Here joining us is chief Investment Officer of the Minnesota State board of investment. Good morning. Good morning, john. How are you . Im doing pretty well i hope you are, too. So, a lot of people trying to figure out what to do with this market your philosophy is to buy the market and not individual equities but this market has been kind of funky i wonder does big techs increasing waiting say in s p 500 concern you . How do you get as diversified as you want to be no. As i said, i mentioned before, we dont look at sector by sector weve been longterm investors and for the most part we buy the market you know, domestically we own the russell 3,000. We do have active managers, but the vast majority of our portfolio is passively managed our equity portfolio is passively managed, same on the International Side so we probably have most stocks that are available to us. Thats done pretty well for you. I wonder with this disconnect between the economy and the market that were seeing does that cause you to shift at all your Portfolio Allocation . Do you have more than usual in cash does fixed income mean the same thing that it traditionally did . Well, thats something that we have been talking about for quite some time. As i said, we wont shift the portfolio very much, but most people look at us and believe our business is to make the most money as possible. I try to point out that our primary goal is to satisfy our pension obligations. And that requires that we have the necessary liquidity every month to ensure that we can meet pension benefit payments we have been restructuring our mixed Income Portfolio the last couple years its now comprised of half the portfolio is treasuries which has paid us off very well the last couple years. Its been surprisingly our the last year our best performing asset class but weve been focussing more to ensure that weve got the adequate liquidity while were able to continue to maintain the growth bias that weve had for so many years thats paid us off extremely well were proud to say in the realm of large public Pension Plans in the u. S. , that weve been a top performer for 30plus years. Yeah. Im back i have to say this is the joys of working from home sometimes your internet signal drops out, but its great to speak with you today im curious about the private markets portion of your portfolio. I think it comprises, what, 16 of the overall portfolio its been a source of strength for you in recent years. How would you assess private markets right now . Where would you be putting money to work . How would you compare that to some of these Public Markets that weve been talking about . Well, weve always liked private equity weve been private Equity Investors since 1981 thats paid off very well. Private markets, which for us is predominantly private equity for quite some time. We were very large energy investors. Were kind of waning off of that now for a variety of reasons but of late we have been doing more direct lending to go along with mezzanine investing we have done over the years. And weve not much as much in real estate. Prior to the pandemic we have been giving considerable thought to increasing what we do there weve been predominantly u. S. Focussed in our private Market Portfolio we believe that we need to have greater global exposure there. We like private markets. Ive really been a fan of private equity more so than public equity. A lot of that has to do with the Agency Principle i look at when i play in with Public Markets, you know, people who are select in stocks are agents, but theyre really agents. Whereby in private markets our gps are principalprincipals theyve got better alignment with us. They have much more control over what happens with companies than public. Yeah. And of course in a week where the fed is very much in focus, you have chair powell testifying on the hill for a second day in a row today. I wonder how you see Monetary Policy playing out in the market more broadly right now do you feel like it is buoying the market and what do you make of things like buying of Corporate Bonds . Well, obviously my buddy pointed out to me several times dont fight the fed. I believe that theres a great disconnect now between what is happening in the stock market versus the economy but when one looks back, i know i kind of carry around a cheat sheet with me and the stock market particularly in the u. S. Has been pretty resilient over the last 40 years, i think theres only been 7 years where theres been a negative return vast majority of the annual returns that we receive from the stock market have been double digit. So,. Given what you just said and your bias towards domestic stocks, talk to me about strategy in International Markets. Because just recently yesterday, the imf said that the Current Crisis is unlike anything the world has seen before youre looking at increasing your exposure to International Markets. How do you do that safely . Well, with Public Markets were not increasing our exposure we have had a longterm home country bias in Public Markets. Yeah. But even private given whats happening on the ground to the economy in these places, how can you be sure or at least relatively stable confident in your investments in International Markets . Well, there are no guarantees ive had a long belief that much of particularly emerging markets that in Public Markets were not really receiving the benefit so the Economic Growth thats taking place in most of those venues and we believe that there may be better potential in private markets there. But for the most part, we will continue to have a pretty strong u. S. Bias either public or private markets. But, we would like to think that were global investors, but you know, given the strength of the dollar and as i was talking before the resiliency we have seen over the past fourplus decades, that the u. S. Is pretty good place to pretty good place to be. Yeah. Hard sometimes to take that advice we always get about have a diversified portfolio, international stocks, et cetera, given whats been happening. Mansco perry, the chief Investment Officer of the Minnesota State board of investment thank you for being with us. Thank you meantime, Mark Zuckerberg out with an op ed announcing new changes for facebook users julia has the latest on that morgan, thats right. Mark zuckerberglaying out his plan to make facebook a positive force in american politics after the manipulation that happened on the platform around the 2016 election in a usa today oped zuckerberg announcing the plan to register 4 million voters ahead of this coming election, double the number registered in 2016 and 201. Zuckerberg unveiling a Voting Information Center hub to explain how to register, vote by mail and how to vote early this hub will appear at the top of the facebook and instagram apps zuckerberg saying between july and november, he expects more than 160 Million People in the u. S. To see information on facebook about how to vote calling this the largest voting Information Campaign in american history. He also announced that all of facebooks users will have the ability to turn off political advertising. This comes after zuckerberg drew criticism for defending the companys decision to allow political ads that contain false information. Saying allowing political ads is in the interest of free speech, not profits. Now, in contrast, twitter last fall banned all political advertising. With so much scrutiny on facebooks power coming from washington, including on going ftc antitrust inquiry, the pressure is on for facebook to not just prevent voter manipulation but also show it can be transparent and actually help democracy zuckerberg saying that they are prepared to prevent election interference that they have been investing billions of dollars to sure up the platform here he is trying to play offense on this issue. Back over to you. Julia, did you read anything into Mark Zuckerbergs multiple mentions of voting by mail in that oped, given the president s tweets that tried to call into question the integrity of the vote by mail system yes i think whats happening right now is theres a lot of concern about voter suppression. And zuckerberg wants to make sure that facebook is not part of that and if anything is really going to prevent voter suppression. And i think that as weve seen with people still being stuck at home, stayathome orders, not only remaining in many parts of the country but also the concern that stayathome orders will come back if theres a second wave, especially around voting time, i think he wants to get ahead of that. I think zuckerberg wants to get ahead of that and make sure theyre laying the ground work for transparent, safe, voting from home if people cant actually make it to the polls. Interesting maybe a position somewhat different than the president s julia, thank you. Still to come, nysc president Stacey Cunningham joins us on the othesi or def the break. Stay with us for the life behind every mask Johnson Johnson scientists are working 24 7 to develop a covid19 vaccine. The clock never stops and neither do we. Iredefined the wordng thschool this year. Its why, at xfinity, were committed to helping kids keep learning through the summer. And help College Students studying at home stay connected through our university program. Were providing affordable Internet Access to low income families through our internet essentials program. And this summer, xfinity is creating a Virtual Summer camp for kids at home all on xfinity x1. Were committed to helping all families stay connected. Learn more at xfinity. Com education. Welcome back to squawk alley. The New York Stock Exchange allowing more Market Makers back to its Trading Floor this morning. Just over three weeks since reopening began. Meantime, both the nyse and nasdaq registering a win in federal court yesterday in a ruling that some fee increases cant be challenged by the government after they have taken effect here is what s. E. C. Chair told us about that ruling in the last hour we have responsibility to ensure that our trading markets and our trading venues operate in a way where people are getting the right deal that competition is driving prices to where, you know, our end users, our investors, arent paying too much for liquidity. Theyre not paying too much to get in and out thats our job our Market Structure is highly complex. I respect that decision. But it just shows that were going to have to look at different ways to get data so that we can make sure, its our job, we can make sure that the markets are functioning in a way thats appropriate for our longterm investors. Joining us now nyse president Stacey Cunningham. Thanks for being here today. Great to have you with us. Thanks, morgan. Its great to be here. I want to get your response to that comment we just heard from the s. E. C. Chairman yeah. I think first off, its important to recognize taking a step back that i have tremendous respect for the s. E. C. We have a great working relationship and we workvery productively o so many different issues around capital formation, around trading in the markets, chairman clayton and his team, director redfern have been really focal advocates of great support system through all the volatility that we have seen through march. We worked very, very well together to make sure that our markets continue to deliver and operate the Way Investors expect them to through any kind of Market Conditions like weve seen that said, there are certain areas where we disagreed on policy decisions that the s. E. C. Was making and how we were going to experiment with some of the market models. Retail investors have it better than they had it before, but its true theres a lot of complexity and fragmentation in our markets today and Institutional Investors have more its a more challenging environment for them to be able to trade and execute securities. So there is cause for discussion and review to enhance our markets and improve them the pilot that was being proposed didnt actually accomplish the job of measuring those conflicts of interest. There is data already available out there to do that secondly, it just was outside of the Regulatory Authority of the s. E. C. , so we tried to propose an alternative and come up with another solution well continue to do that. Well continue to work with the industry on alternatives but the one that was being passed by the s. E. C. Was outside of their authority under the exchange act we ended up challenging it in court and i was glad to see the courts agree yeah. So, when you talk about alternatives or coming up with a solution, what could that potentially look like . I ask because i realize this could get really wonky really quickly for tv, but what could that potentially look like whether youre talking about fees for data or even if youre talking about say connectivity and the ability to move faster, execute a trade faster, i got to think that that actually benefits bigger players with deeper pockets how do you basically level the Playing Field to ensure that everybody can participate in an equal way . Yeah. I think one of the things to recognize is when the policy decisions were made to promote competition in the markets, it led to fragmentation what that led to was better prices for investors as variable costs went down, but fixed costs went up. As people are connecting to more and more places to execute trades so, its gotten more expensive for industry professionals so main street has done better, but wall street is paying more money. What we can do is find recognize the fact that there is a correlation between both fixed costs and variable costs and come up with a solution where we can reduce the overall fees on the industry without putting Different Companies into different buckets. That certainly something the listed companies at the nyc werent in favor of. There were dozens of letters written through the s. E. C. Comment process opposing the pilot. So we looked at all of those letters. We came up with what we think is a good compromise. We had suggested as an alternative. We can dust that off now that the courts have made their decision and see if theres more industry support now to take that route that would lower the transaction fees and reduce the scale of potential conflicts hey, stacey good morning its john fort good to see the familiar look of the floor and see you and here beeps and boops in the background we dont get to hear that as much as we used to when you were first opening the floor back up a few weeks ago, you said there were no timetable for bringing more people or everyone back. Is that still the case yeah, not a specific timetable, but were moving to phase 2 this week where we increased the number of people that can come back, bringing back some of the Market Makers were scaling it up. Importantly we have been open three and a half weeks we put in place a number of protective measures. We have seen no cases, no positive cases as we have been testing people that come in either randomly or because of our screening process. And what were learning is if you act responsibly, we can protect each other ive been really disheartened by seeing some of the videos and footage of people in places that are reopening going back to normal and not acknowledging the fact that we still have a pandemic and we need to be responsible with our actions so, if you do that, you can scale up thats what were doing. Were scaling up but responsibly. So how do you do that as you mentioned before the traders on the floor are not nyse employees i remember being on the floor not long ago, distance isnt always part of the normal protocol what are you going to test more as more people enter the building is there going to be a different kind of enforcement mechanism for how close people should stand together when theyre not your employees how do you do it we changed the work flow. Some aspects of the way brokers and dmns interact that we have not brought back online yet. There isnt a lot of face to face communication we installed plexiglass. People are Wearing Masks we literally have footprints all over the Trading Floor to give them a sense of where they can stand and be socially distanced. Same through the cafeteria and the rest of any other areas in the building that people would walk into. And the screening process is still up and running and we have been working with cbs on testing. So all of those things together are part of how we continue to protect each other frankly, the people on the floor want to be here. So they know that they need to maintain that social distancing so that they dont have to go home i mean, we think about the two months that we shut down for not just the New York Stock Exchange but in so many cities, that will be for nothing where we get a place where we have to close things down again. People are cooperating because they want to scale up, not move backwards. Yeah. And i know we certainly look forward to the day where we can come back and broadcast from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as well stacey, i want to get your thoughts on the ipo market and the fact that we have seen some very successful debuts in the last couple of weeks after really a couple of months where i think many people thought we wouldnt see this pipeline spring to life as quickly as we have theres also been a lot made of this rivalry between the Stock Exchange and the nasdaq. What are you seeing and what do you expect through the rest of the year yeah. I think its been we raised 64 billion since the beginning of the year. We have had a good amount of Capital Raising on going throughout the pandemic and during, during the floor closure, 35 billion capital raised just in the weeks that the floor was closed what were seeing is that Capital Raising shift. So much of it was tied to companies raising money to sure up their Balance Sheets in light of the pandemic. So doing followon offerings we saw a large number of spaks which has been very active area in the ipo market, companies that are special purpose acquisition corporations looking to raise money because opportunistically they believe theyre Companies Worth buying thats a new innovative way to come to market and we saw enterprise, tech and health care those were continuing to ipo with the shutdown and with the success of those companies were seeing more Consumer Companies and others come to market. So were excited about whats in the pipeline we had ipo First Virtual ipo where the ceo is remotely fed into the bell podium we have a lot in the pipeline. It looks like its shaping up to be a very strong second half of the year all right Stacey Cunningham, great to see you. Thanks for joining us today. Great to see you guys. And now we head to break and lets take a look at s p laggards at this hour with cruise lines under pressure again, royal caribbean, norwegian, oracle also down almost 5 after revenues were a bit light. Well be right back. Did you know that americans that bought gold in 2005 quadrupled their money by 2012 . And even now, many experts predict the next gold rush is just beginning. So call us money reserve, the only Precious MetalsOrganization Led by a former director of the United States mint. As one of the largest us gold coin distributors in the country, us money reserve has proudly served hundreds of thousands of clients worldwide. There may have never been a better time to start diversifying your assets with physical gold and silver. And right now its easy to get started. Pick up the phone right now. Call to receive the complete guide to protecting your hardearned assets. Dont put it off another day. 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Pick up the phone and call americas gold authority, us money reserve. With nearly two decades in business, over a billion dollars in transactions, and more than a half a million clients worldwide, us money reserve is one of the most dependable gold distributors in america. Welcome back to squawk alley. European markets are set to close in just a few moments. Seem ma moe da has the breakdown overseas. Closing towards the low of session despite a rampup in geopolitical tensions and a lackluster auto sales number nearly 57 drop in new car registrations in the month of may. However, better than 78 decline in april auto and auto part stocks worst performers in europe today led by declines in renault the eu announcing an indepth antitrust probe of the proposed merger lets pivot to Luxury Retail and look at the parent of gucci anoensing the addition of three new board members, emma watson and the president of chinas ride hailing app in an effort to diversify its board. Tomorrow, bank of england held Monetary Policy meeting where the central bank is expected to expand its kwan tative easing program by 100 billion pounds. Td securities said its priced into the uk market speaking of the uk, boris johnson, british prime minister, agreeing to pick up brexit talks again this summer with european officials in hopes of reaching the yearend deadline. Jon, back to you. Thank you sue herrera has a news update. Good morning, everyone here is whats happening at this hour more than 60 of flights in and out of beijing have been cancelled. Beijing raising its virus alert level amid a resurgence in coronavirus cases. Beijings Capital Airport is traditionally the worlds second busiest in terms of Passenger Capacity the aunt jemima brand will get a new image and name it recognizes the origins of the character are, quote, based on a racial stereotype, end quote target raising its minimum wage from 13 to 15 an hour starting july 5th. And ahead of schedule. The retailer had had pledged to raise its minimum wage to 15 by the end of 2020. Target will also give all of its hourly employees a onetime bonus of 200. And sin mark plans to reopen all of its more than 500 u. S. Cinemas by july 17th the Company Announcing its phased reopening plan which will begin in texas on june 19th. You can find out more by going to cnbc. Com and get information on cinemarks reopening plans. Thats the news update morgan, back to you. Sue herrera, thank you. As we head to break, lets get a check on the markets with the nasdaq Still Holding on to gains right now, up for the eighth time in the last nine sessions the dow and the s p have been slipping between gains and losses currently down right now the dow is down 100 points is s p is down about. 1 its tech and consumer stocks that are leading those gains in the nasdaq and the only sectors in the green. Well be back after this break stay with us yeah yyeah yeah hey, hey yeah music anncr give customers access to precisely what they want, when they need it the most. With adyen, the payments platform that delivers convenience for all. Adyen. Business. Not boundaries. Welcome back the nasdaq not posting backtoback losses since mid may. Well see how it does today. Joining us now is Anthony Chukumba as well as joseph scully, managing director and senior internet analyst. Guys, good morning good morning, jon. Anthony, theres been this focus on amazon during this time i know youve got some thoughts about not just amazon but how this mixture of regular, physical retail and online might be accelerated from here what do you see happening . Yeah. So i think that what we have seen and what were going to continue to see is that this pandemic is going to accelerate the secular shift to Online Shopping in a lot of cases you had consumers who either didnt shop online before but were forced to do so, and then also consumers who were already shopping online who expanded the product categories that they were buying online i think that even once we get sort of the allclear, lets say we get effective treatment and or a vaccine, a lot of those behaviors are going to stick because in a lot of cases consumers found it was much easier than they thought it was going to be to shop online and, you know, amazon has 40 at least market share for Online Shopping in the u. S. Theyve got over 110 million prime members. Theyre still best in class in terms of their website and theyve got obviously the free twoday now oneday shipping they will be the prime beneficiary clearly of that acceleration in that secular shift. Yeah. I couldnt convince my wife that we should buy groceries online until the past couple months now i think this might stick joseph, your thoughts on how amazon is positioned considering that theyre near alltime highs right now and theres a little bit more buzz around antitrust and regulatory concerns which i for one thought would perhaps be pushed off for quite a while post pandemic. Well, yeah. So thank you, jon, for the invite so, these two questions or theyre part of the both sides of the same coin, i would say. So amazons success, rapid success over the last 10, 15 years has certainly made it up sized. It has become kind of potential issue for the government that said, i would like to say two things one, i agree with anthony. I think the what were seeing over the last three, four months in terms of acceleration of online penetration is going to stick around for an extended period of time i think structurally there are precedents to this in uk, for instance, ecommerce penetration is already double that of the u. S. In the u. S. , there are certain categories like groceries you spoke to which has been which has seen very, very low penetration. I think thats changing. And, you know, you look at other sub categories within ecommerce where, say, wayfair plays for bulky furniture type of things and the last time we spoke earlier this week at a conference they talked about 90 , 90 year on year growth in their business thats another category which amazon has historically not been very strong in and you will probably see some aggressive moves in those two categories. Yousseff, i want your thoughts on the food Delivery Market were seeing consolidation there with grubhub getting snapped up. I think it was pretty clear that they were going to be regulatory challenges if uber had really gone through with trying to get grubhub. Maybe the battle lines are drawn now. What should investors expect here with Profit Margins, with spending outlays, incentives to workers, all those things that tend to happen, i think, once the sides have kind of amassed their troops so, in terms of Profit Margins dont hold your breath i think these companies, whether its amazon or facebook or google or, you know, alibaba is in that same camp, theyre doubling down. Theyre doubling down when all their peers are not doing well offline or online, these guys are going all in they have so much money that they need to put that money to work in very high roi opportunities and crisis like these affords them the opportunities. In terms of just mna, i dont think the big tech is going to be allowed to acquire anything up size, right uber doesnt even have market share number one market share. Theyre number three because they were going to acquire number two, the government effectively was going to give them a lot of trouble. Were probably not going to agree to that acquisition. That said, i still think grubhub will im sorry, uber will still look to acquire both organic and through acquisitions postmates, only have 8 market share. I think it would make a lot of sense for uber to acquire that and international also affords them a fair amount of mna opportunities as well. Anthony, close things out for us weve covered a lot. I want to cover at least one more thing that is streaming. You guys at loop recently did a survey of 500 u. S. Consumers to try to get a sense of how covid19 is affecting their habits what do you think happens to netflix . What do you think happens to disney plus . And maybe even apple tv plus coming through and hopefully out of this. Who do you expect to be at the best advantage yeah. Thats a good question i dont want to speak too much out of school because those companies are covered by allen gould and rob sanerson the two of them feel with consumers clearly more hesitant to go to movie theaters, to go to theme parks that plays right into netflixs hands one advantage that netflix has over those other streaming services is they have such a Massive Library that the sort of hulks in terms of production of new content is not nearly as much of an issue for them as it is for disney plus, as it is for apple tv that, you know, that doesnt have as much content but having said that, look, clearly, you know, the rising tide lists all those and all three of those players that you mentioned, one great thing they enjoy, advantage they enjoy over a lot of other players is very, very deep pockets. We think there will be a pickup in streaming activity. Get your point about libraries. My kids are getting into the simpsons for the first time and just in the late 80s right now. They cant believe how many episodes there are that helps at a time like this still to come, netflix Ceo Reed Hastings what he told njtiawk box on social iusce and Covid Concerns thats next. Stay with us a Digital Foundation from vmware helps you redefine whats possible. Now. From the hospital shifting to remote patient care in just 48 hours. To the university moving hundreds of apps quickly to the cloud. Or the City GovernmentGoing Digital to keep Critical Services running. You are creating the future on the fly. And we are helping you do it. Vmware. Realize whats possible. Hey lily from at t here. Im back and while most stores are open, im working from home and here to help. Heres a tip get halfoff the amazing iphone 11 on at t, americas Fastest Network for iphones. Second tip you can put googly eyes on your stuff to keep yourself company. Uh for example, thats heraldo. Hes my best friend. Oh, sorry nancy, i forgot you were there. Get the amazing iphone 11 for halfoff on at t, americas Fastest Network for iphones. Cool . Drop the taco. Get in the car. Does this sentra feel like a compromise to you . Wait, what. . The handling is good, right . No compromise there. Nope watch this. Umm. Bbrie. Brie brie rear automatic braking. So if this Nissan Sentra isnt gonna compromise, why should you . Youre right atta girl. The allnew Nissan Sentra. With more standard safety features than any other car in its class. Welcome back netflix Ceo Reed Hastings making a big announcement this morning. Our Andrew Ross Sorkin caught up with him and joins us with the highlights hey, andrew. Hey there nice to see you. Netflix Ceo Reed Hastings and his wife are donating 120 million to three institutions dedicated to Higher Education of students of color. Uncf and the atlantabased liberal arts school Spellman College andmore House College are each receiving 40 million each, the largest individual gift ever in support of student scholarships that historically black colleges and universities. And i spoke with hastings by zoom yesterday were stepping up with this 120 million gift. You know, we want to help draw attention to the hbcus, them being part of the solution, for america and for black children to aspire to and so were so proud. This moment is not the first time that racism reared its terribly, ugly head. Many of us have been working on these issues for a long time again, for me mostly through education and my visits and my understanding and my relationships with all of my colleagues here was all prethis crisis and you bring covid in and the stress, the typical black family knows many more covid victims than the typically white family because covid hit so har in the black community and of course you have the Police Violence and the killings the amount of tragedy really did get us to focus and say, lets do something now that will be supportive of these great institutions and give people some sense of hope and you know, morgan and jon what Reed Hastings wants to do is bring attention to these colleges and universities in hopes that rather than so much of the money that typically goes to peoples alma maters it actually ends up going to some of these colleges which have been underfunded for years we talk about the harvards and princetons and yales of the world, they have 30 in some cases 40 billion endowments, the undocuments of the historically black colleges in america are in the low 100 millions and sometimes lower than that. And so, thats really where the opportunity lies so its about the money. But i think one of the things hes trying to do is get some of frankly our wealthy viewers to think differently about their contributions, mayor bloomberg making the largest donation in history to Johns Hopkins, his alma mater for 1. 8 billion and total 3. 35 billion to Johns Hopkins alone and i think the idea is that if some of that kind of money could make it to these universities, it could create some real change and better the world yeah, great stuff, andrew we just had Darren Walker from the Ford Foundation on yesterday, day before yesterday, talking about exactly that but also, these students getting scholarships when they come out of college, theyre going to need jobs. I wonder if Reed Hastings talked at all about netflixs own hiring practices with historically black colleges and universities i have noticed their demographic numbers which i believe they released of hispanic and black workers have ticked higher recently at about 8 and 7 . Right, yep. Is there a plan as part of that he says theyre working on it he says its something that he is hoping to do better and better at. Talked about how, you know, if you look at the u. S. Population right now, 13 africanamerican, i think he wants the company to represent the demographics of the country as you said in our relative basis to silicon valley, its a lobar theyre doing better in so far at 7 for the employees across the company, 8 at the Management Level in terms of the africanamerican employees at the company, but he does want to do better and also talked about the issue you talked about which is its not just about getting and giving money to these universities, institutions, its about then leveraging some of that to try to hire from those places all right well see where this goes, andrew thank you. Still to come, Online Learning in the age of the coronavirus. The ceo of coursera joins us next isimbing up in our list th year of disrupters were back in two minutes. Yeah yyeah yeah hey, hey as we head to break, take a look at the worst stocks on the dow this morning it is cyclical names Energy Stocks like exxon and chevron, boeing down 1. 5 , also merck and dow. Speaking of the dow, we are hugging the flat line down just 8 points right now its been another volatile session. The s p up ever so slightly right now, 2 points. The nasdaq is the outperformer of half a percent thanks to those tech and communications and Consumer Discretionary stocks well be rig bk. Sy ths. Htac [announcer] if youve tried college but never finished, snhu lets you transfer up to 90 credits toward your bachelors degree. [woman] it doesnt matter how old you are, you can do it. You can finish. [announcer] finish your degree at snhu. Edu. A newlywed. A guy who just got into college. 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Welcome back on your screen, hertz stock is halted, news pending we will continue to monitor that and let you know when the precise news does come in. And now Online Learning company korcera coming up at number four on our disruptive 50 list Julia Boorstin is alongside the ceo. Thank you, jon. Thank you for joining us today. Hi, julia. So tell us what has been the impact of covid on demand for classes . Its been considerable. Unesco tracks the number of School Closures due to covid as of april 20th, 1. 6 billion students from kindergarten to college had their school shut. Even as schools shut down, people went online to start learning weve seen individuals come to coursera theyre learning data science, computer science, taking personal wellness classes and so weve really seen a tremendous spike from individual learners and also universities who are trying to move their Teaching Online but often dont have the resources to do that now, about two months ago you launched the Workforce Recovery Initiative to offer free courses to unemployed workers. What kind of progress have you made there how many people have been taking those classes through that program . Yeah, basically when we saw covid coming, and it was one of our partners at duke who had a joint venture with wuhan university, they had the campus closed in january, so we knew that this pandemic was going to be making a global presence. First, of course, it was the hospitalizations and flattening the curve. The next thing we saw was School Closures, so we started offering coursera for free to universities so that students could continue to learn online for free weve had a Million Students enroll, over 5 million enrollments and over 13 million hours of learning. Thats on the student side but the next wave after the School Closures really is unemployment we saw that coming, so we said lets do coursera for government for free through the end of the year so that any national, state or local government can offer our partners courses at no cost to people impacted by covid through the end of the year. So far we have seen a lot of interest were now activated at more than 150 countries and 225 u. S. States are using this and its 3800 courses and computer science, data science, job skilling, career search courses that are available to help people get reskilled during this downtime now, a big part of courseras business is something called coursera for business. Youre partnered with over 2,000 Different Companies to help them upskill their workers. Whats going on there . Are you seeing those Companies Cut back because theyre facing cost pressure or are they shifting their investments in different ways where is that business its really a mix i think that it kind of depends on the industry and to some degree the region. For the most part industries in travel, hospitality, entertainment, the ones that have had their Business Models deeply challenged by stayathome and closures of business, theyre not spending a lot of money on learning and are trying to obviously cut back on almost everything. But for most industries, professional services, financial services, manufacturing, we are seeing a redoubling of efforts to accelerate what some people call Digital Transformation. This is the idea that across businesses the ability to use data to make better decisions, the ability to move software into the cloud so they can have more efficient cloud computing, the ability to create digital experiences for their customers and to do sales and Digital Marketing to finding their customers as well as finding digital data and computing to make better and more efficient supply chain operation decisions. Really Digital Transformation is happening around the world in every industry, and i think, frankly, Higher Education is about to really undergo their experience with Digital Transformation in the coming months and years ahead yeah. Digital transformation is something weve been talking about quite a bit on the show in the midst of this pandemic, jeffrey. Thanks for being on with us. Im curious, because weve been talking about the opportunity for disruption and the adoption of Online Learning for many years prepandemic and never really fully took root but im wondering now, how do you keep students and participants engaged and willing to stick it out to the end of a course are there lessons that have been learned in the years ahead of this pandemic that youre now applying to be able to help them avoid things like digital burnout . Yeah. Well, you know, one of the analogies i like to use is that building Online Learning from the ground up to be online is a lot different than putting a zoom camera in front of a lecturer doing that is similar to going to a drama, like a play, and just video recording a play and calling it a movie movies have special techniques, they have sound tracks, they have cut scenes. Theres a way to design a movie where a movie is not just a recorded play. Similarly, theres a way to design Online Learning so its not just a camera on a lecturer. One of the ways to avoid buildout is to have engagement, have the ability for individuals to go at their open pace, to build projects, to do handson experiences and group experiences. So i think theres a way to design it to avoid burnout with respect to completion, it really has a lot to do with why the learner is there in the first place. If you think about the amount of learning on youtube, its massive. Not every individual finishes ever Youtube Video and not every individual finishes the coursera course but if you get a college degree, a certificate or a job, completion rates are much higher the state of new york partnered with Johns Hopkins university to train covid contact tracers. This is a free course, five hours long its only been available for four weeks weve already had 400,000 enrollments. And the completion rates are above 30 , sometimes 50 because people are looking for jobs. Jeff, i wonder, has this crisis and the attention to Online Learning from people who maybe werent paying attention before at all caused you to shift your mission or the way you allocate resources are there opportunities that you see now that you didnt see before yeah, for sure. The fundamental mission hasnt changed. I mean our founders are two professors they didnt do this to create a business, they did it to create access to better education and better opportunity for folks and i do think, i dont know if well get to this in more detail but the promise of Remote Learning and Online Learning together creates incredible opportunities to develop skills and get jobs the big shift that weve seen is that schools have suddenly, importantly, urgently figured out we need to offer Online Learning not just oncampus learning because the pandemic has had a huge impact on the operations of campuses so weve really shifted a lot of resources toward our campus offering in february before covid we had 30 Customers Using coursera for campus we now have over 9,000 instances of coursera for campus its almost 20 of every institution in the world is using coursera in just the last 90 days. Jeff, youve talked about the mission of democratizing access to education with the pandemic having a disproportionate impact on black and latinx employment, what are you doing there to help close that racial employment gap we already have over 200 universities who have courses on many topics. Not only data science and sort of Mental Health but also things like criminal law, social justice, history, things like that so weve created collections of courses to help educate the broader public in giving those courses away for free. Were also going to put resources, funding towards building out a larger catalog of those courses so education and awareness can be available to everybody. Getting better representation among underrepresented groups who are authors and instructors is a great way to inspire younger learners to not only say i have access to those courses but im learning from people who look like me on the employment side jeff, jeff, you know what jeff, i know we could keep talking about this forever, unfortunately we are out of time thank you for joining us today we really appreciate it. Ceo of coursera. Guys, back over to you. Thank you, julia, as well we are keeping our eye on shares of hertz, which have been halted news pending now lets get to the calculator. Mike santoli, see if you can get that nickname to stick in the half. Welcome to the halftime report. I am mike santoli in for scott wapner yesterday chair powell said there is a lot of uncertainty about the timing and strength of the recovery and reiterated the fed will do whatever it takes to help the economy the dow and s p have been fighting it out around the flat line today the nasdaq is the clear outperformer, up 0. 6 of 1 smal