Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger’s First Interview Since Ouster; Twilio CEO On AI Integration 3/24/25

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Carson Group’s Ryan Detrick and Evans May Wealth’s Brooke May break down the latest market trends and today’s big rally. Morgan Stanley Global Chief Economist Seth Carpenter weighs in on the economy and impact of tariffs talk. Twilio CEO Khozema Shipchandler discusses AI’s impact on business—and how the company is using AI internally to drive efficiency. Alan Ratner, Managing Director at Zelman & Associates, analyzes KB Home’s earnings. Plus, former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger gives his first interview since being ousted from the helm of the chipmaker and an inside look at how China is courting US CEOs (again) with our Eunice Yoon.

That's the end of regulation international paper ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange here on during doing the honors at the Nasdaq Stocks jumping to kick off the last full week of the first quarter as a potentially softer stance on tariffs Re-energizes the bulls the Nasdaq climbing more than 2% led by a surge for Tesla. That's a scorecard here on Wall Street But the actions just getting started. Welcome to closing bell over time I'm Morgan Brennan at CNBC headquarters. And I'm John Fort. Joining today from San Francisco ahead this hour, Morgan Stanley's global chief economist,

Seth Carpenter, weighs in on the latest tariff news. And the one policy proposal, he says, is still an underappreciated drag on the economy. Plus, we will get to the latest read on the home builders when KB Home reports earnings results, along with nuclear technology company, Oklo. And former Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, speaks at an exclusive interview,

his first since being ousted from the company about Intel's path forward, what he's doing now, and if he'd ever lead a public company again. But we start with today's market rally. So let's bring in Carson Group chief market strategist, Ryan Dietrich and Evans-May wealth managing partner, Brooke May. Great to have you both here with today's market rally. So let's bring in Carson Group Chief Market Strategist, Ryan Dietrich and Evans-May Wealth Managing Partner, Brooke May. Great to have you both here with all the major averages

higher by anywhere from one to two and a half percent. Ryan, I'll start with you, because we have the S&P, it looks like settling out at 57, 67. So up about 1.7, 1.8%. The Nasdaq got more than 2% here. Can this rally be believed? Well, we think so.

Thanks for having me on a green day. It's kind of rare here. You know, one of the things, Morgan, that we like about this, what have we seen the last couple months? A lot of selling on Fridays and a lot of selling on Mondays. This is two Mondays in a row now. Buyers stepped in. Fridays up four weeks in a row.

The market's kind of telling us some things, you know, hate to say this time is different, right, the four most dangerous words, but we're seeing strength around those days that were weak and historically you tend to see strength around weekends in bull markets, so we like that. Now the big question, you know, last comment here, can it keep going? We think it can. I mean the first half of March is usually quite weak, the end of February's week, I know a lot of seasonal stuff is out there, but just the over-the-top negative sentiment, I know lots of guests have pointed these out there, but just the over the top negative sentiment I know lots of guests have pointed these things out But I'd say the anecdotal sentiment just people I have never heard from in years

We're reaching out to me a week or two ago saying should I sell should I sell? When you have all the sellers exhaust themselves like I think we just did on March 13th Which is usually when you bottom in March. I think we think this is rally has some legs to it interesting I mean just looking at the Dow right now We just turned fractionally positive on the quarter and on the year now. Brooke, wanna get your thoughts here. Are you as optimistic, dare I say, or constructive,

especially given the fact that growth, your names are really adding to this market rally right now? I mean, Tesla finishing up 10% today. Yeah, we are optimistic. We have a year-end price target on the S&P 500 of 6,500, which would be about a 13 percent gain from where we are today. And we think that's going to be earnings driven, more so than multiple expansion. The trick is figuring out what earnings are going to be right now. We're at the mercy of guidance from companies, and it's a difficult environment for them to

forecast. When the most recent CEO sentiment survey came out, there was optimism, more optimism than we've seen in quarters. However, they indicated that their biggest concern right now is geopolitical uncertainty. And a lot of that's stemming from tariffs. So the sooner that we have more clarity, the better off we'll be and most likely dodge a recession. So Ryan, yeah, along those lines, how much of the down market that we saw recently was about the tariffs themselves?

How much you think was about fears of slower growth and the uncertainty that still hangs over not only exactly which tariffs, when, how much, et cetera, but how responses will play out. Yeah, John, I mean, a big part of it, I think, was the uncertainty over tariffs. Like we just said, the uncertainty policy indexes are about the second highest or highest

they've ever been across the board. And you know what happens, stocks need to do a lot better when those uncertainties at high. Why? Because then you get a little certainty. Like, look, we just got, you know, okay, maybe the tariffs are a little more targeted.

You know, it's still kind of some bigger question marks and answers, but the market clearly liked that but again I'm a message of the markets type of investor two Fridays ago We had 90% of the stocks higher in the SP 500 last Monday St. Patrick's Day 90% of the stocks higher two days in a row We call that a buying thrust three and six months later. You're talking like stocks have never been lower, right? So with some really strong returns so to us, know, hate to say the bottom is in, but we think there's a good chance we bottomed

right at a 10% correction middle of March over the top negative sentiment. And now we're seeing the market tip its hand that the buyers are back in control. All right, cross your fingers there, Brooke, which leads us to housing with earnings that we've got here in overtime today. With tariffs maybe off in some cases,

are the home builders okay to buy into here with the rate cut picture though still uncertain? I think that it's still too soon. They are cheap. KB Home is trading at about seven times forward earnings. However, if this is an entry point, you would need to be patient. We saw in our report last week and they indicated that they think the housing market

is gonna be weak for the foreseeable future. The same will likely be true with KB Home. These builders have to give incentives for buyers, and that cuts into their profits, in addition to the uncertainty around what material costs might be and interest rates. So right now we're cautious on the home builders. We think there's better opportunities elsewhere.

All right, we'll approach these earnings with caution then Brooke May, Ryan Dietrich. Thanks to you both. Now let's bring in senior markets commentator Mike Santoli to gauge the reliability of this rebound attempt, Mike. Yeah, John, the bull's sort of in the process of earning back the benefit of the doubt with how this has gone.

Essentially putting in that low, as Ryan was saying, a little over a week ago. Today, this rally brought us to about a two week high, roughly speaking, and then we also went back above this 200 day average. I have a two year chart here because I wanted to point out back here in late 2023, October of 2023, you also spent two weeks below the 200 day average,

had a little bit of a V bottom and then built from there. So it doesn't mean it always happens that way, but you're within the kind of allowable amount of time spent below that longer term trend line where it's not really necessarily a big deal. And as you can see, it's still tilting higher. So, so far so good. I wouldn't say that it's necessarily finally proven

anything just yet. And also a lot of divergences have built up in this market. Take a look at the three major traditional Dow Jones indexes and how they've fared over the last couple of years as well. So you see that obviously the Dow Jones Industrial Average has managed to stay ahead of the transports, which really have taken this plunge lower essentially to the bottom end of this range over the last two years. It allowed the utilities to sort of eclipse them by default here on the lower end with

their more stable action. So the way I would look at this is not the greatest macro message for the goods economy. Obviously travel stocks like airlines have told us things look like they're in a soft patch right now. On the other hand, this is a lot of underperformance where it can just be kind of that gap can just close based on mean reversion if people are feeling less bad about the immediate future of macro here. So I wouldn't necessarily take this

as some kind of definitive market top game over macro worries is real, but it definitely should keep you on alert as we monitor transports today, which really didn't distinguish themselves to the upside the way a lot of other beaten down groups did. Hmm, Mike overall, is this kind of a tennis match? Investors going back and forth watching for policy news versus macro data and reacting to that? It

pretty much is. Yeah, John. And I think the piece of it that really matters a lot, though, is what got priced into the market implicitly at those recent lows. And if you feel as if that was kind of this compound drive, you know, kind of driven correction where it was growth scare plus universal across the board tariffs on April 2nd as well as the momentum stocks can't find the bottom. A lot of that stuff has gotten a little bit better on the margins. It meant that at the lows of 5500500 to the S&P, you probably needed fresh, new, negative news to go much slower from there. So I would say, tentatively, you can basically say right now we've made some peace with the

current state of all those factors, but obviously nothing's guaranteed for tomorrow. Yes, that we know. Mike Santoli, we'll see you again in just a bit. Now, continuing on this theme is the worst over for the market downturn and for a hand-wringing about the economy, that is the question posed by Morgan Stanley's chief global economist, Seth Carpenter, in a new note. He's going to join us next to weigh in. And later, don't miss my exclusive interview with Outstanding Intel CEO, Pat G Galsinger his first since leaving that job About what the future holds for him and for Intel over times back in two

Welcome back Marcus closing sharply higher today after President Trump suggested He may give a number of countries a break on reciprocal tariffs But our next guest says there may be more bad news to come for the US economy. So joining us now is Seth carpenter He is Morgan Stanley's global chief economist. Seth, it's great to have you back on the show. And what do you mean by that? Especially as we do start to see some of the data, particularly the soft data, show signs of slowdown here.

Absolutely. So one of the things I've been saying to clients is that the market's probably got the right answer, but possibly for some of the wrong reasons. So we saw a lot of market reaction. Initially when we got the Atlanta answer, but possibly for some of the wrong reasons. So we saw a lot of market reaction. Initially when we got the Atlanta Fed Nowcast, we now, I think, understand where the wrong signal was there. I think there was a reaction first to the January retail sales report, but now that

we've got the February one, we realize that that was a little bit of a head fake. And some of the softer data sentiment, it can matter, but I tend to look at what people actually do. And I think the data don't yet tell us what's going to happen with the slowdown from tariffs. Ultimately, we've already seen 20% on China. We expect more to come there. We haven't seen the slowdown in the data yet from all the layoffs from federal workers and cancellation or suspension of some federal payments and we haven't seen the slowdown yet and the inflationary pressures

from the restrictions on immigration. We think all of that is yet to come in the hard data but the market sort of getting a bit spooked is probably a healthy thing so they start to pay more attention to risks. It's

interesting to hear you say that because I think about the flash PMIs even today you saw manufacturing numbers declining you saw manufacturing numbers declining you saw input costs ticking higher again so and it seems like a lot of that's in anticipation of what we're going to see with tariffs pull forwards you know ahead of some of those levies going into place am I reading that wrong or I guess what would you be watching most closely to know that we're realizing the full effects here? Yeah, no, I don't think you're reading them wrong and the PMIs, right, they do ask people who are making real world decisions about things that matter a lot and so I think

there's some informational content there. I just think from the pure macro data side of things, we are going to see it start to show up eventually more and more in the payrolls data. We're going to start to see it show up more and more in the payrolls data. We're gonna start to see it show up more and more in the consumer spending data. And that's gonna be sort of reinforcing just how much of a slowdown we can get. I think people are looking for an all clear sign that we've seen the bottom,

and I'm just not convinced we've got there yet. You just mentioned immigration, the crackdown on immigration, you think that's gonna be a drag on the economy here? I do, we know for a fact, for example, that in 2023 and 2024, we had really rapid growth, faster growth than the US is typically able to sustain, while still having inflation, especially services inflation come down. That's because we had a big supply shock, a positive supply to the labor force, slowing

the rate of immigration, in fact, possibly cutting it off entirely, that's got to go in the opposite direction. It means less growth than we would have had otherwise. And it's got to mean less ability for firms to lower prices. We're probably going to get back to a point where at least in some industries, firms are saying what they said coming out of COVID, we're having trouble finding workers. One of the things we did see with that surge of immigration though

in the last couple of years is the fact that the wage increases largely went to, and we don't know what the breakdown is versus legal versus illegal, et cetera, but the wage increases that we did see in that data tended to be tied to immigrant workers. So if you see that start to come off, does that actually mean you're gonna start to see

wage growth re-trigger for Americans in the data? And if so, is that automatically inflationary? So I don't think it's automatically inflationary. I mean, what we did see is the bottom half of the income distribution eventually start to get some wage gains. But remember that wage gain started when we had the really, really tight labor market and businesses were forced to pay up in order to get

workers. So I think that kind of dynamic is healthy for workers, especially at the bottom end of the income distribution. Maybe we start to see a little bit there, but I do think it does mean for businesses at the very least, some wage pressure, some cost pressures are going to come back at a time when I think lots of people were hoping that we got past the worst of those cost pressures.

Okay. A lot for us to dive into as it plays out in real time here. Seth Carpenter, thank you. Thank you. Up next, Twilio shares getting a lift today along with some other software names as tech bounces back. We're gonna talk to the company's CEO about the volatile landscape for technology stocks and how his company is using conversational AI

in its business. And earnings from KB Home just crossing the tape. The stock is sinking down 10% at the moment. We're gonna bring you those numbers when overtime returns. Welcome back, KB Home Earnings are out and Pippa Stevens has the numbers for us. Hi Pippa. Hey Morgan, the stock under pressure here after a top and bottom line miss.

EPS coming in at 149. That was nine cents short of estimates with revenues at 1.39 billion. Also short of the 1.5 billion that Wall Street was looking for. Now the company did say that consumers are working through affordability concerns and uncertainties related to macroeconomic and geopolitical issues, which are causing them

to move slowly in their home buying decisions. And in light of that, the company said that while its sales have improved, they are reducing their revenue guidance for fiscal 2025 to reflect the lower level of net orders that they generated during the first quarter. Again, the stock now down 9%. Morgan. All right, Pippa Stevens. Thank you. Well, gold prices sitting right near record highs above $3,000 an ounce, but is the red hot rally nearing a melting point? We're going to check those charts next and later. We'll tell you why major executives, including Tim Cook, Ken Griffin and Dave Ricks were in Beijing over the weekend and what it says about the state of US-China

relations. Stay with us. Welcome back to Overtime Tech Stocks. We're a big part of today's rally including software names like Twilio which climbed almost 3% remains about 30% below its highs from earlier in the year. Joining me now here in San Francisco is Kozama Shipchandler, Twilio's CEO. Ko, good to see you in person. Likewise. So let's talk about what Twilio does and how it fits in the AI era. Conversation, communication, always been a big part of the sales process, the engagement

process, kind of inspiring loyalty. How does that shift in the big data moment and under AI? I don't think it necessarily shifts. I think what happens is, is that to unlock every one of these amazing consumer experiences that folks like you and I want, what you have to have is communications plus contextual data and then AI is really the activation engine for those two attributes.

And so, to be able to deliver a meaningful, engaging experience between one of our customers and one of their consumers, you really require that contextual data to be able to unlock that. What about the data management part here? I've been paying attention especially to that over the past few months because if customers data, if your customers data isn't kind of tagged, organized in the right way, AI ends up grabbing stuff that it shouldn't grab, using stuff that it shouldn't use in answers, maybe exposing information that it shouldn't expose either inside or outside the

organization, what percentage of organizations are actually ready, based on the way their data is managed, their old data is made available, to go full speed into this era? Yeah, I think that's a really astute question. I mean, I think that the reality, and this is why we emphasize contextual data, right? So first of all, it's got consumer consent.

So consumers are interacting with data that they've actually consented to give to companies that we do business with, number one. Number two, it's contextual in that it's reached into the various data warehouses that companies organize around. And then we're lucky in that we have a customer data platform. Customer data platforms, what they do

is they actually go and grab all of the relevant bits of data. And so the LLM in these cases, it's really serving as activation. It's not going out and grabbing all of the irrelevant pieces of data and information, but instead it's super focused on the brand and what the brand knows about you as an individual to be able to power that next interaction. Let's talk about Twilio's efficiency. You had an investor day a few weeks ago.

Investors were pretty excited about not just what you've been able to achieve cash flow margin-wise now, but what you're projecting. How are you using AI internally to drive efficiency? What are you learning about that? Are there ways that you can productize that? Yeah, I'll give you two examples. The first is that we're using it

in our customer support environment, right? So historically we would have human agents, right, interact with all of the various inquiries that came into our customer support line. Today, greater than 75% of those get deflected by using an AI agent upfront. And the reason for that is relatively understandable. A lot of these inquiries that come in, not surprisingly, are, what's my bill?

I don't understand my bill. Can you help me understand my bill? That tends to be the same, by the way, for customers of all types. It's like 80% plus of inquiries are around billing. That same technology we then went and applied to our business development representatives. So the folks that handle a lot of inbound sales inquiries, we leverage the same technology and in that environment we've actually seen an 80% deflection rate. Now the benefit there is actually doubled because number one

there's obviously the cost benefit of that. But more importantly, for the front line reps who would have otherwise handled those incoming inquiries, now instead, they're able to deal with something that's much more qualified. Are they? Do you have the right front line reps

now that the level of engagement required is higher? Is it changing your hiring plans? It's not really changing our hiring plans just yet. I mean, I think we've seen kind of modest increases in terms of our overall headcount. So I'd say as revenue has grown, the volumes of these kinds of things have grown. So I'd say we're getting volume leverage as a result of these kinds of things. And then as it relates to the productivity and the ability to kind of service a qualified lead, I think that impact is really, really significant.

Because otherwise, it's a human agent that's actually got to sift through everything else. And importantly, we're using our own technology, right? So as I sit here and talk about communications plus contextual data plus AI, it's really those three attributes applied internally. And then to the earlier part of your question, yes, we are in fact looking at

how can we leverage those different elements, productize them, and then bring them back out to customers. And customers, they wanna see that, hey, you're talking a good game, but are you actually doing the things that you're trying to sell me on and applying them inside your own environment? Co, thanks. Look forward to your earnings coming up before too long.

Great. Koshib Chandler, Tulio CEO. We've got breaking news in the IPO world. Kate Rooney has the details for us. Hi, Kate. Hey, Morgan. So the brokerage startup eToro now filing for a U.S. IPO. This is according to a new SEC filing.

This is basically a Robinhood competitor. It's an Israeli startup that offers stock trading. Etor does plan to list on the NASDAQ under the symbol E-T-O-R. Etor, this marks the company's second attempt to go public. It had initially planned to try to go public via SPAC back in 2021. It was a more than $10 billion deal at that point. It was called off due to regulatory hurdles and then market conditions at the time. There is no SEC details here around the valuation, but it has been reported that this eToro deal

will be around $5 billion on the second attempt. One of the regulatory issues was cryptocurrency. eToro did settle charges with the SEC. It paid a $1.5 million fine related to operating as an unregistered broker and clearing agency here in the U.S. There are some risks listed in the F1 filing, not an S1, it's a foreign company, but results, they say will have significantly, they will significantly fluctuate from period to period. They talk about market volatility.

It's similar to what you would see with a Robinhood and a Coinbase quarter to quarter on the risk side. They do mention the changing regulatory landscape as one of the risks they call it complex another risk They mention here in the filing conditions in Israel including the ongoing hostilities between Israel and Hamas and other turmoil in the region Goldman Jeffries UBS are among some of the bankers and underwriters on this deal guys back to you. All right, Kate Rooney Thank you So clarinus dub hub are among some of the bankers and underwriters on this deal guys back to you. All right Kate Rooney thank you so Klarna, StubHub, eToro and CoreWeave which could actually start trading before the end of this week.

It's time now for CNBC News Update with Julia Boorstin. Julia. Morgan the White House is reviewing how the editor in chief of the Atlantic was added to a group text where top members of the national security team discussed plans to strike Houthi militants in Yemen. The National Security Council says the message thread appears to be authentic. The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg detailed the exchanges

in an article today. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court today to block a district court judge's order to immediately reinstate 16,000 fired federal probationary employees. Lawyers for the administration argued that the labor unions and nonprofits that challenged the mass firings, quote, hijacked the employment relationship

between the federal government and its workforce. And the United Nations has advised all of its employees in New York to carry their UN ID cards and a copy of a page in their passport that contains their visa. According to an email seen by the New York to carry their UN ID cards and a copy of a page in their passport that contains their visa. According to an email seen by the New York Times, the UN said they could be stopped by immigration officials.

A spokesman for the UN says it is the first time such a warning has been issued. Back over to you. Julie Borson, thank you. Well, Mike Santoli returns for a look at the current risk appetite among investors. Mike. Yeah, Morgan, we're not sure if Bitcoin is ultimately useful for anything in the real world aside from a store of value. But one way it has proved its usefulness is as a signal of investor risk appetites and

liquidity. This is Bitcoin divided by gold. Now, both, of course, over a couple of years have been very strong, but the actual relationship, the rhythms of it, sometimes is a leading indicator of how stocks and other risk assets do. So this was a little bit of a peak there in the spring of last year. It did proceed a bit of a high in the overall stock market, vice versa with that subsequent low going into about August and September.

So you see here, it's attempting to stabilize basically Bitcoin outperforming gold again after this stiff pullback. Now take a look at gold itself for as much as the chart looks very, very strong and it's got wide sponsorship and there's all kinds of fundamental reasons why gold should continue to perform. Here you see the 65 day total from Strategus here of net inflows into gold ETFs. And what we're looking for here is whether it's getting a little too popular, a little

too overheated and There are some estimates that maybe it is doing that right now So maybe time for gold to take a break and cool off at the same time Bitcoin has recently had a pretty stiff pullback from the highs All right, Mike Santoli. Thank you. Oh, sorry Morgan oh, I was just going back to the charts Mike here It is interesting to see this dynamic between Bitcoin and gold Morgan. Oh, I was just going back to the charts, Mike, here. It is interesting to see this dynamic between Bitcoin and gold.

I do wonder what it means, given the rally we've seen in gold and sort of the risk off nature of it or, you know, hedge against inflation, whether this is not only a positive signal for Bitcoin, but also potentially for stocks. Yeah, in theory, that's the way the logic would work. Now, I would kind of say that gold is not necessarily always saying one single thing whether it's inflation whether it's

central bank control you know whether it's growth whether it's policy chaos. But what we can say is when Bitcoin does better it tends to mean retail investor enthusiasm is rising. Liquidity is ample and you know

people's excitement about some kind of future type of asset like Bitcoin is rising. So it does link up with when equities might be able to do better. Now really thank you, Mike Santori. Up next, in his first interview since being ousted as Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger weighs in on his successor, whether he would ever want to run a public company again. Plus find out what CEOs of some of the world's largest companies had to say about the economy

and President Trump's tariffs during a closely watched meeting with Chinese leaders this past weekend. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Oklo earnings are out and Pippa Stevens has the numbers. Hi Pippa. Hey Morgan, it is a full year loss per share of 74 cents for Oklo earnings are out and Pippa Stevens has the numbers. Hi Pippa. Hey Morgan, it is a full year loss per share of 74 cents for Oklo. This is a pre-revenue company.

Now Oklo also disclosed that it is making a non-material correction for its quarter ended in June, saying that their management team concluded their internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of December 31st of last year due to a material

weakness related specifically to infrequent and complex transactions. Now the company said that that issue had not been remediated by the time of today's filing and they expect that to be fixed by the end of this year. You can see the shares here are drifting lower after a big gain earlier in the day. John? All right. Pippa, thank you. I caught up with former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in his first interview since leaving the company late last year. We talked Intel, his new operating role at a software startup, the importance of investing

in deep tech, and whether he'll ever be the CEO of a public company again. We started with Intel. Yeah. ever be the CEO of a public company again. We started with Intel. Yeah, well, as I've said, I was committed to wanting to finish that story on that, you know, the revitalization of Intel and with the board, the company, and now with Litbu's leadership, really cheering them on to finish. Because the role that Intel plays in the semiconductor industry is critical and one that's important for not just the industry, but for the US.

So I couldn't be more supportive of the team and Litbu in finishing that journey. It's a heavy assignment. And for any company to carry the financial requirements of building next generation technology, fab network, and part of the reason we laid out the Foundry strategy. And I think that strategy is still the right one. And it is very heavy, right heavy in terms of capital returns required and the investments required to go

accomplish that. And with that, this is hard and challenging. And as I've spoken about, the short-termism of Wall Street makes that very challenging. And why? You know, yet again, I'd say, you know, my very best to Intel and Litbu in finishing that seminally important journey. So what's he up to now? Well, Pat is moving from chairman to executive chairman at Glue, a startup delivering cloud-based software and services to churches, nonprofits, and wellness organizations. He'll also be leading the technology function at GLUE.

Many of these services, you know, a common data platform, increasing the security capabilities of this community, you know, APIs that enable them to build their applications, hosting much of the content, you the content from this community as well and delivering a next generation of AI services. We'll be delivering a large language model, Kingdom Aligned Large Language Model is what we call it. That will be an LLM taking the best of open source and then training and putting a rag front end on it to meet the needs of this

community and giving answers that are appropriate to a values aligned community and servicing these almost half a million organizations, huge business opportunity, but one where our objective would be to improve the lives of every single person on the planet, you know, as a result of this work. Gelsinger said he'll also be investing in deep tech, big problem areas like quantum, biotech, next-gen semiconductors. We can expect more details on that soon, but I asked for his thoughts on the government's latest moves pulling funding from higher ed research.

Right now, you know, it's a strong effort to remake government and what that looks like and as I said, some things will be impacted positively, some will be negative in that remake, but I certainly hope, you know, one of my objectives will be, you know, finding ways to bring those world-class R&D capabilities forward for the long term. That is the fuel of tomorrow's economy. And that is the fuel of US leadership. So I will be an unwavering, unhesitant advocate

for those domains, John, every chance I get. And some of the companies that I'll be personally investing in partnering with firms that I'll be working with, are very uniquely focused on these problems. We must be investing for tomorrow. We have to be building the next generation of semiconductors, the next generation of quantum computing, the next generation of biotechnology,

the next generation of material science. All of those, they're ours for the taking. We just have to invest to create them and build the industries of tomorrow. You're going to be interested in leading a public company again? No, no. Linda and I, my wife Linda and we've gone through a bit of a soularching time, John, and it's heavy to run a public company. And being a CEO for a transforming public company, I truly think is one of the hardest

jobs available because you're trying to do a five-plus-year transformation on a 90-day shot clock. All right, you know, with heavy financial expectations, that's hard, but also, you know, you're then very focused on one thing, right? You know, and seven by 24 is focused on one thing. So the focus for us in this next phase will be a broader one, you know,

where glue taking a substantial operating role there, the long-term deep tech investment activities will be more focused, but also then the philanthropies that we've gotten such joy and impact from, and those will be the three pillars of our life. And obviously GLUE sort of brings those two together in a unique and powerful way.

Pat Gelsinger, Morgan, now we are waiting to see how Lit Butan's strategy differs and how deep the cuts are that he'll make. Yeah, more to come on that, and I'm sure you'll be, you know, on the front lines of the reporting as we get it. I am not surprised, though, to hear Mr. Gelsinger say that he doesn't want wanna run a public company again

when he lays out some of these long lead, you know, investment strategies, whether it is quantum or biotech or material sciences, et cetera, because those are technologies that take a long time to crack. And as we know, even with the handful of companies that are public, when you are dealing with public company investors, they tend to look at things on a quarter by quarter basis And as we know, even with the handful of companies that are public, when you are dealing with

public company investors, they tend to look at things on a quarter by quarter basis. And these are going to be years in the making. Indeed. All right. Great stuff, John, as always. Up next, top CEOs attending a secretive event with Chinese leaders this weekend to discuss how President Trump's trade war is impacting US-China relations. And let's get another check here on shares of KB Home, making a major move lower. After missing on earnings and revenue with deliveries and

orders missing as well, they also cut full your guidance. We're gonna get an analyst's reaction when overtime returns. Welcome back to overtime. Chinese leaders hosting an annual event this weekend featuring some of the biggest names in business including Apple CEO Tim Cook. Our Eunice Yoon was there and tracked down some of those executives for their take on the state of US-China relations. We're at the Jiaxiaotai State Guest House. This is where the Chinese government invites foreign visitors and today hosts the China Development Forum.

The CDF, as it's called, is a state-sponsored annual business conference. Over 25 years, it's gone from a relatively obscure forum where academics chatted about China to a schmooze fest for heavy hitters in international business to get face time with Chinese leaders. Even in China's restrictive political environment, the event used to foster more open discussion. But under President Xi Jinping, security and information control have become very tight. The economy is struggling. So it's become much more difficult for CEOs to speak their minds. As I found out when I tried to get some answers.

Any outlook on U. US-China ties? None of them are ties. When they do speak publicly, executives here tend to stress the positives. The increased optimism this year compared to last year at the CDF has been just so carpooling. It's always remarkable to see the progress that China makes in our industry. This year, you feel a lot of positive momentum beginning in China.

So I feel like recovery is underway. We'll remain optimistic because the role of technology is important. I think more than ever, I think technology is going to be a part of economic growth. U.S. companies tell me that behind the scenes they are sharing their concerns with the Chinese about the economy here and their thoughts on Trump's approach. The questions I've been getting more is why is Trump doing this? What is he trying to achieve? Even in public, both sides are obliquely acknowledging

the problems in the U.S.-China relationship. We have preparations for possible unexpected shocks, which of course mainly come from external sources. The president is committed to American companies having access to a global market, and the president is willing to use tariffs to seek to enforce this worldview. Despite the tensions, multinational companies have come to this conference to show their commitment to this market. But in this case,

they're also trying to say to the two governments, you two get your act together so we could keep the business going. John? You know, so interesting very often your China lens Shows the the perspective of the business owner or the people on the street in China this time It's kind of the Chinese governments lens on Business to what degree were you able to read in the message that they're trying to put forth about China's position versus?

President Trump's tariffs? Well the Chinese message really is one of reassurance. They were trying to reassure the international community that China is still open for business and we heard that with the Chinese Premier's reasons to invest. He listed out several. One for example was on the consumption initiatives that that would be a good way and good reason for consumer companies from the United States to invest in China. But at the same time, a lot of businesses are still skeptical.

There's still a lot of issues here. Some of the companies that I spoke to said that they talked privately with the Chinese and expressed some of those concerns that the policy support might not be enough to lift up the struggling economy. And also, a lot of them said that they have promise fatigue, that they've heard this before, these vows to reform the economy and make the playing field much more level. And they want to see some action. Eunice, we're starting to see the steady increase in reports suggesting that a Trump-Xi meeting could actually be inching closer to reality here. What is your sense of that in China right now? Well, there was a sense in that the Republican Senator Steve Daines was here for three days,

and he was meeting with several Chinese leaders. He brought some of those CEOs on his mission to meet with those Chinese officials. And in those discussions, according to Daines' office, he had suggested that a Xi-Trump meeting was really important to move the relationship forward. And in fact, this Friday, we know that some of the CEOs are going to be meeting with President Xi Jinping, again,

kind of showing how important that high-level meeting is going to be. STEPHANIE UNDERHILL UNICEF UNICEF UN, great reporting, as always, from on the ground, working the weekend. Well, KB Home shares are falling after an earnings miss. Up next, a top analyst on what he wants to hear on the earnings call, which begins in just a few minutes. Welcome back. We have some breaking news on Boeing. Philip Bow has the details.

Phil. Morgan, take a look at shares of Boeing. The Wall Street Journal out with a report saying that Boeing is considering withdrawing an agreement for a guilty plea that it had been working on with the Justice Department regarding 737 Max crashes. Remember there, and then we're not going to go too deep in the weeds here, but there had been an agreement that the families of the victims objected to.

A judge who was looking at the case, who handling the case at the time said okay let's look at the language here with things regarding DEI a corporate monitor etc went back to the Justice Department in Boeing where they have been discussing this for some time and according to the journal now Boeing is considering perhaps ending those discussions we should be clear here we have reached out to Boeing. It has no comment on this report. And again, this is a discussion about potentially changing or withdrawing the agreement.

This is not finalized at this point, and this is according to the Wall Street Journal. Guys, we'll send it back to you. Okay, Philip Oh, thank you. Shares of Boeing flat right now in overtime. Well, KB Home is sinking on the other hand after reporting an earnings miss just a few moments ago. So let's bring in Zellman and Associates

Managing Director Alan Ratner. He has an underperform rating on the stock. And Alan, going into this print, you were saying that you thought they might cut guidance here and that is certainly part of the equation of what we saw in this disappointing report. Your takeaway. Yeah, hey, Morgan, thanks for having me. Yeah, we heard from

KB about 2 months ago on their 4th quarter call in January at that time their orders were down about 15% through the first half of their quarter. And they gave a guidance that orders would would be flat for the quarter or flat ish and embedded within that was an expectation that as the spring selling season got underway, they would see stronger demand and narrow that gap and then improve the order book. And unfortunately, the spring is off to a fairly sluggish start across the industry. So they just didn't see the acceleration that they were hoping for a couple of months ago.

Alan, have we found a macro situation now that incentives can't fix? Well, KB is interesting because they cater to the entry level first time buyer, but they haven't necessarily been as aggressive playing that incentive game that some other builders have been. We heard from Lennar last week with their earnings report and they kind of have a different strategy. They are looking to find that market clearing price

and adjust their price and margin to really capitalize on demand, wherever that demand is. Whereas I think KB has been trying to toe the line a little bit between price and volume. According to the press release, it sounds like they made some adjustments midway through the quarter as they realized that demand just wasn't what they were hoping it would be.

So on the call on a few minutes here, I'm looking forward to hearing some more details about that to see exactly how much they had to increase those incentives and what impact that did have on their business. Allen, do you think we're gonna start to see some of these home builders curve their spec home production plans now?

It's possible. We haven't seen it to a large extent yet. The start paces remain pretty strong, even though orders have been fairly sluggish but certainly if inventory continues to accumulate you would think that builders would adjust their start pace accordingly and prevent a further buildup of inventory but we haven't seen a sharp pull back up to this point. Okay Alan Ratner thanks for joining us with shares of KB Home down about nine percent right now and other home builders trading lower in sympathy here on overtime.

John, we get U.S. home prices tomorrow. We get new home sales tomorrow. You also get the conference board sentiment survey, which I suspect is going to be one watched closely given some of the other readings that we've gotten that have shown some signs of softening, shall we say. Yeah, yeah. Also to watch closely how durable is this bounce back? I mean, it looks in a way quite encouraging, right?

When we see the market doing over the past several days, but at the same time, April 2nd looms and although things might not be as bad as some feared, still unclear how rough it's going to get. Yeah, in the meantime, you had a 12% move for Tesla today, NVIDIA up 3% as well, and every sector in the green for the S&P except for utilities, which speaks to the growth in nature of the rally we saw today.

That does it for us here at Overtime.