Transcripts For CNBC Worldwide 20240704

Selfdriving car ambitions and why that may actually be good news for the stock. Plus hong kong looks to get its property sector back on the right foot and its investor happy to go along for the ride. Shares of bumble sink as we go to the open. Its wednesday, february 28th, 2024, and youre watching Worldwide Exchange right here on cnbc. Good morning. Welcome to Worldwide Exchange. Im frank holland. Were going to kick off this hour with a check of u. S. Stock futures after a bit of a mixed day for stocks that saw the dow close lower but the s p and nasdaq finished very slightly higher. Right now you can see red across the board. It looks like the tow could open at 145 points lower. Nasdaq is the hardest hit, down over a half a percent. At least 46 s p 500 stocks are trading at 52week highs or a alltime highs with big tech or communication services. Take a look at some of the names. Were talking about ross stores, ulta beauty, tractor supply, volcan materials. Russell 2000 is coming off its first full day of the year. Take a look at the chart. Small caps up almost 1. 5 year to date, but you can see right now moving higher in the premarket. Well have much more on small caps . Just a minute. Take a look at the yields. The 10year note, weve seen it move 25 basis points since the start of february. Well continue to watch that and talk about the impact of higher rates on the markets. And this morning we also want to talk oil. We start with wti, the u. S. Benchmark down 1. 08 . Bartend crude at 82. 85 a barrett, down about 1 as well. Lets get a check of some of this mornings top corporate stories with our sill vai nahe now. Good morning. Good morning. Pichai called biased ai completely unacceptable. In a note to google employees late yesterday pichai adding, quote, no ai is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of this industrys development, but we know the bar is high for us and we will keep at it for however long it takes. And were watching shares of unitedhealth, rate now down a little over 1 , this following reports the Justice Department has launched an antitrust investigation into the company and its focus. Unitedhealth is the largest u. S. Health insuring commercial markets and Medicare Advantage with 14 and 28 market share respectively. And teslas ceo elon musk saysi new electric roadster sports car will start shipping as soon as next year. In a post to x, musk adds tesla has radically increased designs for the roadster ahead of the release. Musk first announced a batterypowered fourseat sports car at the end of 2017 with an original launch date in 2020, frank. Silvana, thank you very much. Were going to turn our attention back to the Broader Market and in spite of the market, major averages were on track for four months in a row. Coming off its foursession win streak of the year and about to close out its third positive month in the last four. The question, is that a sign of a changing market when it comes to leadership or is it a term shift . We bring in craig sof Piper Sandler. Your new note, are we topping out or broadening out. I oohll ask you. Are those the only two options . Thats a great question. Right now looking at it, the technical answer is yes. Whether its the dow, s p, or nasdaq, you can see off after the big run off of the 2023 lows were now pressing to the upper end of a very well established 18month price channel, and, frank, this is not where you start the next leg up. You dont do that at the upper end of the channel frankly. We need to see it broaden out. Health care is expanding. Right now the breadth of the market has been steadily contracting throughout all of 2024. Youre saying two things it should broaden out and then youre juxtaposing. We have 46 s p companies, close to 10 of the index close to a 52week or alltime high. Isnt that the broadening you say we need for the markets to move higher . Its a good start, frank, but we need to see bigger participation in financials. We need to see a bigger participation in health care, the reason being those are some of the biggest parts of the russell 2000,which is a much broader index than the s p 500 index itself. And when you sum all of these pieces up, frank, its not enough to really say we can start that next leg up yet. So our view has been for this entire year, this is a market thats probably going to enter an hltr or high level trading range. Now is the time where this market is vulnerable to see at least a 10 correction and thats what we tend to expect will come. You say a 10 correction. You see the market pulling back to as low as 4600. I also want to ask you about some additions to one of your funds. Youre adding ibm and disney to the Piper Sandler technical opportunities funds. What are they telling you about the two stocks . What theyre telling you, if you look at ibm specifically, its breaking out to a 4year high, a much Bigger Picture than what youre seeing with apple at this point in time while theyre taking an exit ramp on the auto business. Its picking up benefits from ai. Theyre consulting in other pieces. The last one, frank, is disney. Frcraig, im going to jump i. Disney hasnt performed. We had a former disney cfo trying to join the board saying you have actually lost money on disney for the last three years on almost, i think it with us 90 of the days if you had put money in. Absolutely, but at this point in time if you come back and look at the weekly chart at disney, its starting to bottom out and the relative strength is starting to improve. While theres been a lot of negatives, it looks like its starting to change. Perhaps the management is starting to change. But it looks like its bottomed out and nows the time you want to step up. When people dont like it, this is when you want to step up and buy some of the highquality blue chip stocks, frank. Youre removing apple from the opportunities fund. Craig, always good to see you. Your price target remains at 5050, but were seeing a pull back to 4600. A lot more to come to Worldwide Exchange. That includes the one word investors have to know today. But first the ceo of qualcomm is talking about how hes keeping a leg up on the aimt and smartphone space and what if anything this company can do to right its reputation with consumers and maybe more importantly investors. Later, we have the number one metric you need toat wch ahead of earnings. A very busy hour ahead when Worldwide Exchange returns. Stay with us. Is it possible to count on my internet like my Customers Count on me . It is with comcast business. Keeping you up and running with our 99. 9 network reliability. And security that helps outsmart threats to your data. Moaire dida twoo . Your data, too. Theres even roundtheclock customer support. So you can be there for your customers. With comcast business, reliability isnt just possible. Its happening. Get started for 49 a month. Plus, ask how to get up to a 800 prepaid card with a qualifying internet package. Dont wait, call and switch today take a look at u. S. Futures. The hardest hit, down twothirds of a percent. Carolin roth in our london news room. Carolin, good morning. Good morning to you, frank. A bit of a patchy picture in europe. For most of this week european markets have been struggling for a direction. Just to put this in perspective though, were on track for a 2 gains for the fourth positive month in a row. Take a look. The xetra dax hitting another recordhigh this morning. Its done that for the last five trading sessions. Elsewhere were seeing a little bit of red here. The ftse 1800 off by 2 . Reckitt beckiser is down due to a reduction in colds and flus. Take a look, 0. 2 for talco. Vodafone is looking to sell its italian business to swisscom for up to 8 billion euros in cash. Nothing like a good m a story. Back to you. Carolyn, aocarolin, great to its day three in barcelona. Ai has been the hot topic to discuss their strategies to tap into that redhot tech. Arjun kharpal suffolk one of the ceos earlier and joins us now. Ar arjun, good to see you. Reporter ive braved the crowds here. Really its about ai on devices. Now, just to unpack, that typically weve had ai on the phones. Often its coming from the cloud. Youre using some ai feature, download it on your device now. They talk about it being on devices. Fast and secure. How its going to be powered, chips, of course, one of the big Players Behind me, qualcomm. I had a chance to catch up with cristiano amon, the ceo of qualcomm to talk about the de device. Take a listen. Were on the cusp of an ai revolution. Thats what were betting. Youre starting to see some very compelling use cases. Qualcomm is betting that in the future our devices, whether its a phone or Something Else, will effective will i be a personal assistant to us. I was in the qualcomm booth just moments ago. I saw a very cool demo that was about the size of a cookie and had an ai chip in it. You could ask it questions. It could take video and all sorts of stuff. Thats a vision they have. They become your personal assistants to book your hotel, your flight, whatever it is. One thing im trying to process what size is the cookie. Here in the u. S. , weve got really big cookies. Cristiano amon is talking about cool tech. What is it youre seeing when it comes to ai phones, and things are cheating up when it comes t smart rings. Two things. Ive seen a lot of demos. I want to show you. There was a feature on a phone from a company in china where you looked at it and it tracked your eyes. They were showing a lot of the features on their device with their cameras, with the ability to search. They showed off their smart ring for the first time, the galaxy ring. I had a look at it. Theyre betting big on the health category, with the smartphone, the smart watch, the ring, it can give you all types of insights into their data, and that can unlock new business for samsung as well. Finally the other topic is the innovation, yes, around ai and on phones, but also what does the future phone look like. Theres been a lot of talk about screens. We talked about a screen that could wrap around your wrist that was another device i saw where the actual screen opened up into something bigger as well. A lot of experimentation, innovation happening on the screen front. Around these companies you see around me are trying do just that, to reinvigorate whats been a tough Smartphone Market in the past couple of years, frank. Our arjun kharpal. I know it was a big day because youve got the turtleneck on. Coming up on Worldwide Exchange. Investoring areswiping left on bumble, opting for rivals in okg heloinat t year ahead. Well have that story and the big money movers coming up after the break. Personalized Financial Advice from ameriprise can do more than help you reach your goals. I can make this work. It can help you reach them with confidence. No wonder more than 9 out of 10 of our clients are likely to recommend us. Ameriprise financial. Advice worth talking about. Welcome back to Worldwide Exchange. Its time now for your big money movers, three stock stories of the morning. Im going to start with stocks of ebay, almost up 3 . However, guidance came in much better than analysts expected. Its also raising its dividend and buying back 2 billion in shares. That stock is on track to close out its best month in january after lagging over the month. Urban outfitters under pressure. All missing estimates, though it says positive outcomes to positive sales growth. The pull back in shares follows o a 40 gain. Bumble set to open up at an alltime low after a loss and weak guidance. The dating app is cutting jobs or nearly 40 of its work force. Shares of bumble right now down almost 9 . Shhong kong property stocks list after theyve been in place for more than a decade. Property struggles a key factor for chinas ongoing Economic Data as well. Our eunice yoon getting a first look at one city serving as a prime example of that crisis. Eunice, over to you. Reporter thanks, frank. You probably have never heard of this city. As we found out this week, property markets might be a lot to ask for. Thinking of buying a home in china . Maybe not this one. This House Development was built in 2011 where most of the buildings like this have never been occupied. As you can see, theyre not maintained. Rear, apartments are everywhere. 600 of 900 of these units, half out of the near 800 in this other. Also apartments like this are all over the country and waiting on the economy. Developers hoped that more people would move from the countryside to the cities and prefer a home near the town, but it was bypassed as buyers chose apartments closer to shanghai and because of the graph uc decline, their population is flat lining at 7. 7 million. It could take five years to find buyers for all of the unsold new apartments. Whats wars, falling prices and job sales, its worse. The fear is many of these homes will never sell and remain a burden on the real estate market. And, frank, some of the apartments are empty because people bought them as investments without ever intending on living in them. So the developments are really lonely. Such a great story, eunice. I want to make sure i understand you correctly. They expect it to take three years to sell that apartment . Three years . Five years. And thats assuming that people are yeah, thats right. It was five years. And thats assuming people are actually going to buy them because one of the big problems in that specific city and a lot of these little cities is the building is in some place that not a lot of people want to live in. And theres a population issue. In fact, its one of the oldest the city with the oldest population in china. So you have just kind of a mismatch in the supply and demand and thats leading to this major problem. You know, for your a while here it was hard for a house to stay on the market in the u. S. For five days. Incredible. Eunice yoon, greatreporting as always. Coming up on Worldwide Exchange, why our jim cramer says afl fa bet should be more like apple if it has any hope of regaining the trust of consumers and investors. And first, a new documentary. How easy . We investigate in a new cnbc documentary big shot the ozempic revolution. Watch big shot the ozempic revolution tomorrow right here on cnbc. Much more Worldwide Exchange coming up right after this. 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Alphabets ceo doing iowa damage control. Jim cramer says they need to take a page out of apples book. Its wednesday, february 28th, 2024. Youre watching c Worldwide Exchange right here on cnbc. Welcome back to Worldwide Exchange. Im frank holland. It was a bit of a mixed day for stocks yesterday. Futures extending right across the board. Looks like the dow would open up just about 125 points lower. We also want to take a closer look at tech and the large cap nasdaq. Palo alto down 2. 25 . Micron down, 2 . Broadly were seeing tech under some pressure. Were checking the bond market tomorrow ahead of the cpe report. Look at the benchmark. 4. 29 is the yield here. Weve seen the benchmark 25 basis points higher this month. Similar story for the long bond, often seen as a read on inflation expectations. Its also moved up 25 basis points in february. Lastly but certainly not least, energy. Were looking at oil under heavy pressure. Wti down over 1 , hitting its lows of the morning. Brent crude down just about 1 as well. Okay. Thats your Morning Money setup. Now we want to turn back to what could be one of your big money movers of the day. Were talking sails force. It reports Fourth Quarter results after the close. The stock has outperformed its market by more than double and mega cap announcing a 1 Work Force Reduction in late january. Theyre expecting a growth firefighter salesforce. Operating margins, they also continue to be a key factor. A recent note from jeffries saying cost cutting. Salesforce continues to trend below mega cap peers including microsoft and oracle. You can see the cap forces. Adoption of ai products and the overall demand is very important to investors. Analysts say their check shows strong adoption of data cloud. Current remaining performance obligation. That number is also a read of future business. So a number above the guidance of 10 . That would demonstrate those trends are intact even after a 9 price increase late last year. Sales force could be a big mover post earnings. Shares have moved an average of 7 . Lets talk about more of what to expect from the numbers. George is the founder and advises on a total of 8 billion. They own salesforce through various etfs. George, good morning. Great to have you here. Thanks for having me. Youre cautiously optimisopt. What are your expectations when it comes to the number and the call with ceo mark beniot. Hes cut costs. Theyre up a little more. From here on out, hes got to show a lot of top line growth and beat the streets expectations. Hes got to pump that kind of aspiration to get it right in the middle of ai and have it grow at a rate that the streets going to behappy about. I think thats a pretty heavy lift. I think thats going to be hard to do that. This is a great company. Is it a great stock for the next 12 months . I think its harder from here on out. As i said, youre cautiously opti optimistic. It seems like you want to hold the stocks and continue to go on this ride with marc benioff. One way to look at it, the metric of demand Going Forward. The estimate or guidance is 10 . What are you looking for beyond just that number when it comes to the call and marc benioff is saying about customers deciding to adopt salesforces, or not to, or maybe pushing back on price . What are your expectations . I think the market is all about momentum in terms of tactic and growth. They want to see momentum above and beyond what the street projections are for each particular quarter. That i want to they want to s. The companies trailing want to show the growth and momentum that make investors want to continue to buy the stock and continue to be optimistic. Their projections and what they expect Going Forward have got to exceed the street, delight the street for the stock to keep going up. George, like a lot of analysts from jeffries, jp jpmorgan, everybody is focused on operating margin. The salesforce, it actually lags below a lot of its peers. How big of a deal is this going to be in this report . If a companys able to beat on revenue and earnings, is it still a big deal . Theyve made some progress here, frank, but theyve got more they could potentially do, but i think were kind of on the margins at this point of how much additional profits they could make. They could make more and that would help their cost, but i think topline growth and what they say about ai and einstein are the biggest factors in terms of where the stocks go in the next three months. Sticking with salesforce but you think it might be less Going Forward. Good to have you. Appreciate your insight. Time for a check of some of this mornings top corporate stories. Weve got silvana henao. Shes back. I am back. Congressional leaders expressing optimism theyll be able to avoid a shutdown about with saturdays midnight deadline fast approaching. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer saying yesterdays white house meeting with President Biden turned tense at times over government funding and ukraine aid, but House Speaker mike johnson says he believes both sides could reach an agreement despite facing pressure from some house republicans. Starbucks workers at the companys unionized cafes are set to receive an increase in pay. They announced the move saying theyve found a constructive path forward in their standoff. Starbucks announcing it would provide stores with credit card tipping. Thats something thats been available in nonunion stores for more than a year. Sam bankmanfried is receiving a much lighter sentence than the 100 years he initially received for stealing billions. In a court filing his lawyers argued that a roughly 5 to 6. 5year sentence would be appropriate. They argued most would get their funds back. Thank you very much. Were going to turn our attention back to tech and the damage control back at alphabet and it ee all about its ai tool with gemini. The alphabet ceo addressed the ai blupder. He added its, quote, completely unacceptable and said they got it wrong. Hes promising to make companywide changes to prevent similar incidents. Alphabet lost 70 points in the market yesterday joining other stocks that are negative year to date. On last nights mad money jim cramer said alphabet needs to streamline like apple or even meta. The lousy performance of google is indeed the talk of the town. Its a laugher. There has to be a moment where they push through ee fishency. We find out how many layers arent producing anything. And how many valuable franchises do they have like the sunday nfl ticket. Its liable fallible. Stop running as a skunksworks and start focusing on start making some money. Skunkworks. You dont hear that very often. Lets talk with a Big Technology founder. Alex, its good to see you. Good morning, frank. Im going to google skunkworks. Right now when it comes to apple, give me a sense. How do you view them scrapping their plans to create a selfdriving car. Some people see it as, hey, this could have been the innovation people were looking for and possibly a cultureshifting product. And in others, some think they need to focus on ai and the headset and thats where the real growth is. Where do you land . I think you have to read behind the headline for this one. Of about, there are camps in the product. Why are there camps in the project . I think its been a corporate issue thats held apple back from building an electric car or autonomous car. Were talking about a designled process that in some cases had sensors that were required for autonomous driving very deep within the car and limiting their field of view because the car would look better, and they spent years on this, 10 billion according to some reports, and werent able to come away with a product. To me, their inability to shift this thing is the real concerning thing. Investors saying the car is off the table and theyre going to focus on the secondary. Whats going on inside apple . Where does the culture fall short that it was unable to produce results here . One thing i wanted to ask about apple and then well turn our attention back to alphabet. I bounced this off of you. Its the aflcio index funds. Theyre asking apple to prepare a transparency report and disclose ethical guidelines that apple has adopted regarding the use of ai. Whats your take on this . Apples actually asking shareholders to vote no on this because theyre worried about revealing some of their competitive position. Yeah. I think its an important ask. Were going to start to see even more scandals around these ai generation tools because they spend so much time acting on their own, forming their own opinions. I think without transparency, its going to be tough for users to trust the companies. Apple trust is really the core thing that youre selling alongside obviously functional devices. So i think this is an important ask. I think we should see more Companies Come forward and be more transparent about the way that this stuff works. Like you mentioned, i think apple is asking voters to turn it down. I dont think theres a lot of chance that this is going to pass, but maybe it will set off alarm bells inside apple where they say if theyre going to ship something, maybe there should be a transparency report. Lets come full circle. I wanted to take you down the road to am. Weve seen shareholders asking apple to reveal transparency, ethics. What do you think google has to do to regain that trust when it comes to not only customers but investors . Stocks moved into the negative territory for the year following some of these issues. Absolutely. Well, theyre talking internally about structural changes, right . I think thats important. What is going on in the process . Its not just the mistake itself, but its the organization at issues that led us to this moment that google should really be concerned about. They have to figure out a better process. The best way to speak to investors and customers and users and employees is to ship some productless they can be proud of. We know they they have a modelle, gemini and gemini 1. 5. That should be on par, which is the model from openai. They have to show when the products come out that this model is good and these mistakes that theyve made in the recent past have really done a disservice to google in terms of its opportunity and ability to show us that it has the product chops to put it alongside the openais for instance and really factor it in. Some of these were quite controversial, alex. I want to ask you referring to the request at the apple shareholder meeting. Does alphabet need to release a report, creating more transparency . How are their tools coming up with these results, whats going on, and whos involved with these processes . Their job was getting you from point a to point b in the most efficient way possible and satisfying some curiosity. Right now what theyre doing is suggesting the whole web like conservational ai or when it comes to ai bots. You didnt need the transparency. All the action was happening on the web itself. Now the action is happening within iowa. If google gets away with not telling us how the algorithm works or failing in the past, it needs to tell us now. Its important to succeed Going Forward is to maintain trust with people by being super transparent with how things work. They came up short this week. That might be one of the things they do today. Coming up on Worldwide Exchange, the bullish call on constellation energy, giving that stock juice ahead of the open. Shares up almost 1 7. First we have a bold set of big money movers. Virgin galactic, shares down more than 6 . The Space Company says topline growth was driven by commercial flights and membership fees. Lemonade posting a narrower than expected loss. You can see shares down more than 14 . The stocks also nearly 90 off of its awltime highs. And boston beer shares, theyre falling flarkts revenues decreasing due to significantly lower volumes. Worldwide exchange, were back in just a moment. [thunder rumbles] the biggest ideas inspire new ones. 30 years ago, state street created an etf that inspired the world to invest differently. It still does. What can you do with spy . [thunder rumbles] welcome back to Worldwide Exchange. We start with kbw upgrading lendingtree. Its led by a rebound in its insurance segment, shares up 1. 5 . Keybanc hikes constellation energy. Those shares up nearly 1 . And loop capital initiating a teal with dell. It believes dell is at the very front end of at least two material catalysts, general ai servers and a refresh psych. Its also time for your global briefing. Were going to start with Hong Kong Developers getting a boost after the city left several marketing curves. It including scrapping tacks on res done chal property. That struggle to Gain Momentum following the post pandemic reb rebound. Shares of just eat posts a nay narrower fouryear loss. It owns grubhub. It cites Strong Demand in its key markets. Reckitt is one of the losers behind airborne, lysol. Reckitt expects a growth this year. Shares are down more than 11 . Coming up on the Worldwide Exchange, we have the one word every investor needs to know, y d why our next guest says it mabe a rough road for stocks, at least in the near term. Stay with us. Worldwide exchan coming up after this. For all your skins, gold bond. What is cirkul . Cirkul is the fuel you need to take flight. Cirkul is the way. Cirkul, available at walmart ands kul. Com. Oh no, a rash. Maybe itll go away. Awww, how am i going to find a doctor ill actually like . Is that a qr code . Dr. Stafford makes you feel at ease. Thanks rash youve got more options than you know. Book now. Welcome back to Worldwide Exchange. President biden talks about Data Protection against those that seem hostile. Theyll focus on the data brokers who collect and sell peoples personal info. Shares of microstrategy popping. You see the chart right there. The company says it acquired 3,000 additional bitcoin for a total of 155 billion. It now holds 11 billion worth of crypto. Unitedhealth set to extend yesterdays losses. This follows a report that the department of justice is expanding its investigation. Ebay moving higher after topping revenue and guidance expectations. Its hiking its dividends by 2 cents and buying back stock. Bumble under some pressure. The dating app is laying off 30 of its work force as it takes significant and Decisive Action in interpret terms of accelerating its product. And also urban outfitter, the retailer sees positive growth sales ahead. We look at the striking distance of a new alltime high. Right now futures under pressure across the board, the nasdaq off of it lowserle letter today. Looks like the dow would open 1 15 points lower. Good morning. Its always good to see you. Good morning, frank. We just looked at the futures right now. Give us a sense. Whats your w. E. X. Word of the day. How do you see the day shaping up . My w. E. X. Word of the day is euphoria, which is defined as a feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness. And, frank, i cant think of a better way to describe the market particularly after last weeks knockout Earnings Report by nvidia. Youre not really in a state of euphoria. You expect to see a pullback. How are you having them prepare for this possible pullback . We do think well see a shortterm pullback. We think the setup remains very positive, but by a lot of indications, the market is overbought. So if you look at hedge funds, theyre in the 99th percentile. Theyre higher than theyve been in recent years. Today cash represents 1. 7 of total positions. That has been slashed. Thats the lowest level weve seen since december 2021. Youve got the vix indicating complacency in the market. The s p, whether youre looking at market cap or equal strength, the valuations are rich. Were telling clients if you need cash in the next six months, lets raise it now. You see a 5 pullback 95 of the time. You see a 10 pullback every 1. 8 years. Medium to long term still looks very positive. So the near term looks very positive, but Something Else youre looking out for could come later this week. It does not have impact on the markets to be clear. But do you have clients calling you saying do i need to prepare for this, and if so, how would you prepare for a worstcase scenario if it does happen . Its a great point. Generally it does not have a big impact on the market, but right now its priced to perfection and we arent getting calls im worried about a shutdown. There is a sense of euphoria. In1re69er sentiment is very high. With that, if you look at what happened in august of last year with the downgrade, i think to the extent we get some negative news that could send treasury yields higher, which could be a headwind for equities, that could be a catalyst for a shortterm pullback. You never know what its going to be, but were due for that. Lizzy, weve got to get going. But taiwan semi, what about that . I like them. They just opened their First Factory this past weekend in japan. Theyre investing in their second. They have higher Gross Profit Margins than their competitors. Theyre the largest foundry. I think theyre the updesi. Thank you so much. Great to have you with us on Worldwide Exchange. Futures under pressure. Squawk box takes it from here. You can make money the hard way as a bullfighter or a human cannonball. Or save money the easy way, with xfinity mobile. Existing customers can get a free line of our most popular unlimited plan for a year not only will you save hundreds but youll also be joining millions who have connected to americas most reliable 5g network. Sure is a lot safer than becoming a stuntman for money. Get a free line of unlimited intro for a year when you buy one unlimited line. Visit xfinitymobile. Com today to learn more. Good morning. Apple reportedly canceling plans to build an electric car after ten years of development. Details straight ahead. Sources telling cnbc that warner bros. Discovery is hadding merger talks with paramount global. Well tell you which other players could be interested now in paramount. Plus political news results from the michigan primaries and updated odds of a partial Government Shutdown coming this weekend. Its wednesday, february 28th, and its not the last day of february, 2024. Did you know that . You knew that. Squawk box begins right now. Good morning and welcome to squawk box right here on cnbc. Were liven at the Nasdaq Market site in times square. Im Andrew Ross Sorkin along with joe kernen, and, yes, this morning, melissa lee. Becky is out. Nice to see you. Happy to be here. Welcome to the party. Weve been begging for six, seven days. The boys are by themselves. And you cant take it any longer. Melissa lee is here. Make it stop, make it stop. We appreciate you waking up very early for this. The do