'Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 5/27/25

2025/5/27

Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer

AI Deep Dive AI Chapters Transcript

J

Jim Cramer

通过结合基础分析、技术分析和风险管理，帮助投资者在华尔街投资并避免陷阱的知名投资专家和电视主持人。

T

Todd McKinnon

Jim Cramer: 我认为人工智能的故事至关重要，我们不能忽视它。它正在推动许多主要参与者的重大举措。尽管有些人可能对此感到厌倦，但我认为人工智能对股市的上涨产生了重大影响。我特别关注企业高管们如何不断适应人工智能的世界。例如，特斯拉的股价并未因负面宣传和糟糕的销售而受损，原因在于马斯克其他的重大举措，如自动驾驶技术和人形机器人项目。投资者看好特斯拉的自动驾驶技术，这才是最重要的。英伟达的业务不应仅被数据中心订单定义，它正在与其他行业合作，并与需要最新技术的富裕国家开展业务。英伟达的CEO黄仁勋拥有超越竞争对手的优势，尤其是在软件方面，如Omniverse和Groot。Salesforce收购Informatica有助于客户更好地理解和保护他们的数据，并解决监管行业对人工智能的怀疑态度。苹果公司拥有庞大的客户群，只需要投入资金发展人工智能，并在人工智能准备好时推出最好的产品。总之，我们不应忽视人工智能，否则会错失很多收益。

Deep Dive

This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash market update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramerica. I've been with my friends. I'm just trying to make you a little money. My job is not just to entertain, but to educate, put things in context. So call me, 1-800-703-CBC. Tweet me, Jim Kramer. Now, you probably don't want to hear this, but we can't afford to get sick of the artificial intelligence story. It's driving so many big moves from major players. Yet I see the yawns, I hear the catcalls.

As if it's all overdone, as if it's all unimportant. And that, my friends, is dead wrong. And today's the proof. Dow gaining 741 points, S&P jumping 2.05%, NASDAQ pulling 2.47%, moves that were heavily influenced by AI. Now, most of this rum was about a terrific consumer confidence number in the EU talking about fast-tracking a trade deal after President Trump sounded much more conciliatory over the weekend, delaying the implementation of a 50% tariff until July 9th. It was a welcome reprieve.

It allowed us to rally, allowed us. But you see, I think AI also made a huge difference. You know, I'm not talking about chatbots that blackmail people or refuse to shut down when they ask, you know, or other crazy stuff that we keep hearing about.

I'm talking about how the executives you must watch on our network are constantly and consistently adapting to the world of artificial intelligence. Why don't we start with Elon Musk, as almost everyone else does? At this point, we get up to read still one more slag article about how bad Tesla's sales are. This time it's in Europe.

And then we see Wall Street research about how Musmear's presence is hurting sales because he's made himself a controversial figure. You live by the Doge Chainsaw, you die by the Doge Chainsaw. Except it's not true.

Despite all the negative publicity and the horrendous sales versus the competitors, it's done nothing to hurt the stock of Tesla. In fact, as Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas presciently predicted, the fading of Tesla's car sales has actually brought to the fore all of Musk's other big initiatives. Now, I'm not talking about that giant rocket headed to Mars. That's not a Tesla production. I'm talking about self-driving, specifically in Austin, Texas, next month at this time. But most importantly, I'm talking about Optimus, his humanoid robot project that will soon be a business. And when it launches, it will be a fast-growing

Fabulous book. Muscle self-driving initiative is run on AI, specifically neural networks, which give you more adaptive human-like behavior than the other systems.

And that's why investors can ignore Tesla's car sales. They believe Musk got the best-selling self-driving technology, and that's what's going to matter. That's why the stock won't quit. And then if President Trump gets involved, it won't be pushing for cars to go from Austin to Houston. It'll be having Tesla self-driving all over the interstate highway system, which last I looked is still federal.

Tesla, the tech company, is much more powerful than Tesla, the automaker. And that's why the stock finished up nearly 7% today. Start understanding that that's what matters.

Now, part of that's also because they buy so many terrific chips from NVIDIA. When NVIDIA reports tomorrow, it's going to have to break out of this hyperscaler hell and no longer be defined by the data center orders. In the last few quarters, we've seen an element of cynicism about NVIDIA's business that is truly pathetic, almost heartbreaking. You know, it's all that matters.

For the bulls is to check how much Meta, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Oracle are spending on data centers. Then decide if it still is important to use NVIDIA versus homegrown chips. Now, that's a thimble full of NVIDIA knowledge and nothing more. We're thinking way too small about this amazing company somehow being trapped by the possibility of weaker revenue numbers. Weaker revenue numbers? This is a new industrial revolution, people. Selling NVIDIA here is like selling a steam engine 200 years ago before it really got rolling. Call the bull!

What matters is that Nvidia has expanded its work to tie up with other industries like Tesla and self-driving. Nvidia is doing business with a plethora of wealthy countries that need the latest and the greatest. Yes, right now China is not going to be as important because Nvidia's chips are so powerful they can't sell the best ones to the Chinese. The bias is to say that none of these will equal the size of the repurchase of a single hyperscaler. I come back and say, wait a second. Did you see the size of that Humane project in Saudi Arabia? How about the Stargate UAE project? How about all these sovereign governments?

You think these are small? I think it's crazy. The Gulf states all have money to burn. But how about Nvidia's competitors? Aren't they nipping at the heels? Look, with this quarter, I bet we'll see Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Wang, talking about the advantage he has over anyone attempting to make an accelerated chip.

He's got the software, for heaven's sake. Specifically, I'm thinking of NVIDIA's Omniverse for advanced simulations to build things in record time with far fewer mistakes. We're talking buildings, ships, factories, using a digital twin. The largest market in the world. Or how about NVIDIA Groot, a customizable foundational model for humanoid reasoning that was just talked about at Computex in Taiwan last week. That's NVIDIA software, not NVIDIA hardware, stupid. I mean, person. Why?

Why isn't anyone talking about this? Even with the stock up more than 3% today, I will ask Jensen tomorrow when he comes on this show after earnings.

Now, I can see Mark Benioff at Salesforce on the eve of earnings asking why aren't people talking about the deal he just made to buy Informatica? Don't they realize that that helps customers understand and protect their data better than anything else out there? Don't they know that Informatica is a treasure trove of metadata creating an index of things like when and where you took a picture? Just tremendous amounts of data about other data. Metadata!

Don't they see that when you're talking about agentics, there's a layer of skepticism at the regulated industries thinking healthcare banking that prohibits the widespread introduction of AI? Informatica could take care of that. It could help rebut the objections. Plus, it'll help people not just observe their data, but interpret it kind of like what Spunk, DeFrancisco or Snowflake does. And we heard them last week.

Sure, Salesforce paid $8 billion for something it could develop itself over time. But it doesn't have time because their customers want it now. Wall Street doesn't like this deal, but the stock still rallied 1.5% today. What was that about? Which brings me to the last AI story, the endless carping about how Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, is missing the AI boat, and therefore Apple's phones are falling behind. Not something you felt if you bought the stock Friday as the stock rallied $5 today to get back over $200.

Now, I've been following this Tim Cook story for, I don't know, how about a decade? No, how about over a decade? People have said Apple's falling behind since the iPhone 5, that Apple's death days have occurred before 2012. I've followed it through four watches, four sets of AirPods, all sorts of Macs. I recognize that Siri can be obtuse. She can't do what so many other AI systems can do. In fact, she isn't even AI, leaving Apple open for what?

When it's ready, you'll get it. And they won't rush it out the door just to please Wall Street. There, that's Apple's AI mission, to get it right for you, not this street that's right over here. Plus, every company that's spending hundreds of billions of dollars buying NVIDIA chips, scraping data, trying to understand it, and then sell it to you lacks one thing. Customers, the 1.5 billion people who use an iPhone. Tim's got the divisions. They just have to spend.

You say the president won't let Tim Cook alone until he personally overturns some soil in some forgotten part of Texas, maybe one of the twin cities of Midland, Odessa, or how about Marfa, where the movie Giant was made? That's where James Dean, it was his last movie. Go look it up. I say enough is enough here. When A.I. is ready, and it's obviously not, or else ChatGPT wouldn't have to spend so much time apologizing, Tim Cook will have the best. He'll have the best A.I.,

Cook's North Store is client satisfaction. And over time, that strategy has proven winner. Also winner today with a stock up 2.5%. So let's think of it. Think of it like this. Name me four execs in tech. I think three of them can go just by their first names. You know, I'm talking like a sure thing here. Jensen, Tim, Elon. The fourth is last known. They only know him as Benioff. Tomorrow night, we will have Jensen and Benioff on the show after their earnings are released, and we'll pick them apart, the bottom line. The four biggest names in tech in all business, honestly, are wrestling with AI.

every day. Oh, you want to be bored with it? You want your eyes to roll? Oh, be my guest. But I think you'll miss a lot of gains that will be taken by those who refuse to write off this technology as some sort of scam, including the big four that I just tapped tonight. I want to go to JJ in California right now. JJ. Hi, Jimmy. First time caller. Thanks to you and your amazing team for all the valuable investment insights. Which one? What?

Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I'm just wow. That's very nice. Thank you very much. So what stock are we looking at? OK, here's my question. I got distracted and missed buying Corweave after its IPO. With the stock up by a lot since March, is it still a buy? No, JJ, we can't buy it here. I said that this morning at our morning meeting.

that I do for club members. And I said, look, you know, I think the world of the stock. I recommend it at 40. That looks like a pretty darn good call. Ben Stoto, who's my chief scientist tonight, we got together and said, this one is for real and you should buy it. But up here, up 210% since his IPO, I got to check my enthusiasm. Notice I didn't say curb. Check. OK. Hey, why don't we go to Curtis in California, please? Curtis. Hey, Kramer. Curtis. I got

I got a question for you about Warner Brothers. I was a big AT&T investor, and when AT&T split off Warner Brothers, I got a couple hundred shares. And I was wondering, what would you do with those couple hundred shares now? Okay, here's my feeling, all right? David Zaslav runs Warner Brothers Discovery. He's done the first thing absolutely right. He has made that balance sheet to be palatable.

Now he just has to break out of the hell that is linear and be thinking about all the new exciting things that can be done. I want you to stay long in those couple hundred. I would even be tempted, dare I say, and not just because the Knicks, well, no, the Knicks are not really, you know. I would actually buy the stock. That's right. I would buy Warner Brothers Discovery. I'm willing to stick my head out.

and see what happens. Now, if you don't think AI is a key story for stocks, I think you'll be missing out on a lot of gains in the near future. Gains that will be taken by people who do believe in diseases. Maybe you don't like money.

Hey, that's fine, too. Oh, man, money tonight. Could the company behind North Face do an about face and move higher? We got to size up Vans, but don't forget Vans. Yeah, I mean, don't forget. We have to size up VF Corp. Don't forget Vans, though. Then you called in and you stumped me on Stride and on ADT. So I've done the homework on these two names and I'm ready to turn in my findings.

Hey, and the cyber ETF hit a new all-time high today with Okta helping to lead the charge. But with the stock plummeting after earnings, what the heck is going on here? Why don't we do this? Why don't we go straight to the source? Let's speak to the CEO. And of course, we 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.

This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash market update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

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Are you still quoting 30-year-old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now. It pays to discover. Learn more at discover.com slash credit card based on the February 2024 Nelson Report. ♪

Even though the markets bounce back huge from its April lows, some groups have bounced back harder than others. For example, the apparel and footwear retailers, they've struggled. You might be wondering if this is a buying opportunity, but you can't take it for granted that these apparel stocks can make a comeback anytime soon. And that's why throughout this short week, I want to shine a light on some more popular names in the space. Go case by case, trying to figure out whether any of these fallen retailers can make a comeback.

Why don't we start with VF Corp? That's the company behind Vans, the North Face, Timberland, and there's even some smaller brands like Dickies, Eastpac, Jansport.

Unlike many other apparel plays, this stock has been languishing for ages. It peaked at $100 in the beginning of 2020, and it's now down to $13 and change of us today. Now, that's because VF Corp never really recovered from the pandemic, in part because they paid $2.1 billion to buy a streetwear brand called Supreme in a deal that turned out to be a bust. Also, the rest of the business wasn't doing too great either, to the point where the old CEO got forced out at the end of 2022.

For the past couple of years, I've been rooting for VF Corp. Ever since they brought in Bracken Dow from Logitech to take over CEO, I figured he could eventually turn things around, and eventually is the operative word here. Around this time last year, VF Corp started to get back on track. Last summer, the company formally concluded the Supreme Saga, selling the brand to a European luxury conglomerate at Essilor Luxottica for $1.5 billion. All right, only a $600 million loss compared to what they originally paid for it. That

That relieves some pressure on the company's ailing balance sheet, though. That's how you start a turn. You do just that. Then VF Corp started adding better earnings to the mix. And three consecutive reports delivered in July 2024, October 2024, and January of this year. The company delivered, if not good, certainly much better than fear-related results. I liked them. In response, the stock more than doubled from a 2024 low of $11 to a nearly two-year high of $29 in late January. And people were thinking, this is money.

But now it's back to $13, thanks to the tariff turmoil, among other things. VF Corp went as low as $9 and changed its April low, which was the lowest level since 2008. But it's still a long, long way from its January highs. Now, some of that's because when the company reported last Tuesday, the market didn't love the numbers. VF Corp basically reported an inline quarter, revenue a little weaker than expected, earnings a little better than expected. But beneath the surface, there were some discouraging signs, including yet another weak result from Wattage.

Vans. That's their second largest brand by sales, which has been struggling mightily in recent years. Now, sales of Vans were down 22% in a quarter. Before the pandemic, these shoes, they used to be popular.

Magnum said some of the weakness of Vans was expected because of a, I'm going to quote here, deliberate rationalization of channel distribution, end quote, meaning they're taking the product out of some lower-priced channels in an effort to defend their gross margins. I like that. But Magnum also conceded that its Vans direct-to-consumer business wasn't doing particularly well either. The company's fourth-largest brand, Dickies, is also struggling, down 14%.

Making things worse, VF Corp gave mixed guidance for the current quarter. They're talking about a 3% to 5% revenue decline in constant currency, which is actually a little better than expected. But they also said they expect a much larger operating loss than Wall Street was looking for.

As for VF Corp's full year forecast, the company always said that it expects free cash flow to be up year over year. I guess it's positive. It doesn't give us much clarity on where the business is headed. You know, without clarity, we sell. And that's why the stock plunged 15% last Wednesday. Now, most of the analyst coverage was also fairly negative, decrying Vance numbers and saying things like a recovery will take longer than expected or that there's now limited visibility for the company. So back to the operative question. Can these foreign retailers, and specifically in this case, VF Corp, make a comeback?

The short answer for VF Corp is not quite yet. I think we're still in a holding pattern with this one, despite the fact that the stock had a nice gain amid today's market rally, climbed nearly 13%. It's true that some good things are indeed happening at VF Corp under Brackendale. For example, the weakness in Vans is overshadowing some legitimately strong results for the company's largest brand, the North Face, which had 2% growth in the latest quarter. VF Corp is getting even better numbers from Timberland, which had 10% growth in the last quarter. Well, it's not bad.

Bracken Darrell also insists that the company is making progress in its four strategic priorities, lowering their cost basis, strengthening their balance sheet, fixing the U.S. business, and turning around Vance. His long-term record is excellent. He gets some benefit at Dow. My view, the company absolutely has taken out some big costs as margins have improved meaningfully over the past year. In the most recent quarter alone, their gross margin was up 500 basis points from the year before. Wow.

With the help of the Supreme sale, the balance sheet has definitely improved, too, with VF Corp's net debt declining by $1.8 billion in 2025 fiscal year after some big maturities passed. All right, it still isn't great, but it's in much better shape than 12 months ago. It's headed in the right direction. That

buys time for Bracken Dow. As for the strategic priorities, progress has been especially advanced, where I see no sign of a turn whatsoever. Now that is troubling. Footwear is historically so hard to turn around. It's proving difficult for the king, Nike. So of course it's gotta be difficult for Vans.

Also, if you take a step back, this is the company that's had negative year-over-year sales growth for three straight years, 11 consecutive quarters. It also reported losses, adjusted losses per share in three of the past five quarters. I know that the stock might start moving higher before the turnaround actually arrives. That happened once, right? But in a perfect world, I'd like to see sales growth turn positive before I can declare VF Corp officially back, so to speak.

Look, at this uncertain time, we're going to have to see the Vans business turn around before we see and believe in the broader companies that it's really ready to shine. I just can't recommend this one. While its second biggest brand seems to be, I don't know, how about the word free fall? I'm certainly hoping to see some progress sooner rather than later so I can get on board with the VF recovery. But hope is not part of the equation. Remember, I was trying to get on board. The stock went up to 29. I didn't chase it. Boom.

Here's the bottom line. We saw in the back half of last year just how quickly the stock can climb higher when the news flow gets even just a bit better. But we've also been reminded this year about how quickly VF Corp can stumble when things get tougher. And at this point, after such a prolonged period of underperformance, I myself do not feel comfortable sticking my neck out before I see some real signs of improvement, especially at Vance, not North Face, but Vance, which is the real swing factor here. Matt Money's back after the break.

Coming up, ADT might be known for securing homes, but could it help secure profits in your portfolio? Sound the alarm. Kramer is diving deeper into the stock next.

This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash market update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

Are you still quoting 30-year-old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now. It pays to discover. Learn more at discover.com slash credit card based on the February 2024 Nelson Report. ♪

Every now and then I get a call about a company I'm either not familiar with or haven't checked up in a long time. So we take the time to do some homework and come back to you with a full story. Helps me. I get to remember the story or learn about it again. Our homework's been piling up lately, so tonight I want to catch up with some outstanding assignments. Half the point of the show is answering your darn questions, right?

First up, AJ in Florida asked about a company called Stride on May 14th. Now, this is a technology company, but it's formerly known as K-12 for the majority of its existence, with an educational platform that's aimed at delivering online learning to students across the United States. Their clients are primarily public and private schools, school districts, and charter boards. But Stride also provides solutions for employers, government agencies,

Their primary focus, though, is on the K-12 education space within two different markets. Roughly 60% of the business is focused on general education. The other 40% comes from career learning, which is more about skill training for real-world jobs. Lately, we've been hearing what skill trades will be growing a lot versus jobs that require a standard college education. Stride is like an arms dealer for the people who want jobs.

those positions. I love that business right now. While Stride offers standalone products for each of their segments, revenue for both businesses is primarily generated in the form of their comprehensive school-as-a-service offering. Not exactly enterprise software, but it has the same business model. The bull case for this went simple. Public school satisfaction has been dwindling for years.

And parents are increasingly willing to enroll their kids in entirely online schools if it means they can get a decent education. Well, that may seem crazy to those of you who made it out of public school just fine, like me, okay? Education is in a very different place than when I went to school or even when my kids went to school. Parents and students had a lot of complaints about remote learning during the pandemic. It also made them a bit more open to the concept. Either way, it's hard to deny the momentum that Stride's seeing in their business.

Now, after opening up shop 25 years ago, the company has since expanded their schools of service offering to 91 schools in 31 states in their general education market and 56 schools or programs in 27 states in their career learning market. Not bad. At the end of April, Stride reported the latest in a string of beaten race quarters, which is part of the reason why this stock is the 18th best performer in the S&P 1500 year to date and the 8th best performer in the S&P 600 with a return of over 47%.

Basically, as people lose faith in public education, Stride sees some tremendous enrollment growth. Their application volumes year to date are double what they were two years ago, four times what they were seeing four years ago. That's an important stat. So where do I come down on this one? Look, even though Stride has seen some strong momentum lately, there's still a good amount of competition in this space.

This ranges from other private online school schooling options. There are those to state administered programs, to even free options like the Khan Academy. That's it. The scale of the opportunity here might be enormous enough for that room for everyone.

However, given that the stock's already run more than 47% for the year, you know what? I think the valuation, it's gotten harder to justify. Don't buy. Don't buy. Don't buy. Plus, all the competition in the space makes it harder to decipher what advantage Stride has over its rivals. Make it difficult to recommend it for a big run. I'm not going to do that. Okay? That said, management's welcome to come on the show, explain what makes the business so special. That'd be good. Now,

Next up, deep in Florida, ask me about a really controversial one called ADT. That's the home security company. This was back on May 12th. Now, this is a name we covered when it was retaken public back in early 2018, when it had a flop of an IPO due to concerns about its massive debt load.

This one should be a household name for anyone who lives in the suburbs. You've probably seen their signs everywhere. ADT's core security offering includes burglar and life safety alarms, as well as smart security cameras, smart home automation systems, and video surveillance systems. The majority of ADT's revenue comes from their monitoring and related services, which primarily consists of recurring revenue that's generated from providing monthly monitoring and other services. I always like to see some recurring revenue. ♪

The company reported the end of April, and at first glance, the numbers look pretty darn good. ADT delivered a top-end, bottom-line beat. And while the headline numbers seemed solid at first glance, there was some concern from investors that the company's monitoring and related services business, their largest segment, missed on sales.

That miss and the fact that ADT merely reiterated its full year forecast, something that people don't like, they want to always raise, was enough to send the stock down more than 2 percent in response to the quarter. Look, ADT's done a good job of coming up with new products that make customers' homes more secure, including a partnership with Google on its Nest devices, which can control cameras, doorbells, locks, lights and thermostats all intuitively and through the same app.

This collab also allows ADT to launch helpful new products on the platform like Trusted Neighbor, where they use Google Nest's doorbell familiar faces technology to allow trusted people access to your home. Take family members, neighbors, anybody else you might want, you know, who's going to come over all the time.

Home security is great, but if the system locks out the plumber you call to help fix the leak, then the same system detected, well, all it's really doing for you is ruining your vacation. Bummer. Despite what seemed like a solid quarter in April and the progress the company's making in new offerings,

There is something not great here, a major overhang that prevents me from even considering ADT right now. See, Apollo Management, the private equity firm, is the company's largest shareholder, nearly 30 percent ownership stake. Apollo took ADT private back in 2016, then returned the company to public markets two years later, and it's been the largest shareholder ever since. Now, I've got nothing against private equity firms. Some of them are real great, including Apollo. They've done some good things, but it is always the

threat when you have a private equity firm as a top shareholder, because in theory they could start dumping the position at any moment. Sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Then they would be flooding the market with shares and putting pressure on the stock. And with ADT, that's no longer a theoretical concern because Apollo has been selling down its stake aggressively as of late. That includes a 50 million share sale earlier this month, which came just a couple of months after Apollo sold over 80 million shares in a secondary offering in March.

And the even worse news, Apollo still has roughly 229 million shares left. OK, that's potentially an artillery barrage of selling. I don't want you to stand in front of it. So deep in Florida, that's why I'm not even going to entertain the thought of ADT right now. I just don't want to get people into the stock when it looks like the largest shareholder is actively getting out.

You know what? Maybe we'll revisit this when there's more certainty and Apollo's done selling. But until then, I say sidelines, bottom line here. Stride looks good, but the stocks run too much for me to get too enthusiastic about it. As for ADT, I like the business, but hate that the largest shareholder seems to be selling like crazy. And that makes it way too risky at this very moment. You know what? We should go to Jerry in Missouri. Jerry. Hey, Jim. Thanks for taking my call. Of course.

Awesome.

I like your thinking very much. I think Meta's having a great quarter. I also think that they are, without a doubt, the best advertising bet. What happens if he actually starts to want to monetize WhatsApp? Do you know how much that darn thing's worth? I think you've got a whore of sense. Good level to buy. All right, listen up. I think Stride, formerly K-12, is running up too much for me to be interested right now. And ADT?

I'm calling it risky. But we always love taking another look at stocks that we don't know off. So thank you to our Floridian callers. Everybody's ahead. What else? Exclusive with Okta reporting after the bell. Cybersecurity company beat on every single metric. Then what else is going on with the stock? Let's talk to the CEO. Then with consumer stocks rallying off this morning's strong consumer confidence reading, I'm sharing why today was a lesson in having conviction in your thesis. And then, of course, all your calls rapid-firing tonight's edition of The Lightning Round. So stay with us.

with Kramer. What the heck just happened to shares of identity management king Okta tonight? Okta's moving lower in the after-hour trading despite reporting what looked to me like a pretty strong first quarter. The only possible layer was that the company only maintained rather than raised its four-year sales guidance.

even as it raised the rest of its full-year outlook. Seems to me like a silly reason for such a big sell-off, given that the CEO is just being prudent. But don't take it from me. Earlier today, we had a chance to speak to Okta co-founder, chairman, and CEO Todd McKinnon to get a better look at the quarter and the latest trends in his industry. Please take a look.

All right. So, Todd, I've got to tell you, when I say better even the quarter, why I actually meant that, because I want people to start before they decide. Wait a second. Revenue guides. This quarter was a true blowout. This quarter had so many new customers. This quarter also deflected to me the problem. People were worried about the federal government. None of that happened. Talk about the huge clients you had, the big growth you had.

Yeah, we're very excited about the performance in Q1. Four of our top 10 deals in the quarter were in the public sector, which is very strong for us, a strong part of our business, and two of the top three. So overall, the performance by Okta is very consistent with Q4, where we had great momentum with large customers. Our million-dollar-plus cohort of customers in Q1 grew 20%, fastest-growing cohort.

And again, if you zoom out, this is because identity is even more important than ever. We talk about security, identity is security. To be secure, you have to have a solid identity foundation. And now in this world of AI and agentic AI, these agents are going to be everywhere and they're going to need access to everything. And you have to have Okta to give that access to this agentic future we're embarking upon. I know that both Jetson Wang at NVIDIA and Mark Benioff at Salesforce are deeply focused right now on this whole problem with agentics.

I would think that an agent could easily, let's say, frame you or actually become you. And you are probably one of the few companies, if the only company that can stop that.

Yeah, well, everyone's very excited about the potential, but with all the great potential of technology comes risks and uncertainty. And where we are in the industry right now, Jim, is that we're moving from a world of prototype to production. Everyone is excited about the prototypes of what these agents can do for us, and they're popping up everywhere. They're writing software, they're doing customer support in the prototype world. And now we're moving them to production. And when you move into production, what that means is you have to give them access to real systems, real data, real customer data, your customer data.

And the only way to do that securely is with Okta and with a great identity management foundation that can manage the right access not only to your people and your customers, but also your agents. Is that one of the reasons why you added 70 customers with over 100,000 agents? Is that one of the reasons why you added 70 agents? Is that one of the reasons why you added 70 agents? Is that one of the reasons why you added 70 agents?

Is that one of the reasons why you added Seb? Gage.

Is that one of the reasons why you added Seb?