Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Apple Takes Center Stage; Tech Wrap Up Strong Month 4/30/26

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

A critical round of earnings led by Apple—we bring you the numbers and instant analysis with Maxim Group’s Tom Forte and Bernstein’s Mark Newman. Venu Krishna, Head of U.S. Equity Strategy at Barclays, assesses the market backdrop and what this earnings cycle means for stocks. Memory names report earnings too. Amit Daryanani of Evercore reacts to developments across the space and what they signal for demand tied to AI and data infrastructure. Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes joins the show to discuss growth, enterprise demand and the evolving software landscape. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The bell's ringing out to the trading day at the NYSC Rays Summit, ringing the bell in at the NASAC. The astronauts from the Artemis 2 are doing the honors. Welcome to closing bell overtime. We're live in Studio B at the NASAC market site. I'm Melissa Lee, Mike Santoli, is on assignment, and we are counting down to Apple's earnings just about half an hour away. We'll get to the results as soon as they are released

and get instant reaction from analysts. Before that, though, some other big names that to report. Dow component and Gen plus two companies in the red-hot memory space. Sandisk and Western Digital plus Reddit and many more. Stocks, by the way, moving higher today following the big tech earnings bonanza yesterday. The Dow of 850 points. The S&P 500 up 1% closing at a record high, crossing 7,200 for the first time. The NASDAQ up just short of 1%. Record close there as well. 2% gain for the Russell. And that closes out a great month for stock. 7% gain for the Dow, 10% for the S&P 500, 15% for the NASAC, its best month in six years.

Let's get straight to Sima Modi with a look at the stocks driving today's game, Sima. Well, Melissa, the debate around tech continued. Tech heavy waste reported earnings last night, and it was Google that arguably won the most praise. Its biggest one-day jump in one year after posting a strong acceleration and growth, justifying its big KAPX raise, meta too, increasing the amount it plans to spend on AI, but also went to the market with a more than $20 billion bond offering. According to our sources, a sign that it is increasingly low. leaning on the debt market to fund the artificial intelligence buildout, CEO Mark Zuckerberg

pointing to higher memory prices and compute costs. Now, bigger CAPEX budget should be good news for Nvidia that designs the AI chip sold to all the hypers, but the prospect of heightened competition from the likes of Amazon that did say its custom AI chip tranium is seeing robust demand, citing customers like OpenAI and Anthropics. So we saw Nvidia sell off while advanced microdevices move higher by 5%. Outside of tag, but very much related to the topic of AI, Caterpillar forecasting a sizable jump in revenue goathe as demand for power equipment that is specializes in for data center customers continues to soar, shares up about 10% on the day,

and other AI infrastructure names rallied on Kat's strong outlook, vertive that provides the cooling, eaten the electric equipment, GE Renova, the key provider of gas turbines to the hyperscalers, all ending in positive territory, Melissa. Seema, thank you, Sima Modi. Oil meantime turning lower today, but Brent did hit its highest level since the Iran conflict began earlier in the session. Pippa Stevens got the latest details here. Pippa. Hey, Melissa, a big overnight jump for June, Brent, which topped 126. The move exacerbated by the contracts roll today. July is now the front month, which is trading right around the $11 level. Now, in the last week, oil adding about 10%, which is lifting prices at the pump with the national average, now at $4.30. according to AAA, while California breaks above $6. Lipout Oil Associates Andy Lipow saying $4.50 is in the cards for the national average over the next two weeks as global stockpiles draw. Now, the latest U.S. inventory report is telling energy exports hit a record 14.18 million

barrels per day. To put that in perspective, last year, the average was 10.5 million barrels per day. The U.S. also flipped to a net fruit exporter for the first time in decades. And U.S. production has an increase in refinery runs are flat, meaning that oil is coming out of storage and being sent abroad. In other words, with Gulf oil shut in, the U.S. is filling the void. Now, the draw means that U.S. inventories of gasoline and distillates are now down 14 percent and 17 percent respectively since the war began. And ahead of Melissa, of course, the very busy summer driving season. Yep, Pippa, you know, it's interesting because tomorrow, both Exxon as well as Chevron report their earnings. And I think it was when you spoke to Mike Worth,

the CEO of Chevron or when he was last speaking in Houston, he said that he didn't think that oil prices at that time priced in what was going on with the Iran War. It'll be interesting to see what he says now with oil prices where they are. That's right, because of course they have risen quite a bit since he spoke, but I think there does remain this disconnect between the financial and the physical market, which we have talked about, especially since we're now seeing an interesting evolution from the refiners because actually what they're paying is when you factor in shipping and other things, they're now paying so much above what we're seeing on the screen that their margins have actually turned negative in some cases, not so much in the U.S., more so in Europe.

We also saw some Japanese refineries have to cut their utilization rates. And so there is kind of this mismatch between what the market is pricing and what's actually happening on the ground. And then, of course, even once you think about the straight reopening, if you think about all those tankers having to get back into position, that is going to act at voyage times, which then also increases oil prices. So we will hear from Darren Woods and Mike Worth at Exxon and Chevron tomorrow. They don't usually give an exact forecast for where all the prices are headed,

but their commentary will be closely followed by the street. Certainly will. Pippa thanks. Pippa Stevens. Western Digital earnings are out. Let's get to Christina Parts. Nebelius. It's got the numbers. Christina. Melissa, Western Digital is a hard disk drive provider, so they store memory, essentially. And what we're seeing for the earnings report, EPS of $2.72, which was a beat. revenue in line Q3 to $3.34 billion. The margins were pretty good for the quarter to, a little bit over 50%, the company pointing to that in the actual quarter saying the margins improved, we did see that with Seagate, a competitor. They essentially own a, have a doopoly on the market.

For the guide, Q4 EPS came in at $3.25, much higher than what the street anticipated on a Q4 revenue guide of $3.65 billion. They are also anticipating margins to keep increasing above 51%. So an increase, and yet shares are dropping about 4%. Could be because of the run-up into the stock just over the last little while, especially after its competitor, Seagate just posted a very strong earnings report, guys. Oh, and they also declared an increase in their cash dividend. So 15 cents instead of 13 cents now. Okay.

Christina, thanks. Christina Parts Nevelis. Don't miss an exclusive interview with Western Digital CEO tomorrow. That's 1 p.m. on the exchange. The NASAC and the S&P 500 closing out the month at new records with both indices having posted their best months since 2020. This is strong start to the earnings season over, shadow Iran concerns. Can we expect the same in May or will have prolonged war force investors to rethink their positions? Joining me now here on set, Vino Krishna, head of U.S. equity strategy at Barclays.

Veno, great to have you with us, especially a day when the markets are setting new highs. Does this make sense to you? with oil at these levels, with the uncertainty in Iran, that we can reach these highs? Yes. So if we take a step back, I think I was here a few weeks ago, and I think the crew here was fairly skeptical because we had raised our price target in earnings estimate on March 24th, right? And that was at the peak of the crisis. And I think we were overwhelmingly looking first at the fundamentals, where the earnings outlook was improving. and very different than the historical pattern where normally you see numbers getting cut around this time,

but we saw the reverse happening. And then when we looked at the macro number, the economic growth outlook for this year is actually better than last year. Infreation has been sticky, but companies have managed that pretty well, and consumption has been very resilient, even though consumer sentiment has been bad for the last two years.

So overall, I think the U.S. economy is in great shape, But I think most importantly, the AI narrative had taken a hiccup in fourth quarter of last year, lasted well into the first quarter of this year. And then we have seen a massive snapback because what we were pointing out, that big tech especially, their multiples had collapsed from around 28 times to about 22, 21 times. At a time when their earnings estimate was actually going up. If you look at the consensus numbers for big tech as a group, which is max 7 less Tesla, the earnings growth expectations. 25%. Two months ago, it was around 19% on a consensus basis, right? So I think the tech story is intact. The spending is actually went up again. You saw four of them report right now. Adoption is increasing across the board. The big mega-cap tech companies have reported

major compute agreements. And then you continue to see fair amount of strength in the model benchmarks, right? And so the AI story is actually getting stronger and stronger, and so which means that you can start to see productivity gains percolate through the rest of the economy as well, down the line, not yet, but down the line at a fairly decent pace. So I think the story is good. So we remain optimistic. The last thing I would say is that the pace of this recovery has been so strong in such a short period of time. It does leave some potential for a little bit of a breather in the short term, but the direction, I mean, I don't look at it on a day-to-day or a week-to-week basis. You've got to have a little bit

of a longer-term framework, at least to the end of the year. I think the trajectory in the direction is pretty strong. Right. And you actually say that there are factions in the market that are underweight at this point still, right? And that's one of the reasons why you're bullish, that people are on sides on this, right? Yeah. So we did a lot of work on positioning and flows. So one thing we found is especially long-only active managers. They were fairly underweight tech last year. And they started reducing the underweight, but they're still underweight just that the magnitude is less.

And then, you know, as a selloff is happening in March, they also built up some cash position. Now that's being redeployed. The question is, where is it going? So on the long-only side, active side, we see that it's going away from software into semis, even still. Right? So that's what we see.

On the hedge-one side, what we saw is that they didn't really cut their tech exposure, but they were hedging it, given the strength over the last quality two or three years. Right? And so if you look at the flows finally, especially in the tech funds, even now the flows are not as strong as what we saw, let's say, year ago. But the flows over this last year has become more valuation sensitive. In other words, you know, when there is a dip, they are tactically buying the dips. Right. But when the market is going up and valuations are expanding, they're taking a breather.

So we think that is also about to flip. And the last thing I would say is retail. So if you recollect, in 23, 24 and to early 25, retail was a major participant and a major deb buyer, and they got it right through the whole sort of bull turn post-COVID. But in the last year, we've seen a decent amount of caution. They've been more hesitant. They've been buying more protection. And we do think that that is at an inflection point. So I think, you know, the flows certainly are supportive of this market.

But the magnitude and strength of this move is certainly surprising. But the sell-off was also brutal. It was. So you don't have to remind me. Vinu, great to see you. We've got to let you go. We have some breaking. Ernie, you can make that phone call now. Vinuk Krishna. Sanders are out.

Let's get back to Christina Parts. Nevel. It's got the numbers. Christina. A substantial beat for this memory maker. They make specifically nan memory. So that's a memory that is stored once your electronics are closed down. The EPS 4 Q-3 came in at $23. $1.41. The street was anticipating $14.54. Revenue also beat. The margins were really

impressive. Q3 margins coming in at 78.4%. That's higher than Nvidia's margins. And then for their guide also beat, the midpoint or the range was 30 to 33 bucks a share. EPS guide was the estimates were at 22. So you can really see substantial beat. And yet look at shares dropping over 6%. Could be because the stock has run up 73% this month. In the earnings, report the company talking about an inflection point for the company and that they've signed these multi-year agreements, which a lot of memory makers are saying that there's, you know, customers need memory so badly they're willing to sign on for more than one, two years. Melissa?

All right, Christina, thank you. Christina Parts and Nubless. Let's get some more on the results from Sandusk and Western Digital. Joining us now, Amit Dariunani from Evercore ISI. Amit, great to have you with us. Great to be here. Maybe no surprise given the tour and run. both these stocks have had in the recent boosts off the back of C-Gate earnings.

But in terms of these numbers, they seem to both knock the covers off the ball here. So are they supporting the re-rating story that we have been seeing play out? Yeah, I mean, you know, I'll start with West Indies, right? I think the numbers, to your point, off the charts good over here. Now, in fairness, they're not a whole lot different than what C-Gate said, right? So you almost have this previewed already. They're great, but they did not surprise any further than what C-Gay did, right? So I think there's a bit of an adjustment there.

You know, Sandisk is interesting. I think these numbers at Sandisk are, A, not only are the numbers itself strong, 80% plus gross margins. I like the fact that they have better, and I would argue, more structural gross margin upside than Inmediators right now. But the second thing, and I think this will matter on the call a lot, these new customer engagement that Sandus is going down the path up, right, where they're getting informed financial commitments from hypers. I think the more you can flush that dynamic out, the more you can believe that this is not as cyclical as it used to be. I think you could see the valuations like to ramp up at Sandisk a lot more than what you've seen so far. Can you help us understand these multi-year agreements that Christina was talking about, a company signing one, two years out?

Are they signing at, I mean, I'm assuming they're signing at sort of elevated prices for memory right now. How firm is that commitment in terms of if memory prices, for whatever reason, come down within the time of the commitment? Yeah, I mean, Melissa, I think that will be the key to understand, right? Historically, the fear has been these agreements are only as good as the paper that signed on, which means when things go bad, the hyperscaleter walks away and the memory guys are left holding the bag, essentially. What our understanding is these agreements that they've signed right now, we'll see if Sanders will talk about it more openly, actually has a cash payment that these companies have to make up front to Sanders, for example.

That would be important to understand. The other part I believe part of this will be there's a floor pricing on memory that they've got to commit themselves to. But these contracts are actually going to look, I believe, a lot like what Corby has been signing with the hyperscalers. I think they smell and look a lot like that. And if that's the case, if there is an up-term cash payment, then I think there's more tea to these contracts versus what you historically have, which are just handshakes. Are you concerned at all that there is double ordering, triple ordering of memory amongst the hypers, for instance, that may cap growth maybe two years down the line, three years down the line? Two years might be a very, very far away time for memory companies right now. You know, I do think if you break this down, right, this is all fundamentally going down to how many tokens do you want to produce, how many tokens you want to consume over time.

And I think if you take the framework, if you believe the world has to become more inferencing heavy versus training, then the market is more coming the way of NAND and Sandus versus not. So I would actually argue that I think Sandisk is almost where HBM and DRAM were a couple of years ago. but at the very early stages of it. All right. Thanks for joining us right as these earnings were released. I'm at Dariunani of Evercore ISI. Well, software stocks have made a recovery in April. The IGV is up 4%, but still trailing the markets.

Earnings just out from Atlassian, the stock is higher after hours, but has lost more than half its value so far this year. We'll talk to the company's CEO about the results and about the software slump. You're watching closing bell overtime, live from the NASAC market site. Welcome back to overtime. April was a huge month for chip stocks. the I share semiconductor ETF was up 40%. It rose every day in April except for two days this week.

The worst stock in the group, ASML, still up 10%. The best stock was Intel up 100% finally surpassing its dot-com-era highs. Cratow, Astera, AMD, also big gainers in April. Atlassian shares jumping in the after our session after the software company reported revenue of $1.8 billion. That's above street estimates of $1.7 billion. EPS also beat. The company raised its revenue growth guidance in cloud and data center growth,

both above estimates. Joining us now exclusively for his first comments before the call, Atlassian co-founder and CEO, Mike Cannon Brooks. Mike, great to have you with us. Thanks for joining us before the call. Thanks for having me, guys. Do you think that the concerns about the Saspocalypse will be put to rest with this earnings report? Well, look, I can't speak to the broader market concerns. I can tell you, from Atlassian's point of view, we had an outstanding quarter. As customers continue to increasingly move their business to the Elassian platform in ever-graded numbers, right? You can see that in the

total revenues of 1.8 billion up 32% year-on-year, cloud revenue up 29% year-on-year to over 1.1 billion. And this quarter, we focused on the service collection, one of our businesses internally, because it passed a billion dollars in ARR and keeps growing north of 30% year-on-year alongside one of our biggest quarters ever for competitive wins. So I can't talk to broader market concerns. I can talk to our business and the incredible strength we had this quarter, which is a credit to everybody on the team around the world. What has been the uptake in the quarter of Rovo, the AI offering? I'm just curious how consumers are digesting this

and if there's increased demand and increased usage of it. Fantasticly, yes. Look, Rovo is now used by more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. Rovo being Atlassian's AI platform and offering and collective of services. We pass tens of millions of robo actions in a single month, and it's really starting to show up in our results. Not only have customers increasingly using Rovo to power, their workflows and their business processes across many, many different types of teams,

from HR to finance, to technology, to marketing, but it's also showing up in results and in customer voting. The teamwork graph, the context that Atlassian has, has about someone's business, their processes, their workflows, allows them to do incredible things with AI that they just can't do anywhere else, to get higher quality answers and to get cheaper answers fundamentally, whatever AI tool they're using.

And you can see that because Rovo customers are expanding their use of Alassian. Rovo customers grew their ARR at more than twice the rate of non-Rovo customers. And our AI credit usage is growing at about 20% month on month. So just a fantastic story for, the software, the technology that we built, delivering business results for our customers and starting to show up in our business results every quarter.

And I wanted to home in on the notion of usage-based pricing. For a long time, this industry was strictly, in general, seat-based pricing, which was sort of the big concern driving the Saspocalypse that gripped your industry and maybe is currently gripping your industry, Mike. But you and some others are moving to usage-based pricing, and I'm wondering how that is rolling out and how customers are responding to that. sorts of changes you're seeing in terms of how customers perceive what they're getting out of the product with usage-based versus seat-based?

Look, I think the fundamental model for most workflow-based SaaS applications will continue to be seat-based, right? That is us being customer-led. The vast majority of our licensing revenue is there. It's the same thing I would say with storage or with networking costs. There's a lot of costs that we bear that are consumptive. and we include in a singular offering. There are increasing customer demand and sets of services

that are usage based alongside it. So I think the end answer will be a blend of both, how much is included in your default seat-based usage pricing, and how much is included in a consumptive element on the end. Again, Atlassian offers both, and we do so in a number of different ways. The teamwork collection, which is our flagship offering of the entire Elassian Workflow platform. Those customers get significantly increased AI rovo credits in that offering in their seat-based.

And indeed, their Timor Collection customers are using more than twice as many rovo credits per pay user as non-TiomO collection users, and they're running twice as many agents. So I think we're going to evolve through the pricing mechanics and different offerings, but in general, customers are seeing incredible value from our, rovo platform. And I just wanted to get at some of the concerns that have been gripping your industry specifically and see how what your perception of those concerns are now that we are at this stage of AI adoption. I mean, in terms of the concern that AI agents would replace some software workflow or that the usage of AI would reduce workforces and therefore

seats, have you seen any of that play out? We aren't seeing any of that play out in our numbers. We've said this every quarter. We had another great quarter for seat expansion. One of the things that drove the beat was our cross-sell, so customers buying multiple products, and secondly, our expansion rates, customers are moving from, you know, 1,000 seats to 1,200 seats, increasing their usage of the Alassian platform. I can say for us, we have incredible potential within our customers still today. Again, 75% of the Fortune 500 used Atlassian's products, but they represent less than 10% of our revenue.

And so we have huge expansion potential in our customers, and that continue to show. up in our numbers. We're seeing jobs numbers be continually strong in the areas that people have worried about. So I'm not sure those fears are going to play out. They're certainly not playing out in Atlassian's numbers in terms of how our customers continue to expand their use of our software as a strategic partner to their business. Mike, great to speak with you. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your time. Mike Cannon Brooks of Atlassian. We were just minutes away from Apple,

results. We will get those numbers and instant reaction for you right after this break. Stay tuned. Welcome back to overtime. Amgen earnings are out. Angelica People's got those numbers. Angelica. Hey, Melissa. Well, it's a beaten raise for Amgen and Justin adjusted EPS of $5.15 a share topping analyst estimates of $4.76 a share revenue at $8.62 billion. That's also ahead of expectations. One bright spot in the quarter, that's for Paffa. That's, of course, a heart drug that took a while to gain momentum, but it's really started to take off for Amgen. On the other side, prolia. That's a drug for osteoporosis. That drug's facing competition for multiple biosimilars after it went off patent last year, and it looks like sales are shrinking faster than analysts

expected this quarter. Amgen is also slightly increasing its outlook, raising both ends of the range for revenue by $100 million and its adjusted earnings guidance by $10 a share. It now expects fully a revenue in the range of $37.1 billion to $38.5 billion, and adjusted EPS between $21 and $20.10 a share. shares are down about 2% right now, Melissa. No mention yet of Maritide? You know, I haven't heard anything. The call is getting underway in just two minutes, but, you know, all the analysts that I've been seeing all the previews.

Nobody's expecting any updates right now, but of course that's what everyone's waiting for, Mel. All right. Angelica, thank you, Angelica Peebles. We are just moments away from getting Apple's Q2 numbers. Joining us now with a look at the key numbers to watch as Bernstein's senior analyst Mark Newman and Maxim Group Senior Consumer Internet Analyst, Tom Forte.

Great to have you both. Mark, what is the key number that you're looking for here? Well, hi, good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Yeah, we're looking at, I think, iPhone revenues and gross margin for the entire company. The company has been doing great in iPhone revenue and iPhone units recently. Slightly concerned that a lot of the growth is coming from lower end, but they are gaining share. So does that have any impact on ASPs and margins? I think that's what we're going to be looking at. And, and also, obviously, bottom line, EPS and the guidance they give for next quarter. The other impact on margins could be memory prices, Tom.

Is that a worry for you? It is a worry for me. The good news is they're doing so well with iPhone sales that they may be able to make up some of the pressure in volume. But I would be paying particular attention, Melissa, as you pointed out to Apple's guidance for the June quarter, and if we're going to start seeing some pressure on gross margin, from higher memory costs. That would be consistent with comments you heard from meta and from

alphabet, which raised their cap-X, our book on higher memory costs. Or Mark, would Apple be more immune because it's got a higher-end sort of customer base and they can pass on those costs? Actually, in what, hold on guys, the numbers are out. Let's get to McKenzie Sagalos with Apple's results. McKenzie. Hey, Mel, so it's a beat on the top and bottom line. You're looking at EPS of $2.1 versus the $1.9. cent estimate revenue also beat 111.2 billion versus a $109.6 billion estimate. I spoke with CFO Kevin Perrek a short time ago. He said that this is a record for the March quarter. Moving on to iPhone sales segment, that's actually a slight miss here at $56.9 billion versus the $57.2 billion

estimate. This is its second revenue miss in three quarters. Moving on to services, CFO Preck telling me, best quarter ever there, 30.98. billion versus the estimate of 30.39 billion. That is up 16% year over year. The max segment also coming in ahead of the street at 8.39 billion. That's a 6% boost year over year. iPad beating 6.9 billion versus 6.66 billion. Really chalking that up to the M4 powered iPad air. Prec really pointing to that as a bright spot for the iPad segment. And we've got that wearables home and accessory segment coming in at 7.9 billion, up 5% year over year. Now, I want to point to some comments that we got from CEO Tim Cook.

He spoke to our Jim Kramer a short time ago. On China, he said he thinks the relationship between the governments is better today than it was last year. And so he thinks that that's a positive, but that the thing that is driven their business is that the product has really resonated with the customer. Tim Cook also weighing in on the Macs said that they couldn't be happier with the enthusiasm that they've seen for the most advanced Mac lineup in the company's history. huge excitement for MacBook Neo, a product that has been championed by John Turner, the incoming CEO. He said, Cook adding that huge excitement for the MacBook Neo, which really opens up the Mac experience to a whole new range of customers. On the Mac Mini, Cook saying that there is huge demand here, that they, I mean, so much so that they couldn't fulfill at all. They had supply

constraints during the quarter. They still have supply constraints. And they'll most likely have them for the next several months. So huge appetite there for that product. Last thing I will say on that Google partnership because Gemini is powering this rebooted Siri, this new AI strategy for Apple. Tim Cook saying that the relationship with Google is going well and saying that they can't wait for WWDC, their big annual developers conference coming up in June. Guys, those shares down half a percent.

So maybe it's that iPhone segment miss that is weighing down sentiment. Yeah, McKenzie, thank you. Keep us posted. McKenzie Sagalos out in Cupertino for us. Mark and Tom, we got the numbers now. There was an iPhone miss. I mean, at the heart of it, Apple is an iPhone company. How concerning is this missed for you, Mark?

Not really concerned. I mean, actually, if you look at the numbers, it's not, it's pretty close. And we actually, from third-party sources, we noted in our Apple tracker that the ASP was trending a little bit lighter than expected. So we actually expected that the iPhone revenue could have been actually worse than this. So I feel pretty good about the number as it is. Obviously, we need to go through a few more details to see what's trending and some of the details from the guidance will learn from the call. But that's what I'm going to be looking out for really is the guidance for iPhone going into the next quarter, including the gross margin. And how is that holding up, given, as you said, memory headwinds and other things going on in the market

and a little bit more strength in the 17e, the lower end, which may weigh a little bit on margins going forward. but I feel pretty good about these numbers, actually. Okay. Tom, your first take on the numbers. Yeah, so my first take, Melissa, is if you're looking at iPhones, you probably still had close to 20% growth there, which is very impressive. I do think that at some point in time, I look forward to the transition from Tim to John, and I think one of the things that Tim did so amazingly well was have an enduring product lifecycle for the iPhone.

The fact, it's still more than 50% of revenues today, and it first came out back in 2007. So at some point in time, I'm looking to see from John, and if he thinks he can sustain that kind of momentum. And Melissa, I'm also encouraged that they beat on top and bottom line, despite the iPhone sales coming in a little short. Mark, I'm curious what you want to hear on the conference call, given, you know, this is going to be a transition year for Apple.

There are a lot of big changes, obviously, with a new CEO, a relatively new CFO in place. We've got the transition from the 17th cycle to the 18th cycle. We've got, you know, a revamped Siri, supposedly, you know, re-igniting sort of Apple's entry into the AI race. What do you want to hear on the call about sort of the roadmap ahead at this critical moment? I mean, I'm most excited to hear anything else they can tell us about Siri, new and improved Siri and Apple Intelligence.

I really think that is the key potential upside for the company and the stock. So any information around that, I'm very happy to hear that Tim Cook, mentioned about that on your earlier comments. And then other products coming out, the defaultable, some worries that the foldable was going to get pushed out a bit. I would love to hear anything on that. They may not say anything on that on the call. They often don't say details like that, but that's the other thing I'd be looking for.

And then, as I said, they often guide to a gross margin. And, you know, we'd expect gross margin to come down a bit as seasonally as normal. in the next quarter, but how much would give us a good idea on what the impact is from this low end doing extremely well. I mean, they are gaining share dramatically in the low end. And so to see if that's going to continue. We do want to go back to McKenzie Zagal. She's got more from the quarter, Mac. Hey, Mel, I got the gross margin for you. The concern going into the print was that memory cost inflation might show up, but it's beating at 49.3% versus the 30.

48.4% estimate. CFO Kevin Perak telling me a short time ago that it's above the high end of guidance range. Greater China coming in at $20.5 billion. That is 28% up from the year ago quarter. Cash on hand hitting $146.6 billion. And then we're also getting info on the cash dividend. Apple increasing that by 4% to 27 cents per share. And finally, the company authorizing an additional $100 billion share buyback, just like they did last year. That brings it up to roughly $500 billion over the last five years. A big part of why we've seen that share price go up. Shares now, you know, trading roughly flat. Mel? Yeah, Mac, thanks. Mack, thanks, Mackenzie Segalos. Tom, I'll go to you on this gross margin number, which we finally got better than expected, but of course that doesn't inform us

about what could happen in Q3. I agree, Melissa, and I am more concerned about the second half of the calendar year when it comes to the potential for memory inflation to affect Apple. I am encouraged by the performance in the March quarter, and I think the $100 billion in repurchase is a reminder. I think sometimes that $350 billion to $4 trillion moved by Tim Cook, too much credits given to buybacks. But it's encouraging that John Ternis will also have a very large buyback to support his efforts when he takes over on September 1st. Yeah. Mark, I saw you sort of shaking your head. Not bad. Forty9.3 versus 48.4. On the gross margin, I mean, I don't know what else you had reaction to. We had the greater China numbers, which are up 28% year-on-year.

Yeah, no, I mean, the gross margin is phenomenal. The company is doing phenomenally well here despite all these headwinds from memory. It's because they have the greatest supply chain management of any other OEM. This is what Tim Cook's been great at, and it shows forth in these numbers. Despite memory prices going up 300-400%, they're still expanding margins. It's pretty amazing. And that's due to their long-term contracts with a lot of their suppliers and continue to out-execute because of that. And so, yeah, we've got to be looking for more details on guidance for next quarter and how they see margin going into that quarter.

I think we're particularly interested. The other thing I'd mention is that new products coming out later in the year, any kind of comment that they have about that would be interested as well. Yeah, I mean, Ternus is a hardware guy, Tom. I don't know if we're going to get him on the call and if we're going to get sort of his vision of what Apple should be. But, I mean, Apple really has the only viable or most popular, I should say, AI device on the market right now. And so on that call, do you want to hear anything about how it maintains that position in light of everybody else, Open AI, meta, going into the space? Yeah, so I think that for John Turner's, it'll be interesting to see. It's a reminder that Apple's still a hardware-first company. They sell premium product, generate tremendous margin there, and then also support it with wonderful software. I do think what's different in the gross margin front is the larger percent of sales coming from services. I think that does buffer Apple for maybe some incremental component cost pressure. On the new products, the ones that are obvious to me are the foldable iPhone. I think iPhone Air is a precursor to that, whether it's this fall or next fall, to be determined.

And then I do look forward to Apple offering some sort of smart glasses. I'm wearing Amazon's frames right now. Met is doing incredibly well. And then longer term, we'd be curious to see what new products John has up his sleeve that we're not thinking about today. Can you buy, like, toilet paper from your glasses, Tom? I mean. So I can ask Alexa, Melissa, just about anything. And yes, I imagine that if I wanted to, I certainly could buy a toilet paper from Amazon with my glasses.

Yes. All right. Thanks, guys, your instant analysis on Apple's numbers. I appreciate it. Mark Newman and Tom Forte. Up next, we'll dive into some of the other big names in making moves in the APDara session. Stay tuned. Reddit earnings are out. Julia Borson's got those numbers. Julia. Hey, Melissa, Reddit beating across the board. Earnings of $1.1 per share far ahead of estimates of a 50. 58 cents per share revenues of 663 million ahead of estimates of 611 million. Now, this is a company that has never missed on top or bottom line results since going public two years ago. We see shares now up about 9%.

Now, daily active users of 126.8 million, about 1 million more than anticipated, with a company guiding to second quarter revenue between $115 million and $725 million and Q2-Ebadov, 285 to $2,285 to 295 million guidance both on the top of bottom line ahead of estimates. I spoke to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman who said, quote, as the internet becomes more sanitized and summarized and optimized with AI, there's an increasing craving for that human perspective and human connection. Going on to say, ironically, an AI internet makes the human internet, which is Reddit, stand out even more. Huffman stressed the value of Reddit's unduplicated reach, saying about 30% of their users are not on any other platforms. Huffman will be on CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Kramer tonight.

Back over to you. Julia, thanks, Julia Borsden. Well, Apple being on both the top and the bottom lines, up next, we'll discuss how investors should be trading the stock right now. Welcome back to overtime. Apple shares moving lower, despite reporting an earnings beat moments ago. The company increases dividend, authorized a new share buyback of $100 billion. essentially flat for the year. Will these results get the stock back moving again? And if so, is now the time to buy. Joining us now is High Tower Advisor's chief investment strategist. Stephanie Link, she sold Apple stock last year. Hey, Steph, great to see you.

Great to see you, Melissa. What will it take for you to get back in? I'll tell you, this quarter was really, really good. If you go through the details, we expected a good quarter. We got a good quarter. Earnings, you know, they beat total revenues up 16 percent, product revenues up 15%. I think iPhone was basically in line. I'm good with that. The real positive call-outs, services, services is 25% of their revenues and it carries much higher gross margins, which is one of the reasons why I think gross margins beat expectations and really pleased that they didn't get hit on the gross margin line because of the memory prices that everyone has been concerned about. We'll have to see what they say about guidance in terms of gross margins next quarter.

Here's the thing. I got out of Apple because they did not have AI in their latest phone last year. And I didn't think you're going to see a super cycle. We had a great cycle, even though we didn't have AI in the phone. So if they can talk about at WWDC with a about AI and they can execute on that, the stock to buy in my, in my opinion. So I'm going to keep a close eye on it. Problem is it's at 31 times earnings and I want it a little bit cheaper. But if they have a better phone with AI incorporated in it, I think that that you will get a super cycle. Yeah, it's interesting and maybe telling that Tim Cook told Jim Kramer that he's very excited about WWDC,

which implies that they're excited about what they're going to unveil at WWDC, which goes into that AI story. You know, we heard from the mega-cap tech companies either keeping KAPX steady or increasing KAPX. Apple, very little spent in terms of KAPX on AI specifically. Do you think now looking back, that was a smart thing to do? Well, for the short term, maybe, but for the long term, I mean, I think they want to make sure they get it right. And so I'm okay if they increase capax in a big way, if they get it right. Because I think if they do have AI incorporated into this phone, it is going to be a game changer. I think you're going to see a much a different cycle as a result, because we've all been waiting for it, right?

So I think it's going to be interesting to see how it all plays out. I also think the stock is down a little bit, by the way, Melissa, because the stock rally does. 10% from the March lows. So maybe it gives back a little bit, but I'm going to be, you know, looking a little bit more closely at this one. Yeah, it's interesting that you're looking a little more closely since the second half of the year seems to be what concerns analysts the most in terms of the impact of rising memory costs on gross margins. Steph, how do you, how do you view that and do you see this quarter's gross margin beat as any evidence that it can actually skirt that issue? I think they can. They have the size, the scale, they have the inventory, the long-term

contracts, but most importantly, they have services that is expanding, that's growing better than expected. At 16 percent, expectations work for 14. Again, as I mentioned, this is 25 percent of their revenues, but the margins are in the 70s. So, like, you're looking at a possibility of them able to skirt the memory thing, right, and then at the same time expand their services, and then you have a new AI iPhone potentially. That's a great recipe. I just wanted a little bit cheaper. Yeah, of course. I know you like your value.

Just to get sort of an overview of our sort of, you know, Mag 7 earning stuff. Did you change any of your positions today based on all the results we got yesterday? I did not. I'm disappointed in the Amazon action, but not disappointed at all in the results. The stocks had a heck of a run, though, so I understand the pullback, and I think it's going to be short-lived. For me, I think meta was way overdone. I mean, they had ad impressions up 18%. They had time spent that increased. I know their daily active users fell a little bit. I think you can explain it away from the turmoil in Iran and in Russia and that sort of thing, that this is a company that is trading now

at 19 times forward estimates. And they just put up 33% ad revenue growth, which was almost double versus last year. So that's the one I'm looking at to be buying. I just want to maybe have the dust settle a little bit, Melissa, in the next couple of days, but I will be adding to it. All right. Steph, great to see you, as always. Stephanie Lank, High Tower. Chevron, next on the big names on tomorrow's earnings calendar. Those stocks both surging nearly 30% so far this year. Up next, find out what to expect from the results. Closing bell overtime, live from the NASDAQ markets. I'd be right back. Shares of Roblox getting crushed after hours losing 20%. The company fell short of the estimate.

Daily active users is a key metric. The company also lowering its full year guidance due to safety headwind, saying its new safety measures slowed new user acquisition. That stock is down 22%. Chevron next on the big names on tomorrow's earnings calendar. Pippa Stevens has a look at the key numbers to watch. Pippa. Hey, Melissa, the numbers themselves perhaps not as important as the commentary we get on the call, especially since we already got an indication about last quarter with both companies filing 8Ks earlier in April, saying that while upstream earnings got a boost from higher commodity prices, the impact will be counteracted by hedging activity. Now, Chevron has the lowest exposure to the Middle East across the super majors, with the region making up just over

1% of its liquids production, that's according to RBC, versus 8% for Exxon and 11 to 19% for the European supermajors, meaning Chevron could be better placed to benefit from the current commodity price environment. For Exxon, Qatar LNG is about two-thirds of its global LNG portfolio, so investors will be listening for an update on infrastructure damage at Ross LaFan, since Exxon holds an interest in the two trains that were struck. Finally, production plans are also key with Kevin Hassan. saying earlier, the U.S. is making a huge amount of progress in increasing energy production. Melissa? Pippa, thanks. Pippa Stevens. That does for us here at overtime. Fast money begins after this short break.