Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 12/31/24
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On Mad Money tonight, Kramer will venture anywhere. A gigantic Chevron floating production unit smack in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Welcome to Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco. I'm coming to you from Chief's Kingdom. To speak to executives and leaders across Wall Street and beyond. From retail...

to healthcare, to technology, and more to bring investors the stories that matter to this market. Mad Money looks back at some of its biggest conversations of the year that brought home gamers insight into the headlines, trends, and state of the economy in 2024, starting now. Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to a special year-end wrap-up edition of Mad Money. As we head into what will be our 20th year of Mad Money...

We wanted to take a look back at 2024 and reminisce on some of the amazing places we got to visit and people we got to speak to. We're traversing so many states and stock stories this year from cruise ships to oil rigs, football stadiums, the theaters, and even some fantastic moments right here at the Stock Exchange. We can't possibly pick a

favorite moment. Although getting a robot to make me drink at the NVIDIA conference might be up there. So tonight we're bringing you a selection of some of the standouts of the year, starting with a trip we took way down south to Chevron's new offshore oil platform, Anchor, where we got to interview CEO Mike Wirth, 140 miles off the Gulf of Mexico. Take a look.

Mike, we are on anchor. To me, it seems like an engineering marvel, a technological marvel. How do you get it done? Well, it takes time. We started 20 years ago when we first acquired Elyse out here 140 miles offshore. Ten years ago, we made a discovery with a well from a drill ship. Five years ago, we had enough engineering done to make a final investment decision. Five years later and over $5 billion of investment

Here we are. So it takes time. It also takes every engineering discipline you can imagine. Marine engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, petroleum engineering, chemical engineering, coming together with the world's greatest suppliers to integrate these systems. It's like a small city out here. We've got to be self-sufficient. It'll be here for decades. And I'm really, really glad to host you. Okay. I've been on platforms before. I don't smell any oil.

It seems self-contained. It seems low carbon. How is that possible? Well, our goal is to keep everything inside the pipe. In the old days, when you could smell things, it was because there were vapors getting out of the pipe. That's not acceptable today. It's not acceptable for our company. And so you've got to keep things inside the pipe. It's clean as can be.

It's some of the lowest carbon intensity production in the world. The average carbon intensity for oil production is around 60 kilograms per barrel of oil, or 60 tons per barrel of oil. This is about fine. So it's low carbon intensity. There are no emissions. Nothing goes overboard into the water other than very clean water, and that's the way we operate. All right, so tell me something. I got some of your crude right here. I buy a gallon of milk in...

New York City, it's $5. Paying $3 at the pump. All you gotta do is milk the cow, put it in a cart, and, oh, heat up the milk. And you got it. And they charge $5. How are you able to...

What does it take to get it there in my pump? And how can you recharge three? Well, it's a global market for crude oil. And we've got to be efficient with our capital investment. We've got to be efficient with our operations. And frankly, the industry has got a history of finding a way to do things better and better

which continues to drive the cost down, which allows us to compete in the marketplace. And prices, really, if you look at them over a long sweep of time and you adjust for inflation, they really haven't gone up very much. And so it's all about continual improvement and efficiency in an industry that is a highly competitive industry. All right. So tell me about this facility in particular, what costs more than $5 billion. It's got many levels. Where's the oil

from here? Well, the oil is coming from a few miles that way. It's going to come from a few miles that way. This is a big field. It's a field that's several square miles. We put a facility here. We have different drill centers on the seafloor a mile beneath the surface of the ocean. And then we'll drill wells that reach out laterally from there another mile, two miles. It all gathers along pipelines on the seafloor. And then we bring it up here.

The ship that drills these wells, first of a kind, we worked with Transocean to work at 20,000 pounds per square inch, which is the reservoir pressure. How much pressure is that? Give me, like, how many pianos on a table, how many caterpillar trucks on a table? So imagine a full-grown male African elephant standing on a quarter. That's what the pressure is down in this reservoir.

We've got to drop the drill pipe and pull a drill pipe in and out of the hole 35,000 feet down. That's taller than Everest. That's taller than Everest. It's about the cruising height for a commercial jetliner.

Three million pounds is the hook load on the crane, which is essentially equivalent to that crane on a ship out there lifting three fully loaded 747 airplanes. All right. So how can it be worth it? How many net barrels do you think are in this? How do you justify spending that money, especially when I know that we like Chevron for the dividend? Well, we've got several hundred million barrels that we expect to produce out of this field.

over 30 years. So we take a long view on recovering our investment, which is a large investment. It's got to generate a return and got to generate positive cash flow because the dividend matters to our shareholders. And we've got a strong track record on that dividend. Now, just on the stock in general, I find it's been held back because you're doing something with Hess. That's under arbitration. We can't

tell me that's going to be resolved. But it has hurt the valuation of the stock, even though I think if you get it, stock should go higher. And if you don't, you can do conventional because your conventional is strong. Well, look, our portfolio was very strong before we did the transaction with Hess. We had a great growth trajectory. Over the next several years, we're going to grow free cash flow at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate, which is what supports

The dividend our dividend yields over four four percent, which is three times the S&P. We've grown our dividend for 37 consecutive years the last years that at a six percent last decade at a six percent

compound annual growth rate. So we're returning cash to shareholders over the last two years, dividend and share repurchase, more than $50 billion back to our shareholders. Okay. You know, I appreciate that. Our viewers appreciate that. Mike, there are people, look, Baconda was bad, and we all know it. It's a long time ago now. But what do you say to people who say, you know what, you can't really mitigate the damage here. There's nothing they can ever do. Offshore is just too dangerous.

Well, look, the Macondo incident was a horrible incident. And I think everybody in the industry recognizes that and has learned from that. So we operate at a much higher level of safety even than we did back then. Thank goodness our company's not experienced

an event like that, but it could happen to anyone if we're not as diligent as we could be. So we pool resources to be prepared to respond to an event, but we've also raised the bar on the standards for our drilling operations out here in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico. And at the first hint of a problem, you shut down and you go to a safe state. - All right, now, on this platform,

It seems like I see many, many people. How many did it take to build? And how many people are here, live here, sleep here, go to the gym here? Well, it took thousands of people to build this. It was built in more than a dozen countries around the world. And the pieces then come together. The equipment comes from suppliers.

around the world. The hull that we're floating on was done in a shipyard in Korea. The topsides were done in Corpus Christi, Texas. It's all integrated and then brought out here and anchored up. And so thousands and thousands of people over many years. Once we've got it installed, it's run with a pretty efficient crew. We've got maybe 100 people on board at any time. They work 14 days on, 14 days off.

Typically, when they're on here, it's 12-hour shifts, 12 hours on, 12 off. We're 24/7 back to back. So it's a relatively lean crew that runs it, but it's like a small city. -All right, so a lot of people, we had two hurricanes. People were worried about hurricanes. What can you tell people about this under the extreme conditions that could happen?

Well, certainly when there's a hurricane, we evacuate our facilities if there's any risk that it could be hit. We shut in the production. We take everything to a very safe state. The facility is designed for a thousand-year storm. We've got 80 to 100 feet of freeboard between the surface of the water and the first deck on the platform, so we can take waves that are much higher than you see, and even the Category 5 hurricane that just washed right underneath here. So it's designed

to withstand more than the biggest storm that you would see here in the Gulf of Mexico, but we get everybody off and take it to a safe state when there's a storm in the region. That will do it. Mike Worth, Chairman and CEO of Chevron. Thank you so much, Mike. Thank you, Jeff.

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Welcome back to this Mad Money end of year special. Next up, we're taking you back to an interview that I love doing. Take a look. Larry, this was perhaps the most important of your letters, and I read every one of them. And that's because, frankly, you are laying it out. There is a generation of people that will never, ever catch up unless they read this and understand, understand that as a nation, we just don't help them.

Look, I think I write about fear and hope. I think one of the major components of fear is for so many people about how can they have financial independence? But more importantly, for so many, how can you live your later years with dignity and decency? And we don't talk about the whole crisis of retirement. And this is not just a U.S. phenomenon. This is a phenomenon

worldwide now. Last year I traveled to 17 different countries and I've never had more

broad conversations about the need to think about retirement, whether it's in a middle-class developing country or it's a very advanced developed country. They're rethinking about how should we be thinking about retirement. In the coming years, we're going to be doubling the number of people over 65 years old, and we're not preparing society for that. And one of the big things for me, Jim, was

There's not a day that doesn't go by when we don't talk about the miracles of drug discovery, especially when we talk about the weight loss drugs and the power of what they're doing, the miracles of what they're doing in terms of helping kidney disease and joint diseases and heart diseases and diabetes.

There's new miracles coming on related to dementia and the slowing down the pathway for dementia. We're extending life. These are miracles. These are blessings. But these are people, younger people, they don't know how to invest. They are scared to invest. They are intimidated. They don't feel they have a penny to live on. And worst of all, they do have no hope. And they tell you when you confront them that that's the realistic position, no hope. Because our generation had reason to be hopeful, and they don't.

Well, I don't think also the younger generation knows where and who to listen to. Let's, you know, more of them are listening to some form of social media. They're not reading anything long form anymore. We were blessed that we had actually long form media where we really learned about issues and more fundamental issues.

But even back 30, 40 years ago, we didn't talk about retirement. We never talked about things like retirement before. But now we must. We have no choice. You know they feel that they can't afford to retire. They will work. This is this young kid. They will work till they die because they have no money. They have huge college tuition. Yes. And no one tells them how to put money away. And they would tell you what money. Inflation has destroyed me. Right.

I'm 23 and inflation has already had the best of me.

Well, when you and I were young, we actually had worse inflation than the young people did, too. And we were able to find it out. We had just we had much larger inflation. So, look, we're going to get by this, but we need to be thoughtful about how do we build that that process. And look, I am bullish on the on these young people. They are smarter than we were at our age. They have more global understanding of the world.

They're going to be put to work and have funny, wonderful opportunities if they put their mind to it, if they have the energy behind that. But how do we do it? See, it is up to you and I. I mean, actually, it really may be up to you and I. I mean, they feel disconnected. They don't want to put themselves in our shoes because they think our shoes are too big and it's ridiculous. They have no bootstraps. They lost their trust in the country.

I think the lack of trust in our country is one of the huge issues of today because they don't know where and who to listen to. And I really do believe we as leaders, you in your role, my role, we have a larger responsibility of speaking the truth

with facts, with consistency. And I think this is what my letter is doing, talking about some of the big issues that we're afraid to talk about. You know, I'm an optimist. We always talk about how I'm an optimist. Yes, you and I are both optimists. I'm an optimist because we talk about many of the problems. You read a front page every day and it's full of, you know, problems. Right.

However, what people don't realize is if we talk about these problems, we generally mitigate them. In fact, most times the problems never get as severe as they are. What I worry about is when we never talk about these problems and the problems get worse. And to me, that's why I wanted to focus on retirement because this is something that we don't talk about.

We put it under the table because it's not today's problems. It's not about the moment. It's about the building a nest egg for retirement takes 30, 40 years. And so I understand a lot of young people don't even have the money to live a proper life. But there are many who are going to work to get fine organizations, fine companies and

And we all have that responsibility to help them down that pathway. Well, one of the reasons that I really love this letter is it's filled with optimism. You genuinely believe if we can grow out of our problem, which people don't think we can, and you actually provide a solution. We have millions of jobs that could be created, literally millions in our country, by being pragmatic about energy. I thought it was terrific. Right. Well, this is a phrase that I've heard across the world.

that we have to be decarbonizing at the same time and we have to continue to be making sure that we have energy at an affordable level. And so we need to have the hydrocarbons today. And so this energy pragmatism that I heard worldwide, even countries that

But the one thing that I'm hearing from so many countries, they're aggressively decarbonizing as fast as they can. But at the same time, if they're growing at 8%, like in India, they're still using coal and they must use coal because they don't want to be dependent on OPEC to buy more and more and more. They're growing their economy. They're growing their economy with more and more investments in energy, with decarbonization.

That's the future. This is what we're talking about. I'm talking about infrastructure. We need to do more public private. We need more private capital to be put into work. And so then government can be spending more money on other issues. Now, there is a belief that with no costs coming down, with food being so expensive, with college tuition, leaving a lot of debt, that it's almost foolish to try to save. This is their view. Because how are they supposed to pay rent if they're saving?

Look, life is full of trade-offs. I mean, we all have trade-offs. And if you don't have enough for your rent, obviously you're not going to save for retirement.

But there are many people who are renting and having a role at a job that are ultimately through their work, they're able to build some form of nest egg. And the key is putting that money to work. It's not keeping money in a bank account. It's about the compounding of a return and building a retirement over a long horizon. But how do we make it so that retirement investing is more automatic in this country? Good question.

Well, we need to have 57 million Americans do not even have retirement. That's what you're talking about. They're going to work till they die, Larry. Unfortunately, they have no choice. But here's the blessing. I just said we're all going to live longer. That's a massive blessing. We don't have most people in this country that do not have backbreaking jobs like we had 50, 100, 200 years ago. What is wrong about working longer? OK, we have to change your psyche.

First of all, every human being needs a purpose. And most people find purpose in their job, in their family. And it's a balancing act. Everything is a balancing act. And look, I do really believe that investing allows people that platform, that background to grow. I want to thank Larry Fink, who's the chairman and CEO of BlackRock. Larry, your best one. Thank you.

Coming up, an impromptu interview led to a historic moment on the floor of the exchange. Kramer's conversation with the president-elect next. Pandora makes it easy for you to find your favorite music. Discover new artists and genres by selecting any song or album and we'll make you a personalized station for free. Download on the Apple App Store or Google Play and enjoy the soundtrack to your life.

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Welcome back to this year in review edition of Mad Money.

What do you have to say to the American investor in this country? Well, I think you're going to see some very good days ahead. A lot of incentives are going to be given. You saw yesterday a billion-dollar investment that we give you very fast approvals. Nobody's come up with that one yet, although it seems pretty simple. I think you're going to have some great days ahead. We have to conclude a couple of bad wars that are going on. A lot of bad things are going on.

We'll get them done. Do you think that we are in a situation where business will be far more embraced under you than currently? Well, I don't want to really knock current, but I will tell you more than at any time, anywhere in the history of our country. Now, we used to speak together about the idea that the averages mattered and were a good barometer of your performance. Is that still the case? Can we go beyond Dow Jones, maybe to NASDAQ?

Well, I think I've always said, you know, to me, stock market is very all of it, you know, all of it together. It's very important. It's an honor to be here at New York Stock Exchange. I sort of joked that I actually bought the building across the street because the stock exchange was here. It's a big deal. Forty. It's a nice building. Forty Wall Street. So, yeah.

Look, we're going to do things I think that haven't been really done before. We're going to be cutting taxes still further. You know, we got it down to 21%. We're going to bring it down even below that. You pay 21 if you don't build here and meaning your product or whatever it is you're building. And if you do, we're going to try getting it down to 15%. But you have to build your product, make your product better.

in the USA. And how about every working person who's watching? We'd love to be able to see dividend tax maybe much lower, capital gains much lower. Well, we're going to be talking about that, and we're really talking about lowering taxes. Last time, as you know, we took it probably from...

close to 44-45 percent down to 21 everyone said that was impossible now it was always my I really wanted to get it down to 15 and will be able to do that and if you remember we had the best three years in the history of our country from the standpoint of the economy and you've been so professional and so good

I haven't seen you so much since I've been a politician. Well, thank you, sir. We were together. I was grateful to be a judge on The Apprentice. We had a great time. That's right. You were a judge. He was a tough judge. He was a tough judge. Well, we had to eliminate some people who didn't cut the mustard. You made me a hatchet, man. I respect that. Yeah, well, we're going to be doing the same thing, I can tell you. Unfortunately, there's too many of them.

But I think we're going to really incentivize the country to go back and work, and they will be incentivized. They're going to do well. People are going to be very happy. J.D. is very much involved, and I have a great partner right over here with our First Lady. People love our First Lady, and we're going to do something very special. We have some great people up there. You saw some of the people on the Cabinet.

and we have some of the most successful people in the country, and we're dealing with the most successful people, and those are the people that put others to work, and we're going to be hitting job numbers. And as you probably heard me say, we picked up, since just the election, $3 trillion in, you call it worth or value, but $3 trillion was picked up since November 5th, so that's pretty good. When President Reagan was here, he talked about

putting the bear into hibernation, letting the bull run free. Sound like a good motto? Sounds perfect. I can't do any better than that. That's what we're going to do. All right. Now, I do want to, I know we've got some other people here, but I don't see Elon Musk. I was hoping because he's been a good, let's say a good aid to you on a lot of different things, whether it be crypto or whether it be GOP-1 drugs. I mean, there's a lot of different ideas. Well, he's got a lot of ideas. He's a great guy. He's a really good guy, too.

And I guess his stock has done pretty well. He's been everybody's stock has done well since the election and even before. And Scott Besson's done a fantastic job. And one of the things I liked about Scott is that he said long before I even know who he was that the market's only doing well. This is before the election. It's only doing well because they think Trump is going to win.

So we made Scott the Treasury Secretary, which everybody, frankly, wanted. And he's going to do a fantastic job. Meantime, how about a crypto? Really, we do need, I think, to some... You're embracing crypto. Very different from the previous administration. Strategic petroleum reserve-like for crypto?

Yeah, I think so. We're going to do something great with crypto because we don't want China or anybody else, not just China, but others are embracing it and we want to be the head. We're going to be ahead of AI. We're going to be way ahead of AI. And we've got to produce tremendous amounts of electricity. You know that it's unbelievable when you think that we need more than twice what we already have. If you think that's pretty for a specific industry, but we'll be able to do it. We have Lee Zeldin in charge of the environment. He's going to

be giving us very strong approvals, I think. And he's going to make sure everything's good and clean and proper, but he's going to give us very fast approvals. Natural gas makes it so that we should be able to afford it and be able to handle the 5% per year grid. But obviously you think that we need to be able to be the king of AI, which means that we also have to, some people would say, protect Taiwan.

because China would like very much to be able to have that technology. Well, we're going to be having a lot of talks with China. We have a good relationship with China. I have a surprising relationship. Now, when the COVID came in, I sort of cut it off. That was a step too far. That was, as they say, a bridge too far.

But we've been talking and discussing with President Xi some things and others, other world leaders, and I think we're going to do very well all around. And we are we've been abused as a country. We've been badly abused from an economic standpoint, I think. And even militarily, you know, we put up all the money, they put up nothing and then they abuse us on on the economy.

And we just can't let that happen. We're not going to be abused anymore. We put America first, but we're also going to help other countries. I know you've got a ton of things to do, but what can you say to the working person who owns stocks? Should they buy more stocks?

Well, I don't want to get into a situation where they do and we have a dip or something, because that can always happen. You know that better than anybody in the world, probably. I think you're the leading authority in going up and going down, but you always end up. He always ends up. That's the good news. But we have, like, Doug Burgum standing right over here. He's done a fantastic job. He's been on your show many times. And we have just tremendous people. I would say this. I think long term, this is going to be a country like no other. We had...

the three best years ever until COVID came in. And then we did a good job getting rid of it, the stock market. If you look at the markets, were higher than just previous to COVID coming in when we handed it over. And now we know. I know the people. I know the players. When I came in, it was very interesting, Jim. I came in.

And I was not a Washington guy. I didn't know too many people in Washington. I had to rely now. I who do I know people? I know people. I know people so much. They're coming out of my ears. So we have great people coming in. Well, Mark Zuckerberg's been over to see me. And I can tell you, Elon is another and Jeff Bezos is coming up next week. And I want to get ideas from them. Look, we want them to do well. We want everybody and we want great jobs.

Fantastic salaries. We want people to love and, you know, when they wake up in the morning, like, get up and I love to go to work. I want to go to work. We want people working and we want them working for a lot of money. All right, Mr. President-elect, thank you so much. Good to talk to you again. Thank you. Thank you. Still to come, Kramer setting sail with Mickey and Moana. A look back at his interview on a Disney cruise ship next.

Welcome back to this Mad Money Year in Review special. Next, let's head back to this interview that really made waves. Josh, I feel like we're the eighth wonder of the world Disney treasure. Tell us about it.

Well, Jim, this is our sixth ship in our fleet. It's incredibly exciting to take this one out on the high seas in late December. She'll be sailing out of Florida. Like all of our ships in our fleet, this is all about story, deep story, deep detail. That's what differentiates these ships from everything around.

Here we are in Agrabah, the story of Aladdin right here in our Grand Hall. But so much to explore on this ship, so much for family, so much for young kids and adults. We've got all Disney characters on this ship. We've got Marvel. We've got Star Wars. We've got Coco. We've even brought some of our properties from our parks onto the ship. So clearly we're excited about it. But that is new, right? The Disney IP that you're using, live show that's never been seen before, these are different for Disney.

Yeah, for the first time on the Disney Treasure, we're actually bringing stories and intellectual property from the parks onto the ship. You and I just had a chance to check out the Haunted Mansion Parlor, which I think people are going to go crazy for. A lot of our theme park guests, those that have visited our theme parks in the past, we know that three quarters of them

They actually want to come and cruise with us, and they will in the next five years. So it's important that we take all of the intellectual property that we have around the company and we put it on full display on these ships. So we're excited about that. Let's talk about that. As someone, my chapter starts as a big position at Disney. This particular part of Disney, I would say, was not accessible, didn't know about it. Tell us about this, where it fits into the mosaic that is Disney.

Yeah, well, we've been in this business now since 1998, where we launched our first two ships. And we came into the space and we essentially created family cruising. The guests that come on our ships today, four in 10 say the only reason that they're cruising is because Disney is here. So that's pretty powerful. We've created a space. We also know that when guests get on any one of our ships, when they step off, they tell us they had an incredible time. Some of the highest ratings that

that we have across the whole company take place here on these ships. So after the first two ships in 1998, we started developing. The Treasure is our sixth ship. Each one of these investments has very healthy returns on it. And it's powerful for the whole company to be able to take the stories that you might see in a theater or in a theme park like we talked about and then put them on full display here. Now, you do have a number of ships coming.

And it shows me that this division is going to be very important in even for earnings per share, because you did have a great return on investment on the first cruise. Yes, absolutely. This is our sixth ship. We've got seven more coming.

So by 2031, we'll have 13 ships in the water. We see a big opportunity here, obviously. Demand is very, very strong for our fleet in fiscal year '24. We had a 98% occupancy rate. We know that the world is looking for more Disney. These are brand ambassadors for us that we can literally take around the world. And so we're very bullish on what this can look like for the segment.

at the same time i was looking at the uh your some of your competitors and i happen to be very pro the industry right through covet too because i thought i just haven't enough people enough ceos to know it's just a really different dynamic but people will never stop cruising has been my view and that was certainly the case but you are able to make uh a

a little bit more than some of the others per cruise. Now, what are you doing to make it so it's more lucrative for shareholders? Yeah, so we're always thinking about value. How are we driving more value for our guests? And that comes really in the form of story, number one. You've seen it on the treasure today. Everything that we do here, there's so much detail and everything is steeped in a story from the Walt Disney Company. That's incredibly powerful. Nobody else has that. On top of that,

If you look at the entertainment, the Moana show, for example, that's on the ship. Thank you for letting us have this preview of that. Absolutely. It's a phenomenal show. The dining and the way that we orchestrate dining with story and unbelievable service. There's really so much to explore on these ships that really differentiate them for the rest of the cruise industry. Now, when I look at the different, we went to all the different bars and restaurants.

You have some areas that are for children and some areas, if people are watching, if their parents are watching, they can also have some alone time while the kids are able to do other things, which is very different from most places that I know that you can take your kids to. Yeah, I'm glad you noticed that. There's literally something for everyone here. The kids will go crazy in the kids clubs.

The parents can have the finest dining that they may have ever experienced before. The shows are Broadway quality. There are spaces for the families to come together and spend time together if that's what they choose to do. So there's a ton of flexibility on these shifts, and that's evidenced by the profile of the guests that we see coming to visit with us. And you know what happens after they leave? They say they're coming back again, and they do. So we're proud of the experiences that we deliver. More of this 2024 Mad Money special next!

Welcome back to this Mad Money 2024 special. Michael, we're at the legendary Paramount, which lay dormant for a long time as a gymnasium. You use this basically as a stake to be able to explain that Live Nation is huge and ready for you. Right. Yes, we're proud of this. This has been dormant for 60 years. It was a gymnasium.

One of the greatest music venues originally, Ella Fitzgerald, all the great jazz performers back in the day. And my mom saw Frank here. Your mom saw Frank. So when we saw this and it was all boarded up with a basketball court, we thought we've got to bring this back to its original roots. It's a good metaphor for what you've done. Entrepreneurially, you have created an organization. It's Ticketmaster. It's the venues that I...

I am astounded at the growth. The quarter was incredible. What do you attribute the incredible surge in demand for tickets? What's it about? You know, today this consumer is a new consumer. You know, when you and I grew up, we listened to, you know, the top 10 and had a very limited music repertoire. Today, that 14-year-old has Spotify in his pocket around the world and knows every musician. So the amount of music available to the consumer today has just plummeted.

propelled this idea that they want to see the live show. Now, you are, I think, almost like a drug company. I look at your pipeline, which tells me where the stock could go next year or ready or way ahead for this year. Yeah, it looks like 25 is going to be probably a record year. We're

We're on sale right now with over 20 million tickets. Looks like a large stadium year next year. So we're excited. It's going to be a big year again. For those who don't know what Live Nation does, could you explain the process and how you've grown over time? Because when I first met you, the dream you had seemed difficult to realize. Right.

You know, we looked at Live, the business had been focused on recorded for so many years. Live was kind of a second thought. I looked at it as a global business. The idea that concerts were local and that we could go around the world and kind of assemble this team now, 48 countries, 100 offices.

and be that great partner for the artist who says, I want to go on tour, who do I call? Live Nation can do it all for you. - I'm glad you mentioned partner for the artist. I was very perplexed by the Justice Department going after your company. I wanted to bring you of Ticketmaster and you have Live Nation, but also really kind of focused on the idea that you have frustrated artists. I checked this before I talk with you. Most of them found this was fanciful. New administration comes in, you guys are on record as saying, hopefully you'll see a return of a more traditional antitrust approach.

Not necessarily not adversarial, but kind of like, let's figure out what to do, guys. Instead, it was really pretty much jackboots.

Yeah, we're hopeful that there's a better someone to sit down with and think about, can we find a solution? We think we've built a great business. As you said, when you talk to artists, we tend to be their best partner. We work for them, low-margin business, and we're proud of what we've been able to do for the artist. Now, one thing that also seemed quizzical about the JustSport position is that there are people who feel that you have caused ticket prices to go up. But in reality, as someone who has bought ticket prices,

tickets. It's not you that is really the delta. It is the scalpers that cause the problem.

Yes, we live this all the time. You know, every Saturday on sale, that artist does the best job of finding what they can charge. They leave a lot of money on the table. That's the reality. The artist is worried about their fans, and we find it absolutely frustrating on those Saturday mornings when there's pages of secondary tickets for thousands of dollars. And fans are pissed off at that. They don't understand the system well enough to know what a scalper does versus the artist. So it is a frustration we have.

Okay, how is Ticketmaster doing? Ticketmaster's, you know, on a global basis, we think it's got an incredible runway ahead of it. It's a very U.S.-focused business for many years. We're now just expanding to Brazil, Latin America, more into Europe. So it's going to have an incredible global runway of expansion. In America, it's going to have a record Q4 because of the push around the concerts and the stadium business. So it's an incredible business and got a great runway.

More of this 2024 Mad Money special next. Welcome back to this Mad Money 2024 special. Next, we're looking back at an interview with a CEO that likes to shake things up. Take a look.

Jonathan, thank you so much for having us. This is a very special Sweetgreen. We're at the Infinite Kitchen. Tell us about where we are. Jim, it's such a pleasure to be here with you. So we're here in New York City in Penn Plaza at the first Infinite Kitchen in New York City. This is our first retrofit that we've completed. So taking an existing Sweetgreen and implementing this new technology. So the Infinite Kitchen is our automated co-pilot solution to help us

make a better experience for our team members, for our customers, and better financials for our company. And so what it does is it assembles every single meal at Sweetgreen. We're able to assemble about 500 bowls per hour. Which is incredible. But, you know, what's important here and you'll be able to see is

At Sweetgreen, we have a huge commitment to the sourcing of the food, the craft of the food, and the hospitality. And so when we designed this experience, it was really intentional around making sure everything starts and ends with human hands. We prep all the food here. We're cooking everything. We're making the dressings. The automation helps us assemble so we can make things fast.

fresh and perfectly portioned, but we're still having that hospitality component where you do have a team serving you that food. - You've clearly thought through this because the perception is if you've got great throughput, you have no hospitality. If you get hospitality, then you're backed up.

So I know a lot of these things are because you're a restaurant guy. You're looking at this stuff and it just, you need all these things in order to make it so that you can hit your numbers, but also well exceeded and not have a terrible line and have the food be great. Absolutely. You know, I, I,

I remind our team all the time, we are a restaurant company. We are a food company. Technology is a great enabler, but that's not what we do. The technology just helps us create better experiences for our teams and for our customers so we can execute our mission better. But at the core, it's about the food. It's about the experience, about the brand. On Mad Money, what we've always been looking for are quality places that go from regional to national. Is a gaining factor trying to have fresh produce in different cities?

There's a few gating factors as we expand. So the supply chain is definitely one of them. We do set up a new supply chain in every region we go. At this point, we've set up supply chains across the country. We're in about 20 major markets around the country. So, you know, almost 240 restaurants nationally, you know, nationally with a national footprint. But the gating factors beyond supply chain really has to do with people.

For us, we have a huge goal of promoting as many managers or head coaches from within. And so much of that is building the bench and the pipeline to make sure we're delivering on our promise. One of the things that I found about you guys, you've worked really hard before you came public. And one of the advantages you had is therefore you're not putting through a huge amount of price. People are very worried about the price given what your word, choppiness, that we have.

How are you able to rationalize high quality food, local source, reasonable price, and pull this off all over the country?

Obviously, there's been a ton of inflation over the past decade. You know, I think I read yesterday that food away from home inflation has been about 51%. Too high. It's a ton. Luckily for us, it's been less than that. So while Sweetgreen has always been a premium product, and given the price we pay to our farmers and wanting to pay a fair wage to our team members, it's always been premium price. But over the past four years, our relative pricing advantage has actually improved. If you look at us versus our fast casual peers,

and again looking at us versus QSR, the difference has really shrunk. So we're seeing a real opportunity here as people trade up from QSR and other fast casual, and we're also seeing a big trade down opportunity, especially with dinner. So now when you can come get the salmon bowl for 15, 16 bucks, while that could be a little bit maybe pricey for the lunch side, for dinner that's incredible value.

Now, let's talk about Infinite Kitchen, or IK, as you say. Now, this is an extraordinary device, basically, right? I mean, this comes purpose-built. Yeah. And you have a lot of stores. Could this be the model for all stores? So we're really proud of what we built. I've got to give a shout-out to the team who built this, our Spice team that built

built this fully, you know, they designed it, they built it and now they're scaling it. Very proud of the work they've done. It's a company we acquired about three years ago and have been working in tandem to roll this out. So we've four of them open today. We've had three new restaurants featuring the Infinite Kitchen and this being the first retrofit. We do believe there's an opportunity over time for all new restaurants to feature an Infinite Kitchen. So next year, over half of our pipeline will feature an Infinite Kitchen.

and we expect that percentage to increase over the years. We also think there's a pretty big retrofit opportunity. Probably not all stores, there's some stores where the size or the volume may not quite be there, but many, many of our stores have the opportunity for a retrofit.

And we're going to learn a lot with this one. I'd like to say it's still early. It's just opened a month ago, first retrofit. We're seeing how customers feel, how team members feel, understanding the return metrics. But so far, the results have been very promising. You're a student of the game, so to speak. You really understand restaurants. Do you try to take the best of a Chipotle, take the best of a Kava even,

take the best of McDonald's, which is low end, and just kind of look through everything, try to avoid the Starbucks situation where there's too much complexity? Or is it just your lab and you don't care about the other guys, you want to do it right for the customer? - You know, I'm a student of business. From the time I was a kid,

I've just loved studying business, reading biographies of business leaders, and it's something I always knew I wanted to do. Even Ray Kroc? Even Ray Kroc. I learned from all of them. Actually, the Founder movie is one of my favorite movies. It's an incredible movie. The scene where they're in the kitchen laying everything out, that's something we do all the time. You're running the time test and you're figuring those things out. And so I'm a student of the game, not just food though. There's a lot to learn from food, but we like to learn from

all kinds of consumer brands. And really, you know, one of the philosophies at Sweetgreen is this balancing of art and science. I believe the best consumer brands have a really thoughtful approach around the art, which is the story, the feeling, the soul, the food, the creative. But the science is equally important. How we enable that through the technology, the data, and all of those other pieces. And so I think, you know, we've really tried to merge these two ideas in every single thing we do.

I'd like to say there's always a bull market somewhere, and I promise you I'll find it just for you right here on MadMoney. I'm Jim Cramer. Happy holidays, happy New Year, and see you next time. 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.

You should not treat any opinion expressed by Jim Cramer as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. Cramer's opinions are based upon information he considers reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full Mad Money Disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com forward slash madmoneydisclaimer.

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