win a game again. most often the clubs will sag, and they will be worried about what happened, but they didn't. put it behind them and came out and won it. >> a pair of game fives tomorrow, philly and pittsburgh and what will happen on that one? 7:30 p.m. on the nbc sports network. "mad money" is right now. thank you for joining us.

we are taking the cue from the stocks and not the actual earnings. so we are getting angry and even scared about the reactions and driving ourselves. let me use a couple of household names to show you what i mean and help to explain the action for you and put it in perspective and take the brands that is kfc and taco bell and pizza hut. some said that china didn't have

great numbers, but i have to tell you that is nonsense. i am telling you point blank china did. others were upset about the results of taco bell, and this i were upset about the costs, but i am not because i read the results. this has nothing to do with yum's results, because china is right on target. for heaven sake it is almost as if it were right out of the little red book. and all of the makings of a turn around and all of the raw makings going up, and the ceo could not have been more adamant about the costs being terrific. darn, this was a fabulous yum quarter even if you put it under the microclass. you know what i mean? anyway. believe me i was kicking myself because the charitable trust action reports.com, and removing emotion in the equation, i was

shake ming my head like reagan,u know what i mean? i did not spew green vomit though. how could i have been so stupid to trade yum from my trust? how could i have been so stupid? what am i? what a bozo? but the stock had been up so much. i could not afford to have the charitable trust hold on it to, and that is my thinking. i could not give up the gain. i did not want to be exorcised. yum had rallied 45% from last year for heaven's sake and what happened? the stock gets hammered and because it is hammered suddenly a bad quarter. people ferment the woes i mentioned and they have the decline because nobody wants to believe that the stock can go down in good earnings, because that is an thet cal to rational reality, right? no, the reality is that the price matters and the reality is that it rallied so, so much ahead of the quarter that it didn't matter what the company said, because it could not justify the increase with the commentary, and the stock had

become more bullish than the fundamentals and the stock ran ahead. i was not an idiot for selling it for the trust, no, i was brilliant. of course i was not brilliant or stupid, but recognized that at times the price of the stock is better than the reported earnings. and yum moved up so much that i could not handle the good news. do you believe that ibm is any different despite what you have read? i have traded ibm since 1981, and ibm reported that it raised and not cut, but raised estimates handily and because the stock opened up five points down, and the pundits saw that the stock did not raise what it wanted, and hey, pundits, i have bad news for you. in the last two years, ibm has rallied without any revenue growth. it was the earnings that drove it the right way and now stocks

going $2.10 and and it is a big gain and this is big blue and again, give ten scale of the move, it did not matter what ibm said. so when the company did the very thing that it had done for ages, and beating it up for numbers the investors weren't crazy about it in the 200s and now ibm is a classic example of how hard the business can be and why you have to stop kicking yourself. my charitable trust owns ibm, but we had sold some in the last week of marchf and when it ran and i sold it at $2.06, i was apoplectic, and i was thinking, what was i thinking, i was a joke and not a midnight toker, although toking might have been better. and i am reece but not a space cowboy anyway and continuing with the miller metaphor i should have taken the money and run and i did the right thing with ibm and sold yum, and now it is in the position to buy back the stock it sold, because it is a lower price at $2.06 and

i went to buy yum back, and both quarters were good but it said that the stocks were reflecting better, so they had to be knocked down. you don't believe me? let me give you the other size, the inverse. consider cy, sigh pcypress, and make the chips for the touch screens in almost every non-apple device, and yet the stock is terrible and the numbers are coming down repeatedly, slash, slash, slash and like freddy kruger and wow, wow, wow and like. and people decided that anything but apple, their customers, well, that is not good enough. turns out that making the chips for all of the non-apple players is not good enough when cypress was $19, but at 14 and change, all of the non-apple customers that was plenty, so when cypress reported a better than expected

quarter today and better than the slash freddy kruger estim e estimated that preceded the quarter, it was one of the biggest gainers of the day when the dow closed. and now, the insurance company, you know, stocks have done knotting for the year and you know why? because people figured that the insurance company would not do well, and today we find out that the dow jones member was doing spectacularly, and that is how they could run on this hideous day. and finally a company i saw today, a super cycle and peabody energy. with a gain of $2 or 7% today probably the fourth best performer in the seidenberg, and you have wanted to be in peabody and you said, oh, wow, i wish i had been in peabody and oh, wow, you would be a genius if you owned peabody, but maybe a genius today, but a total idiot if you had it for the last year, because the whole company has fallen 16% for the last 12

months and yes, kruger, kruger, kruger, and slash, slash, slash and so it reported terrible and horrible earnings today but they weren't terrible or horrible enough to disappoint which is why peabody went higher. of course, when you get the reactions the people freak out about the winners. the winners. and isn't that the take away from the yum? so when you hear that qualcomm got turned into a loser today from a winner, and when you hear that they are having trouble making the chips and predicting that it won't meet customer demand meaning apple demand, then you put the tail of ver rosty on it unlike edgar allan poe, and apple may not sell as many phones as it'd like or perhaps delay the iphone which means quarters two, three, four of this year might be light? you augment that with the demand that no customer or suppliers ever is allowed the speak about apple and you have aura of mystery to allow you the fret

about how many iphones verizon sold because they won't give you the number when they reported today? and when you add up a stock that is 75% up year after year you start to think, geez, nothing can go wrong with this one or no matter what happens, it is going to be just slashed mercilessly when it reports tuesday night and then you start to i, this i don't want to if greedy, so you know what i will do? i will ring the register and that is how apple falls today. here is the bottom line, many things matter when you are investing, and we have to worry about in europe, that i'm worried about europe. okay. i stick by that, i am worried about europe and worry about the jobless claims which again were not so hot. and we have to worry about the fundamentals and the expectations and those have been terrific, but most importantly when it comes to the infant reaction and the instant analysis, we have to worry about the price. and after a rip roaring quarterings the stock price is not good anymore. the prices are adjusted downward

and be patient, let them come down, and then do some buying when the price is right. let's go the steve in michigan. steve? >> caller: boo ya, kramer. >> how are you, parter? >> t >>. >> caller: two in one. the stock being punished -- and what about the new plant in china? >>le w ford is not up because it is doing poorly in europe, a nd ford is not up because it is not doing well in latin america or any place else. and so that is what happens in earnings season, you can't look at the macro and the jobless claims and the earnings, we have to look at where the stock is and in a lot of cases, it turns out the stocks were priced too high. "mad money" will be right back.

>> announcer coming up, melting point, and major dow alcoa kicked off the earnings season on a high note, but can it handle the heat of the market? cramer is sitting down with the ceo to find out. later, nutrition facts. health conscious consumers are fortifying the companies to keep it well and which stock can be the best supplement for your portfolio and which has it feeling deficient? don't miss kramer's head-to-head vitamin stock smackdown just ahead. all coming up on "mad money." mizs out on the "mad money"? text 26211 to get kramer on your phone. to get more "mad money" visit cnbc.com or give us a call at 1-800-743-cnbc.

this week an earnings report card on an american business and plus could water be more valuable than oil? the ""wall street journal" report" with maria bartalaromo on cnbc. we did things with electronics and mother boards. that's where the interest in engineering came from. so now, as an engineer, i have a career that speaks to that passion. thank you, mr. davies. arrival. with hertz gold plus rewards, you skip the counters, the lines, and the paperwork.

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never ever write off a great american company with phenomenal management. that to me is the lesson of alcoa which totally out of nowhere report eded a much bett

than expected first quarter when it kicked off the season earnings to no big surprise. and it is pure here on "mad money" that we need to talk to alcoa and if there is any one company that is benefiting from the not the lip service, but the actual and it is alcoa. i don't want the long drawn out thing, because i have to get to klaus kleinfeld and find out more about what is driving the company's earnings and the remarkable comeback. welcome to "mad money." >> good to see you. wonderful, wonderful. >> and i have to tell you that most companies say, we have to get green, we have to get green. i know that a lot of the clients are no longer saying that, they are saying please, make us more sustainable and you are the reason that more clients are more sustainable and so tell us how it is the clients driving what you are. >> start with aerospace and we love the industry and we just raised the forecast for 14%, and

for more of boeing and other companies. >> and that is what was released on the conference call. >> the workhorse, the a-2320 and the boeing 737 is an all aluminum plane, and why did they do it? because they knew that the planes are getting replaced have a 50% better fuel efficiency. how do they get that? they get that through exactly aluminum. they get that through aluminum lithium and you alloy that we invented which is ten times less weight than the composites. >> but as strong? >> much stronger. much stronger than that, and a lot of the experience how the maintain it, and that is how everybody knows how to do. >> and cars? >> same story, you know. in the car if you go over the life cycle 20% fuel efficiency, and 20% fuel e first si, and we see with the new fuel emission standards that people are now shifting on the volume of cars to aluminum intense cars, you

know, and we look at the wheels, and you know, wheels, and people say, you should not reinvent the wheel, and we reinvent ed the wheel which is good for us, because this wheel here is aluminum wheel which is 45% lighter than a steel wheel, and it is, you know, gives you 5%. this alone 5% fuel efficiency. >> trucks? >> exactly. trucks. and you see on top of this, it is self-cleaning and six times brighter than a normal aluminum wheel, and very cool stuff. right. >> and how about the plastic bottles versus -- >> yeah, right. exactly. you know, look at that. this is what we called shaped cans. this is -- this material, i mean, aluminum is the infinitely recyclable. >> and how much aluminum that was around -- >> 75% of all of the aluminum produced on the planet is still in use, 75%. this is cooling faster, and so in beverage cans it is great.

in u.s. the recycle rate is at 57% so if only every american would recycle one can more, we would get it up to 75%. >> like europe where you were born they recycle 85%? >> no, 90%, and 90%-plus in germany and also in some states in the u.s. where they have legislation and it is do-able. we can do it. >> if 75% is still around, there is too much around in the world? >> no, we love it. our customers love it. we have the largest recycling plant on the planet which is in knoxville, tennessee, because we want to take the stuff that only takes 5% of the energy to remelt that and turn it into a new aluminum compared to if you have to make it, and also newly make it, there is a differences, because you say, what do they expect from us, and two-thirds of the energy we use from making the primary new aluminum comes from the hydropower and so that the cleanest waterpower and the cleanest thing and no co2

emission, and we reduced the co2 emission in the last 50 years by 60%. that is the story. >> and how about my daughter who took this class and she said that the number one pollution pr problem in world is plastic computers so what is alcoa doing on that? >> well, your daughter is smart. >> well, she is. >> where does that come from? i don't know. exactly. she knows and you know that average house in the u.s. throws away 3 1/2 pieces of electronics every year, and this adds up. you see that the industry is in the process of alum ninumalumine whole casing and the thing is that it appealing from the consumer side and a real function, because it is sustainable and again recyclable but the real function is the cooling function because it is a heat sync to slim down the product and get rid of the fan and you will see that many of the products are using that. that is a great story. we are going from one industry

to another. >> and we are big believers that coal is being taken out of the system and natural gas is taking over and turbines. >> turbines alone on the fuel efficiency that we are seeing put into the aircrafts and the products we have put in place and i talk ed about the aluminu weight savings and you will get more savings through the jet engine technology, and that comes through all kinds of stuff. i mean, what really happens here is that you have to make it as such, the blade as such that it cools itself so that you can bring the temperature up in the burn chamber and bringing up the temperature in the burn chamber gives you additional advantage of bringing the emissions down by 50%. so cool sync. and another thing in aerospace it is what is this? is he talking about the nuts and bolts? yes. this thing, it is a fastener, and aerospace fastener and this aerospace fastener alone holds

50 toyotakcamrys, and that is the strength. you see the precision. 50% of the downstream business is aerospace. you saw it in the results, and this is a booming business. we are expanding in there and good profitability and good innovation growth rates, you know, and similarly, we are increasing our footprint in the midstream business and you saw the earnings lags week and record results from the downstream and midstream and good improvement on the cost efficiency side on the upstream side and that is story. >> okay. in the last question i have is that with all of these great secular trends and lower fuel costs that is aluminum and more sustainability, and apple ipad that is made of aluminum and great looking and got great looking, and it conducts if you need it to replace copper it is fabulous for so many things, and when will you see the explosion earnings power and is it the chinese who are producing in

your unbelievable conference call 5 million times made too much, and the chinese reainese the story? >> well, the question is two questions really. let me start with the chinese one, because it is most misunderstood. the chinese are not flood iing e market. this is not what happens. the chinese are 40% of the demand and the production. but the real story is that the 40% production they have is the most expensive and the dirtiest that we have on the planet and it eats up all of the resources they don't have. they have to import everything and import the water resources and the energy resources and it does not make sense. >> it does not put so many people to work. i love that analysis. >> right. exactly. and the point is to better understand the audience power and some people misinterpret us and they say it is a aluminum

company and just swinging what is going on in the world and some negative view some days more and some days less and in europe, some people are focusing on one thing and overlooking the other. the thing that we have learned from it basically continuing to do the good things we are doing, and in tehe endb people understand it. >> and the quarter was terrific. it was terrific. thank you very much. that is klaus kleinfeld, the ceo of alcoa. you see why i'm so excited about the darn story, because the clients are excited about the story, and the clients that pay the bills. thank you. >> health conscious consumers are fortifying interests in companies keeping you well, but which stock could be the best supplement for the portfolio, and which is going to have it feeling deficient? don't miss kramer's head-to-head vitamin smackdown just ahead. and just ahead, bp has been shining in 2012 and will shades of gray hanging over europe chance future returns?

kramer is talking to the ceo to paint a clearer picture of where this company could be headed. all coming up on "mad money." [ male announcer ] when this hotel added aflac

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around, i'm going to keep on taking your best questions on twitter @jimcramer and turn them into yes, what we call segments, full segments. here's a pithy tweet we got from rxa7 my buddy last week. gnc or vsi? vitamin shop. all right, that's my kind of tweet because it sets me into motion. here we've got two retailers of vitamins and nutritional supplements. a key part of the health and anti-obesity trend that's made you so much money in stocks like whole foods, hain celestial, herbalite, buzz, annie's, gnc and vitamin shoppe have been on fire lately and both are within striking distance of the 52-week high and both relatively fresh-faced companies that have done wonders since they came public, emphasis on the word relatively. vitamin shoppe has rallied 175% since its ipo in october 2009 which is a lot of money to make

in 2 1/2 years. gnc has done even better, up 120% since it came public a year ago on march 31st, 2011. so we like the vitamin and supplement space. when you have two stocks in the same industry, you got to be able to decide which one is better! that's rigor, that's the essence of stock picking, it's a battle! and it's why i thought it was worth devoting an entire segment to this question. gnc or vitamin shoppe? you don't need to put together a steel-cage death match with tina turner as referee. you don't need me being your master blaster, although i do want to be that. but you do need to be able to choose wisely. and to do that, you need the right framework. we need to be aware of the differences between two companies. gnc, these guys are huge. 7,600 stores in all 50 states.

53 additional countries. gnc also has a franchise heavy business model as about 2,500 of these locations are franchises, makes it much cheaper for them to expand, but they don't capture as much upside from their franchise store. vitamin shoppe is much smaller, nimble, 530 stores, all of which are company owned, free-standing stores as opposed to gnc's mall-based format. vitamin shoppe is all domestic. covers 40 states, district of columbia. we can still compare these two on an apples-to-apples basis, which is how you always have to try to pick stocks with and start with growth prospects because growth is the elixir that moves stocks higher. we like new-store growth. on this front, vitamin shoppe has a lot more potential. much smaller base. vsi plans to open up 52 new stores this year, 10% increase. they have to put up a lot of stores. management expects for vitamin shoppe they can ultimately grow to 900 stores before they saturate the market. that's a 70% increase from the current level.

gnc, on the other hand, already saturated the u.s. market, opening just 125 new locations in this country off of a base of more than 3,000, that's only a 4% increase. however, gnc does have their international business where they're adding new stores more quickly, a la dominos, a la yum. i think they have the edge on growth from new stores. but we also care about how much growth these companies can squeeze from their existing store base. same-store sales. last year, vitamin shoppe posted an impressive 7.4% rise in these comparable store figures. and this year they're projecting growth in the mid-single digits. gnc, though, even more impressive. 10.1% increase in company-owned same-store sales. and 12.1% increase last quarter. growth is accelerating. accelerated revenue growth even when backing out ecommerce. gnc gave upside guidance,

projecting 8% to 9% growth and then they upped that still further, noting that first quarter comps are running in the teens, i couldn't believe it. it was like a junior growth stock. these are spectacular numbers. vitamin shoppe, same-store sales growth, moderating like you'd expect from most retailers. but even though gnc is a huge established chain, their comps are accelerating. i cannot emphasize enough how impressive that is. thank you, tweeter, for putting me in front of this thing. how about profitability? gnc has higher margins, you know how much importance we place on margins. 16% of sales as opposed to just 9% for vitamin shoppe. much lower margins. not only does gnc have a stronger balance sheet, but even initiated dividend last quarter that gives you 1.3% dividend. how about the execution? gnc wins hands down in execution. having exceeded every target set by management since it came public. vitamin shoppe, occasional miss

here and there. i find myself wondering how is it that gnc is doing so much better? because they are. they really are doing much better. i think the answer is that gnc has the superior understanding of what its customers want, which, of course, is management's strategy. see, gnc gets 44% of its sales from the sports nutrition category. which is by far the fastest growing category in the industry versus just 29% for vitamin shoppe. i want you to think about things like -- i bought one of these just this weekend, protein powders. the ones that help athletes put on muscle. designed to improve performance and post workout supplements to help with rehydration and muscle recovery. plus gnc carries many more private label products, 56% private label at gnc, 24% at vitamin shoppe and gnc's private-label products are considered high-quality. look at the fancy packaging. i actually want to buy this more than the branded guy. and they really push this stuff when they go to buy something. we love private label because

the gross margins are so much higher than selling other people's merchandise. think about perrigo, their manufactured store brands versus those made by j & j. one's much cheaper and looks the same. and gnc also creates systems for getting customers hooked on the products, like boxes of vitamin packs that get people coming back month after month. something vitamin shoppe maybe just hasn't figured it out? vitamin shoppe carries a broader range of merchandise, but they aren't necessarily the hottest products. and they don't keep customers coming back for more. so in my view, gnc is definitely a superior company. and this is one of those very rare cases, by the way, where the better company also has the cheaper stock. gnc sells for 16 times next year's earnings and 24% long-term growth rate, vitamin shoppe for a higher multiple, 21 times earnings even though it has a lower 21% growth rate. the bottom line, right now people are paying up for vitamin shoppe because it has much more

capacity to add new stores domestically. but store growth isn't everything, people. gnc has stronger accelerating same-store sales, consistent execution, better mix of products and an international kicker, all of which add up to a higher growth rate. and as long as gnc is cheaper than vitamin shoppe, i think it's a steal. debbie in new york. debbie? >> caller: hi, jim. big east meadow boo-yah to you. >> what's going on? >> caller: okay. with so many americans overweight out there and where can weight watchers be headed? as a member myself who believes in the program and the fact that the company bought back a huge amount of the stock i think there is potential, i just want to know how you feel about that. >> we've got this guy on the staff and he's just like -- i have to tell that guy to put a little weight on.

he's killing me with that wtw. he's like the invisible man. but that said, the stock did have that catalyst of buying back, right? the big buyback and then it's finished. as much as i think tim looks fabulous and is thinner than ever, thinner than i'll ever be again, i can't recommend the stock. can i be like a habitat for humanity and say he looks good? i work out. if your portfolio needs a little boost, i say look to gnc. it's got stronger profits, better growth, same-store sales than the lower priced brand. stay with cramer. guys. come here, come here. [ telephone ringing ] i'm calling my old dealership. [ man ] may ford. hi, yeah. do you guys have any crossovers that offer better highway fuel economy than the chevy equinox?

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it is time for the "lightning round" on cramer's "mad money." i don't know the callers or the stocks ahead of time, play until this sound, and then the "lightning round" is over. are you ready? it's time for the "lightning round" on cramer's "mad money." start with matthew in new york. matthew. >> a big carmelo anthony b-b-boo-yah. >> what's up? >> caller: hey, my question is

about a stock that i lost my pants on recently. and i know the analysts are really bullish on the stock. it's about devon energy. >> stephanie link, the research director and i must have spent an hour kicking around devon and why we like it. and the answer is sometimes you have to buy poorly acting stocks, it's the chart that's speaking in chesapeake. this company's a buy, worth far more than the stock it's selling for. ira in new jersey, ira. >> ira from livingston, new jersey. serial dividend raiser, what's your take on it? >> serial dividend raiser. i think the stock is much cheaper than people realize. >> buy, buy, buy! >> these companies are really great shareholder companies that can take us into the jersey play. i like it. bob in virginia. bob? >> boo-yah from virginia, y'all. >> nice to have you. >> you have a very polite staff. i like the nat gas story.

are you still negative? >> i can't because it's just, if you want to go that way, you know i want you to go kinder morgan. kmp has come down a great deal. that's a better play. let's go to cameron, please, in virginia. a lot of virginians. >> how you doing, jim? >> how are you? >> i'm awesome. awesome. hey, i want to see your outlook on micron with all the recent earnings from qualcomm and intel. >> nope, nope, nope -- >> sell, sell -- >> i'm not going to go there. i'm sorry, but i do want to go to bobby in illinois. bobby? >> yes. >> go ahead, bobby. >> yeah. this is bobby from chi-town, i have a question for cramer. >> you're on. >> caller: i'm interested in natural gas and it's at a ten-year low. most experts say it's going to $1.80 to $1.85. my time horizon is three to five years, i'm looking for a dividend play. looking at chkm which is the chesapeake mainstream. >> no, no -- look -- i don't think chesapeake -- i think it's

an okay situation. energy transfer partners, a much safer bet, a much higher yield and kelsey warren is doing a good job. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of the "lightning round." >> the "lightning round" is sponsored by td ameritrade. [ male announcer ] what if you had thermal night-vision goggles, like in a special ops mission? you'd spot movement, gather intelligence with minimal collateral damage. but rather than neutralizing enemies in their sleep, you'd be targeting stocks to trade. well, that's what trade architect's heat maps do. they make you a trading assassin. trade architect. td ameritrade's empowering web-based trading platform. trade commission-free for 60 days, and we'll throw in up to $600 when you open an account. trade commission-free for 60 days, on our car insurance. great! at progressive, you can compare rates side by side, so you get the same coverage, often for less. wow! that is huge!

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they didn't take a dime. how much in fees does your bank take to watch your money ? if your bank takes more money than a stranger, you need an ally. ally bank. no nonsense. just people sense. the teacher that comes to mind for me is my high school math teacher, dr. gilmore. i mean he could teach. he was there for us, even if we needed him in college. you could call him, you had his phone number. he was just focused on making sure we were gonna be successful. he would never give up on any of us.

don't let today's hideous action blind you to all the domestic companies reporting best numbers. the chemical company that managed to break free from the gravitational pull of the averages and rally today. $2.53 or 2.6% to a new high courtesy to an amazing quarter. ppg makes all kinds of chemicals. but the company's main business is coatings. the number two player worldwide. you've probably seen their products all over the place, you may not have realized it. as ppg's coatings protect everything from cars, airplanes, ships, to basic packaging. they have a solid glass business. plus benefitting from the ultra low price of natural gas, which is one of the most important input costs, maybe the most right now. despite all the the hand wringing about the weakness in

europe and the slowdown in china ppg managed to deliver a better than expected quarter this morning with a 3.5% dividend raise to boot. the stock has moved. company earned $1.81 per share excludeing one-time expenses, 12 cent beat with inline revenues that rose 6.2% year-over-year. ppg talked about strengthening demand in most of the end markets as well as growth in emerging regions. they expect the next quarter to be even better. ppg has given you 141% return including reinvested dividends. but it's only up about 8% year-over-year. and i think the future's looking a lot brighter for this company. let's check in with the bankable chairman and ceo of ppg industries to find out about the quarter and where his company is headed. welcome back to "mad money." >> it's great to be back, jim. thank you. >> i'm going to have to take a break here and say, listen, ten goals by your pens versus the flyers, don't get your hopes up. >> they got one back last night. they needed it. flyers have played well, but

don't count the penguins out. >> all right. i won't. i won't. and i'm not going to count ppg out because you said something that blew me away. i'm going to quote. you've heard my comments. we're optimistic on the north american market in the u.s. across all of the end use markets. this is a change for you. you have often talked about how asia's been a driver. it sounds like everything's better in the u.s., nothing here's particularly weak. a lot of people at home are saying employment not that great, country's in a funk. that's clearly not what you're saying. >> we're a lot more optimistic and i am personally about what's happening in the u.s. economy. it's not going to be a straight line up, but we see a lot of end use markets that are really performing well for us in the u.s. and overall, it's our best market. the automotive oem business is excellent, aerospace is great, and even the construction business that you and i have talked about, jim, over the last many quarters, even that is showing signs of life at least

on the residential side and in the home renovation and repair markets. >> at the same time, your raw costs clearly are going in the right direction. we have to talk about natural gas, how you've got natural gas even where your plants are. but as a raw cost going down, with the hedges off, it looks like the margins are going up at the same time the revenues are expanding. >> yes, this natural gas situation for us has been a real boon. we saw natural gas prices close today at $1.90. this is an unbelievable windfall for our economy, for the chemical industry. more broadly for ppg and for any energy-intensive business here in the u.s. and it's one of the reasons i'm more optimistic. i think it's going to make us a lot more competitive in manufacturing, our wages here have been more under control than in markets like china and so i am more bullish than i've been in many years on the u.s. economy, especially on the industrial side.

>> i'm not going to let you just throw that out there. i've heard something that i've not heard from any executive on the show. you're saying our costs are cheaper than making things in china? >> oh, yes. so if you look at $2 natural gas in china natural gas costs and energy in general more than three times that cost, natural gas is over $6, mcf in china, our wage rates in china. even though the economy has been growing well there and our business is still very good, wage rates have been inflating at over 10% a year for the last five years, land costs up. so i would say that the china cost advantage in many energy-intensive industries is diminishing, and i think now the u.s. is going to be a much more competitive on the global scene in terms of manufacturing costs. >> boy, that's an amazing story of which you're at the heart of it.

now, you did have a -- you were talking in your conference call. it's not like you can lock in these low prices forever, right? if you go out three or four years, you're not going to get $1.90. >> right. and we've looked at additional hedging. we've had, i think a mixed experience over the years in our hedges. we can go and start hedging these forward. you and i talked about it. if you go out much past a year or so, you're starting to pay certainly prices a lot higher than what we're seeing today in the market. and it's not clear if how long. and we may have these prices around $2 or potentially even lower for some period of time. >> well, that would be totally boon to your earnings. now in the fantastic ppg investor overview you do, you basically i think show how you moved to a proprietary company. how did you know coatings was going to be so much better than glass? >> well, we liked many aspects of the coatings industry. it's not capital intensive, it's

been a more consistent earner, it's a capital light business that depends a lot on proprietary technologies. you can really solve a lot of your customers' problems, create benefits for them, and i would say that it is an opportunity for us to use our science and technology to really come to bear in markets where i think we don't have some of the same advantages in commodity businesses such as glass in some aspects of that end use market. >> last question because you have repeatedly talked about how great it is in asia. if you had to put money right now dollar for dollar in asia versus the united states, how close are they to being competitive with each other as the place you want to commit resources to? >> i think we're comfortable putting resources and capital in both markets. i think china is still a very good story. we've had a slowdown in china in the construction markets. as an example, a little lower

growth rates, but i think over the next few years, china's going to continue to be a very attractive market for ppg. maybe not as export-oriented as in the past. so i'm still very optimistic about china. but as i told you, the u.s. now is a really attractive place. the markets are strengthening. we'd like to see the corporate tax rate changes that would really spur more investment. but i would say i feel equally good about both markets now, jim. >> incredible. thank you so much, chuck bunch for delivering endlessly for your shareholders. great job. thanks for coming on the show. guys, stock's not done. stock's going higher. it's just too good of a story. and it's natural gas. finally you hear the good side of natural gas. you always hear the bad side. look at how much money they're making. stay with cramer. [ male announcer ] we imagined a vehicle

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find your theme and stick with it. own it, don't deviate from it. this morning, we got a terrific number from f5, the onramp to the internet. we saw vm ware blow out the estimate. this israeli company posting extraordinary earnings. that's big data speak. these companies all helped route and store large complex files including video at gigantic data farms so they can be accessed by companies, individuals, governments, you name it.

it's a proprietary trend that laughs at spanish bond auctions, it can smash the jolting of the public by the stock markets. when you have a theme that works through thick and thin, it allows you to pick up stocks on weakness that would otherwise terrify most people. we know big data's on fire. and when you think of big data, companies levered to the cloud are important. who dominates the cloud? salesforce.com. red hat. both hit new highs today. how about splunk which orders the data in ways that companies can use. in short, you stick to this theme, i'm telling you, you will make money. what i like to do is look at variants of the theme being thrown away because they're misunderstood. here's two. intel, emc. emc was off $1.04 today. emc actually owns vmware, that's the virtualization cloud play. meaning the cheap way for enterprises to tap into the cloud and vm ware knocked it out

of the park. emc itself is a dominant player in storage for the cloud. take a look at the ownership. if you don't believe me, look at the ownership of vmware. intel's simple. they make the processors that go into the data farms, break open a data farm, it's intel. and they didn't give you that gratification. that's a huge mistake. you've got to buy stocks to play on this theme when they're cold not when they're hot. the big gains came from picking them up when most people thought they had lost their way. of course they hadn't because they got the big theme behind them. the the companies failed to blow people away when they reported. the next time they succeeded, you've got enormous gains. that's what i believe will happen the next time around. patience does get rewarded. this isn't mega millions we're playing here. patience can't be rewarded instantly. that's oxymoronic, but patiently exploiting secular themes, that's how you make real money. stay with cramer.

apple, we heard about a guy getting uncertain about what's go