After Verizon and AT&T topped Wall Street’s earnings estimates with their second-quarter results, Jim Cramer wondered if there might be more steam ahead for the telecom giants.
“These are huge comebacks for two staid, old competitors that had started to seem like whipping boys for John Legere, the brash CEO of T-Mobile,” the “Mad Money” host said.
The un-carrier’s second-quarter earnings report did blow investors away, with its 817,000 post-paid subscriber additions coming in at more than double the Street’s estimates.
But at these levels, Cramer said that Verizon and AT&T could represent better buys than the Legere-led magenta giant.
“Now, AT&T and Verizon aren’t un-carriers; they aren’t cool in any way, shape or form. But as investments? They’re beginning to be, let’s say, among the best and their stocks are open for business for everyone who needs income and not just the capital appreciation that I think T-Mobile will continue to give you,” Cramer said.
Days when the stock market’s top performers fall out of favor with Wall Street and investors turn to stocks they previously hated remind Cramer of what sell-offs are really about.
“[It’s] a chance to identify red-hot stocks that may have gotten away from you — but you didn’t want to chase then because you had discipline — and are now cooling off, giving you a chance to scale into them gradually on weakness,” the “Mad Money” host said. “Emphasis, by the way, on the word ‘gradually,’ because with the pessimists feeling so empowered, there’s going to be more pain ahead.”
Cramer so he advised homegamers to buy in stages on the way down as the latest sell-off runs its course, using the stock of Amazon as an example.
The days of “couch potato” gamer stereotypes are long over, as the burgeoning eSports industry rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
The trend’s top beneficiaries include Logitech, the Swiss maker of computer accessories like keyboards, headphones and high-end gaming gear, and its CEO, Bracken Darrell, is thrilled to be a part of it.
“It’s been an explosion of a business for us,” Darrell told Cramer on Thursday. “We’re getting deeper and deeper into eSports with every launch, and we’re really innovating very aggressively trying to improve the experience for not only the casual player or the competitive player, but even the professional player.”
One such professional player is Andy Dinh, the 25-year-old founder of one of eSports’ top-ranking teams, who spoke with Cramer about his experience in the developing industry.
Cramer also spoke with Martin Anstice, the CEO of semiconductor equipment maker Lam Research, to hear more about the company’s role in the red-hot space.
“Something incredible happened in the last couple of years: the semiconductor industry delivered to the world a level of connectivity, a level of storage and memory and advanced computation to truly harness the value of data, the new currency of the world,” Anstice told Cramer on Thursday. “And the world of flash memory, particularly, is a major contributor to that.”
Flash, in particular, puts Anstice’s company, which develops machines for chipmakers to make their products, in a particularly good position for growth, the CEO said.
“It’s a sweet spot for the company, and that’s one of the fundamental reasons why performance for Lam is as strong as it is. That supports a very diverse set of applications, whether it’s autonomous driving, augmented reality, the world of A.I. and [machine learning],” Anstice told Cramer. “I mean, there’s a huge amount of innovation, and the world of silicon, the semiconductor industry and Lam are sitting at right at the center of making that possible.”
Finally, Cramer spoke with Mike Kneeland, the CEO of United Rentals, the largest equipment rental company in the world.
An exemplary reflection of the industrial commodities space, United Rentals has been seeing broad-based growth that looks promising going forward, Kneeland told Cramer on Thursday.
“Last year, I think that the industrial sector went to a pause. And now it’s coming back. We started seeing it in the fourth quarter and in the first quarter, and it continues into the second quarter,” the CEO said. “Every month, our utilization was a record. Every month of the second quarter. So this was a great quarter by all standards.”
The company’s recent acquisition of NES Rentals has also been going almost unexpectedly well, Kneeland said.
“We’ve done over 275 acquisitions, so we know the playbook. We’ve had our bruises, but … we have a good playbook and the team’s executed very well. Within nine days, we had that company on our operating system and we turned it right around,” Kneeland told Cramer. “We’re delivering much sooner than we anticipated on all of the synergies, both from a standpoint of cost synergies and revenue synergies, as we build that into 2018.”
In Cramer’s lightning round, he flew through his take on some callers’ favorite stocks, including:
RR Donnelley: “Why don’t we wait to see what they do? I mean, it’s been such a disaster. We’ve done a whole show about what a disaster it’s been. I mean, maybe they can come up with something that makes it so that it would be a mistake to sell. Let’s just see what they do. But it’s been a travesty.”
Freeport-McMoran Inc.: “You know, it just went up $2 bucks. I do think the stock bottomed at $12. Why don’t you see if you can get it at $13? But I do like the idea. It’s a buy.”
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Source: Tech CNBC
Cramer Remix: These stocks aren’t 'cool,' but they could heat up your portfolio