Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 05/21/25
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Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramerica. I'll be with my friends. I'm trying to save you a little money here. My job, not just to entertain, but on days like today, educate, teach you about how to handle this. So call me at 1-800-743-CMC. Tweet me at Jim Kramer. It's a miserable day. Just nasty. Drenched in red ink, the Dow plummeting 817 points. S&P plunging 1.61%.

NASDAQ coming 1.41%. Don't buy, don't buy, don't buy. It was hideous. So we got to ask ourselves, how the heck did this happen? We got to dissect the reasons for this decline before I give you a message of hope, not despair. I will let everyone else do the despair thing. They do it very well.

First, stocks are going down because interest rates keep going higher. Like it or not, the stock market takes its cue from the much larger bond market, even though most publicly traded companies we deal with don't borrow a lot of money. They don't have floating rate debt either. So who cares about Treasury yields, right?

Wrong. The economy runs on credit, always has, and the cost of that credit is going higher, and that will slow business and hurt earnings. It could hurt you more than the tax breaks will make you happy. Consider that. It's what is at stake for you.

Right now we're in a transition mode. We're going from moderately high interest rates to genuinely high interest rates. And here I'm speaking of the long rates that are set by the bond market, not the Fed. Don't blame the Fed. The Fed is in control. It's the why that's spooking us. See, we're discovering that April was a really weak month in this country.

As we parse the quarters that are being reported, we get the sense that the economy froze in the country between Liberation Day, when the president announced those super large tariffs, and when he rolled most of them back over the next few weeks. It's not like business did nothing during the interregnum between Liberation Day and the tariff pause.

It's more like CEOs spent that whole period frantically switching their supply chains, trying to get out of China as fast as they could. While many companies were able to do that, lots of others were surprisingly much more dependent on the People's Republic of China than even they knew. As I listen to the calls and talk to CEOs, they quote about how instead of importing 100% of their stuff from China, it's now down to 50%. We have a 30% tariff on Chinese imports. 50% is way too much. The reliance on China,

It's shocking. The government may have put a pause on most of the tariffs, but I haven't found a CEO who isn't deeply concerned that they could come right back. Frankly, it's a wonder that any business got done in this country in April at all. Of course, many companies don't need to import anything, so they didn't feel the pinch. But what matters to the market is that CEOs of all stripes recognize that their bottom lines are now hostage to something that's never been the case. Hostage to the White House.

Now, they hesitate to even talk about it unless their fears get back to President Trump. And that's how you end up targeted like Apple, who was singled out for moving its iPhone production from China as quickly as possible. I thought we wanted that. Turns out it's not enough to move your manufacturer away from China. The president wants it here or else, whatever else is. It's that kind of admonition that has business frozen. And it's not just Apple. The president told Walmart he doesn't want them raising prices to pass on the cost of tariffs. Walmart. In theory, there's nothing you can do to Walmart. But in reality, who knows?

It's almost like we have a centrally planned economy, isn't it? One based on pique and anger and maybe a little sarcasm. It's not helping the GDP at all. And regular people have no idea why they're suddenly seeing higher prices pretty much everywhere, not just the supermarket. The whole exercise is indeed inflationary. So the month of May is a month of everyone, consumers, bosses, CEOs, trying to get used to the new regime of mandates and minutes. No wonder it's National Health Month. Mental health.

That alone would put upward pressure on bond yields. Anything inflationary sends these yields higher. Just a fact. But when you have inflation and lower business activity, I don't have to tell you that's an unholy situation.

Less business should lead to less inflation, but not if you have tariffs raising the price of so many items that you and I use and businesses buy to make things. Now, the second inflationary punji stick is right in front of us. It's a tax bill. Now, I don't want to make political commentary, so I'm going to outsource this to ChatGPT. Quote, former President Donald Trump has frequently referred to his proposed budget legislation as one big, beautiful bill. Hmm, that's true, ChatGPT.

But ChatGPT, did you know that Trump is the current president? Why do I even pay for that service? Anyway, if you want interest rates to go down, the government has to cut the budget deficit. That means cutting spending and raising taxes. So imagine just for a moment that the bond market is a person. That person would take one look at this budget bill and head for the hills because the tax cuts, huge tax cuts, will indeed blow up the deficit. That's right.

And you wonder why rates are going up? They're supposed to go up when the government does the opposite of what Mr. Bond Market wants. It's axiomatic, written and granted. Right now, it's President Trump versus the bond market. It's a tough opponent. It doesn't succumb to name-calling or outrageous postings or threats to be defeated by a hand-picked candidate. There is no candidate, and the bond market ain't running for anything.

So we have a situation where tariffs are finally kicking in at rates that aren't as high as we feared, but are definitely inflationary. And we have a budget bill that could add $3 to $3.5 trillion in debt, not subtract, add. That would be one thing if the market had taken a beating lately, softening the ground and prepping us for this onslaught. But the market's been fabulous. In that sense, you could argue that today was a day of vicious buyer's remorse. But let's go back to the initial question. What does any of this have to do with stocks?

First and most importantly, we had a bond auction, 20-year paper, and it did not go well. Buyers seemed fed up. They recognized that there might be a reckoning coming because our government keeps borrowing money like there's no tomorrow. Every once in a while, it dawns on bond buyers that they're not being compensated enough for the risk, given that the United States just can't get its act together. As rates go up, though, the optimists among us look at the yield, now more than 5% for the 20-year. And what do they do? They sell stocks to buy what's now a more attractive asset.

And compared to your typical dividend stock, where the yield's only about 4%, that 5% risk-free from Treasury is a great deal. Remember, you always get your money back when you buy a bond. So as yields go up, bonds become more attractive versus stocks. Meanwhile, the uncertain business environment makes people more risk-averse. When you're risk-averse, you sell stocks and buy bonds. Okay. All right.

then what's the message of hope here? Is there any way out of this? Sure there is. Remember, we're in the thick of it right now. The budget deficit is front and center, hence the reckoning. When we finish the budget negotiations and we get some big, beautiful bill, people will start focusing on how the tax cuts should be great for growth.

While the bill is very inflationary, that's because it's going to juice the whole economy. The reckoning will be replaced by a new thesis. We're going to grow our way out of the deficit. Doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. Just matters that we'll replace the grim reckoning gloom and its incessant chatter. Remember, we are the richest country in the world. We can kick the can down the road for decades before the national debt goes up in our face. It's a fact.

When the bond market calms down, and it will, buyers will come out and pick among the stocks of undamaged companies. Look at it this way. There's a heck of a lot of stress right now. The market's frantically trying to factor in higher rates and lower taxes and higher tariffs and lower business activity and higher inflation and lower consumer spending. Right now, we only feel the negatives. These can be replaced much more easily than it feels right now. Much more easily than it feels. Remember that.

And when we do replace them, the bottom line is that this market should come roaring back because there are plenty of companies that can deliver excellent earnings in this environment. And their stocks are being clubbed along with everything else. Patience, patience. Better prices are coming. I can promise you that.

Prakash, California. Prakash. Yeah, Prakash from California. Congratulations for 20th anniversary of your show. I have been tremendously benefited from your advices and your messages and your email. I'm a club member since long. Okay, thank you. My question today...

Yeah. My question today is ticker symbol FICO, Fair Isaac. Shall I buy now? Because, you know, we have to have we had a really good relationship with Will Lansing. We have to get him back on. I was talking to Ben Stoto today, who, of course, is the chairman of research and knows more about anything. Chief scientist. And he was he and I both are very confused about. We know that something went wrong. We have to have Mr. Lansing come back.

Good relationship, Mr. Lansing. Like to see you later this week or tomorrow. Let's go to Terry in Florida. Terry. Hi, Jim. Club member, Terry. Excellent. I've owned this stock for a long time. And Berkshire Hathaway owns a ton of it. And they're still buying it because of its large gas and oil reserves. Morningstar gives it four stars and four.

fair value of 62. The downward moving average got gapped by it a few days ago, and now it couldn't hold. So it's down to 41 now. And so I'm wondering if I should just dump it for a big loss at this point or hold on. Let me take it from here. As you heard, because you were probably on our conference call today that we had for the club, I urge people to go and listen to the club meeting because I

I talked about not thinking about where you bought it. I'm thinking about where you're going to go with it. And this company, even though it's owned by Berkshire Hathaway, Occidental is not going to go anywhere. I wish I didn't have to say that, but I don't see this company getting a bid and I don't see oil going higher. Let's go to Warren in New York. Please, Warren.

booyah from the big apple and here's to the hardest here's the hardest working man on cnbc thank you thank you very much my question is about accenture acn yes given the size of accenture about 800 000 people jim and expected slower growth

Would a strategy of breaking the company up be a good way forward? No, don't even do that. No, don't even do that. Now, this stock went down because of Doge. Now that Elon Musk is back to Tesla, I actually think you'd buy Accenture. I've been listening to Julie Sweet. I think she is smart as a whip.

And Accenture may be a company that can really help a lot of companies right here. I just wish that because the spell check, it always comes out as C-A-N every time you type in A-C-N. So I don't ever like to type in A-C-N. I type in E-Y because I can't get E-C-N. Anyway, look, there's a lot of stress out there right now, but you've got to be patient. Better prices are coming. I know better means lower, but...

Bear with me. Now, I can promise you that we're going to get to a bottom. May I have money tonight? Should you get all aboard CSX? All aboard! Despite its latest quarter flowing below expectations, I'm tracking the impact of the terrorist weather and more with the CEO. And what's in the pipeline for Phillips 66? I'm hearing straight from the sweet seat after that brutal proxy fight with Elliott. And later on, I'm talking to Snowflake top brass special off a huge quarter. So stay with Kramer.

Don't miss a second of Mad Money. Follow at Jim Kramer on X. Have a question? Tweet Kramer. Hashtag Mad Mentions. Send Jim an email to madmoneyatcnbc.com or give us a call at 1-800-743-CNBC. Miss something? Head to madmoney.cnbc.com.

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After a truly hideous day where rising treasury yields crushed the stock market, let's take the temperature of the actual economy. And to do that, you want a railroad. Take CSX, the big East Coast railroad that can give us some real insight into how businesses from all sorts of sectors are holding up in a really uncertain environment. Let's check in with Joe Hendricks. He's the president and CEO of CSX to get a better read on the situation. Joe, welcome back to Bad Buddy. Great to be here, Jim. Thanks. Joe, you're the president.

You're a straight shooting guy and you start your call by saying that it's not good out there. And what would it, let's be positive. What would it take to make it good?

Obviously, interest rates coming down would help because the interest rate sensitive parts of the economy, housing, autos, and that brings steel and aluminum, et cetera. Room for improvement there. I mean, we haven't hit the 17 million SAR on auto since before COVID in five years now. So that's a big opportunity for us. And then certainty. I mean, everyone's looking for it. We're not going to have it. But where's where's all this going with trade and tariffs?

Well, to me, in some ways, it's going toward you. Every single company I deal with is very proud that they've lowered the China exposure. Some of that, Joe, has got to go instead of west coast to east coast, east coast to west coast. That's your wheelhouse. It would be. And obviously, if it comes to east coast ports, it's even better for us. But we do move a lot of traffic that comes from the west coast ports because it makes its way over to Chicago or Memphis or somewhere and comes onto our network because two-thirds of the population are on our network.

side of the Mississippi River. But, yeah, I mean, our exposure to China is less than 10 percent of our revenue. But still, it's an important part of it. But if we make things in America, better for CSX. Right. Now, let's talk about that. I look at these companies and I take it for gospel when I see the president saying, listen, we've got $550 billion this and $550 billion that. I think it's going to be in the southeast. And that'd be a right to work state. You can debate. You know, if you're a union person, you might say Kramer's anti-union. I'm not.

But the area of this country that has the workforce that everybody knows is hardworking and doesn't necessarily unionize is your area. So you must be sitting down with some executives and planning where all these plants are going to go. No question, Jim. Matter of fact, we had 37 plants open on our network this year so far already. 37. 37. And what's the average before this? Probably half of that. Well,

But I'll give you a better number. At the end of last year, we had 500 projects in the works with companies to find locations on our network. That number is now 600.

And that's even before this tax bill goes through, because that bonus appreciation. Have you read that tax bill? It's really good for growth. The bonus appreciation, especially on factories, is huge. You're the first person that's talked to me about it. I've been looking at it every day. I cannot believe it can spur a huge amount of growth. I saw some stuff today that said it could improve the IRR by 50 percent. I agree with that. On a manufacturing plant. You want to build here? That's a big deal. Okay, so let's deal with the realities. I mean, you've got coal. I mean, you've got coal.

Joe. Volume's good. Export pricing's down. That's what's really hurt. $100 million in the first quarter. I mean, listen, here's the thing. Metallurgical coal, big deal to places like India, other parts of Asia. The volume is still there. Pricing's been depressed because of commodity prices. Rates are tied to that.

But I'm telling you, thermal coal in the US, going to see a little more volume this year. You know why? We had a cold winter, and now natural gas prices have gone up above 350. That coal might make some trade-offs. So watch that area. But it's not like we're building new coal plants yet. We're not building them. Some of the closures are being delayed.

And, you know, the president's talking about big, beautiful coal as well as big, beautiful bill. But, yeah, it's a long-term secular decline for sure. But export coal is a big part of our exports to the United States. Very good point. Now, when someone uses the term missed opportunities in their key end markets, which is what you did, I want to know what those opportunities were and whether they can come back.

Yeah, so in the first quarter, we didn't run the way we wanted to run. There's several reasons for that. Some of it was weather. Some of it was still the effects from the hurricane. And we said on our call about $1 million a day of revenue we missed because of our operational issues, which that's $90 million that we should have had. We're running a lot better the last four weeks

You know, we lost a fourth of our network going north-south because of Hurricane Helene, and we're still rebuilding that. Won't be back until the fourth quarter, but we're starting to run a lot better, and we feel good about where we are. What do you think about the theory that I'm coming up with? When we had that, you know, we had a day of liberation, and then we went back a little, we got a little less liberated, that

The country kind of froze, didn't it? It did in early April. That's why the market bombed out in early April. We certainly did it ourselves. And also big flooding happened throughout Tennessee and Kentucky in that time period, too. That hurt us. I mean, do you ever read the book of Job? You ever read that in the Bible?

I mean, what is that? Like, we should change your name to J-O-B? I mean, what's happening? We're waiting for the locusts. But in all seriousness, you know, we control things we can control, and we can do a better job. And our team is doing a much better job. But you have a resilient network. We do. It'll be even more resilient when the Howard Street Tunnel gets opened up in Baltimore and when the Blue Ridge gets rebuilt in East Tennessee. But we're showing signs of being able to deliver the execution we want. You know,

They're building that East Tennessee area up. I know that G.E. Vranova just got a very big order. The TVA is coming back. You must be seeing a return to a robust nature of all the power that needs to be built in this country. Are you seeing data center built? We are, and we're seeing that. We're seeing the data center built. We're also seeing warehouses being built because of all the distribution that's happening in eastern Tennessee. That's good for Intermobile.

It's good for intermodal. Eastman Chemicals in Kingsport, Tennessee, right next to Mark Costa, a friend of mine I went to school with, is a CEO there. We're seeing growth in those areas. But I'm telling you, we get our network back. If we can get interest rates coming down and we get this tax bill through, I think you can see some more confidence in the economy. What do you think about using the word trough if we get that, that we're just going to go like this? I would hope so. I mean, the interest rate part has to see some progress. I know, and it's not going our way.

And it's not really moving in that direction right now, right? But the trade stuff is settling a little bit. Now there's more boats coming from China. There's going to be more stuff coming to the ports. So we'll have stuff for the holidays and for back to school and whatnot. Well, let's talk about that. How is the consumer doing? Should we be looking forward to the holidays, looking forward to back to school? Are they spending? I listened to Target today. I felt like they weren't spending. I listened to Walmart. Seemed like they were spending. We are seeing a little bit decline in things like

you know, plastics and paper pulpboard boxes. A little bit. A little bit. But, you know, those industries are going through restructuring, too, on the paper side. So some of that's coming from that. But I'm telling you, I think it can come back if we can get some of this behind us and start focusing again on running the economy.

Well, I know that it is going to be very difficult, but I think you're right with Trough. I do want to talk about why you're here, because it's a good cause. I want everyone to know it. Just tell me. Yeah. So we're going to be, you know, tomorrow morning with Blue Star Family. Secretary of the Navy are going to be celebrating Fleet Week.

And importantly, almost one in five of our employees, we have 23,000 employees, one in five have served in some capacity. Railroading attracts veterans. Outdoor sport, capital equipment, seven days a week, process discipline, a lot of the things that our service members bring to the workplace, we're proud of that. And we're going to be celebrating Fleet Week with Blue Star families and the support we give the military families. If I were a vet and I heard you say this,

And I said, you know what? I like that guy. I like that company. I want to apply. What are the chances that person could get a job? It would be very good, especially if you're on the conductor side of things where we're doing most of our hiring. So you are doing some hiring. We are doing hiring. There are certain spots in the country. It takes about six months to train, but great career, six-figure income, pensions, lots of good benefits. But most importantly, veterans make good railroads. As a matter of fact, I sent a hat.

personally, to every veteran on our network that says veterans make the best railroaders, to each one of them in a thank you letter, that's how much we care. Veterans make the best railroaders. You heard it from a man who knows the railroad show, Hendrix, president and CEO of CSX. Thank you for coming on, Jim. It's always great to see you. Always great to see you, Jim. Mad Money's back in a minute.

Coming up, with one of the biggest boardroom battles of the year just coming to a close, the CEO of Phillips 66 joins Kramer to discuss shareholder activism, oil prices, and more. Next.

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Sometimes you get a compromise and maybe no one's happy. Take the proxy fight that just played out between Elliott Management, a very smart activist firm, and Phillips 66, the integrated downstream energy company with a number of businesses in refining midstream pipelines, chemicals. The result here was basically a split decision. Four board seats were up for grabs at the annual meeting. Shareholders gave two of them to management's nominees and two of them to Elliott's nominees.

Both sides spin this kind of as a victory. Stock got hammered today, but so did many others. Some people think it's because neither constituency got everything at once. Elliott's pushing for Phillips 66 to break itself up in order to unlock value. Matchman thinks they've got a nice business model going right now. I'm betting maybe this fight isn't over. So let's take a closer look with Mark Glaser. He's the chairman and CEO of Phillips 66. Learn more about the results of the proxy contest, and what comes next. Mr. Glaser, welcome to Mad Money.

Glad to be here, Jim. Thanks for the invitation. Okay, so Mark, I know you. I know some members of your board, all rational people. And I'm willing to bet that this might work out okay, that not everybody's going to come in entrenched and figure out what to do, and that you might be able to coexist. Am I being too optimistic?

I think you're hitting it on just about right, Jim. I think this is a great outcome for shareholders. Both sides fought a hard fight. And I think that there are certainly differences of opinion, but we're all committed to creating the most shareholder value you can with Phillips 66. Now, what do you think is the most value? I want to have your case and then maybe I just trace out a little bit what Elliot wants, because they're in a very tough sector right now. And it's not like you're able to just kind of fight.

quite too much of the trend. So maybe you can just guide me along. Sure. With our strategy, we focused on our core area in the mid-continent of the U.S. That's where the most of the hydrocarbons are that we can process. That's where our refining system delivers more value per barrel than our competitors. And we can lean into our integrated value. And that's really the proposition that we have. We can create competitive advantage with those assets

and the integration of those assets and deliver outsized value. But we've got more work to do. We've got to get our refining assets into the world-class shape that they need to be in. That's a several-year process. We're two and a half, three years into a several-year process, but we're going to continue to focus on being more efficient and being better at what we do. Over the last three quarters, we've seen our

product yields increase to record levels in consecutive quarters while we're pushing more crude through those facilities. And so it's happening real time. Our costs are coming down and we're building out this midstream business that's deeply integrated with those assets as well that deliver very stable earnings over time. So we've got this great combination of stable midstream earnings with the more volatile refining and chemicals earnings that can

and put us in a position to deliver strong value to shareholders across the cycles. And we're committed to a strong, growing competitive dividend, and we're able to increase that dividend year after year after year. So a lot of our investors really place high value on our ability to deliver that dividend. So that combination makes us unique.

and gives us a great value proposition for sure. We see, Mark, that even if you wanted to eventually break it up, and I know that's not your game plan, you do want to get refining to be as good as possible. You do want midstream to be as good as possible. You do want chemicals to be as good as possible. So there seems to be common ground there almost immediately.

Absolutely. We've got to get the most out of our assets every day, Jim. We've got employees and a culture that every time somebody gets out of bed to come and work in the morning, they're looking at ways to be more efficient. They're looking at ways to create more value, to leverage technologies, AI, whatever it may be. We want to bring the best that we can get our hands on to increase the throughput in our refineries, to be more efficient, to

create more value around those assets and to leverage the integration we have. And we believe every investment we've made around this mid-continent asset base that we have has created more competitive advantage, and there's more to come. And we've also sold $5 billion worth of assets that not are in that core area. And so we have been reshaping the portfolio very actively over the last three years, getting good value for assets that really don't contribute to our core strategy. Now, I don't want to look back. I like to look forward. But I do know that

Elliott had a history of not having to actually go to a vote. What in your mind happened here that it got pretty more contentious than I think many people thought it would be?

Well, on our side, I can only comment on our thinking. We were open to an off-ramp from the proxy battle every step of the way. We've made that clear. And you'd have to ask Elliott what their view on that was. But I think that the fact is, this is the first proxy battle, I understand, for a U.S. company that they've taken all the way to a vote.

And and our our position was to fight and defend the company and to engage with shareholders to make sure we had a clear understanding of what shareholders were looking throughout this. And I think that it's been it's been a tough process. It's been a good process. And I think that we're ready to move forward and create the most value we can for our shareholders. So let's talk about the environment. Mark, this has become very a very difficult environment for everybody. Yeah.

I am not sure whether you think that the presidential policies have impacted any of your businesses. I know chemicals in many places are down. It depends on the kind and the grade. I know that oil is down, but that's not necessarily bad for you, correct?

Well, that's right. We're a margin business. We have to go out and earn our margin above and beyond the price of crude. And the thing that has been in play recently is a lot of volatility and uncertainty. And what we really want to see is just some stability and some certainty. And I think as things resolve with China and we settle into a more normal pattern that establishes fairer trade around the planet,

uh... that that's ability will help contribute to more consistent results because we have to go out fight for margin every day capture whatever margin is out there uh... and volatility can make that a difficult job right when this question

As a business person, do you ever have to be concerned about the so-called reckoning that we're having with the bond market where it looks like that finally people are beginning to realize that the country has too much debt? Or is that just an abstract issue? And your job is to drive shareholder value every day no matter what.

Our job is, Jim, to drive shareholder value day every day, no matter what. I think the bond markets, what that can do is that can increase everybody's cost of capital. So it gets more difficult to make investments. It gets more difficult to do that everyday mission, deliver on that everyday mission of increasing value to shareholders. But everybody's in the same boat. Everybody's cost of capital will go up if the bond markets get tighter.

Well, look, I want to wish you guys the best of luck. I think everybody, all I want is for everybody to get, it sounds silly at my age to get along because that's what's best for shareholders. I'm betting it will happen. Mark, Mark Glaser, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's great to see you. Thanks so much, Jim. Take care. Absolutely. Thank you too. That's Mark Glaser. He's the chairman and CEO of Phillips 66 Bruising Proxy Fight. Now let's go forward. Man, money's back in for the first time.

Still to come, Snowflake's quarterly results just crossing the tape. Don't miss Kramer's post-earnings exclusive with the tech company's top brass. Next.

Look at the stock of Snowflake Go. After the close, the cloud-based data management analytics platform reported a terrific quarter. Stocks roaring after hours. This is the third straight quarter in which Snowflake turned in strong results, even as the stock's been unable to hold on to its post-quarter gains thanks to broader market volatility. Nothing they're doing. They're doing it right.

This time, the company delivered a stellar top and bottom line beat, terrific guidance for its current quarter, full year sales forecast. So we are hoping we can see a more sustained move higher for Snowshares. So how'd that come about? What'd they do? Let's dig deeper with Sridhar Ramaswamy. He's the CEO of Snowflake. Mr. Ramaswamy, welcome back to Mad Money.

Jim, so happy to be here. Well, first of all, a hearty congratulations. I joined the analysts who congratulated on the call because it is a monster quarter. How were you able to do such a strong quarter and start your conference call by saying no deceleration, which is what we really wanted to hear? Thank you, Jim. We had our first billion dollar quarter. That was an amazing monster. I'm really proud of the team.

What I'm really happy about is Snowflake is right at the center of today's AI revolution. We have over 5,200 customers that are using our AI products weekly. Amazing brand names, people like Kraft Heinz, Samsung Ads, Siemens, and so many more. But what is really cool about Snowflake is our core business and analytics is strong while new products are taking off.

And we're able to do this by practicing what we preach, by being more efficient with AI. That's why we were able to deliver operating margins of 9% up from 4% last year. All of this gives us confidence. That's why we raised our guidance for the year. Well, in anticipation of our interview, I checked in with Carlos Abrams Rivera, who is the CEO of Kraft Heinz. He said, excellent relationship, excellent partner. Why does he give you those superlatives? What are you doing for them?

Because we start with what matters to the customer first. And when it comes to things like AI, we make it easy for them. My standard offer to any customer that I talk to is spend half a day with our technical team. We'll give you a dozen prototypes on your data. It'll cost you next to nothing so you can feel what this can do.

too many people sort of mystify ai they don't understand what it can actually do we tell them we'll build a bunch of prototypes have fun and then you can figure out how do we create value from there it's that mentality that makes kraft heinz say aha we're going to we're going to implement our internal ai chatbot on top of snowflake because we have done all this work with them

Now, that also is probably if we are in a choppier moment, that is a model that I would embrace more than a long term lease or owning. I'd rather just go with you and then expand the lease if it works out. That's correct. That's where the consumption model is very strong. You pay for what you need. And with AI, for example, there's no pre-commit. You don't have to sign up to spend a lot of money.

Every project that we do needs to deliver value for the customer. That's how we can stay disciplined and grow responsibly. Now, you use the term cohesion, product cohesion. You're obsessed with it. What does it mean for your company? It means that things work as expected.

If you create a chatbot by piecing together things, as soon as you finish doing it, you're going to realize, wait, I don't know who is supposed to access what from this chatbot. Maybe there's confidential information that not everybody is supposed to access. By cohesion, we mean that if you build a chatbot on top of Snowflake, it's going to obey all of the governance rules that your data people have set up.

This means that when you want to extract data into Snowflake using one of our connectors, it shows up seamlessly. It's really making all of these parts that need to work together effectively actually work. Otherwise, you're doing the stitching. It takes a lot of time and keeps producing surprises. There are no surprises at Snowflake. Speaking of working together, I keep seeing companies that I think they're your competitors. It turns out they're your partners. I thought that Microsoft was a competitor. They're your

your partner. You just announced a very big partnership with them. That's right. That's right. The hyperscalers.

We work very well with them. Obviously, AWS is a big partner, our biggest partner as it were, but we have a great relationship with Microsoft. We have a wonderful relationship with the Fabric team where Snowflake can read data that is stored in one link. Similarly, we are working with them to have them be the data layer for Snowflake. And again, Cortex Agents, which are the agentic platform components, can be part of Office Co-Pilot. There are many customers in which Azure plus

Snowflake is better for the customer, just like in some cases, AWS plus Snowflake is going to be better for the customer. That must be a testament to some degree to your ability to be able to make friends, frankly, to have good partners, because theoretically, you shouldn't be that close. It's all about value creation. The more you work with people,

the more you tell them we have a brighter future together, the more likely they are to want to work with you. Well, that's obviously working because you have an incredible 124% net revenue retention rate. That may be the highest I've seen.

It's very solid. We continue to aspire to do more. We are very happy with where that is. But with things like AI, with things like data engineering, where you're seeing spend go up, I think we can get even higher. You did not see a break in action at all after Liberation Day? No slowdown whatsoever during the month of April? A lot of Snowflake customers use us for critical functions.

Closing the books. Anti-money laundering. Regulatory reporting. You don't get to shut these off. I guess you can't really stop anti-money. You can't just stop doing that. You cannot stop doing things like that. We are very responsible with how we spend our customer money. I think that is showing up in the continued strength of consumption and of bookings, which went up 34%. And

Everyone told me the big banks don't want to go in the cloud. J.P. Morgan's a huge customer. J.P. Morgan's a huge customer. We also talked about how we signed two monster nine-figure deals last quarter. So that is, again, positive. And it's a testament to how people are betting their data future on Snowflake. Now, one last one. When you have a global company like AstraZeneca, they're trying to analyze data to prove drugs. They go to you for that?

Absolutely. They come to us because we can help them deal with unstructured data. If they have research reports and want to analyze it, they come to Snowflake. If they have structured data about how is some medication doing, they come to Snowflake. And with things like Snowflake intelligence, you can now put these things together, begin to think higher level things like what's the workflow that I can automate?

How do I make an analyst be way more efficient? Those are all the things that make us such a key player for enterprise AI. I'm going to leave it right there because that's just an incredibly great message. That's Sridhar Ramaswamy, Snowflake CEO. Look, I know everybody's really grim. You went home today. You said nothing's working. Take a look at Snowflake. May I have money back here for the break? Coming up, Kramer takes your calls and the sky's the limit. It's a fast fire lightning round. Next.

It is time. It's time for the Lightning Round. And then the Lightning Round is over. Are you ready? Let's get that. Timmy Chail, what's happening? You tell me, Sam. I'm all yours.

All right, I got a stock that's fallen out of favor recently over some bad news. I wanted to get your opinion on if the current price is a good entry point for Marvell. I think Marvell is right to be brought here. I think Matt Murphy did a fantastic job. There was one little glitch involving one customer, and it wasn't life or death. This level at $60 is a... All right, now we're going to Cale in Arizona. Cale.

Jim, I'm Cale. I'm 21 years old from Arizona. I've been watching with my dad before I could walk. Quick question for you. Is Lucid Motors a long-term play? What do you think? Or are we just in an EV bubble? You're 21. You're 21. Let's put our money with something that is going to make a little more sense than Lucid. I think that if you wanted to be in that area, if you wanted to be in that kind of progressive area, you might go with Rivian, okay? I think Rivian is better than Lucid.

Bingo. Now we're going to go to Matt, who is in Florida. Matt. Hey, Jim. How you doing? Matt, I am doing excellently. How about you? Thank you for asking. I'm the same. Life is good. Thank you. I like that. I like that positive attitude. You got it, man. I've been listening to you for a while now. And as you've said many times, I'm in this for the long haul. I recently bought into a stock that has a lot of hype around it. And now I'm up in the green.

They reported strong earnings yesterday. And I want to know if this is something I should hold this stock for the long haul or dump it and run while I can. And this stock, Jim, is Pony AI. It had great revenues. I mean, I would have told you, let's swap out of that and go into Tesla. But you know what? You can ride it. How old are you? You know what I'm asking?

Oh, he's done. This is a young person's stock. An older person's stock will want Tesla, OK? Because it's not clear to me that this company is sustainable. But that's a nice call by that gentleman. Let's go to Hayden in Maryland. Hayden. Hey, Jim. How are you doing? I am doing really spectacular at this very moment. How about you?

Pretty good. Pretty good. First, I want to give a shout out to Mr. Mark's business class. And I'm wondering what you think of Pan American Silver Corporation. Well, first, I want to give the same shout out because that business class is Dino Mike. I happen to like silver very much. And from the old days, I remember from Bill Flexing, Pan American Silver is the best silver mine. So I think you've got something going there. I'm with you and that business class. Let's go to Mike in Illinois. Mike, Mike, Mike.

Hey, Jim. I'm accumulating position in a cloud-based platform for medical professionals and physicians with tools across 50 states. Reported earnings last week, $570 million for the year. Subscription revenues, $543 million, up 21%. And I proceeded to tank

after earnings on weak guidance. What's your opinion on Doximity, DOTS? Mike, that was a bad miss. That was a bad miss. And that's a high-growth company that had just been building up ahead of steam. And I cannot recommend that company because that was an unfathomable miss, frankly. And I feel very badly about saying that. But I was quite surprised. I cannot get behind that. I want to go to Ian in Florida. Ian. Booyah, Jim. How you doing? Ian, best day ever. How about you?

Not bad. Not bad. Well, I always feel good. I will say I always feel good after my conference call from the club because the club is very important to me. So there's 12 best days every year. So go ahead. I'm sorry. That's true. I'm actually part of the club. So thank you, Jim. I appreciate what you do. Thank you.

Mine's going to work.

for the most part, but I wanted to, it's getting a bit toppy, I think. I'm not sure. What do you think about sticking with Micron here? I think it is getting a little toppy. I think the market's getting a little toppy and Micron's going to go with it. Now, it went down to 66. I think it could go down to 80 without a problem. And then you'll probably want to buy it again. But I sense that there is a trade here, not an investment for the moment, and you need to do a little...

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of the Lightning Round. The Lightning Round is sponsored by Charles Schwab. Coming up, is Tesla's CEO back in the driver's seat? Kramer's giving you his biggest takeaways from Elon Musk's CNBC exclusive. Next. Next.

Sometimes you marvel at an interview. Just sit there and marvel, even if you don't necessarily like the person being interviewed. I found myself marveling at Elon Musk after my colleague David Faber sat down with him because for a moment I recalled the Musk whom I adored, the guy who thought bigger than anyone and wasn't afraid to tell you that. This was Musk in businessman mode, very different from Musk in political operative mode.

There were many takeaways from the Musk interview. It was a fabulous interview. But the one that got me most was his unabashed belief that we're all going to be riding around in cars with no drivers. It's not just going to be in Austin, where unassisted self-driving Teslas are about to take over the place. I sense that perhaps because of his time as president, there may be something bigger in the world.

I would not be surprised if the president pushes hard to allow the interstates, which I'm sure he'll say he controls, to allow driverless cars. And he'll order it as soon as Elon's ready. Why not? We know that these self-driving Teslas are safer than cars driven by humans. The technology is about as good as it gets. Musk has convinced me that. I'll take a driverless car over a drowsy or drunk driver any day of the week.

Even better, we know that once the interstate goes driverless, you got those on and off ramps going to the regular grid. It'll be a states right issue, I know. But I see the red states buckling under to agree with the president because he runs the Republican Party. And I bet he can rule many of the blue states, too. Enough of the city by city nonsense. It's got to be the whole enchilada. After listening to Musk and putently adding three years to everything he predicts, I can see this happening by 2028. More importantly, I like that we got the old Elon Musk back.

He's adamant that Tesla's cars are superior to everything else on the market and will sell well. Somehow, when he says it at the factory, it seems a lot more plausible, doesn't it? A lot more plausible than when he's in a cabinet meeting with a red hat acting as the president's hype man. He's just more serious when he's in business mode. And I think that whoever hates him from his time in Washington will quickly forget Musk, the politician. It's almost as much the businessman keeps delivering.

I guess I can say happily that I like the Musk who sends up rockets and tries to cure impossible to treat illnesses, sets up giant data centers, has systems that give you clear signals, streaming programs for a fraction of the price of telcos or cable providers. I like the Musk who just knows how to accomplish what he sets out to do, which is no slight on Doge, except he left well before the job was done. Maybe because the job's impossible without Congress passing some actual legislation.

Musk cockiness just didn't do it for me in Washington. The man behind the president, the chair of the robe spear of Spanning Cuts just didn't resonate. But the original Musk, the modern day Da Vinci, the man with an ego the size of Jupiter, the one who just talked with David Faber, that guy, I kind of like him. I like to say there's always a bull market somewhere. I promise you, if I just for your money, I'm Jim Cramer. I'll see you tomorrow.

All opinions expressed by Jim Cramer on this podcast are solely Cramer's opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, NBCUniversal, or their parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by Cramer on television, radio, internet, or another medium.

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