Despite the first decline in german Investor Confidence in about six months. The roadmap begins with a slew of bigname earnings, verizon, j j and travelers and delta beating estimates well break down the quarters of each. Taking a large position in dow chemical calling for a Strategic Review. And attention Business Travelers the eastern half of the u. S. Bracing for another big snowstorm and biting cold, well get into that, but first, its a big morning for earnings. Three dow components in the mix, verizon and j j and travelers beating the streets with their quarterly results. Outside of the dow Delta Air Lines did also exceed consensus with profit of 65 cents a share helped by lower fuel costs. Lets go through the big dow names. Bus unlike last week unlike last week almost uniformly good. I like what verizon had to say, buzzing about it with david beforehand. I like the earnings per share. I really like the Revenue Growth. I like the churn. There was a discussion about churn. Still below one. Frankly like directv. Like comcast, Parent Company. People just keep signing up. It is a remarkable juggernaut of an industry. But different from at t to a certain extent and tmobile. Here you have the case where theyre not suffering at all from competition from tmobile, in fact, they may be courting numbers from tmobile seeing that growth at verizon. If you growth, they had a bit of a problem in terms of throughput for the lte, you know, the 4g that youre all on, if you try to get data in big urban areas in new york city, they were always thought of the best. They must have thrown a good amount of money at it because it seems to have improved and they did not lose subscribers as a result. Wireless margins still look good. The calls going on right now and i havent had a chance to really listen to much of it so well see if we get anything else but overall it looks like a pretty good quarter from verizon. You raise a really good point the idea of improving the network. One thing that stood out, verizon said 16. 5 billion and for 2014 and a lot thought capx would be down and its good for the telco equipment companies. Buying media assets from intel, thats the other story. Fios revenue was up 16 and more than a third, i think 35 on customers who can receive fios do. Our building is going fios. We havent had the vote we need to make sure theres enough available households in the building so theyll take it from the street to the actual building. But the purchase of the intel overthetop platform if we can call it that, thats what it essentially is, is interesting. Its not a large dollar amount by any means, a few hundred million bucks is what were thinking. Theyre going to integrate ipbased tv services with fios video to further differentiate fios from traditional able tv offerings and reduce ongoing deployment costs. Theyll be getting bigger in the programming game, too. I think many of us, i switched from time warner to verizon. And ive got to tell you that these numbers show that theres some sort of technological superiority. Its interesting to hark back to what you were talking about the activism and the bid for time warner. Fios is taking share, not from cost cast, because comcast numbers were juggernaut. Theres so many moving parts, i do not see tmobile taking share. No. And fios competes 13 overlap with time warner table. The biggest overlap where it competes the most is cablevision if you want to think about that. Interesting. And, of course, Time Warner Cable for its part would say to charter just going down that road for a minute, youre not competing with anybody the way were competing against fios. Weve got a much tougher go here. Right. Give us a break when you say you can improve things so dramatically, you try to come in and fight with fios. Come in the water is fine. Your point, the numbers so far, carl, this is a day where between activism and earnings, it is a very different tone from last week. Yes. J j beats by four cents. U. S. Sales up seven led by pharma. Their guidance for the year under consensus of 575 to 585 where the street is but some have pointed out they did the same thing last year and beat hand handily. Goreski is under promise, overdeliver. His predecessor was an overpromise, undeliver. Hes learned the lesson. Remember, pharma is this company. This companys got growth pharma unlike pretty much all the other big dogs. I like the growth that i see in the highermargin businesses in some of these drugs. Its still another good number for them. People think its a tylenol play or a neutrogena play, its a highgrowth biotech play unlike bristolmyers. Wow. Its been a while. Bristolmyers will report a good quarter i think, i like j j and travelers, and they buy back more. Fishman is not a promoter. No. Hes not a promoter. No, hes not. But its worked for him. Travelers was a big beat, 268 versus 215. Premiums up five. Claims were down. Right. But it has had some trouble getting breaking out past 90. Once again, storms raised rates and the next year no storms, big profit. Right. But travelers been buying back stock. Im sure there will be something on the call. The last time there was a concern, he mentioned competition. One of the things people need to realize at home when youre on a conference call, if you hear the word mixed or competition, the hedge funds come in and blast it out. They just react like that to some sort of program. Competition, blast. Speaking of hedge funds, what a morning. Wow. We got activism front and center, of course, not to mention it all. But dan lopes taking dow chemical the bigger activism of the morning. Its constructive actism if you will from morlobe amr. Loeb. In this case, its a letter released on this relatively new website called harvest. If you want to know the its hvst. Com. Its not enough to be a billionaire, you got to own a stake in a website and put your letters out there to drive traffic to it. Thats the case here. You remember kyle bass also releasing his views on gm on this same platform a few weeks back. As for those views from mr. Loeb they are centered on dow chemicals underperformance really since 1999 makes a point right at the beginning of his letter, saying, the stock price is the same it was in april 99, 15 years ago you could have purchased this for the same amount of money. Incredible. Lets get to it, guys. Lets separate the petrochemical business from the rest of the company. Dows petrochemical Operational Strategy has been to migrate downstream supposedly to earn higher margins but he said its not working and you should be focused upstream where youll benefit in the enormous drop in natural gas which is a key feedstock and separate it out and take your time, by the way, says mr. Loeb. The nomination deadline has already passed for getting directors, so theres not going to be a fight here for most likely a year. That means they have a year conceivably to consider some of these things. The question is where other shareholders are. Loeb clearly believes as weve seen when they take the large stakes in megacap companies that he has the support of the other top ten shareholders. Thats what you need because otherwise you wont go very far because he doesnt have a big economic interest to dictate terms. Coleman at dupont took these actions. If you look at Eastman Chemical and westlake, these were companies that really embraced the natural gas shale revolution. I will tell you that liverist has decided to open plants. Hes going to build a plant. Hes one of the few really out there. But at the same time the underperformance is stark. And i completely understand the idea that the company has been undermanaged, the deals, the car valve for commodity versus the spinout of coleman or the merger to spinout with ppg. Its undermanaged and theres a sense that liveris is a professorer. He was a guest this morning on cnbc. He joined Andrew Sorkin from davos. Liveris did know that loeb was coming. Interesting timing on their part. Concluding the interview just prior to mr. Loebs release of the letter. Heres what liveris had to say. We should all be thinking like the nelson peltzers, i have no problem with people saying heres better waifs to get things done but as management you have to think about those ways which i believe at dow weve been doing. If you look at Something Like my Balance Sheet which is the best its been in about a decade, weve got expensives on it like the preferred from warren buffett. If you get the stock up above 52 for any length of time you will get rid of those preferreds. They can convert. They will be converted, i believe, and that will, he mentioned how expensive they are, of course, paying that dividend, so thats another thought process here if you can get the stock moving towards 52 and get it to average that price for 20 of 30 trading days, they convert. Thats another expensive thing done away with on the Balance Sheet. This will be interesting to watch. And, again, loeb, sony, remember, somewhat friendly. Unclear whether it really got much done there. He might claim that he did in terms of transparency, but certainly they have not done the subsidiary ipo they were calling for. Loebs cf they sold their phosphate business, friendlier and in this case thats the way hes going trying to be constructive. Well see, 1. 3 billion stake is his largest single position. Its really big and we have to watch it because dow chemical could be worth a considerable amount of money. And then theres nelson peltzer, of course, being added to the board in mondelez and as Andrew Ross Sorkin reported earlier this morning not going to push for a pepsi deal. But clearly loeb not the only activist making some news today. I think this is a company, i can speak on the fundamental side has been undermanaged a lot. People feel it should have had longer growth. Had a long history in cad burca. They are fighting history, heinz made a lot of changes internally and wendys, did a lot of good there, ingersollrand, for those who say the story is over, it could be just beginning. Interesting heinz was the last time that pelz ran a proxy fight. It appeared he was close to doing so here, sources indicated he wanted two board seats it would appear and he ends up getting a board seat for himself and no stand still. In other words, meaning that, you know, he doesnt have to support the board in what it does. But, of course, he most likely will. If he had gone to a proxy fight, he would have gone after four seats. But its interesting he hasnt done that. A lot of times they dont want to go to proxy fights. Youre seeing a lot more settlements than fights and heinz is a long, long time ago. Heinz he did get in and Robert Johnson came on when i did a mad money show at university of texas, he came on. And i thought for sure he would say bill johnson. Bill johnson, im sorry. That there was not a report and he says that they put good guys on the heinz board. I believe chuck bunch ppg of the pittsburgh ties. And they originated a lot of good ideas and he welcomed them. I wonder if Irene Rosenfeld doesnt actually welcome some of the ideas from pelz even though i know there was not a lot of goodwill, you never know when goodwill can spring. As you point out its about operations. Its not about a pepsi deal. Thats off the table in terms of him pushing for anything like that. Its just about doing better. He was relatively specific on some of those ideas when we talked to him at delivering alpha in july. Heres a listen. My fault with irene is twofold. First of all i think the name mondelez, i think that hurts us two multiples. Really . It sounds like a disease. Suffering from mondelez. What but, youre right, her margins are way, way lower than what they should be. And when irene and i meet again, in the very near future, we thats exactly what well talk about. They got to have more changes now. Ill tell you that. Nelson does a lot of work about overhead. And kind of lets call it wiggle and royal. Theres people who own you can try theres a lot of unallocated overhead and hes been a laser on that. I dont think he likes imperial ceos. Yeah. And after a couple of not great years at trion they had a strong year last year, they were up 40. That was a big year and they needed it because theyd had a couple of lackluster years performancewise at the fund itself. Look at wendys. Its remarkable. Its been a fantastic burger and stock. I bet it is. When we come back, a ceo whose company is helping to bring bitcoin to the masses. Stick around to find out. Another winter blast meantime getting ready to take aim at the east coast and well get a forecast and one of the areas preparing for the storm. A couple thousand Flights Canceled around the eastern seaboard today and then the analysts moves from marriott to ge to apple to burger king to the gap. More squawk on the street live from post nine in a moment. [ male announcer ] this is the story of the dusty basement at 1406 35th street the old dining table at 25th and hoffman. And the little room above the strip mall off roble avenue. This magic moment it is the story of where every great idea begins. And of those who believed they had the power to do more. Dell is honored to be part of some of the worlds great stories. That began much the same way ours did. In a little dorm room 2713. This magic moment we do . I took the trash out. 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Call today to request your free decision guide and find the aarp Medicare Supplement plan to go the distance with you. Go long. The northeast bracing for its second big winter storm of the new year. Its already caused federal offices in washington, d. C. , to close today. Weather channels jim cantore is in the Nations Capital with the latest. Good morning, jim. Reporter were talking about schools closed 99. 9 of them not only d. C. But also into philly and also baltimore here, Train Service the mark between washington and baltimore also shutting down, they are still leaving one rail open but were starting to lose ways to get home later on this afternoon and that has always been the big concern with this, the evening rush hour, thats when we will maximize the storms potential. Thats when it will snow the heaviest. Well also see that accompanied by wind and falling temperatures, and that will be not only here but all the way up through the northeast megalopolis, d. C. , philly, new york and boston. A huge concern as we work through the afternoon as conditions on the ground and in the air will continue to deteriorate. You mentioned the federal offices are closed and whats interesting is especially for d. C. And the southern areas theres winter storm warnings out all the way down to the tidewater of virginia, southeast of virginia were talking about, is the type of snow. It will be a very light, fluffy snow, not the kind of snow you make snow men with or have a snowball fight with, its very low water content, and it will blow and drift around and cause visibilities to drop quickly to a quarter or a mile or less. Even long after the snow is gone tomorrow expect a lot of blowing and drifting of that snow and bitterly cold and dangerous temperatures well below zero. This is what you call the bite of winter and its going to bite pretty hard here on this midjanuary day. Back to you. My favorite quote thank you, jim. My favorite quote is from mayor de blasio from new york, he came into office on the first vortex, with it was so excited they decided to do it again. When you see the market up, remember, people will be running home today. Theyre not going to stay until the end of the day. The day after tomorrow was on the other night and i caught a little bit of the end there. The polar vortex. Global warming was not in the Global Warming an important article about china exporting pollution to us and taking our jobs. That had been my position and suddenly its becoming mainstream. But read those stories. Very important in terms of what our country may end up doing with the chinese. And watch nat gas, powering half the homes in this country. Propane, ive been watching propane, thats a group thats been horrendous. Suddenly propane has come together and amerigas did a deal with Energy Transfer partners and did a unit sale, its a big propane company, largest in the country. 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