NBCU Ad Chief Departs, Is Expected to Succeed Musk as Twitter CEO 5/12/23

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Okay, text from the wedding planner.

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

She's talking about a cake pop mural.

SPEAKER_3 (0:05)

Ah, exciting.

SPEAKER_2 (0:07)

Ooh, it's $8,000.

I don't know, we're trying to save for a house. Well, you only get married once or twice.

SPEAKER_4 (0:15)

The three time stops.

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Carl Quintanilla (0:31)

Market Moving Insight and Analysis join Jim Cramer, David Faber and me, Carl Quintanilla on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street.

Good Friday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange, trying to put together another Up Friday. Banks get some relief from Thursday's pressure, some optimism about the debt ceiling as well, even as that White House meeting was postponed into next week. Our roadmap begins with a macro picture. Those talks delayed. A Fed governor says more hikes might in fact be needed.

David Faber (1:02)

Plus Twitter has a new CEO. Elon Musk will be stepping down from that role. He'll still have lots of responsibilities at the company. And shares of Tesla, well, they're popping, perhaps as a result ahead of the open.

And we're gonna keep watching the media space as well. Disney got a downgrade at Wolf. The stock, of course, very weak yesterday. And we'll also talk about why Netflix is seeing its longest stock winning streak in nearly two years. Do want to start with that news. It's very close to home, of course, but also involves Twitter. Closely watched private company. Of course, we can't confirm that Linda Yaccarino, who runs advertising at NBCUniversal, will be stepping down or actually has stepped down from that position and will be joining Twitter as its CEO, something that was at least fought about as of yesterday because Mr. Musk tweeted something to the effect that he had found a new CEO who would be starting within six weeks.

Official announcement should be forthcoming momentarily, guys, but basically she will be stepping down immediately and then have some time and then begin at Twitter, apparently, not soon after. Of course, the up-fronts are coming up. Understanding is that they'll be handled by Mark Lazarus at NBCU and somebody will be moving into her position on an interim basis.

And now Twitter has a CEO, something that Mr. Musk had told us some time back. He was looking for something we had reported on back in late December, at least, that he was actively trying to find, although it did take some time for him to settle on the right person.

Jim Cramer (2:42)

I think it's interesting, David, that he'd always been leaning towards having a technologist, and it had been run by technologists, and not actually not that well.

The one big thing that had been missing was the connection with advertisers. So you put a person who's advertising at the top and he stays on as the technologist.

David Faber (3:01)

Yeah, that's the plan. You know, we know from his recent interviews, of course, when he came in at Twitter, the company was in a position to potentially, he said, be bankrupted in as little as four months, given its cash burn, given its interest costs, of course, as a result of the leverage buyout that he undertook, taking on over 13 billion in debt. He has cut that dramatically, saying in that recent BBC interview, it's down to maybe even be profitable.

Obviously cutting staff from 7,800 to 1,500 people. Let's bring in a Julia Boriston, who's obviously been following this story for us as well and has more, Julia.

Julia Boriston (3:47)

David, NBCUniversal officially announcing that Linda Yaccarino will be leaving the company and that Mark Marshall is being named Interim Chairman, Global Advertising and Partnerships, and he will be reporting up to Mark Lazarus, who's Chairman of NBCUniversal Television and Streaming.

Now, there are some statements in this release here from Mike Kavanaugh, President of Comcast, saying they're grateful for Linda's contributions during her 12-year tenure, wishing her the best.

Linda Yaccarino saying it's been an honor to be part of this team and everything they've accomplished together. It's my understanding that she will be joining Twitter as CEO, and we're looking out for an announcement from Elon Musk, who was together with her at a WPP conference earlier this week, but a big transition for Linda Yaccarino, who's been at CNBC's parent company, NBCUniversal, for a dozen years, and just want to point out here, David, that this all does come ahead of the upfront ad sales period, which is a crucial period for the whole media industry. Linda Yaccarino would have been the one to lead a big presentation that is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on Monday morning in Manhattan. Now it looks like that's going to be led by Mark Marshall and by the rest of the people on Linda's team, and then, of course, this all builds up to the Cannes Advertising Festival that's in June, where a lot of those deals are made with major advertisers. So big transition. And then, of course, the question is when will she start? At Twitter, will it be six weeks, which is what Elon Musk tweeted out yesterday? Or will it be sooner? And will she be representing Twitter at the Advertising Festival in Cannes? And of course, David will see what the vision is for Twitter under her leadership.