Snap Inc.’s earnings miss on Tuesday inspired CNBC’s Jim Cramer to come up with a new saying to the tune of his enduring rule about the stock of Apple: “own it, don’t trade it.”
“You know I always say to you, ‘own Apple, don’t trade it.’ Well, I’ve got a new one: use Snap, don’t own it,” the “Mad Money” host said. “Holy cow, was that quarter bad. It could be the new benchmark of bad. Move over, Blue Apron.”
Snap aside, Cramer knows that playing offense and defense at the same time isn’t easy, especially for a business.
“Yet whenever I speak to a truly competitive company, that’s exactly what they’re doing — playing both offense and defense using the power of digital, using the power of technology. They have no choice; if they don’t embrace technology they’ll be left behind,” he said.
That’s why Cramer saw Salesforce.com’s partnership with Alphabet’s Google, which was announced on Monday, as so important.
Cramer said the partnership would benefit retailers that compete with Amazon and would prefer not to pay for Amazon Web Services for their cloud-based needs.
Retailers’ days could be especially bright this holiday season, as online sales are expected to hit $100 billion for the first time ever, Adobe Chairman, President and CEO Shantanu Narayen told CNBC.
“We think it’ll be the first $100 billion, online, digital season ever,” Narayen told Cramer in a Tuesday interview. “We announced that mobile will actually cross the PC in terms of where all of these transactions are happening.”
Adobe announced these predictions on Monday in its annual, holiday-season Digital Insights report. Last year, online holiday sales reached $91.7 billion, topping Adobe’s initial estimates.
Adobe also expects this year’s Cyber Monday — the Monday after Thanksgiving during which retailers offer deep discounts on online purchases — to be the biggest online shopping day ever.
Digital presence has become absolutely essential for consumer-facing companies, at least according to Lew Cirne, the founder and CEO of cloud-based monitoring service New Relic.
“Your digital experience is your brand,” Cirne told CNBC in a Tuesday interview with Cramer. “You don’t walk into a bank nearly as often as you fire up its app. So think about that. Think about how the app is now becoming more important than the actual bank experience to so many customers.”
New Relic helps companies keep track of their software, measuring performance, customer interactions and potential problems.
The fast-growing company boasts clients like Major League Baseball, Adobe and 21st Century Fox, which was in the news Monday for reportedly having talks with Disney to sell the entertainment giant most of its assets.
Royal Caribbean Chairman and CEO Richard Fain told Cramer on Tuesday that his company’s cruise locations are still recovering from the impact of the summer’s hurricanes, but consumers’ appetite for technology is causing much bigger waves across the industry.
“A year ago … I would have said people are wanting it. They really want to see the technology and that’ll be a differentiator. I think we’re beyond that,” Fain said. “People simply expect it. It’s a price of entry. And you have to have the technology and we’re investing huge sums in it.”
As millennial and “Generation X” customers flock to cruises for new experiences, Fain said that his company gained a slight advantage by noticing the need to connect early on.
“It’s everything that we do. It’s the passengers, it’s the crew, it’s the travel agents, it’s everything,” the CEO said. “All of those things are now so driven by technology that we just have had to invest heavily in it. We’ve been doing it for a few years, which gives us a little bit of a leg up, and we’re going to continue to do it because it’s now an existential requirement of our business as, frankly, any business.”
When Red Robin Gourmet attributed its weak third quarter to having too many restaurants and announced it would stop its expansion to figure out next steps, Cramer saw Wall Street’s poor reaction as somewhat ironic.
“Yep, a statement about not putting up more stores … is booed by analysts and professional money managers alike. Wall Street’s unwilling to back any company that seems to be having an existential crisis, despite the fact that, in reality, the whole industry’s having an existential crisis,” he said.
As Red Robin shares shed nearly 29 percent of their value, Cramer balked at the Street’s response, saying that the rise of take-out and delivery is an “unstoppable trend” that will quash chains like Red Robin if they don’t find ways to appeal to new customer bases.
“Millennials have it figured out,” he said. “Millennials love the burgers, but the burgers can travel. So they can buy a six[-pack] at the grocery store, grab a Red Robin on the way home or have it delivered, and sit there watching Netflix or playing Grand Theft Auto, generally having a grand old inexpensive time. I’ve gotta tell you, this is a nightmare for any restaurateur, and I think it’s only the first quarter of this dreaded transformation.”
In Cramer’s lightning round, he flew through his take on callers’ favorite stocks:
Apache Corporation: “I’m not giving up on Apache. I still believe in Alpine High, but I’ve been a suffering catfish on this one.”
Prudential Financial Inc.: “Prudential is fantastic. It’s always been incredibly well run. I just wish they’d come on my show.”
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Source: Tech CNBC
Cramer Remix: My rule on Snap is 'Use it, don't own it!'