybody in the suburbs -- i shouldn't sa

. >>> cnbc's phil lebeau getting a rare interview.ut the boeing dream liner program? there will be a crew of engineers from boeing flying to work on fixing the grounded 787 dream liners. here's what he had to say on the question of how frus tated were you? >> very much. >> is going be charged with a federal conspiracy. information that he allegedly traded to his friend. he would sometimes disclose confidential information gave london tens of thousands of dollars in cash. typically arranging for him to meet on a side street in order to give him bags containing $100 bills wrapped in 10,000 $bundles. worth an estimated $12,000 as well as jewelry and concert tickets. based on . >> the share from the illegal profits from trades about decker's february 2013 earnings announcement. there is a lot more about the information. one more thing about herbalife. scott london said that none of his information had anything to do with heralife, he told and it's recorded on the phone that london learned that herbalife is going to go private. you just st

phil lebeau joins us with the best. >> people are talking about whether it is as bad. >> two bright spots. first of all, airlines did a better job in the last year handling baggage. so that's a bright spot. the airlines did substantially better. the flights were on time here in the united states and increasing almost 2%. what were the top five airlines according to the airline quality rankings? number one? virgin america. >> that are all low cost carriers. these are airlines that started out providing low fares. they still provide very good value but they are clearly doing a good job in matching customer expectations, on time performance, baggage delivery and things like that. >> jet blue and delta. delta is showing that you can be a legacy carrier and do well. both of these stocks performing well over the last year up between 35 and 45%. guys? back to you. >> i can't help but thinking maybe people's expectations are too high. was there anything that made you go wow? >> it's not necessarily who was at the top of the list or the bottom. it pretty much stays in line with what it has been in

cnbc's phil lebeau is live in chongqing. phil?w, ford's investment in china is one that a lot of people for years has said when is it going pay off because we're going on six years since alan mulally said be patient. invest heavily in china. look at sales over the last six years and how they have grown. in 2006 ford was barely on the radar in this country. last year, car sales totaled 421,000 factory and imports and transport vehicles and it was more than 600,000. in fact, ford sales in china are growing three times faster than the industry rate. in the first quarter they were up 54% and compare that with the industry growing at roughly 18%. ford has passed toyota in terms of total sales in china which is why alan mulally is investing even more time on this country. >> we're the fastest growing brand. we're doubling our production capacity. we're bringing in all of the ford vehicles now and to have the diversity of chongqing and shanghai and guangzhou, i think it is a very good base for us to continue to serve the chinese customer

phil lebeau joins us with more on that. he figure for the effective cost of leasing a model s that's what people have issues or questions with. here's the new leasing program for test la. it's pretty standard, similar to other leasing programs. it's 10% down, financed through a u.s. banks or wells fargo. residual value is guaranteed to be the same as a mercedes s class at the end of your lee years. that's what you are guaranteed to have for the model "s." tesla says this will expand the market in terms of people who can afford to buy it. and a lot of people are saying what exactly is this program? you have to look at it, according to tesla over the long-term range. some of these are easy to understand. not buying gas, that's $284 if $5 a gallon is your gas price you're going to save every month. some of these, a lot of people are saying, what? i'm worth $100 an hour? you take that away from what it would cost you every month, and this is what you get. you still have to write the check. but the savings, $850 a month comes out

phil lebeau is in chicago. phil, for years it was the toyota corolla that was number one. what happened? >> well, a couple things, first of all, you talk about how they've had strength in china for ford and the focus, that's been a determining factor over the last 12 months to 15 months in china, compared for the corolla, which is still sold in china, but remember toyota has had a number of problems when you factor in the dispute between china in japan over territories. that really turned off toyota sales and all the japanese brands in china. that was a factor. then you have that the focus has been doing well in the u.s. in europe it's a bit of a wash, but doing a little better than toyota is doing in europe. in i've. >> no, in fact their sales -- remember, forte way late to the game in china. they've been making tremendous progress over the last five or six years. they're well beengine gm and volkswagen. now, forte will eventually get up over a million, but they're a long ways from thativities phil, thank you very much. >>> all right, simon, that focus is a nice little ca

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back to you. >> thank you, phil lebeau. >> bgc is selling the benchmark u.s. omx group for nearly 1.3 billion in cash and stock. bob grienfeld said the deal is about believing the government will spend more money than it takes in. >> we think that the size of this market will grow every wrong and every month they do a treasury option and the amount of dollars outstanding right now is 11 trillion and the reasonable forecast has it growing at about 16 trillion. we look at patty murray's budget proposal and she has the deficit being cut to 160 billion of new product and opportunity enlarging the market and you like that. >> howard lutnick is chairman and ceo of bgc partners. the reason he's smiling is the stock is up about 40% this morning. howard, happy to have you with us. why did you do the deal? >> the stock traded at $4 and it made no sense to us. we're an extraordinary company with great technology. analysts have us doing 8.5 million and the market cap was $1.2 billion so we took a small section of this company, $100 million in revenue and did a deal with n

phil lebeau is live with the very latest.s how many questions stephen mcnerney will address the topic. in the past we haven't seen too many people question issues and it tends to be the usuals. and i'll be curious what happens earlier today. ethiopian airlines, and uneventful flight which is what boeing wants to hear and it expects the return of 787s start ramping up over the next three weeks and also the same time, we'll watch to see if the backlog of 787s are park outside the factory. they are modifying nine dream leaners that are awaiting delivery. they have 25 sitting there waiting to be delivered and it expects to deliver dream liners. take a look at shares of boeing over the next year and in particular, once it became clear that boeing had its hands wrapped around this battery fix, that's when shares started to take off and you see the shares traded at $92 a share and that's the best price since 2007. so clearly, investors are optimistic that they're going to be getting past all of the battery problems. >> in the meanti

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economy is on the road to recovery, strong auto sales for march morning phil lebeau has the details. hi, phil. >> these were solid numbers. it capped a very strong first quarter. let's look at the march numbers. generally speaking, when you look at the numbers most are close to or maybe a smidge below expectations, but generally speaking across the board -- a couple things stand out. crossover utility vehicles, we've been talking about if for some time. well, the improving economy and pent-up demand, that drove double-digit gains. they surged stronger in march, and take a look at pickup truck sales. this is important, because pickups are a good gauge of what's happening with the contractors, small business, and housing market. the improving housing market also drove relatively strong pickup sales in march. >>> and electric vehicle sales, this caught a lot of people by surprise. in the first quarter, tesla outsold the chevy volt and nissan leaf. if you look at shares of tesla, we've been talking about it for some time. now at a new all-time high. sue, don't forget later today, they'll

they are reaching a new kind of audience or at least, phil lebeau, a new and maybe less affluent audience're going for the entry level market, brian. there's no doubt about that. and compare what you saw today from the industry as a whole versus the luxury automakers. industry auto sales in march, solid, probably up in the range of 5 to 7% for the month. look at the luxury automakers. cadillac this ises up 49.5%. really everybody, even mercedes, which had a nice, but not a huge month, up 6.5%. here's what's driving it. these entry-level models are becoming more and more popular. it's a good way for the brands to branch out. cadillac finally getting into that market with the new ets, which is going on sale. that's their entry-level model that starts just over $33,000. mercedes is also getting into this market. the new cla class, which doesn't go on sale until later this year, but already they're pricing it at just under $30,000, which brings up the question, is it possible, these luxury brands are cheapening themselves by going to a lower price point? the head of mercedes-benz usa says he