Billion in buy backs. The company also approved Quarterly Dividend of 8 , nearly 3. 29 a share. Analysts were looking for about 38 million phones to have been sold. Apple earning 11. 62 a share and that blew expectations out of the water there, too. More than a dollar above estimates. Revenue came in at 45. 6 billion. That was more than 2 billion above expectations. Heres what carl icahn tweeted out after apples report. Agree completely with apples increased buyback. Believe well be happy within we see new products. As we said at conference yesterday, we continue to believe apple remains meaningfully undervalued. Many analysts fail to understand the company. Well, investors really took a second look at this, jumping on apple shares, soaring more than 40 in the late trading, gain of 7. 5 . We haven aanalyst coming up in a few minutes. One of the tweets that was really great yesterday was like 11 weeks and 6 days of doubting apple in the quarter and one day of believing and jumping back in. Getting back to the midfives. Its been in the sevens. We had the discussion to get back on the fast track to a trillion dollar market cap. My question was, do they need new products . Do they need new products or because they only are still in the teens for penetration of smartphone. Can they continue to sell and bring the market share up . Yesterday it wasnt new products and it wasnt ipads. It was the iphone. The iphone can still give you 40 bucs. I dont know if it can get you to a trillion. Thats why icahn, i like what you did, cant wait to see the new products, tim. That was a pointed remark. Actually less pointed than normal. Than he normally is. Thats exactly what hes saying, great quarter. You did great with the iphones but what have you done for me lately . Some of the increasing the dividend like that, splitting 7 for 1 so that other investors can get in because that stock was pricey. You can get i dont know if id do that. The split . I kind of like it because i understand, if youre an investor who wants to dabble in stocks, youre not going to be buying a lot of stocks at 564. Theres a certain berkshire never split. Theres a certain cache in berkshire and google. Then you can figure out, you know what, im going to mack a couple classes, im going to give those people the opportunity, with nonvoting stock. Thats what berkshire has done, too. Right. Its always better, i think, to split the stock. When you do a reverse split it goes down, when you do a reverse split, it goes up. It just looks cheaper. Well see what happens. Whats wrong . Facebook are the other big report investors are reacting to this morning. The social media giant earning 34 cents a share, a dime ahead of estimates. Revenue also beating expectations, thanks to facebooks mobile advertising business. Facebook did say video ads and ads within its Instagram Photo sharing app would not make a meaningful contribution yet to revenue in 2014. The company also announcing that chief Financial OfficerDavid Ebersman will be stepping down june 1st. Hell be replaced by david winter. He was also you heard of him. He was from zynga, a cfo there. I like the name of zynga. Thats what facebook did, up 3. I dont know what the market cap is of that. Im surprised apple well get back to that we add 8 on to that. Its almost 2. 5 . Its gone up today. That will bring the yield down. Right. Lets talk about earnings were expecting. Today is a huge day for results. Weve got eli lilly, caterpillar, 3m and General Motors, all expected to report just over the next 90 minutes. Buckle up, people. Today will be capped off by microsoft and amazon after the bell. And well get first on cnbc reactions and comments from eli lillys cfo. Thats at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. We have gm cfo Chuck Stevens, happening around 7 50 a. M. And at 8 00 a. M. , caterpillar ceo. Hes also forthright about the global economy, too. A lot to talk about with all of these folks today. Alstom, one of the big movers today. There are reports, they came out yesterday, that General Electric is in talks to buy the company for about 13 billion. And that a deal could be announced as early as next week. That was out yesterday. I havent looked in all the papers this morning but wasnt it bloomberg it was bloomberg. Ges declining to comment on the report. And alstom says it was not informed of any takeover offers. Can you say that . I was not informed of any i dont know. The stock youre saying that sounds like legalese . Where theres smoke theres usually fire. It makes sense because ge is unable to bring back 80 billion in repatriation. This will be 13. They have 87 in cash, 57 over there. Out of this country. Alstom shares have been good right. Down 20 or something. I still say we, even though were not owned by General Electric anymore. I understand. Move into more of transportation. We already there i go again. Ge makes locomotive engines and are involved in jet engines, things like that. Theyve gone away from ge capital and finance. Kind of makes sense. Alstom shares had dipped about 20 over the past year. It was a cheaper buy. Thats up 14 . We will see. If ge were to pull off such a deal, it would be the biggest acquisition in the companys history. Now i dont know if thats adjusted for inflation but this was the first dow component, at least the last original dow component. Its thomas edison. This would be the biggest acquisition ever. It would be a big deal. Are the animal spirits back . You cant buy yogurt from that country. Right. And also you have politicians and unions in france where the company employs 18,000. Can you imagine i dont know whether ge would go in and rationalize, is that what we call it, rationalize operations but it could mean i dont think you can. Youre not allowed in the first place. Would the french and i use that not as a pejorative, would the french the word itself. No. I love france. Favorite city in the world. If you cant buy a yogurt company, youd be able to buy this . This is a jewel of french industry in manufacturing. I think that would raise more than a few brows. These euros, they know the bullet trains. Everybody travels around in trains. We tried to bring them here and connect cities that dont even want to visit each other. Bullet trains in europe theyre the thing, the way to get around. You dont have to take off. Oh, fly. I think the nauseous is from the nervous. No. Its a motion thing. Youre strapped in. Its a motion thing. Trust me. Lets talk more about General Electric. Janing us joining us now is nick heymann from blair and company. Longtime follower of General Electric. Where theres smoke, theres fire, ge, are they considering buying this company . Good morning, joe. Excuse my voice. I would tell you in november of 2010 ge was critically interested in the grid portion of alstom, which at the time aviva owned. In turn, it was alstom that beat out ge for all of the utility Power Management products that now are a part of alstom. That is interesting. So you werent surprised you cant say. You dont know whether theres actually something going on or not. Theres a lot of puts and takes here. Okay . Clearly, they have a significant overlap in their gas and steam turbine business. We added it up last night. The two collectively are utilizing about 40 of their combined heavy gas steam turbine capacity. Ge is one of the top two wind producers. Alstoms entry into the business is probably not strategic. As you mentioned, ge has focused on the freight side with these locomotives and alstom has been one of the three leaders in the Passenger Rail side across all spectrums of the market. So the transit rail business has consistently grown moderately but grown strong free cash. At 13 billion, this could be 13 billion, joe, i think we have to check the numbers under the hood. Okay . Because 13 billion might be the 25 premium ive seen referenced to yesterdays equity price for alstom. That would equate to if you paid something in the 32. 50 range, thats euro, it would equate to about 9. 9 billion in euro just for the equity. Theres 4. 5 billion euro of gross debt, 500 billion in capitalized lease. Wrap it all up, its about 1. 6 billion euro which in dollars would be about 18 billion. Assume something of that debt. They got a lot of money over there. Theres a lot of i think theres a lot of opportunity here, but, you know, i think its certainly affordable by ge. I think the strategic fit could be rationalized. But i think clearly to ensure the required returns, remember, alstom for almost the better part of seven or eight years now has earned 7 or 8 margins. Youd have to have an extensive Restructuring Agreement with regard to alstoms existing cost base. As you mentioned, today 19 of its employees are located in france, 18,000. You think the french would let ge buy . Heres another tweak. 2 8 of alstom is owned by bouygues. The stock was down 68 from its alltime of 76 euro back in 2008. He suffered for quite a while. He apparently supports this transaction. Really . Thats interesting. Wish we had more time, nick. A lot of stuff in tech and elsewhere going on. Appreciate it. Okay, sir, have a great day, joe. Have a hot toddy. I think that has booze in it. Its 5 00 somewhere. Shareholders approving managements Equity Compensation plan at cocacola yesterday. Warren buffett is cokes largest shareholder, holding about 9. 1 of the shares outstanding through berkshire hathaway. He told me he abstained from that vote because he didnt agree with the managements equity plan. He hadnt said anything before that. He does say the plan to increase the number of shares it awards managers he thinks is excessive. He didnt want to vote against it or say anything ahead of time because he didnt want to express any disapproval of management. He says he still loves cocacola. He reiterated his support for cocacola ceo mukhtar kent. In 2002 coke had a plan that involved 240 million shares. That lasted six years. They had a plan in 2008, six years later, that was 280 million shares. That lasted six years. And then this plan when i read about it was for 500 million shares, which they would equate to 340 million, still, 340 or 500, they were going to use it, they said, in four years. That really struck me as quite excessi excessive. So i didnt actually read that until after winters wrote the letter. I would have felt the same way. Heres a statement from cocacola on buffetts comments. The Cocacola Company board respects mr. Buffetts philosophical stance on ek we equitybased compensation. We greatly respect his views and look forward to continuing our productive relationship with him for many years to come. Buffett said hes never sold a share of coke, never plans to sell a share of cocacola. Still has a lot of faith in the management, loves mukhtar kent. He has been outspoken about excessive compensation in the past. He said to him this felt excessive. Im all over the map on this, as far as nuances go, i thought a lot about this, too. I think were both right. I knew he wasnt going to go against coke on this. I didnt think of the im not going to say chicken a word i cant say. If he feels that way, vote your shares. To be able to talk the talk and comment on it without doing it, the only way if you want to prevent the public secretarier from getting involved in excessive compensation fwb thats what you view, it has to be shareholders who take the initiative on this. If he doesnt stand up to take the initiative on something that he thinks was wrong, then i dont know who will do it. I think sometimes a rebuke like this is potentially enough. I think so, too. My guess is mukhtar kent and the board got the vote they wanted but they can choose how many years to use that. Originally they would sbend pen in four years. I asked him if they took longer to spend that, would you be happy . He said yes. You can get more with sugar than you can it may be just his to speaker suede in persuade in a softer way. He doesnt do hostile takeovers. He likes the management here. He think kent is the best person to be running this company. I love warren, you know that. Hes a piece of work. He was the most incredible businessman in his generation which doesnt mean youre always that nice all the time. Okay . Now hes a nice old guy, he has a lot of money and everything. The way that people immediately will accept the worlds richest man, assuming the role of the protector of the little guy and the protector of the working class and the guy against excessive compensation, the guy against rich people getting a tax break, no one ever sees that with even a hint of cynicism or with skepticism. I just think, here he is, he can set himself up, i wish i paid a lot more taxes. But he doesnt pay taxes. He talks the talk but he never really there were people who complained about that yesterday. First of all, it caught me by surprise. I was trying to figure out how to react. What . Say that again. Did you say that . Just say that again. I was a little i will say, if somebody like that doesnt speak out, i havent heard from david winters. He put out a statement right before. All that cocacola said was that 83 of the shares cast were cast in favor. I assumed that meant buffett voted in favor. So did winters. He said were surprised he had an opportunity to stay a stand on failed to seize it. The more i thought about it last night, the more i thought he can be more persuasive by doing things this way rather than going hostile. He says when the tide comes down, everys naked. When the tide comes you can see whos naked. This time, its belching when youre invited to a dinner, you do it too many times youre eating alone. Youre eating in the kitchen, he said. He thinks long and hard about everything i dont think he thinks long. I think he can think so quickly about things. A lot of things struck me. Big news coming out of apple. Joining us now, dan morgan, senior Portfolio Manager at cenovus trust company. What struck me here was the company may not be ready to take over the living room and it may not be ready to buy tesla and may not be ready to have flying cars yet. But all those things hold a lot of promise but in the meantime they have to do some it looks like theyre rearranging the not the deck chairs on the titanic but rearranging finances to give shareholders right now because they dont have a new product yet. Youre right, joe, i heard you talking before about apple, saying can they extend the current portfolio and drive growth that way or are the new products like the iwatch, going to make up for the slowing and the products. They seem to be taking a bit from ibm in terms of reducing the share count year to year was 65 million. They reduced the number of shares, really jacked up that earnings per share on 7 net profit growth. So you know, increase the dividend, repurchase shares and so forth. Overall it looked like a decent quarter as you were talking about throughout when the numbers came out. Youre right. The jury is still out. Are these new products going to actually be able to make up for these more mature products that are starting to slow down in terms of volume . In the meantime, i mean, tim is like how about this . Ill give you this and what about this . Right. How about i throw in this . You have 40 of upside. It worked. Yes. Everybody loves a split. Thats huge. I like 2 for 1 split. Ge split 3 for 1. I never got a 7 for 1. I think there have only been three or four larger ones. Reverse splits from 30 cents. If youre a bank you do reverse splits. Id rub 7 all over my body. You dont need to see that. 7 for 1, its like, whoo suddenly its pretty great. For a tech stock, a growth stock, id have to question close to a 2. 5 yield. How much are you growing . Microsoft, intel, theyre all doing that now, cisco, paying big dividend yields. If you look at the top line growth on amle what was apple, little over 4 . Theyre trying to move things around. Its like a drug company, joe, if you think about it. You have these Big Drug Companies with the huge blockbuster drugs coming off patent. They have to come up with new products to account for that. You think about it, you have the four key products. You have the iwatch, itv. Its a big question. Youre on a treadmill and somebody is turning up the speed. Just to stay in place youre running faster and faster. There you go. Appreciate it, dan. Thank you. Okay. When we return, a special bring your kids to work edition of executive edge. We go to the front lines of a very hot topic, which is cooler, facebook or apple . Well ask the kids of america which ones they use. They have answers for us, right after this. [ dog barks ] [ male announcer ] imagine the cars we drive. Being able to see so clearly. To respond so intelligently and so quickly, they can help protect us from a world of unseen danger. Its the stuff of science fiction. Minus the fiction. And it is mercedesbenz. Today. See your authorized dealer for exceptional offers through mercedesbenz Financial Services. Take this simple test. Press your tongue against it, like this. It moves do you feel it . It can happen with every denture. These movements may irritate your gums. But you dont have to bear with it. You can try fixodent plus gum care. Thanks to its formula, your gums become one with your denture. This helps stop movement and helps prevent gum irritation so you can keep enjoying life. [ apple crunches ] fixodent. And forget it. Teach the children well the fathers health did slowly go by it is time now for the executive edge. Which do you think is cooler, facebook or apple . We just happen to have a Panel Experts here to tell this out today. We have scott, kimmy, natalie, blake, who are all around the table. Joe, you have to admit, these are the experts when it comes to cool, not us. They are. I think we might have the same answers, because kids how old do you have to be to be on facebook . I think 13 unless you have permission from your parents. Is that how it works . Are any of you on facebook. Instagram. He whereas talking about facebook. Its bad for you to be on facebook if youre younger. You are not the customers. You are the users. Thats right. I saw that. I saw that. If you had to pick. I have my phone right here. I have my iphone. Kimmy and natalie. Ipads and ipod touches. Yes. Kimmy . I mean natalie . Im ipod touch and ipad. All around the table. I use an ipad for school and i have my iphone in my pocket. I dont know what id do without apple, although unfortunately sometimes i do instagram in school also. If you got to own a piece of the business. Thats what a stock is. You get to own a piece of the business and kimmy, you asked a good question before we came back. What was the question . Which one makes more money. The right question to ask. You are thinking like investors on this. Which