Mad Money 04/29/26 | Audio Only

My mission is simple: to make you money. I'm here to level the playing field for all investors. There's always a bull market somewhere, and I promise to help you find it. Mad Money starts now.

Hey, I'm Cramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Cramerica. Other people's friends, I'm just trying to make you some money. My job is not just to entertain, but to teach about this crazy market. So call me at 1-800-743-CNBC or tweet me at Jim Cramer. When it comes to tech companies, you know what? It's become not enough just to beat and raise anymore. You need to have something else going on, something that's not in your control. You need a shortage, or else your stock's not going to get much love. Even if you're one of those big dogs, yeah, the hyperscalers we talk about, the ones that reported after the close this very evening.

Now, there are a lot of crosscurrents today. We should mention a day when the Fed met, a day when the president proclaimed for a second time that he's no longer going to be a nice guy toward the enemy, Iran. But this time he added a rifle for some Rambo-like emphasis when he posted the story there. That blizzard post, plus a weak bond market where rates crept up once again, gave us today's action. Dow falling 280 points, that should be dipping 0.4%. NASDAQ actually edging up 0.4%, but I felt the market was uglier underneath. See, those higher interest rates are now banging a lot of companies, especially the banks, which were quite worrisome in their activity. We're going to talk to the relatively new bank SoFi later in the show, and it got hurt badly. But the funky nature of trading in this key group makes me anxious. I always like to see the group do better, or at least do nothing.

The Fed meeting today, it brought me no real solace. It's the last Fed meeting hosted by J. Powell. It was uneventful at the same time that oil went up big again. It's an unavoidable fact of life that oil soared 7% to $160 today, near the highest it's been since the war started. That in itself, I'm calling it worrisome. I've told you over and over again, though, that it isn't a rally in oil per se that matters. No, it's the ripple oil causes to the bond market. If interest rates ignore oil, we're fine. But now, though, we aren't fine. They're not ignoring oil up here. Rates are going higher. A huge part of our economy could use a rate cut, particularly housing. But at this pace of inflation, there won't be any. Even under the incoming Fed chief Kevin Warsh. Hey, Mr. Chief Warsh, will you can the press conferences, please? Maybe do a Netflix and have a journalist. Maybe have them write down the questions. Okay, answer the best ones on our website. Then go do some work.

What else didn't go right? Well, how about the bounce in the dormant defense stocks? Boy, I don't want to see them move up. That's always a terrible sign. Sign of some military surprise that we didn't count on. That's a sign that you might need to do some selling to a lot of traders. That's the way they did it. And we saw that across the board midday, especially with tech, until a closing rally. War, inflation. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. So what's working here? The shares of companies where they can't make enough product in technology. No, not Amazon, not Alphabet, not Microsoft, not Meta. Seagate. Seagate, the maker of disk drives that store data, including data spewed from machines in the data center. Oh, Seagate's been a horse for ages now, and it rallied 11% today on the conference call. They talked about how they can't make their product fast enough. I don't know when that will change because there aren't enough machines available for Seagate to expand its disk drive production. Boy, that's exactly what you want to see. That's what the market wants.

We're seeing the same thing at Intel. Yeah, Intel once again climbed 12% as it doesn't have enough CPUs to help alleviate the shortages crippling the growth of AI agents in this new fourth industrial revolution. That's the hottest part of the fourth industrial. Then there's Generac. We had him on recently. I don't know, do you remember they were going to have some big orders from the hyperscalers for backup energy? They said the same thing today. I don't like when a stock rallies the second time on news we already know, but this market wants shortages. They'll take them wherever it can get them. And there is a shortage of energy that goes into data centers. Same thing with Bloom Energy, one of our absolute favorites, which jumped 27% today because its fuel cells for the data center are in short supply and they don't burn dirty. Or how about NXP Semi, which rocketed 25% on a shortage of chips for autos. That's a surprise because NXP's auto business has long been an albatross around the company's neck. But now that the cars are filled with software-defined product, NXP is a must.

But I don't want to bury the lede of this very evening, where we didn't have a lot of shortages and instead we just had four gigantic companies that all had to go off at once, possibly because they're just trying to give me a heart attack. I mean, maybe that's the story. Four of the Magnificent Seven reported this evening. And remember when I told you that you would need something good from two of them, at least two of them, to power us higher? Well, that is pretty much what we got, but we didn't get any shortages. See, Alphabet crushed it, okay, in every line, including Google Cloud, which was extraordinary. That's been a hot, just a really hot item for a long time now. Those guys just get YouTube strong again, Search incredibly strong, which is very important because it's funny. The whole buildout, especially their own gCPUs, their own semiconductors. Well, maybe those are in short supply. That could make sense. I'll go with that.

Amazon, look, I like the earnings so much. Even as I know that there were sellers initially all over the place, I liked it because one of its key divisions, the one that Andy Jassy, the CEO, came from, Amazon Web Services, had incredible growth, 28%. That is just absolutely insane. I remember not that long ago having some, let's say, hotter words with the CFO about whether Amazon Web Services would even grow in the double digits. It's now scoring at 28%. Now they should spend the money. Maybe that's a bit of a shortage. They may need more power, more compute just for their data center work. I was worried that it would grow at high single digits. Nice move. Their cloud business is fantastic.

Now, call me confused when it comes to Meta. I've been mulling it over before I came out here. I know they announced they upped their capital expenditures by $10 billion. And you know what? When you do that, all I have to say is don't buy. Don't buy. Don't buy. But then again, they did have the fastest revenue growth in five years. So maybe they should spend. But then again, I'd like to see more justification of that spend. But then again, I absolutely like that the revenues were up 33%. You see what I mean? Boom, boom, boom. I didn't want that though. I just wanted to be boom, right? I got this and I got this. And finally, there is Microsoft. And I don't know what to say. I thought they would have something more to say than they did. Maybe you can consider it cheap, but it's software. Hey, by the way, if I really want cheap, throw a dividend yield in there and I'll buy Ford Motor.

It's odd. There was a time when all four of these companies would have unstoppable growth. Now, the growth belongs to those who sell into constrained areas. And there's nothing constrained about artificial intelligence. In fact, it's all over the place. The bottom line is simple. The best tech these days is ironically old tech because we stopped building old tech. And it came back into vogue because it turns out that artificial intelligence needs some old tech too. Now the big guys can't build enough. And with the exception of Google and Amazon, there's not much else to say. Let's take some calls. Let's go to Evan in New Jersey. Evan, hi Jim. How are you? Thank you for taking my call. Oh, I'm glad you called me, Evan. How can I help? I wanted to ask about how you feel about Domino's Pizza after the recent... I got to tell you, I happen to love Russell Weiner. I think it's terrific, but boy, they missed the quarter. And when I read over the conference call, I just didn't find anything that made me feel that this is the level. I couldn't say this is the level because I got other restaurateurs doing incredibly well. I got Starbucks doing well, and I've got Kevin Hochman at Brinker doing incredibly well. And I have Domino's, by the way. Yum was good, but they're getting out of pizza. But no, no, it wasn't good, and I don't want it for the yield. Let's go to Jerry in California. Jerry, Jim, big ocean wave booyah to you from California. Fantastic, and I'm glad to have you on the show. What can I tell, what can I say to you? What do you got? Hey, great piece recently on Viking Cruises. Oh, thank you. Thank you. You captured that to a T. So, Jim, we got into this early. So, are we trading this or staying invested in the leaders of the sea? We do not trade Viking Holdings. We think that Viking Holdings with Torstein Hagen is about as good as it gets. We spent a lot of time with Torstein on the last time when he was in New York. And let me just say this, that one, if $78 stock, it feels a lot like a hundred. All right, the best tech days, well, ironically, is the best ones are old tech. Aside from Amazon and Google, I just don't have that much to say about the others. One of them I like, Ford Motor.

Okay. On Mad Money today, Brinker, the company behind Chili's and the aforementioned Brinker, I should say, Chili's and Maggiano's, soared today after earnings. What's working for this restaurant chain, particularly when others aren't? I'm going to check in with the CEO then. With the averages roaring back this month, the IPO market has started to pick up some steam. I'm sharing if newly public company X Energy could energize your portfolio. And SoFi fell over 14% today on an inline earnings and unchanged guidance. I got to figure out what the heck is going on. Let's bring in the CEO and stay with Cramer.

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This morning we got one of those better-than-expected quarters from Brinker International, parent of Chili's and Maggiano's, and that was enough to send the stock up double digits. I love that. While it's still down from its early 2025 highs, investors were braced for a disaster somehow, and instead they got just a real good number. All January was soft because of bad weather. Then February and March were much stronger. I love that, what's known as cadence. Plus, management raised the low end of their full-year earnings forecast. Stock had sold off hard going into the quarter, and worries about rising costs instead of the consumer. So these numbers were enough to send it flying. Management also said April's off to a strong start. So I bet we're going to get some analysts saying good things tomorrow. So let's take a closer look with Kevin Hochman. He's the president and CEO of Brinker International. Hey Kevin, welcome back to Mad Money. Hey Jim, thanks for having me on the show again. All right, 20 quarters, 20 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth. 31% comp from last year for Chili's. How's that possible?

Okay. So let me ask you, how is it possible, a little bit of magic on your part? You've got beef inflation, you've got high repair and maintenance costs, you've got general inflation in areas like utilities and rent, to-go supplies, delivery fees, beverage and food cost unfavorable by 60 basis points. How are you able to make even more money when every one of those is unfavorable?

Now, a new sandwich always going to get people excited. I loved in the conference call. People should listen, read the conference call before you buy the stock. So you know, you like giving people too much food.

I may have to pivot and go away from Three for Me for the first time in a long time and go for that chicken sandwich. It sounds very good. You know, I love to eat at your place. Now, one of the reasons I love to eat at your place, and you said wealthy people, not so well. Everybody goes, is that you give me name-brand liquor? Are you still giving people name-brand liquor in those Margies?

So Cinco de Mayo is coming up. I mean, I got to get a reservation. I mean, Cinco de Mayo, you're going to crush it.

Okay. One last thing I think people need to know that the check really is cheaper. Three to four dollars versus everybody else. Now, you don't necessarily brag about that. You talk about value. Do you think the people just recognize the difference somehow, that they're smart enough to know? I mean, even though you look, you have cattle, it goes up every day. There's very few companies other than you and Texas Roadhouse been able to hold the price. Do they say, wait a second, this seems to be cheaper?

Well, next question. Am I going to see a TikTok explosion of people eating the chicken sandwich?

Well, that's called cinema verite. I want to thank Kevin Hochman, president and CEO of Brinker International, for an excellent quarter. Kevin, I'm glad to have you back on the show. Hey, thanks so much, Jim. Appreciate it. Of course, Mad Money's back after the break. Coming up, a new player in the nuclear energy space just entered the market. So, should you be buying in? Cramer is taking a closer look at X Energy next.

The averages actually, not today but this month, have been roaring, and that's allowed the IPO market to pick up with real steam. That includes a new way to play the nuclear power space, X Energy, that came public with a bang last week. Even if the nuclear stocks aren't as hot as they were last fall, and boy were they smoking before the house of pain, there's still a ton of interest in this business because it's the cleanest way to power all these new data centers that we're putting up. Nuclear is the cleanest way. Some would say the safest way. So, let's take a closer look with X Energy, which is a designer of advanced nuclear reactor technology and a manufacturer of advanced nuclear fuels. They've been working on a small modular reactor design for more than a decade. In theory, these are the lower cost, much lower cost than traditional nuclear reactors, and they take much less time to deploy. At the same time, X Energy has designed a specific type of fuel that allows these reactors to operate safely even at very high temperature, which presents advantages for certain industrial use cases.

Now, X Energy will be producing this fuel at its own facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The first fuel facility should be completed within the next two years or so. I bring this up because X Energy doesn't really plan to build its own reactors, let alone own and operate them. They're going for more of a what we call razor-razor blade business model. The company wants to license this technology to customers and then let them build their own small modular reactors and then sell them the fuel they need to operate at peak efficiency. I really like that because historically building nuclear power plants has been a very tough business where a lot of money has been lost. Selling designs and fuel for nuclear plants sounds a lot more enticing, safer, and more lucrative. Of course, X Energy is still in its early stages, but they have three big initial customers already lined up: Amazon, Dow, and Centrica. Okay, Centrica. Well, listen, the latter is one of the largest gas and electric utilities in the UK and Ireland. According to X Energy, quote, advanced development efforts are already underway on the first Dow project at its Seadrift operation site in Texas and the first Amazon project in connection with Energy Northwest. End quote. Hey, by the way, when Amazon signed on as a major customer in the fall of 2024, it also took a big stake in X Energy and still owns more than 20% of the company. I like that. They're believers. Hey, same goes for Ares Management. That's a private equity firm we know very well. As well as Ken Griffin of Citadel, Steve Cohen's Point72, Jane Street, Cathie Wood's ARK Invest, and even the University of Michigan. Go Blue.

That's a mighty impressive list. But if we're talking about backers, I need to mention that X Energy has a very good relationship with the Department of Energy dating back to December of 2020. That's when the company was awarded $1.2 billion as part of an advanced reactor demonstration program. One of the last things the first Trump administration did was to set up this business, this set up this division. So far, $438 million of cost reimbursements have gone through. So the company's got $762 million worth of potential reimbursements for Uncle Sam still in the pipe. With its IPO, X Energy falls into a group of publicly traded next-generation nuclear energy companies focused on small modular reactor designs. Think Oklo, which a lot of you love. Think NuScale. But X Energy has a very different business model than these guys, and they also went through the normal IPO process rather than sneaking in via a SPAC, which you know I don't like. I like the rigor of the IPO process. So how about the numbers? While the company's still very unprofitable, there are some positives here. First, unlike Oklo and NuScale, X Energy actually has a decent amount of revenue, with $109 million in sales last year. In comparison, Oklo's had zero revenue to date, while NuScale has been bringing in 30 to 40 million a year. X Energy is making this money from service payments coming from its initial customers as well as grant payments from the Department of Energy. Of course, the company's still burning money in terms of profitability. We're talking about a $213 million loss last year.

But I honestly wouldn't sweat that too much because X Energy is spending big in order to expand, which is what you want to see at this point in its trajectory. Plus, the company's got a pristine balance sheet, and after the IPO, they now have roughly 1.4 billion in cash and equivalents along with nearly $600 million in digital investments. Hey, that's a big cushion for a company that's likely to keep losing money for at least a few more years. Finally,

Let's talk valuation, which is very difficult to do, to the extent that means anything for a money-losing company like this one. As I mentioned earlier, X Energy came public with a bang. They were originally looking to sell 42.886 million shares at a price between 16 and 19, but the deal was upsized to 44.25 million shares and eventually priced at 23 bucks. That's well above the range. That is one of those things I typically say: don't buy. Don't buy. Don't buy. But I like the company. Last Friday, it then opened for trading at $30.11 and it got as high as $37 and change at its intraday highs yesterday. Though it since cooled off and come back down to $31 today, basically flat with where it opened. But that's a 35% gain if you got in on the deal. At this price, X Energy is being valued at around $12 billion. It's hard to say whether that's a good or bad price given that we're at least a year away from substantial revenues and maybe years away from profits. Understand this is obviously a very speculative position I'm talking about. You can only buy a stock like this with money that you can afford to lose. It's high risk. But if X Energy does pan out and become a major player in America's nuclear energy renaissance, then it is going to be a high reward stock. It's the kind of stock I recommend in How to Make Money in Any Market because you know I'm pro smart speculation. I think everyone should own one speculative stock. Maybe this is for you. For comparison's sake though, X Energy's market cap now puts it above Olo's 11.3 billion and makes it much larger than NuScale at 3.9 billion. Then again, with more revenue than those two companies and some great initial customers, you could argue it deserves to trade at a substantial premium to both of them. So here's the bottom line. If you feel compelled to speculate on something connected to nuclear power, then I think X Energy is the way to go. Just remember that it's still insanely speculative. And if certain things happen, say interest rates spike or AI data center construction boom slows down or there's some sort of regulation setback about nukes, then this stock will be crushed. But barring those terrible outcomes, I like X Energy as long as you're comfortable with the risk. Again, though, buy it with the money that you're prepared to lose, but by all means, buy it if you're really hung up on nuclear power. All right, let's go to some questions. Let's go to Ian in Florida. Ian,

I am doing well, Ian. Booyah to you. What's up?

Certainly.

I think you should buy it right here. Enough is enough. It's been going down because people are worried about air travel. I think this is a maintenance stock now. There's not as much travel, so there's not as much maintenance needed off the planes. That's when you buy GE Aerospace because otherwise it doesn't come down. This is a good moment to buy GE. Actually, really good quarter by the way. John in New York. John,

I am doing well. John,

Good, good, good. I've held AT&T for quite some time now. I'm thinking about selling it. What do you think of this particular stock? Look, I like growth and I like income. It gives you the income, but the growth side is not there. Honestly, if you wanted to own a stock that has growth and income, I would prefer you own a master limited partnership. Some of those ones that have done really well during the war, that did really well before the war. I'm thinking about Enterprise Products. Why not go buy 10? Swap out of that and go to WMB because I'll feel a lot better about it. Now, if you want to speculate on something connected to nuclear power, then I actually think that this X Energy that just came public may be the way to go. Just remember, it's insanely speculative. Much more Mad Money ahead, including my exclusive with SoFi, seeking today what spooked investors in the digital bank's quarterly report. Let's get the details from the CEO. And restaurants are tough to run, but we're seeing a remarkable turnaround in a charitable trust company that needs to be studied. I'll reveal it and break down the story. And of course, all your calls rapid fire in tonight's edition of the lightning round. The stereo cramp.

What the heck just happened to the stock of SoFi Technologies, the preferred digital bank of the younger generation? Here's a stock that's had an incredible run, going from $8 and change at its post-liberation day lows a year ago to $32 and change last November. As a longtime SoFi bull, and everybody knows that, I felt the move was vindication. But then the stock started rolling over again, selling off part of the broader AI displacement meltdown. I think that's crazy. This is a bank for heaven's sake. You can't have Claude vibe code you a bank. As of yesterday though, SoFi had pulled back to 18 when it reported this morning. The results were mostly in line, but the guidance for the current quarter was disappointing. In response, the stock plunged more than 15% today. Perhaps that's excessive. Don't take it from me though. Let's check in with Anthony Noto, the CEO of SoFi Technologies, to get a better read on the quarter. Mr. Noto, welcome back to Mad Money.

Okay, Anthony, I look to your bank for great growth. And from the looks of things, I got plenty of growth, just maybe even better than usual, wouldn't you say?

All right. So when I hear that, I think, all right, beaten and raised, but you did not raise. So I've got to try to understand because as someone who felt just at $18 not that long ago that there could be an exceptional year for earnings, I'm concerned.

Well, if that's the case, and you don't want to be overly aggressive, your words, then it is disconcerting to me that you're keeping so many loans on your balance sheet. You and I have seen when bankers get too aggressive and they keep back loans on the balance sheet. It's often a sign that they can't sell the loans or maybe they want to take on a little more risk than I know I would have thought if I bought the stock of SoFi.

Okay. So I, like many other people, have to deal with periodically with people who want a stock lower. Now, I know a lot of people who may not understand there are people who literally are betting against companies and hoping the stock will go down. There's a particular firm that seems to be thinking that you have a much higher default rate than I think you do have. How do you shadow box against someone who genuinely is able to say what they want about it because it's a free country?