Transcripts For CNBC Squawk Alley 20170622

In the biotech names and, again, guys, some real loops here well see if that continues as people dissect what is happening with this Senate Proposal for health care. Well send it right back down to the New York Stock Exchange and the true over at squawk alley. Good morning. Welcome to squawk alley much its 8 00 a. M. At oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores in california. 11 00 a. M. Here on wall street squawk alley is live good morning welcome to squawk alley. Carl has the morning off. Im on this side now. Youre on this side we like to switch it out a little bit joining us this morning, vanity fair special correspondent and General Motors vice chairman and cnbc cbsor bob lutz. Good morning to both of you. We want to Talk Health Care were just getting this draft legislation from the senate. Theyve been working on it in secret were starting to get the details trickling out as we make our way through 140 pages. Were seeing the markets react Health Care Stocks are surging on the back of this bill that includes the insurers. The hospital stocks as well. Don chu is monitoring that for us a bit of relief potentially on what this is going to mean in terms of the number of insured and what its going to mean for the industry overall you can see with the insurance side of things as weve shown you those right now, a number of these names have been rallying in maybe the week or two ahead of this release proposed legislation we talk about cigna and aetna and some of those guys all hovering near record high levels here if you take a look at that, you can maybe say that much of the Health Care Move has been kind of in anticipation at least of some of the proposed legislation here like you said, with 140some pages worth of that legislation to parse through this is the knee jerk reaction well see as the morning progresses whether that kind of gets tempered or accelerates i can admit and many others can admit i havent read through all of the legislation sure, insurers and the hospitals as well, some of the hospital stocks up probably the biggest among the health care names that we talk about. Tenant health care youre seeing there up 7 . Community health, 7. 5 hca holdings, 3 or 4 there the idea here is if there is some kind of optimism in play here, these are some of the initial battle grounds where yooer you youre going to see that stock move play out. We dont know if well see any movement tempering the optimistic surges. That remains to be seen. But still, these are the names that were going to focus on throughout the mid morning and mid afternoon trading to see whether or not wall street agrees with what people are saying about Health Care Legislation or the proposed ones i mean, sarah, i think wall street cheers the Senate Health bill is the only way you can interpret what were seeing right now. We talked about how, you know, throughout this whole process people wonder where is the insurance lobby . Where are the Health Insurers . Are they for or against it the response is lets work kind of lets wait and see that appears to have paid off. We mentioned some of the insurance names trading at all time highs big moves in the hospitals again, part of this this is what will there is concern that this does leave in place some portion of obamacare as currently structured but thats why youre seeing a positive response in the Health Care Sector broadly speaking the changes will be facing but over a longer period of time i guess we dont know whether this rally is based on whats in the bill or some calculation on the likely hihood of it actually getting through. So few people have had time to dig into this. It may be both now. The early reception again this is early hours. Because it does seem relatively positive, maybe you couple that with a less unfriendly bill than maybe the house version might have been. And a chance of maybe this thing actually passes and maybe its not the worst thing for this industry i would say what we have heard out of the insurers is pulling out of Obamacare Exchange markets that is something the white house points to. Republicans point to as well the other group of stocks i want to point out are some of the biotech stocks which have also sort of been on fire lately. Yesterday having the best day in some time again, softening of perhaps what might happen on the drug pricing front out of the administration. We should also watch the medical device makers as well. We know this draft bill would repeal medical device taxes effective after december 31st, 2017 that is the end of this year that is something they were lobbying hard for. Its been in the house and Senate Version of the plan justining to che continuing on the bill. Youre just not seeing as Much Movement today all right dominick, thank you for that upday. Moving on, President Trump meeting with tom tech ceos at the white house this hour. Drones on the table. Among those attending, former aol ceo and founder steve case, sprint founder and at t ceo randal steef randal stephenson. Were expecting comments from the president at any moment. Bob lutz and nick bilton are still us with. Bob, i want to ask you on the drone front. A number of changes have come out allowing regulation and how much of that is actually going to be enforced precision hawk and air map among the Drone Companies that tl. Wh there what do you think needs to happen laying the groundwork for this form of transportation . What can the Trump Administration do . I think theres got to be federal guidelines on what altitudes these vehicles operate at, whether theyre passenger carrying or freight carrying but the legislation has to be such that more efficient form of transportation and thats where i always say the third dimension is the untapped variable in modernizing the nations surface transportation system. Its got to be highly efficient. Its got to be affordable and at the same time they need to pass the regulations that ensure public safety. You cant leave that to the states thats gotting to federal just like all federal aviation regulations are. And, nick, i know that drones and 5g are on the agenda for the administration. They want to talk about the startup visa. There are rumors throughout that that framework could be pulled back that would have allowed immigrants to stay in the country for 2 1 2 years as long as their ventures are seen as adding jobs. How much do you expect that to emerge out of this narrative of what we hear after the meeting today . First of all, i cant wait to be able to fly to work on my personal private drone i think it will be very exciting i think the thing that is interesting when you bring up the immigration and vcs, the sprob a lot of vcs didnt go today. You know, if you look at perkins, all these different venture firms, they didnt send anyone partially because of optics and because they dont agree with the president and things like. That yet this is actual lit immigration topic is the most important things to the companies that they work with. It is Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing it heavily elan musk and all these people and so its going to be interesting to see what actually comes of this topic, of this conversation when the most important people in the room that care about it the most arent actually there. Top executives from all of the major wireless carriers are going to be there. How do you expect that to impact the conversation, nick thats also an interesting scenario with the carriers but as he said and as others have said, this is one area where i do completely agree with the white house is we are so far behind as far as cell phone speeds and pricing and all these Different Things when you look at other countries, specially asia, we pale in comparison i think that there is a hope that we can kind of move things along a little quicker now and thats one thing that theyre discussing to day. 5g should have been in our devices long ago all right moving on. More drama at uber long time board member bill gurley stepping down from that role after reportedly leading the charge to push travis to resign as ceo. Gurley posted this tweet there are many pages in the history books devoted to travis k. Few have had such Lasting Impact in the world bob lutz, ride sharing or if you want to call it gig economy, on demand rides have been a big part of what is rolling the Auto Industry what is the impact of this resignation of the drama on the board of uber . Look, nobody questions the fact that ride sharing is the future of the automobile business and the Car Companies are going to have to find a way to capture value down stream by owning part of the ride sharing experience because 20 years from now these fully autonomous modules with no controls will be standardized, normed and basically brands will disappear. Having said about the heat, it happens very frequently that founders of the companies once the company reaches a certain size are no longer capable of running it this is a typical case of Silicon Valley startup, hightech young people and they were treating running of the Corporation Like a frat party. You can do that as long as the company is small but once it gets big, you have to obey the rules and you cant be engaging in sexual harassment, jokes about race and ethnicity and all that stuff that has to go away. And at some point when the company gets big and youre in charge of all that shareholder money, you owe it to people to behave responsibly and in a mature fashion and he was obviously not capable of doing that. So i think the fact that hes going to be replaced by somebody is looking at it cosmically, i think its a good thing. Bob, i think a lot of people would agree with you nick, i wonder if that really is how Silicon Valley looks at founders and losing them as an asset or a liability look, i think the reality is this isnt just morals and ethics lets not give the v. C. S the credit they dont deserve. They want a return on investment they want the company to go public and travis, you know, had a tremendous amount of control of that company and decided which direction it was going to go. And the ipo for them was not necessarily on the table any time soon. So for the vcs that pushed him out, i dont believe that was all about ethic ands morals. I believe it is they wanted to get their money out. Thats the only way they can do it because its such an overvalued company nick, youre saying its about money, not changing the world . I know its hard to believe i know its hard to believe. You look and you think but this is the thing. This has been my problem in Silicon Valley for the last decade there is this complete nonsensical thing that were making the world a better place. I think thats the after thought. And for the Venture Capitalists, they say that too. I think its complete nonsense they are in it for the money this is a perfect example of that we have to leave it there nick bilton and bob lutz, thank you for joining us. Sure. Thank you straight ahead, oracle shares are on pace for the best day in three years up almost 9 next, a cnbc exclusive with mark hurd well keep an eye on the Health Care Stocks. [vo] when it comes to investing, looking from a fresh perspective can make all the difference. It can provide what we call an unlock a realization that often reveals a better path forward. At wells fargo, its our expertise in finding this kind of insight that has lead us to become one of the largest investment and Wealth Management firms in the country. Discover how we can help find your unlock. They are the natural borns enemy of the way things are. Yes, ideas are scary, and messy and fragile. But under the proper care, they become something beautiful. Shares of oracle surging hitting all time highs this morning after a blowout Earnings Report lets send it to josh lipton on the west quoechcoast. Im here with oracle ceo mark hurd mark, thank you for joining us. Sure. Thank you for coming over. I want to dig right in, mark, into the traction youre seeing in that Cloud Business cloud ookings, 855 million, up more than 40 year over year you call this the best quarter oracle has had you compete in a lot of different cloud categories though can you walk me through just what is driving that growth . So to try to talk about what you said, we did 855 in q4 in Cloud Bookings that was against what previously last year was the best quarter ever so this was big growth on a big growth prior year where we did almost 600 million in clawoud bookings the beginning of the year, we predi predicted we would do two million in Cloud Booking so it wasnt just the 855 that we reported last night but that brought our whole year to about 2. 1 billion worth of Cloud Booking. It was a good quarter. And part of a really good year for us and it really was broad based across multiple geographies, multiple product lines we had very strong bookings in erp which is a very important if you will, the largest Software Applications category very strong bookings in hr, hcm which we virtually doubled in our revenue part of our Cloud Business so very strong across really all aspects of the things we measured you mentioned do you have the multiple cloud offerings in this market are you able to get customers to buy, you know, multiple cloud offerings at once . Can you package those . How much better are you at that now than you were six months snag. Its a huge part of our strategy, josh we believe that customers dont want to buy from multiple Cloud Companies if they k they want accommodative models they want to share information they want to move information from application to application and do that easily the fact can you have not just great applications but a suite of those great application thats Work Together is a big part of our strategy and that manifests itself. And when we book nerp sass complication, were now seeing more and more that it brings with it in other applications with it. H. R. Applications, sales applications, et cetera. I want to switch gears and talk about competition youre going to catch and pass sales force. Do you have to get now more competitive in crm specifically . I ask that because when you look at that, you know, Sales Force Management software, that market right now controls about 18 that thats about double the market share how do you think about that competition . Well, again, our strategy is exactly what we just described w we have a suite of applications. We have more application offerings than anybody else. Were competing in more categories frankly, were competing in the biggest categories starting with erp. Then hr as well as all of the suite of Customer Experience opportunities including Marketing Sales and service. We are gaining shares in sales automation but it is for us, it is real i didnt think Bigger Picture not just the competition in one segment of the applications business i was listening to the call, mark one topic i didnt hear addressed was ai, Artificial Intelligence when i listen to the rivals, theyre putting a lot of time and money, effort into that technology is oracle also investing in ai acquisitions is there were going on under the radar that investors should know about its not under the radar. Just to be clear were investing heavily in ai. We believe the application of ai, pattern matching, whatever word you want to use for the technology, some people call it machine to machine is really getting it integrated and embedded into the applications itself so the fact that you can now get the computer to do things and do it actually not just do the work but do it really fast in a way that gives meaningful answers to meaningful questions and outcomes that can then be used in real time to make better decisions. Getting that embedded into the application is different than extracting data. Historically in our industry, we used to extract data from an application, send it somewhere, let people do magic with it and then takes a long time and then send it back thats not the way the industry is going to head were going to see ai embedded directly its not going to become a solution as a feature intergrated directly into the application sets themselves. And thats what were delivering as we speak. I want to talk about another rival called amazon. Aws, last reported revenue of 3. 7 billion infrastructure is a risk for you, it is growing fast. How do you judge the competition, specifically there with amazon . Do you look at the top line or are there just different financial metrics that traders and investors should be watching let me go back strategically what weve done. The view is start in the application space which is what weve done i think you hardly get anybody anymore had a questions the scale and software as a service or sass or application just to encapsulize our entire applications business, when you just take sass, our license on premise business and our support on premise business, that whole set at ecosystem grew 10 , roughly 10 in the quarter so weve been very focused that was driven by the sas business growing over 70 in the quarter. Weve done the same thing now with our Platform Business and our next destination is infrastructure its been thoughtful so it starts for us in the context of having great products larry spent a lot of time personally architecting this next generation of infrastructure as a service. When you say the next destination is infrastructure as a service, do you see yourself competing for the same cloud customers as amazon . Of course, there is overlap but remember, were different than amazon. We talked about this before. Amazon offers infrastructure they start in infrastructure we funneldamentally are differet we make applications we make platforms, data bases, java, business intelligence, machine to machine capability embedded in the applications and our infrastructure is aligned to be differentiated based on that ip set i would guess, and im not going to being exactly right here but i would guess a quarter of the worlds infrastructure has a piece of oracle ip running on top of it. My guess is there another 25 that is related to some piece of oracle ip. Our ability to run the jobs, im telling you, better than anybody in the world, better than anyone in the world is our strat xwi and that strategy on the calls ive been listening a long time. We often talk about some of the competition that comes out i often hear you mention sales force or amazon, maybe workday i dont hear you on the calls typically mention microsoft or google why is that . It depends on who we see in the marketplace, right i think, you know, again, we very much line up our Sales Organization and our Product Organization by buyer, by solution and in many cases by competitor so it really who we see and we talk about who we see. Now microsoft that should bring up is a very good company. We dont directly compete head on with them in many things. There are some things. We overlap some in data base there is certainly infrastructure that can you see compete. But there are applications and the applications are fundamentally different. We talk about what we see as being contemporary to the time were talking about. So are you then not seeing google in the marketplace . Listen, i think that we talk about who we see so as opposed to me going into the negative, we talk about who we see and we talk about what we think is most important related to our business. Oracle i know, mark, committed to achieving double digit Earnings Growth in 2018 s that a one off or should investors expect that to be a ximent target n consistent target that air able to meet . We talked about it on the call what happened last night and what we reported was not an event. It was not transformational as heard people saying. Its been building you see it in our numbers coming quarter after quarter after quarter. This is not a one time event this is the beginning of now your ability to see our ability to produce revenue, turning into related a leverageability in earnings and so i think this is the beginning of a string of Strong Performance from oracle. I want to end on politics you always appreciate when i bring that up. So tech ceos this week, they made their trip to washington, d. C. They met with President Trump. This mission, this new goeal of modernizing government and stim systems. I think its a fantastic opportunity for the government i thought that the comments i heard coming out in terms of the beginning discussion that was part of the press conference about the age of the applications, the silo nature of the applications, those are things that we do really well. And so were obviously very glad to help. Staff is very engaged in trying to help the government and leading some of efforts. Were going to do and bring everything in our arsenal, everything in our portfolio to help all right mark, thank you for your time today. We appreciate it jon, back to new new york all right thank you, josh lipton for that great interview. Guys, i think maybe we reached a point where well stop hearing investors say oracle missed the cloud. What we heard from mark hurd and heard on the call last night is part of oracles deliberate step towards bringing all of these applications at once to the cloud. Follow on to the enterprise. Ive been trying to say this for a long time. All right, well give you credit too i think im in the pundit category bammel is talking about having a 62 price target on this theyre giving them a peak multiple that is a difference a quarter can make i think the difference is, the question is are we still in a best of breed rear when it comes to Cloud Software where people go with a sales force because they feel like thats better or are we entering the con seen yens pha convenience phase where people want to go with a suite . Price target raised at wells fargo, deutsche bank, Goldman Sachs and jeffries on this quarter. Youre seeing the stock move up 9 Senate Republicans releasing a draft of the Health Care Overhaul market reaction, Health Stocks on the move. Mostly higher from insurance stocks to hospitals. Our reporter is digging through the 142 pages on capitol hill. Senators moved from a close doord te ed door session and asking a lot of questions on to the floor where we heard the Senate Majority leader speaking a few moments ago. Can you hear protests behind me. That is called the arc for people with intellectual disabilities theyre very vocal in protest. The senate is calling it bert care reconciliation act of 2017. In essence, it repeals all of the Affordable Care act mandates and virtually all of the taxes it instills an incomebased tax credit that steps up for lower income americans it phases out Medicaid Expansion beginning in 2021 and significantly shifts the cost burden to the states by 2024 it also allows states to apply for a waiver to opt out of providing essential Health Benefits from obamacare but not for preexisting conditions. That is a very important point and something that Senate Republicans were add manlt abam. Mitch mcconnell is shepherding this prostotest we just heard him addressing this bill moments ago. We agree on the need to stabilize the Insurance Markets that are collapsing under o obamacare and policies contained in the draft will implement stabilization policies so we can bring financial certainty to Insurance Markets and hope to americans who face the possibility of limited or zero options next year under obamacare. It says stabilization effort thats are really moving the insurance stocks today the bill provides for the federal government to pay those cost sharing reductions billions upon billions of dollars to Insurance Companies to provide those obamacare plans through 2019 there is also a 50 billion bucket called a Stabilization Fund to offset premiums. There is 62 billion for states as well. So there is a lot of money that is going toward that stabilization effort in particular but all the senators that we were able to speak with that are leaving the meetings that its a draft theyll have to read it. Its going to take some time and it very long and very complicated. Guys were about to hear from House Speaker paul ryan any moment now this is going to be really interesting. In the politics of this, the senate is a more moderate body you have to get the rand pauls of the world onboard will conservatives rally behind it the key question is whether this bill will actually go to a full conference, whether either body wants that to happen because theres a likelihood that they wouldnt actually be tibl agree on a financial bill there is a potential that leadership from each chamber negotiate this is behind the zeenz try and work out some of the differences that their individual members have. We dont know how this process is going to play out we know they want it wrapped up by the august recess and we know the white house expected to support the senate bill today. We also have the cbo score that were waiting for we learn how millions of americans are affected, what the budgets impact is going to be. Senator mcconnell says we can expect that next week. They renamed it. Its no longer the ahca. It is now the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 the br something. Better care is how theyre calling it. One reason why they did that is because senators and members of congress were desceforgettine a. Do you think the senate realized that brca also refers to a gene that has something to do with health cue the criticism that is that there were no women in that working group. Exactly were looking at the protests on capitol hill. Yeah. Who is this group you mentioned here its a group called the arc my stephanie just saw them i was here at the camera but they are down in this rotunda. You can hear, has quite a bit of echo its called the arc. Its for people with int intellectual and mental disabilities its been happening every day here but Senate Republicans have been continuing to toil privately and well see exactly how this plays out now that its in the public sphere you got criticism with preexisting conditions. I think it is worth mentioning this bill as expected would strip federal funneleding from planned parenthood and for america one year and also pro hiblts tax credits from being used to purchase plans that offer abortion coverage. These are all going to be controversial. Yeah. I was going say, this does highlight the medicaid issue thank you. It looks like paul ryan is headed to the microphone for the Weekly Press Briefing. This one is close, 21. Come on. All right congratulations anyway it was really cool to see special agent crystal reiner throw out first pitch last night. I dont know if you went and watched it but she had just got out of the hospital yesterday and to see crystal throw the first pitch was a very, very, very cool thing to see i saw steve this morning hes his spirits are up hes talking and doing well. And he sends his regards and thanks for everyones thoughts and prayers. This has been a busy week delivering on our agenda for the country. Yesterday for those who may have missed it, republicans and democrats came together to send important Veterans Administration reform legislation to the president s desk weve all seen the xanscandals,e saw the waiting list and the scandals things need to change and the Veterans Administrationen that bill is going to deliver the fundamental reform that will solve the problems they will help our veterans get the world class treatment they deserve and they have earned we still have a lot of work to do were going to keep at it until we as a country can say that we are really and honestly keeping our promises that we made to veterans then later today, today we expect a big bipartisan vote for Glenn Thompsons bill to improve career and Technical Education this initiative is going to make it easier for people to get the skills they need to fill better, higher quality, higher paying jobs a good Technical Skills job can mean verything it can be the foundation of a successful career and great future i see this everywhere i look in wisconsin. This bill can make a real difference for american workers. So bottom line, every day here were working to address the problems that people face in their daily lives. These are just two more examples of us coming together and delivering on our agenda questions . Thank you, senator ryan you have seen the Senate Version of the Health Care Bill yet . I have not. Ive been briefed on the Senate Version. Ive been busy myself ichlt been briefed on the Senate Version. Can you give us your reaction on what youre briefed on . Yeah, look, believe me, i know how hard this process is from personal experience from what i understand, the bill tracks along the lines of the house bill i think that is very good. Im not going to opine on their process. They gave us the space to go through our process. The last thing i want to do is be disrespectful of their process. They have a lengthy process ahead of them. The bottom linecy want th is i to pass their bill the system is collapsing its a real look, Anthem Blue Cross yesterday pulled out of wisconsin. Thats one of the most flag ship Health Insurers weve had in our state for many, many years this system is in a tailspin we made a promise we would repeal and replace this Law Enforcement im very happy that the senate has gone through the work of putting together a bill that keeps that promise. Yeah, im eager for them to pass it im not going to opine on the details. You referenced the process. They largely done this behind closed doors you in a recent interview talked about the fact that your process was open you were very proud of that. In fact, are you comfortable with the way they went about this this legislation after you drafted legislation not while you draft legislation. I think this is sort of a talking point in search of a problem. You dont release a bill before you finish writing the bill. You write the bill and then release the bill thats what the senate has done. They want to vote next week is that enough time for the American Public to digest it do you think the appropriation should be matched by spending cuts elsewhere in the budget if youre asking if we have a cap adjust ment should we have offsets in mandatory, i think the saens yechanswer is yes. Because you said the Health Care Bill and the senate does track so closely with the house bill, do you anticipate that house would take up the senate bill or make further changes its hard to say. We havent made that decision yet. Theyre just beginning the process. So were not at that point of making that kind of decision yet. Can you address the Senate Sanctions bill i know theres this blue slip problem. How many of you know what the blue slip problem . All right. So four. This is a very technical issue but its the constitution. So we take that very seriously my understanding is ways and means is giving the Technical Assistance the senate needs to make sure they can form with the constitution and the original cause and ed royce has indicated these very eager to move this bill so we want to get this bill cleaned up we need Foreign Affairs to do their scrub of this legislation which is what we do every time a bill comes over from the senate. Chairman royce indicated he wants to get moving on this quickly. Is that going to be a formal Committee Referral where they mark up that bill . I dont know the answer to. That we want to get moving on it weve got to honor the blue slip which is a constitutional origination clause issue thats why we ask ways and means to make sure they give senate Foreign Affairs or Foreign Relations the Technical Work they need so they can get this right. You personally support the poll i yeah, i support sanctions im going to let hvac, Foreign Affairs do, their scrub to make sure that bill is written the right way, that its in good shape. But ed wants to get moving on this bill. So President Trump who are you with . Im cns news. So President Trumps 2018 budget calls for eliminating the federal funding for the corporation for public broadcasting do you support that proposal and will you follow the funding elimination of the cdp outlined in the president s budget . Im going have to refer you to the appropriators theyre just Getting Started on the bills. I dont get too deep into the detiles like that i refer you to the appropriators. Thank you, mr. Speaker. A budget question for you. Dianne black the chairwoman is really supportive the ideas of doing 150 mandatory cuts, some of your other chairman not to comfortable with the idea. I know youre still having your family discussions but how do you envision sort of going through this do you think maybe there is a Half Way Point yeah, deja vu all over again. I served as budget chair for eight years. I had these kind of conversations every year with the other authorizing chairs she is doing a fantastic job of getting consensus on the kinds of instructions fwheed to make sure we get some savings out of the budget every budget should have savings. And dianne black is doing that just like any other year and any other budget chair should. She is going through and talking to each authorizer about the kind of savings they can hit that is the way the budget process works. Im confident shell get that done shell find consensus with our other chair ands, you negotiating thats how you put a budget together. Yeah mr. Speaker, do you think it will be appropriate for the Senate Judiciary committee to subpoena former attorney general lo lore ya Loretta Lynch . Im not going to comment. Im going to ask you, know how hard it was to pass the house bill, the health care plan, was there any red flags when you were briefed on the bill that came to your attention and thought hey my numbers im going to lose no, i havent seen any of that yet i know how hard this is to pass a bill like this what was helpful to us that we didnt have Senate Leadership playing armchair quarterback with us. The last thing i want to do is play armchair quarterback with them twinlt respe i want to respect their process. I havent read through all of the bill myself. Ive just been briefed on the basic contents but what is important is that they pass their bill that we get this process going so that we can keep our promise. Last question can you tell us more about scalise . We dont have time. Can you tell us more about mr. Scalise . Well, we decided is were not going to be the ones commenting on his Health Progress other than to say i had a great meeting with steve this morning. And hes bright. Hes alert he just wanted to go through the agenda he wants to go throughout latest whip and what is come together floor. He want a brief on work. He was just so thankful for also by the way, were doing blood drives here. Hes very thankful for that. Hes very thankful for the outpouring of support that hes received from friends and colleagues and people from louisiana. He was just very, very taken and moved. And just to hear him talk about, you know, bailey and crystal and his affection for them and his thankfulness for them, its just really something he seemed like he is doing well. Thanks thank you thats House Speaker paul ryan wrapping up Weekly Press Briefing he was asked about the just published Senate Version of the Health Care Bill this morning. He said i dont want to get involved too much in the process. He defended the fact they did work behind closed doors on that saying they were working on giving a draft of the bill ready and then theyre showing it to the public didnt go into too much detail beyond that did he reiterate he was pleased that their version of it does look much like the house version. Meantime, President Trump praising the Senate Republican Health Care Bill as well and added he hopes the final bill will have heart. Joining us now on the cnbc news line is andy slavitt thank you, sir, for being us with what are your early reactions here to the senates sfwhil. The bill looks a lot like the house. Its probably an ugly stepsister to the house bill. It cuts medicaid more dramatically than the house bill does we can expect that tens of millions of people will still lose coverage under this bill. People will lose the protection they have today to preexisting condition protections and what insurance should cover there is consistent things in here the massive tax cuts are here. The massive cuts to medicaid and Medicaid Program as we know it is in here so president wants the fwobill have more heart, he needs to have more piggy bank heart without piggy bank means absolutely nothing to people this is devastating to millions of families and kids and as the babyboomers age, the nongoes to people to pay for people in Nursing Homes will dry up. So you mention you need a big check in order to do this. And arguably thats why President Trump was elected. Some of the country or enough of the country to get him elected felt as though the checks were too big, even in the case of medicaid which expanded dramatically do you accept that there could be some changes so that those programs dont weigh on the budgets in the decades ahead well, i dont recall trump running on a massive tax cut for millionaires and corporations. I dont that i is what people voted for. I dont think people voted to take checks away from people i think people voted with a hope to improve the insurance exchanges. Theres very little of that. In this bill. I dont think there is a referendum on that i think if you look at the polls, people dont suggest that of course, everybody wants Health Care System to work better i think we should Work Together to do that i they we can have a more stable system its hard to have a more stable system when we have a partisan bill that cuts dramatically from care for the neediest and most Vulnerable People. And thats, i think, what this bill does. Andy, you say its a partisan bill i guess, of course, it s but the democrats seem to not want to negotiate against themselves, poke holes in obamacare. Do you think thats going to be a sound strategy Going Forward it seems like something is going to change. Auto a. Si its not clear what the democrats are doing here yeah. I think the democrats i talked to, they dont want to have a hand in taking coverage away from people. I think its as simple as that i think there are bills coming out of the senate. I think there could be more. The democrats to sign on to. That would work on how to stabilize the insurance exchanges, how to help middle class families afford care, even some republican ideas Like Health Savings accounts and so forth. I think we could get democratic support. But i think not just democrats but a lot of republicans have a very difficult time signing on to the fact that youre going to take Health Care Away from millions of people the nongoes to communities remember, these all go to hospitals physicians and Nursing Homes to take over trillion dollars away from the Health Care Community that cover Vulnerable People and put it in tax cuts i dont think youll see democrats get onboard with that. Andy, thank you for joining us with your thoughts and reaction to this bill. This is andy slavitt as we mentioned, some Health Insurer stocks at all time highs including humana lets get to sarah who is over there on the floor w. A very special guest. Sarah . I made my way to the floor to talk about the long delayed financial this morning and announcing a new cfo its been a volatile year for them after announcing it was investigating the own accounting practices. Joining me in a cnbc exclusive, the ceo and founder of hian,er win simon. The big headline out of your investigation is no restatement of earnings. And you didnt find any evidence of financial wrongdoing. So what took so long number one is we identified this last year and with that we did an xens you have an extensive review. We looked at customers around the world. And we take government very seriously. We want to ensure that we got a 100 right and with that, i can sit here today and say, again, we go back to november and say no intentional wrongdoing no Material Change to our financials they maintain their opinion. And now its time to move on and build our business and take it to next level. What was it what was the problem that led to such a deep dive into the accounting so with that, as we looked at certain things in regard to revenue recognition, something was identified and with that today we looked into it. And as you heard me say, the good news is there is no Material Change for our financials which is a great outcome. We did get the Financial Results from more than a year back they were disappointing. The business loed. Its been a difficult year. There is a lot of things out o my control number one, currency affected us by 20 million in the uk number two, regards to our protein business, turkey prices came down. Number three, when he some issues with el nino and our fruit business in the uk on the other hand oushgs business still grew 4 considering all that happened. We threw off close to 150 million of cash. Well pay 210 Mississippi Valley debt. The thing is throughout this here, sarah, we spent time evaluating our business. We announced today were going to take 350 million of costs out of the business. We announced a stock buyback program. Throughout this we made numerous manage ment changes. Were in a great category in health and wellness. The consumer will continue to eat healthy. Well continue to, you know, look for better for you products and we have the brands and products that consumers want. The stock popped initially on the news at the open were looking at it now down 4 . Do you feel you have a long way to go when it comes to restoring credibility with investors here . I think its important to get out there and tell our story tell our story about our brands, tell our story about our positioning and what were going to do. And i come back. I feel good about our story. I feel good about the plan that we have in place we announced today, you know, like i said you have an optimistic 2018 outlook. The question is are all of the problems that you faced in the last year just temporary stepping back, file good about them going into q4. A lot of the issues have been mitigated already. And whether its currency and stock and pricing, whether its protein were seeing good results coming from it you know, currency is it currency is currency in regards to our scu rationalization, in regards to our inventory reductions, theyre behind us. I feel good about going into 2018 what i feel good about is the brands that we own today, the products that we own globally around the world and i feel good about the consumer wanting more and more healthier products. Is that why you have decided to stay on this has been a difficult year for you personally. Well, ive decided to stay on listen, this is something i founded 23 years ago and this is something that, you know, continues to grow, continues to evolve and with that i think theres lots of, you know, runway left within hain and theres lots of runway left within me. Its a question that is topical because in light of ubers recent struggles, were left wondering whether a founder should stay on when a company has a major crisis or not. Well, listen, the good news is we navigated through this this was a difficult navigation to navigate through. In regards to the business, i feel that business is on track but, you know, one of the big things is this here. We really have put a Strong Management Team to work beside me to really take this business to the next level and, again, we have the products. We have the people we have the strategy and i really believe that we have consumers that want to buy our products. So your biggest customer is whole foods, and investors werent exactly convinced as you told them this morning on the Conference Call that the amazon buying whole foods purchase would be a good thing for hain why do you believe ma . Whole foods is, as you say, one of our biggest customers amazon is one of our Fastest Growing customers. They want Natural Organic products and the barrier to entry into this category whether its supply or manufacturing, hain has a strong position there. The fear is theyll lower prices and the margins will get hit. One of the things weve announced are cost cutting, taking costs out of our business that should enhance our margins. But not only whole foods and amazon sell our products we sell our products all over the world in 85 different countries. Theres a lot of different opportunity. I think the bigger opportunity for us, sara, is as whole foods and amazon look to sell healthier products t cuts into more products. Theyre going to want more and more hain products whether its earth best, access, arrowhead mills. This gives us tremendous, tremendous access where we can sell more and more of our products. So how do you see the future of grocery playing out you sell to kroger, walmart, all of them. I think i come back and say this to here one of the things about amazon buying whole foods, it still shows the importance of brick and mortar brick and mortar is going to be here for grocery business. It also shows ecommerce is a big part of the grocery business the other thing is Global Brands you know, we just did a joint venture in india theres 1. 3 billion people in india, 26 million new babies born every year so the opportunities on globalization hain is positioned for that. Irwin simon, thank you for sharing us and selling your story. Thank you, sara. The ceo and founder of hain celestial. Good to hear from him, sara sara eisen meantime, united hlteah, j j and pfizer leading it up 33 points were headed to a break. Back after this. They become something beautiful. Attendi attending. If i could im going to ask a group ft. Meade yeah, stay and see just to your company name and yourself and maybe a very brief remark because we have a lot of people and well start from my left diana . Can you hear me mr. President , mr. Vice president , secretary ross, ivanka, jared, everyone here today was part of the Aircraft Systems talk and im very much a proponent of supporting s. T. E. M. , women and veterans towards innovation and job creation. Thank you, diane. Good morning. Thank you, mr. President , for the privilege to be here Vice President , all of the distinguished members of the cabinet. I represent honeywell and we play in many different segments including aerospace, automobiles, homes, buildings, oil and gas and its a pleasure to be here to talk about a very important opportunity for u. S. Competitiveness, that being i. O. T. Thank you. By the way, honeywell, great company. That is a great company. Thank you im the chief operating officer of 500 startups. Weve invested in over 1800 Companies Making us the most active Venture Capital firm in the world. Were a Venture Capital firm and accelerator in Silicon Valley with 150 employees all over the world now