Alphabet, Intel, And Gilead On The Move After Earnings… And China Hits Back At Trump 4/24/25

0:00Live from the Nasdaq market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square. This is Fast Money. Here's what's on tap tonight. A monster night of earnings from big tech to big pharma and more. We're breaking down the results in all of tonight's reports and what they could mean for the broader markets. And tough talk. Chinese officials with some harsh words for President Trump on tariffs and trade. How the White House responded and what it says about the state of negotiations, if there are even negotiations going on. Plus, Hasbro's winning day in the face of tariffs. Pepsi goes flat after its earnings report.

0:28and the mislabeled R in Karen's acronym gives a boost to the carved trade. Who knows what the R is, really? I'm Melissa Lee. Coming to you live from CEO B at the NASDAQ on the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Karen Feinerman, Steve Grasso, and Guy Adami. And we start off with Alphabet earnings, the first hyperscaler to report this quarter jumping on the top of the bottom line beat. It also upped its dividend, announced a$70 billion share buyback. The conference call is now underway. Deidre Bosa has been listening in. She joins us with all the details. Debo. Hey, Mel. So shares moving a little bit higher after we just heard from CFO Anand Ashkenazi.

1:04She just gave some color around guidance, which was highly anticipated. She said that in cloud, they're facing a tight demand supply environment, so they could see some variability in cloud revenue growth rates. She also said that given the significant increase in investments in CapEx over the last few years, they're going to see higher depreciation. She also said that to expect some headcount growth in 2025 in key investment areas. Aside from the cloud stuff, none of that is particularly new. So maybe some relief. Shares before she started talking were at around 3%. We're now higher by about 5%.

1:39Overall, though, Melissa, broadly some relief for investors as Google's ad revenue came in largely in line with expectations. And there was some worry that increased activity on AI chatbots tariffs might impact its core negatively. I want to point out another comment from chief business officer Philip Schindler on the call. He said that for AI overviews overall, this is the AI that they're feeding to search users. He said they continue to see monetization at approximately the same rate, which gives them a strong base. Shares, though, I will note they're only up about 5%, barely denting that 15 % loss year to date.

2:13And that is because there are still risks on all sides of Alphabet. You've got the two major antitrust lawsuits that go straight to the heart of its ad and AI strategies, tariffs, monetization of Gemini competition. No doubt some of these are going to be asked about in the Q &A portion, which just kicked off. We will be listening and bring you any news from that portion. Back to you. All right. Keep us posted. Debo, thank you. Deidre Bosa in San Francisco. A few flash reports have crossed into my inbox, and they all say better than feared. Better than feared, Karen. A little bit even better than better than feared, I think.

2:46There was a lot to like. You know, she touched on a lot of it. You know, the top line was better. I think teeny, teeny little light on YouTube, but really not not even enough to make a difference at all. Subscriptions a little bit better. That's a nice business. So I like what the commentary that I heard so far about AI, about hopefully being able to monetize that. Remember, they did talk about depreciation. So that goes into the gross margin. So that's sort of something to be aware of. Although I liked it. I think it's it's not trading up as much as one might think because it's a pretty good beat and better than feared.

3:23But remember, it's fifteen dollars off of the bottom. Now, granted, the bottom was pretty terrible. But so I'm long. I'm feeling a little like an exhale. But we still don't know. And we're not going to have any resolution in the near term on what is going to happen to search. Is it going to be dismantled? Right. So that's it. I think it's a huge exhale and I think it's a huge exhale for earnings season. And I realize this is one name, but I think it was also on a day when we happen to have heard from Amazon and NVIDIA. They reaffirmed that they're not seeing any let up in AI demand. So, I mean, you know, this is this is the story.

3:57Is CapEx falling off? What does it mean for the hyperscalers? What does it mean for NVIDIA? But but what we heard here is a story that at least for Google, I think, gets you at least comfortable with their core model. Now, ultimately, the question for Google, I still think, comes down to search and where people are once again challenging the, you know, how relevant, how potentially obsolete it could become in an AI world, et cetera, et cetera. And then you just get to Google in terms of valuation. And I would reiterate in a world where we're probably by the end of this earning season, I think I think the I think the street, I think what we're hearing from investors is that the multiple you want to put on stocks is less than it was three months ago.

4:38And when you're talking about Google, which is one of the cheapest companies in the world, certainly relative to its market cap, it's great for Google. And we we had these conversations also about Waymo. We've had these conversations we heard from Netflix about how YouTube was really outperforming in some level in terms of engagement. This is really positive stuff for Google. It's also 40. So Karen said it's 15 off the bottom. It's 40 from the top. Why are they buying back stock if they've got so much investment to do? Because it's down 15%. Because they think it's cheap. They've got tons of cash.

5:09So they can buy back. So antitrust is two years away. They've got a ton of cash. Why not just make it? So they think their best investment is to buy their own stock. Isn't that a little? I think they have enough money to invest in whatever they want to buy. They're doing whiz. That's$34 billion. That still leaves them with, I think, about$60 billion, not including the cash they got from this quarter. And so I think they can do it. They can afford to do it all. Yeah, and the only negative I would see is that search is coming in. So they used to be between 90 and 95. It's called 93. Now they're around 90.

5:46I think people are going to the perplexities. People are going elsewhere. where they have their own AI, but I think it's cutting into them a bit. At least for this quarter, as Mark Twain once said, the rumors of his death greatly exaggerated. And that's the same thing. You see what I did there? You are a philosopher, Diane. It's great. We expect those things. No, do you? You don't even flinch anymore. It's lovely. Thank you, Tim. I appreciate that. And I'll say this. I don't know what this one was, but maybe I should hire these guys and guys because their hedging book was up$260 million in distribution for$23.

6:18through. I know that's not a big deal, but somebody's doing something right on the hedging front. Traded down, held the September low like a boss. I think they should be buying back stock because I do think it's cheap and I have that kind of confidence. I mean, with that low in place, I think the stock goes higher. They also can't do huge acquisitions anyway. I mean, it's all going to be small. Their hands are tied. Yeah, their hands are tied. They've got to do something with that. I just meant in CapEx. Is there other stuff that you could do under? Even with that, though, they're doing$75 billion-ish, give or take, of CapEx.

6:46So I don't know. This read through from Meta, though, is very, very good. Very, very. Yeah, very positive. Right. I wonder what they're going to say about China in terms of advertising. I mean, everything seems to be good. But going forward, six percent of their advertising revenue is China related. A lot of it, Timu and Shein. And we know that the de minimis loopholes might be closed and therefore that revenue stream might be shut off. Yeah, of course. And they have every reason to at least communicate that kind of caution in this environment. But again, I guess, you know, the revenue on cloud came in at 28.1 percent, more or less in line.

7:21I think that's that's a huge relief. Again, we're talking also about really high margin business that I think in some level for Google, their cloud doesn't get the benefit of the margin uplift that AWS gives to Amazon. And I think that's at some point part of why you want to own Google. All right. For more on Google, let's bring in Fast Money friend and deep water asset management managing partner, Jean Munster. Jean, great to see you. Hello, Melissa. Good but not great, you say? Because growth is slowing. Good but not great. We didn't get any clarity on that critical question that we're all talking about, what's going to happen with search?

7:54I just want to put some quick parameters on that. A year ago, GPT, 200 million weekly users. It's probably about 600 million weeklies today. I mean, that is off the charts growth. At the same time, if we compare that to what Google said on the call related to monetization of ai overviews it's basically unchanged over the past few months and so the users are going up they're rolling out to more countries but in other words we still haven't learned much about how this whole search question comes out besides the other competitors gpt in particular grok are getting a ton of traction grok top app and ios and android store and so i think melissa as i say good but not great, it's going to be really tough for long-term investors to get comfortable that this, in fact, is going to move in a different direction over the next few years.

8:48They've been at it two years now and still aren't seeing meaningful uptake. And if I was going to kind of put this on the most basic terms, Google is becoming eBay effectively. Its energy is getting zapped out before eBay. It was Amazon kind of taking its energy out. Now it's GPT, Anthropic, and Grok doing the same. So, do you think that this is just early innings and so there's time for Alphabet to catch up in this? What's your takeaway from all this then for Google's AI business? I think it's going to be a very, it's going to be a tough road. And so I've been positive on this for a long time and I've shifted my view more recently.

9:28And specifically, just the question about, it's not just about having a great chat bot. The problem is that they've got a trillion-dollar search business that they have to somehow create a monetization that feels a lot like what everybody wants right now, which is a really simple result. And so not only are you facing competition for these other bots, but you also have to answer this question about the monetization. And so my sense is that Google is going to be an important part of our lives for a long time. 2 billion daily users over 2 billion, they said. That's not going away. eBay's didn't go away either.

10:03eBay's a$30 billion company today. And so I think that this one's going to be really tough over the next several years. And just to kind of put a bow on it, I don't know what a long-term, again, what a long-term investor is going to pull out of tonight that's going to make them comfortable that they're going to successfully navigate that monetization question. It's interesting, Gene, because what you're saying there is hauntingly familiar to what Ben Wrightsy said about a month and a half or two months ago. And he used a comparison of Google to Eastman Kodak, which I thought was an interesting choice by him.

10:35And I'm not pushing you down that road, but you're saying similar things. Yeah, it's, again, a company that's near and dear to all of us. But let's just rewind and look at what's happened for the surge growth over the last year. March of 2023 or 2024, it was 14 % growth, 14. And it's just continued to go down. It's 10%. YouTube, kind of the same trend. And so a really important company that's just not growing, that still has a really big question to answer, just like eBay had a question to answer, was they were a third party. Amazon was coming in as a first party doing fulfillment. They had to make a hard decision about how to go after that.

11:12They stuck to their road, and that's where they are today. Gene, it's Karen. Thanks for being on. So a lot has been said about breaking up Google, but what about not I'm not talking about from an antitrust standpoint. I'm talking about actually letting the pieces float or spin or whatever, however you want to do it. What do you think of that as a possibility? And what would you be in favor? Yeah, to unlock some of the value at this point, I think there's probably some mechanics around that. Now, on the Chrome side, it didn't seem like there was much of a bidder, but OpenAI wants to bid for that.

11:46I think that just shows you how these two companies are fighting for the consumer. That's the bid on Chrome. So Karen, I think that there are opportunities to kind of spin these out. I still think that the central question, it's kind of like Intel, is like, what's your central question? How are they going to grow, compete in the AI? We know what it is in the central question relative to search, and I think a breakup isn't going to change that equation. All right. Gene, thank you. Thank you. Keep us posted on the conference call. Gene Munster, Deepwater Asset Management. Gene had mentioned the comparison to eBay.

12:20I thought that was interesting since they spun out PayPal, and PayPal was a very fast-growing part of the business, and it really unlocked the value of PayPal. That was a P and Blysep, by the way, so that's why I naturally turned to you. It was a P and Blysep, but I'm glad we brought it up again. I'm someone that plays the acronym game the way it's supposed to be played, an acronym car, and that's okay. Look, I guess I don't agree with that. I guess it's a very obvious. Let me restate that. It's not obvious. And I understand where people are going with this. But I also part of the reason I feel comfortable with Google is I think that's priced in.

12:53I think the market at a time when you've seen multiples put on the mag, the rest of the mag seven that I think are put them into kind of a new era over the last couple of years in terms of even a higher multiple relative to themselves. I look at the pieces of the Google business, including YouTube, which on a really tough comp is now 10 percent of revenues. It's not insignificant, but I think it could be 20 because based upon the strength of it, not because the rest of the business is is is falling. So I just an environment to me where I think it's a lot easier to hold. It's a lot easier to hold Google when I look at the mag seven.

13:24The numbers here today are, I think, going into next week, which is really important with Amazon and Microsoft next week and then later Apple. And then, you know, it's it's pretty positive. By the way, speaking of mag seven, we had the stock draft today over in Anglewood. It was a very exciting day. And it was, you know, Guy Adami was teamed up with Sebastian Maniscalco, which. What a pairing. Talk about twin sons of different mothers. I mean, look at that. I mean, how great is that? I mean, these guys separated at birth. Well, he's Sicilian. I'm Sicilian. Right. Lovely conversation. You know, you made fun of me last night.

14:00I said, Sebastian and I had a lovely conversation. Turns out we had a lovely conversation. And your kicks were mag, firmly mag seven. They were mag seven. Firmly. This whole thing relates to this seeming tangent. And Guy, being the humble man that he is, wanted to take zero credit for those picks. I believe him, by the way. Sebastian, the guy does his homework. He watches Fast Money all the time. And the bottom line is he made the call on those companies based upon he was looking at valuation. He was looking at where they are relative to the cycle. And Guy was just tagging along. As I typically do.

14:28As I do often on this show. But I'll say this as well to sort of piggyback on some of Tim's earlier comments about Google. What Gene is saying could absolutely be true, but it's not happening over the next couple of weeks. I mean, this is probably longer term stuff. In the here and now, Google just proved, you know what, things are OK. Valuation is OK. They seem to be pretty convinced that they're headed in the right direction. The stocks should bounce from these levels. All right. We are also getting results from Intel after hours. The chipmaker lower despite beating on the top and the bottom lines.

14:55The conference call kicking off at the top of the hour. Christina Parts and Nevelis has got the latest. Hey, Christina. Hi, Melissa. So, well, the earnings made is partly driven by demand being pulled forward due to looming tariffs. Like you said, the call just started, but I actually spoke to Intel's CFO about an hour ago, and he acknowledged likely, quote, pull ahead purchases. And that uncertainty is adding to the weak guidance you alluded to. The company is cutting 2025 OPEX from$17.5 billion to$17 billion, including workforce reductions, which will begin in Q2 and move quickly over the next several months.

15:26Quote, the CFO said, we have not come up with a number. And he said that despite the 20 percent number that was reported just a few days ago. CEO Liputan releasing a memo telling employees they're required to be back in the office four days a week starting September 1st. The CEO has only been in the role for about five weeks or so. But in this memo, he's calling it the, quote, most challenging role of his career. He plans to streamline management layers across the organization while refining their AI strategy. And lastly, on the call, the CFO call with me, he said that they remain committed to their foundry business while planning to cut non-core products.

16:01Didn't specify specifically what he meant by non-core, but said they have about 10 to 15 non-core products. So a lot of news, but yet the shares price is still down about 5 percent. All right, Christina, thank you. Christina Parts and Nevelis. Steve Grasso, what do you make of this quarter? So I own it and I would be a buyer here. You buy these companies because the CEO. You buy ServiceNow because of Bill McDermott. You used to buy T-Mobile because of John Ledger. You buy it now because of Mike Sievert. You buy the story. When he was at Cadence Design, the stock was up 3 ,200%. That's what I'm buying here.

16:33I'm buying a turnaround. This was, I hate using the term kitchen sink, but this is the bottom, I think, in Intel. I'm looking for efficiencies. I'm looking for spend the right way. That Silver Lake injection of over$3 billion, I think, helps. The commitment, though, to the foundry business, that's a big capital drain. I mean, people were looking to them to maybe co-manufacture with a Taiwan Semi or something like that. Offload some of the burden of the foundry business. I think capital and balance sheet are a really important part of this story. And I recognize that think of the world we live in, think about what's going on with tariffs.

17:05It really almost seems like it was all about companies like Intel falling so far behind Taiwan Semi and global players. So I know they have to have an important role going forward. I wonder how they're going to do it. And I agree with Steve that the CEO is certainly, for the first time, you've got a CEO at the helm that you believe can engineer a turnaround. But this is a turnaround that is so extraordinary that I think you have to be patient. I'm intrigued by the kitchen sink part of it. Why not, right? It's free. It's of any environment. This is the one to just say, you know, we can't give you any guide, anything like that.

17:38Look at the quarter. And I agree this second quarter guide was not good, but why one day to everybody's point. But when was the last time, and I'm sure somebody will at me, their data center was up almost 8 % year over year. That's been a huge drag for a long time. So seemingly there is a little bit of a turnaround going on. And if that is a sandbag, I think Intel is pretty interesting right here. Well, the latest batch of tech earnings coming on the heels of another strong day for the markets. The S &P jumping 2%, the Dow adding nearly 500 points, and the Nasdaq leaving the charge surging 2.7%.

18:08It's a third straight day that the tech-heavy index has posted a gain of more than 2%. It's only done that four times in history, most recently in April 2001. The Nasdaq now down less than 1 % this month. So what will today's earnings do for the recent momentum that we've had? You alluded to it. It's good news, particularly ahead of all of the other big tech earnings that we're looking for next week. Yeah, I think we could. This is a time, I think, to talk as much about just some of the technical dynamics of the market. I mean, we've had a 12.5 % rally in the S &P off that intraday low on the 7th.

18:40It's pretty remarkable. Now, we're right up at the top end of a down channel that goes back to Feb 21 and for semis back to Jan 7th. So that's what's fascinating to me. I think if you look at the move that the markets had and there's some arguments and I'm reading some pretty interesting data out there that a lot of the sell off has been all about hedge fund repositioning. And then CTA is following them that you haven't heard retail sell. You haven't necessarily seen foreigners leave our markets. And those are two points that are either, oh, that's really bullish or it's actually very bearish because you haven't seen the type of capitulation that you could see.

19:13It's shocking that it's almost back to flat-ish. That's sort of amazing. This is so much worse, though, than flat or flat-ish or down slightly. It's like staying flat. Yes. That's way, way less treacherous than this. I look at it and, you know, 5 ,500. Steve's talked about this. I think we've collectively mentioned. This is basically that 50 percent retracement of that low that we made, by the way, which was the bottom of a three or four year trend line, I think, from 2020 or so. So we held the trend line that we should have, the uptrend. Problem is what we've seen here is just, I think, a textbook retracement.

19:48I don't think we're out of the woods yet, though, Mel. So we're above the 20 day moving average, which is your momentum indicator. The 50 day moving average is 5646. So that's the big one that we have to breach or cross over to the upside. Look at a long-term chart in the S &P. We've had collectively across this desk every crisis. This is going to be another one that the market shrugs off, and I think we're going to be at 6 ,000 pretty quickly. Pretty quickly? Like when? Four months. Four to six months. Is that quickly? I don't know. I thought you were going to say Thursday. Yeah, not Thursday.

20:23500 plus points. Not Thursday, but it's... Okay, four to six months. All right. Always love interesting calls. Yeah, get out there. Coming up, more after hours action to bring you Gilead, Gilead, Agnico Eagle, T-Mobile and Boston Beer all on the move after reporting the details and numbers out of the quarters next. And the latest on tariff talks or lack thereof, the contradicting comments from President Trump and China and what it all means for the state of trade. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money's back in two. Welcome back to Fast Money Earnings Alert on Gilead. The stock falling after reporting an earnings beat but revenue missed.

20:57Angelica Peoples joins us now with more on the quarter. Angelica. Hey, Melissa. Yes, this was really a mixed Q1 for Gilead. In HIV, Descovy for HIV prevention beat estimates, but Biktarvi for treatment came up short. In oncology, Yaskarta beat, but then Tridelvi. That missed by almost$54 million. And they reaffirmed their full year sales and adjusted EPS guidance. And they're saying that that guidance did include what we know, the known tariffs at this point and how that will increase the input costs. And they're saying that it does not include any potential pharma-specific tariffs. Of course, we are watching for those, but we haven't gotten any of them yet.

21:37So we'll have to see. And that can, of course, change throughout the year. Guys? Do they have manufacturing overseas? I'm just trying to figure out what sort of potential exposure they might have. So they do have manufacturing overseas, but they are really making the case on the call that's still going on right now that they are less exposed than some other pharmaceutical companies They're saying that the majority of their manufacturing is here in the U.S. and that also their IP is domiciled here. And they're saying that 80 percent of their profits are recognized in the U.S., which would make them less exposed than some other companies.

22:10Of course, it is a very complicated supply chain. And they note that it's not necessarily all in the U.S., but they are trying to paint that picture that they are less exposed than some others. All right. Angelica, thank you. Angelica Peebles. In fact, Cantor coming out with a note, I think it was today, basically putting out their top picks that are the least exposed to tariffs. Gilead is one of them. Vertex is another. They're saying that Vertex has no overseas manufacturing. It's all manufacturing in the United States. AbbVie, another one. Regeneron. But obviously, this is a huge issue hanging over the group.