I think we should give full disclosier first. Comcast is the parent of our company, cnbc. By the way, the ceos of both companies, they were be joining david faber right here on squawk box coming up at 7 00 eastern time. Ive already had i was walking and thinking im going to leave this show with neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night. And i saw that was written into the prompter and i thought for a second, whose motto is that . The post office. Who wants to compare comcast to the post office . No one wants to be compared to the post office. I get my mail every day. You once talked about how effective they were and then we talked about they lose 8 billion a quarter. I want the post office toen continue. And i certainly dont want to make any postal workers mad. Should we talk about this . I think we should talk about it now. Its worth talking about. It has a lot of ramifications. Did we just pull the rug out from under them . I think charter eped it to be done, right . He wanted someone to do it. The problem was charter was close her to 132. Time warner wanted 160. Comcast oh, look at this. He looks mad there. And michael, the cfo, had been negotiating last week with charter to take pieces of thats what i heard. Did this come as a huge surprise . And there were big fights. Michael left the meeting in a big hough, threatened to say if you guys cant get your act together, were going to do it ourselves. I dont think charter believed that was what was going to happen. We can talk to brian. He can tell us more about that piece of on it. Here is the thing. Im a Time Warner Cable customer. As a customer, i am thrilled about this. I apologize. Were going to have the ceo on. Theyre done a lousy job on a relative basis. Comcast is about the speed isnt as good, the service isnt as good. They have not spent the same type of money comcast has. Now, if youre a content creator, not so good, okay . Because all of a sudden the Cable Company has a lot more power on that. The Net Neutrality discussion is getting raised again. If youre a netflix, unclear where you would stand in this. Comcast offers netflix. They do. But theres a question of whether theres a new competitor of netflix. If i decided i wanted to start netflix, could comcast take me on or would they charge me more for certain pipes. Youve seen how much the economies of scale makes sense here. Huge. And thats what malones point was, this has to get bigger because theres so much money to be saved in this. Now, is he happy as a b benevolent is he happy that the industry is going to be much more nimble and all these people wont be . Yeah. Well and he will get some. He will get something from this. Hes not getting nothing. On a scale of one to ten lower than five . We can talk to david faber. We want to do that. If they knew that comcast was going to come in with this offer i dont think he was ready to go through these numbers. The numbers make sense for comcast in a way they might not make sense for charter. Well, for comcast, theres no overlap here. If youre looking at the regulators, the argument is were not overlapping, were simply picking up where Time Warner Cable existed. Youre not taking a competitor out. Youre your point is youre replane placing the competitor with a different competitor. Youre not taking out competition in those markets. The question you raise about the content issues and what that means down the road its a longer term story of what the issue looks like. But the regulators signed off on Nbc Universal, its hard to think that this is a different bar unless you look at it fr from people thought that might be how about the upside . Theyre going to be able to spend upgrades. Its expensive. Theyre going to have to bring the cost down on a per home basis. By the way, they might be able to bring the cost down across the industry, so that could be a benefit. If you look at it from a Time Warner Cables customers perspective, theyre going to be lining up rallying for this to happen. Wifi access, comcast and time warner has been installing wifi access across cities across the east coast. If they put that together, you could see a whole creation of a massive wifiing network. So there are real technological benefits. You are an owner of comcast, as well. And i am. Im a customer, im an owner, im an employee. But my point is, you own shares. You own these shares. I do. And theyre going up. Well, theyre going up, but this is a huge dilution for your ownership stake in comcast. The way the money is being spent, your money, your shares which are being diluted, are you satisfied as a shareholder . Yes. As a shareholder, i am over the moon. You are . Im doing back flips. But this is not affecting your view on the antitrust im trying to thats why i just gave you all the downside. Im with you. Seeing if you because im trying to figure out how i feel based on how you feel. And i dont know whether im going to be the opposite of what you say or the i havent decided yet. I have a pretty good idea that i might come out in favorite of this deal. You think so . I think i havent looked at everything, but yeah, like im not going to be looking at that. What is that h thing that you always add up . The way to do the formula. Some other news deal to talk about, dow jones reporting that the mercks could sell part of its business. It includes well known brands such as coppertone sunscreen and merck officials will reportedly begin meeting with buyers next week. Good news for m a land, by the way, if youre in the banking business. Berkshire hathway is considering acquiring part of graham holdings. Berkshire holds 1 is. 7 million shares of graham. And it said in an s. E. C. Filing that it is in talk toes exchange its stake for some of grahams assets. Graham owns cap lynn education, fixed television stations, the online magazine slate and several others. Slate . Jacob weisberg, slate. You love slate. I love jacob. In our corporate news, cisco posting better ththanexpected earnin earnings. Cisco raising its Quarterly Dividend from 2 cents to 19 cents a share. Indicating its growth slowdown may be easing. The ceo John Chambers cautioning that they continue to face issues. Cisco now forecast ago 6 to 8 drop in revenue in quarter. Keep an eye on that as hardware spending sags. The outlook is about in line with consensus. Were talking to an analyst who covers the company and were going to do that in just about 20 minutes. All right. Back to the cable deal no. We may mention this again at some point. A number of other stocks on the move in extended hours, including cbs, earnings and revenue beat the street and the network announced a 1. 5 billion stock buyback program. That stock, thats pretty amazing, ive got to say. What was the low, do you remember . Cbs . Yeah. Remember . No. What was the number . Well, im just saying you would have been it would have been a good move to buy it at the height of the financial crisis, andrew. Thats my only point. It was so you dont have this institutional memory. 4. 16. Thats neither here nor there. Shares under foods coming up pressure. Its cutting its 2014 Sales Forecast for the second time in three months saying competition is eating into its growth. And coceo walter rob is going to be on squawk on the street to talk about the quarter at 9 15 eastern. And another name hit hard in after hours trading, net cap. Earnings of the provider of data storage disappointed the streets at 16 cent net cap. Net cap . No, net app. Oh, there is only one t. Its nettap for me. Netapp. Chipmaker nvidia. Why is it two syllables if its nvidia . Why four syllables . I dont know. Chipmaker nvidia getting a boost after Fourth Quarter earnings. Thats not bad. Yeah. Earnings and revenue top consensus results were helped by the chipmakers pc gaming components. Angies list, shares of a local Services Review site dropped sharply following its report of weaker than expected earnings and disappointing Current Quarter revenue and dpiedance. Have you ever used that . I have no. Craigslist . Years ago. I sold furniture when we moved. It was a little creepy. That bothers me a little. I also bought something. I went to somebody elses place and bought some furniture years ago. Used furniture . Yes. Thats weird. It wasnt a mattress, was it . No. It was a an ethan allen armoire. I feel like talking about crabs again. I used to rent furniture. You did . Yeah. Thats even weirder. From a rental center . Yeah. Thats so depressing. I rented a tv and a stereo when i lived in london. And then it gets re lets talk about todays economic agenda. Weekly jobless claims and january retail sales. Economists say the weather is a key factor to watch in both reports. Headlines reports are expected to decline by 0. 1 last month. Coming up at 10 00 eastern well get December Business inventories. You saw the nasdaq picking up. This morning, the futures are under pressure. In fact but dow futures are down by about 67 points below fair value, s p is off by over 7. 5 points and the nasdaq is down by 18. Oil prices picked up yesterday by about 43 cents. That was its highest settlement since mid october. This morning, theyre pulling back to 99. 72. The tenyear note at this point is yielding at 2. 756 . That is just below the yield of yesterday. But that yield of yesterday was at the highest level in over two weeks. The dollar is looking like its down across the board. The yen the dollar yen is at 101. 93. The euro is at 1. 3662. And gold prices this morning are looking like theyre down just barely, down by about 3. 1,291. 90 an ounce. And Federal Reserve chair janet yellen was scheduled to head back to capitol hill today, but the Senate Banking committee has now postponed that hearing due to weather. The Washington Area expecting a significant snowstorm. Weve got no word yet on new data. When we get that, well bring it to you. Speaking of the weather, we should get the latest Weather Forecast. It was bad out there this morning for those in the new york areas. Another winter storm slamming many states today. Keith gartman joins us now from the weather channel. When is it over . You try to pick your question there. When is it over is a good question. In new york, not until late tonight, early tomorrow morning, but we will be changing over to rain. That will make it a little better. We have Winter Weather alerts up and down the eastern seaboard. Winter storm warnings in effect, Winter Weather advisories in the light blue. This track is a little bit to the west. That allows that warm air in. You can see already the rain snow line moving in to parts of maryland, washington, d. C. It walg something snow there earlier. 3 inches an hour. Thats this right here lifting into pennsylvania. New york is on the fringe of it. So its not a question of whether or not new york will change over to rain. It will. Its the timing on of it as this warm air continues to rock on in from the ocean. Basically, to the east of the 95 corridor, it doesnt mean theres not a great deal of snow. Showing you the system, moving into new york, boston, probably changing over to rain later this afternoon. Its raining in new york around 7 30 tonight. This gets tricky because on the backside, youll probably get enough cold air to wrap in to give aus last shot of snow early tomorrow morning in new york and then around rush hour in the boston area. Generally speaking, though, these back end snow spots dont put that much snow down. Probably another inch or just just adding insult to injury there. What are we talking about . Some pretty big totals. This is largely to the west of 95. But our purple is 8 to 12 inches. Then we have a big area of 12 to 18, as well. Were thinking interior parts of massachusetts will see the most snow. By the way, becky, i dont think its weird to buy used furniture. Its the whole shabby chic thing. When i was in college, i bought i my junior year. It was used at that point and i kept it until a few years ago. When i think about it, my entire house is used furniture. The second you buy it, right . No. Theyre called antiques. I just realized that. Everything in my house is yeah, someone else owned this thing like hundreds of years ago. Old used furniture, which is even stupider. What does it have to be, 25 years old to be an antique . Well, what am i, them . Well, all of us. Youre a great antique. Im a beader meyer. Do you know what that is . Yes. You do . So its weird, the snow, theyre even giving roads. If youre west of 287 youre going to its weird the way theyre doing it. And then theres another one coming tuesday. Yeah. Oh, tuesday . Yeah. No. Oh, can we get him back . We need him back. Is he still there . Tuesday again . Must be flying back. And then by 2100 dwb its going to be 80 degrees everywhere. So we could get him back for that forecast, too. Well talk to keith next time and get a better jut update on this. When we come back, more about the acquisition of the day. We are going to talk to an analyst who predicted comcast would make this prediction. Also at 7 00, we have Brian Roberts and Robert Marcus, both our guests. More squawk right after this. Ciscos results are out. Scott, last time he they definitely talked about emerging markets and they even alluded to nsa type backlash and but they said it wasnt material. In this latest one, what is the real fly in the ointment here for the forecast . Can you tell . Theres several things. What we have is a company that has Technology Changing behind this business. We had the snowden effect is what its affectionately called now. Having an impact on the business in china and asia and were starting to see signs in other areas, as well. So i think this is a business that is under a bit of pressure from several fronts. They are doing a an effective job at working to try to offset some of that pressure. But i think its going to take time before we see before we see them come out on from under this. The snowden effect is reminding me of the weather almost. Anybody can use it, right . You cant really put a finger on it. You can just sort of its like this nebulous number. Its the snowden effect, too. A lot of companies would be envious of 11 billion in revenue and a quarter, though. This is still a pretty successful company, no . Its still a very viable company. This is a company that not more than about a decade ago, the golden child of the internet. Its still a strong and growing company. The internet is going to have to re engineengineer their productp up with it. Scientific atlanta, theyve made more acquisitions than any company in the world almost. What do they need to do now . Thats what got him to where they are now. What else do they need to do . It is cloud related. What were seeing out there is a pretty aggressive shift in the cloud and its probably just beginning. The ceo is likely to be a year where you look back and see a big change taking place in the industry. When you shift the cloud, the architecture needed there and the platforms to do that is a different style of equipment than cisco is used to producing directly. So theyre shifting their product strategy. Theyre shifting to work more with things. If any company can get traction with this stuff, its going to be very good at sales. Im going to start asking about the internet of things. So eventually everything is going to be tied together. Sensors. Theres going to be an internet of on everything tied together. Is that what you mean by that . Think about where we are today versus two dwreers ago. Everyone has a tablet today. Most people have a phone, if not two. Even the coffee shot down the street is connected wirelessly. Were connected to the internet in ways we havent been before. Its going to require some changes in the way we build out that internet as a result. This encompasses lots of different areas, as well. Well see changes to moves in Wireless Networks in medicine, were going toitz in connected cars. Were going to see it in more wireless devices that we use every day. Youve got smart watches, lots of things that are going to be coming out. All this load, all this data thats going to be coming out of the internet is going to need to be handled in a more scalable manner. Thats where cisco is headed next. Its going to take a little bit of change, a little bit of adoption in new brothers, but theyll get there in time. What actual product are you is cisco involved in the software of this or theyre involved in the hardware for the actual backbone of this whole network . Thats a good question. Theyre involved in the hardware, mostly. There is a software in that. Cisco is going to strive for a higher margin business. But at the same time, theyve been known to sell the hardware. And its we wonder why i could apply to cisco, you know what i mean . For a job. And they would say what are your skills here to help us do what were you see, people need to go to Higher Education in this world. What you just described to me, i wouldnt know where to i dont know. We need to get people weve got a lot of transitioning to do with our workforce, too, scott. By the way, can comcast skills, that might inspire more sales. Thanks, scott. Coming one were got a report from where the weather is nice. Carl quintanilla is going to give us his olympic sized update from sochi along with an updated medal count. But first, media analyst rich greenfield made the call that time warner should have some patience and that comcast would snag this deal. He said it first. Were going to talk to him in a moment. Snap thinking up gamechanging ideas, like this dozens of tax free zones across new york state. Move here. Expand here. Or start a new business here. And pay no taxes for 10 years. With new jobs, new opportunities and a new tax free plan. Theres only one way for your business to go. Up. Find out if your business can qualify at startupny. Com sometimes they just drop in. Always obvious. Cme group can help you navigate risks and capture opportunities. We enable you to reach Global Markets and drive forward with broader possibilities. Cme group how the world advances. Here in philadelphia you can access a philly cheesesteak anytime, day or night. 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