Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: All-Time Highs Post-Fed: Intel-Nvidia Partnership as FTC Targets Live Nation 9/18/25

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Markets soar to record highs following the Fed decision as Allianz Chief Economic Advisor and former PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian analyzes the rally. Kristina Partsinevelos breaks down the major Intel-Nvidia partnership development reshaping the chip sector. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson discusses the commission's lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation plus broader deal oversight. Barclays Analyst Brandon Oglenski provides FedEx earnings reaction. Macroscope CEO and former Twitter executive Kayvon Beykpour (who founded Periscope) shares insights on his company emerging from stealth this week. Julia Boorstin examines Jimmy Kimmel's suspension and the future of late-night television.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, that's the end of regulation. Fans for the cure ringing the closing belt, the New York Stock Exchange. Thena Capital doing the owners of the NASDAQ. Stock's closing higher. Once again, record highs for the Dow, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ, and let's pay particularly close attention to the Russell 2000. The small cap index hitting its first all-time high, closing at an all-time high since November. And with money flowing into stocks, we're also seeing a bit of that risk-on-trend play out and other asset classes as well. Gold falling, that's a rare currency these days. But Bitcoin jumping back near $118,000. Also a big deal between Nvidia and Intel, Nvidia investing $5 billion. That's creating ripples across the chip industry.

The market's thinking this news will be good for some, bad for us. We're going to get much more on this deal coming up. And that's the scorecard on Wall Street, but winners stay late. Welcome to closing bell overtime. I'm John Ford back alongside Morgan Brennan. And we do have a couple of earnings reports we are watching for FedEx and Lenar. And we will also be speaking with the head of the FTC. He is suing Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

There's also a lot of other deal news that we want to talk to him about. And we'll also talk to Kvon Bankport. He started Periscope, ran product at Twitter. Twitter. Now he's launching his new company, Macroscope. At the same time, the yield on the 10-year rising to 4.1% today, despite the Fed's quarter-point cut yesterday. Rick Santelli is here to make sense for all the bond market moves. Rick, a cut isn't a cut for everybody, huh? That's true. And remember, the market has a mind of its own. We could have a Fed and an administration that has views about interest rates, and the Fed has control over short maturities unless they do quantitative

easing, but otherwise, the market beyond the short end? Well, it's based on investor preference and what strategies and trades are going on. Look at jobless claims today, and this is huge. Okay? Last week, we had 263,000 on initial, moved to 264. I was confused. Many were confused. Supposedly Texas had an issue. We thought that there would be a major revision there. There wasn't. But the current read of 231,000 was a big drop. And as soon as that happened, and that's a four-year chart, so they still remain rather tame. As soon as that happened, boom, interest rates pop. Now, look at an intraday of two intense. That's a 12-hour chart. And what you'll notice is right after initial jobless claims, the market's yield started to move

higher. It was fertile for that already. Let's not forget debt and deficits. And let's not forget, the Fed underscored inflation. Joe LaVornia was on today, talking about how inflation's going down. I don't know what statistics he's looking at, but I don't see it in any of the statistics. And if you look at a two-day of twos and tens, it's pretty much self-explanatory. The minute initial jobless claim started pushing rates up and they went higher than yesterday's easing day high yields, the entire Treasury complex shot up. So even though we're only up a couple of basis points on treasuries. They're very important, considering we rejected 4% in terms of a closing yield, and that's significant on 10s. But it isn't just us. Look at boons in the EU. Look at gilts in the

UK. Same exact two-day formation. We're all correlated because we're all in debt. Morgan, back to you. All right. Rick Santelli, thank you. We've got FedEx earnings out. Frank Holland has the numbers. Hi, Frank. Yeah, looking at FedEx right now, shares up just over 4% a bit off of their highs after the initial report was released. top and bottom line beats looking at revenue. Revenue came in at 22.24 billion. The estimate was 21.66 billion. EPS, a very strong beat, came in at 383 compared to the estimate of 359. Also, looking a bit deeper here at the different segments. When you're looking at Express where the company generates just about two-thirds of its revenue, we saw a beat on revenue and also margin expansion. Last year, margin was 5.4%. This year, for Express, it came in at 6%. Also, FedEx answered the question about guidance. They did offer guidance previously that the only had offered guidance for the current quarter. We now got full year guidance, 4 to 6% revenue growth compared to the estimate of 1.2% EPS between $1720 and $19. Now, this is interesting. The midpoint is 1810, a bit below the estimate of 1821. We also got some other information from

FedEx. They secured a new national customer Best Buy. We also got them to say that they're maintaining that the spin-off of FedEx freight, their LTL trucking business, will still happen in June of 2026. In general, a very strong report for FedEx. We're going into the report. I got a number of downgrades from Bank of America and Evercore. Very worried about the impact of the loss, the de minimis exemption, Bank of America, estimating about 17% of FedEx volumes come from outside the U.S., not all that de minimis, but they say a large percentage.

FedEx managing to expand margins, even with the impact that de minimis loss, that was supposed to really lower air freight rates. So definitely a strong execution when it came to the express business. And again, still playing a spin-off. It's trucking business in June of 2020. 26. One big question about this company is the impact of Fed rate cuts. Perhaps we're seeing a positive impact on the guidance. Again, the company had not offered guidance before. Some of its highest margin business come from manufacturing customers that directly benefit

from cuts to rates. Again, looking at FedEx shares up now, about six and a third percent after top and bottom line beats and forward guidance when it comes to revenue that was better than expectations. Back over to you. Frank Holland. Thank you. Fed and the Fed. We've got one day after the Fed cuts rates and signaled more cuts ahead. ahead, at least through the end of this year. We've got stocks jumping to record highs, bond yields moving up as well. So here to explain all of this, Allian's chief economic advisor and former PINCO CEO, Mohamed Alarion. Mohamed, it's great to have you back on the show. Welcome. Thanks for having you, Morgan. Man, talk about volatility in the, in the treasury market here.

I mean, you had a 10-year yield that broke below 4% at one point yesterday in the midst of Chair Powell's speech and on the heels of a rate cut decision. And now we're at 4.116. What's moving yields higher? And is this the right reaction from the market here? So two main things push yields higher. One is the dropless claims number. As Rick said, that was quite a number. If you look at it, it's the biggest weekly decline in four years.

And then the second thing is that people are starting to realize that when you look closely at the summary of economic projections, if you look closely at the dot plots, there isn't that bigger support for two more cuts. It was only by one member. So I think people are sort of revisiting the initial reaction to this was exactly what we wanted. We got the 25 basis points cut. We've only got one at the center, so things are fine. And guess what? They've now got two cuts. People are realizing it's much more complicated than that. So based on the data, your analysis of the data, the idea of this being a risk management cut, as Powell put it yesterday, does that make sense? It does. I would have gone a step further saying we are prioritizing the risk to the

employment side of the mandate relative to the risk to the inflation side. That's not to say inflation is going away. It's not. In fact, if anything, inflation is going to go higher. But the biggest risk to this economy right now is the employment side. You do not want the cliff effect when companies go from hesitating to hire and start firing. Because when companies start firing, has a way of spreading through the economy. So we don't want to get to that point. And the Fed should be as supportive as it can to stop us from getting there. Mahamad, the Fed chair Powell talked about the risks being balanced and two-sided. It sounds like you see them a little bit heavier on one side or maybe significantly heavier on one side than the other. I do. I think

they are two-sided, absolutely. And let's not forget that with their new projection, the Fed will have missed its inflation target for seven years in a row. I mean, that's a very long time. And six of those years, the inflation has been or is likely to be more than half a basis points above, more than 50 basis points above the target. So that's a major issue. Trapal did pivot because he said that,

while we have risks on both sides, he's paying more attention on the employment side. That's what justified the cuts. Otherwise, with the projections of higher inflation, higher growth, it's really hard to justify a cut unless you worry about the risk to the employment side. You would think the equity markets would be a little bit under the weather if you were listening to our conversation without a chart on the screen. Does it concern you that equities have been at these levels and even risk assets have been

trading where they are given what the actual economic conditions are and where you think the risks are weighted? Look, it's fully understandable. One, there are very strong technicals, but two, the equity market has got into this mindset, which is a very powerful mindset. That is something along the following lines. I know the sovereign side is messy. We have tariffs.

We have debt. We have deficits. We have a Fed that's divided at best or divided and confused. I know the sovereign side is messy, but look at the corporate side. Look at what's happening in terms of productivity. promises. Look at what's happening in terms of earnings. And what you get is a focus on the corporate side and a belief, a very strong belief, that you can decouple from the messy sovereign side. The messy sovereign side plays out in the bond market. And the only reason yields aren't

higher is that a lot of people who are in the steeper trade realize that this administration and perhaps the future Fed may look to, using the words of the secretary, bend the curve. Do something to make sure that the longer term rates come down. And you don't want to take on a Fed and Treasury that are looking some to influence the yield curve. It's so fascinating to hear you say that. I mean, we have U.S. stock indexes closing at record highs today. And globally, we're seeing this big bull market in equities as well. Does that have room to run then, especially if you do see this decoupling continue? I think it does unless we get one big policy mistake, which I hope we will not get one. Or alternatively, you get some

sort of shock, an exogenous shock of some sort. But the technicals, Morgan, are really strong. Look, valuations are high, but the technicals are strong. And if you look at what the rest of the world is doing, there were fascinating numbers recently. They are willing to buy American stocks, but they're hedging the dollar. So the rest of the world is doing the same thing, saying, I am willing to bet on corporate U.S., but I'm hedging sovereign U.S. And if both the foreign and domestic investors are comfortable in that mindset, you need a major shock for that not to continue. Okay, well, many people will not be hoping for that.

Mohamed Al-Irhan, thank you. Thank you. Let's turn now to the big investment of the day. It's NVIDIA putting $5 billion into Intel to co-developed CPUs. foundry deal, not AI chips, but Data Center and PC chips are Christina parts of Nevelas. How's the latest? Christina. Well, Intel stock actually closed 23% higher. Invidia up 3.5% while AMD fell almost 1% on news of this partnership that you mentioned, John, that massively really expands Nvidia and Intel's addressable

markets. Invita gets access to integrated GPU notebooks and enterprise systems using Intel processors, markets that they've pretty much been locked out of. Intel gets into AI infrastructure and high performance graphics. where they've had pretty much zero presence. They are both targeting 150 million notebook sales annually. This was on the press call, plus 25 billion Intel data center processors for that market. And that's actually real revenue opportunity if executed.

They did not provide a timeline. And while you mentioned there's no foundry manufacturing deal today, this could absolutely lead to Intel manufacturing Nvidia chips if Intel nails their advanced 14A process technology. It's like a trial run for a, much bigger relationship. And despite all of the political speculation, the companies confirmed these discussions started

before Trump took office and they've gotten positive government feedback along the way. InVedia was clear this doesn't hurt their arm partnership either with Arm did close down 4.5%. I asked Jensen Wong specifically about that, but he said since most enterprise clouds still run on Intel standard processing anyway,

they're just giving customers or more options and that arm shouldn't be down, and yet it was. John. All right. Christina, thank you. Now, for more on all of this renewed interest in Intel, let's bring in Austin Lyons. He's a senior analyst at Creative Strategies. Austin, when I saw this news, I noted that Foundry was not a part of it. And also thought about there's always been this CPU connection, both to GPU's graphics processors on the PC side. And you've, you know, in the data center, needed to connect some of these AI processors to CPUs at some point that's been part of the bottlene. who's got the balance of advantage here and how much of the upside for Intel is just that

Nvidia is paying attention to them. Hey, John, thanks for having me. So you're totally right. These systems, both in the data center and client side, are CPUs plus GPUs. And notice, there's two product announcements. One was about opening the AI data center door for Intel and Nvidia is saying, hey, come on in. We want to help you build rack scale. Nvidia based data centers and then likewise kind of to help each other out is very

mutually beneficial Intel saying hey let me open the door and bring you guys into the client landscape so I definitely think that it's mutually beneficial it's clearly the world's largest company signaling a big vote of confidence in Intel both in their products that they're going to jointly take to market also in Intel's foundry which manufactures Intel CPUs and then at the end of the day you know It's your question about, what about the signaling here? Is there going to be a brand halo effect? I definitely think, you know, especially for Litt Bhutan as CEO, this is Jensen Huang,

the market's darling, saying we're betting on Intel, we're partnering with them. And in fact, we're putting our money where our mouth is in investing $5 billion. So I think all around win-win, great for Intel. But, Austin, is this a challenge medium to longer term for Intel's messaging, both in the PC side with integrated graphics? This is kind of, if they're tying up with Intel. on that, does it mean that their integrated graphics story is going to be potentially weaker? And then, even on the data center side, where they're trying to spin up their AI chips,

if they're doing special stuff with Nvidia, is that going to make it harder for them to differentiate their AI offerings? Yeah, there's a lot of long-term questions. I think in the near term, it gives a lot of clarity. Intel is CPU. They're doubling down on CPU, and this is taking the best GPU they can get, doubling down CPU bringing it together. Long term, what does that mean for integrated graphics? I guess we'll see. Let's see what customers prefer. And then on the data center side,

yes, we still need to hear from Intel what is their planned long term. They've talked in the past about things like Jaguar Shores and other Gowdy chips that they were trying to bring to the market. We haven't heard much about that lately. Obviously, in the near term, the best thing is to partner with Nvidia, with CPUs, what AI chips might Intel make? TBD. Let's see. Austin, there seems to be a sense out there, at least from some investors and some folks on Wall Street that, especially on the heels of what's been a flurry of deals now for Intel, that this perhaps signals the end of an era and the beginning of a new one for Intel, namely the idea that this could set the stage for a bigger acquisition or perhaps a break apart of its broader portfolio. Your thoughts?

This is a new era. You know, Libbu is made very clear that he's looking at things differently. He's coming in as an industry expert, but an outsider. All options are on the table. Really, the concern lately has been around Intel Foundry, is 14A going to stand up, is it going to be funded? What are the geopolitical concerns? Litbu has gone sort of on a tour in the last month and raised money from the biggest government in the world,

the U.S. government, from the biggest company in the world, NVIDIA, and from SoftBank. And so he's really clearly shoring up their coffers, if you will, getting a sign of confidence. I think too early to tell, they've definitely structured things such that they can take investments for Intel Foundry separate from Intel product. I thought this was an interesting way of partnering with another fabulous company. And maybe this does start to split apart Intel Foundry versus Intel product. Now, interestingly, Nvidia and Intel here are coming together on the product side.

But this does look like a healthy future for product and a healthy future for foundry. It could set them up to a world where they can both stand on their own. You know, we will see. All right. Awesome Lions. Thanks for joining us with big moves. And both of those names in particular, Intel, finish up more than 22%. Well, the FTC is suing Live Nation and Ticketmaster over allegedly illegal ticket resale practices.

Up next, we are going to hear exclusively from FTC chair, Andrew Ferguson. about that lawsuit. And later, we'll get insight into the health of the housing market when Home Builder Lenar reports earnings overtime. It's back in two. Welcome back. Shares of Live Nation closing 2% lower today. If the Federal Trade Commission sued Live Nation and Ticket Master River,

what it alleges our legal ticket resale tactics. Joining us now for an exclusive interview is Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson. Chair Ferguson, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Me here. Thanks for having me on. So let's start right there with this lawsuit. filed in California today. Seven states joined in as well. What is the basis for the suit?

So look, ticketing in this country has gotten out of control, and credit for this goes to President Trump. He's understood this for a long time. Americans are sick of having to fork over an arm and a leg to take their family to a baseball game or to see their favorite show, their favorite musician, whatever it is. And he issued an EO in March that told the federal government and the FTC in particular, do something about this. Use your legal authorities to try to help Americans be able to do this thing that we love. That's a huge part of our culture, which is going to live sporting events and live shows. So we filed this suit today against Ticketmaster, and we've got three things that we're saying of it going on. The first is that Ticketmaster has not been honest about its pricing, that it's posting prices on its website, and then jacking up some fees after you move through the purchase flow, then that violates the FTC Act. The second, thing is that we say that they have been misrepresenting, being totally deceitful about how many tickets are actually available for purchase on the primary market. I mean, look, we all know when you log on to try to get tickets to a football game or tickets to a concert, it says

that there are a certain number of tickets available, but it never seems like there are that many available. And that's because brokers have been coming in and buying up huge swathes of them. Ticketmaster has known this all along, but it's still posting those ticket numbers on their website, that's deception. That's not allowed under federal law. And the third, and the most important is we've got this law called the Better Online Ticket Sales Act. And the point of this law was Congress recognizing that brokers were using methods to get around ticket limit controls, buy up tons of tickets, and then sell them massive profits on the secondary market. And what we found in our investigation is evidence that Ticketmaster knew this was happening and let it happen

because a lot of these sales were then going to Ticketmaster's secondary ticketing platform. And that means that, you know, Ticketmaster and these brokers got to pocket profits that should have belonged, you know, to the concert, to whoever the musician is, who's putting on the show. But generally, our musicians lower their prices so that their fans can get in. And that means that on these secondary markets, brokers and the secondary markets like Ticketmaster got to pocket those profits. It's totally unfair. It's totally wrong.

It's also illegal. That's why we're in court. Yeah, and I will know, Ticket Masters owned by Live Nation, we have not yet received. We've reached out for, but not yet received a response from Live Nation and Ticketmaster. What would you like to see happen to remedy these allegations? Oh, look, I mean, two things. First, I want an injunction that tells Ticketmaster, you can't do this anymore. You can't, you can't screw ordinary American consumers who just want to go to a baseball game or a concert so that brokers can make massive profits.

and Ticketmaster can share in those profits. And the second thing is a lot of money, potentially billions and billions of dollars, were taken from American consumers by Ticketmaster and pocketed as illegal profits. We want to get those back, we want to get those back and give them back to American consumers who have been paying too much for tickets.

And President Trump understood this. That's why he's had the federal government go out there and try to make this part of Americans' lives better like he's doing all across the American economy. And the FTC is proud to carry out. the president's agenda today. I want to shift gears a little bit with you, Chair Ferguson here, because earlier this afternoon, the president floated the idea of pulling licenses from networks in the midst of what we've seen play out with Jimmy Kimmel over the last couple of days.

I realize that's the jurisdiction of the FCC, but when we talk about media M&A, in particular, for example, the Tegna Next Star deal, which seems to be in focus in the midst of this controversy of the last couple of days, how are you thinking about this and does it funnel into your regulatory process for deals such as that? Look, we've got jurisdiction over a large part of the American economy and deals happening in the American economy. And my job, the job President Trump gave me, is enforce the law, enforce it fairly and vigorously and make sure we're protecting American consumers.

I'm not a telecommunications lawyer, but I do know that the Supreme Court has said time and again that Congress has the power to regulate the broadcast airwaves because there's limited spectrum available, consistent with the public interest. And again, this isn't my, this isn't my bailiwick, but this is what Chairman Carr is supposed to be doing. This is what the FCC was built to do was to protect the public interest on the airwaves. But my job is to take mergers that come into my shop, review them consistent with the timelines that Congress is given. And if they're illegal, I go to court. I've done that a couple times thus far in the administration. They're not illegal. I got to get the heck out of the way and let

free markets govern. Chair Ferguson, you just said in the administration, and a minute ago, you said the FTC is proud to carry out the president's agenda. I mean, the FTC in its charter is bipartisan. Do you believe in an FTC independent from the president? Are you independent as chair? I mean, members are not supposed to be removable before their terms except for cause, but President Trump has already attempted to remove commissioners from other agencies.

He openly talks about what he expects commissioners like you to do. I mean, will you vote in a way that diverges from the president if your convictions call for it? And can you name any issue where you might? I am appointed by the president. I am removable by the president. And that is what democracy requires. No one in this country. No one should want bureaucrats at alphabet soup agencies believing that they get to make all the shots without any

political accountability. The American people elected President Trump in a landslide in 2024, and they expect that he is able to tell the federal government, here is what the American people want, carry it out consistently with the law. That is my job. That is what I am doing. And he absolutely, like I said back in March, when he removed two federal trade, he didn't attempt to, he successfully removed two federal trade commissioners. He absolutely has the power to do this. And democracy requires that he'd be able to do this because the American people elected him, not me. All right. FTC Chairman, Andrew Ferguson, great to have you on. Thank you for joining us. Thanks so much. Well, from the FTC to the FCC, find out what the

FCC chairman is saying about Jimmy Kimmel and that controversy and the impact on media stocks after ABC's indefinite suspension of the late-night comedian. Plus, a top venture capitalist on his new startup with just raised a lot of new money. We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime. shares of Pallantir rising today, as the company agreed to invest more than $2 billion into the UK by 2030, also getting a deal from the UK's Ministry of Defense to use AI software as part of that deal. You can see those shares finished up 5% today. Quantum computing stocks jumping today as well, Raghetti computing, getting a $5.8 million contract with the U.S. Air Force,

INQ, partnering with the Department of Energy to advance quantum technologies in space as well. And a lot of green right there on the screen, by the way, even as this Quantum Congress has out in Washington as well. Well, it's time now for a CNBC News update with Kate Rogers. Hi, Kate. Hi, Morgan. The U.S. today vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that demanded an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and hostage release. The U.S. said the resolution didn't go far enough in condemning Hamas. The other 14 members of the body voted in favor of the resolution, which also demanded Israel lift all restrictions on aid delivery. Erica Kirk was unanimously named as the CEO of Turning Point USA, the conservative youth organization founded and led by her late

husband, Charlie Kirk. The board said today that Charlie Kirk had wanted his wife to take his place in the event of his death. Erica Kirk promised to make the organization, quote, the biggest thing that this nation has ever seen. And Florida's orange production hit its lowest level since 1932. In an annual report today, the USDA said during the 2024 and 2025 marketing year, yields were down 32% from the year before. The USDA blamed crop disease and hurricane damage. John, back over to you. All right. Okay, thanks. Well, Homebuilder Lanar is set to report earnings in just a few minutes. We're going to break down the numbers as soon as they're out. And FedEx shares. Those are almost 8% right now. We've got a top analyst to react to those results

and talk you through how you should trade the stock when overtime returns. Welcome back to overtime. Record day for the markets, the S&P 500, NASDAQ, and even the Russell 2000 hitting record today. Darden restaurants, one of the worst performers in the S&P, after the owner of the Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse chains missed earnings expectations in part because tariffs are making beef and shrimp more expensive. And investors are bullish for, well, bullish.

The crypto exchange swung to a quarterly profit in its first report since going public just over a month ago. Well, let's get another check on FedEx, because those shares are popping after their first quarter profit and sales saw a boost from domestic shipping. UPS shares getting a boost as well right now in sympathy. But joining us is Brandon Oglensky, Barclays North America Air Freight and Ground Transportation Analyst. He has an overweight rating on FedEx. Brandon, it's good to have you on. I mean, shares are soaring here. I realize that expectations were tempered going into this print, but your takeaway.

Yeah, Morgan, thanks for having us on. And we're definitely bullish FedEx, like that last company just, quoted there. But look, I think there's three things that really matter. First off, this company really delivered margins in an environment where the whole transport universe is worried about slower and lower import volumes, which we're seeing from U.S. tariffs and de minimis rule changes. So I think what we're seeing here is that the company's structural cost initiatives here are really delivering. The second point really here is that the company is on track to spend their freight business. And I know the freight segment was a little bit weaker this quarter,

but that's really in line with the other public comps. And importantly, it's delivering almost best in class profitability. So we think that the freight business is almost worth half the market cap of this company, if not more. And then thirdly, and most importantly, which I think most investors still haven't really figured out here, we're in a generational shift here. And I hate to say it because we really do like UPS and all their efforts. But unfortunately, that business is really in structural decline as Amazon takes volumes off it. UPS is trying their best to maintain margins and to shrink their footprint.

But what's happening is the cost per package that UPS is going up significantly. And that's really the duopoly competitor here with FedEx. What we're seeing is FedEx is actually benefiting from that. We're seeing structural market share now come on to FedEx as they're merging their domestic networks to a lower cost outcome. So we think this is actually in the very early stages here. Interesting. So how much of this is company-specific versus a reflection of the global macro when FedEx forecasts for fiscal 2026 a 4% revenue growth rate year over,

year. Yeah, I mean, I think the street was looking for something much lower. I know we are at like 2% growth going into this print. I think the street may be just a little bit above that. Morgan, I think a lot of this is really driven by domestic volume gains. That's where we were really surprised this quarter. And again, maybe not shocking given the challenges that's happening over at UPS. On the international side, they're definitely seeing some challenges with mixed. Priority shipments were still down. So I think management will definitely talk about that and probably have a somber outlook for global trade. But nonetheless, here's a company that's actually guiding up top line. Now, I think some investors might debate that. We just had a good chat with

one of the smarter transport investors saying, oh my gosh, they're guiding revenue above the street, but EPS kind of in line with consensus. But again, I think in this environment, you know, every management team is going to be pretty conservative with the outlook. How do tariffs factor into all this? I mean, you just mentioned de minimis. It's almost like de maximus. It's a huge outsized impact that I don't think we've actually even been talking about enough, especially we start to look at some of the e-commerce players and everybody that's attached to it. But is there a scenario, especially if you are seeing a pull forward an inventory or at least a push past, we'll call it peak uncertainty of tariffs? Is this actually a tailwind for FedEx here?

Well, I think it's a headwind for the business at large. I mean, we heard Lulu Lim in a few weeks ago, right? They've designed their whole supply chain to really take advantage of de minimis. So I think we're seeing wholesale changes on that level. But more importantly, we still have. have a lot of people employed. I know jobs are slowing here, but we're still near full employment and retail sales have been pretty good. So domestic package demand actually feels okay. And again, I think there's a structural share shift going on within the market. Okay. Brendan Oglensky, thanks for joining me. Shares up 7.5% in FedEx right now. Up next, we'll discuss the outlook for venture capital with the co-founder of Periscope, whose new DevOps startup just emerged from

stealth this week. Be right back. Welcome back to overtime. Nobu Nordus. A big winner today after announcing participants in a late-stage study of its experimental daily obesity pill showed roughly the same weight loss and tolerability as it's weakly injectable, we govy drug. Now, the FDA is expected to make a decision on whether to approve that pill later this year. Those shares finished up 6%. It's finally a dose of good news for investors, though, who have seen Novo's share price cut in half, just to put it all in perspective over the past year. Yeah. Well, meantime, measuring the AI productivity boost remains a murky calculus for

companies and investors, enter Macroscope, a startup finally talking openly about its mission. It's looking to help managers better understand the progress and problems in their software development. And joining us now is Kvon Bakepour. He is Macroscope co-founder and CEO, and the Periscope co-founder and former CEO. Kavon, good to see you. It's been a while. You like the scopes.

Good to see you, John. I like the scopes. It's good to see again. It's been a few years. It has indeed. Well, let me ask you big picture here about these tools for helping software teams work better together. In the public markets right now, for every Atlassian at a $45 billion market cap, you've gotten a sauna closer to four. What do you think distinguishes these efforts for success?

Well, I mean, I think, you know, in some ways this is a problem as old as time, and in some ways the problem is somewhat new. Every company, whether you're a small startup or whether you're a ginormous company like Atlassian, you know, you sort of suffer from very similar problems, which is how is the product changing, what's everyone working on, how is the code base changing, This problem is just becoming more severe now that every engineer is being turbocharged by AI coding agents. And so what we're building with Macroscope is fundamentally a transformative tool that helps you actually understand what's happening. But rather than getting that understanding the old-fashioned way, which is what every company does, meetings, spreadsheets, emails, bugging engineers, we're actually using AI to help you get the ground truth of what's happening.

So in a sense, like this is not a new problem. It's just the problem is much more severe because software development is being transformed by all these AI-assisted coding tools. So in a way, some of our viewers might be more familiar with the kinds of dashboards that the finance side of a business, the CFO uses, to understand how a company's operating. Is this kind of the software development version of that, product managers, project managers being able to better understand where the problems are, what the progress is in coding projects? Yeah, the simple way of thing, it's really, it's x-ray vision for your company. And, you know, you want to understand what is happening with the product. Whether you're the CEO of the company or whether you're a product manager, you want to know what do we get done this week. And usually you have to go ask a bunch of people, send some emails, have a meeting.

We actually use the code base as a source of truth, which for any company that builds software, the codebase is the source of truth. So whether it's what features that we shipped this week or what did John work on today, we can answer those questions rather than bugging an engineer. you have an AI agent that can splunk through the code base, consult whatever artifacts are necessary to be able to answer that question for you at any time without distracting an engineer. So how complicated does this agentic AI movement make this effort of yours that's fueled by agentic AI?

I was just talking with the CEO of Notion a couple hours ago. He's got this knowledge worker AI out there. You're charging for this by the seat right now, the human seat, I assume, but you're going to have software agents out there, I imagine, writing code as well. Are you capturing the value of helping managers understand, not just with the people, but also what the agents are building? Yeah, we actually have a hybrid model.

So we charge based on the number of active developers in conjunction with a usage model that charges on the basis of how many commits and pull requests, which you can think of a, for any software engineering company, the sort of core atomic unit of change of the company is how many commits and pull requests are being created. So for companies that have an extraordinary amount of AI-assisted agents doing work in the background, our pricing model accommodates that. But, you know, largely a lot of companies today, like the primary source of change to the code base,

is still engineers that are using these AI coding tools. So we think we've built our business model in a way that captures the value on both sides and can sort of ride that transformation. Is that an important thing for investors, both private market and public, to understand right now, is the shift in the model from seats, human head count, to consumption, which is, I guess, a little bit more of that other piece of the model that you were just talking about. I think there's definitely a transformation happening in the B2B space. I think, you know, there's a lot of discussion around outcomes-based pricing rather than seat-based pricing

rather than usage-based pricing. I think fundamentally what investors, what customers, what we as product builders care the most about is are you solving a valuable problem for customers? And, you know, the business model is obviously important to that as well, but fundamentally the most important thing is, are you solving the problem that customers have? For us, that's getting visibility and understanding to the right leadership stakeholders of the company, and it's also solving problems for engineers. Like, for example, our product does automated AI-powered code review so that we are helping, you know, prevent issues from being shipped into the code base. So fundamentally, that's the most important thing for any product builder. Well, let's not let so many years pass this next time.

Kavon Bakeport, great to have you. Thanks for having me. Well, shares of NetScope surging after going public. Up next, hear what the cloud and AI security company CEO says about protecting customer data in the rapidly expanding world of generative AI. And later, what's at stake for Disney and the rest of the media industry in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel's show being pulled off the air over his comments of the killing of Charlie Kirk.

Welcome back to overtime. Check out shares of Abercrombian Fitch. Those are rallying today, BTIG initiating the retailer with a buy-react. $120 price target, which implies upside of more than 40% from Wednesday's close. The analyst there citing a multi-year growth opportunity driven by strategic price increases and tailwinds from its Hollister brand. Shares finished up 5%. And a big debut on Wall Street for cloud and AI security company NetScope.

That stock popping 18% after going public at $19 a share, which was at the top of its increased range. Earlier on Squatbox, I asked CEO Sanjay Berry what sets his company apart in the increasingly crowded security space. There's more data in the past few years than the history of time, and everybody wants to leverage cloud and AI. What we let them do is we let them say yes. Yes, you can use chatGBT. Yes, you can use Gemini. Yes, you can use 100,000 plus SaaS apps, and you can protect your data and protect yourself against threats while doing it. So we unleash that innovation for them.

Barry says the company will turn free cash flow positive this year, and operating profit is on the horizon. Well, first, CBS canceled Stephen Colbert's show. Now ABC is indefinitely sidelining Jimmy Kimmel. Up next, we'll discuss whether we could be witnessing the end of late night comedy on TV and what that could mean for the media industry. And don't forget, you can catch us on the go by following the closing bell overtime podcast on your favorite podcast app. We'll be right back. Welcome back to overtime.

Disney's ABC is taking Jimmy Kimmel's show off the air indefinitely after his comments about the shooting of Charlie Kirk. prompted TV station owner and X-Star to say it would preempt the show for the immediate future. Sinclair broadcasting also preempting the show, demanding Kimmel apologized to Kirk's family. Earlier on Squawk on the street, FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who yesterday suggested ABC's broadcast license was in jeopardy, said this, this is how the market should work. Think about the business side of this. You have the national programmers, Disney, that create this content, and you've got individualized. licensed TV stations all across the country. And they're required, they've been for years, required to respond to the needs of their local communities and viewers. I think it was those local

communities and viewers that were saying, you know, we don't like this stuff anymore. And so Next Star was the first mover here, said we're going to preempt this program. We're going to black it out. Again, that's what you're supposed to do, a healthy functioning markets. I think, again, people sort of focus on, you know, narrow specifics, but there's a much bigger shift that's taking place right now in the media ecosystem. Well, let's bring in Julia, and for more. Hi, Julia. Hi, Morgan. Well, certainly uncharted territory here for the late night, the business of late night, if you will. And I do think it's worth noting that sources close. The situation have told me that it was Bob Eiger and Dana Walden, who is

co-chair of Disney Entertainment. They were the ones who made the decision to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air for now. But I've also heard from sources that it's not clear, yet what's going to happen over the long term, John and Morgan, and it's possible that he would end up coming back, or his show would end up going back on air, though his contract does expire within the next year. Julia, I wonder what this means for the business of late night overall. I've seen suggestions out there that the Republican, the president's pressure is just an excuse for network executives to do what they might have wanted to do based on the dollar

movement anyway. But, you know, is Fallon next? What about SNL if Brendan Carr doesn't like the way a joke was constructed? Well, it is worth noting that President Trump did urge NBC to take Jimmy Fallon off the air as well as Seth Meyer. So there is direct pressure coming from the administration, which is really unprecedented. So can't stress enough the unprecedented nature of this. And I also have to point out that these are not decisions that were made just for financial reasons, especially if you look at the pressure for this situation that came from Next Star. Next Star is looking for FCC approval of its $6 billion deal with Tegna. And so it's looking for that approval from the FCC. And so it was in response to the commentary from FCC Commissioner Carr that led Next

Star or prompt to Next Star to make that decision. So these things all very much seem intertwined. And I do want to point out that the ratings for late-night TV have been in decline, along with ratings on television in general, late-night TV has done very well on YouTube and on social media and has generated meaningful revenue on YouTube and Jimmy Kimmel Live happens to be the best rated of the late-night shows or have the highest viewership of the late-night shows on YouTube, and it is with that YouTube revenue that the show is overall profitable. So while the TV business may be in decline, there is profit from other parts of the business. So even if you see a reshuffling here with talent, and to your point, you see a ratings decline on the television side, but you see money making happening through digital channels here. Is this a situation you can see a reshuffling of talent and other folks step into these types of positions and maybe in new ways? Well, I think the real question is sort of what's the overall business model here? And these late night shows employ hundreds of people. And the question is whether it could be done less expensively.

I think the whole industry has seen a shift towards streaming, a shift towards viewership on social media. People watch these clips the next day and maybe aren't watching as much in real time. All right. Julia Borsen. Thank you. That does it for us here at overtime.