Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime 3/21/25

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

From the open to the close, “Closing Bell” and “Closing Bell: Overtime” have you covered. From what’s driving market moves to how investors are reacting, Scott Wapner, Jon Fortt, Morgan Brennan and Michael Santoli guide listeners through each trading session and bring to you some of the biggest names in business.

That's the end of regulations. I am ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Microsoft doing the honors at the Nasdaq and stocks closing at the highs. After a calmer tone on tariffs from President Trump helped pull stocks off their lows mid-session, the Dow, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq all finishing with gains for the week. That's the scorecard on Wall Street, but the action is just getting started. Welcome to Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan with John Ford. Coming up this hour, the bull case for Nvidia getting started. Welcome to Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan with John Ford. Coming up this hour, the bull case for Nvidia. We're going to hear from one analyst who says the company's developer conference has convinced

him to be even more bullish on the company for the long term, even as that stock turns in another losing week. Plus details on the fighter jet contract dogfight that sent Boeing and Lockheed Martin in opposite directions today. And energy trader Bill Perkins tells us why he says natural gas is currently at a crossroads and how to play it. Well, let's get straight to the market action with city research director Drew Pettit and aerial investments vice chairman Charlie Babrinskoy. It's great to have you both on here today. And Drew, I'll start with you because I'm looking at your notes and you seem pretty constructive on stocks here given the drawdown we've seen in recent weeks.

Yeah, look, I think the message we're trying to send is stay the course. When we were talking about the first half of this year in December, it was about first half volatility. And then all of a sudden, when you get it in policy uncertainty, which a lot of people were talking about, then do you really need to freak out or not? Look, we understand there's still some uncertainty ahead around tariffs and the impact on earnings, but at these levels, let's call it 5,600 today, feel a lot better than we did when we were trading,

you know, north of 6,000. Charlie, do you feel a lot better, especially as Mike Santoli put it just a few moments ago, we're in the midst of peak policy uncertainty? Yeah, this may surprise you, Morgan. I get accused of being a perma bull. I've been pretty bullish on the economy for four or five, six years, and I'm cautious here. I think people are familiar with history, know how dangerous tariffs are. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Great Depression was caused by

Smoot Hawley and a trade war. Tariffs, the fundamental document in capitalism is The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, written in 1776, which made the argument for free trade. It is a foundation of our economy, the world's economy, and we are playing with fire. I think this is very still dangerous. I hope people are right who think that Trump is bluffing, but if he's not and he's really going to put these tariffs on, it's gonna be very painful and more painful than what's reflected in the market right now. So Drew, is this mainly a question of whether or not

you think a recession is likely here? It gets how deep and how long. We've said this looking at the data over history, is if you really wanna know where the S&P was going in the 80s, figure out where GDP is going. If you want to figure out where it's going today, it's a little bit more about secular trends, not to completely divorce the two from one another. But look, I just think recession is going to hurt the growth side of the market, but

there's still some secular tailwinds. There's still a lot of focus on productivity, and I think there's a lot of levers companies are gonna pull, and they're not just gonna take tariffs and changes, just kind of lying down, sitting back. So to us, look, I'm probably more glass-topped old than Charlie is here, but at the end of the day, yeah, tariffs are a negative.

We really do need to get past that if we want serious upsets. Charlie, on top of that, student loan defaults are starting to hit consumer credit scores. What's the impact you think of that going to be and how should investors position if they're concerned about it? I think you got to broaden that. I think it's not just student loans. I think it is the consumer got big payments from Washington in the COVID years,

and they have gotten big payments that are now slowing down. And I think Brian Moynihan said something that surprised me. He said the consumer is in better shape than people think. I don't see that in the portfolio companies that we talk to. We think the consumer is okay. There's obviously very low unemployment, but the consumer is feeling some strain here. And so you're gonna see it with some higher student loan defaults. We're gonna see it with credit card payments being a little weaker.

I think the consumer is not in great shape. So Charlie, I wanna talk to you about a name that you have owned for a while. You've recommended on this show, MSGS. What do you think now that we saw a record sale for the Boston Celtics earlier this week, which actually sent shares of MSGS higher? We talk a lot about fixed assets or assets that are not tied to the public markets. Sports does increasingly seem to be one of those. You're exactly right, Maureen. This is the kind of name that we want to buy

in this environment. The sports teams, the TV revenue is not gonna head down. The people that buy suites at Medicine Square Garden are not people that are gonna feel some of the effects that I talked about on the consumer. So we think the NBA is in very good shape. Remember that Medicine Square Garden sports owns not only the Knicks, but the Rangers as well.

And the stock is now trading for less than the price of what the Celtics were sold for by themselves. So you put this all together and we think that MSGS is selling for 40 to 50 percent below what it's actually worth. Now we've got to get Mr. Dolan to consider a sale and that's not gonna be easy, but the value is there. Drew, where do you go in your portfolio to sort of defend yourself against the things you expect?

Look, it's a barbell. Actually, it's funny, what Charlie's talking about is kind of a secular trend in the consumer, right? So we like some of the secular themes on the cyclical side, where we're seeing some early improvement in some of the short cycle. And I like to pair that with growth at a reasonable price. So look, we're not jumping into the deep end here

and just buying the NASDAQ outright. But look, I think you get a lot of interesting pharma, communication services that play really nicely to that GARP side of the portfolio. All right, Drew Pettit and Charlie Babrinskoy, thanks for kicking off the hour with us. Thanks, Morgan. Major averages higher on the day and on the week, with the exception perhaps of

the Russell 2000. Well, another name that moved higher today. This was a big win today for Boeing as President Trump announced from the Oval Office that the aerospace giant would build the Air Force's next generation air dominance, NGAD aircraft, here's a rendering of the newly named F-47. It's the first public image for the super secretive program

that has apparently been flying prototypes for the past several years. The F-47 will be the world's first sixth gen fighter jet, stealthy, crude, so people will be on board. Set to replace the F-22 in the next decade. For Boeing, this is a huge coup. After years of setbacks and other government programs, Boeing's phasing out the F-18 for the Navy.

It has been investing billions in its St. Louis factory as it has competed for this contract. The company's saying in a statement that, quote, it made the most significant investment in the history of our defense business in preparation for this mission. Now the F-47 program itself, as of now it's said to be worth about $20 billion

in contracts over the next five years. And the program overall expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. With limited info so far, at least what we have publicly, Cowan estimates that total program value could be around $240 billion. the after the Navy down selected to Boeing and North of Grumman for its FAXX competition, its own NGAD competition just earlier this month. Now Lockheed telling me it is, quote, committed to advancing the state of the art

in air dominance to ensure America has the most revolutionary systems to counter the rapidly evolving threat environment. That while disappointed with this outcome, we, Lockheed, are confident we delivered a competitive solution. We will wait further discussions with the US Air Force. Now it's unclear whether Lockheed are confident we delivered a competitive solution. We will wait for their discussions with the U.S. Air Force. Now it's unclear whether Lockheed will protest this decision that tends to happen with big contract outcomes like this. We'll see. Meantime there are other active

competitions that are tied to this broader NGAD strategy as well. GE Aerospace and RTX are competing on the engine for this aircraft and Startup Andral Industries and General Atomics are competing on the engine for this aircraft and startup and real industries and general atomics are competing on the collaborative combat aircraft, the CCA, which is worth about $9 billion over the next few years on its own. CCA, this is the drone wingman that will fly missions alongside the F-47 as well as F-35 stealthy fighter jets. But you can see John, shares of Lockheed Martin finished down about 5.5% today, Boeing up

about 3% though off the highs we saw earlier in the session. How much of this defense environment is zero sum? You either win or you lose, especially as all kinds of expenses coming under scrutiny in the federal government. Typically big programs like this, especially know aircraft programs like this it is usually just one winner for a competition like this. That being said in general and we saw everything sort of come off the lows here in the afternoon but once again for the most part you saw defense names under pressure today. They've been under pressure really since the election outcome and the reason is because of all the focus on Doge, and we know Elon Musk was visiting

the Pentagon today. We know the defense secretary, Hegseth, has been cutting certain programs, another call it half a billion dollars, that was announced yesterday. And so defense stocks have been selling off. What I would say, and I was talking to Tony Bancroft over at the belly funds, he runs the aerospace and defense investments over there. He was talking about this too, is that the market seems to be missing it here

because case in point with this NGAD award today and some of the other big awards that are expected to come or big programs that are expected to materialize like Golden Dome, which is going to be tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars to build out. This is about reallocating defense dollars, which will ultimately be good for the defense sector and cutting them away from things that are not necessarily

about modernizing the military. So overall, this could actually be bullish, even as the stocks sell off. Okay, we'll see. Well, for now, let's turn to Senior Markets commentator Mike Santoli for a look at key levels to watch if you're going to believe this rebound. Mike? Yeah, John, kind of a mixed conclusion after this week's action.

I don't think the S&P 500 did anything in particular to compromise the notion that last week saw a pretty credible low on a tactical basis, but we didn't get escape velocity by any means, kind of flattish on a week-to-date basis down from Monday's rally and we're also at this level from right back here I've been talking about for a while that's the mid-July high it was exactly 56 67 we're still looking up at the 200 day moving average now it's okay to spend you know a couple three weeks maybe or more below that level as long as you don't really lose too much more ground in the last ten years or so ten percent corrections which is what we just had about half of more below that level as long as you don't really lose too much more ground in the last

ten years or so ten percent corrections which is what we just had about half of them go significantly further than that and half of them you find some traction there now take a look at some seasonal patterns it's supposed to be a better time of year after mid-march for the S. and P. five hundred seasonally speaking. But in years following a 20 percent up year before which we had in twenty twenty four there has been some tax season related selling

at least that's the way it looks historically is what's impacting the market there in that time. If it was less than a 20 percent up here you see it's a little smoother path higher. I would say though maybe there's a difference this year because

we've been selling since February, right? You're down since February 19th in the market. So maybe we sort of preloaded some of that cash raising for capital gains purposes. This, by the way, from 314 research, this analysis. But the big question, Mike, isn't it, is April 2nd, are we surprised one way or another, not only with what the president does tariff wise, Mike, isn't it, is April 2nd. Are we surprised one way or another,

not only with what the president does, tariff-wise, but how other countries respond? Without a doubt. So I don't think anybody is sitting here and saying, we know exactly how this goes from here. It's much more about, has the market kind of tensed up enough in advance of this that we can absorb whatever might come on April 2nd?

Who knows? Maybe there's room for upside surprise in terms of maybe not having such a severe tariff response. That maybe was the market message from today. And then finally figure out some equilibrium beyond that. So I'm not suggesting, hey, stop worrying. Worry helps at least to get people having more realistic expectations for the market. All right. Mike Santoli, thank you. See you later this hour. When we come back, energy trader Bill Perkins tells us why he thinks natural gas is at an inflection point and how Trump energy policy could impact the whole commodity complex.

Plus, the Nasdaq managed to eke out gains this week, though Nvidia sat out the rally even after a number of announcements at its developer conference. But one analyst says the long-term bull case became clearer this week. We'll hear why when overtime comes back in two. Welcome back. Oil and natural gas moved in opposite directions this week, oil posting gains on the back of sanctions on Iran and a plan from OPEC plus members to cut output. Meanwhile, NatGas posted its second straight weekly loss due to a surprise storage build. So joining us now is Bill Perkins from

Skyler Capital Management. Bill, it's great to have you on. You say NatGas is at an inflection point. Why? What do you mean? Well, you know, last year we had the producers curtailing production because of low prices, and they're reaching capital discipline and that they're going to need higher prices to invest in natural gas. But they are turning on wells that they've turned off, so we have higher supply. But what's been going on in the Gulf Coast is we've been exporting a lot more LNG, particularly around the Henry Hub, about 3.8 BC at the day and rising. Venture Global came out and said that they found

efficiency gains of 40%. And so there's kind of this tug of war on whether or not Henry Hub prices are more related to the international market than they are to domestic pricing. That's certainly a shift. I'm curious what you think energy policy is going to mean for this market and for the energy complex writ large. Cause on the one hand,

and we saw it with president Trump meeting with oil and gas executives at the white house this week, the whole drill baby drill ethos. On the other, you've got all the trade and tariff dynamics and you also have geopolitical cross currents, including a possible ceasefire in Ukraine and Russian energy products coming back on the market. Yeah, it's a mess to try and untangle.

I think in the longer term, we can see rising production as they work through the regulations and the permitting processes that slow down development. I think that's a longer term solution, not an immediate solution. I think in the immediate term, we have export authorizations for LNG. Now, it takes a while to build an existing LNG plant,

or I'm sorry, a new LNG plant, but to de-bottleneck one and to get more LNG out of this country, that can happen rather quickly. And so I think the kind of the permissive attitude towards energy infrastructure is slightly bullish in the short term and bearish in the long term. Bill, what's the likely impact of a global trade war on energy? Does it lower demand? Yeah, that's definitely the bearish. You know, you're seeing that in crude, crude gets spooked. Anytime we're talking tariffs, trade wars, et cetera, that generally isn't good for global

GDP, which isn't good for energy use. I think global GDP and energy news are synonymous. And so you can see pressure from the macro strats exiting anything where we're looking at a recession or a slowdown in the global economy. That is a spooky bearish fact out there. So if that's the expectation, what's the surprise that ruins that trade? What are the factors that could cause things to go the other way? Well, I mean, if you look over to Europe, the prices are in the teens, right?

They're at $13, $15, right? And so, and you look over at Henry Hub, we're talking four dollars. And so that ARB is pretty large. And so as these export facilities ramp up, do domestic prices in the Northeast or Chicago matter? Is there even enough infrastructure to get the gap from where the gas is produced to where it's going. And so that's kind of the tug of war. If you look at your total US balances, they look fine. But if you look in the South Central or particularly Eastern Louisiana or around the hub, things look extremely tight. And there's a debate on whether it's too tight or short when the cooling season starts.

We're gonna find out very soon whether or not that's true. If it is too tight, you know, there could be a violent move upward. If it's not and it's loose, it could be under pressure given where we are heading in stocks. I realize this is a longer term dynamic. You just touched on the fact that it is. But are we gonna see more infrastructure built

out for some of these? I think about Marcella's shale and how landlocked some of that gas is when you're here in or where I live in New York state and you know utility bills continue to move higher despite the fact that it's basically in your backyard. Do we start to see more of this infrastructure build out in general domestically? Yeah definitely we're gonna see more build up where it depends on the state I think New York state is is very anti growth very anti development particularly in the northeast. So it's very hard

to get pipeline projects you know there's a band on drilling in the Marcellus. Marcellus is it we're not even drip drilling in the true Marcellus that's the upstate New York part. But in Texas moving the Permian gas across states into Louisiana,

over time, we're going to see a lot more energy infrastructure built in certain areas that are a little bit more, let's say, friendly to energy development. And in areas where the states are particularly harsh on energy development, it's going to be a longer, longer road. OK. Bill Perkins, great to have you on. Great to see you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Coming up, retail on sale. The consumer discretionary sector is pacing for major losses this month.

With Nike the latest name to crack after a warning about falling sales, we're going to talk about the names that could be worth a look at discounted prices. And later, we'll hear from the CEO of satellite imagery company Planet Labs, whose stock sank double digits today following last night's earnings results. Welcome back to Overtime. Nike falling 5% today, the worst performer in the Dow. On the heels of last night's earnings report here on Overtime, where it warned about a drop in sales

as tariffs and consumer confidence fuel uncertainty in retail. With Lululemon set to report next week, let's get the read on retail and the consumer with Simeon Siegel, managing director at BMO. Simeon, happy Friday, good to see you. Is Nike management just kitchen-sinking it here, uncertain macro, maybe trying to protect

the credibility of a new CEO? That would be nice. I think, hey John, good to see you. I think the uncertainty word, I think that's the word, and I think that's true across retail. We'll see it with Lulu. We've seen it in the last several weeks. I think if you and I were able to say this was it,

we have the light at the end of the tunnel, I don't think Nike, I think Nike would have closed up higher. I think that right now there's a lot of hope. I think there's still a little bit of confusion. I think once we can create clarity, that's when you'll see people jump in. What's the likelihood that we get a similar message from Lululemon? Different scenarios.

As you say, it's a new CEO. We have a problem of overextension. Lulu right now is still questioning right now, are they in growth mode or are they not? I think what happens with Lulu is there's product conversations, there's competitive conversations, and I think what you and I are gonna find out increasingly each quarter is

where do they fit on that maturity curve? International should be fine. The question's gonna be the difference between, and this is sounds gonna sound silly, for North America, for America, the difference between a positive one to 2% growth and a negative could actually have severe ramifications. And so there's general negativity around Lululemon right now, not because the brand isn't a strong

brand but because perhaps it's overextended and we're going to find out that there's room to give back. How much of this is a reflection on the state of the consumer particularly here in the U.S. versus the fact that there's just a lot more competition in the market, especially when you're talking about something like athleisure. So Morgan, I think it's a great question. I think that the reality is if we were to rewind and say, okay, we just we're talking about Q4 earnings right now, which sounds funny and backwards looking, but that's what it was. And so if we were to look back at the Q4 earnings reporters,

everyone feels like they were disastrous because if you look at the market, the market has been disastrous. Most holiday reporters actually were good. Most holiday reporters saw revenue grow. They saw margin grow. It was the guidance. It was this macro uncertainty. It was the thoughts of caution for the future that got people all concerned, not the actual spending.

I think that the US consumer, clearly there's delineation. Clearly there's different areas, but I think maybe they're getting a little bit worse than they actually are. I think we're little bit worse than they actually are. I think we're framing them worse than they actually are. People are still spending. Now they're choosing where to spend and there's winners and losers instead of like rising tide lifting all boats.

But we're finding in every sub-sector there's a winner and there's a loser and that's not an unhealthy thing. That's market share. It's also interesting and you're touching on it but we saw it even this week with some of the names are reported whether it was Nike last night or five below the

day before the fact that a lot of these retailers and apparel brands are factoring in possible tariff impacts and we don't actually know how any of that's gonna play out either so there could be potentially room for upside surprise potentially so in light of that and in light of what you're saying what would you be buying right now? So I think the question now is how dirty are you willing to get? So do we want something comfortable? Do we want a TJX where we need to spend up,

but we know that there's not gonna be a whole lot of surprise factor and that you're just comfortable, sleep easy at night. That's bucket number one. So that's kind of my right side of the barbell or left side of the barbell, whichever way the screen shows me on. The other side, the dirtier side,

the more interesting side perhaps would be Capri. You and I have talked about this one in the past. What's so fascinating to me about Capri, which owns Michael Kors, Versace, Jimmy Choo right now, is there's a market cap of around $2.5 billion and net debt of around 1.1. They are talking about potentially, or they are not, the media is talking about potentially them monetizing Versace and or Jimmy Choo, which could solve this net debt problem immediately. Even if they don't, Michael Kors generates a lot of cash. I think there's a really interesting dynamic where you look at the Michael Kors business,

which looks like it's been underperforming and tied into all of the macro conversations we're having now, but you layer that in with a balance sheet opportunity that makes the stock particularly interesting. When a world where the sun comes out and people are willing to bid again, I think there's a lot in retail that has seen meaningful collapse that then people might get a little bit more comfortable. And so that's digging a little bit more in the dislocation

versus the TJX, which is the comfortable safe place. Okay, so that goes to maybe put a finer point on that. Are you saying the mainstream consumer, if you're taking a flyer, that's a stock that you would pick for the mainstream as opposed to high luxury or a discounted? Sure. I mean, that's where they fit. I think the beauty of this is there's winners in luxury, there's losers in luxury, there's

winners in both of these areas, and there's revenue growers. And so for me, I'm thinking about this in the context of retailers that have fallen, retailers that have a compelling valuation with a really interesting balance sheet kicker. The fact that I've got almost half of my market cap in net debt means my enterprise value is too high. That will be fixed. That'll create interesting stock market opportunity. If I just look across where the retailers that have gotten knocked down, Michael Kors

is absolutely one of them. And very much to your point, that is not when we talk about ultra luxury. So appealing to a different consumer. All right. Simeon Siegel, thank you. Good to see you guys. Good to see you. Yeah.

And by the way, queue the QR code. You can see that too because it leads in perfectly to the latest installment of my on the other hand newsletter. This week's debate, our consumers tapped out now that consumer debt has hit $5 trillion. So you can scan that code on your screen or type in cnbc.com slash o-t-o-h to join the conversation.

Well, after the break, the S word on everybody's mind on Wall Street, and at the Fed. Tariffs raise prices and reduce output. So that's a stagflationary impulse, which is different from saying, this is stagflation. All right, well, we're going to look at what the data says about the stagflation equation when overtime returns.

Let's get a CNBC News update with Pippa Stevens. Pippa. Hey, John. Columbia is reportedly giving up the battle over $400 million in federal funding with the Trump administration. The Wall Street Journal reports the Ivy League University is giving in to demands, including an agreement to appoint someone with broad authority to oversee some of its international studies programs.

The White House pulled the funding earlier this month over concerns the school isn't adequately protecting Jewish students Hundreds of the SEC staff have agreed to take President Trump's buyout offer amid efforts to trim the federal workforce Sources tell Reuters more than 600 people have agreed since January The SEC declined to comment and a British Airways plane landed this afternoon at London's Heathrow Airport And a British Airways plane landed this afternoon at London's Heathrow Airport, the first of several to do so in about 18 hours after a fire caused a power outage that shut down operations at the airport, affecting thousands of flights. The airport's chief executive said Heathrow would be working at quote 100% by Saturday.

Morgan back to you. Pippa Stevens, thank you. One of the reasons the market has been under pressure is because of concerns over growth and inflation. So let's bring back Mike Santoli for a look at the risks that the Fed is watching.

Mike. Yes, so it's not really quiet on either of those fronts, the growth side or the inflation side. And this is really an illustration of that from within the Federal Open Markets

Committee of the Federal Reserve, the policymaking group. Now they all ask for their projections, right, around what GDP is going to be and what inflation is likely to be. And then along with that, they have something in there that says which direction is the greatest risk to your forecast. So what you're seeing right here is for inflation, essentially the entire committee saying that the risk is to the upside of core

inflation relative to what they put down on paper for the end of this year. And in similarly, or mirror image, that almost everyone is saying the risk to their real GDP forecast is to the downside. So this is what gives that feel of things moving in a stagflationary direction, even though the situation we're in right now could not be really described at that with 4% unemployment and 2.5% inflation. So I do think this sort of encapsulates what the overall markets have been dealing with here. I do want to point out, though, look at the prior time we had this kind of wide gap, right? That was like 2022 when everyone thought we needed a recession to kill inflation. It didn't happen that way.

And so the economy managed to be a little more resilient on both fronts than was expected. I have to tell you, I think Steve Leesman will be proud of you for pulling this out of the Fed's forecast this week. Proud of me for a change, you mean? Yeah, just because I know he pays attention to this when it comes to the dot plot and the forecast and sort of where everything's headed and why. That's right. And it does seem like it's very reflective of the trade wars as they're playing out and given what we know from a limited certainty place.

Exactly, and you know, it's not unrelated that we had this little bit of a soft start to the year and then it got compounded by the possibility of a very aggressive terrorist that might undermine whatever momentum we did have. But I do think it also is illustrative of the way people are essentially kind of disclaiming any conviction in their outlook. And then Fed Chair Powell said something like that too. So I'll channel Steve Leesman one of his favorite sayings is if you're not confused you're not paying attention. All right, Mike Santoli, thank you. Well, shares of imaging satellites maker Planet Labs sinking after a weaker than expected first quarter outlook.

Up next, CEO Will Marshall breaks down the results and the role that Gen. AI is having on his business. That's an exclusive interview. Plus, Nvidia shares now lower for four out of the last five weeks, but later we'll hear from a top technology analyst who's even more long-term bullish on the company after attending this developer conference.

We'll be right back. Well, shares of Planet Labs falling today after satellite imagery and Earth Observation Data Company reported revenue guidance that disappointed Wall Street, even as the backlog jumped 115% quarter over quarter and Planet posted its first quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA Now I asked planet CEO chair and co-founder will Marshall about the forecast

We're putting out a plan that we feel very confident that we can hit it is a Strong growth, but it's Accelerating growth and what we can say is, as you mentioned, that we got really strong increasing backlog. Our backlog of business grew more than doubled quarter on quarter because of a lot of the deals we've been making. And that it gives us not just the ability to give guidance for this full year. And we believe that's good, but then it also gives us line of sight towards strong revenue growth acceleration next year. And we've even put out that we are able to have line of sight

to get to positive cash flow in 24 month period as well. And we sit on a pretty good cash balance. So we feel very good that we don't need to go back to the financial markets for any further capital infusion. So an inflection point perhaps. Planet Tau's the largest Earth observation fleet of imaging satellites. It builds and operates them for both government and commercial customers. Planet unveiling first light images of its Pelican 2 satellite this week as well. And it uses NVIDIA's Jetson platform for that spacecraft. Now with NVIDIA forging further into space partnerships at GTC this week and Jetson-Huang even touting future

data centers from space, I asked Marshall about the role of GEN.AI in planet's business. As I mentioned getting answers quicker to our users by putting these chips, these GPUs, upstairs in our sat-lines so that instead of downloading the image and then do the processing downstairs, we can do it upstairs and get then the answer back within minutes rather than hours. For example, just think of the disaster response after the LA wildfires. We were helping as quickly as we could, but it still took several hours before we had images and then AI on top that then did building damage assessment to help relief operators, the fire relief operators there. If we could get that down to minutes, minutes means helping

save lives. So this is important for our customers. It's important in the security arena as well. Our defense and intelligence users want faster access to data. There's many use cases where this is a value. Now, Planet is also using Anthropics large language models on all of its data for customers. The stock has plunged from recent highs. It finished down about 10.5 percent today. It's still up more than 80% over the past six months though.

And a reason for that is the fact that it could benefit from changes under the Trump administration to contracting and the fact that you have government teaming up with commercial space and defense tech companies, perhaps in new and increasing ways. So for the full interview with Planets Will Marshall, check out Manifest Space. You can get that by scanning the QR code on your screen

or by downloading wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, the CEO of One Tech Startup that's helping to fix the worker shortage and high demand healthcare. FedEx, one of the worst performers in the S&P 500 after missing Wall Street's profit estimates and cutting its full year guidance, loop capital downgrading that stock to sell from hold, citing those results and the potential impact of President Trump's upcoming reciprocal tariffs. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. LinkedIn dominates the market for mainstream professional networking, but there are thriving niches too. So today, John takes time out with a founder addressing a worker shortage in healthcare. Well, Dr. Iman Abouzadeh, CEO of Incredible Health, a startup that raised the series B three years ago at a $1.65 billion valuation. Abouzadeh is originally from Sudan,

but also lived in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the UK. She grew up with a surgeon for a father and she also then became a doctor. Her turn toward business came when she moved to the US at the age of 24. My parents won the green card lottery and that was life changing for many of us.

And the decision to move to the US has been a dream that I've had. And all my siblings are here now, we all had the same dream. And we not want to come to the US. At the end of the day, I do despite the challenges that the US has, I think it's the best country in the world to live in. And if you are pursuing excellence, whether it's excellence in entrepreneurship or in trauma surgery or ENT or whatever it is

that my siblings and I are doing. I mean, this is a fantastic place to do it. She co-founded Incredible Health eight years ago after working as a consultant in hospital operations and then managing product at a med tech startup. This month, Incredible Health announced it is expanding beyond making employment connections between nurses and hospital systems into also helping technicians to find employment. They make up about 30% of the healthcare workforce.

We're able to expand the number of opportunities that each individual technician gets exposed to and gets to embrace. Also on our platform, the employers apply to the talent instead of the other way around. So it's an extremely delightful experience for the technicians. And then of course, we do offer a whole range of career services to them as well, including career coaching, interview preparation, we help them evaluate offers. This is historically a group of workers that doesn't necessarily get strong career advice and support. And so, Incredible Health plays a critical role

in that as well, in addition to connecting them to an entire network of employers. So an interesting point here. In our conversations over the years, Dr. Abouzade has pointed out to me that her survey work shows nurses aren't picking employers just based on money, and similarly, technicians want flexible scheduling

and career advancement programs from employers. employers just based on money. And similarly, technicians want flexible scheduling and career advancement programs from employers. So the timeout takeaway, money isn't everything. It might be easier to throw money at a labor problem, but in high demand areas, winning can mean having the systems in place, aided by technology, to become an employer of choice. Employers are the ones who are applying to the technicians.

Well, Nvidia shares, ending the week in the red and now lower for four out of the last five weeks. That's despite positive commentary from CEO Jensen Huang during the company's GCT developers conference. Our next guest says he has found more reasons this week to be bullish for the long term. So joining us now is creative strategy CEO Ben Beharon. Ben, it's good to have you on, and let's start right there. What was it about a multitude of days and messages and partnerships and news announcements this week that solidified that case for you?

Yeah, I think there was a number of things. I mean, obviously, it's hard to be bullish against just the roadmap that they showed. You know, one of the biggest debates and arguments that we get into, as I'm sure you guys have all talked about too, is what is the degree that these customer specialized ASICs are going to compete or take share from NVIDIA? I think when you look at the technology roadmap from NVIDIA in terms of what they're doing with Grace Blackwell and Blackwell Systems going forward,

it's going to be very, very hard for those to compete. And I think they were extremely bullish about how much of the industry, not just the traditional cloud servers, but AI factories and this entirely new infrastructure and how IT is being kind of redeveloped for the AI era is being built on Nvidia. Like it's not being built on other things.

And so I think when you look at the ecosystem that's grown around them, they're deeply entrenched. It doesn't have any sign of that changing. And I think the roadmap for that capex that's being spent on the back of Nvidia just shows that there's still a good few years, if not longer, of growth behind them just in data center, let alone robotics and AV and all of these other areas that they're talking about. But to change the game for the stock trajectory, I wonder if, you know,

Nvidia has to tackle a whole new area of business or get a bigger share, even bigger share, than it's already got. Jensen Huang has been kind of the ultimate statesman, not just for AI, but now for quantum, for robotics, for all these things. But does he go vertical at some point and sort of gobble up a piece of what partners

have been taking? Yeah, I mean, I think they're showing that. If you look at what they're talking about architecturally, particularly within the Grace Blackwell systems, which is again, where they do the ARM CPU, the Grace ARM CPU, there's a lot more networking involved in there. There's a lot more custom rack development, custom boards.

They're, I mean, as vertical as we've ever seen them with those particular products, and those are different than their B, their B200 or B300 products where you can use anybody's, anybody's CPU with. So I think they're showing that, John, but I think you're exactly right. And I think there was a sense of frustration that I saw from Jensen, particularly in the financial analyst QA, where he really kind of went off saying like, you guys don't really understand and nobody's modeling the upside opportunity here when you really understand what we say when we mean, what we mean when we say AI factories, that this is new build, these are dedicated, purpose-built factories to just run enterprise AI.

And he seems to think that nobody is modeling that in or really understands it. So there's the, we kind of have a sense of what they'll sell just product wise here in 2025, which is where I agree with you, hard to surprise to the upside to move the stock. But I think I think he is signaling people don't understand the magnitude of this opportunity. And I think that's worth unpacking because there is a lot of growth ahead. And I think they're very bullish that they're going gonna continue to get a big chunk of that share. To be fair here, I remember, what, was it 15 or so years ago? More than 15, we're coming up on 20.

When I was looking at Apple, and people were trying to think about how can Apple be worth more than it is right now? And I was thinking about how many iPods would they have to sell in order for them to double their stock price? And that was just the wrong way to think about it. Because you know, who saw that the iPad and the iPhone and all this other stuff was around

the corner? Is it similar for Nvidia, perhaps, the areas that become available when technology shifts so dramatically? I think so, and I think that's why he's using this vast TAM expansive types of language. He said if the world's industry is $120 trillion industry and you believe that a good chunk of that industry is going to redo

their infrastructure, rebuild new infrastructure, because they need to build these AI factories, that Nvidia would get a good portion of that. I think he's trying to say, if we are at the center of this new intelligence frontier, this industrial revolution for AI and intelligence, we're the backbone, the standard that this is being built on, you've got to really look wider

at how much this is going to change every industry and the spending in that industry and GDP for countries and all of these things. So I think he's really trying to sell a wider vision. I think that's where he's getting frustrated that people aren't grasping it. And like I said, I think that is worth debating and discussing. What does this really look like over the next five to ten years? I wonder how closely you're watching some of the what I'll call Nvidia proxies that are maybe in the private markets and poised to start to go

public, CoreWeave being sort of the near-term example here as soon as the end of this month. Are you watching some of these companies? Are you assessing them and sort of what this is going to mean for the ecosystem and that transition to going public? Yeah, and I think you look at them and there's a couple other examples. I think DigitalOcean is sort of in there. They even mentioned Vertiv, which I think is an interesting company for liquid cooling. And so you're seeing, again, this is part of the ecosystem that's growing around Nvidia.

One of the fascinating things right about CoreWeave is that there's yes, there's public instances, but they just show that we don't actually have enough compute when companies like Microsoft and other big enterprise companies are actually securing GPUs with them. I mean, really, it just shows that we still need so many more GPUs, which is, again, we need more infrastructure, we need more land,

we need more space, we need more energy. All of these things impact in that ecosystem. It shows there's a shortage. It shows why there's demand and opportunity for folks like CoreWeave and others. And I think, again, part of that is just widening our lens to how much compute is really needed. Ben Beharon, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.

Alright we had an update for the NASDAQ, the S&P, the Dow, the All-Fittish Tire. Thank you, have a good one. On the week as well. The Russell 2000 though, still down about half a percent today. Yeah and next week it's going to be more of the same. Yes, buckle up. But that's going to do it for us here at Overtime.