Full Interviews Of Michael Wirth, Michael Dell, Jamie Dimon And More: Davos 2019

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CNBC Excerpts: CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Broadcasts Live from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Today, Wednesday, January 23

WHEN: Today, Wednesday, January 23, 2019

WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box” — Live from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

Following are unofficial excerpts from CNBC interviews which aired on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F 6AM – 9AM) today, January 23rd live from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

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Interviews included: Coca-Cola CEO and Incoming Chair James Quincey; Dow CEO Jim Fitterling; Marsh and McLennan Companies CEO Dan Glaser; Chevron CEO and Chair Michael Wirth; Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman; Palo Alto Network CEO Nikesh Arora; Anheuser-Busch Inbev CEO Carlos Brito; Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins; PayPal CEO Dan Schulman; Dell Technologies CEO and Chair Michael Dell; Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard Tyson; JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon; and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Links to video of the interviews are included below.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Coca-Cola CEO and Incoming Chair James Quincey

James Quincey on Growth:

I think there’s a difference between a downturn and less growth. I think we’re in the phase of 2019 where we’re likely to see a little less growth, or a little less tailwind. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say it was a headwind. So I think it is gonna be a slightly tougher year than 2018 in macroeconomic terms. And I think we just need to work our way through it. I think the costs are passed through of some of the commodities increases has largely happened, although there are cost pressures out there. So I think it’s a little less tailwind, rather than a new headwind.

James Quincey on Uncertainty:

I think that in a way the biggest issue is not so much that we see a little less growth, but there’s more uncertainty. There’s been more volatility over the last couple years. So I think people are going into it going OK a little harder than last year, but I feel a degree of uncertainty out there that you can’t quite put your finger on.

James Quincey on Global Uncertainty:

I think the uncertainty is actually kind of global rather than it’s one region. And actually in the modern global economy, something that goes wrong in a major piece here transmits itself around the world. So I think there’s been a lot of volatility in some of the developing countries over the last few years, and so we see that continuing. But I think there’s just a little cloud of uncertainty over the growth forecast for this year.

James Quincey on Consumer:

We do two things. We’re gonna follow the consumer, what are the things the consumer is trying to do? How are they responding to macro trends? How do we help serve them better with beverages? And then all the issues, whether it’s bringing down the sugar content of our drinks, or solving the world without waste. In the end, our approach is you can’t be against everything, you have to be in favor of something.

James Quincey on Zombie Brands:

I think the consumers are doing a couple of things. Firstly, they’re drinking more commercial beverages. But they want more choice, they want more diversity. And in some categories are appearing and they’re disappearing. Others are staying. But the dynamic is yeah, you have to do stuff organically. We invest more in R&D to drive our own stuff. We invest in new brands. But in the end, if you don’t manage the outflow, if you don’t kill off the zombies, it’s gonna clutter up the system. It’s gonna clutter up the shelf. It’s gonna clutter up the marketing. So we’ve had a big program of killing off the zombies, we call them. It’s not the best phrase necessarily but it’s very evocative and everyone understands what we want. It’s take out those SKUs that aren’t working for us and get rid of them.

James Quincey on China:

We all hope that they will focus on making the trade terms better, rather than walking back. I mean no trade deal out there in the world is perfect, they can all be improved and let’s hope that that’s where the agenda ends up. For us, the effect is ultimately slightly indirect because the Coke business is both global and incredibly local. In any country in the world, 95% plus of what you drink is actually made in that country. So all the Cokes in China are made in China and all the Cokes in the U.S. are made in the U.S.

James Quincey on Plastics:

I think the simplest single idea is stop thinking about packaging as single use. Everything that is single use in the world is gonna tend to be got rid of. Everything needs to be collected and recycled. And the great news about whether it’s a plastic bottle or a can or a glass bottle, all of those things can be collected and actually remade into new bottles. So we set ourselves the objective of by 2030 collecting back all the plastic cans and the glass that we sell.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: 100%?

QUINCEY: 100%. And using at least 50% of it in making new bottles.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Dow CEO Jim Fitterling

Jim Fitterling on Plastic Waste:

There are a lot of efforts on bans and there are a lot of efforts to say ‘Let's go back to glass and go back to metal.’ But in reality, the environmental footprint of that is 4-5 times as high as plastics. What we really need to do is create the circular economy for the plastics and create the value and put the infrastructure in place to stop the waste.

Jim Fitterling on Dow Shares:

Our shares have been down obviously with the general market and with what we saw happen with oil pricing. So that oil pricing has an impact on our end product prices and that changes the psyche a little bit in the marketplace.

Jim Fitterling on 2019 Outlook:

2018 was a strong year, so strong demand growth around the world. I think we saw as the year ended obviously some change in sentiment, and people are attributing a lot of that to trade discussions. But I think around the edges there are also some concerns about demand. Demand is good for products. I think 2019 will be a good year. The shape of the year may be a little bit different than 2018. ‘18 was a very strong start and 2019 may be a mirror image of 2018 where we ramp into the year.

Jim Fitterling on China:

China is still a rapidly growing economy. And it's growing, I think the estimates are going to be around 6% on a pretty large base, second largest economy in the world.

Jim Fitterling on Growth:

The consumer is still strong. Business results are still strong. And I think what most people are concerned about is are the political moves actually and the policy changes actually going to have a dampening effect, but I think most of that is within the control of the governments and they're working through those issues. They work through that on the trade side, then I think we have possibly even some pent up demand.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Marsh and McLennan Companies CEO Dan Glaser

Dan Glaser on a Different Year:

What a difference a year makes. Last year, you know, confidence was back, there was a lot of CEO optimism. A sense of the long aftermath of the slow growth financial crisis has finally drawn to an end, and good times were ahead. This year, filled with uncertainty, levels of concern, and you can pick your poison. I mean it starts probably at the top with a general economic feeling as to whether it’s a slowdown. I think more attention to the U.S. China rivalry -- everybody knew China and the U.S. were rivals but just not capital R rivals. And then you think about other subjects that are being talked about here. Brexit, I mean, certainly one of them.

Dan Glaser on Outcome:

The outcome is eventually we’re going to have a recession, whether it happens in 2020, 2021 or 2022. It’s eventual.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: The clock is always going to strike midnight at some point.

GLASER: Okay. But ultimately let’s remember there’s no better time to be alive. This is the greatest time in human history. And there’s more opportunity than threat… You get to understand there’s always risk, and it’s exactly a result of all the opportunity that exists. And so you can’t ignore the risk, but ultimately focus as much on opportunity as anything else.

Dan Glaser on Insurance Companies:

When I look at insurance companies it’s a tough place in the market for capital providers. I don’t care if you’re an insurance company, a bank or other types of capital providers. It’s a good part in the market for advisors because the world is more complex and the value advisory has risen.

Dan Glaser on Risks of Future:

When you think about risks of the future, everybody, most companies buy physical damage and casualty, liability types of insurance every year. But some of when they’re looking at risks the conversation is more about risk than insurance, and it’s really about what is AI impact on the workforce? What’s the impact of advances in broader technology?

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Chevron CEO and Chair Michael Wirth

Michael Wirth on Oil Prices:

The real thing we'd like to see is stability. And commodity markets, when they're volatile, they make it hard for investors to invest. It's hard on consumers. And so, you really need a price that encourages investment and draws in enough new investment but is not so high that it weighs on the economy. We're probably not far from that kind of a price right now.

Michael Wirth on Profitability:

I think, you know, Brent in the 60s, WTI in the 50s is near where the industry can now be profitable. That may not have been true a few years ago but as we've gone through this last down cycle, people have become more efficient, we're finding new ways to use more technology and we can make it work in that kind of a range.

Michael Wirth on Technology:

A big part of the story in the Permian Basin has been moving from the early days of almost brute force trial and error by the, you know, the early frackers to beginning now to really bring technology to bear to become more efficient, to get more productivity out of the drilling. And so it's a tremendous story about technology.

Michael Wirth on Carbon Tax:

We're in favor of market-based mechanisms, as opposed to mandates or subsidies or command and control approaches. But something like a carbon tax, you get into a massive source of revenue. Will the revenue, the governments really just rebate that back, or not? And the other thing that in many of these proposals has been a feature is a stated intent to clean out all the existing less efficient regulation.

Michael Wirth on Oil Markets:

Oil markets are driven by the difference between two very large numbers - demand for oil and supply for oil. And so at the margin small changes can take the market into or out of balance. What we see around the world, and we sell our products into a number of sectors, that historically have been pretty good indicators of economic activity, so construction, mining, transports. We sell lubricants and lubricant additives into industrial applications. We're not seeing signs that we're hitting any kind of a wall.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman

Adena Friedman on Nasdaq IPOs:

We had in the United States 259 IPOs and 186 of them came to Nasdaq. So we're very pleased with the performance of 2018. And then if you look at the number of listing applications that we had on file starting last year, we have a 35% increase in Nasdaq – in companies that want to come to Nasdaq at the start of this year. So you have a really great growing pipeline and a very strong pipeline of companies from all industries, all sizes, looking to tap the public markets.

Adena Friedman on Shutdown Impact:

We have a very important relationship with the SEC. They do real work to evaluate these companies, make sure the disclosures are accurate and complete. And then we do our work to evaluate them in accordance with the listing standards. And if they can't do their work, it's hard for us to complete ours. However, I would say that with the hope that the government does reopen in the coming days, weeks, then I think that we'll see that there is certainly less of a time window for these companies to go but they're all ready to go.

Adena Friedman on Q4 Volatility:

Going into the 4th quarter, it was -- we had all these companies that were ready to go and wanted to tap the markets, either in the 4th quarter or at the very beginning of the year and they did slow down some of those plans with the volatility in the market. But the companies that did go out did fine. And so if you're a strong company with a strong story and strong financials, you'll be able to get out even in a more volatile environment. I think that the volatility obviously has calmed down a bit as we've gotten into 2019 and so it does feel like a receptive environment.

Adena Friedman on Dual Class Structure:

We would like more companies to tap the public markets. And we do believe it's good for the country, it's good for the economy to have more companies in the public markets. So if we look at the practicality of allowing these founder-led companies to come with dual-class, it's better than them staying private and having investors not be able to invest in them at all.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Palo Alto Network CEO Nikesh Arora

Nikesh Arora on Trust:

I spent the last day and a half in Davos and everybody’s talking about the digital transformation, the fourth industrial revolution. And the next word that comes out of their mind is trust, there’s going to be no transformation without trust. There’s going to be no trust without security. Every time you read the front page of the Journal or you watch CNBC talking about the next data breach, you take one notch away from the trust that people have in these companies. So it’s very important that security, risks, cybersecurity has to be on every CEO and every board’s agenda.

Nikesh Arora on Hybrid Cloud:

If you talk to the customers out there they want to be hybrid-cloud, multi-cloud. Very few customers are saying I’m putting all my eggs in one basket. So yes, will Google did a great job of trying to secure their infrastructure? Yes. Will Microsoft do a good job of trying to secure their infrastructure? Yes. Well, but they’re not gonna do anything that’s gonna help you on a cross-platform basis. So that’s one problem they’re not gonna solve, we’re gonna help solve it.

Nikesh Arora on Big Changes:

We haven’t spent enough time thinking about it as we built infrastructure in companies. And it’s very hard to go pivot that on one day and say, “Let me go fix it.” It’s gonna take us a while to get there for things to get totally secure as we want them. And I think that’s one part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that people are security – just buy IT, so we’ve always had two vendors, tried to have vendor not get price gauged by one or have two different people. The problem is our systems don’t talk to other security vendors and aren’t supposed to. Because if they did they’d talk to the bad guys. So we’ve got to make sure that people start looking at it as a platform play, we have three platforms at Palo Alto networks. We should tell our customers, “You’re better off getting the whole platform from us, as opposed to trying to piecemeal the best of breed.” I think that’s a big change coming in the industry. And the third big change coming is we’re gonna have to do a lot more automation on this stuff. You want the cyberattack to be stopped mid-flight. Today it takes between 50 to 150 days for companies to find out that somebody’s been lurking in their infrastructure.

BECKY QUICK: Really?

ARORA: Yes.

BECKY QUICK: And you could get that down to what, you think?

ARORA: You have to get it down to real time. You’ve got to be able to stop it as it’s happening.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Anheuser-Busch Inbev CEO Carlos Brito

Carlos Brito on Beer Growth:

What we see in beer that I think is very important is that it's one of the few – one of the only categories within food and beverage that continues to grow volume and rate on a global basis. And today that's one of those things that's very rare to find. I'm not saying every country, but as a global average for a global company.

Carlos Brito on Market Maturity:

Beer has gone through an amazing last 10 years, an amazing assortment, a widening in terms of styles, varieties, and the mature markets has really clicked with. And in some mature markets, yes it's true, on average, beer is not growing volume wise, but it's growing rate wise. People are paying more for their beers. And if you look at the high-end segment, they’re growing -- it's growing everywhere. It's one of those segments that grow everywhere.

Carlos Brito on Tariffs:

We are one of the biggest aluminum buyers in the world, in the U.S. We source most of it from the U.S. But of course this whole conversation about tariffs has an impact on us and on the beer drinker for sure. Because if you're a manufacturer in the U.S. today with the tariffs, you are at a disadvantage compared with the beers that we bring from Europe into the U.S. because that can -- that aluminum in a can is now called a cannot aluminum so it doesn't pay the tariffs. Same for cars, same for everything.

Carlos Brito on Aluminum Tariffs:

What we calculated was that it would double the inflation. So for a beer can, if inflation's 2% and you'd pass that to consumers, you'd have to pass on another 2-3% on top, on a beer can because of the aluminum tariffs.

Carlos Brito on Tilray Partnership:

What we're doing with Tilray is really a research partnership, R&D partnership, in Canada. There's no decision to commercialize anything. Tilray is a great company, a very responsible company. If we decide to do anything in the future, if, it will be in a responsible way.

Carlos Brito on the Threat of Marijuana Legalization:

We still don't have enough data points because there's noise to prove that beer or alcohol beverages are suffering. Quite the opposite. We have no data points in that respect. Because you have a lot of people going to those states because it's legal so it's very hard to do a same store sales type of analysis with the same population that lives there.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins

Chuck Robbins on China Tariffs:

Our business in China is still relatively small. Yeah, I mean it’s less than 4% of our business. So the impact on that side is less severe and has the potential to be…

The tariff situation, my point was, okay, we navigated the 10% tariffs. But if we hit 25, and I’ve had this conversation, then you know the ability to pass all that through to our customers is, we’re probably gonna be less likely to do that. So we’re gonna have to preserve our financial model, so we’ll have to look at where we cut. And I just hate to think about cutting innovation and R&D at a time right now where 5G and all these emerging technologies are just so important to the country.

Chuck Robbins on Technology’s Role:

The role technology is playing today, particularly in a B2B world, even versus where it was before the financial crisis is completely different. You know, I would characterize it as before the financial crisis, companies would build their strategy and then they would tell the technology teams to go operationalize it with whatever tech you needed to do. And today, they’re defining their strategy based on the integration of technology and what it allows them to actually do differently as a business. It’s just a subtle but really fundamental difference. And so, as we enter this time of risk, you know, we’re trying to figure out what does that mean for tech companies during this, if we do see a cycle.

Chuck Robbins on Cybersecurity:

Cybersecurity is gonna be nothing but machine learning and AI running in the network because no one has a perimeter anymore.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with PayPal CEO Dan Schulman

Dan Schulman on the Shutdown:

We put aside $25 million into a fund so that we could loan up to $500, which is the average take home pay of a federal worker, in a totally interest-free cash advance. And so it's our part to try and be part of our community. These workers, as you all know, are living paycheck to paycheck and they really need our help.

Dan Schulman on Social Responsibility:

And I think it's really important that we, as CEOs, really think about our companies as part of the communities that we live in. I think doing these kinds of things, and a lot of people think about purpose and profit as being in different camps, I think that's a false duality. I think you do the right thing and those things come back multiple-fold to you. I think it's the right thing to do for business.

Dan Schulman on Tailwinds:

We have a lot of tailwinds at our back. We live in the digital economy. Things are digitizing, retail is moving towards digital, mobile's exploding and so, you know, our business remains strong.

Dan Schulman on China:

China's a very important part of our business. We don't have a domestic payments license so we don't operate inside of China. But we're a very important platform for exports – online exports outside, coming out of China. So we take our 250 million people on our platform, AliExpress and other players inside China, put the PayPal button on their merchants and our consumers outside of China purchase from Chinese merchants and they export goods out. So it's a big business for us, a growing business for us, and one that isn't affected by this – by these trade wars.

Dan Schulman on Cybersecurity:

I think for companies like PayPal, for a financial services company, they've been woke for quite some time around this. We realize that identities typically are compromised so that we do many things beyond user name and password. That to us is jacks are better in this poker game. You have to look at 30 or 40 different variables on almost every transaction to be sure that the transaction is valid and it really is you who's coming in. And we're able to do that now with mobile devices.

Dan Schulman on Cryptocurrencies:

I have always thought that crypto was more of a reward mechanism for implementing blockchain as opposed to really a currency. And we're not seeing many retailers at all, except any of the cryptocurrencies. But I think the underlying technology is still very interesting.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Dell Technologies CEO and Chair Michael Dell

Michael Dell on Digital Transformation:

We’re in a world where the digital transformation, the explosion in data, AI, machine learning, cloud, you know 5G. All those things are capturing the imagination of customers and they require all new kinds of new capabilities to be able to make that happen. And, you know, we’ve put ourselves in the position of combining the world’s best capabilities to be able to enable that for you know, 99% of the Fortune 500 and hundreds and thousands and millions of small and medium-sized businesses all over the world.

Michael Dell on Innovation:

Everything is becoming intelligent. You have an explosion in data and then you apply computer science to take this data to fundamentally change the products and services and make them better. That, when you layer on the, you know, next generation 5G just means there is a -- you know, it’s the fourth industrial revolution. Now, some of it will be hype and some of it won’t work, but we’re seeing it move at a very significant pace across just about every industry.

Michael Dell on China Tariffs:

Certainly we’ve moved some things out of China, you know, based on the tariffs and various rules that are in place. And you know, have about 25 factories around the world and most of them aren’t in China, right? And so, we’ve got a flexible supply chain and it’s largely been uninterrupted from the perspective of our customers. We have a strong and large business in China and we have critical capabilities that are unmatched by the local companies. And therefore you know, we have a great business. And you know, we’ll see how that develops over time.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard Tyson

Bernard Tyson on Reducing Health Care Costs:

We look at it in two ways: one is, how do we reduce the absolute cost of healthcare over time? And that’s a journey that we're all on. And we're not there yet by any stretch of the imagination but we are definitely seeing signs of progress. The second one is: how do we manage the trends? The trends is a big one, because as you know, in the United States, they are trending anywhere from 4-6%. We have goals –

BECKY QUICK: Health care inflation costs—

TYSON: Yeah, inflation costs plus, right? And we try to keep ours in the 2-3% range with initiatives and other things that we're working on while also improving access and quality and the whole experience that people have with our system.

Bernard Tyson on Health Care Mergers:

These mega mergers should create efficiencies. The distribution or how those efficiencies are then distributed out becomes part of the debate. In Kaiser Permanente, the efficiency goes back to our customers in the forms of lower rates and overall we hope that the unit cost will change… How other large systems decide to distribute those efficiencies obviously is driven by many factors such as how they're constructed. I'm a not-for-profit, we have a not-for-profit organization, and many of them are for-profit corporations.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon

Jamie Dimon on the Shutdown:

The Democrats and Republicans should sit down and finish this issue immediately, and compromise to do it. That’s what they should do... And they should make a deal because it’s gonna get worse for the American public, and they shouldn’t allow it. And it could damage, you know, it’s damaging confidence a little bit. You see consumer and business confidence skyrocket and now it’s coming down a little bit, because of that. Because of trade, all the noise around the world… Somehow our government should figure out a way simply to never do it again.

Jamie Dimon on the Economy:

The U.S. economy is kind of like a ship that’s growing, except the shutdown, 2 or 2.5% and that’s gonna keep on going for a while. Then you have all this other noise, okay, geopolitical noise, Brexit noise, what’s the Fed gonna do -- I’ll talk about that in a second. Shutdown, trade. And those kind of they’re kind of like boiling the waters in front of that ship. So eventually that may very well cause a slowdown or a recession, and I don’t know if it’s 2020 or 2021. But the range of possibilities is broader, and the range of bad outcomes is increasing.

Jamie Dimon on Fed Rates:

I think the Fed will look at what’s going on. I mean my guess is they’ll probably pause now, but if we -- if they raise rates again in 6 months or so because we’re growing at 2.5%, that’s still a good thing.

Jamie Dimon on U.S. Issues:

If we looked at our own issues and fixed them, we’d be growing 3%. And to me reform is part of that, regulatory reform, tax reform, small business formation was lowest it’s ever been in a major American recovery, mostly because of regulations and lack of access to capital. And so to me, I always look and say, ‘What can you do better yourself?’

Jamie Dimon on China Relationship:

It is the most important relationship, geopolitically, in the world for the next 100 years. The administration has raised very serious trade issues, and they are right. Both sides want to resolve it. And you see every time it looks like we might resolve it, things get better. If it looks like we won’t resolve it, things get worse. If you have tariffs get in place on March 1st, I think that would be bad for the global economy… What you need to do is get this strategic relationship mostly around trade right, and fair. And not just for us, but for the Europeans, for the Japanese. And I think both parties want to do that. And that would be better for the world growth.

Jamie Dimon on March Deadline:

I think they’ll get enough done, kind of agreements and principle, before the end of March to extend the deadline. I think it’s very hard to get something done by March because of the complexity. But if you read the papers, and read between the lines, I -- they will allow more American -- foreign companies to buy control of their companies there. That solves two problems. Unfair investment and some of the forced intellectual property transfer.

Jamie Dimon on China:

This whole thing about China 2025, that you’ve got to split into little component pieces. It shouldn’t be, they have the right to have industrial policy to grow their country and benefit their people. Just like we should have better industrial policy. But what they don’t have the right to do is to use state-owned enterprises, theft, subsidies, forced transfers, all these things to dominate industries against other countries around the world.

Jamie Dimon on Global Growth:

3.5% global growth, the United States is doing fine. Trade may get resolved and all those things may reverse. I mean we’re gonna have a recession one day, we’re adults, we should all understand that. And we don’t know exactly what’s gonna cause the next one or exactly what the timetable, but the financial system is in far better shape in the United States.

Jamie Dimon on Little Things:

I’d say lots of little things. Like, you know, Brexit if that goes south that’s not good. If trade goes south that’s not good. If the shutdown goes on for longer that’s not good. They have real direct effects on the economy, and then indirect confidence. So you have seen confidence come down a little bit. So you know if I was a policy maker I’d want to get these things resolved.

Jamie Dimon on the Fiscal Issue:

The fiscal issue is a real issue and it’s really got to be dealt with. It’s not an immediate issue. So our debt to GDP is like 80%, on its way to 100, on its way to 120. We can afford all that. But it becomes a hockey stick in about 15 years. And it’s all related to entitlements…. But it’s not the reason you’re gonna have a recession tomorrow.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi

Dara Khosrowshahi on IPO Shutdown:

I always tell my team: focus on what you can control. And there’s nothing that we can do about the shutdown. There’s nothing we can do about the SEC. What we can do is run a good business, build a terrific service, continue to build our brand. And that’s really what we’re focused on right now.

Dara Khosrowshahi on UberEats:

UberEats, home delivery of food almost in over 200,000 restaurants in under 30 minutes. It’s a magical experience, and we have had cities in which the Eats product has become profitable. But essentially once we saw that program working, we’re accelerating city launches. Early cities early on are unprofitable, but we know that the model is sustainably profitable over a long period of time. So, we think about near-term growth, with long-term profits.

Dara Khosrowshahi on Autonomous:

I do think that autonomous is an enormous technology. It will bring huge strides in safety, huge strides in making transportation available to more people around the world. Anytime you have a technology that is as earthshaking as autonomous, it doesn’t come easy.

Dara Khosrowshahi on AV Partnering:

We are completely open to partnering with third party autonomous because ultimately we believe in the technology. We want to own a part of it, it’s a great opportunity. But ultimately we think this will be good for society.

Dara Khosrowshahi on the IPO Race:

The race is in innovating and building a service. From my standpoint there is no race going public. If we do it, when we do it, we will do it when it’s the right time for the company. This is a big enough service, this is a big enough brand where I think that there will be a market for us anytime we go public, when the time is right.

Dara Khosrowshahi on Uber is Good for Society:

We want to be in as many countries as we can because ultimately we think that our service is good for society. It provides lots of job opportunities for drivers out there. We hesitate to make judgments based on oh this government is good, this government is bad. We want to be on the ground and a force for good, and usually I think if we’re a force for good then we can move forward societies in a positive manner.

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