Power Lunch - Damage Control, Un-Natural gains 1/10/24

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun is doing damage control after that Alaska Airlines incident. We’ll speak to  shareholder and brand expert about what he said, and he needs to do to reassure customers and investors.Plus, natural gas prices have been soaring to start the year. As the U.S. becomes the biggest exporter of liquified natural gas, we’ll look at some ways you can invest in the energy space right now. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Power Launch alongside Kelly Evans. I'm Tyler Matheson. Big interview in the last hour with the CEO of Boeing. We will talk to a shareholder and a brand expert about what Dave Calhoun said and what he needs to do now to reassure customers and investors. Plus, natural gas has been jumping up 10% to start the year as the United States becomes the biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas. We're looking at ways to invest in this space. We'll also talk about the potential consumer hit. But first, let's get a check on the markets. The Dow's up 77. points. About a good for about two-tenths of a percent while the S&P gains 17. And the NASDAQ is the leader today in a reversal of the trend we've seen so far year to date, adding about six-tenths of one percent. Also in spite of Apple being hit with another downgrade, this time at Redburn Atlantic, they're cutting the stock to neutral from buy Apple, down 6 percent in the past month. And from high tech to low-tech, shares of WD-40, everybody's got a can of add, or soaring after

reporting strong earnings and sales. And the CEO says he is negotiating with big retailers on price increases, and that would improve the company's margins. We begin, though, with the big interview in the last hour on CNBC, an exclusive with Boeing's CEO Dave Calhoun. Let's bring in Phil LeBow now. Phil, what was your biggest takeaway from the conversation? They realize the severity of the situation and the need to find out what happened. That may take some time, but to more importantly make sure it doesn't happen again. And part of that involves going back through the processes of manufacturing,

not only that specific plane for Alaska Airlines, but all of the 737 maxes that the company builds, especially the Max Nines, which are in question right now. So part of that is that starting on Saturday, and we just learned this today. Dave Calhoun said they had the senior leadership here, along with the CEO from Spirit Aerosystems, was in town, Pat Chanahan.

They have put together an internal safety group that is in this war room, looking at everything that has happened and reviewing the work history, not only for the aircraft in question, but for all of the Max Nines, and they're coordinating their efforts with the NTSB and the FAA. Here's Dave Calhoun talking with us last hour. We're in a moment where we have nobody at risk, and our job is to understand literally everything that has happened, everything that surrounds that particular fuselage plug, and fix it, and make sure it can never happen. again. The max nine grounding impacts 171 planes worldwide. The bulk of those planes are here in the

U.S. flown by United and Alaska United, the biggest operator with 79 airplanes, Alaska with 64. The max inspection rules that both Alaska United and the other carriers overseas will be using to make sure that the fuselage plug is meeting the specifications it's supposed to meet. Those rules have not been finalized, but Boeing is talking with the FAA and the NTSB. There could be some movement on that relatively quickly. I say relatively quickly, maybe a few days. But for now, those planes remain grounded. Getting them back in the air is a key priority not only for Boeing, but also for Alaska and United and the other airlines.

So, Phil, as I look at this, Boeing is obviously ultimately responsible for its jet, and they are taking responsibility for its jet. But it was Spirit Airlines. It was responsible for the building of this fuselage. Spirit Aerosystems, Tyler. Spirit Aerosystems. What did I say? Do I say airlines?

Spirit aerosystems. I'm sorry. You did. Go ahead. I'm corrected. Spirit aerosystems. They were the ones who manufactured the fuselage, including the door apparatus that was there, I assume.

Correct. That was not assembled by Boeing. So isn't it spirit aerosystem's responsibility if there was indeed a manufacturing problem with that door insert? Depends on what caused it, Tyler. And I'm not trying to dance around the answer here. We don't know if it was a manufacturing issue. We don't know if it was a production issue in terms of as it was going through the process

before it was delivered to Alaska Airlines. So that's really the key. You need to know exactly what caused the plug to be ripped out of the airplane. Pat Chanahan, CEO Spirit. Aerosystems spent many, many years here at Boeing. He knows Boeing well. Boeing knows him well, and he knows what Spirit needs to do in terms of answering all the questions revolving around this particular aircraft, as well as other questions about quality control at Spirit. All right, and forgive me again for mislabeling that company. Phil LeBow, thank you very much.

Appreciate it. For more reaction to what Boeing CEO, Dave Calhoun, said in his response to the incident and to the Alaska Air incident so far. Let's get to a panel, including Dean Crutchfield, CEO of Crutchfield Plus Partners, and Tony Bancroft is a portfolio manager at Gubelli Funds. Boeing is his third largest holding. Let me start with you, Tony, if I might. How material is this incident,

so far as we know it today, to the Boeing stock price? Thanks, Tyler. I think financially speaking, I think overall is immaterial. How we look at it, probably on a per week basis, is probably going to be somewhere around $20 million a week on a concession basis. And this isn't liability that Boeing would have to pay to the airlines for the loss of use.

Yes, concessions-wise. And then, of course, there's going to be probably inspection costs, which are essentially de minimis. So I think as long as this doesn't go play out for months, talking multiple months, it's really going to be an immaterial impact to the financial loan. So you still have confidence in your holding, in Boeing, in its ability to? For sure. Long term, I think Boeing's, first of all, I think it's a great company. I think they make great planes.

They make safe planes. And, you know, all the secular and structural tailwinds that the industry has, there's a lot going the right way for the commercial aerospace industry. This, fortunately, was a lot less severe. But in 2018 and 2019, when they had those tragic crashes, the shares moved sideways for a long, long time. They were also in the 300s then, and they're only trading at 227 now. So they're $100 less than they were five years ago, and now they're facing a yet another period of drawn out uncertainty.

Why do you see value here? Sure. I think, again, in the near term, is going to be machinations with the stock price. But, again, over the long term, the secular tailwinds that are impacting industry, they're going to make 40,000 planes in the next 20 years, these two OEMs. And, you know, global travel is outpacing GDP by 100 basis points or so, expensive. expected to be. So I think the long term is going to do very well. And when we get back to production rates that were pre-2018 levels, there's a lot of free cash flow to go for Boeing. Dean, let me turn to you. Tony has addressed the financial risk here to Boeing. But what is the reputational risk?

And how do you think they have blunted any reputational damage so far? Well, obviously, their brand's taken a massive hit. I mean, this is a broadside to it. It's been through a lot of crisis in the past. Typically, companies respond, you know, to a crisis with an attitude of delaying and denying and deflecting and defending. In fact, Moolenberg, his, you know, Colmoons' predecessor was a bit like that with those disasters Kelly just spoke about in 2018-19. So they've learned a lot from that. And he's been through a lot, Carl Hoon, since his tenure in 2020, right? He's had COVID. He had the 787 delivery stoppages. He had the quality issue, actually, at Spirit, if you recall, before this happened.

You know, so basically a lot going on, and now we have this crisis. So they're very well rehearsed, but hats off to him and his crisis management team. They've approached it in a entirely different way. And my, you know, I always say about crisis management. It's not about the why. It's about the moment and what you do in that moment. And Calhoun's been spectacular. And it's going to be a case study in years to come.

But the way they're going, it's going to be looked at in a highly revered fashion. That's interesting. I want to turn Tony, just back to the stock. for one more second. As we mentioned, it was trading not only $100 higher per share back in 2018 and 2019, even when they had these tragic events. The market cap back then, the peak market cap was in 2019, $240 billion. The company's worth only $140 billion today. Now, if we were talking Legacy automaker, I'd say, of course, they're going the way of the horse or what have you, if they're not an EV maker. Why is Boeing worth so much less now than it was five years ago?

So the stock, the company really trades on free cash flow as far as, and that really is driven by production rates. So they're still pretty far below what they were, you know, producing pre the first, you know, first mishap. They're at most 52 planes, 737 maxes a month. And now they're somewhere in the high 30s. But is that enough to account for the company being worth $240 billion for years ago and only $140 billion today? I mean, it's a big, the max is a huge cash flow. They're talking, you know, talking, you know, going to be obviously free cash flow positive this year and talking, you know, 10 billion plus, which for they were negative for the longest time just because of the, you know, the incremental. So you think this aircraft and the problems with it have directly contributed to kind of this growing hole, it's almost a liquidity hole, a valuation hole.

And if they can get the things back on track, does that mean the valuation could, the market cap, the whole worth of the company could really? For so much, you know, it's a big operating leverage story, right? So when the factory has got a lot of overhead and there's not a lot of production, you're not getting any revenue and you can't spread the costs across that. And then it works the other way. The pump works the other way when production rates start getting back to historic rates, it becomes very profitable. And I think the long-term picture is we're going to see that. And it essentially unconstrained demand. And that's why we hold it is one of our largest holdings in our G-CAT ETF fund.

Dean, so I guess I'm sensing that you would give the company an A or an A-plus in this case on how, how they've handled this. And so you would not see this incident as financially, you know, really, really measurably detrimental to Boeing. Well, initially it's going to be to, you know, to your other, you know, the other commenters points, you know, they're obviously taking a hit, but they've got 40,000 after build. So they've got a book that's deep with orders. So there's a confidence in that delivery. But it's more about reputation and brands. So they're There's two strategies that Calhoun has ahead of him. One is obviously the brand, which you need to rebuild public trust. And number two is how do you build regulatory trust? Well, that's clearly

linked to TQM. And their TQM is clearly wrong here, including quality control, some massive issue for them that they're obviously focused on. So those are their two approaches. I guarantee that one of the most powerful ways for them to signal change, Calhoun said it, this must never happen again. So you need to show that. You need to do that, communicate it, but you also need to signal that. And your brand is the best vehicle to do it. So my bet is that they will be looking at launching an entirely new rebrand within 12 months. A rebrand of the company, not of the aircraft that is at issue here. A whole company. The aircraft with the whole company, a rebrand of Boeing. And it's not just about a shiny new logo. We're talking about a major brand overhaul. It's a bit like cracking open.

your ribs and removing some organs, which does leave a scar. But they need to do that, and they are going to be doing that. So their best vehicles are yes, TQM, bang it, say it loudly, what are you doing with that? But also, what are you going to do with your brand? But to do a major rebrand with the branding, the implementation, advertising, PR marketing, employee comms, you could be looking at a price of over $70 million in 12 months. That's very, Dean has left us with a very vivid metaphor there. What do you think of that? Do they need to rebrand the company in that way? You feel? You know, obviously, Mr. Crutchfield is the expert on that. But I'd say on the operational and quality control side in my previous life, when I flew F-18s in the Marine Corps, we always

would say everyone's, every pilot in the squad and is a safety officer. Everyone deals with quality control. And it's a marathon. It's paramount. And I'm 100% confident that CEO Calhoun is fully aware of that. And I'm sure. this is going to be his lasting legacy to get this thing on track and moving forward. This guy flew F-18s in the brain court. Wow. Wow. Do you still fly? No, I don't.

No, a lot of golf now. Too many kids. Well, thank you very much for being with us today in sharing your insights. Tony Bancroft. And Dean Crutchfield, thank you as well. Good to see you both. Coming up, a major breach to the SEC. As you've probably heard by now, the regulator's Twitter or X account was compromised,

nearly leading to serious repercussions for the crypto industry. We'll get all the details next. Plus, we've already seen some bad news break one key market name in the case of Boeing. Which could we expect to break out in the weeks ahead? We will get technical support when Power Lunch returns. Welcome back. The Securities and Exchange Commission itself is reeling from a major breach. The regulator was forced to retract a false social media post,

which claimed they had approved the Bitcoin ETF for trading last night. Amon Javers has more for us. Kelly, well, we got some information about the hack of the SEC's Twitter, now X, X account last night from a posting by X's security team. Remember that in the 4 p.m. hour yesterday, the SEC's official account published a statement suggesting that a Bitcoin ETF had, as you say, been approved. That triggered Bitcoin prices, but within moments, the SEC said it was not true and their account had been compromised. Now, overnight, X posted a statement saying the compromise was not due to any breach of X's systems, but rather due to, to an unidentified individual obtaining control over a phone number associated with the SEC Gov account through a third party. X also said that the SEC account did not have two-factor

authentication enabled at the time of the hack. Now, that's a standard extra layer of protection, and it's going to raise questions about why the SEC did not take this pretty obvious security step on such a high-profile account. I reached out to the SEC this morning for their side of this. I've emailed them, called them throughout the day today. heard back from them yet today. So nothing from the SEC today in response to what the X account put out last night. And of course, there is some rich subtext to all of this, Kelly, as you know. X is owned by Elon Musk. He's been a bitter critic of the SEC for years. So the blame game here could be particularly pointed. Back over to you. Well, and people were, of course, having a

field day with this. The only thing I wonder, Amin in a longer last way, and I doubt this, look, it looks obvious they're close to approving the Bitcoin spot ETF. I don't think. this would derail that. But do you think on some level they want to go, well, screw you guys? Look what's happened. Here we are trying to help legitimize and broaden the industry. And you go ahead and give us one of the biggest black guys we've ever had. Yeah, well, I mean, to be fair, I don't think anybody at the SEC ever sits around saying screw you guys to anybody.

That's officially anyway. But look, I mean, you know, there's a real question about whether this cage rattling that happened yesterday is going to delay the Bitcoin ETF, which spot ETF, which everybody, has been expecting to come any moment now. The question is why would it, though, right? I mean, if you were the SEC, you've kind of made the decision, you've run the traps on it, you're ready to go. Why really would a Twitter mishap like that impact your decision to go ahead with this? I mean, you might want to just say, hey, everyone stopped doing everything. Let's figure out what's going on here before we proceed and make sure that we can actually roll this out without another problem. We do have control of all of our social media. So that might be what's going on.

we haven't heard from the SEC all day today on this. And we've been reaching out to them, and we'd like to get their side of it. Is the system back and secure? Well, the SEC said yesterday that they had restricted access to the account, so they were able to get the account back. But we don't know beyond that what other accounts that they've been looking at. Gary Gensler has his own personal account, which they used, ironically, to say that the other account had been tweeting something inaccurate.

They tweeted out through the Gary Gensler account that that was inaccurate. So if you're trusting things on that platform, how do you know which one to trust at this point? Right? If these platforms are hackable in this way, can anybody rely on anything in terms of, you know, something that's market moving that they see on that platform, given the history here of people getting hacked over time? All right. Amon Javrish, thanks very much. Appreciate it. You bet.

Further ahead, getting some tricks of the trade. CNBC launching its first ever paid online course for job seekers. We're going to give you a preview. Talk about it a little bit when Powerline. returns. All right, welcome back, everybody, to Power Lunch. Let's get to Rick Santelli in Chicago now for a look at how bonds are trading ahead of tomorrow's inflation data.

Hi, Rick. Hi, Tyler. Indeed, it's been pretty wild in the Treasury complex, maybe across all sovereign trading across the globe. Let's start with our 10-year auction today. There's an intradate chart around one eastern you see volatility, but we continue to move higher even though it was an average, not much of a below-average auction. But if you look at a two-day, you get a lot more clues.

The two-day shows that for a good chunk of the early trade, we're under yesterday's lows across the entire treasury curve. But that reversed, and all yields are actually now higher on the day. And maybe the biggest story is how hot, hot, hot, all the European debt is right now. And how all the patterns of tenure are very, very similar. Let's look at a six-month chart of tens in the U.S. Now hold that image. Now let's go to the German boom, the standard of the Eurozone. Now let's go to the Spanish tens.

And now let's go to the UK tens. You see all those patterns are almost identical on the way down. Now on the way up to some of those historic high yields of the fall, the path might have been a bit different. But then all of a sudden, what we see is central banks. Ours leading the way are supposedly going to be aggressively easing this year. And that has fueled an appetite despite the fact that we're probably going to be over $2 trillion in sovereign debt issuance this year between the U.S. and Europe and maybe Japan. So it's a very interesting development going on as we continue to monitor.

Why is this important? Because if the calculations are wrong and inflation pops up a little bit in the future or our central bank isn't as aggressive as many suspect, we could really see the roughly. pulled out from under some of this investor craze in Europe going on. The Spanish auction had a bid to cover three times stronger than our average bid to cover for U.S. 10s. Kelly, back to you. All right. Rick, thank you.

Busy day here, Rick Santelli. Let's get to Bertha Coombs now for the CNBC News Update. Bertha. Kelly, President Biden and House Speaker Mike Johnson held a phone call today to discuss border security. According to Johnson's office, the speaker asked the president to use his executive authority to secure the southern border. Phone call comes as some House Republicans threaten a government shutdown if Biden and

congressional Democrats do not agree on tougher border policies. And as southeastern Connecticut City ordered hundreds of people to evacuate and declared a local state of emergency following a partial dam break today. Flash flood warning along the Yantic River near Norwich, in effect until 6.45 this evening comes after a strong storm brought torrential rain and heavy winds to the northeast last night. An actor and comedian Stephen Fry is joining forces with PETA to call on the United Kingdom's Kingsguard to stop using real fur in their bearskin hats. He narrated a video for the animal rights group saying the hats are purely ornamental and serve no military purpose. The Ministry of Defense told the BBC the bear fur comes from licensed and legal hunts.

Kelly, back over to you. Well, there you go. Bertha, thank you. Bertha Coombs. Coming up, seeing some unnatural gains to start the year with Nat gas. It's jumping 16% already, though down big today giving some of that back. We're going to dig into the space. How should you trade it?

What's the big takeaway? Bill Perkins joins us next. Welcome back to Power Lunch. Natural gas might be giving up some gains today, but it's still a big. 17% in just the past month. And it comes as the U.S. is now the biggest world exporter of LNG. Pippa Stevens here too. OMG. Yeah, OMG for LNG because last year the U.S. actually oversook Australia and Qatar to become the largest global LNG exporter. In 2023, exports rose to 86.15 million metric tons, according to data from Kepler. That was up 13%

from 2022's levels and made up about 21% of global LNG exports. LNG exports. The majority, about 65%, is going to Europe after the EU moved away from Russian gas. Asia and Latin America received 27% and 7% of U.S. LNG, respectively. Now, there are currently seven LNG plants in the U.S. with more under construction. The EIA forecasts that total exports from North America will double by 2027, which has led some to say that we will simply have too much. Still, there are a host of companies looking to take advantage of this growing market. That's everything from the upstream gas producers like Chesapeake and EQT to the companies that own the pipelines that transport

the gas to LNG plants, including Williams and Kinder Morgan. And then finally, the companies, of course, themselves that own the liquefacation plant like Chenier and Semper. And this is really kind of astonishing because we only started exporting in 2016. So we rose to the top spot in a very fast amount of time. Crazy. Seven years. I remember when they had to to turn the LNG plants around. Exactly. That was a shiner. Yep. Exactly. Initially it was going to be an import facility and then they changed it around to exports. Wild. All right, Pippa, stay with

us. As we follow also a potential mega merger in the NatGas space that could come together as soon as this week. Chesapeake and Southwestern are reportedly close to a deal would create a $17 billion company and it would make him the largest NatGas producer overtaking EQT. For more on that

deal and then NatGas trends more broadly. You've got to talk to Bill Perkins. He's CEO and head trader at Skylar Capital management. Bill, welcome to you. I guess first of all, I just kind of almost put this from the consumer point of view. Anything to worry about here in terms of prices? Well, when there's a cold shot, in the natural gas, we have a lot of shale drilling now, which tends to have more freeze-offs, these newer wells. And so when it's extremely cold, we tend to lose supply. But the system is generally robust. Stocks are full. Storage is salt dorm storage, that readily available storage.

is available. So we will definitely meet the demand unless, unless, unless we have kind of these URI events or these like polar pigs that used to come down. We don't see that. We see some higher prices in the intermittent period, maybe a week, but everybody should be fine and warm. Northeast, are they going to be fine? How are we going to fix this? It's going to take a lot more infrastructure or incentive or maybe even regulation to get the producers to winterize. They just don't see the value in putting in the equipment or the one-off freeze. Generally, higher prices are good for them for the production that they do have. And so I think it's a matter of aligning incentives with the producers and getting the infrastructure in.

But by and large, there's so much production in the Northeast and so much storage that you generally don't have a problem, and it's very much a tail event type thing. You know, unlike the oil market, the gas market has traditionally been very regionally focused. But is there any worry that with this surge in LNG that does open up the U.S. Henry Hub prices to either higher prices or even just more volatility given all this new avenue for demand? Yeah, definitely looking forward. I mean, right now, whatever we can export, we are at capacity. So essentially, it doesn't really matter what's going on internationally. It's just gas goes, they drill the gas, they ship it out. There's no room for exporting more LNG.

We're about to double our export capacity, which means that the U.S. may float with international prices or international prices might crash because we're shipping so much gas out. That remains to be seen, but we're about to be part of the global volatility, not just domestic volatility. What do you think of the possible merger of Southwestern and Chesape? I think it's brilliant. If you look at the distribution of their assets, they're both big and the Marcellus in the Northeast. and the Hainesville. And the Hainesville is, those two areas are regions of growth. The Hainesville is one of the areas where you want to be growing

if you're looking forward towards LNG exports. If you look at their rig counts, their frat crews, they're very similar. And so you can have rig efficiency and drilling efficiency, but you can also have operational efficiency. So a merger makes a lot of sense for these two companies. Where is Hainesville? I'm not familiar.

Well, that's in Louisiana. There's Haynesville, Texas, and Haynesville, Louisiana. It's very close to Henry Hub, very close to the export facilities and the pipeline infrastructure to get the gas out. And so becoming a behemoth, getting those efficiencies in operations with crews, debt, etc. It's really a smart play. Is there anything that would stand in its way, Bill, anything in regulatory or anything like that? I mean, wow, you're asking me to play politics. I don't understand some of the regulators.

Well, I'll make it simple. They don't want any deals to happen. So especially in the natural gas space where you could be talking about higher bills for consumers, you know, it seems like they're they might come a call in. Yeah, well, I think it's counterintuitive. I don't think they're predatory. I think that as they become more efficient and they lower the cost of production, that results in lower prices. We're about to get linked up to the world and world prices are much higher with the export facilities. So I think the higher prices are coming.

You know, they're not drastically higher, but we're going to have to now compete with other nations and people that are used to paying $10, $20 per Mb2 for gas when we have kind of the cheapest gas on the planet except Qatar and Trinidad. And so, you know, that is not going to be a result of this murder. merger. This merger is actually going to create economies of scale that allow them to produce cheaper. And so I hope regulators don't get in the way, but, you know. Yeah. And on that regulatory front, we did get reports that the Biden administration might start cracking down on some of these LNG permitics for the permits for the facilities. The White House did say they have no comment on those reports. But obviously, the environmental groups are very much against the surge in LNG and adding even more terminals. Do you expect LNG to become a, you know, a battleground of sorts topic?

during the 2024 election? Well, I think that we have enough facilities already permitted or under construction that significantly expand our lead as the number one producer. I think newer facilities, let's face it, the ones that are building, they don't want more competition. So they're also against it behind the scenes. The environmentalists don't like it. They would like a faster transition to renewables.

And so you have a lot of people. that are not necessarily as welcoming. And it's a lot easier for them to lean on regulators one way or another to say, this isn't necessary. Why do we have to have another LNG export plant? It remains to be seen what the administration will do and what their view is, but the current administration tends to lean to less infrastructure if it's associated with oil and gas. Indeed. Bill, thank you so much.

We appreciate your time today. Good to have you. And PIPA, thank you as well, our PIPA Stevens. And coming up, how to ace the interview. CNBC make it launching courses for job seekers looking to boost their confidence on the open market. We will get the key details including some hot tips when Power Lunch returns. Okay, there we are. All right, welcome to Power Lunch.

More than a third of people have seriously considered quitting their jobs in the past three months, just saying, according to a CNBC survey monkey workforce survey. But searching for a new job can be daunting. Now, CNBC's Make It is launching a new course to help you with the process. You get more information by scanning the QR code on your screen. We'll leave it up there for a couple minutes. Visiting the CNBC makeit.com slash courses. That's how you would register.

And by listening to our next guest, Hannah Howard. She's senior work editor. How did you get that title for CNBC Make It? Tell us about the course. This is 100 minutes of video content on how to prepare for and ace a job. interview. It's broken up into different modules, I suppose? Yeah, it's split up into five-minute lessons. We have three great experts who talk about everything from interview psychology to body

language, how to prepare, how to follow up, everything you need to know about how to nail your interview. And it also comes with a companion workbook. So there are additional exercises and scripts to really help you get it down and feel confident. Forgive me for being a bit snippy here, but if you need 100 minutes of training to ace an interview, I don't think you're going to get the job. Well, some people feel a lot of anxiety before a job interview. Some people have been out of the workforce for a while. You've got new college graduates who have never done this before.

So it's really for anyone who just wants to brush up and feel like they can go into any job interview. How to put your best foot forward. Yeah, exactly. How important now, it seems to me, I think I know the answer, but how important beyond the interview is LinkedIn in today's? job-seeking market. LinkedIn is very important. About 85% of recruiters use LinkedIn to source candidates. So that's reaching out proactively to people they think might fill open roles and also to check out anyone who's applied for jobs in their company. So having your LinkedIn up-to-date,

having things like promotions and skills up-to-date on there is super important. And it's been such a change the last couple years when, you know, most of us are used to this idea that it feels like scarcity. There's more, there's not enough jobs and we all want them. But then the pandemic came and kind of changed that. And you heard all about quiet quitting and people just, I don't need to work. And now, even with the launch of these courses, I feel like maybe we're the kind of the old normal is coming back. And everyone's getting a little nervous again and needs to make sure that they have their ducks in a row. Yeah. So two years ago, it was a lot easier to get a job than it is now. But the job market has been pretty resilient. There's still more open jobs and there are people

searching for jobs. So it is still a good time to find a job. And the pandemic has made people realize that they can look for the things they want as opposed to necessarily having to settle for just whatever job is offered to them. You know, you mentioned a third of people who are considering quitting their jobs. They're looking for more meaningful work, better pay, and for more say over how they do their work. How many, how much of the job interview process now is online via Zoom or Teams as opposed to in-person? And are there different tactic strategies that you would find out about in this course

for the online interview as opposed to the in-person interview? In other words, is it different qualitatively? You know what? It is a little bit different. The things that you're saying, the things that you're talking about are the same, but the way that you set yourself up, the way that you come into the interview,

You know, in the course we talk about being prepared for an in-person interview that looks like making sure you're on time by looking at how long is it going to take you to get there. For an virtual interview, it's making sure your internet connection works and making sure your background looks okay. How many people have had this happen to them, making sure your Zoom is updated. Yes. You go on, you're two minutes late already to it. Well, maybe not for an interview. Okay, you're five minutes early, but all of a sudden your computer, it's doing the automatic reload, little things like that. So making sure that everything's up to date, that you're not going to have people walking in and out of the background, making sure you're just sort of like...

So what's interesting to me is if you were doing an online interview, a lot of people are not terribly comfortable with the idea of being on camera. And they'll look up in the sky and they won't be looking around or they'll down. And so I suppose you could do that in a job interview face-to-face as well. But there are certain skills that you would need to employ for the on-camera interview. They're different. Yeah, definitely. And the course actually goes into that about how to set up your camera, making sure it's at eye level, you know, and even talking about if you feel really uncomfortable on video,

making a video of yourself talking about some of those like common interview questions so that you can go over it, see where you're stumbling, see where you're not looking straight at the camera, that sort of thing. The other difference between the in-person interview and the online interview, you've got to wear pants to the in-person one, right? Well, we actually recommend that you wear pants to any interview. In case the camera slips. Just in case. Just in case.

Yeah. What are you wearing? Yeah. Hannah, thank you so much. What is the course again? CNBC make it.com. Cnbc make it.com slash courses. And you'll find everything you need to know about acing your next job interview.

I think you can get a deal if you do it right now, too. Still ahead, we'll get some technical support with our chartist to highlight three stocks. He has the potential to pop higher. Power Lunch is back in two. All right, welcome back to Power Lunch, everybody. Time now for some technical support. We've got three stocks making some technical moves that we want to bring into focus. Our chart us today is Jay Woods, Freedom Capital Markets, Chief Global Strategist.

Jay, welcome back. Good to have you with us. Happy New Year. Let's go to Nvidia. Shares up about 2%. You say this stock is one that is in a breakout. Oh, this is a technician's dream. Let's look at it over the last year.

We had a great big gap on a breakout earnings, and then we trended higher for a while, and then we kind of stalled. A lot of people got a little upset right here at August when they had this record earnings quarter, and it failed to go even higher. But what is it done? It has gone sideways.

It's done nothing for almost eight months. And then finally, this week, it broke out. If you think about how the market rallied and that broadening happened in the last two months of the year, Navidia didn't do it. Navidia kind of went sideways. It just broke above 500 with some serious gusto. This stock has a leg to go much higher. 550, you could stall 560, but the path for Navidia is fantastic.

You had in the Consumer Electronics Show and then positive earnings in the middle of February. And we're talking 20, 30 percent gains from these levels here. You got room to run there. Let's go to J.P. Morgan, top U.S. Bank. JPM will release fourth quarter financials on Friday. What are the technical saying here? It's important to know that it is an earnings play, and I don't like to play these things in earnings, but let's think about JP Morgan.

The run it's had, this stock is breaking out to all-time highs before its earnings. This happened. We had a nice little sell-off here. 2022, 2023. We made the roundabout. A little cup and handle. We like cup and handles. And then a breakout.

This is set up if it does pull back during earnings to buy the stock, to add to the name. You want to see this 160 level. this support if it continues to pull back. It would be a great entry point and then set up from a risk reward point of view. If it doesn't hold, if it fails, if it fails to hold that 50-day moving average right in here, get out and look at it again.

But this has been the cream of the crop and now it has a tailwind of the Fed easing. This setup is perfect. I love it. Going into earnings. If you get a pullback, time to buy. Time to buy more. All right, let's go to United Health. It, too, set to report on Friday its earnings. Highest weighted in the Dow

because of its price, also the the most expensive. It's price weighted. Jay, what are you watching on this one? Yeah, and a fun fact with its earnings, it's never missed. So they're going to beat, but here's what you want to see. Kind of reminds me of the first stock we looked at, Navidia, at least from a price pattern. We had a nice long uptrend. This is three-year base. This is three-year chart with a two-year base. The stock has been going nowhere, stalling at 550 consistently. But what has happened now? Let's just back this out recently. We're making higher lows. We're making higher lows. want to see those higher lows. That's constructive. We have been testing 550. We keep knocking on

that door. Yeah, you can see that, man, that's really vivid. There's a low. There's a low. There's a low. Yeah. But here's a higher low. Yeah, it's kind of a hot mess, but it's been a nice trading stock for those that like to trade in these channels. But what I see now is it has potential to pop. So I would chase this on a gap outside of above 550 going into earnings. And then you know your risk reward. Your setup is if it doesn't hold, This 550 level comes back in, get out. It was worth the shot. But the upward momentum is there if it follows through.

And guess what the leading sector is so far this year? Health care. Health care. So let's see if UNH can continue. Jay Woods, a hot mess. Not you, but UNH. Good heavy here, man. Jay Woods.

Thank you both. Coming up, AI is taking over CES. The cutting to edge technology has fingerprints all over one of the world's biggest trade shows. We will go live to Vegas for the latest and a live. report when this hot mess returns. Welcome back, everybody. Couple minutes left here. Several more headlines to get through. Let's start with this year's Consumer Electronics show,

dominated, of course, by the biggest story in tech, artificial intelligence. Let's get out to Julia Borson in Vegas with some of the big highlights. Hi, Julia. Hi, well, Kelly, right here, I'm at what SK Group is calling sort of an AI theme park, featuring a lot of their work around AI and sustainability. is pretty exciting stuff here. Over there, there's what they call a magic carpet. They're working with Joby.

Of course, SK Group makes a lot of semiconductor chips, so they have a platform that elevates up in the sky. All this is looking to show how AI and sustainability work together. One of my favorite ones over here is they have an AI fortune teller and then a hydrogen-powered train that's going around this whole area. So, Kelly, this really, to me, sort of epitomizes the focus on AI, that's all across CES this year. It sounds like some of those products that you're looking at are rather more for display only or

novelty issues items. What kinds of gadgets or or or serious products are you seeing there? Well, what's really interesting is I'm looking on the other side of the camera. There's a lot in the in the kitchen space, a lot of really high-tech ovens. Yesterday I spent some time at the Samsung booth looking at their very high-tech refrigerator. That's going to be on sales soon. They also have an AI powered washer dryer. They actually have a combo washer dryer that uses AI to make sure it uses the most minimal amount of energy possible to wash and then dry your clothes. So those are the types of gadgets that will be available to consumers very soon.

But you're right, this is really more about showcasing all the bells and whistles and all the potential that could come from AI down the road. But this is more fun, less practical. When you say very soon, is that a 2024 rollout for something? of these products or 25 what? I think specifically for some of the Samsung products we're talking, you know, by the end of this year, I did some demos at the Mercedes booth. They have an AI operating system, AI powered operating system where you could talk to the car. That's something that we won't see probably until 2025.

So I would say some of the gadgets like the ovens and the fridges expect them this year, but this is really about adding AI assistant capabilities. The longer term, if you're talking about a flying carpet, that'll probably be a while. All right, Julia, thank you very much. Have fun out there in Vegas. Julia Borson. Thanks. Appreciate it.

All right, speaking of AI, according to the World Economic Forum and the WEF, I think, is next week in Davos, by the way. False and misleading information spread by artificial intelligence is the world's biggest, biggest short-term threat. In its latest global risks report, the forum says disinformation threatens to erode democracy and polarized society, and is the most severe risk to the global economy over the next two years. It's kind of ironic because someone say the wef itself plays that role. Yeah, yeah. But what they're highlighting about AI is also what companies are working on to try to add watermarks and all sorts of different things, so there's not mass confusion this year.

Amazon is laying off hundreds of employees across its prime video and MGM studio divisions. This is according to an internal memo viewed by CNBC. They say it's to help, quote, prioritize investments for the long-term success of our business. It's Twitch game streaming also announced they're cutting 500 jobs. Very, very interesting. So you can be an AI and still be vulnerable. Thanks everybody for watching Power Lunch. Glad you could join us.

Dow's moving right up to session highs. Closing bell starts right now.