Different meeting. The first annual meeting since Charlie Mungers death at the end of last year. It raised questions of what Berkshire Hathaway will look like after Warren Buffett. Those are the things that shareholders have been asking about and the types of things we see reflected in the media. Big questions, obviously, thrown to Warren Buffett and greg abel and jane who will be on stage this weekend to answer those questions. Well talk about those over the next few hours. Some of the issues surrounding berkshire. These are issues that Warren Buffett was direct about in his annual letter to shareholders. He laid out the disappointments they have seen. Bnsf was a disappointment on earnings. Earnings dropped significantly from a year ago. Buffett laid out how its railroad has fallen behind the other five major north american railroads in terms of margins. He talked about bhe. Berkshire hathaway energy. The major Utility CompanyBerkshire Hathaway owns as well. Laid out the issues on the regulatory front with the western states. Major fires there, liability issues that come with it and questions raised by regulatregu. All of those things raising questions. We will talk about those issues. The other major thing is litigation for real estate br brokers. Berkshire hathaway did not participate in the litigation that was settled. There were questions about that. A lot of meat to chew over. We have guests today and the ceo from the portfolio companies. Oriental trading, brooks running and pilot and bnsf. We have mario ganelli and we have questions to throw out about how the board is looking at these things. A programming note. We will have full coverage of the annual meeting as Warren Buffett takes the stage to answer shareholder questions. Tune in to cnbc and cnbc. Com at 9 30 a. M. For full coverage here at the meeting. Andrew. Thanks, becky. Well come back to you a lot over the next three hours. Of course, a lot over the next 24 and 48 hours. Lets check on markets and see where things stand. The dow is up 320 points. Nasdaq up 121 points. S p up 20 points as well. Lets show you treasury yields at this hour. Still three and a half hours before the equity markets open. The tenyear note at 4. 569 . The twoyear note at 4. 883 . We want to talk about Berkshire Hathaway with the apple shares reporting a 10 decline in iphone sales. 46. 6 margin. Think about the business. Apple signalled the Revenue Growth in the Current Quarter in the low Single Digits. Analysts estimate of 1. 3 . Perhaps the biggest catalyst for the stock move was this. Apple approving 110 billion in share buybacks. The largest buyback in corporate history. It raised dividend to 25 cents per share. That will drawdown the cash pile at 162 billion at the end of the quarter. In the last ten years, apple spent 658 billion on buybacks. We will talk to the apple analyst who is raising his price target after the report. Part of the buyback strategy is one of the reasons Warren Buffett got into the stock. If you can make the float lower, it makes everybody elses higher. If they dont have a better use, there is no reason to sit on it in a money market fund. It makes sense. This sort of flies in the face of the criticism you see and in this example, tim cook has options that will be worth more if he gets a stock price up. It is the Way Companies decide to run and if they issued too much from the past to reduce the float and it will boost earnings per share. If you are sitting on 162 billion, it is an effective and wise use of cash. Hopefully. The stock is down how much . This is the five of six quarters where revenue has fallen and the stock is still amazing. The size of the buyback. Lets talkabout the market cap of the company. On the percentage basis, a normal buyback for anyone else. When you are worth trillions why talk about billions when you can talk about trillions . When you think about what could you do with 110 billion . Not a flying car. Lately, they decided were apple. We have the great ecosystem. Maybe we will not be all things to all people. I think that makes sense instead of pouring cash into some exotic venture. Its smart. When you go off on all these half cocked directions. A. I. A. I. Has to do it. Theyre trying. Theyre behind on that. The question is and we talked to jon fortt about this yesterday. Do they need their own model . Amazon doesnt have their own model tyet . Do you need an obesity drug . Did you hear my tease . Amgen or novo nordisk . You know where im going by looking. I know. I thought you were talking about it. Wegovy. Amgen news out last night. I think it was phase one. Thats okay. Shares of amgen soaring getting into the business. Number one, the company said it will stop developing its experimental weight loss pill and move forward with the injectable drug. The company will release initial data from the midstage trial on that drug. It is pleased with the results so far. The injection is different from existing drugs liking wegovy and zepbound which activist a gut hormone receptor. Amgens drug blocks the receptor which changes how the body breaks down sugar and helps keep weight off after they stop taking it. That is the worry of the others. It has been tested to be taken once a month or even less frequently. Thats the amgen news. A friend of mine ran into me last night. Im at a cocktail party. Im eating with no discipline right off the appetizers. You look like you have been cov gorging. He said you are really going to take ozempic . He looked at you. I think that theres going to be a microscopic version that people will take. What will it do . It is all about addiction. You will get addicted to that instead of food. You should keep your addiction to crispy treatment and dont get addicted into an injectable thing. Lets talk about booking holdings. Earnings above estimates as it benefits from postpandemic travel. Rooms booked in terms of the number of nights jumping 8. 5 . Gross travel rising 43. 5 billion. The guidance here is for those met tricks in the quarter fell below estimates. The Company Expects reservations to slow in the Current Quarter as tensions in the middle east curb Regional Tourism there. It makes up 7 of the bookings. Israel alone is 1 of the bookings prior to the israelhamas war. We will talk to glenn fogel at 7 25 east eern time. Shares of expedia are down sharply this morning. The company has First Quarter results in line with the estimates, but did cut the fullyear guidance. The signal that margins are flat from last year. The recovery from the vrbo Vacation Rental business was slower than anticipated which put pressure on the bookings. Do you call it vrbo or vrbo . I see commercials. Vrbo. Its jobs friday. Po polled forecasters expected the economy to add 240,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in april. The market seems to be coming to grips with the current environment. If you think about it, andrew, and what we want here, when you have stagflation worries, you could not like a hot number or a cold number. You could not like the hot number because it implies theyre not going to cut rates. It should dispel the slowdown fears. You will not like a cold number because you thinking stagflation. I dont know how a surprise onon either side is bad news is bad news. Im surprised the market is taking these numbers in stride. Travel coming down. Thats a first we have seen in a while. Everybody is saying, oh, it is all good. Can we go to becky whenever we want . Becky . Yes, im here. Im listening. I didnt see any tents. None of the 40,000. Here . Yes. I havent seen any yet. Capitalists are welcome at the meeting . Card carrying capitalists. Some have cards they were handed out a few years ago. These are from the gatherings . It is a foreign country. You bring your passport when you go there. Actually, tgi bh . Thank god its Berkshire Hathaway. Take my mind off the other things. This is the place. Joe, i cant believe you have never been out here. You would love it. I know. You know what else i love . Meat. The real meat out there. Do they have a place that serves the gates burger . Vegetarian . Not vegetarian. Its like i dont know what it is. Now im cooling on that now, sorkin. You should go out there, joe. When is the last time you had fake meat . A long time ago. Years. What happened . Ill go out there. The fake meat is not any less fatty or healthier for you. That was the problem. You will be signing autographs out there, joe. Really . Youre big in boca and omaha. Worldwide. Becky, we will come back to you in just a moment. Excuse me. Well talk about how companies are navigating a politically charged environment from the election to the nationwide protests on College Campuses. That is next. As we head to break, here is the look at the stocks lifting the dow ahead of todays js ob report. Squawk box is returning after this. Announcer this cnbc program is sponsored by baird. Visit bairddifference. Com. Giving traders even more ways to sharpen their skills with tailored education. Get an expanding library filled with new online videos, webcasts, articles, courses, and more all crafted just for traders. And with guided learning paths stacked with content curated to fit your unique goals, you can spend less time searching and more time learning. Trade brilliantly with schwab. And theyre all coming . Those who are still with us, yes. Grandpa whats this . Your wings. Light em up gentlemen, its a beautiful. Day to fly. Welcome back to squawk box. We have the latest on the College Campuses and we have our guest with us now. Good morning. I think were all trying to figure out the implications of this and whether companies will ultimately hire some protesters. There are a number of ceos saying they think they would love to hire somebody who is active and passionate about things and others who say i would never want to hire any of these people. I think different strokes for different folks. You are seeing a variety of reactions to this. It is interesting that just as things are heating up politically across campuses and across the country, of course, spurred on by the israelipalestinian conflict, Silicon Valley is retreating from being out there politically. That is what we have seen at google and meta. That is actually more of the position of a lot of Silicon Valley companies. Do you remember a moment two or three years ago after the murder of george floyd where Brian Armstrong came out with what seemed like a controversial view that politics should not be in the office or social causes discussed and companies should not be engaged in pushing for social causes and the like. There are a lot of people who seemed outraged about that position. Now it seems that that position has become increasingly the norm. Absolutely. Brian armstrong from coinbase was completely vilified for asking employees to keep politics out of the workplace. This was in 2020 after george floyd was killed. There was a huge push among a lot of employees in tech companies, not just in Silicon Valley for players employees to take a stand. There are others saying a time and place for political and social activism. We dont want it in the workplace or corporate channels. Both felt it was divisive and distracting. It was creating so many divisions and people were on teams and they did not want to work together. That is how big of an issue it has become. How did we swing this issue so far . We need to listen to employees and have to have a mission and social purpose. Our customers are increasingly looking to us for political or not political guidance, but where we stand as a company and who we are to now saying we dont want to be anybody. We want to make our product and do our thing. Yeah. By the way, i think there was a contingency of employees and leaders who just wanted to program and code. Not everybody wanted their company to take a stand on a variety of issues. Absolutely, theres been a shift. I think there is a bit of Mission Creep literally and figu figuratively. It is a mission. What started in Silicon Valley companies with the values and big mission statements. Google, dont be evil and do the right thing which they transitioned to. The big and broad statements allowed for Mission Creep. If going back a few years, it made sense to take a stand for, of course, were for equal rights. We want our earth to be protected. Fast forward to today. Does that mean these companies are also expected to take an antiisrael stance . Does that mean theyre supposed to back out of a contract with the Israeli Government which is what google employees were agitating for here . No, thats against the core business. In a country like this right now, michal, it is either 49 49 with two in the middle. I dont know what it is on all of the issues. Why would anyone in their right mind pick who is buying more sneakers . Michael jordan will last forever. Republicans buy sneakers, too and im not getting involved. It is not as simple as equal rights for all. There are other issues that half the country feels really strongly about that it is the opposite of what the other half of the country feels strongly about. How do you know which side to weigh in on and why do it if you will lose half of your customers . Yeah. Theres the customers and theres the employees. When it comes to Silicon Valley employees in particular, they skewed younger with the employee base. Thats the statistic for Many Companies out there. We see the political skew of younger generations. Look at what is going on on College Campuses. Not everybody is protesting. You have viewpoints not broadcast out there and not necessarily the loudest voices. With Silicon Valley companies, it was the natural inertia to skew in the direction. It has gotten out of whack. If you left silicon valuley alone on hamas, i dont want to know where they would come down. That doesnt change 80 of americans behind israel on this and all this stuff thats been going on, none of that has changed. I dont think you would find that on the polling to be on the other side of that. All these other people . You might feel differently. There are reports now with elon musk and david are putting together Fund Raising Efforts on behalf of donald trump. He moved to texas for a reason. Zuckerberg is probably in one of the tents. Probably in that tent. Im not so sure about that. Hes not in a tent. Maybe a yurt. I appreciate it. Thank you. Coming up, the exclusive negotiating window between paramount and skydance is set to end today. We will talk about the new cash offer from sony and apollo. How do you explain this . Later, a big lineup from the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, including longtime investor mario dabelli. Squawk box is coming right back. Are you keeping as much of your investment gains as possible . High taxes can erode returns quickly. At creative planning, your portfolio is managed in a taxefficient manner. Its what you keep that really matters. Book your free meeting today at creativeplanning. Com. Raising you was no bed of roses. Are you getting me anything for mothers day . Go to 1800flowers. Com. Oh my gosh wow gorgeous i feel like royalty. Thank you. 1800flowers. Com. Happy mothers day. Happy mothers day sure, im a paid actor, and this is not a real company, but there is no way to fake how upwork can help your business. Search talent all over the world with over 10,000 skills you may not have in house. More than 30 of the fortune 500 use upwork because this is how we work now. Sony pictureses and Apollo Global management submitted an all cash 26 billion for paramount global. This is in the journal. The offer is a starting point for negotiations and n nonbinding. The shares did jump yesterday after the offer was reported. Sony would be the signi significant majority shar shareholder. Paramount is an exclusive negotiating period with skydance which ends today. Ends today. S does Shari Redstone get wha she wants with the deal . Is it more fair to shareholders . In terms of straight fairness to the Broad Shareholder base, you would think by default it would be. Im sure that she would argue and well see what happens with this special committee and whether they decide if they think longer term they can make a go of it with skydance. Its apples and oranges. This is why i came to you first. I was hoping to get a clear explanation. Let me ask you this then. Is apples to apples if she decided to do this five years ago it would be 8 billion and now 2 billion. Is that apples to apples . No. What was the most the Redstone Family could have gotten at one point . Goodness. Thats what i mean. This is like succession. This is like watching this part of the reason why they turned on bob bakish. They were mad at bob for not taking the deal at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. I would say if Shari Redstone want ded them to take the deal, they could have. That is when streaming was going to the moon and netflix was taking off and everybody staying home and watching. Yeah, theres plenty of blame to go around. The valuation that was seen a few years ago is not there today. You know, for the worlds smallest high lviolin, but that still sad. Thats built up. It is a tough and challenging environment. It is a change in how val st ued these things. It was a change in how wall street valued it. Jeff looks like a genius at this point. Becky will have Mario Gabelli in a little bit. Right. Mario gabelli is a major owner of paramount. We are talking