Closing Bell - Closing Bell Overtime: Markets Brace for Nvidia 8/24/26

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Man Group’s Kristina Hooper breaks down Kevin Warsh’s closely watched moment and what the shifting policy outlook means for stocks. The episode also examines one of the more surprising turns in the AI trade: Ryan Levine, Senior Utilities Analyst at Citi, explains what happened to the expected AI boost for utilities and whether surging data center power demand can still translate into gains for the sector. Consumer trends come into focus as Ike Boruchow of Wells Fargo examines what a potentially warm winter could mean for retailers and apparel companies. Jonathan Boyar makes the case for value investing and identifies opportunities away from the market’s most crowded trades. Nvidia takes center stage ahead of earnings later this week. Tim Arcuri of UBS previews the report and outlines the key signals to watch across AI demand, spending and the semiconductor ecosystem. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The bell is bringing an end to the trading day at the NYC community financial system ringing the bell and at the NASDAQ investor holding doing the honors. Welcome to closing bell overtime live from Studio B at the NASDAQ market site. I'm Mike Santoli. Melissa Lee is off today. Stock's mostly lower, but the Dow closed in the green by about 140 points. The S&P 500 losing a quarter of a percent and the NASDAQ down about three quarters of one percent. bond yields pulling back today a few basis points lower for the 10 and 30 year maturities. This comes along with a drop in oil prices as the U.S. issues new sanctions on Iran. We're going to have more on that coming up. Plus, the focus this week is, of course, on NVIDIA, reporting after the bell on Wednesday.

It's lower, along with the broader chips complex, much more on that name as well. We've also got our eyes on other stocks and sectors. Utilities, we're supposed to get a boost from powering all the AI data centers, but we haven't seen it lately, the worst sector over the past six months. And while we're still sweating out the final days of August, we'll talk to one retail analyst who's focused on this winter's weather, and the stocks that could be affected. Let's now begin with the names making big moves in today's session.

Christina Partsenevulus has those for us. Hi, Christina. Hi, Michael. And I'd at least start to the week for AI, semis, and tech momentum, as it really played out on thin volume. Memory names like Micro on Sandisk, a state under pressure. InVDIA reportedly told its biggest customers it's raising prices by more than 15% on its latest chip systems for machines shipping early next year with

soaring memory costs as the main driver. In video itself fell for a seventh straight session. Its longest losing streak since September 2020, shares down about almost 3%. Applied Opto Electronics also stumbled about 13, almost 14%, as it plans to raise $600 million through an at-the-market offering, and that sparked dilution concerns. Pierce coherent and momentum also go dragged down with it. A bright spot, Bitcoin, crypto stocks, extended their rally after the flagship coin broke out of its trading range. Strategy, the best performer in the NASDAQ 100.

You can see up almost 3%. And in Washington, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson unveiled a fresh round of Iran sanctions. But investors saw limited near-time supply impact and WTI fell more than 2%. Energy was among the day's worst sectors, weighed down by Diamondback, Texas Pacific, to be specific. And on the flip side, last but not at least, consumer staples led the market. like Dollar Tree. There's Altru up there on a manufacturing deal. And on days like this, it's really the tell the money rotated out of high flying tech straight into defensive names. Mike? Yeah, it was notable, Christina. The other switch is energy down along with tech, energy has been

kind of an offset to some of the weakness in tech. And I just wonder about this kind of renewed wave of selling across semis. And it felt like, you know, we had this weekday in South Korea overnight. Samsung had a big drop. But it was pretty small. specific to Samsung, right? They're going to issue new, new equity or something. So I wondered about that kind of chain reaction we're getting here. And if it's just technical, is driving that group or something else? You just said it to Scott just in the last 20 minutes or so, that it's just a continuation of the unwind that we've seen over the last few weeks. Yeah, we saw a little bit of an uptick more recently, but is that really what is driving that? What is the fundamental backdrop

for a lot of these names to keep them going higher? All the catalysts are pretty much done. You have InVIDIA, Wednesday, Marvell, Thursday, and then eventually, you know, a few other hardware names. But there's really nothing to pull this whole segment up. And I think that's the concern going into a market where perhaps yields are, you know, continuously staying high. This weighs heavily on the growth sector like these chip names, not in Nvidia per se. But I think that has a lot to do with it. The fact that there's really no major catalyst for this entire group in the next four to five weeks. Right.

Yeah, we've gotten all the earnings, therefore we know what all the CAPEX budgets, Exactly, except for NVIDIA, right? Right, it's not too clear what the incremental fresh news is going to be. We will look out for it. Christina, thank you. Thanks. Well, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson speaking earlier as the U.S. issues new sanctions on Iran and countries who trade with Iran.

Amon Javers was at the news conference announcing those sanctions, and he joins us now. Amen. Mike, the Treasury Secretary stopped short of issuing massive new secondary sanctions on Iran's trading partners saying he didn't want to rattle the global economy. Here's the Treasury Secretary earlier today explaining why they didn't decide to pull the trigger on this today. We believe that a warning shut and a level set of expectations is appropriate. And if people do not want to meet our expectations, then we expect, and they should expect, that they will leave the dollar system.

So what Treasury did today, Mike, is they issued this press release, designating a whole bunch of entities and some specific vessels for violating U.S. sanctions policy, those entities will be cut off from the global financial system. But they stop short of impacting China, UAE, and other countries that do business with Iran. The Treasury Secretary was asked why. He said, look, I just don't want to blow up the entire global financial system. This gives those countries time to come into compliance. Now, we'll see whether those countries do come into compliance or not.

Iran for its part, not impressed doing some chest thumping of its own. Iran issuing a statement saying we are fully prepared for U.S. sanctions. They cannot cut off our financial arteries. That's the Iranian economy minister speaking to state TV in Iran. So Mike, we've got this sort of messaging exercise today, the Treasury Department saying in an unspecified time, we'll take unspecified action, hoping that that sort of pushes those countries that are trading with Iran to knock it off, Mike. Yeah, Amin, so the messaging, the sort of jawboning approach, I guess to some degree mirrors what the Treasury Secretary is trying to do with the bond

market as well last week in terms of, you know, not quite deploying all the potential firepower, but hoping that you're on the right side of an issue. You hope it maybe starts to move into direction that we like. I also note that the administration has been highlighting or citing these estimates of more oil exiting the Strait of Hormuz than a lot of the private kind of firms that are trying to evaluate. I wonder if that's just saying, you know, maybe we can muddle through for a while longer in the absence of a clear catalyst for a solution. Yeah, and, you know, Mike, you mentioned all those things. It is striking how many economic conflicts the United States is involved in today,

right? The tariff battle with Canada over the weekend, the battle against the bond market that we've seen Treasury engaging in over the past week. Now this economic sanctions battle, against Iran. They're taking on a lot of economic fights right now. And to your point on the oil markets, you know, the big backstop to the entire global oil market has really been the sort of unknown of China's supply reserves, right? They've had bigger supply reserves that have cushioned the global economy much more so than anyone expected going into this. So one of the questions is, how much does China have on hand and how much does U.S. intelligence know about that? And are we seeing some indication that there is some oil flowing to the Chinese that's not in the official counts?

That's going to be one maybe for the historians to try to unwrap when this is all over. I was going to say that somewhere there's an escape valve that it appears the world is getting more oil than the worst case in areas would have let you believe. And only a few people know about it. Yes, seemingly so. All right, Amy, thanks so much. So will Kevin Warsh's keynote speech at the annual Jackson Hull symposium, the Fed's holding this week, reassure bond investors or add to their concerns and what will it all mean for the stock market. Joining us now is Man Group chief market strategist, Christina Hooper.

Christina, good to see you. Great to see you, Mike. So much to kind of try and boil down here. It felt as if today the bond market was a little better behaved. We're not really sure all the factors driving yields higher. Maybe this Treasury kind of measure is helping to break that. What does it tell you about the balance of risk and reward as it's developing? So what I'm gathering from what we're seeing is that there are a number of different concerns

that are being sort of illustrated by the big rise in the yield since the start of the war. Right. But those yields on the long end are not being driven by inflation expectations. It's really about, I think, a lot to do with just fiscal unsustainability, because, of course, the war is going to cost us a lot of money, so that could be the catalyst. And also, of course, foreign investors reticence to add to U.S. Treasury exposure and, in fact, perhaps want to reduce Treasury exposure.

So I think they're looking at risks in a different way than, say, U.S. investors are when they look at the U.S. bond market. In absolute terms, I guess you'd be tempted to say 4.7% on 10-year treasuries in an economy growing 5, 6% nominal. it's not necessarily unusual, historically speaking. The shape of the yield curve, not extraordinary in most ways. So is there any emergency to respond to in that respect in the near term, or is it just something we have to digest? So I think the administration sees it as something to respond to, just given the announcement last week.

And I could see why they have decided to do that, because what we have is just competition for bond dollars. Right now we have all this AI debt issuance that's likely to grow. That seems to be the direction we're going in. And of course, we have a growing budget deficit that makes U.S. Treasuries look less attractive, especially on the long end. So there are a lot of reasons to react, but unfortunately reacting can sometimes underscore fears. Sure. Yeah, I kind of been pointing at the bond market is trying to, you know, regulate access to new debt. debt by companies and governments through repricing to higher yields. But does that, you know, maybe restrain the other parts of the economy that aren't so well positioned like housing?

I guess that's a question we'll have to deal with. And then when it comes to Kevin Warsh at the end of this week, it's so tricky because he's wanted, at least in theory, to say, hey, let the market determine, you know, what's relevant and exactly how policy ought to go. What signal is it sending? Well, that's really the $64,000 question, because, you know, Because when you have bond market intervention by Treasury, then you're not getting an accurate read on what the market is telling you. So it's going to be very, very difficult for the Fed to rely on that. And so I think we're at a very difficult place right now in that certainly Chair Warsh wants to remake the Fed and sees in many ways that it needs modernizing. But at the same time, and that includes less transparency, fewer effort.

OMC meetings, it seems, based on the minutes. But at the same time, what we have is markets that have grown up on increasing transparency, on more communication, not less. And there's a real mystery around what exactly this new Fed will do. So I think we're hoping for a lot from this week's speech from Chair Warsh, but I'm not sure if we're going to get it just because those committees don't seem to be ready to report final recommendations. So it might be something of a lot. So it might be something of a work in progress and maybe a broader vision for what chairwarsh anticipates in the future. But this is a difficult time for him. What does it tell you or what are the implications, I guess, on a practical level for portfolios, right? I'm guessing from everything you've said

that you're not looking at 2.5% real yields in 10-year treasuries, 3% real yields in 30s, and saying, hey, that's a good return. So I assume there are other things you might prefer to do. So I think the key takeaway is that with yields going up, and I do anticipate yields on the long end, continuing to go up, what we're likely to see is downward pressure exerted on equities, especially long duration equities like technology. So this is likely to be a pretty difficult environment for tech, especially AI, just given concerns about whether or not the AI-related names, especially the hyperscalers, can get to a revenue level that justifies their. spent. There was a recent article in the journal about Camp Kotok and how the big buzz was around concerns that AI hyperscalers aren't going to be able to do that. And I think that is a key question. It's only amplified by higher rates. So from my perspective, it's about being well

diversified, and that includes outside the U.S. where there's a lot less exposure to AI and that theme in general, especially in Europe, where defense spending seems to be helping drive the economy and could very well drive parts of the stock market. Yeah, maybe the other kind of secular growth area of the industrial complex there. And I know you meant David Kotak's annual fishing gathering of a lot of the smart minds and markets. Christina, good to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Christina Hooper. Coming up, utilities were once seen as safe, steady income payers.

Then they became part of the AI trade as beneficiaries. of the insatiable power demand, that trade hasn't worked lately either. Why not? This slow and steady mystery stock popping to an all-time high today as well, that's coming up on closing bell overtime, live from the NASDAQ market. Welcome back. We want to show you the closing bell at Sebo in Chicago. That ends the regular trading day for options. Well, take a look at some of the stocks hitting 52-week highs today. Travel names such as Expedia and Airbnb, Target, continue its comeback. That's the highest level in more than two years for that stock. And Coca-Cola at an all-time high, it has been a publicly traded company for more than 100 years,

almost at 92 right now. All right, utilities are catching a bid today, but the group has been struggling, stronger, longer-term power demand from AI and data centers on one side, but higher yields, borrowing costs, CAPEX needs on the other. So how should investors navigate this sector now? With me here is Ryan Levine, City Senior Utilities Analyst. Ryan, Brian, good to see you. seeing you. So obviously, I guess higher rates can't help when it comes to this group, but what else seems to be going on in terms of maybe sentiment shifting about what returns might come to utilities from all the power demand? So in general, we're seeing strong backlash politically around the country, and that's really driving our actions that will reduce returns on equity. So the

FERC has taken actions that reduced the adders that the companies earn on ROEs in Maryland and Jersey, in parts of New England, and that's directly impacting the earnings outlook for companies. So it's the, I guess, the concern over electricity costs everywhere is driving these actions that will restrain utilities. Do you think it's a well-founded worry on the market's part, or are these isolated issues? So there's somewhat isolated to individual states. The bigger challenge is the political challenge in terms of some of the local and regulatory environments that's slowing the rate of investment and timing of investment.

that has a bigger impact to the outlook for the utilities. And then the data center backlog, I mean, it's part of this, right? So it's just how fast might some of these new data centers come on and all the rest of it? What's the relationship with the publicly traded utilities outlook and this notion that a lot of the data centers will kind of bring their own power that won't really link up to the grid? So in individual states like Texas, we saw pauses of great connection process called Bad Zero. was supposed to come out in August 7th and now is delayed, most likely until after the election. So that's creating an opportunity for bring your own power, islanded behind-the-meter-type solutions

that can allow the data center to bring power without a reliance on the grid. Those have use cases and can play a role in certain states in certain locations. But the end game is these customers ultimately want the grid connection for the reliability attributes and a lot of other key milestones. Obviously kind of a diverse sector in terms of, you know, ultimate power source and the regulatory environment and geography and all the rest of it. How do you at this point recommend, you know, sort of playing it? What are the preferred names?

So in general, we think a lot of this political rhetoric will ultimately blow over and the companies will be able to navigate it. Our preferred names are some of the names like First Energy, Exelon, that are in more out-of-favor states that I think in the long run will be well positioned. And then other states that are other companies like a Nextera that's well positioned on these islanded solutions and data center campuses that are less dependent on local politics to provide long-term solutions for the data centers and ultimately drive longer-term earnings growth for the companies. And then in terms of the sensitivity to what's going on in the bond market or what the Fed does,

I mean, I guess that's just always the background noise for this group, but how do they, how do you expect they'll trade in relation to all that? So they've historically traded, correlated with the longer duration interest rates, you know, whether it's treasuries or triple B bonds. And that's been the case the last few months as part of the driver for the recent underperformance. But the companies have shifted more to a growth sector as they've reduced their dividend yields and dividend payouts and redeploying that capital into this perceived data center growth opportunity. So they should be less sensitive on a go-for basis because of their shift towards a more growth-oriented sector. But they're still directly correlated to their longer duration interest rate curves. Longer term, assuming, you know, kind of most of the data centers that are planned get built,

or we actually get to whatever scale for AI infrastructure, will the publicly traded utilities, do you think, have a profitable role in there? In other words, are the regulators going to allow them to kind of reap a lot of the benefits of that new demand? Yeah, ultimately, they have a monopoly to serve a lot of these jurisdictions and should be able to deploy the capital and earn a reasonable rate of return on that, which would drive meaningful earnings growth acceleration for the sector and should be direct beneficiaries. These have to navigate through the local opposition around water rights

and air permits and some of the local blight issues that's causing slowdowns to economic development in these regions. But ultimately, they should be direct beneficiaries of this data center buildout, given their structure. And then finally, I mean, I know this is one of those impossible to forecast things, but the wildfire liabilities that are affecting some of them, is there any reason to think that there's going to be flare-ups in there this year or any result of what's happening this summer? I mean, there's always a risk in a state like California. Only about 7% of fires are caused by

utilities. We're expecting a landmark piece of legislation to be introduced by the end of this week and passed into law in California by Monday for a constitutional mandate. And that would be a pretty big opportunity for de-risking the regulatory environment and the companies to future wildfires, but then meanwhile addressing the needs of Californians to serve their longer-term needs, infrastructure needs. Interesting. It's a timely shift potentially. Ryan, great to talk to you. Thanks for coming to. Thank you. Brian Levine from City. Coming up on overtime, Wells Fargo issuing a warning and one double downgrade on cold weather retail stocks. Thanks to a potentially historically strong El Nino season, The analysts behind the call joins us now.

Welcome back. The material sector hitting an all-time high this morning. It's first since February before reversing to close lower. Material still, the second best performing sector so far this month. Steel stocks led the early rally as investors weighed the prospect of a deepening trade war with China, but those names also faded sharply from their highs. A sign investors may be in prove-it mode, but it comes to whether Trump's tariff threats actually become policy. We're also watching shares of Canada Goose, the outerware maker posting its worst day since February,

as margins could come under pressure from these potential tariffs, but also hitting the stock is a double downgrade from Wells Fargo to underweight from overweight. That's helped push Canada Goose to a 52-week low. Joining me now is the analyst, Wells Fargo senior analyst, Ike Boruchow. Ike, it's good to see you. And I know this call on Canada Goose was not really about tariffs specifically, but part of a big look at how weather this winter might impact various names. So start with Canada Goose. Yeah. Hey, Mike. How are you? Look, Goose is the most exposed outerware company that we cover. It's about 80% of their mix. They make more than 100% of their

profit during the holiday season. That's really a bad place to be considering the report we put out today, which talked about the El Nino event that we're expecting. Now, look, this is not a typical El Nino, and I'm not a meteorologist. But what I can tell you is there's a chance that it's going to be the strongest event we've seen in about 150 years. There's a 70% chance that it's historic. These are big problems for the auto wear companies, not just goose. And when you say, you know, a strong El Nino event, we obviously mean an unusually warm winter, right? So it doesn't catalyze a lot of the seasonal purchasing that you might otherwise expect to see. So I guess what other names that you cover are more vulnerable that you think the streets not appreciate?

Yeah, and I think, Mike, what you want to keep in mind is that every 1% of warming kind of equates to about a 3 to 5% hit to outerwear sales. So that's kind of the correlation. So you think about a couple percentage points. It's a big deal. The last time we saw an Aligno event to this extent was 2015. Outerwear sales across the board were down 20%. So that's really the problem. So you want to think coats, outerwear boots.

The names we talked about in today's note was Canada Goose. Also, Decker's, which owns the Ugg brand, which we also have an underweight on. Ugg had a disastrous 2015. They've done a lot to deweatherize the business since then, but it's still a cold weather category. Also VF Corp, which is the owner of North Face in Timberland, very exposed, and Burlington in the off-price space is the most exposed to cold weather categories as well. It's interesting to me that Decker's, you know, is that. lever to cold weather through Ugg boots.

Because, of course, you know, they have pretty diversified brand portfolios, other drivers as well. And it would seem that maybe Ugs aren't even necessarily, you don't buy them because you're cold and have to walk in the snow. But I suppose historically it's been in the crosshairs. Yeah, and remember, Mike, you know, again, when I give them credit for deweatherizing the business and the Hoka brand is very separate as well. But the last time this happened to this extent was 2015, I believe UG missed their Q3 guidance, by seven points of revenue. And more importantly for these brands, it led to carry over inventory

that pushed into the early part of the next year. I believe the gross margins at Decker's were down a couple hundred basis points in the Q1. So it's not just the sell through, it's the build of inventory. And remember, 2015 is currently the most impacted El Nino event. 2026 is supposed to be worse. So you just have to, history has to matter here to some extent.

And Burlington, nonetheless, even though you say, you know, maybe it's going to impact them, you remain an overweight on them? Yeah, look, we really like what they're doing. They're executing really well. We like the off-price space. We believe there's visibility. But, you know, the last time we had a big El Nino event for them, it hurt their comp by 400 basis points. I mean, they are, as much as they de-emphasize, they people still view them as the coat factory to a large extent across the country. And cold weather does matter. I believe that they're built better to execute this time around versus a decade ago, and I think they can still have some of the industry leading growth. But in the very

near term, it's problematic, and we just have to be intellectually honest with that. And what about, you know, I guess some of the companies that are going to stay clear of all this? In other words, that they're just inherently insulated from a lot of the weather trade. Yeah, I think core apparel is fine. You know, think, you know, just general t-shirts, denim dresses. That stuff doesn't really Evan flow that meaningfully during these time periods. It's really the super weather-sensitive categories that you have to look out for. And that's kind of where we kind of put the risk when we went through all the numbers and the analysis this morning. Yeah, interesting stuff. Maybe folks think they want a mile winter, but I got to watch what you own, if that's the case.

Ike, good to talk to you. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Ike Berchow Wells Fargo. Time for CMEC News update. Hey there, Mike. As Ukraine today celebrated the 35th anniversary of its break from the Soviet leaders of Britain and France pledged stronger military support during its war with Russia, including access to classified tech and faster delivery of missile defense systems. UK leader Andy Burnham made the pledge in Kiev during his first foreign trip since becoming Prime Minister. French President Emmanuel Macron, who appeared via video link, urged allies not to back down in the face of Russian aggression.

Prosecutors in Taiwan today say they indicted nine people, including employees at Nvidia and Super Microcomputer for their involvement in the alleged illegal export of high-end air. AI servers to China that were equipped with Nvidia chips, neither company has commented on the indictments. And Nevada just filed the first legal challenge to a federal plan to limit the water supply from the Colorado River, which is on the brink of collapse. And Nevada argues the plan violates federal law and doesn't consider the economic effects of the cuts. The river supplies about 90% of the water to the Las Vegas area. Mike? Brandon, thanks for us very much. Well, coming up now, while the big tech gets all the attention

and a lot of money is chasing big gains in memory and momentum. Turns out value is holding its own against growth so far this year. Up next, we'll talk to a value investor about some names that he's watching. Welcome back to closing bell overtime live from the NASDAQ market site. Stock's mostly lower today. The Dow did manage a small game, but the S&P 500 fell 21 points, and the NASDAQ lost three-quarters of a percent. The NASDAQ 100 losing almost a full percent as the big chip names lagged ahead of

a video's result later this week. Oil dropped 2% as Treasury Secretary Scott Besson had some tough talk for Iran and its trading partners. And Bon Yield is also pulling back today. Two big events this week, the PCE inflation number and Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh's speech at Jackson Hole. And shares of Grand Canyon education are falling after hours. The company is placing its CFO on paid administrative leave. It says there's a governmental investigation into trades by a non-employee third party in the company's stock. Grand Canyon says the company is not the focus of the investigation, and it is conducting its own

investigation into the matter. All right, the S&P 500 value ETF. The IVE has been trading very similar to the S&P 500 growth fund, IVW, so far this year, raising the question of whether investors in cheaper stocks can expect to be rewarded further in the months to come. Joining us now is the Boyer Value Group principal, Jonathan Boyer. Good to see you, John. Thanks for having me. So kind of value focus, but I think of you guys as being a little more like looking for some idiosyncratic, lesser understood kind of situations and maybe where folks aren't looking so closely. So I did want to get your general view of like, is this a good kind of rich hunting environment for those types of things in the

market? I think it's a great hunting environment. There are a lot of stocks, I mean, especially with, you know, you've talked about the broadening of the market. There are a lot of stocks that are still trading significantly below what an acquire would pay for them. And that gets as excited. What gets us more excited is there are a lot of stocks that have identifiable catalysts that can help realize that value in a not so long period of time. Yeah, that kind of private market value approach, I guess, is what you're referring to there, just kind of figuring out intrinsically what a company might be worth. Let's get to some of your preferred names at the moment. And Uber fascinates me because it's really, it's not some kind of slow growth company that is

super mature and therefore cheap. It's just one that growth. investors have seemingly backed away from. Yeah, Uber is almost like Nirvana for value investors because it's trading at a below market multiple. It's growing 20, 30% a year. It's a great business. We don't think it's going to be disrupted. But the street is thinking that Elon, as well as Waymo, are going to eat their lunch, and we don't think that's the case. We think this is a business whose best stays are ahead of it. It's got this super high free cash flow yield, right, like 7% or something like that. buying back a lot of stock. I guess the question is, what's it going to take to persuade investors

that, in fact, they're not going to be disrupted? It's really hard to prove a negative, so that's a hard thing to do. I think it's just continuing to go out there and operate really well. I mean, every year, they're growing more and more rides. They're expanding their TAM. They're partnering with lots of different companies like they did with Expedia. They're doing all the right things. At some point in time, the market will recognize value. It's just you have to be patient, which most investors aren't. Yeah, for sure. I do want to get to a name you've owned for quite a while, MSG Sports,

and, you know, this is like a spin-out of a spin-out. So it's a long saga and how this company got here. It's the Knicks and the Rangers, basically. Now that it's been kind of discovered in the last several months, with obviously what the Nicks did and the value of the franchises, is there still value left? There's lots of value left. And, yeah, this has been a name we've been covering for a long period of time.

Right now, the enterprise value, of MSG Sports, which owns the Knicks and the Rangers, is $10 billion. About a week or so ago, the Lakers in almost a forced sale went for $12.5 billion. So it's still extremely undervalued. I think if they put the Knicks up for sale either partially or a full sale, there would be a line around the block. Plus, they're doing things to help unlock value. They're splitting the team into two in about October or so.

So you're going to be able to buy the Knicks as a publicly traded contract. company. You're also going to be able to buy the Rangers as a publicly traded company, and that will highlight the valuation disconnect. All right. We'll see how all that develops. And then you mentioned a identifiable catalyst. Talk about Cooper a little bit because there are folks, I guess, stoking the fires for some change there. Yeah, we love when activists get involved in names, and Jana is involved in this, as well as another activist firm. Cooper, for those who don't know, is a contact lens company and a women's health business.

It is selling at a very depressed multiple. Jana got involved in about a year or so ago, got board representation. In the last conference call, the CEO, all but hinted that they were going to sell the women's health division. We think you can go for a lot of money. We think they'll use the proceeds of buyback shares.

And then you'll have a pure play contact lens company, and you'll get a much higher multiple. All right. In the final minute, Scott's Miracle Grow. Another one with maybe a catalyst out there. Yeah, there's definitely a catalyst there. The longtime CEO James Haggardorne is now no longer with the company. He's not even on the board.

He still controls it. That could portend to sail in a not too distant future. I wouldn't be shocked if that happened. But now you have different management in who's doing a great job with costs. And the other thing is they got out of the cannabis business, which was an absolute utter disaster. So you're going to get a lot of new shareholders into it who would never invest in a cannabis company. What's holding the stock back in this last? last little period, like what's going on macro-wise? Well, I mean, I think, you know, obviously you have

inflation. It wasn't as bad. They hedged a lot of stuff. And I think it's just not really a well-covered name. People don't like Hagen-Dorn. They don't even probably realize he's not there anymore. People still think they have the stigma of the cannabis business. And it's kind of a show-me story. Yeah. The president gave it a shout out last week. They got a very brief pop in the stock. We'll see where it goes from here. Jonathan, great to talk to you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Boyer. All right, news from the IPO pipeline. Now, Pippa Stevens has this story. Hi, Pippa. Hey, Mike. So Greco filing just now to go public in the U.S. This is a Scotland-based company that provides industrial power generators and battery energy storage. Now, the company was previously taken private in 2021 at a 2.3 billion sterling pound valuation. Last year, net revenue of 3.4 billion. And according to Sky News, they could be valued at 20 billion here in their IPO. And of course, this is a sign of the times, Mike, with energy companies seeing a record first half for IEWROW.

IPO raises just given the demands from electrification and data centers and so much interest in power generation at this moment. So again, I'm Greco filing to go public. Yeah, private equity doesn't have to be reminded twice that there's a right market for the stuff they bought five years ago. So we'll see how that goes. Pippa, thank you. The biggest market cap company in the world reports earnings in less than 48 hours. Can a video meet the moment? Up next, we'll talk to an analyst who recently raised his estimates to this coming report over time. The market squarely focused this week on results due out from Nvidia on Wednesday.

But that's not the only news out of the company. New details today about its groc chips. Christina Parts Nevelis has those details for us. Christina. Well, Nvidia is specifically putting its groc 3 LPX into full production. You're like, oh, what is that the names? The piece is essentially is that slots into racks with GPUs and CBOs to make AI respond dramatically faster, especially on open-8 weight models, the kind anyone can download and customize freely,

but of course it will cost money to actually run. That speed lane has been the territory, specifically of Cerebris, for these high-infrance chips. The independent chip maker built around fast inference, I should say. Its stock has been under pressure for weeks, down, what, 26%, today falling over 5%. And Nvidia is just coming straight at it

with its GROC LPX rack. NVIDIA is also making the same bet on the software side. Days ago, it agreed to pay $6 billion to license pool-sides technology and hire more than 100 engineers to build a powerful open weight model of its own, according to the Wall Street Journal. The goal is essentially an American open model to rival China. We know that the CEO has been very vocal about this.

So cheaper, faster, open AI means more usage, and more usage means more demand for NVIDIA chips and hardware and software. Nvidia doesn't necessarily need to profit on the models themselves. At that top layer of the stack, it profits on everything else that runs underneath them, Mike. Yeah, Christina, all of these announcements, along with, I suppose, a lot of the equity investments and other financing maneuvers that Nvidia does kind of underscores that it really is viewed as more of a platform. It's kind of this across-the-waterfront play on the growth of AI as it might develop.

And actually, the stock kind of trades that way, right? It doesn't trade like the pure picks and shovel AI hardware vendors, like the memory makers and all the rest. It's been much more close to the other Mag7 names like Amazon. Yeah, and I would say maybe the marketing pitch came about two years ago when they started calling themselves an AI infrastructure firm. And that's because, like you said, it's not just about the hardware. There's the Kudas software, the Nemotron for open weight models, DGX developer platform. There's so many different offerings.

And with NVIDIA now entering the financing space, even if it's just, you know, in terms of vouching for certain customers, that's helping, you know, on the finance level. They're acting like a VC. They're investing in smaller firms all across the globe. So there's many different facets and different lines of business that Nvidia is now entering so that there shouldn't be treated as just this compute play that we often lump it lump it in with Broadcom and also why it's not trading that way anymore. Exactly. I guess we maybe should say Nvidia's grok is with a queue. It's not grok with a K like SpaceX's AI model and all the rest of it. But people should learn that. Christina, thank you very much. Thank you. This all comes as investors await the company's second quarter earnings results out on Wednesday. The stock just posted at seventh straight down session for the first time since September of 2022. But despite the recent weakness, some on Wall Street are going into the report, feeling pretty bullish.

Let's bring in Tim Rkiri. He is head of AI semiconductor research at UBS. Tim, great to have you on. Just I guess, what in the report on Wednesday is going to be most relevant to you? What are you going to look for first? Yeah, I mean, I would say there's the numbers and then there's the narrative. And numbers-wise, I think they're going to be very good. We have this new Vera CPU that's a very strong, you know, driver going forward. Vera Rubin is beginning to ramp in the October quarter and more significantly in the January quarter.

That all looks great. There's some questions around whether they can maintain gross margins as this new product ramps. I think they're going to address that. They sounded pretty confident about that. Narrative, on the other hand, is a little murkier for people. And I'm, you know, personally hoping that the company can provide some context around this, you know, recent flurry of deals, setting up these financing vehicles. They're, you know, getting more involved in the procurement of, you know, land-powered shell. They're kind of greasing the skids so they can

keep, you know, revenue growing. And they're also getting much more involved in the, at the model layer as well. What would be a kind of beneficial way that Nvidia can characterize all those activities that would reassure the market? I think the fact is that Jensen is the only one. who can really make sure to be ahead of all these perceived bottlenecks. And the first order of business was to really go out and make a bunch of purchase commitments to the supply chain for stuff like memory and optical components. And now he's moving up to the data center level. He's setting up these financing vehicles.

And he's the only one that he's always staying ahead. So I think he can make the point that he's the one who's going to stay ahead of these bottlenecks. And he's the one who's innovating the fastest here. You mentioned there's some attention on gross margins and that the company will likely address that. I mean, is the price increases that we heard reported about today part of that story? I think so. I mean, obviously, you know, memory prices have gone up. So that's a headwind that they have to overcome. So the fact that, you know, pricing is going up. I, you know, personally, I'm fine with margins.

I think that they'll be just fine. But yes, I think that they are, you know, pricing up a little bit to kind of get out in front of these memories. and other component, you know, cost inflation, yes. Because the company has been, I mean, just earning such a huge amount of everybody else's spend, free cash flow has been massive. I guess there's some question in terms of when the valuation compression might end if it's going to end. And maybe they'll, you know, return capital to investors. That's one way to unlock.

Maybe they have to reassure everybody about, you know, the frequency of future chip generations, what would you most want to hear? I mean, look, the stock is trading at 13 times my earnings number next year, 13 times. So I'm not sure that the multiple can really compress much more. And to me, the stock is going to start to compound earnings growth from here, because the, you know, multiples already gone down, I think, as much as it's going to. And I think in terms of the share repo, they are generating basically a billion dollars a day next year in, in, you know, free cash flow. So I think, I don't think you're going to hear much new in terms of capital return on this call because they already said last call that they're planning to return

50% of their cash flow. So I'm not really sure that you're going to get something new on this call. But I think as you go into next year, I think they will set up what their longer term capital return plan is. And I think the, you know, fact is that they're the ones making all the money. And so I think that they can stay on a very consistent capital return plan here. They can really jack up the, you know, repo. But again, I think that, you know, be more next year than it would be this year. Right. Yeah, it's very analogous to Apple after the iPhone Bonanza. We'll see how everyone navigates it. Tim, thanks very much. I appreciate getting a set up with that, Tim Marquiry. Coming up, him and hers shares take a hit after Visa says its customers

are complaining. Closing about overtime, live from the NASDAQ market. The sky will be right back. Visa flagging a problem with Hims and Hers sending that stock sharply lower today. Brandon Gomez joins now. to explain. Hi, Brandon. Hey there, Mike. Yeah, shares down 8% on the day on reports that Visa put the telehealth company on notice over excessive customer disputes, specifically tied to its weight loss subscription. Now, according to internal documents, HIMS was placed in Visa's Acquirer Monitoring Program after a surge in card disputes in July. The company faces an $8 surcharge for each dispute, resulting in a roughly $75,000 fee. That's roughly 9,300 disputes overall. HIMS must now get its dispute rate below 1.5% for three consecutive months.

to exit the program. The company telling me it's moving quickly back under that threshold since it was only about point one percent over visas threshold. Hymns spokesperson saying the company has, quote, built a checkout process that is clear about costs, but did confirm it has seen a small amount of disputed charges. But Mike, look, we know this is about more than a small fee. The FTC in July launched a broader investigation into HIMS. So that $75,000 isn't the story.

The signal from disputes combined with the broader FTC scrutiny is, and look, it's spooking investors down 8% on the day, Mike? And that scrutiny and V's attention here presumably is about customers who feel as if they can't quit subscriptions? Right, exactly. The customers that try to go into their accounts, Hymns did flag to me the fact that customers have to go in ahead of time two days before the cancellation period in order to cancel it. So there's, of course, always these sort of fine-tuned details about how you can actually

cancel your subscription. But again, for analysts, what they're really focused in on is the fundamental business here. And the FTC is a lot of what's going on. mind the scenes. Fascinating. Brandon, thank you very much. Let's get you set up with tomorrow's trade today. On the earnings calendar, more retail earnings are on the way this week with Dick Sporting Goods reporting tomorrow. That's tomorrow morning. After the bell, we'll get results from Intuit, Box, and Zoom on the economic front. We're going to hear S&P K Schiller, Home Index, Consumer

Confidence for August, new home sales for July, and the Richmond Fed Manufacturing Survey. That is going to do it for overtime today.