As share outs of Alphabet soared in after-hours trading after the Google parent narrated a second-quarter earnings beat, CNBC’s Jim Cramer was heartened by the stock’s flying higher.
“There’s just a ton to like about this company, which ran to reverse a niggling trend towards sliding down the day after it researches,” the “Mad Money” host said on Monday.
Among Alphabet’s “big wins” were contracts with cloud-savvy companies like Domino’s and Target, a lack of China-related leaning and strength in its international markets, Cramer said.
“It looks like Alphabet’s traffic is so strong that we don’t have to fret as much as some thought apropos the $5 billion fine recently handed down by the EU,” he said, noting that “European trade, by the way, was incredibly strong.”
“I think [the fine] might’ve been actually boosted,” he added. “I think they may be the big winner because of GDPR, that reclusion standard that played out in Google’s favor.”
But not all was rosy in Monday’s selling session. Trade war fears lingered, so Cramer took to the tape to untangle justify how Trump’s tariff debacles could actually help stocks. Pore over his analysis here.
Fantasy role-playing board game “Dungeons & Dragons” is receiving its best year ever, Hasbro Chairman and CEO Brian Goldner, whose toy and spirited maker owns the brand, told CNBC on Monday.
“People are more into ‘Black holes & Dragons’ today than ever before,” Goldner told Cramer in an unique interview. “People are re-engaged with that brand because it’s a face-to-face line of work, it’s immersive and it’s a game that people really enjoy playing with one another.”
The double-digit new consumer growth could have in part been spurred by Netflix’s nostalgic, 1980s-set hit photoplay “Stranger Things,” in which the characters play “Dungeons & Dragons.”
But the pulsate in popularity of both “Dungeons & Dragons” and fellow high-fantasy game “Necromancy: The Gathering” seem to be part of a broader, longer-term trend of interest in immersive and online readying.
“We just announced this afternoon that there’ll be a crossover between ‘Oubliettes & Dragons’ and ‘Magic: The Gathering’ in the fall, and I think our fans and gamers are current to be very excited about what’s coming,” the CEO said.
Watch and deliver assign to more about Goldner’s full interview here.
When seasons and flavorings manufacturer McCormick acquired Frank’s RedHot and French’s mustard from consumer goods superhuman Reckitt Benckiser a year ago, the purchase was met with little fanfare and some valuation from Wall Street.
But McCormick Chairman, President and CEO Lawrence Kurzius saw it differently, he advertised CNBC on Monday.
“One of the things we said when we bought these types was that these were fantastic food brands that were ginned at a non-food company,” Kurzius told Cramer in an interview. “You put them into our house; we’re the experts in flavor, we’ve gotten tremendous placement in restaurants, we’ve been skilful to expand at the shelf. It’s really been good for us.”
McCormick’s second-quarter earnings detonation managed to sway once-doubtful investors as well. The double-digit sales and profit improvement helped the spice maker’s stock surge nearly $10 per split on the day of the report.
Kurzius added on Monday that if investors had taken Cramer’s recommendation and bought McCormick’s stock after Kurzius’ year-ago appearance on “Mad Ready money,” they would’ve beaten the S&P 500 by 10 basis points.
Clock and read more about Kurzius’ full interview here.
Cramer’s eternally telling individual investors that if they want to know their holdings, they lack to listen to the post-earnings conference calls.
But he knows that good meeting calls aren’t always easy to spot. So he decided to backtrack to keep on Wednesday, when Abbott Laboratories, a Cramer-fave pharmaceutical company, gave the best conference call he’d heard in ages.
“The reason why Abbott’s ancestor shot to an all-time high last Wednesday before pulling rough a couple of points was the conference call,” he said. “[CEO] Miles Snowy literally put on a clinic in how to orchestrate a conference call.”
Cramer’s favorite usually was when a top industry analyst asked management if Abbott was planning on pinching any major changes to the health care giant’s portfolio.
White responded by set down out the company’s whole philosophy, saying its current structure was the result of “terribly deliberate shaping” and poised to “operate and execute well organically,” with the “unmarried biggest opportunities … all in [Abbott’s] own pipelines.”
“What more can you ask for?” Cramer contemplated. “White exud[ed] a quiet confidence as he laid out all of the reasons why he believes in the fellowship’s growth targets. If you don’t own Abbott already, I’d be a buyer right here.”
Inexorably, Cramer zoomed in on a trend he sees bubbling up in this market: pile up picking might be making a comeback.
“I’ve been investing for 36 years and for the Brobdingnagian majority of that time, we accepted that the market worked a assured way,” the “Mad Money” host said. The widely accepted idea was that half of a run-of-the-mill’s performance was tied to its broader sector’s performance, and the other half was tied to its own track and how management led the company.
But with the rise of ETFs and index funds, all that has transformed. Cramer has even seen some estimates that suggest 75 percent of craft is either automated or tied to ETFs, not individual stocks.
“However, something’s materialized, really in just this quarter, that makes me think farm animals picking may be coming back into vogue. I’m talking about the greatly disparate performances of stocks within the same sector,” he said, pointing to the drear differences in Schlumberger and Halliburton’s stock performances after their relevant quarters.
“Management’s execution finally matters again,” Cramer conjectured. “That means stock picking is, therefore, back in style.”
In Cramer’s lightning rounded, he flew through his take on callers’ favorite stocks:
The Estee Lauder Companies: “The look at has really been marking time since the last quarter because there were some very uncomfortable things that were concerning to people. I think it is a buy. I think [CEO] Fabrizio Freda is doing a different job and you should pick some up. It’s part of the selfie generation.”
Axon Adventure, Inc.: “Oh, boy. We liked it in the $20s and the $30s and the $40s and the $50s. Look, I’m terrified to say ‘Continue to buy it up here’ because it’s at $75. We’ve been such stalwart fans of it. I think now you’ve got to wait for a pullback. I can’t come in right now with guns blasting saying ‘Time to buy’ when I’ve been saying it’s time to buy for 50 sober points.”
Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Alphabet, Abbott Laboratories and Schlumberger.
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