Theres no company more american and today, it did something it hasnt done in four quarters. It reported a rise in sales in north america. Its biggest market. The Worlds Largest beverage maker was also able to hike prices helping to offset the impact of a stronger dollar. Shares finish the day up nearly 3 topping wall street profit and revenue forecast for the year but the Company Still faces some very big challenges and after years of sluggish sales, can coke find growth . Sara eisen reports. Reporter cocacolas earnings beat came mostly due to continued cost cutting including layoffs and first price hike in two years. The good news sales up slightly in north america. Ceo kathy wallarid said low gas prices help consumers. Also Conscious Consumers buying teas and flavored waters shying away from sugar and soda. Understand that trend and population growth flattened. The overall demand is flat. They have to look for niche markets to grow because the growth in carbonation soda is flat. Reporter the question around cocacola mirrored questions about the overall economy. Mainly can the Worlds LargestBeverage Company find growth while facing global head winds . Most of cokes earnings come from outside the united states. With the price of american exports increasing thanks to that stronger dollar, cocacola ceo muhtar kent is calling 2015 a year in transition. He notes the consumer challenged everywhere around the world and that there is a lot of volatility in currency, interest rates, growth rates and geopolitical issues. Theres also a continued risk among cokes major shareholders. One camp led by billionaire Warren Buffett seems content with cokes steady pace and its dividend growth. The other camp may be smaller but its continuing to pressure kent and the board to make changes. The board has to realize they work for the shareholders they dont work for themselves. When the shareholders arent happy, they have to address it quickly. When the business is not growing or profitability is declining, they have to address it quickly. Reporter for now, a decent Earnings Report gives coke another quarter to deflect any heat it might be feeling. For nightly business report, im sara eisen at the new york stock exchange. And joining us now to talk about coke is caroline levy, beverage manager at cosa america. Welcome back. Sara eisen just characterized cokes report today as decent. The market seemed to see it as a little bit better than that. How do you see it . Weve been seeing quite a lot of relief rallies where expectations get so negative. Everybody has been aware of the currency head winds that are facing coke and many multinationals. We have had them leading up to it. I see more of a breath of relief. What more does coke has to do . Its taken a while to make some efficiencies and more to do apparently. I think they really need to do more of what theyre doing and faster. So i think its interesting that theyve bought a 16 or 17 stake in monster beverages. I wonder why they didnt buy the whole company. I think Something Like that would have been transformative and might feel risky but i think they need something major. The second thing is the costcutting side. Theyve announced plans to generate savings of 3. 5 billion over several years. It is not enough and not fast enough. Those are some examples. What is your rating on the stock and what would make you change snit. Weve had an underperform rating for a couple of years, actually initially stemming out of concerns with china the second largest market in the world. I think what we really need to see, under the belt. Nothing shortterm that would change my view but over time, what id love to see is more Free Cash Flow generation more return of cash to shareholders also recognition maybe you dont keep plowing money into csds if the market is shifting fwrae them. Caroline people perhaps think muhtar kent is not the person to transform cocacola. The company has grown under him certainly, but theyve been challenged under him as well. For me the biggest disappointment actually was the purchasing of the u. S. Bottling operation. The massive expensive endeavor and in the sluggishness in which the refranchising is happening. So yes, that has been under his watch. I think hes faced a lot of big negative macros but i would like a more sense of urgency. You mentioned a phrase. Csd. The drinks . The carbonated soft drink. And a lot have sugar you dont like this stock. Are there others you like better . Absolutely. Absolutely. Number one, you may be thinking of pepsi, im thinking of monster because the opportunity for monster now that they have cokes blessing and the opportunity to be distributed globally in the coke system is immense. Were very excited about monster. Pepsi, we have an outperform rating on that because the snack business is quite robust but i still think the u. S. Only stocks are really going to continue to do very well and with monster barely outside of the u. S. But with opportunity in the u. S. Is a perfect combo. Thank you very much caroline levy. Dow component coke helped bolster the markets today as did optimism. Greece reach an agreem creditors even as germany minister dampened the compromise. The dow index rose 139 points to 17,868. The nasdaq finished with a gain of 61 and the s p 500 was up 21. Also contributing to the optimism apple which became the first u. S. Company to close with a market cap above 700 billion. Its now more than twice as valuable as microsoft and exxon mobile the second largest, with a market cap of 385 billion ty. Astonishing. Crude prices falling first time in four sessions. International agent session said the supply of oil will raise global inventories before investment dent production and that affected prices. West texas fell 5 finishing the session just above 50 a barrel. Brent also lower and as the debate continues over whether oil prices have bottomed for now, falling about 50 in recent months today, j. P. Morgan weighed in saying oils collapse is almost over. This counters yesterdays note when you told about from citi that said oil prices had further to fall maybe even to 20 a barrel. Lets bring in kevin book for his take on oil prices. Kevin, welcome. Clear view energy partners. Whos right, chase or citi . Well its not for me to judge whether theyre right or wrong. History will do that for all of us including oil forecast but whats clear about the divergence in opinion, not only you need two sides to make a market which is part of the fun but also so much uncertainty about whats going to happen given the unconventional supply and how quickly it might retreat from the market. Kevin, that is one of the differences in your notes that you pointed out. This time the volatility in oil, the big swing to the downside is different than swings weve seen in the past. Oh absolutely. Right now, were looking at a tremendous inventory overhang. Even our numbers which tend to diverge from the consensus to the upside we see a weaker Second Quarter on the basis of further inventory builds where were different i think from the other forecasts that are out there is that we see production slowing down much sooner and much more starkly than some of the optimistic narratives about ongoing production, new efficiencyies and coping better with new markets. You think its going to be 50 and above barrel oil on average rather than 30 to 20 barrel here. Thats right. Theres well thought out opinions here and i would not to disagree with it with any of them. Oh go ahead. Disagree but 20 is a very attention grabbing number. Its a number that takes us back to the beginning of the last decade when opec was still actively trying to manage the market and looking in the 18 to 22 price band. Thats an eyebrow raising number. Kevin, is there one single determinate out there that you are watching very closely to tell you which direction oil is going or whether we formed a maybe the better way, what are we missing . Maybe we undercount the responsive of demand. Certainly it is different. Oecd is less price responsive now that were more efficient but demand is not dead. You cant have this kind of price for any sustained period of time without people rethinking their infrastructure and purchasing decisions and consumption patterns. That will boil in a much faster return than anything were expecting. Kevin book with Clear View Energy partners. Thanks for having me. The recent sharp drop in oil prices is prompting halliburton to make job cuts. The Oil Services Company said it expects to lay up to 8 of the Global Workforce and is the latest in a string of Energy Companies to do so. The cuts will be across all of the companys operations. Now to the economy. Two voting members of the Federal Reserve board see a rate hike looming today. President of the richmond fed jeffrey lacquer said june looks like an attention offer because the economy is strengthening. Separately San Francisco president John Williams told the Financial Times the central bank is getting closer and closer to raising rates. And today, bond yields rose with a ten year treasury closing right around 2 . The number of job openings jumped to a 14 year high. According to a new Labor Department survey there were more than 5 million Job Vacancies at the end of december. December was also the best month for hiring since before the recession and thomas perz said the job market is showing strength. In the depths of the recession, there were almost 7 job seekers for every job. Now were down to 1. 7, so everything is moving in the right direction. You layer this on top of job numbers on top of gas prices on top of auto sales, and that all equals a confident eco fundamentals are very very strong. Improved demand for goods and services has prompted employers to hire. One company doing hiring is home depot. The Home Improvement retailer said it will take on 80,000 workers for spring selling season. That matches the number of people hired last year. The jobs both permanent and parttime and seasonal positions. Finance chiefs from the group of 20 leading economies are in turkey and today, they vowed to take action to bolster Global Economic growth. The group said it would use monetary and fiscal policy to meet goals but treasury secretary jack urged not use currency devaluations as ways to increase their exports. Steve sedgwick with more from istanbul. Reporter two day meetings in financial bankers around the globe attended by jack lou and janet yellin with what the host Prime Minister of turkey said was a productive meeting. Saying the world is in a better position than 12 months ago and that actually a lot of the action taken in brisbane to move forward with the Global Economy and push 2 trillion worth was moving at pace but although, there were kriss in the specific targets that the host wanted to include was absent. All working now on their own program. This will be country by country led. There was a conversation as well about foreign exchange. Theres a great concern that the countries may well use domestic policy for currency. It was a ret ration from ministers that actually domestic policy must be for domestic gains and not to affect the level of currency devalueuate and then create a competitive situation. Something talked about here. Price and then actually the Lower Oil Price net positive. And volatility did remain. Talked about tax, Financial Regulation and about combatting terrorism. For nightly business report, this is Steve Sedgwick in istanbul. Beyond the breach. An agency to fight one of the biggest threats to American Business cyber attacks. But can washington really solv a number of companies, not just one, a number were hacked today. News weeks twitter account was compromised by a group claiming to be affiliated with the islamic state. The chief Financial Officer of twitter, yes, the cfo, had his account hacked when he clicked on spam email and unauthorized content was posted to Delta AirlinesFacebook Page after its account was accessed. And on a day when all these businesses accounts were hacked washington announced the creation of a new agency. Designed to monitor cyber threats. A counterterrorism official said the new agency will be there to aid in the fight against cyberterrorism which is a growing threat to business. To the private sector, weve made it clear that we will work together. Were not going to bottle up intelligence if weve got information about a significant threat to a business. Were going to do our utmost to share it. Eamon javers has more from washington now on this new Cyber Security initiative so eamon, how is this new cyber center going to be different from the cyber defenses that the government has now . Reporter thats the key question here sue. In one way, it has a new name. Called the Cyber Threat IntelligenceIntegration Center and that word integration, is sort of the key here. The u. S. Government has a lot of cyber monitoring devices and centers right now in place. In fact president obama last month went to a cyber center at the department of homeland security. This one though is in charge of integrating the intelligence coming from all the different apparatus. The fbi, nsa, different parts of the National Intelligence infrastructure. That will be a onestop shop for government officials in figuring out whats going on in cyber space. Governor everett tried anything like that before . Reporter they have. Theyre modelling this on the antiterrorism side of the front. By having an Integration Center where they pull all of this information together and send it to government officials, they can better get a handle on exactly what the government knows. They call it a hole of government approach and worked well on the terrorism side. Do you think they can really solve the problem . They must think they can if theyre putting this forward but it seems to be getting worse every day. Reporter lot but not entirely solve this problem. Lisa in that clip from the white house said this is a key problem for the 21st century and it g to be a defining problem for the earliest part of the 21st century. You dont talk that way if you think youre goingin to solve it overnight. Is there one particular aspect of social media or the email system thats the most vulnerable that officials are really worried about . Reporter its the human being whos receiving the email sue. I cant emphasize that enough. The weak link here is you and me. Even we saw high ranking twitter officials falling prey to some of this. When you get the email they call it spear fishing email so highly targeted looks like an its email to you, a topic youve maybe discussed before and you just click on the link even though something is not quite right about it thats when they got you. A lot is about training the workforce to be a lot more suspicious of the emails were getting, even if they seem like theyre on topic and on point. Scary stuff, eamon. Thank you very much. Reporter you bet. Eamon javers in washington. A big miss since shares of deans food tumbling. The biggest dairy processer with trails estimates. The company forecasted Current Quarter earnings fell below analysts expectations. The ceo tried to encourage investors saying the 2015 full year results substantially better than last year. Still, shares slumped down almost 12 on the trade. Today to 15. 92. Shares of Starwood Hotel rallied after beat estimates. The company said it will spin off timeshare Vacation Division focus on core hotel operations. Popped 6. 5 at 65. 93. Starwood wasnt alone. Wynn hiked and raised dividend to 42 cents a share. The yield on the shares about 1. 5 . Shares up almost 9 today to 88. 07. Cvs with record sales even after deciding not to sell cigarettes. Helped by medicare growth to offset the in the decision to stop selling tobacco products. 2 higher to 1. 68. Shares of martin verieta, the maker reported a Solid Earnings beat and announced 20 billion Share Repurchase program. 5 authorized shares. Stock rose 15 to finish at 137. 24. And sony and disney are teaming up to bring spider man and the add avengers back together. Spider man in upcoming disney produced Marvel Super Hero movie in and in a few years, get his own sony movie. Shares of sony rose 1. 5 to 26. 06 and disney slightly higher to 102. 92. We told you earlier that apple hit 7 billion in market value. Part of the reason why is the venture announced with first solar. The companies will build 850 Million Solar Energy farm in california apples fourth solar farm. Rose nearly 5 to 48. 54. Apple closed a 122. 02. Speaking of apple, it is selling now for the First Time Ever outside of the united states. As we reported yesterday, apple will issue bonds in swiss franks taking advantage of that countrys record low borrowing cost. The bond sale came in two parts, raising more than a billion swiss franks or 1. 35. The ten year apple bond will pay investors a yield of 0. 28 . The ten year pays 2 . Apple is a better credit than uncle sam. Maybe it is. The 15 year will pay a yield of 0. 74 . Well while apple is seeing Strong Demand for new swiss frank bonds, new demand for product in another part of the world and thats creating a black market for iphones in china. Eunice yoon has more from shinzen. Reporter when you want an iphone in mainland china, take to one of apples 16 stores and buy the most popular model, the 64 gig iphone 6 for 998. But not the only way to get an iphone. Along the border with hong kong iphones are smuggled in in boxes and bags by people paying as little as 42. As the train station, iphone mules walk through customs to a darkened alley carrying the phone in parts. A bag of chargers for one and earphones on the other to avoid getting caught by the authorities. The goods are handed off to others who reassemble and package the phones for sale in this country. China the biggest market outside of the united states. Easy to find iphones here. You can buy them in the official stores or you can come to a place like this a Major Electronics market. Outside, iphones are sold at authorized resellers, but inside theres a healthy gray market trade. Some are new, many refurbished. Which are which can be hard to tell. Most of the new phones are smuggled from hong kong though some u. S. Models can be found. The phones are sold to fans of all ages all over the country. New ones cost 150 less than at the official store. A bargain for a phone that sets the average Migrant Worker back two to three months pay. Lookalikes can be purchased too, even as we found out, well not quite the iwatch but the i watch. Just the latest sign that the newest creation in china wherever its sold in the world. For nightly business report, im eunice yoon in shanjen. Coming up what about the spare room in your house about a fast growing sharing economy giving rise to another potentially big. And finally tonight, to many the sharing economy is a game changer giving rise to a new population only to drive, deliver, rent their house to earn money. Like all businesses these fast growing ventures involve some risk giving rise to yet another business. Ensuring the shared economy. Mary thompson explains. Reporter the Ride Sharing Service uber said it makes a million trips a day covering a lot of ground and providing insurers Fertile Ground for new coverage. The sharing economy could be used especially on the Auto Insurance side. Reporter among insurers providing targeted auto policies for firms like uber and its rival, lift are Metlife Geico and u. S. A. A. Well established exclusions for passenger in fear of these kind of activities. So thats why theres a sort of gray area between commercial and personal coverages for this type of activity and thats why we hope to sort of bridge the gap between the two types of coverage. Reporter for insurers the sharing economy presents a huge opportunity. The Consulting Firm pwc estimates this economy grows to 335 billion by 2025 from 15 billion in 2014. Meaning along with drivers, homeowners who rent theirho homes and individuals providing pick up and Delivery Services may need additional insurance too. To make sure youre covered before you share your car, home or time taking up goods for others the Insurance Information institutes Michael Barry said pick up the phone. The first call is the Insurance Company to explain what youre doing. Reporter while firms like home rental business air b b with damage for host and liability, barry said your Insurance Company may still require additional coverage like a landlord policy. Individuals delivering groceries for insta cart may want to invest in a Business Owners policy. To prevent profiting from sharing. For nightly business report, im mary thompson. Fascinating, isnt it . Interesting stuff. Youve got to have insurance everything. Of course you do. You do. All right, that does it for nig for tonight, with no insurance, im sue herera. Im tyler mathisen. Have a great evening, everybody. See you back her i think you should go for it for a moment. Robert kelley is deep into rehearsals for proof, opening in just days at theatreworks in palo alto. Im sorry, katherine. But, its a question of priorities and work takes priority. You know that. He founded this company in 1970 and has seen it through boom times and bust, directing more than 100 productions. I think we got this down pretty well. The timing seems about right. I just want to take another look at it. Tonight on spark we follow in the footsteps of leaders in the local art scene, extraordinary individuals, like Robert Kelley who have transformed their communities through the arts. Well try to keep up with oakland east bay symphony conductor Michael Morgan as he shuttles between gigs teaching, conducting and making music his life and his livelihood. There is an x factor. Call it c