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tv   The Exchange  CNBC  August 9, 2024 1:00pm-2:00pm EDT

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well. "final trades," kevin? >> i sold in august a $215 call on jpmorgan. >> thank you for that. >> farmer jim? >> shanir energy. >> taiwan semi. >> stocks are going positive. we'll see how this transpires. "the exchange" is now. ♪ ♪ >> thank you, scott. welcome to "the exchange." i'm kelly evans. here's what's coming up. the s&p is coming off its best day in two years. but stocks are still struggling to end on a high note. one money manager says the market stress will continue for now, so he's making moves in two of the mag seven names, one a buy and one is a sell. china's weak consumer continues to weigh on the world's second largest economy. inflation numbers showing more government stimulus may be needed there. we'll look at china's path forward, and what our presidential election could mean for chinese equities.
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shares had tripled since january, better than ai. look at that, up 196% for sweetgreen. and they're raising their guidance for sales. i love to see it. we'll ask the ceo what's driving that growth in a first on cnbc interview. let's start with the markets and dom chu has the numbers. >> sweet and green, at least for right now. the markets overall today have been, i'm going to call it marginal and symmetrical. the broader s&p 500 sits at 5329, up about 0.2 of 1%, up nine points. at the highs, we were up around 21 points and down 19 points at the lows. so we've been moving, but just not by that much with regard to the markets overall. the dow up 28 points, pretty much flat on the session, slightly green. same thing for the nasdaq composite index. that tech heavier index up seven points, 16,667.
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here's where we stand with regard to the last week. given all of the roller coaster volatility, how do things net out right now in this mid afternoon friday trade? the s&p 500 etf is down about a quarter percent. so we have gotten back a lot of the losses, but not all of them just yet. the tech heavier nasdaq composite or nasdaq 100 etf, the qqqs, are flat over the last week. so there's been dip buying in those mega cap technology names. and then the small-cap index, which has been an outperformer as the near and medium term, underperforming, still down about 1 1/3%. that's the state of play with regard to the market cap spectrum. and by the way, if you're looking for the relative outperformance, even with the volatility, check out these three sectors in the s&p 500, because each of them, the xlp, which is consumer tapers, the xlv, health care, and real estate, are posting solid, not
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crazy type gains, but check this out. here is what we're focused on. how far are we away from the highs we've seen from the last year? each of these three sectors is a percent or less away from their highs we've seen over the past 52 weeks. so health care, real estate and consumer staples, some of these less volatile sectors. back over to you, kelly. >> sweet and green. dom, thank you very much. fears of the slowdown have been hitting the market this week, sending the dow and the s&p to their worst day in two years on monday. today, we're getting new data that suggests the economy is still chugging along. we've been bringing people all of the data over the past 24 hours. what do you have? >> the consumer may not quite be dead yet. they modestly boosted their spending in july compared with june, according to the cnbc nrf retail monitor. we saw good growth. not exactly a summer spending spree, but the data offers some
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competence to the economy and the consumer is keeping their momentum going. total retail sales, up 0.7, compares to 0.5 in june. year over year does tick down. core retail, we take our restaurants to have a view of that. that was a pretty good 1% versus 0.3 in june. 1.7 is the year over year compared to 3.1. the data we derived at from real credit card spending during the month crunched by affinity solutions, helped by back-to-school spending and online promotion days like prime day for amazon. restaurants did pretty good, up 2.1. and there's the general merch merchandise, 1.8. we pulled a lot of online sales into these categories. and also helped the personal care, as well as building. those were the two down sectors i spoke of. here's the year over year. some good spending going on.
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9.7 on general merchandise. and then furniture and home furnishings up good. but gas stations down year over year. and jan nippen told us at 10:00, that might be a price decline, not necessarily a unit sales decline. sales in the retail, a bit above trend, their own trend, and a bit above the government data we get next thursday. and economists say consumers do remain cautious, but they're still spending where there's value to be had and when they can find a good price. finally, economists say look for a 0.3% in retail sales next week, so that's below what we expect. 0.1 autos. so after that weak jobs report, everybody got scared. markets have been hungry for any data to show whether the broader economy is weakening or if the july jobs report was maybe an outlier. the retail monitor suggests the
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economy's demise may be premature. >> what about the fed? we were talking about intermeeting cuts. what are we looking at for a half point still? >> okay. so let me give you that data directly here. i'm going to go to my screen. we're at 50/50 for the half point. we were up near 80%, 90% for september. we were at 80%, 90% for half in november. now we're looking at 50/50 for the 50 in september. and then it's about 84% for another 25. so people do think, you know, if you say we're at 5.25%, we're going to be at 4.5 through november. that's -- take a look right there. that's that 25 fed funds futures contract. you can see we went way down in terms of the outlook for january 2025. and then we added about a quarter.
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i will tell you, kelly, that the 50-50 split kind of jives with my reporting on this issue. i think that the fed could go either way, depending upon whether the data next week come in weak, and then you have another jobs report and a couple of inflation reports in there watching those jobless claims along the way. it could go either way. 50/50 seems like a good place for me. >> you say a quarter point is a complete guarantee? >> quarter point is a guarantee. and the market's pretty secure that we're going to get 75 by the end of november. >> by the end of november. so maybe -- but -- >> at the november meeting. >> so then that's a quarter point in september, maybe a half point in november? >> yeah, you could do it that way, right. >> interesting. >> it's hard to tell exactly how the market is priced. could this look through what happens in september, right? the market says, you know, 8 probability, we're down 75% by the september meeting.
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it could go either way. >> or if we get there. but i like how you put that. steve, thank you very much. we appreciate it, steve liesman. monday's market rout cost the mag seven more than $650 billion in market cap, but only down 1% on the week, now the stocks continue to climb back. my next guest says these movements have created an opportunity to buy two names. let's bring in steven harden. aren't you in d.c. normally? >> no, we're in salt lake normally. >> i was going to say, i don't know if you're going the drive back in this rain, but you have to fly back. >> we just have to stay longer here with you. >> we can really dive in. when you saw monday's market action, what was going through your mind? >> i felt like it was an overreaction. the market likes to be a little overreactive, especially the morning we saw the vix spiked about 66. >> that was crazy. when we were at 08 during the fina
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financial crisis, that's very unusual. >> the last time was covid in 2020. by the end oh of the day, i think the market got much more rational. >> if you look at that and you're confident it's more than a positioni ing thing, do you start buying? tell me what moves you're making? >> one, you do want to take opportunities here, right? and there are some. i think ely lily has been a great opportunity. you've seen this rotation into health care. you've seen health care looking to break out of that. even today eli is doing great. and the earnings continue. the new utility, these drugs they're selling and people are taking, they're not going to stop taking them. talk to somebody that lost 30 to 40 pounds. >> even if the economy weakens? you don't think they might drop it at the margins? >> not at all. everything else will go by the wayside.
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so that's a really good position to have. so when that -- when you have a market move on monday, that's what you're looking to get into. >> were you able to add to that position? i didn't see what lily did on monday. >> health care has been tough for the last 18 months. it's not participated in the mag seven. it's not one of the mag seven. but that's what you want to do there. with those mag seven, this is an opportunity to readjust some of your holdings within those seven. there's something you want to have hold, and some things you're still holding, probably time to exit. >> do tell, what comes to mind? >> let's talk about a positive note. i think microsoft has the biggest opportunity to take advantage monetarily of ai. i think they can do that with their microsoft word product with power point, excel, et cetera. so they have the biggest opportunity, and as the front runner, probably the biggest opportunity to fail. >> let me ask you this, there are some who are saying maybe its strategy of trying to monetize ai is not the best way
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to use these tools. in other words, look at how meta is already using ai to optimize ad sales, which is what it does best and able to make those nvidia chips have a high payoff because it can get better ad dollars and raise revenues and earnings. microsoft would have a harder path if they have to convince every corporate office to pay for those additional fees to use its tools which are quickly becoming somewhat xhodt commoditized. >> the reality is, there's a lot of consumers that are paying for chatgbt $10, $20 a month, so the demand is there. the execution is critical. but they have the biggest opportunity. in the meantime, put that aside, they're still waiting on the cloud and operations, they still outperformed on earnings per share, so you have earnings to use if you will, while you wait. >> you said that was one that think of more positively. what about the other side of
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these trades? >> no offense to many people that continue to hold tesla, but that's one you want to exit. tesla from an ai perspective is about ten years out. the sales of the cars, which it is a car company right now, has been disappointing, right? you still have a great, so to speak, innovative leader, but he's also very volatile. you never really know what he's going to do. >> but you don't look at spacex and say, they're bailing out boeing and nasa and maybe musk knows what he's doing? >> don't you love that? >> what a black eye. they have a corporate leader -- and to their credit, they claim they could solve this problem, but nasa is not so sure. so we talk about musk's volatility, but where precision and reliability really matters, look at what they are able to deliver. >> a lot of people talk about him and it's true. but his employees are fantastic,
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very smart and capable and work very hard. so behind them, there is a wonderful workforce. >> that still doesn't make you bullish on the stock, because the ai? >> i think he's a very outspoken leader. when the time comes that he really has something, i guarantee he'll be talking about it. so wait till he speaks before i get in. >> any other trades you would be exiting here or final thoughts on this whole week? >> my biggest takeaway this week is there's a lot of pressure on the fed. that's my biggest pressure from the macro perspective, what are they going to be doing differently this time? they've had 30 or 40 years of the unemployment indicating recession is ahead. how are you going to avoid that? i'm interested in what you do this time than the last 40 years. >> do you have an opinion what that should be? >> i'm with steve, they definitely need to come out with at least 25. people are getting soft, they're very slow. i might want them to speed up just a little bit. so i think that anything outside 25 or 50 would be extreme
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surprise. emergency is off the table, that's not coming. >> but you would love to see 75? >> i would love to see 50 with a lot of communication between now and then that's what they're going to do. >> we'll see if we get that. david, great to have you here. appreciate your time. don't miss tonight's cnbc special "taking stock" with mike santoli and josh brown at 6:00 p.m. eastern. while concerns about a slowdown sparked a slowdown, china has been dealing with this for some time, with the shanghai composite down 10%, and consumer prices jumped more than expected in july, raising some fears of deflation. my next guest says the chinese economy is in terrible shape. marco pavic joins us now. bring us up to speed on these narratives in china where it
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seems deflation is still a concern, what do you make of today's cpi number? >> there's not much to share, because most had to do with food inflation. so if you strip that out, you find out that there was no real inflationary bump. also, on top of that, our emerging market strategy here has pointed out that their own underlying data for predicting cpi remains in disinflation. so real rates are higher than nominal rates. that's preventing many consumers and, you know, the private sector of the economy, from leveraging up and using the opportunity of low interest rates to actually reengage and create the net. ises so you stay away from the market, is that the bottom line? that's so consensus, i can't imagine anyone excited to be nibbling at chinese stocks. >> it's difficult to see a catalyst.
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policymakers have to realize despite low interest rates, there's no appetite for borrowing. so this is very, very similar to 2010, '11, '12, '13, '14 environment in the united states and much of the west. china is stuck in secular stagnation. you can repeat all this verbiage from our own experience. and until policymakers in china realize this, and capitalize much greater fiscal response, i don't think anything popular is going to happen. >> we waited for years for them to do that. by the way, if anyone is out there holding chinese corporate debt, that could be the next shoe to drop. what about the election coming up? trump's odds have fallen. any thoughts what a harris presidency would mean? >> i would argue that ironically, and probably not a consensus, but i think harris would be far worse for performance for chinese assets
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than donald trump. this is because i think that a president harris would continue joe biden's policies, which have been to deepen the trade war with china and to tighten the screws. with president trump, there is this nonlinear outcome that is possible, which is that he actually gets a trade deal with china. note that in his convention speech, he only used the word "tariff" twice and both times it was to argue that he would force china to build factories, ev factories in the united states. nobody talks about this, but if that were to happen, it would mean a significant trade deal between the u.s. and china. so in a way, trump could become a catalyst after a 6 to 12-month period for actual upsides to china. i don't think that's priced in or talked about. >> that's really interesting. i can't imagine it, but if he tried to force them to build ev factories in the midwest, which is a great idea that others will
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steal, that china would agree because it's part of a broader trade deal that would benefit them. what would the u.s. get from that, if we were to say okay, yes, we get jobs in the near term and production in the near term, but do you think his goal is something that would up lock better performance of china more broadly? >> definitely not his goal. that is an ancillary outcome, which is to get good, manufacturing jobs in the midwest, and likely crack open china, particularly in the services industry side, which china has stubbornly kept non-tariff barriers to trade pretty high. so it would benefit american corporations as well, that mainly export services, and it would benefit the return and advancement of chinese potentially manufacturing firms to get to trade in export or rather build in the u.s. but then acquire those profits and return them to china. so in a way, it would be a win-win for the multinational
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corporations side of the ledger on both countries, but also for the workers in the u.s. but certainly it's not his goal to create a rally in chinese assets, but that is what it leads to. also, remember he seems to be comfortable with a weak dollar. how we get there, that's a complicated story. if that does happen, generally speaking, if the dollar enters a bear market, which may be politics or monetary policy under trump, that should be good for emerging market assets, including china. >> last question in global markets. you mentioned the dollar, the carry trade. there's difference of opinion how far we are on this. some say we might only be in the third inning of this. if you mention the weakening dollar, that could be a headwind, if the yen strengthens, the dollar weakens, you would imagine more positioning. walk us through the playbook as
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it relates to the global carry trade and if this is a factor that should be a headwind or a side story. >> i think it's a definite headwind to stocks. i think that you have to understand, the carry trade is not just about interest rate differentials, it's also about the last 16 years. the last 16 years have been about american exceptionalism, american profits. so if the narrative is unwinding and your previous guest was talking about the sectors are pretty good, nice entry point into health care, if suddenly the u.s. is no longer seen as the preeminent position to hold, these flows will continue to leave the u.s. you don't have to own u.s. health care. you don't have to own u.s. defenses. >> where else is there? even if you said okay, you don't mine microsoft but you own eli lilly. where else would you get a long momentum? >> you can definitely prolong
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defenses across the world. if you look at profit margin differentials, the u.s. only has an advantage in tech-related profit margins. so the tech story is done, then the unwind in the u.s. exceptionalism trade will be massive and it won't be about a couple of basis points that carry here or there, it will be about a narrative shift. i can involve european health care companies, they're doing some great things. i can hold japanese consumer staples companies. that's what i'm more concerned about, the secular sift into a 16-year bull market. >> i'm putting my hands, i'm not listening, i don't want to hear about the exceptionalism on the profits. but i appreciate it. not many people are talking about the long end oh of this trade. i think it's part of the unwind we have seen. marco, appreciate your time v. a great weekend. speaking of the elections,
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cnbc teamed up to survey more than a thousand americans about the most important issues to them this election cycle. a majority say the economy, and the cost of living are the number one issue on their mind. coming up, sweetgreen shares are spiking after they raised their full-year guidance. makes it a big outlier in the restaurant space. shares are up 28%. we'll ask the ceo jonathan neimann what's behind the growth. but first, everyone is debating the health of the consumer, so we'll get an inside look from one ai lending platform about the trends they're seeing. and here's another check on markets with stocks trying to erase this week's losses. the dow up 100 points. the russells are negative. back after this. >> this is "the exchange" on cnbc. okay, team! oh, thank you so much i couldn't have done it without you.
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honestly, i don't do a whole lot here. i'm really just here for the at&t internet, it's super-fast so, any pre-launch concerns? what if nobody buys them? that's mean or, what if everybody buys them? oh, i hadn't thought of that that's probably not gonna happen can we handle that kind of traffic? the network can handle it! i downloaded eight hours of true crime stories just during our last video call i'm learning a lot
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lyles will need a good leg here. can he deliver? here comes the pass! look at this kid! coming in tight on the line. team usa, what a run! it's gold for team usa. noah lyles with another gold medal. in case there was any doubt, who was the breakout star of these world championships.
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we are seeing shorter lead times globally and some signs slowing demand. >> the u.s. consumer is a little soft. you have seen it from a variety of consumer companies. >> we have seen a more challenging macro development consistent with -- >> we're watching the consumer and some of the softening. >> we were talking about the consumer. >> wholesale is relatively weak, mainly driven by traffic and conservatism. >> you are seeing the consumer
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trouble in some areas of the market. >> persistent inflation over the last few years has led to belt tightening across wide portions of consumer discretionary spending. we see an internal and external survey data where price is the biggest concern of our customers. >> that was a great montage, some of the ceos on our air just this week warning about weakness in the consumer. my next guest brings us an inside look. his company helps lenders make decisions beyond a borrower's credit score. the shares are down 7% today, despite posting an earnings beat. i'm joined by the co-founder and ceo. welcome to you. great to have you here. >> thank you for having me. >> so broadly speaking, tell me where the business trends in the last few months and weeks and what's the outlook you have this year? >> maybe can we start with the
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company. it allows banks to approve more consume wers the power of ai. >> people won't know that your business -- >> correct. we have ally bank on our platform, u.s. bank, and others, and the reality, is for some of them, we are helping them to approve without them to know that we are behind it. so we're talking about $21 billion that we have extended to the customers of these banks, which is almost over 2 million customers. >> how do you use ai to make these decisions? this is the one area where regulators are concerned. they don't want you to use data points that are discriminatory, and that this is economically valid. >> 100%. this is definitely the uniqueness. if you think about it, the major concern is that the models will work as they should without any discrimination. and the way you do it is you use
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only data that doesn't have any race or gender or age, so you cannot use anything that is not part of the credit act to not make any decision. what ai does, it looks beyond your fico score. it looks into the consumer behavior with who you are as a person as the ability of you to pay back the loan. >> based on what? if it were pulling from me, what can it -- >> that you are very responsible with your paying back, that you never missed any payment. >> a credit card payment. >> or even an auto loan payment. even in rough days, you were responsible and you pay back. therefore sometimes it will not be on your bank account, and you need to dig deeper. >> can it access things like if you paid rent on time? >> it's only based on the credit
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that you get and much more predictable power in doing so. and the result shows -- for instance, talking about millions of customers that we are managing to help them to get the right relief and the right loans that they are looking for. >> totally. if it's only based only on credit, how is that different from a fico score? what is this that you can do that -- it's in the credit lane but it goes beyond what fico can do? >> credit is really recording all of the trades you have done in the past. so if a fico were a very simple score, it will take your only few very top ones. you are usually leaving behind a lot of data on the table. now, very big things in our ai are taking that and utilizing more of the same data to find a better outcome. and that has been the breakthrough when you're
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deploying that ai technology that we use, making so many big waves into so many places. >> it must bring something extra to the table, because all these customers are saying we rely on this now to make these loans. can you tell us anything kind of in realtime about what you think is going on with the consumer, to bring it back to these concerns ceos are expressing, is any of that picked up in the data? >> definitely. it's very important discussion to have these days, where the economy and the u.s. are a very big question. and i think the major narrative that we have seen from different earnings and a few others that the spending of the consumer is starting to slow. and then there is the question how do the credit of the consumer happening? and there i would say the picture is a little bit the opposite. >> it's better. >> it's very much better. >> interesting. >> what we have seen in the last few quarters is that the
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consumer, actually being able to pay back and half of the portfolio that pagaya has, and as i shared, we had more than 30 different banks, that we have very deep insights into the consumer behavior. >> so they're able to pull money somehow -- >> exactly. >> interesting. >> if you think about the reduction of interest rates that is expected to happen in september or later down the year, the consumer will have a mu better ability to pay, because interest rates will go down, interest rates on their atl on their loan also go down, and we have the economy even further -- >> this is like the hour of highlights. from what you told us, we're going to talk about sweetgreen. they're still able to put that money to work. thanks for bringing this to us. hope we can check in again. coming up, warner brothers hovering near its lowest levels since 2009 after posting a $9 billion writedown on its tv
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networks this week. we'll round up all the media headlines ahead in "tech check." and stocks hitting new session hires. the gains are modest but helps undo the damage from earlier this week. back in a moment here on "the exchange." ♪ (alarm sound) ♪ amelia, turn off alarm. amelia, weather. 70 degrees and sunny today. amelia, unlock the door. i'm afraid i can't do that, jen. ♪ (suspenseful music) ♪ why not? did you forget something? ♪ (suspenseful music) ♪ my protein shake. the future isn't scary. not investing in it is. you're so dramatic amelia. bye jen. nasdaq-100 innovators. one etf. before investing, carefully read and consider fund investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses and more in prospectus at invesco.com. do you have a life insurance policy you no longer need? now you can sell your policy - even a term policy - for an immediate cash payment. call coventry direct to learn more. we thought we had planned carefully for our retirement. but we quickly realized we needed a way to
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welcome back to "the exchange," everybody. i'm tyler mathisen with your cnbc news update at this hour. iran is in a better position to launch a nuclear weapons program. that's according to u.s. intelligence assessment. "the wall street journal" reporting the intelligence community believes iran isn't currently building a nuclear device nor does it have evidence that the country has resumed its nuclear weapons program that was mostly suspended way back in 2003. for the first time ever, electric and hybrid vehicles outsold traditional gas-powered cars in china in july according to the china passenger car association. the category, accounting for 51% of new passenger cars sold last month. that's up from 36% a year ago. here come the chinese evs. and the san diego zoo's giant pandas finally made their
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public debut thursday. the pair are the first pandas to enter the u.s. in 21 years. they arrived from china in june as a conservation agreement reignited a panda diplomacy between the u.s. and china. kelly, back to you, munching the bamboo. >> tyler, thank you very much. tyler mathisen. coming up, sweetgreen shares are seeing a healthy gain after an earnings beat. after the break, we'll speak with co-founder and ceo jonathan neman about what's driving growth. "the exchange" is back after this. energy fuels, a leading american uranium producer, is ramping up production to supply expanding nuclear markets and diversifying into rare earth elements, key
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ingredients in many clean energy and defense technologies. energy fuels. you didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. lucky for you, shopify built the just one-tapping, ridiculously fast-acting, sky-high sales stacking champion of checkouts. businesses that want to win, win with shopify. (reporters) over here. kev! kev! (reporter 1) any response to the trade rumors, we keep hearing about? (kev) we talkin' about moving? not the trade, not the trade, we talking about movin'. no thank you. (reporter 2) you could use opendoor.
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(vo) ready to meet the dream team? you can with wells fargo. while many restaurants have seen weaker than expected sales this earnings season, you can see the names there. da sweetgreen is bucking the trend, surging on the back of strong second quarter results, shares up 28% today. they had a 9% jump in same-store sales. the stock is up over 190% this year. first on cnbc is jonathan neman, the ceo and co-founder of sweetgreen. forget ai, jonathan, why do we need to go through this trouble
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with we can just own shares oh of a salad restaurant chain. >> good to see you, kelly. >> we talked last time, this isn't just a story about consumer preferences for fresh food. you're also trying to increase store by store profitability using technology to do so. i don't know if any of that factored in here to the results. >> thank you again for having me. we had a fantastic second quarter. i want to take a second to thank our 7,000 team members that brought it to life. we grew our sales 90%. we had a margin of 22.5%. i think it was contributed to a few things. one, we move beyond salad, and we introduced caramelized garlic steak, driving a lot of traffic for us. with that, we have seen a huge shift from being a primarily lunch business to a lunch and dinner business. so we have seen more brand awareness, especially in the
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merging markets has really gotten a lot of those other stores to comp really nicely. and lastly, pure execution. hospitality, speed of service, giving customers an experience they have come to expect from sweetgreen. that's really starting to work to us. again, thank you to our team. >> it reminds me witif we talkeo chipotle or chick-fil-a. when i was growing up, if we saw a chick-fil-a, it was the best day ever. what i wonder about is, for how much longer do you think you can realistically continue to put up this kind of growth and see these kinds of trends? because these concepts can reach saturation fairly quickly. maybe you think that's a long road, maybe it's ten years. but i'm curious how you're thinking about that. >> we see this in such the early innings. we have less than 150 stores
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today. chipotle has almost 4,000 restaurants. so we think just in the u.s. alone, is in the thousands of restaurants. we have prove than the concept works everywhere. we're in 20 different markets. it's working in all of our different markets. we're seeing nice returns in profitability and a ton of white space. while the company started more urban and coastal, you see us all over the country. urban, suburban, smaller towns, and what it's telling you is that people want real, fresh, cravable food. when we started this company, we said we want to create a better version of fast food, where you can get unprocessed food, and still some of the benefits of fast food around the convenience that fast food has, and the accessibility. so that's really what we're trying to do. while sweetgreen, we think about price value a lot while the consumer we understand may be a little pressured. as the inflation hit the industry, we have been able to
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take a little bit less price than our competitors and we're seeing a lot of people trade down, especially with steak at dinner. while $15 could be -- might be a more expensive lunch, $15 for dinner is incredible value and customers are seeing that. >> it all makes sense. no one wants to cook at home either, so thank you forgiving us an option outside the house. can you kind of segment out at all what you think is going on with the consumeer? it is a very confusing time. >> you know, i think what it's telling you is consumers are going to be more careful where they spend their money. i think brands really mean something to them, both emotionally and from a convenience perspective, and are going to continue to do well. you have to work for it now. it's not just our current menu driving it. it's new menus. it's really focusing on how we broaden awareness with
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customers. so we have to work to drive traffic and expand the customer base, but great brands and concepts have a lot of room to run. you have seen that diver intelligence in the market this quarter. >> what can we expect on the innovation front, where you drive traffic? how do you think about that? >> yeah, so when we started sweetgreen, the idea was not to be a salad company, but to create this incredible supply chain, and this brand that stood for real, fresh, cravable food and expand that. so we started with salad, we're now going into bowls and plates. expect it to continue to really innovate on the menu, especially in the next 12 or 18 months. so think about new form factors around the type of foods we'll serve, other types of proteins and innovation, and a ton of opportunity outside of the entree, whether that be signature side or a beverage program that we're working on, as well as something around
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treats. so we have a robust testing pipeline around menu innovation, and we see -- expect to see a lot of exciting things over the next 18 months. we're seeing -- we've got a lot of exciting things happening in the world of automation, just to make the job easier for our team members, make it faster for customers and a better financial model for shareholders. >> just don't shrink the bowl sizes. i know there's this debate going on, you know, people like my husband, they have to know when they go they're going to get a lot of protein and not just a couple of pieces that would be like kid's size. >> absolutely. that's one of the benefits of infinite kitchen. it's perfectly portioned every time. we have four infinite kitchens, next year at least 50% of our
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pipeline will feature infinite kitchens. we're seeing from order to getting -- having your meal ready in about three minutes, which sis unbelievable. >> sometimes i don't like the robots sometimes. i mean, i want to have that area of manipulation. jonathan, congratulations. thank you for joining us, and giving us insight. >> thank you for having me. >> jonathan neman of sweetgreen. still to come, paramount shares are moving higher, despite a mixed quarter and cut 15g% of the workforce. "s ene tu ailwh wrern onthe exchange." the all new godaddy airo helps you get your business online in minutes with the power of ai... ...with a perfect name, a great logo, and a beautiful website.
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welcome back. the harris campaign is responding to former president trump, saying the president should have a say in the fed decision on interest rates. megan has the details. megan? >> hey, kelly. that's right. this is just in from the harris campaign. we had asked them to respond to those comments from former
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president trump yesterday, saying that he felt he should have a say at least a say in what the federal reserve was doing. but a harris aide responds now and says full quote here, vice president harris has helped create nearly 16 million jobs and brought back the economy after trump devastated it. she believes the fed should make decisions independent of create million jobs and brought back the economy after trump devastated it. the key part, she believes the fed should make decisions independent of the president and donald trump. this is one area we see she wants to hold to what the biden administration had been doing and also regular order. this is what presidents have long done. she's holding to that, differentiating herself from the trump campaign here and wanting to say, we want to maintain this independence between the white house and the federal reserve. >> megan, thank you very much. elsewhere, paramount is laying off 15% of its staff. julia boorstin has a look at what their results say about the streaming wars in today's "techcheck." julia? >> well, paramount's results in
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the announcement it's cutting 15% of its staff speaks to media's struggles right now. paramount gaining as shares gaining on surprise profitability in its streaming division. it also took a $6 billion writedown on value of its tv assets. that stock is still down 30% year-to-date. paramount's three interim co-ceos reassuring investors they're on track to close the skydance deal and the new company will find $1.5 billion in savings as it struggles with decline in linear business. all of this speaks to the challenge of competing with netflix, which surged past expectation, not bogged down by any legacy businesses. on the upside for the media giants, there were signs of strength in streaming across the media industry. at disney, its streaming assets turned profitable a quarter earlier than expected.
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pay cob narrowed its losses with the promise of a boost from coming nba rights. warner bros. discovery with a $9 billion writedown in its linear weakness still had a surprise strength in subscriber gains in streaming. but for warner discovery, without the scale of a disney or comcast or paramount solution with a merger deal, plus the fact it's losing its nba rights, is under particular pressure, which could push it to maybe sell off pieces of that company. >> that's what people are wondering. oh, thank you so much i couldn't have done it without you. honestly, i don't do a whole lot here. i'm really just here for the at&t internet, it's super-fast so, any pre-launch concerns? what if nobody buys them? that's mean or, what if everybody buys them? oh, i hadn't thought of that that's probably not gonna happen can we handle that kind of traffic? the network can handle it! i downloaded eight hours of true crime stories just during our last video call
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rate cut odds are getting higher and muni bond demand is getting hotter as well. what is going on with muni land? are these the best of times, the worst of times? do tell. >> yes. a few things going on. as you know, it's been a volatile week. muni bonds have also felt that. i would say first from an opportunity standpoint, a lot of our clients have been reaching out, what do i do in this time
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period? you mentioned the odds of the fed rate cut are getting closer. we've been telling our clients, the opportunity is not gone. we have seen yields come down. some of it has reversed. >> do people just jump out of muni bonds -- this is what i don't understand. shouldn't they do fine under either situation? >> they should. it's a very retail-oriented market. you have maybe during times of rising and rapidly rising rate periods, you see a lot of money leave the market, outflows, it's a cyclical effect. that's where we double down and say, this is a fantastic time to be getting in. rates are up. we've been kind of going along with that message. look, you're comfortable sitting in cash. we're not saying obviously all this cash is meant for muni bonds but if you're looking to add fixed income, you're in a high tax bracket, you want to get in before the fed starts cut cutting. >> fed starts cutting, to your point. harris presidency, maybe taxes
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are going up as well. >> exactly. i think it's two things. i think right now supply has been very robust, let's just say. year over year, muni issuance has been up 30%. a lot of issuers want to get ahead before election time. these periods of high issuance are creating pockets of opportunity. we're seeing leverage now. after election, as there's more certainty, there will be less issuance, you'll start to see a lot of money kind of going to fixed income or motion if fed does start to cut, taxes could be going up. >> a couple of areas you think briefly might be most attractive would be where in muni land? >> look, we are focusing, and most of our clients focus in the investment grade space. i would say that with spreads that are generally tight, quality is most important. states are going into, however this recession, slowdown pans out fairly well, but a lot of that fiscal stimulus will pan
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out, stay high quality. >> as it runs out, you don't want to be exposed to plays. interesting. that's why you do what you do. thanks for joining us. >> thank you. that does it for "the exchange." "power lunch" is next.
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