Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 04/23/25
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Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramerica. How's it going, my friends? I'm just trying to make you a little money. My job is not just to entertain. It's to teach you. So call me at 1-800-743-CNBC or tweet me at Jim Kramer. When you see a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park, you call a park ranger because these bears are dangerous. They think nothing of mauling your face off. But the grizzlies turn into teddy bears when the rangers come and you can't even remember what you were so afraid of.

After a day where the Dow gained 420 points, the S&P climbed 1.67 percent, and the Nasdaq pulled over 2.50 percent, we can only presume that the president can turn the Grizzlies on Wall Street into teddy bears with the stroke of a pen or even just a post on the social media platform he owns. I've never, ever seen the market bend so readily to the wishes of one man.

It's extraordinary. The park ranger seems to have a way with the bear. It's not clear if he's scaring it down or he's calming it down, but there's real effort involved. Of course, there's almost no effort involved with President Trump when it comes to declawing the bears on Wall Street. He only needs to walk back some previous comments and the market catches fire.

After spending days mercilessly calling, how about chiding, Fed Chief Jay Powell a major loser whose termination couldn't come fast enough, last night the president made it clear that he had no intention of firing Powell. Never mind that he kept calling him our Fed Chief, he's called Mr. Too Late. He now says it was the press that ran away with things. The whole notion of firing Powell now seems to be off the table. And the name calling?

And what happens today when that name calling's over and Powell's job's not in danger? Not that it ever should have been, either legally or professionally. Well, I'll tell you what happens. The stock market explodes higher. That's because Wall Street was terrified Trump would cause a constitutional crisis by trying to fire the Fed chief. What's really amazing is that the market had just rallied yesterday merely because the president didn't trash Powell.

Now, I want to say something here. I think it's actually it's beyond belief how easy it is for this one man to tame a bear.

Even if it's a pair that he released on us in the first place, all Trump had to do to cause the two-day rally was not repeat that Powell was a major loser and then say he wouldn't try to fire the guy. It certainly helped that President Trump indicated there could be a deal with the Chinese, even though, from what anyone can tell, there's not a lot of discussion with China. The president also conceded that the tariff rate on China won't be 145%. Ooh, but it won't be zero either. Again, not as precise as we'd like, but it's improvement. More importantly...

It worked. If you wanted higher stock prices like I do, it worked.

Now, I don't know if people realize how extraordinary all this is. You call the Fed chiefs some funny names, the kind that would make most of us feel somewhat remorseful, given how Powell's kind of a pretty dignified guy. You tell your lieutenants to see if you're allowed to fire him. Then you say it was really drummed up by the press and the market rallies like nothing ever happened. It's almost as if there's a whole exercise. Is it? It's a TV show. I mean, you can see Powell walk into the boardroom. Seems calm. Cool character.

Sits down. President consults with his other judges. He then turns to look right at the Fed chief and he says, listen, Mr. Major loser, you may be too late, but you know what? You're not fired.

And then the NASDAQ goes up 2%. Whoa! Now we're almost back to where we were about a week ago, before the press began to chin up those stories about the president bashing Powell. All right, what's really going on here? Look, the president is very powerful, especially when he's fixing problems of his own creation. But something else is going on here, too. The companies that reported yesterday and today gave you amazing numbers with excellent forecasts, even if the tariffs stay on.

The CEOs of these companies one by one calmly talked about how their business is terrific and could even get better, not the stuff that you expect when you think they were supposed to have a recession. Just take tonight's show. You're going to hear from CEOs of some of the largest, most important businesses on Earth. You'll listen to the CEO avertive. Perhaps the most important company in that red hot data center business and their business is incredibly strong. No cessation in sight. In fact, I think it's accelerating. You're getting that acceleration for free with that down now, Scott.

You'll listen to an interview with Bill McDermott, the CEO of ServiceNow, a huge enterprise software company. They reported arguably the best enterprise software quarter we've seen all year. ServiceNow is a hero stock, putting up insanely good numbers when its stocks seem to indicate that we get a shortfall. Totally wrong. You're going to get to meet the CEO of GE, Vernovo. The company is furiously trying to meet the demand for more electricity in this country, and it can't meet that demand. It has too much business.

I'm calling it a high quality problem. These are companies with stocks that were seething to go higher. They wanted to launch, but they never would be able to get off the ground as long as the president was rolling out new nicknames for J-PAL, like maybe Cherry Garcia, talking about how Powell's favorite group, the Dedden Company, should file for Chapter 11. I say that with some mirth, as Powell's the epitome of a distinguished banker, economist, historian, and yes, deadhead.

These three stock stories come on top of GE Aerospace, which just shot the lights out. 3M, which is in the midst of a major turnaround. These are big American companies. Given that the whole world's thinking we're about to have a recession here because of the extreme tariff turmoil, these are the kinds of companies that should be slashing the numbers. But

They're not. They're raising the numbers. Oh, and just tonight, the Story Texas Instruments, which have been struggling mighty of late, shed the weaknesses, put up terrific numbers that might be enough to ignite what had been a more abundant chip cohort. Now, here's the real kicker and the difference between Yellowstone and Wall Street. The Razor can't really make the grizzly get on his hind legs and dance, but the president, he got the bear doing a kick line. Where's Tesla? Here's a company that reported one of the worst quarters of the year. Ah.

I mean, it's really terrible. It's just dismal. But the stock soars more than 5%. Why? Because CEO Elon Musk is getting out of Doge. He's spending more time with Tesla. That's enough. Now, if this were one of those days where President Trump pokes fun at major world leaders and doubles the tariffs on the spot, Tesla's stock would have taken on the chin. But when the president backs away from his high-risk demands, the market's suddenly very forgiving. And when he talks positively about exempting some companies like the autos from some tariffs, well, you know what happens? House of pleasure. Yeah. We need these companies to do well if we're going to avoid a downturn.

Let me give you one last thought about this. If the president were to use his power to be constructive, to not call people names, to lighten up on truth social, and to say it's time we roll up our sleeves and make some trade deals, then I think the market would really roar. And if he simply said, you know what, I want to go back to the way I was last time in the White House where everybody wins, then the Grizzlies would go into hibernation for four years. We wouldn't be talking about a bear market rally. We'd be talking about the best ways to serve bear meat. It's a cookbook.

Bottom line, that's how powerful Trump has become on Wall Street. On days like today, it's helpful, but for most of the year, it's going the other way. Of course, you never know who he'll target next. We don't want any of the big CEOs to be trash. That could hurt. The market doesn't care if he goes after law firms or colleges, but going after central bank, different story. Right now, Trump owns Wall Street, and only he can decide if that's going to be a good thing or a bad thing. I think it's time to go all in on good.

Let's go to Rakesh in California. Rakesh.

Hi, Jim. I love your show and your advice. Thank you, partner. I enjoy watching your show. Thank you. I have a question. What do you think if it's a good time to buy Oracle stock now? The stock is pretty beaten right now. Oracle is way beaten down. It's another one of those stocks that's being hurt because it's guiding the data center. Look, it's up four today. I never counseled buying a stock up four, but I will say this. Oracle has multiple, has compressed to the point where it's now an inexpensive stock, and that's what matters. How about we go to Mary Jo in Florida? Mary Jo.

Hi, Jim. Mary Jo, how are you? I'm great. Hey, I'm a club member, long time, first time. Yes. And I just want you to know I really appreciate you. Thank you. In 2008, I sold half my portfolio with the rent in October.

In March, I started buying again. And by September, I was back to even. I mean, that saved my bacon as far as my retirement account is concerned. Anyway, and I'm retired now and disabled. So it's really important. Anyway, I'm a club member. First of all, thank you. I know that that was heartfelt. And that I did that is the kind of thing I'll call my wife into the show and say, look, I did good.

And she needs to hear it, and I need to hear it, so thank you. Thank you. You did really good, really good. Thank you. So, yeah, I'm calling about Kat. I'm a club member, but I didn't liquidate it completely when the club sold out a while back. Right. And now it just seems like it's not an environment for construction anymore.

You're right. It's not Mary Jo. And boy, Jim Appleby's retiring. Oh, man, is he good. He's the guy who really turned the company into what I call a secular grower. That said, it's not expensive, but you're right. It may not be the time to own Caterpillar. It is a better, there may be a better season coming. And again, thank you for your kind words. And remember, you know, sometimes I got lucky too. Mark Haynes, the late Mark Haynes really helped me try to find the bottom. So I can't.

You know, I got to give him credit because he really helped me a great deal. Anyway, look, right now Trump is running Wall Street and only he can decide if that will be a good thing or a bad thing. I'm hoping for some good. I'm Ed Money Tonight. Don't miss this lineup of post earnings exclusives. Next Service Now is on the move after top and bottom line beat today. Wow. I got to see you to hear what's ahead for software in the midst of macro uncertainty. And it's platinum.

Then GE and Renova slid alongside the market during the recent sell-off, but we gained some traction today. I'm checking with Top Brass to get a better reading. And later, Verdin flew higher after its quarter cost the tape this morning. I'm digging into the data center industry with the company's Top Brass, so stay with Kramer.

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After the close, we got a rock solid quarter from ServiceNow, the enterprise software leader that helps automate all sorts of IT and back office jobs. More important, they reiterated their full year forecast, offered inline guidance for the current quarter despite the tumultuous environment. Well, is that enough to turn the stock around? I think it is. But let's dig deeper with Bill McDermott. He's the chairman and CEO of ServiceNow. To learn more, Mr. McDermott, welcome back to Mad Money.

Jim, thank you for having me. Great to be back. OK, so, Bill, I thought that this when I looked at the quarter, I was thinking I'm going to get the gold standard. I think this one's really the platinum standard of enterprise grade AI. And it's about time that someone came through with enterprise AI numbers because, holy cow, it's been we've been deficient of good quarters. Well done.

All right, Jim, thank you so much. I have to credit so many of our employees. They did a great job. I call this elite level execution. And you're right. AI acceleration delivered another outstanding quarter. And in fact, it quadrupled in the quarter. So we're really excited. Now, one of the things that people would tell me is that, you know, this the Doge committee, Elon Musk going to come in, get rid of all the companies that are helping to automate things. You've got this U.S. federal government priority.

of transparency, accountability, and efficiency, which is this government transformation suite, I think you must have been called in to try to make sure everything's done right.

Well, thank you, Jim. You know, we're laser focused on modernizing the government and elevating how it serves the American people. And I think that's probably why our public sector business grew 30 percent year over year this quarter. We had six new public sector logos, net new business, including a huge U.S. federal agency. And there were 11 federal deals that were greater than a million and a couple that were greater than five million. And I'll tell you what I see, Jim.

I see the whole software industrial complex consolidating onto ServiceNow in the public sector. And this is also happening in commercial entities. You know, they're still running COBOL systems from 1959.

And if you think about the legacy systems that were structured by department that, you know, built over many decades, ServiceNow is helping streamline all that. So we're excited. We're very happy to team up with the public sector entities and very proud of our business there. Well, I don't think you're just teaming up with the public sector entities. I'm looking at your pre-configured AI agents and what that says to me.

is what I saw out at GTC. It says to me that you are partners with Nvidia to do the first real agentics that is saving money for people and also, of course, making the people, not letting people up necessarily, making them more productive. Absolutely. And you know the story well, Jim, how we teamed up with my great friend and yours too, Jensen Wong. And we started building LLMs with him six years ago. And

And now the pro plus version of the ServiceNow platform is literally the platinum standard for enterprise grade AI. And you can run all functions, all corners of your office on ServiceNow, take the cost out, improve your margin profile, even in an uncertain revenue environment, and then really rethink your business processes.

And you could do that by industry. I mean, just think about an auto manufacturer in a tariff-centric environment. There's 30,000 parts that go into building a car. And if you can't automate your supply chain in real time on ServiceNow, you actually can't get to tier two and three suppliers and sign up new ones immediately.

And you'll have to pass on a $10,000 on average course to the customer, which they may not pay. So we're more relevant now than ever, Jim. Well, I want people to understand that at a time when most of the enterprise software companies are not as relevant, uh,

You and by the way, uncertain revenue growth, you had 20 percent revenue growth and better than 30 percent non gap operating margin, which I want people to understand means that you are achieved a rule of 50, not 40, which is an elite group of companies that's done that.

Thank you very much for saying that, Jim. We're very, very appreciative of it. You know, we have to keep our company operating at the rule of 50 plus. You know, this quarter we had 48% free cash flow and 20% sub-revenue for 68%.

But as a full year guide, we actually upped it in an environment where I think we're one of one, where you're growing above the rule of 50, upping the guide and very confident about our global position across all industries in the global economy. And I think about AI. You know, this is the only 20 trillion dollar GDP impact market over the next five years that ever existed.

And $4 trillion in global OPEX will come out with AI. And to have the leading enterprise platform doing that for our customers in the public and the private sector is humbling. We're very excited. Okay, I know you as not just the CEO of ServiceNow. You're someone who people go to to see what to do.

What are you telling people who do have these different tariff situations so that they can stay even keel and not miss their numbers and frankly not be petrified of the situation? We have to be strong. Leadership is in high demand and trust is the only human currency. So this is a moment in time where you really have to build people up.

Keep steady on your strategy and don't just change your strategy because you think something is going to change that's going to change your business model entirely without thinking about technology first. Because if you really do deploy technology, I'm looking at situations in the government where we can take out billions in cost.

So while things might look complex at the moment, if you think about technology and how it can transform business, it can lead you to new business model innovation and outcomes you never even dreamed of. So lead the people and use AI for people. You know, Jim, we run ServiceNow. We drink our own champagne before we bring it to market. I've got an 86% deflection rate now.

on soul-crushing work our people used to have to do. It's now getting done by agents. I can take a lead conversion and improve it by 16x by using AI. And finally, yesterday, I had a sales representative come up to me and said,

I used to take four days to figure out when I made a sale what my bonus and commission would be. I did it in four seconds now with my AI agent by my side. So bring technology in service to people and change fundamentally the way you run.

And everybody should be thinking now how I can be a tech first company because it's the only way forward. Is that the way? And my last question, I'm sorry, I've got to truncate. But is that the way to deal with the uncertainty that some people feel the president generates when he goes back and forth and vacillates a bit on some of his issues?

Well, I really take a positive approach to everything, as you know, Jim. Yes, you do. And I think, you know, we're in a moment in time where we're rethinking a lot of policy matters on global scale. But I also have very high confidence that

in the administration and in the country, that in the end we'll figure out the proper equilibrium where everybody can understand the new rules of the road, they'll be highly reasonable with bilateral global trade, and we'll prosper like we always do and we always get through tough times.

And they never last, but tough people do. And as you know better than anybody, because you are a winner, winners see opportunities in the challenges life brings. And that's what we got now. Well, Bill, I believe in it. You've got a message that everybody needs to hear. And you've got the numbers that everybody wants. I want to thank Bill McDermott, who is the chairman and CEO of ServiceNow. And this stock will be up big. And it's not done at these levels. Thank you, Bill.

Thank you, Jim. Thank you so much. We'll be right back after the break.

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When you look at GE for an overrun, GE's old power division caught fire last year, but its stock has sold off the rest of the market in recent months. Two things fell from 40 percent from its share of highs and lows earlier this month before recovering a bit in recent weeks. This morning, though, the company reported a strong quarter with positive full year forecasts in spite of all the tariff turmoil.

And that's why the stock rallied over 3% today. So are you getting a good entry point down here? Let's take a closer look at Scott Straczyk. He's the CEO of GE Vernova to find out. Mr. Straczyk, welcome back to Mad Money. Jim, thanks for having me. Okay, full year. Full year, and it looks like things are coming along pretty good. No question. Good first quarter print, margin expansion in all three businesses, strong cash flow, returned over a billion dollars of cash to our shareholders, and real opportunities to grow from here. Backlog expansion across the business and more to come.

I read all the different reports of so many different companies that here's something I never see. We are sold out, largely sold out for 26 and 27. You really have that much to me.

Gas turbines, we most certainly do. We're sold out for 26 and 27. We're filling out for 28 right now and starting to take orders for 2029 and having commercial discussions for 2030. Well, that's better than aerospace. We've got a real opportunity to serve here. Now, one of the things that I know, and you were very clear, you do have tariff exposure, 300, 400 billion, and you're going to mitigate it. But what you also could be, when I see that you say the most populous country in the world, India,

at 1.5 billion, but they need electric, they have coal. Saudi Arabia needs it. I started thinking that maybe you're a solution to the tariff problem, not actually one of the things that's hurting us. No question. At the heart of the tariff dynamic is trade imbalances. And as 70 countries come in and start negotiating with the U.S. government, they can stop in Greenville, South Carolina, and we can do a gas turbine transaction. They can stop in Wilmington, North Carolina, and we can work through our

SMR business, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for our grid equipment. And we'll help with that trade imbalance. It does seem like the old days, what you would do, you know, Larry Culp, who runs GE Aerospace. But the old days, what you used to do is call Boeing or GE and say, listen, we got a trade imbalance. We're in a problem here with the United States. We want to give you some big orders. And then we get it. It looks like these orders can go to GE and Renault.

We've got a real opportunity to serve these markets. I mean, the U.S. is a priority for us in all of these markets, but we've got opportunities in other places. In gas, Saudi Arabia is our second largest market today. You think about grid business, Europe is a big piece of the equation. But with wind, we're excited with what we can do in India, what we can do in Romania. There's global opportunities here across the board.

All right, now, Scott, one of the things that occurred to me when I first met you, I was very bullish on nuclear. You tried and you correctly said, listen, Jim, Jim, please don't get ahead of yourself. When I spoke to you this morning, it was the first time that I felt that you were ahead of me in terms of what could happen nuclear. Things are moving fast. The reality in the last 90 days, we've had a lot of productive conversations with both the hyperscalers on what it takes to move this to the left, the administration. They clearly care on infrastructure.

moving nuclear in the right direction in the US. We'll have multiple applications into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the next few months. And then it's going to come down to how long does it take to get licenses to construct approved. If we can get that done in 12 to 18 months, we've got a real shot here. If we have the Department of Interior, if we have the Department of Energy behind you, then I have to believe the NRC, which is a story of its own. And look, we want them to be thorough.

But we don't necessarily need to be slow. You could be getting approvals. And I understand for TVA, it's happening right now. Well, TVA will have their application into the NRC next month. And then we're off to the races from there. I mean, Secretary Wright, Secretary Burgum have been very available and accessible for us to partner on our steps forward. We're already in construction on the first plant. It's just in Canada.

We need to get the first plant in construction in the U.S., and I'm highly confident we're going to get there. Now, when I look at what you're doing with the, you mentioned the hyperscalers, I think that they, you're really kind of their hope. Look, we all want, we want solar, right? We love solar. We love wind. But in the end, they have to come back to you, don't they?

There's going to be a lot of gas bill that's going to be required. They need dispatchable baseload power. Gas is the most efficient economic answer that's going to help them. If you look at our gas backlog today,

it's negligible the number of data center orders. But we often talk about what we call our slot reservation agreements. These are agreements we have with customers that have secured slots that aren't yet orders. About a third of that pipeline, which are contractual contracts where customers are paying directionally 20 percent, they're hyperscaler data center oriented orders. So that's an illustration of where this market is going. And I think we're just getting going. I think

People are unfairly are very unfair about natural gas. Natural gas gets cleaner every year. The people know how to do it. They're doing a terrific job. And yet somehow it's still said that people act like it's coal or fuel oil. It's not. It's much better than that.

We've decarbonized the electric grid in the U.S. with coal-to-gas switching. And ultimately, gas is the force multiplier for more wind and solar to get built. Without gas, you can't get to renewable penetration rates that the world is looking for. Now, could you please tell us where we are and...

where you think we are in this cycle, knowing that a couple years ago there was no cycle. Where are we now in what you think could be a multi-year move for your company? Well, when you really take a step back and look at it, there hasn't been a lot of investment since really 1975.

There wasn't no need. There was no demand each year. Let's think about why there wasn't load growth. Globalization in the 80s and 90s was moving jobs and manufacturing to other countries. In the 2000s and 2010s, think about productivity from software and the Internet was mitigating demand. Where are we now? Now, as globalization evolved,

and as the software and the hyperscalers need more electrons, the same dynamics in the last 40 years that have been tamping down demand for electricity are accelerators for demand. So the best indicator to me or the best proof point, you've got to go back to 1945 and the end of World War II.

That's the infrastructure build-out that we're going to have. And what happened at that time? The economic growth, but also for national security. We needed to build the electric power system. For both reasons, we need to do it again now, and that's exactly what we're going to do. All right, my last question is...

If we wanted to go with you to see it, where would we go? Where would we see? Is it in your plant, one of your plants? I want to see this in action because this is really the great part of America right now. Listen, I'm proud to represent 75,000 employees in the world, 18,000 in the U.S. that are making this a reality every day. We talk about bringing a new energy to the energy transition. We can do that in our factories. We can do that out at our project sites. We'd love to have you at any of the above, Jim.

Well, I've got to tell you, when I think about what you're up to, and I'm, you know, with international, domestic, when I think about nuclear, the SMR, I come back, I don't even know which is the most exciting, perhaps with the idea that I never thought in my lifetime that I would see 5% growth to the grid, what, every year?

We got a real shot here. The last time you saw growth like that was after World War II. Right. And this is our moment. But the prosperity that happened in this country after World War II, that's when we became one nation with just lots of, with the middle class. Exactly. And I think that's what people are not,

really realizing today. For the last 20 to 40 years, the basically technology shifts that have happened with electric power grid always had winners and losers. Right. Coal was replacing gas. Wind and solar were trying to replace gas. They were putting miners out of business who were just going and doing their job every day. But now this is what's going to enable the economic growth that this country needs and the national security dynamics. We need this for AI. This is

purpose-built work that we're excited to do. And it is something where we can have a trade, we can change the trade deficits with many countries, not just a handful. Think about the LNG deal the government references in Asia with Japan and Korea. They're going to need gas turbines.

We'll make the gas turbines in Greenville, South Carolina. Well, I hope they start mentioning GE Renova and building things in America, in Greenville, South Carolina, where I want to go. We'd love to have you. I look forward to it, Jim. Thank you very much. That's Scott Strang, CEO of GE Renova. Guys, this stock's come all the way down, but this is not a one-year thing. This probably lasts the rest of our lives. Mad Money's back after the break.

Can the unfairly beaten down data center stocks finally make a comeback? Take Vertiv, a company you know I like very much. It specializes in power and cooling equipment for these warehouses full of servers. This morning, Vertiv reported a clean top and bottom line beat with management even raising their full year sales forecast. And that's why the stock shot up more than 8% today. It was up a lot more at one point. Can it keep rebounding? Let's check in with Gio Albertazzi. Gio's the CEO of Vertiv. You get better read on the quarter. Gio Albertazzi, welcome back to Mad Money.

Hello, and thank you for having me. It's great being with you. Of course, Gio. Now, I was talking with your chairman, Dave Cody, not that long ago, up for a retreat on leadership. And we were marveling that the data center is still the hottest area in the world when it comes to business. But somehow people have given up on it and think that it's slowing. Can you set the record straight for us, please? Yeah, I think that our

multiple elements to that. This is certainly a long-term trend. I mean, the AI is changing the world. Everything is digital and becoming even more digital. So data, data traffic will continue to grow. So an absolutely secular trend. But

But when we look at that more in a short term and we look at it through the lenses of our orders, our strong trade 12-month orders and particularly strong Q1 orders, when we look at it through the lenses of our opportunity pipeline, we see strength. We see an enduring strength.

And the very encouraging thing for us is that enduring strength is very consistent with the model and with the five years outlook that we gave in November at our investor day. So the things are unfolding. The things are unfolding in the short and the long term in a way that is consistent with what we have.

shared with all our investors. People don't understand, I think, that when you're in business, what you always hope for is you have this quarter, say the end of the fourth quarter, and then you come in in what's known as a linked quarter, the first quarter. And it's even much better than a fourth quarter. I have almost no companies that I follow that had that, but you had it, sir.

Well, we like it a lot. I must say that there is a strength in our pipelines. And it's not necessarily a seasonal business, the business we're in. It really is a business in which big orders can come and go and can –

have a lumpiness that make a quarter absolutely great and another strong but not as phenomenal, let's say, on a quarter-to-quarter basis. So we should look at it really in a longer period and

And it's the longer period trajectory that matters. And we feel pretty good about the long term trajectory and the short term. Now, at the same time, you did have a tariff environment and mitigation actions page that I hesitate to see that at the deck because I just like to see it clean. But it's true that you have to make adjustments because of issues of tariffing that our countries do it.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, not uniquely avertive, but the good thing is twofold. On one hand, we've been strengthening our supply chains, really building resiliency in our supply chain,

And we are so much stronger now than we were, say, two and a half, three years ago. And that is serving us well, very well. Now, that supply chain strengthening was really targeted around geopolitics. Now, there is a slightly different spin to that. But it's a strength and an ability and a resilience that is serving us well. Having said that, there are a lot of moving pieces. And it's complicated. But we feel good. And I feel particularly good about

about the focus and the diligence and the energy with which Team Vertiv is approaching that. There is also of course a price end to tariffs and counter tariffs. So that's an area that we are also tackling on certainly on the price of new projects, new opportunity, new price lists, but also working very much together with our customers

on sometimes when needed, some element of order repricing. I did want to mention your customers. A lot of people feel that the only customers that Avertive has are these five hyperscalers. That's it. Now, you're a man of the world, and I know that from talking with Dave. Could you please explain to people that there are more than just five customers that are interested in Avertive's data center business?

Yeah, we are world leader in digital critical infrastructure, everything data center, but also telecom and CNI. Data center is by far our biggest part of the business. It was about 80% last year. But again, that's a large array from the big hyperscalers to a very large number of co-locators that are, of course, serving the hyperscalers, but also the broader enterprise market.

There is a very interesting number of, as they are called,

Neo clouds that are focused on AI and are growing very interestingly. Enterprise is, it starts to be focused and interesting AI, but it's not just AI. It is also the traditional cloud. It is the generic enterprise type of workloads. But also,

and we see that coming more and more to the full, is everything around proprietary AI and sovereign

AI that is becoming more and more of a general interest. So the customer base is quite broad. Now, I hear you say that. And yet I felt at one point during this quarter, the stock simply just said gave no credit whatsoever to AI. It was literally back to where it was before people thought that there was such a thing as artificial intelligence. Does that not mean that people felt that AI was dead, sir?

Look, I think there are cycles in the kind of a general feeling and sentiment out there. If we go back...

to, what was it, July, August last year? We had a moment when AI was dead as well. Then it resurrected. And then it went really strong. And then now everyone is saying, oh, things are slowing down. No. We like the coherence that we have always shared with our investors. And we see the market. We see it going in the right direction. And we

keep the consistency in our performance and the consistency in our outlook of the market. But again, it's corroborated by what we see. What we see talking to our customers, what we see talking with our partners, what we see talking with NVIDIA amongst others, but certainly very important.

Excellent. Okay, I now know that it was quite wrong that your company's stock was selling as if there was no such thing as AI, when it clearly is. Gio Albertazzi is the CEO of Vertiv, long one of our favorites. Thank you, Gio, for coming on the show. Well, thank you very much. Absolutely. Mad Money's back after the break. It is time for the White Rock Christmas. We're up. Golden Resort. I'm standing by. I'm standing by. I'm standing by.

And then the lightning round is over. Are you ready? That's our lightning round. Gary in Alabama. Gary. Hey, Jim. I want to know what your thoughts are on Uber. I have a small position in that. I like Uber very much. I think it goes higher. Hold it for multiple years. Let's go to Todd in Illinois. Todd.

Hey, Jim. Thanks for taking my call. You betcha. My question is Vestas Corporation. Vestas. We like Centos here. We're not Vestas people. We're Centos people. Let's go to Michael in New Jersey. Michael.

Hey, Jim. I'm calling about a great company, this product that people seem to love. It seems like a wider growth area. It's open up to it, but I don't hear it mentioned much. The company I'm calling about is PAYC, Paycom. Yeah, that's a great human capital software, and you're absolutely right. I like PayCore, too. Remember, that just got bought by Paychex. Yes, that's a good space. Let's go to Ryan in Ohio. Ryan.

Jimbo. Hey, brother. Yo. I'm looking on Interactive Brokers. I see they're raising their dividend. They're talking about a future stock split. What are your thoughts on IBKR? Well, I think it's good, but I actually like Robinhood and my travel trust owns Goldman. When I see Goldman this cheap and I know how good they are, that worked there one time. I got to tell you, I think Goldman at 11.8 times earnings is the way to go. Hey, how about we go to Harry in Florida? Harry.

Booyah, Jim. Booyah. I'd like to give a shout out to Gary and Eileen. And the question is Arista Network. Okay, so Gary, Eileen, and Harry, listen and listen up. Arista Network is down way too much. Jayshree Yalal is a winner. This stock is being treated as if it's a loser. I want to buy it right here at 70. Let's go to Nathan in Oregon. Nathan. Hi, Jim. How are you? I am good, Nathan. How about you?

Good, thanks. Member of the Investing Club and a long-time listener. Yes, thank you. I wanted to ask you and get your opinion about CRH. It's coming on quite a bit. You know, building materials right now is not the place to be. I'll tell you, though, if you really want to be in near that area, I would go with Martin Marietta materials or even Vulcan materials. Those are my two material stocks that I like. Let's go to Steve in California. Steve.

Jim, thanks for having me on. Long time watcher. I want to give a shout out to my stock picking buddy, Jeffrey, who's getting married this week in Brooklyn. My stock is Venture Global, the

I can't do this to Jeffrey. Jeffrey's getting married very near my house because I've been broken. I can't hurt him. You've got to tell him not to get in your venture global. It's only fair. He'll be a newlywed. It'd just be vicious if he owns that sock. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of the lightning round!

People don't seem to understand what's at stake with the great data center build out. We have a whole bunch of generative AI models with similar interfaces, and I think there's only room for a couple of winners, maybe even just one. Why not? Back in the day, there were many search engines vying with Google, but Google spent a fortune to dominate the entire industry. It turned out to be worth every penny.

Right now, there's tremendous ignorance about these AI chat models. People sample one, stick with it, not knowing what to do with the others. But you deserve to know the difference. So we all did this. I asked the chats themselves, the chats most people use, Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Perplexity, ChatGP and Grok to explain themselves and ask them what sets themselves apart from each other. I want to share the answers with you, starting with Claude from Anthropic, a company that Amazon has invested heavily in.

How did it explain itself? Not bad.

Meta AI may be the most different. It's not about answering frequently asked questions or providing customer support. Instead, it hails itself as a creative writing companion that summarizes content. I like Meta AI for its insight into what younger people might be thinking. It's really good on pop culture.

Lately, perplexities captured my fascination. The bot says it has fast, accurate, and citation-packed responses. True. I love it for what it calls the ability to deliver fast and comprehensive answers. Perplexity is no nonsense, no warmth. Just the facts, please. It's the dragnet of generative AI modeling.

ChatGPT is rather remarkable for remembering who you are and what you've done in the past platform. It doesn't just respond, it collaborates. I find that as it says it is broad knowledge and real-world intuition. Finally, there's my current personal favorite, Quark, which is owned by Elon Musk's XAI. It's been my experience that Quark has the information for everything I'm looking for almost instantaneously. Only Perpexly can rival on that front.

Okay.

That's how the chatbots see themselves. What about my view? I think every company in the genre of AI arms race needs to keep spinning. These sites will be the future. They'll be what you need when you talk to your robot, when you need a true assistant. But if we're seriously going to rely on them, they need to be flawless. That means more NVIDIA chips. That means more data centers like we heard tonight. That means scraping for more sites. Whoever can pull this off wins the entire category. So for those of you who think that the data center build-out is almost done, let's just say this.

I just ran down the key sites. They're all terrific. And you know what they're really good at? Apologies for getting things wrong. I'm calling that suboptimal. I know getting generative AI right will cost a fortune, but for whoever wins, it'll be worth it ten times over. So they better keep spending. No company can afford to be left behind. Like I said, there's always a bull market somewhere. I promise I'll find it just for you right here on MadMoney. I'm Jim Cramer. See you tomorrow.

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