Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Earnings Reports 101: What They Are, Why They Matter, and What CEOs Are Saying This Quarter with Tim Seymour

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Every quarter, public companies drop their earnings reports—a financial report card that can make or break stock prices in an instant. But unless you speak fluent Wall Street, these reports can feel like they’re written in another language. Today, we’re translating. Nicole breaks down what an earnings report actually is, why it matters, and how to read between the lines of those buttoned-up earnings calls. And to help make sense of what this earnings season is revealing about the economy at large, Nicole calls in Tim Seymour—investor, founder of Seymour Asset Management, and CNBC’s Fast Money regular. They unpack the top takeaways from this quarter’s biggest earnings, what stories are flying under the radar, and where the smart money is moving right now. Plus, Tim shares which stocks he’s bullish and bearish on. Follow Tim's work here. Find Tim's investing disclosures here. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. Public Investing offers a High-Yield Cash Account where funds from this account are automatically deposited into partner banks where they earn interest and are eligible for FDIC insurance; Public Investing is not a bank. Cryptocurrency trading services are offered by Bakkt Crypto Solutions, LLC (NMLS ID 1890144), which is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the NYSDFS. Cryptocurrency is highly speculative, involves a high degree of risk, and has the potential for loss of the entire amount of an investment. Cryptocurrency holdings are not protected by the FDIC or SIPC.  *APY as of 6/30/25, offered by Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Rate subject to change. See terms of IRA Match Program here: public.com/disclosures/ira-match.

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something that drives the stock market every single quarter, but often feels like it's written in a foreign language, earningsarnings reports. I have a really stellar guest joining us to unpack this, but first, WTF is an earnings report. Well, every quarter, public companies are required to report their financial performance, kind of like a financial report card. These reports tell investors how much money the company made, how much it spent, and whether it hit or missed expectations.

They report revenue, profit, debt, and future guidance all in one juicy, juicy document. So why does this matter? Well, because when a company releases earnings that beat expectations, stock prices can pop. But if a company disappoints, even by a hair, Wall Street can react fast and furious. But it's not just the numbers that move markets,

it's the earnings calls too. That's when CEOs and CFOs get on a conference call with analysts and investors to explain what happened last quarter and what they expect next quarter plus they answer questions. It's part financial briefing and part performance art. Normally CEOs are super buttoned up on these calls but as a little fun fact there was a notable exception this year. Restoration Hardware had their earnings call last quarter on Liberation Day. So when the tariffs were announced, Restoration Hardware's stock started to plummet during the earnings call. And when someone told Restoration Hardware's CEO on the call that the stock was down 25%, he said, excuse my French, oh shit. Normally earnings calls are

not this blunt or fun. Normally if there's bad news, you'll have to read between the lines. So if you're paying attention, these calls can reveal a lot more than just numbers. They give you clues about confidence, about risk, and the vibe generally inside the company. To help us break down the most important earnings of the moment and how they're shaping the broader economy and the stock market right now, I called my friend Tim Seymour, investor, founder of Seymour Asset Management, and CNBC's Fast Money Regular. We talk about what this earnings season is telling us right now, the stories behind the headlines, and where the smart money is paying attention right now. Plus, Tim tells me his stocks that he is bullish and bearish on. Let's get into it.

Tim Seymour, welcome back to Money Rehab. It's been a while. Nicole, it's been too long. Okay, let's do a quick vibe check on the market where we are right now. How are you feeling? Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs in the middle. Well, first of all, I think it's like surf's up, dude. It's Hang Ten.

Markets have really been waves to surf, but make sure you're in the water. Markets feel a little frothy to me. But it's not like I'm going to tell you that I love necessarily the macro for the fourth quarter. Markets are not terribly cheap here. And I know people have a lot of different ways they measure whether markets are expensive or cheap.

Is this a good time or a bad time? I think in the context of what your audience is thinking about, I think it's a great time. I think it's a great time to be investing. It's really easy to sound overly. It's easy to be bearish. It's easy to say, hey, valuations don't make sense here. But as someone that's seen multiple Michael market cycles in 30 years, I kind of like the growth construct here for some of these big companies. I think that the market has broadened. I think the market is more than just seven stocks. I think the market has places to invest in things that are also somewhat countercyclical, that will be great places to invest over time, just stay there and actually enjoy investing and enjoy markets because I think you're in the right place.

I was gonna give you props. I thought the surfing stuff was quite a bar, Tim. I didn't know you're such a markets poet. Wow. But here we are. I really do wanna dig into where the opportunities are in the S&P 493, so to speak. It's been a big week for earnings, though. So I want to dig in there because you talk about the market being expensive versus cheap.

And the way people determine that, if you could break it down, is based on earnings. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of people out there that are professionals that don't even totally understand earnings in the context of markets overall. It's a big week for earnings, I think, most importantly, because there's some sense of we're going to hear from companies just how much their business is being affected or is not being affected by tariffs, how inflationary that might be, how that might start to contract some of the margins that they have. So in the big picture of earnings, earnings season is always very important.

It's always at least a benchmark quarter to quarter of how are we doing against the things we said we were going to do versus the things we are actually doing. And along the lines, companies encounter all kinds of things that are either in their core business lane or there are macro or things that are exogenous to what they do that they can't control. I think right now we're hearing more about the things that are the exogenous things,

the things that are outside of what they can control. I think for a stock market that right now is at an all-time highs, it's very important to touch base with companies and hear about the things that they're willing to talk about, because it seems as if companies have been using the opportunity around trade and uncertainty and inflation to give us less information than they used to. And one of the women who's on the show with me on CNBC on Fast Money, Karen Finerman always says, I don't even know why companies are trying to give, you know, quarterly information. Why do they have to give guidance?

It seems like it's something that's really almost impossible and unnecessary. So back to this week, think about we've got American Express, we've got United Airlines, we've got Netflix, we've got a handful of companies that I think are in more of the consumer sector, and then we have the big banks and the biggest banks in the world. And of all these companies that are reporting, I think the banks are very important to get a read on how they're seeing the consumer. Where is the buying power?

Where are some of the consumption trends? Where is inflation? But then you have companies like Netflix, who almost everybody uses Netflix. Universally, Netflix is a company that is loved in the market. It's done phenomenally well over the last couple of years because, in fact, they are one of the few places to invest in media where there's not only profitability, but there's enormous profitability. And then the United Airlines is another interesting example this week of where the airlines have

also been kind of caught in between oil prices, which have been volatile but are generally lower because of some fear about the global economy, but maybe more importantly because there's a lot of global oil supply that's coming online. Airlines tend to do better when oil prices are lower. Airlines are dealing with some of the risks around global travel and global trade. I think this week's a very important week for markets, but I think it's not gonna make or break what most of your investors are gonna do in the next three to six months. And I don't think there's any one earning report this week

that I expect to hear a game changer or something that would change my view both on that company and or the markets, but famous last words. I mean, I love Karen, friend of the show, by the way, she's been on recently. And so smart. Why do we get these every quarter? It's so confusing when we see earnings beating and then the stock goes down.

We had a whole smorgasbord of this. We had Wells Fargo eating earnings, so to speak. But then the shares were lower by 4%. We had JP Morgan lower, even though they had better than expected second quarter results. BlackRock down. I mean, Citigroup was up too. But what do you make of this? In life and on Wall Street, it's better

to beat low expectations. But even when you do that, you can still get screwed with the stock price? You can. And the expectations and where the bar is set and consensus is often what we're judged by. And therefore, I think for most investors having a view on a company, having some thesis on why you want to own it, some sense of comfort as to their core business model, their balance sheet, the upside, the catalyst you see, is the most important compass to get you through periods

that are particularly murky in terms of the economy or that company's core sector that they operate in. So I think those are the things that are most important, but I can't say that earnings, quarterly earnings are noise. I think there's a ton of important and interesting anecdotes and important updates you get on the business, everything from margin profile to places where they're investing. And so I think it's just some combination of that.

No, for sure, we need to see earnings reports. Very, very important business. We can't just continue to run on vibes and macro fears. When you're looking, though, at earnings reports, what do you look for specifically? Like, if you had 30 seconds with an earnings report, what are you going to look for? Earnings per share, revenue, guidance, cash flow. It depends on the sector, but generally.

Simply I look for the relative change in the last quarter or the last year. I care more about a company relative to themselves and somewhat relative to their peer group. But again, it's in the context of, hey, what changed in this quarter? To ask about what's the most important metric to follow, whether it's price to cash flow or debt to equity or, I think it depends on the company. There are companies that are more lever than other companies and therefore I care a lot about their leverage profile, their quick ratio, things like that, that do change on a quarter to quarter basis, but at least are setting the picture for the larger and longer term thesis

on why invest. But I think companies relative to themselves, and then just at least the trend in terms of the growth of their business. Yes. Now, for some companies growing 5% would be a headline that would be fantastic. For some companies growing 5% would be a disaster if they're a growth company. So I do care about the top line.

I do care about at least the rate of growth. And obviously again, if a company is contracting and we knew they're contracting, less contraction is better than more contraction. Also we have earnings before the bell, after the bell, earnings to Palooza. Is there any benefit from doing earnings calls after the markets?

It's funny. I mean, yeah, CNBC loves I mean, it's always oh, and after the bell, we've got this and we've got that and it's always exciting. And sometimes it's really exciting on days and fast money when we have a few trillion or $10 trillion of market cap reporting, and it's almost like boom, boom, boom. But I'm not so sure I care as much about when a company reports, whether it's before the bell

or after the bell. I understand people that are day trading more than they are longer term investing care about those things. I think it's also interesting to see which companies try to slip in an earnings result at 6 PM on a Friday evening into a long holiday weekend. And there have been some that have done that too.

So I'm pretty indifferent on where I want to see a company report. I do want to see them report. I want them to be consistent in their reporting. And that's probably the most important thing. When you see layoff announcements though in earnings calls, it tends to make the stock go up. Why is that? Well, the year of efficiency at Facebook was one of the great moments for the inflection

of that stock's performance. And efficiency was about we're not going to necessarily throw billions and billions of dollars at the metaverse. We may be throwing it at AI and certain types of infrastructure around ultimately things that are going to lead to both ad spend and consumption trends. So those are now being rewarded at Facebook or Meta, excuse me. I can't get over this, by the way. I still call them Facebook. I'll never say X. Yeah, I'll never say X. But I think the layoff dynamics are obviously a much bigger story when we're

thinking about the economy than they are for companies. Yes, I want to see a company be more lean and mean. I just be careful because job cuts often could be a company that really does have to watch their balance sheet more than we'd like them to. Job cuts at Intel don't make me happy. And we've heard a lot about that too. What makes you happy? It's such a loaded question. But we are seeing financials reporting this week. What are you bullish on? What are you bearish on?

It's kind of a mixed bag. A bunch of the banks announced dividend increases for the first half of the year, despite all of the stock market volatility and uncertainty. So where are you seeing the opportunity? of the year despite all of the stock market volatility and uncertainty. So where are you seeing the opportunity? Banks and capital markets and capital give back and capital allocation do make me happy. I think banks have become underappreciated as both dividend plays and as ways to appreciate that the tailwind for them on less regulation is really translates into giving more

money back to shareholders. I think after the financial crisis, things were in place for banks that even if their business and their balance sheets were strong, they weren't able to do this. So I like the story of lower secondary leverage ratios, the SLR, or all these other little funky terms that we hear about with banks. Most importantly, they're raising their dividends 5-10%. They're buying back shares. This is, of course, a creative in terms of price per tangible book. This is also very interesting for a whole slew of investors who I know in a world of high growth companies and mega cap tech, but just paying dividends and generating income from your portfolio is really important. I think money center banks, I think a Citibank, the Bank

of America, JP Morgan, I'm along all of these. I like Citibank a little more. I think they've been a little more aggressive. I think this is again, a bank relative to itself, changed its stripes a little bit, is saving money, is using AI, is able to take advantage of efficiencies that are coming from this fintech umbrella that is great for the biggest, fattest, slowest to move banks in history of what Citibank always was. And I think that's changing. It's just a quick footnote. So SLR, basically, banks have to keep a certain amount

of money because they messed it up during the financial crisis. They messed it up and they messed it up for Wall Street. They messed it up for Main Street. And I think they were an easy and appropriate poster child for things that had gotten run amok in terms of the derivative industry. So since that point, both the Federal Reserve who regulates the banks, so this is also an

interesting topic for what's going on today, that the Fed maybe is trying to fight and maintain independence from a White House that seems to want to control what they do, even though our central bank is independent. And one of the reasons why the rest of the world is always, there's many reasons why people love investing in the good old US of A, but our central bank's independent, it's strong, it's able to regulate its own banks,

and it doesn't necessarily have to listen to the politics of Washington. Back to the election, yeah, we'll see where this goes, but I think it would be a disaster if people started to feel that our Fed was no longer independent. But as it relates to the Fed regulating its banks, it was important for the Fed to impose very stringent

regulations on banks. And I think that's fine. And I think as investors, we didn't put as much money in banks, banks, financials as a weighting in the S&P. So those of you who are investing in ETFs and you look at maybe what weightings they have in the different sectors, I think bank weightings are going higher.

And I think some of this is good news because the Fed is taking some pressure off the banks, not because necessarily Washington's telling them to do it. Or you can look at ETFs that track the banking sector. There's the XLF, there's the KRE, excuse me, which is the Regional Bank Index, the XLF. That one has done really well for me. It has, really? Okay. How long have you owned it? I can open up. You want me to open it up at brokerage?

Yeah. Take a look. I probably got it around the time when everybody was upset at the regionals, like Silicon Valley Bank days. Yeah. Yeah. That was a great time to be a buyer of regional banks. And one of the things that I think will be a potential driver to the next move higher in regional banks, I think there will be consolidation. I think there will be more consolidation. But the various ETFs that exist for various sectors are great ways to get exposure without having to pick a name. The XLF is interesting because a big weighting in it includes Berkshire Hathaway, which isn't

really a financial company, has a lot of insurance, but also has some energy and is real estate consumers, some real estate, some credit card stuff. So, but good for you and your KRE. Thanks Tim, watch your back. Hold onto your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more money rehab. Let's play a little game.

Love that. Okay. So I'll give you a stock or an industry and you tell me if you're feeling bullish or bearish. Ready? Boeing. Bullish. I think Boeing is at an inflection point where they're starting to generate free cash flow again. Again, remember, this is a company that's been burning through cash, costing investors money, has had a ton of problems. Boeing's worst problems are behind them. Bullish. Bitcoin. Bullish. Costlessly bullish. What is it? 120 right now? We're a little weaker today, but yeah, 118-ish.

This is the week of crypto goes to Washington, right? So there's a lot going on in the regulatory circles around Bitcoin and digital and everything related to the regulation around it. Great stuff. Bitcoin's priced in a lot of good news. I think longer term, I don't think any question, the genie's out of the bottle, limited supply. Bitcoin eventually goes higher.

It could certainly go lower before it goes higher. A dollar. Bearish, but I caution that everybody's bearish and that makes me want to be bullish. Because of opportunity. Yeah, I just think everybody's on one side of the boat, but there's no question that some of the policy of Washington around the dollar, they've pretty much said they want a weaker dollar. That's not terrible for investing in stocks, by the way. That sometimes can be very good. Nike.

Bullish. Tough few years, still the largest company in athleisure. I'm a Nike shareholder. I think the idea that Nike's lost its way and will never be an innovator and a hit brand again, if you could see my footwear. No, I don't have Nike's on today. Actually, I've got my, I've got my, I've got my suede Vans on. I got my suede Vans on today. Wow. I would have guessed on. Is that how you say it? Yeah, I have, I have ons too, and I'll probably wear those to fast money tonight.

So you can read me like a book. Kind of guy. Apple. I'm going to say cautiously bullish again, because I think sentiment in the stock is terrible. I believe an install base of over 3 billion phones means they will find their way in AI, but we're all disappointed in what they've done. Google. I won't say alphabet, but similar. Similar. I mean, but this is so bullish because I believe there's too much talent, too many assets there. Some of the parts of this company is some of the best and brightest in the world of technology.

You could make an argument. It's like the biggest incubator technology hedge fund who also has a core search business. Cautiously bullish. Gold. Bullish. Very bullish. And bullish despite the fact that gold has had a incredible run But all the reasons that we talked about with the dollar with Bitcoin with concern about the Fed with Dynamics around we haven't really talked about international markets

But I do think that the rest of the world is thinking a little bit more about their own backyard But I think central bank reserves are becoming that much more denominated in gold and they should be Tesla bearish There's other people around me that rant all the time about Tesla and it's an easy rant, but for me, it's this irony that Tesla is supposed to be on the leading edge of a handful of technologies that are really not in the price, but are in the price. And suddenly there's competition and there's competition

in some of those other places that I don't think Tesla really owns. So I embarrass you. Okay, Klarna and all the IPO babies. Ah, IPO babies. I'm going to be bearish. I just feel that there's a lot of momentum in some of these names. I don't love the buy now pay later stocks, but I probably think they're going to be okay until we start seeing real job layoffs. But I think there's a lot of froth in companies having said that. I bet a lot of your audience loves the IPO market, loves investing in some of these names, and they've done incredibly well in some of them.

I've done well. Reddit, CoreWeave. Circle, you know Circle? I didn't do Circle. I sat Circle out. Well. Such a square. No, oh. I'm trying to be a poet like you, Tim.

All right, what's one stock or sector or something that we left off that you're feeling bullish about? Well, I think we should mention international investing because I bet a lot of people don't sit at home and think, where can I invest around the world when there's so many great opportunities in the United States? I've spent a lot of my career investing internationally.

I ran an emerging markets hedge fund for 15 years. I run an international ETF right now, IDVO, which pays a nice div on an international. So it's basically a covered call strategy where we enhance the yield by selling calls on big global blue chip companies like Siemens or Barclays Bank or SAP or Taiwan Semiconductor or Novo Nordisk. I just think for a long time, investors kind of forgot about the markets

outside of this country. And I do think this isn't just a trade. I think this is an investment theme. And I think international markets have underperformed for 15 years. And I think most people are underweight international. And I think this is not something that you missed because even if Germany's outperformed the S&P, if the German DAX has outperformed the S&P by 30% since Thanksgiving, and you say, well, I think I missed that, it's still underperformed the S&P by 65% even after that move

as of right now. And then other big ones are like VXUS, VA, IEFA, those types of... Yeah, so if you're thinking about other global funds, you're thinking about ACWX, for example. That's the MSCI world, XUS, and that's a benchmark that is at least one that people follow. So I think there's a lot of different places to get exposure internationally. Sometimes people, investors like to look at country ETFs. Maybe they want exposure to Japan. Maybe they want exposure. That would be the EWJ, whether they want exposure to Brazil. That's EWZ.

Whether they want Mexico, EWW. And with all these headlines about all this trade, it's creating dislocations that probably will create opportunities for investors. For sure. Tim, as you know, we end all of our episodes by asking our beautiful guests for tips that listeners can take straight to the bank. You've told us so many already.

You can tell us one more or give us a time when you needed money rehab. Oh, yeah. I mean, look, the money rehab thing for me, there's been so many different periods in my life. Certainly that first American Express card that I went to college with was deadly. And now having held my American Express card for, I don't know, 35 years, they didn't take it from me, but they almost did. I think that investing in energy and themes around both the strengthening of the US electricity grid, but power generation to support AI, to support computing power, to support crypto,

I think those are themes that are not flashes in the pan. And I think nuclear particularly is an area that I've loved for a long time. And I still think there's more to do there. So there are uranium ETFs, there's a company called Cameco, which is CCJ, it's had a great run, but and it's not cheap. But I like investing around energy. And constellation energy is another name I'm long and like that exposure to both AI and data center and power generation, but also they are exposed to Nat gas and renewable as well as nuclear. And they're one of the largest players in the big old state of Texas,

which seems to be where everything's going on these days. And I know there's been some awful things which are really sad, but Texas as an economy and as a place that is very vibrant and seemingly a place where there's really exciting things happening, owning power in Texas to me is something that's really interesting. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lapin.

Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some Money Rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me.

And follow us on Instagram at at MoneyNews and TikTok, at MoneyNews Network for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.