Such a deal would reflect the fast consolidation of the Media Communications and internet industries. The acquisition of time war fleury would give at t control of a lot of popular content, including cnn, hbo and valuable cable channels. The speculation sent shares of time warner up more than 7 , and at t lower by about 3 . But the deal isnt done yet. And there are additional reports that even apple may be interested. Media Companies Think bigger is better these days. And a merger of at t with time warner might be the biggest of all. Adding at t with the market cap near 233 billion to time warner at about 68 billion, would create a media powerhouse. Bigger than comcast, the producer of this program, and bigger than disney, 21st century fox and cbs and viacom. Those last two are reported to be in merger talks, too. At t time warner would be the biggest media deal since comcast bought Nbc Universal in 2011. In this case, a it and t would get time warner from hbo, cnn, tnt, tbs, warner bros. , the Cartoon Network and others. At t, known for its telephone, wireless internet and Satellite Services is looking for growth. It tried to buy tmobile in 2011, but regulators killed the deal. Now its looking at video. Which accounts for most of the content pushed through its pipes. And thats why it bought directv last year, for about 50 billion. Instantly making at t the biggest player in pay television. When you think about how content is being consumed today, more and more millennials are consuming content over tablets and smartphones. When you think about the opportunity, there is a tremendous opportunity to push content. Companies like apple, google and verizon are all aiming to get into the streaming game. Risk . Media bets carry plenty. In 2000, aol bought time warner for 160 billion. At the time, it was the largest corporate takeover. But the two Companies Never got in sync. Todays time warner is a different company. Ceo jeff sold aol to verizon and spun off time warner and time, its publishing division. Two years ago, 21st century fox offered 80 billion. But time warner thought it could do better. So how much would at t need to make a deal work . Stay tuned. Stay tuned indeed. James dicks joins us to discuss whether a at t and time warner deal would make sense. It sounds as good a question place to start as any. I find it really ironic i used to work for time warner, by the way, full disclosure. Time warner recently spun off its cable business. It is the very Business Model that at t seems now to be banking on if indeed it bought time warner. So why does it make sense for time warner to do this or at t . It certainly may make more sense for time warner than it does for at t, especially if time warner is going to be a seller in this transaction. But i think youre right. You basically had a company, time warner, which has been talking to investors for a while about the advantages of spinning off and getting a cleaner corporate structure, more focus on content. As you noted. Splitting out Time Warner Cable here to some extent, this is an aboutface in terms of that strategy. Now, of course, it would be at t presumably driving that strategy. But vertical integrations like this, it seems difficult to see their big synergies on their face. And also yeah, go ahead. You know, one of the issues that has been brought up by various analysts in this whole discussion is that if at t does want to go this route, the time warner is really the only player they could go after, because its the only one with a single class of stock. All the others have several classes of stock, and so it makes it much more difficult to do any kind of a deal. Yeah, i suppose that i mean, that kind of begs the question of whether this is a good road to go down for at t in the first place. Once you made that decision, then you can make the decision whether time warner is really your best option, and as you said, because its does not have super voting shares in many ways. Its the only option at this type of scale. Thats one of the reasons why time warner is much more likely to be the subject of these types of reports and this type of activity than the other big media names in the space, because it lacks that super voting structure that might block a deal. I assume that this would be done with a lot of debt. At t already has a lot of debt. If im an at t shareholders who loves that dividend, and this Company Takes on a lot of debt, what does that say about the safety of my dividend and the future of my stock . Yeah, so i cover time warner. I do not cover at t. I guess what i would say is that one advantage is that Interest Rates are relatively low. So therefore debt is not you know, can be more accretive in these types of calculations than it might be if Interest Rates were higher. Again, i think you really have to think about what the strategic implications are, and whats the real benefit and plan as opposed to just whether the numbers make sense in terms of an arhytarithmetic calculation. Does time warner need at t . No, i dont think so. You can make an argument that having greater vertical integration means a better bundle down the road. Thanks. Now on to deal number two. Which involves two chip makers. Qualcomm is reportedly near an agreement to acquire Nxp Semiconductor for about 37 billion. That deal would make qualcomm a bigger supplier to the automotive industry. It already supplies chips to smartphone makers like apple. The move would expand qualcomms reach as the Smartphone Market starts to slow. Qualcomm is reportedly offering 110 a share. Shares of both companies moved in opposite directions. And the third deal is in the tobacco industry. British American Tobacco made a 47 billion offer to buy the rest of reynolds american. It does not already own. Such a combination would create the Worlds Largest listed Tobacco Company by both revenue and market value. It would also create the Worlds Largest player in e cigarettes and other vaping products. The deal would combine wellknown brands, British American owns did you know hills, kent, cool and rothmans. Reynolds american owns newport, camel, pellmell and grizzly snuff. British American Tobacco shares down 4 . That potential deal news was not enough to lift the broader market. Stocks finished mostly flat with Consumer Discretionary stocks the best performing sector. The Dow Jones Industrial average fell 16 points to 18,145. The nasdaq rose 15. The s p 500 fell fracnaly. It was a sluggish quarter for general electric, despite earnings expectations. The company missed revenue projections and cut its full year sales forecast. Ges oil and gas business proved to be a big drag on those results. And that pressured shares which fell fractionally in trading today. Seema mody now with more on the companys quarter. After a weak first half of the year, wall street was hoping for a rebound in Revenue Growth from the industrial giant. But weakness in general Electrics Oil and gas business continues to hurt sales, prompting the company to lower its full year revenue forecast. Analysts had been targeting secondhalf growth of about 50 in ges power business. Its largest division. In the third quarter, power revenue grew only about 7 . Goldman sachs calling it a weak operational quarter. But despite the challenging environment, ceo jeff i am mult remains positive. Executing well in a tough environment. We continue to aggressively manage costs while positioning for longterm growth. The business fully leverages the g store. It will come out of the cycle stronger. Ge lifted its cash flow outlook and announced a boost to its Share Buyback by an additional 4 billion. For nightly Business Report, im seema mody. Fellow dow component, mcdonalds, was one of the bright spots in todays session. Its Quarterly Earnings were better than expected. Thanks to the popularity of its allday breakfast menu. The results provided further evidence for investors that its turnaround plan is taking hold. The stock up more than 3 in trading today. Susan lee has more on mcdonalds results. Three things that helped mcdonalds in the recent quarter. One, preservativefree chicken mcnuggets. Two, japan sales jumping close to 18 on promotions like pokemon go happy meals. And three allday breakfast meals. Analysts concerned the breakfast boost was fading at the oneyear anniversary. The drags in the quarter, china, saw sales fall on costs from the south china see ruling which yum saw in recent earnings. Mcdonalds did mention on the Earnings Call they are in the final stages of selling off their china, hong kong and other asia businesses and expect these sales to be completed by yearend. Back here in the u. S. , the golden arches trying to find growth in a restaurant recession. Hurt by chief grocery prices. Relative to restaurant prices and close to 30 , the ceo says a gap in prices is just one factor negatively impacting sales. I think the Macro Economic issues of Consumer Confidence and just uncertainty of wage increases that the slight squeeze on discretionary spend with gas prices back up and Health Care Costs going back up. I think those are the sort of things we see affecting customers. Before today, mcdonalds stock was down 16 since may. And trading close to the lowest in a year. This Quarterly Report card, though, may change that momentum. For nightly Business Report, im susan lee. Still ahead, what we know about todays massive attack on the internet that caused widespread outages. Moim a massive internet outage shut down or slowed major websites across cyberspace. Sites like amazon. Dine was apparently hit by targeted strikes. After the first attack was resolved, be dine reported a second one midday and a third one later in the afternoon. Eamon javers has been following the story all day from washington. Eamon, do we know yet who is doing this . Reporter we dont know who is doing it, sue. Interestingly enough, what dine said today is that this is coming from tens of millions of different ip addresses, all around the world. Its a global attack, whats called a distributed denial of services attack and nbc news Pete Williams did speak to a senior u. S. Intelligence official today who said their initial assessment is this is whats called internet vandalism, rather than a statesponsored attack. So at least early on here, they seem to be ruling out that it was russia or china, maybe, behind it. Who has the ability to influence those tens of millions of computers to do what theyre doing . Well, thats an open question. Well find out as investigators dig deeper into this. But the interesting thing here is that investigators at dine said that what they saw here was a botnet of devices hooked up to the internet of things. We think of these botnets being cloned computers. In this case, they said it could have been things like dvrs or cameras on phones or even those toasters you see that can be hooked up to the internet nowadays. All of those devices now are also attached to the internet, and they said that a lot of those were used in part of this attack today. So thats why it was so difficult for dine to fend all of traffic off at the same time. It all came inbound all at once. Very frightening. Thank you, eamon, very much. Eamon javers in washington. Arizona usually votes republican, but this year it is a battleground state for a change. And it is at the center of one of the most controversial issues of this election season. Immigration. Tessa brewer reports tonight from phoenix. Reporter at digital air strike, a social Media Marketing and Brand Reputation company, ceo, alexi va neary, worries about the way the Trump Presidency might affect her business. Theres a lot of need for more business in the country. It absolutely concerns me. If he became the guy in charge to make some of the decisions and to follow through some some of the threats hes made, i see them as as threats and that concerns me. So it worries me. It could limit our ability to do that and ultimately could hurt our job creation. Reporter arizona is a red state. Its only voted for a democrat for president once in the last 68 years. Now Hillary Clintons leading donald trump by five points in the Arizona Republic poll. When i see the tied numbers, thats astonishing to me were that close. But we are. And then it comes down to who do we get out to vote. Reporter the Arizona Republic endorsed hillary clinton, the first democrat in its 125year history. The newspaper was bombarded by threats in response. But the Editorial Board reflects what is happening politically, as conservative arizonans denounce donald trump. I dont think they like kind of the swaggering playboy lifestyle. You know, the multiple marriages, that kind of rubs them the wrong way. Reporter arizonas latinos have almost 40 billion in purchasing power. And statewide, almost 15 of all businesses are owned by foreignborn entrepreneurs. The closer you get to the border, the less they want a wall. People live down there, theyre concerned about border security. But building a medievalstyle wall or whatever exactly trump is talking about is not what theyre looking for. Reporter as trump support has lagged, his accusations have increased. He calls the election process rigged. Is there any possibility this election is rigged . I can tell you in arizona, nobody knows what the vote is going to be, except for the voters. Reporter in arizona, the Voter Registration system was hacked, but not compromised. Arizona Business Owners are looking for growth and stability, even if it means higher corporate taxes. Im always looking for ways that we can reduce the size of government and taxes overall as a Business Owner. But ways we can stimulate the economy and help us as a Business Owner ultimately create more jobs. Reporter alexi is hoping for a future worth cheering for. For nightly Business Report, im contessa brewer, phoenix, arizona. Honeywell posts its first profit drop in five years and thats where we begin tonights market focus. The conglomerate said weakness in the Aerospace Division caused decline but results still better than expected. Expects earnings for the Current Quarter to rise by double digits. Shares finished the day up fractionally. Moodys expects the Justice Department to file a lawsuit against the Ratings Agency over alleged violations related to the grading of mortgage bonds and other securities leading up to t to the 2008 housing crisis. Moodys also reported an increase in quarterly profit and revenue, prompting it to race its fullyear earnings outlet. Shares fell 5 to 102. 24. The mobile Network Equipment maker ericson posted a loss a week after its Quarterly Earnings would be nearly wiped out. Sales fell with the company citing a weak Telecom Equipment market and stronger competition shares off 5 to 5. 10 and a strange day for luxury retailers coach and burberry. First, there were reports coach was working with an Investment Bank on a potential merger with burberry. Then later in the morning, different reports came out and said the two companies were not in active talks. Shares of coach fell 1 to 35. 55. Our market monitor likes Cloud Computing and social media companies. He has named companies he says reflect the new reality of tech. Last time he was on, back in december, he recommended amazon, which is up 22 . Facebook, which is up 24 . And workday, which is 10 higher. Joining us now is mark leeman, president. Welcome. Thanks for having me. The new reality of tech. What do you mean by that . The new reality of tech really tells a couple stories. One is you have Cloud Computing, which is what we saw in the microsoft report. And Companies Like salesforce and amazon are going that way. And also obviously social media. And what we see in Companies Like facebook and others. And thats the new reality of tech. And you need to play in those largegrowing markets. And if youre not, youre probably stagnating and not growing the top line and bottom line. You still like facebook. Tell us why youre so hot on facebook. I do. I think they have had a tremendous year. I think theyre monetizing their subscribers in a great way. Obviously, over 1 billion people who check their facebook. I like to call it the world cup finals every day. 1 billion people check their facebook every day. Instagram has over 500 million users and i think that kind of user base and that kind of action on their two platforms is growing. And the amount of time theyre on those platforms is also going up. And advertisers crave that kind of attention and that kind of demographic and that is not slowing down. And also the stock is coasting towards an alltime high near 132 today. You usually get an opportunity when people worry that growth is slowing and worry the margins are unsustainable and i think those are the times you want to pick up shares of facebook. Next on the list is microsoft, which had a big pop the other day on its earnings, which blew past wall street estimates. Would you still buy it at this point, given the price move its had recently . Yeah, i would. The stock eclipsed its 99 high, which is a seminole moment for the company. They have really invented the company. They still own the desktop. They still own that market. But their move to Cloud Computing has been rapid. Theyre investing in the data centers and in the cloud, and i think theyre doing a wonderful job of getting there as more of that business starts to mature in the kind of growth accelerates, youre going to see a multiple expansion there, tede with the eps move, you will see growth in that stock. And, being again, they pay a dividend, which is kind of a rarity for a hightech, highgrowth company. And thats a really important thing for Dividend Growth managers who get both that dividend and also get the kind of growth we saw in the last quarter. Everybody has got their eye on salesforce. Most especially because of rumors they may do some big acquisition. You like the stock. How worried are you that mr. Benioff goes in and buys a big company that may pay a lot of money for one. Hes going to buy something, okay . Probably the most interesting thing of this Campaign Season is when we saw Colin Powells email talk about the salesforce playbo playbook. Fascinating to me and my analyst. What the stock has done, and that rumor of the last three or four weeks has gone down by 15 . And i think nobody has done a better job of moving their customer toward the cloud. Nobody has done a better job than marc benioff at running his company. Now you have a maximum amount of fear theyre going to do something that is detrimental to the stock. And theyre going to do quite well and i think thats the stock you want to go forward. Leave it there, thank you. Coming up, the sweet smell of success. Meet the woman lighting up the fragrance market one candle at a time. Tonights how i made my millions is next. The prestige Beauty Industry in the u. S. Grew to 16 billion last year, partly on the strength of socalled luxury candle sales. They were up double digits. One company cashing in is Nest Fragrances. In tonights how i made my millions segment, we check out the Business Scents of nests founder. When Laura Slatkin picks up a scent, she knows a winner when she smells one. That one. She proved she had a nose for business back in 2008, the day she launched Nest Fragrances. Her brand of luxury aromatic products for bath, body and home. We sold 1,000 candles in one day. And i screamed at the top of my lungs, because i knew that we had hit on our hands. Reporter still, nest is not what you would call an overnight success. Its more like the culmination of decades spent learning the intricacies of an industry she helped pioneer. A business she unwittingly married into when she tied the knot with harry slatkin. Harrys brother, howard, is a world renown interior designer. And he had this beautiful shop on east 70th street and he asked harry and i, would we like the shop as a wedding present and we looked at these candles and said, wow, wouldnt it be cool if we started a Home Fragrance company. Reporter they did just that. Quitting their wellpaying wall street jobs to found a Scented Candle concept called scatkin and company out of the interior design shop. We actually used the cash flow from the shop to manage the initial business. And remember, we were fighting the fact that it wasnt really an industry. Reporter 13 years later, they were selling products exclusively in highend Retail Stores and reportedly bringing in 15 to 20 million in sales annually. Nancy mckay then an executive at estee lauder, took notice. I believe they are the reason that Home Fragrance is growing the way that it is today. Reporter according to a study by the Market Research firm, the mpd group, sales of prestige fragrance candles are up 18 , and reed diffusers up 36 since april of 2015. But slatkin was attracting more than a decade before that. Namely Limited Brands founder who bought the Home Fragrance business in 2005 for an undisclosed amount and hired harry. And so laura was actually faced with a challenge. I was really worried about my husband, whether he would really enjoy working for a large company. So Nest Fragrances started as a backup plan. Reporter the company also began as a private label business, with laura creating Home Fragrance collections for more than 80 luxury brand clients. While she waited out a threeyear noncompete agreement. We kept launching brands, one after another. And some of them did okay. And when we launched Nest Fragrances, it was an enormous immediate success. I had seen it in stores, and i smelled it, and i just loved everything about the brand. Reporter so much so that in twitch, mckay left her nearly 30year career with estee lauder to become nests ceo. She says sales are thriving. At retail, we do between 50 and 70 million. Reporter slatkin advises other wouldbe entrepreneurs not to get thrown off the scent of a potential success. Whenever youre faced with an obstacle, its how do i get over it, how do i get around it, how do i solve it, how do i move forward. You cant get drowned in the challenges that are presented to you, because theyre sometimes daily. Nest fragrances almost never happened after the slatkins sold their first company. Laura thought about devoting her time to new york collaborates for autism a nonprofit the Company Founded after their son was diagnosed with the disorder. Instead she decided to do both and very well. Very well indeed. All right, that does it for nightly Business Report tonight. Im sue herera. Thanks for watching. And thanks from me, as well. Im tyler mathisen. Have a great weekend, everybody. And well see you back here on monday. Pete donald trump says hes accept the Election Results on one condition. Hillary clinton holds a clear lead in most battleground polls, but the nagging email issue wont go away. Im Pete Williams, in for gwen ifill, tonight on washington week. I will totally accept the results of this great and historic president ial election if i win. [cheers and applause] pete a defiant donald Trump Doubles down on charges of a rigged election during a final debate with hillary clinton. The candidates spar over taxes, gun rights, abortion and vacancy on the Supreme Court. Ms. Clinton we need a Supreme Court that will stand up on behalf of womens rights, on behalf of the rigs