Only given consideration to more recently because of the phenomena. Well end up meeting the ceo a couple of months or whatever after we have made an investment it puts greater burden on us for Due Diligence and for the backgrounds of the people who are involved and the experience. Its probably going to end up with some good results actually. Thats interesting. Weve had some discussions on air about the degree to which lack of persontoperson meetings means can you close on a house, can you close on a transaction, but youre saying its not necessarily a deal killer it definitely is not. I think that will be for early stage companies. The Later Stage Companies where theres more substance involved and theyve been around longer is a bigger problem. Were in the early stage, a round, b round, period i think well have less of a concern about that we also obviously are focused a lot on follow on rounds for our existing portfolio which is fairly extensive at this point hi, alan, its jon fortt, good to see you. I can see you here on this big screen in front of me. I appreciate the stayathome beard youre growing as well i was talking with fred wilson at union square yesterday. He was saying the same thing about doing deals with entrepreneurs, ceos who he hasnt met in person and that being a brand new thing. Im wonderings also about your current portfolio companies. What percentage of those would you say are at risk of not surviving this i would say the risk is probably in the younger Seed Companies that did not have sufficient capital to get through at least six to 12 months of a downturn like this a lot of people who had gotten over extended and carried away by the euphoria of the last year or two and perhaps didnt raise sufficient capital there is capital around but People Like Us are being more discriminating and the hurdle is higher in terms of just doing a follow round following round automatically and participating just because a Company Needs capital. Theres got to be more substantial justification, i think, for getting Additional Capital at this point. We are definitely financing those companies in the portfolio that are demonstrating growth and that have a viable economic model, which in the end is really what the key to the whole business yeah. Alan, its morgan, that being said, as when the time comes that we do emerge from this crisis, how do you think its going to shape entrepreneurs and also b. C. Investors appetites to perhaps pursue some bigger ideas and visions . I ask this think abouts the Mark Andresen essay talking about time to build everything from infrastructure to education to health care to manufacturing on down the list. I would agree with all of the above and add other areas i think weve all one phenomena this whole experience is people learning to operate from home and learning to operate remotely and i think thats going to change lifestyles and its going to change the opportunities. It should be good for gym equipment and good for your building outdoor basketball courts, its going to probably change the cooking industry. A lot of wives or significant others or friends, just friends, whoever youre cohabiting with will have to learn how to be a cook, male or female, and that different types of ingredients, learn to operate with delivered foods and not being able to perhaps shop or wont be as interested in going out physically and shopping as much as they did before i think safety is going to be a concern. Safety, security, and health i think out of every adversity comes opportunities. Weve all seen this play out many, many times before. I think that there will be new industries created and new businesses that werent as popular before, will now get a second look. We see lots of opportunities in times like this. Alan, are you demanding that companies in which you invest have a larger Rainy Day Fund for huge, exogenous events than you did before you know, its pretty recent. This exogenous event or black swan, as its been called. I think really a black swan is whats happened in the oil business, but thats another subject. I think that we havent yet had that opportunity to prepare for something, but i think in the future, we certainly are going to have to consider that and maybe have longer supplies of capital and perhaps put in a little Additional Capital to prepare for this you know, an event like were going through now is a hard one to prepare for the emphasis is always on making sure you have sufficient cash reserves to get through a period of time when you achieve objective that are the basis for raising a subsequent round of financing. I think those companies will always be able to find money were in reasonably good shape im actually was surprised how good our portfolio is and i am not seeing too many crisis situations in the last month which i will have expected the ppp has been helpful to a selective number of our companies. That is good news alan, im wondering, foundational principle wise, as you look forward over the next, i would say, one to three years, what is not going to change . Were talking about everything thats changing, everything thats potentially changing. What are the core ideas that you had a few months ago, a year or two ago, that you believe will still be just as relevant Going Forward . Well, i think the direct to consumer trend, which has been so prevalent the last five years, going to continue people have gotten used to buying remotely and weve seen that in the recent stories about the terrible decline in the chasm in the Department Store field, which is a shock to the american system which Department Stores have become so fundamental. I think that health care concern and interest in Health Care Companies has been there and will continue. Were looking for companies that have good, sound economic models that never changes i think that Database Companies fall into that category. As you know, carl, ive excuse me, i cant see you, you can see me, but i cant see you. Ive been spending time in the podcasting area which is interesting. Im very interested in the whole field of elderly care, products and services for the elderly i think its going to open up a whole new market in the Going Forward. Its going to be the Fastest Growing part of our population most people over 60. What are they going to do . Whats their activities going to be what kind of foods are they going to happen. When they travel where are they going to go . Home offices i think those are the market for products and services for the aging is going to be a very big field. It is and it will be bigger as we go forward. Love to hear that and see what comes out of that process as well. [ inaudible ]. There seems to be there seems to be this growing debate happening within the v. C. Community right now about government aid and what that stimulus looks like, whether its the ppp loans and whether startups are going to potentially take them and apply for them and whats involved with that or whether it is even on a larger scale some of the debates weve seen with people on our air yesterday around airlines and other industries taking aid money from the government right now as well how do you think that is affecting the startup landscape and the private market in general right now and do you agree with some of these discussions that are coming out . Well, i think that there is a discussion, an intellectual and practical discussion, of whether venturebacked companies should be taking getting access to the Government Funds for the most part, venture capitalists, im speaking now venture capitalists, not private equity firms, have a minority interest and its a group of people so they have a relatively small interest and i think that the if there is an access to the ppp loans, there will be lots of layoffs and i think that there is the government is stepping in and helping a lot of these companies. I think you have to have had an Employment Base. A pure startup has a very limited number of employees and not going to be able to access this capital i think its more that companies that have grown, have an Employment Base that will have to be laid off dont forget, this ppp loan is going to take care of supposedly two or two and a half months of need, but this need is not going to end in two and a half months. This is going to probably this need and this rebuilding is going to take a lot longer there are going to be need for Additional Capital beyond what the ppp itself is. Yeah. For sure, alan. Believe me, were all going to watch carefully what you do given your historic ability to see around corners its great seeing you. You look great well see you soon. My new look so long. Still to come, a Restaurant Owner in georgia on the states plans to reopen. Kind of want to hear what he has ayit s st wh us were back in two. Veterans, in times of crisis, youve served our country. If youre a vet and youre experiencing any symptoms of the coronavirus, please contact your local va hospital. Protecting your health is our greatest duty. Welcome back expedia announcing big changes this morning and our seema moody is tracking the latest seema . Morgan, thats right. Expedia raising 2 billion in debt and 1. 2 billion from Silver Lake Partners and apollo group. Those two private equity firms will get a seat on expedias board. In addition to that a major leadership change. Peter concern, vice chairman, appointed ceo of expedia kern alongside barry diller have been running daytoday operations since the former ceo and cfo were ousted in december. The key focus will be what role private equity plays here in turning around the struggling online traveling operator along with many travel companies are facing a number of challenges due to the fallout of the coronavirus epidemic one other focus whether m a will be part of the strategy private equity plays with expedia. Its a playbook that company has used in the past five years, acquiring brands like or bits, travelocity and home away for over 3. 8 billion back in 2015 thats the home renl platform that directly competes with airbnb these are two private equity firms that do have significant experience investing in hospitality and travel, both putting money to work in airbnb, just in the last one month and apollo helping out with a debt round with United Airlines and in the past it was one of the significant investors in Norwegian Cruise Line and ended up taking that cruiseline operator public in 2013. It will be interesting to see not just with expedia but the role private equity tries to play in turning around companies that have a lot of liquidity concerns they need to address. Seema, thank you. Lets get a check on where we stand in todays trade decent gains across the board for the major indices up better than 1 . Not quite 1. 5 on the dow. That translates into about 327 points welbeig bk. L rhtac [narrator] at Southern New Hampshire university, were committed to making college more affordable. Thats why were keeping our tuition the same through the year 2021. [student] i knew snhu was the place for me when i saw how affordable it was. [narrator] find your degree at snhu. Edu. Welcome back just off of session highs this morning as the picture from Corporate America continues to fill in with these q1 earnings, guys, and even some sec filings now, which robert, one of our producers, jon, has posted or brought to our notice talking about the number of cancellations that are now bleeding into q3 and say weve seen high levels of room and Convention Cancellations through the Third Quarter of 2020 with some tentative rebooking in the Fourth Quarter and in to 2021. The notion that you see this immediate snapback in late summer, at least anecdotally is getting a little pushback. Sure is at the same time keeping an eye on tech stocks, some of the major ones, microsoft, amazon, a positive one this morning. Apple and amazon more than microsoft but holding up well and all of those are looking to support their local communities where the headquarters are as well well see what they have to say about reopening. Yeah. Speaking of reopening, as we know georgia is starting the process of reopening really tomorrow, but uncle jacks meat house in duluth, georgia, will not be among the businesses reopening right away joining us is willie degreelel, owner who talked about this process. Its great to have you back. Good morning. Good morning, carl, how are you . Were doing okay. What is your plan in duluth . Well, the restaurant is supposed to be able to open on monday, but being that were more of a middle serve, finer dining restaurant, im going to wait on the sidelines and see how the customers are reacting we sent out some emails and did some social media polls to our guest and our database and about 65 are talking about not going out right away, so 35 to 40 said they would come and support us with spreading out the tables and doing everything were going to do and 20 overall said they would support us on takeout and curb soouds. Curbside. Interesting i dont want to get too much into the politics, but two questions do you think Governor Kemp is doing the right thing in opening the door for businesses to decide for themselves and what will constitute for you a sign that the consumer really is ready well, the feedback, getting 40 , 35 or 40 saying they will come is actually a very positive thing. Georgia is not new york. So the fear is not as eminent, right. Fear is no different than a virus. Fear infects the same way as positive energy does Governor Kemp, i believe, in the right way is somehow trying to get something started. Wers t we, the people, the customers, the owners have toadapt. We cant look for complete control of the government to run our life every day somehow people want to get going. I think the process, somebody has to take the risk and try to move the ball rolling forward. Willie, im wondering how you manage the process with employees and with customers theres some employees when you bring them back in, theyre going to be on the payroll again and means there may be some benefits theyre not eligible for thats going to require a lot of communication from you, also if opening up does have negative Health Consequences its probably going to take at least a couple weeks to see those. Whats your plan both in communicating to employees and on watching the results to see if it really is safe to open up more and more . So priority number one is employee safety and then guest trust. So employees, we stay connected to them on a daily, weekly basis through great delegation, management, systems, infrastructure so all of that is in place so for me to open, i need 25 of my staff from back of the house to front of the house, all different positions. We are ready, the management, we spoke to our team and we have enough people to be ready to open i want to wait on the sideline for two weeks. When you talk about the guests, and the staff be were talking about masks, were talking about sanitizing the entire restaurant on a daily and weekly basis, with an external nating company. We talked about sanitizer. Changing the door handles and the locks to enter and enter bathroom or anything so its no touch. You Touch Everything with your foot and grab bars were going to have the thermometers to test peoples temperature, all the guests coming in and staff coming in. We have to win the trust of the staff and guest so the people who loves the brand and understand were doing everything in our power to protect them and the staff as well willie, it sounds like youre already taking a lot of actions even though youre not ready to reopen yet im curious, how does the liability piece of this fit into your decision . Its certainly been a big debate about who ultimately as we start to see different businesses and part of the economy open up, who could be responsible if heaven forbid you start to see a resurgence of covid cases and subsequently lawsuits tied to them well, you know, everything in our industry, were always worried about lawsuits, the legalities Georgia State is a little different than new york. We can have waivers and they can sign off a lot of people want to get back to work, want to get back to their normal daily routine people ive spoke to from my Corporate Team i could tell im trying to motivate them. People get disconnected and out of a routine and start getting depressed. They start dwelling on the doom and gloom and think things are never going to get better. The fear sets in im not a lawyer i have lawyers work on my team well do everything in our process. I try not to think that negatively i try to think the positiveness and keep it to a minimum a lot of great people are working on this virus and working on cures and medications and steps and we, as america, are getting smarter and smarter by the day yeah, thats what were all pinning our hopes on, willie i would love to get your take on one thing, commentary from the casino companies, the ceos who have been operating in macau for years and their point is generally, people in asia are used to this they know how to be germophobes by habit and thats something americans will have to learn how to do. How do we do that when we have that american optimism and that individual freedom, the cowboy culture, that sort of defiance this country well, whats different in we adapt as people, right america has been the land of the free weve had terrorist attacks and 9 11 and adapted after that. Insurance companies adapt, businesses adapt people adapt so, you know, in the thick of things weve lost thousands of people, which is so sad and its horrible, but im always trying to take the positive in it ive seen a lot of asian people in this city and when im traveling abroad all over the world always wearing masks, on airplanes and everywhere it is a norm to them it might be a new norm, the mask business, the sanitizers and protective measures and well have to wait and see how everybody adapts to this i have to believe that our great minds will do everything to solve the virus. They come every so many generations and years and we prevailed before and i believe we will prevail again. Willie, were going to ask you to keep us updated viewers love hearing from you and listening to your thoughts on this whole issue. Take care of yourself. Well see you soon can i talk about one other thing, carl . Yeah. Yeah. So the funding, like im working with bank of america, im having a hard time getting my ppp money. Then i see a lot of Big Companies im out there, people are calling me, i can [ inaudible ] a lot of businesses i happen Construction Companies getting 10 million, small startups getting 40. I just feel the way it was handled, originally i sent out a plan about the Payroll Companies handling this format i just dont think it should have ever been put into banks hands. The Payroll Companies deal with every business, know who you are and what you do, who is paying, who is tipped, who is hourly and salary it should have been held by pate rol the Payroll Companies and the funding would have been smarter, wiser and better. Theres definitely been early lessons how to get that money out quickly. People understand your point for sure well talk to you soon thank you very much. Thank you in the meantime a coronaVirus Outbreak update with sue herera back at hq hello, carl, hello, everyone. Michigans governor grinchen whitmer says th Gretchen Whitmers says that stay at home is flattenings the curve some schools in germany began reopening today. Chancellor Angela Merkel understand the urge to relax restrictions but criticizing some states for moving too quickly. Tiger woods and Phil Mickelson will square off in a live golf event to benefit Coronavirus Relief efforts nfl stars Peyton Manning and tom brady will join the match which will air on tnt later next month. And while this years nfl draft wont look like the big events in recent years, Online Sports books are seeing a lot more betting this year on who gets picked and when with no live sports tonights draft gives gamblers their first opportunity in weeks to wager on a familiar event you can always get more at cnbc. Com jon, nfl draftathon is basically tonight during the draft, which you can watch online, they are targeting basically six charities tied to covid19 relief and all the money will go to them. Thats another good aspect of this. That is good, indeed, sue we havent seen one like this before indeed. Hopefully wont again. After the break the ceo of Tractor Supply freshff o that companys earnings call. Well be right back. As we went into the month of april, and millions of americans are sheltering at home and theyve heard from Public Health officials its best to try to minimize your time in physical store locations we saw spikes in digital comps. For the quarter were up over 100 but in april alone our digital growth is over 275 . Weve just seen cyber monday occur almost every day, except the volume is twice the size weve normally seen on even a cyber monday peak. Pretty incredible interview with Brian Cornell this morning and becky quick on squawk box, as the comps on digital are astounding but when you couple that with the discounts theyve had to make on clothes, limit the number of people in the store, online groceries not as profitable, in the end margins take a hit. Yeah. Absolutely i think the commentary about this being every day being like a cyber monday also really speaks to not only what it means for retailers that are have essential products that are being move around the country but the Transportation Companies like ups, fedex and others, that are used to spending the entire year developing a socalled peak season for the Christmas Holiday season, and getting ready for that type of level of volume, and did not have that same type of foresight here and having to flex their noetworks and make i work as well. With these changes looking at omni channel, we had moments where the internet in general and ecommerce had a big moment where mobile, when the iphone first came out and you were capable of doing transactions on that had a moment. Unfortunately, its a crisis thats creating this moment for omni channel, but to me thats really what cornell target is talking about. Weve heard similar things from walmart and others, that the combination of digital and physical locations is something people are adapting to moving on, and having something to do with that, many are turning to Tech Solutions during this pandemic, but not every startup is safe. Our next guest saying what should have been a booming time for home buying apps like zillow and open door might end up being the industrys bust. Joining us now to break down the disruption and broader tech industry, wall street journal tech columnist laura foreman, good morning. Thanks so much for having me. So, lets start with the real estate piece open door, zillow, a couple of those companies that were making this bold move of saying were going to buy houses and then resell them to people. We have enough capital where we feel confident doing that. Were going to use our data to minimize risk. But they didnt see, as so few did, this crisis coming. Is this an exo tensional threat to them or if they can baton down the hatches do you expect to see this Movement Come back in a few months or a year . Ive been saying this all along, for these buyers, they have gotten way head of themselves and concerns about a recession coming and wondering what theyre going to do about that, theyre holding this inventory, hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory, i think zillow said most recently as of march they own over 1800 houses. Here, with the coronavirus, its something no one saw coming. I think, you know, millennials are first adopters of this Digital First technology theyre buying houses less and less having to already deal with a Great Recession and then you add this into it, i mean think about what it does to their down payment. Im not sure its going to come back as quickly as they think its going to. On the flip side, we were talking about target its a Grocery Provider and a retailer and theyre seeing this omni channel business really being so important for their operation. Yeah, theres some margin issues but a surge in buying. Instacart is another name thats seen an incredible surge in demand any signals yet that you can see on what the longterm effects of so many people turning on this digital activity, what that is going to mean . Yeah. I mean i think a lot of people are wondering is this a covid precipitated spike in usage or is this a more secular shift i think eye buying is its own beast, right its huge and its going to take a lot of people along time to adapt to using technology when commit to their home, something they worked so hard to get when it comes to groceries something you need every night to feed your family, i think especially for these older generations, the baby boomers who probably were slow to adopt, theyre seeing more than ever this is important for their health, right, so theyre going to continue to use it i think Going Forward. Then theres the social and political question, and its kind of unanswerable, but im going to ask it anyway because you know how we are, there have been so much there has been so much pressure on social networks and Large Technology companies, you know, kind of anti i dont want to call it monopoly because arguably a lot werent textbook monopolies to begin with but pressure from washington on these companies. Those companies are the very ones were relying on, whether its facebook for social interaction, amazon for the delivery of essential goods, go on down the line, is it likely that that kind of political pressure we were seeing eases off quite a bit because of how much were relying on them now yeah. I think look, there was a lot of political pressure going in this year and i think its a little rich how suddenly everyone is kind of flip flopped from tech is terrible to tech can be this great savior those problems that were highlighted earlier, the regulatory and Security Issues, those are real problems, that arent going away. At the same time, you know, the wall street journal did a piece i think two weeks ago about how apple and google are working on tracking technology that could end up essentially reopening the economy and being the savior here so were seeing that, you know, the benefits of technology and big tech working together are highlighted, amplified more around coronavirus then again like in that article, trump was quoted as saying, you know, this is really interesting, but there are a lot of Security Issues and well just have to see yeah. Hard for me to imagine the political will is still going to be there to break up big tech after so many people leaning on big tech so much now we will, indeed, see laura foreman, thanks for joining us. Thanks. Were going to take a quick commercial break and a check on the markets right now. Major averages are extending wednesdays rally into a second day as investors digest earnings and economic data. The dow is up 269 points or a little over 1 the s p is up 1 as well stay with us dad, im scared. Its only human to care for those we love. And also help light their way. Its why last year chevron invested over 10 billion to bring affordable, reliable, ever cleaner energy to america. Man retailer Tractor Supply reporting an earnings beat as the company deals with the Virus Outbreak joining us is the president and ceo of the Tractor Supply company hal lawton great to have you on the phone thank you for having me. First i have to ask you a broad question because you were president at macys until early december you were at ebay three years ago heading up north america now youre ceo at Tractor Supply what do you see happening to retail, since youve had such a deep look at it from so many angles, and how is it going to change through this crisis yeah, thank you i think retail has been going through a shift like all businesses over the last 20 years with the advent of things like the internet and ecommer and mobile phone adoption, broadband technology, the Computing Power and i think the coronavirus and the crisis here has really just accelerated many of those trends. Were certainly seeing our customers look to shop online more, theyre looking for contactless pickup in store and buy online and pickup curbside, theyre looking for contactless payment. Theres much more strong adoption of mobile convenience is playing a bigger and bigger role. All these trends were really trends that have been evolving over the last 20 years and really in the last six weeks what weve done is pulled forward the customer adoption curve on these by two or three years. Yeah. On the call this morning, you said that you had a crossfunctional team meeting twice a day, seven days a week, since late february working on this covid19 crisis and the appropriate response i got to ask you, based on this opening up thats beginning, you have 92 stores in georgia, tennessee and ohio are among your top ten states for stores, all of those looking to open up more in the next couple weeks, South Carolina as well what are your plans to either change operations or make sure that both customers and employees in those locations are safe the safety and health of our team members and our customers is our utmost, top priority, and really has been since late always is, but has been very much a focus since late february when we kicked off our pandemic crisis task force. Weve made a number of axships, over 100, actually, over the last six weeks to really be focused on our Team Member Safety and health. That includes the mask rollout of ppe, face masks, face shields, gloves, hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies. We added a greeter to every door and every store we have in the company. Weve expanded were now hiring 5,000 Additional Team members. We have 34,000 when we began were adding 5,000 to that weve also given every team member two weeks of sick pay if youre sick we do not want you coming into work weve extended a variety of our benefits to our team members including an appreciation bonus. All of our team members, hourly team members, earning 2 per hour more right now. We began that on march 16th. Weve taken as ive said over 100 different actions to do everything we can to ensure the health and safety of our team members and our customers. We have our own epidemiologist as part of the team. Weve got several folks who are monitoring local and state municipality regulations and were in constant communication with the cdc and other government regulators. Its good to hear, hal. This is morgan you mentioned cyber a moment ago and certainly Tractor Supply has expanded same day delivery to all of its stores. Given the fact that so many customers are located in rural parts of the country right now and the costs can very quickly climb when youre talking about that last Mile Delivery in places that arent as dense or arent as populace, how are you executing on the strategy and thinking about that dynamic making sure people can get the essential goods they need and keeping your costs in check . Tractor supply has been investing in our omni channel capabilities for the last few years. We call it the one tractor strategy that foundation has really served us well through this crisis in addition, building on that foundation as you mentioned, weve rolled out curbside delivery nationwide. Weve rolled out same day and next day delivery nationwide weve increased our mobile point of sale hardware by 50 and rolling out Contactless Payments over the next few weeks. As it relates to ecommerce, we have seen a significants increase in ecommerce sales strong spikes there. That said, 70 of our Online Purchases are picked up in a store. So buy online and pick up in the store is the highest kind of profitable Purchase Online 75 of those buy online and pick up in store orders are being picked up via curbside strong adoption of a very new feature that weve rolled out. As it relates to same day and next day delivery, currently we charge we pass along the costs of that to our customers it can range from 20 to 60 depending on the distance from the store and the size of the item or items youre ordering. Weve not had any customer complaints or issues with that and we feel like its a very competitive pricing for the types of items we sell on a same day or next day basis. Finally, farmers are feeling the pain right now, starting to get hit hard with things like dairy and livestock are concerned. Are you seeing the ripple effects of that in terms of purchases and activity in your stores we are the largest bag good seller of feed in the country, so much like the family needs a Grocery Store service for our customers, in many ways were serving the animals needs for our customers. We certainly at the end of march saw large stock ups of those categories those have kind of abated now and were seeing really just a growth in a lot of outdoor categories, lawn care, landscaping, fencing, poultry and chickens, agriculture, gardening, you know, much more about the outdoors and homesteading and on your one acre or two acre or five or ten acres of land. Certainly a lot of Activity Still around the care and maintenance of our customers animals as well. Right. And were very much there to support rural america. All right hal lawton, the president and ceo of Tractor Supply company, after that companys earnings, thanks for being with usp. New york state is out with its latest numbers on covid19 Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled them a few moments ago. The hospitalization rate is down again so that is good news the overall, if you project the curve, everybody is looking at curves nowadays, if you look at the curve, the curve continues to go down and thats also in the total hospitalization number, bounces up and down a little bit, but its clearly down the number of intuing bations bounces a little bit, but its clearly down numbers of new covid cases walking in the door or being diagnosed is relatively flat. C walking in the door is relatively flat. That is not great news wed like to see that going down, but its not going up either number of lives lost is still breathtakingly tragic. 438. That number is not coming down as fast as we would like to see that number come down. What were looking at at this point is okay, were on the down side of the curve. The numbers are trending down. Do they continue to trend down or do they pop back up if they continue to trend down, how fast is this decline and how low will the decline go . In other words, if 1300 people or about that number keep waccing wac i walking in the door, then youll have a hospitalization rate proportionate with the number of people walking in the door we want to see number of people walking in the door reduced. The number of new infections redu reduced. We hit a low plateau, if you will we dont fwhee that is and we dont know when it is. If you look at the number of incoming cases its been remarkably flat for the past several days thats the best indicator of how its wokking and over the past few days we flattened at 1300 new cases a day, which is not great. Wooeds like to see the new cases reducing even more and wed like to see them reducing faster. Thats governor coumo of new york with the layest stats for the hardest hit state. 438 deaths in the last 48 hours. Still some key questions especially around incoming places Video Industry booming as were people look for Online Entertainment due to social distancing switch seeing record levels of interest broadcasting over two billion hours of content sarah, thanks for being with us today. Thanks so much, morgan. Thanks. What have you seen as we have seen so much of the economy shut in and people shelter in place we are seeing an unprecedented surge in our audience and hours watched and the new of new creators on twitch twitch is a Live Streaming service that has its heritage in gaming it seems improbable that it would be as large as twitches. Gaming is a global industry. They game about an hour a day. That heritage and foundation of gaming has really sent twitch up in situation where we have this Rich Community who are interacting online and were seeing in a time of social distancing that more and more communities are looking for that kind of connection the surge youve seen in demand how much of that is a pull forward or temporary with things like sports not available or do you see it as a cultural with gaming becoming mainstream entertainment piece of the puzzle theres a surge thats associated with the social distance we had about two billion hours watched in 2019. What we know is when communities form on twitch, there are bonds established between the content creator and their audience we see all the time that the bonds deepen and get enrich and people watch for longer and longer there will be some softening when social distancing ends. Thats a gad thing for the world. I think people would like to be in place where real interaction can occur in gaming and communities. Tell us about the operations of the company right now are you hiring particularly for those people who are keeping the network up and running we are very fortunate that twitch is a deck the kad old company. A lot of the foundation that they built even in the tv days prior to converting to twitch was a core about Video Transmission Technology that scales very effectively. We serve one of the most latency sensitive audiences on earth which is gamers as our core audience we have been investing in techniques to ensure stla a low latency experience for years we are seeing that scale very effectively. Our structure sits on oaws. Were able to scale up and down. The work force, what is the status of that are they working longer hours . Are you hiring people to handle the surge . We continue to grow were hiring we do that to ensure were growing in areas that be sustained over time. We have incredible surge we have done deals with cloud to thep that on boarding. We absolutely speak to continue to invest sensible around the areas we see growing and we believe have real opportunity for twitch over the longer term. Microsoft, facebook and google have been trying to raise the program, how competitive has the landscape become given fact that viewership engagement is up you have more and more high profile people like pro athletes that are tuning in on daily basis . Twitch is relents ele relenty focused on serving the community. It makes us the best place to have the experience. Its been a decade investing in that we see sochl these other companies beginning to enter our space. I think its good for the industry as a whole wp we feel very confident that were well positioned to continue to grow in this time thung thank you for joining. Thank you so much we do want to take a look at the markets before we close and toss to the half the dow, s p and nasdaq all still up by better than 1 , but a bit off the highs. Also want to note this interesting item out of the governor of new york andrew c m cuomos daily conference call. 13. 9 of residents have had the coronavirus. More than 85 have not its data like this, it just reminds me how little data we have despite the fact were watching certain numbers every day in the market reacting to coronavirus numbers as well. This is really remarkable its a preliminary test so nobody wants to draw too big of a conclusion 21 sort of backs up the other evidence that we have seen out of places like california that the actual infection rate is a multitude of what the testing is telling us so far. Yeah, its something we have discussed. Were still poised to be lower for the week for the major averages second day of gains as it stands right now led in part by energy. Lets get over to the judge. Dow break even for the weak lets get to the judge our breaking News Coverage continues right now. Stocks higher as we mark 1 month since the march 23rd lows. The s p 500 up 25 since that day a remarkable turn around at a time when the economy is still facing unprecedented weakness jobless claims are still soaring and good news on the virus seems a bit hard to come by. What does all of that mean from wh