Apple’s Latest Hardware Updates… And A Buyback Bump 9/9/25

0:00Hi, it's Melissa. Before we jump into today's show, I've got something exciting to share. On December 11th, we are hosting a special edition of Fast Money Live, trading the holidays right here at the NASDAQ Market Site. You get to watch a live taping of Fast Money, meet and interact with the traders, and, of course, celebrate the holiday season with us. It's stocks and cheers in the heart of the city, Times Square in December. You will not want to miss this. Tickets are available now at CNBCEvents.com slash Fast Money. Live in the NASDAQ Market Site in the heart of New York City's Times Square, this is Fast Money.

0:29Here's what's on tap tonight. Oracle's monster move, shares surging after the company posted 1 ,500 percent growth in its multi-cloud business. Is this the sign investors needed to see there's even more room to run in the AI trade? Plus, a spotlight on Apple, the tech giant unveiling its latest slate of iPhones, watches, AirPods and more. But investors didn't seem too impressed with what they saw, how the company missed the mark and what it could mean for the stock from here. And Jamie Dimon's warning, the JP Morgan CEO saying right here on CNBC that the economy is getting weaker. what he sees for growth and how investors could get impacted.

1:03I'm Melissa Lee. Come to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Tim Seymour, Karen Feynman, Courtney Garcia, and Stuart Kaiser, head of equity trading strategy at Citi. And we'll get to Apple's big event later in the show, but we start off with Oracle surging to new records after reporting some blockbuster growth in multi-cloud database revenues. The earnings call just getting started. Our Mackenzie Cigales has got the very latest. Mac. Hey, Mel. So Oracle is jumping in the post market as investors look past a slight earnings miss and zero in on its AI and multi-cloud momentum.

1:34Database revenue from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft growing more than 1 ,500 % in its fiscal Q1, while cloud infrastructure revenue, one of its fastest-growing businesses, jumped 55 % in the quarter. And then looking ahead, Oracle's contracted backlog. This is the cleanest proxy for future growth. It climbed more than 350 % from last year to nearly half a trillion dollars. Part of what's driving momentum here is a$30 billion deal with OpenAI to expand U.S. data center capacity and a new partnership to run Google's Gemini AI models on Oracle's cloud. Now, the company's earnings call that just got started.

2:11We'll keep an ear out for additional guidance and color from Larry Ellison and CEO Safra Katz. Mel? All right, Mac, thanks. Mackenzie Cigalos. the quarter itself was not much to write home about, but it is a guidance, Karen, and the notion that, you know, if the street was expecting 180 percent growth in RPOs, remaining performance obligations, and it came in at 359, that's a magnitude higher. Yes, it's staggering. And so we were talking a little bit before the show about, OK, this is a stratospheric number and what you could put out half a stratosphere and still really, you know, have something extraordinary to report.

2:47So you must feel extremely confident in reaching that stratospheric number. I mean, it really is kind of stunning that we're, I don't know what inning, two, three, maybe, but to have this, you know, monumental shift. So what is the profitability going to be? We don't know that. So that's an open question. But I mean, this is just stunning. I don't know how else to think about it. Extraordinarily huge. We'll see how much actually comes to pass, but they sound like for the next few years, this is what they expect the revenue growth to be. Yeah. And I think that the next few years is what makes this so extraordinary.

3:22$3.59 growth on the RPOs is great and crazy. And we've heard some analysts wax as if this is the craziest day they've ever seen. I would just put it as if you have that kind of visibility of almost 70 percent CAGR out to fiscal 30, that to me is astounding. That to me is where this is a number that at least imputes into a number of other companies out there that must be seeing the same thing. And while I would argue that Oracle has tended to have a few more pom-poms in their releases than other companies, and they really have, I think it's very difficult to dispute the energy and the momentum and the transformation in their business, which we've talked about, which is very much seeking a wider revenue base, maybe at less margin.

4:06This is very impressive. Op margins right now, 41 and a half. Let's see where they go. The fact that they are also in a place where they will actually have Google Gemini on their cloud infrastructure, the fact that they are now competing in the same space as some of the other trillion dollar companies means it feels like this is a company that wants to get there. Yeah, clearly what you're saying is the AI demand is there. I mean, when you see this kind of backlog increase, like people are still spending on AI. And I think something you do want to maybe watch for here is the CapEx, right? I mean, they went from about under$2 billion of CapEx in 2020 to over$21 billion last year.

4:42That's presumably going up when you have this kind of a backlog. And I think that's the question when you look at these companies is clearly the markets don't care about these high CapEx numbers. They don't care the valuations are much higher than their longer term averages, but at some point they probably will. So I think in the short term, these kind of numbers are absolutely going to bring the stock higher. But I do think that's something you want to watch in the space as we move forward. I mean, it's just amazing that yesterday's narrative was, is AI adoption slowing? And then here we are today.

5:06We've got this huge, massive number, a forecast into the future, which really reaffirms the notion that AI spend is here to stay at least for the next five years. Yeah. I mean, I think it's what we were joking before. It's classic AI earnings report, right? Miss earnings, miss revenues guide up and the stock explodes higher. I also think it kind of continues this recent trend out of semis into other parts of the AI trade, right? And this type of result, I think, is just going to kind of further that momentum into the software space and obviously into power generation as well. I mean, where the stock has come also is staggering.

5:38If you consider that at the beginning, you know, since June, the stock is up 40 percent. So it's not like it hasn't had a run into this quarter. It has had that run into the quarter. And yet here we are still investors bidding it higher. I mean, there are probably some analysts who argue, and it might be right, the stock is better here today than it was yesterday at this price. it's hard for me to buy something up that much. I mean, it's not a short squeeze. There's like a tiny short interest here. That's not, I mean, it's just wild bullishness. And if you look at like a core weave, right, you could see how, I mean, that's up five or 6 % in the after hours.

6:14Right, right, right. But I mean, 27 and a half percent, it's just an extraordinary percent for such a big company to move in a single session. I don't think Oracle is over-owned when you look at least how people have sought to get their exposure across AI and tech and semiconductors. And as Stuart said, this is part of a rotation. We talked about this. We talked about this with Broadcom. We've talked about that we are seeing some rotation in the space. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's less exciting for the folks we were talking about yesterday. It just means that there are more people. And again, if you asked a lot of retail investors, and I would say even a few handful of institutions, the names they were going to not be caught underweight were going to be the obvious ones.

6:54Oracle wasn't in that basket. Let's be clear. And now getting up near, I don't know, what's the market cap here? North of 400 billion? 800 billion. I mean, 800 billion. So this is a case where this company now is not only a must own, but it's a case where in the last even call it 15 months, this market cap has tripled. And that's something that I think a lot of people don't have exposure to. I mean, prior to its cloud business, between 2012 and 2022, sales growth averaged 1.6 percent. And now what are we looking at? I mean, it's just an extraordinary remaking of the business here. Yeah, and to that point, it almost continues this game we've been playing about who are the AI winners and who are the AI losers, right?

7:33Like Oracle might have been in the less winners camp and is now kind of in the more winners camp as well. It is stunning. Look at last earnings season. You went into the earnings season, MAG-70 PS growth forecast mid-teens coming out of the quarter. It's mid-20s, right? So it's just massive, massive upside to all of these numbers. And again, I do think it's really hard to pick the winners and the losers because they switch seats pretty quickly. Yeah, we got a news alert here we do want to get to. New calls for tariffs out of the White House. Megan Cassell's got the details here. Megan. Hey, Melissa.

8:03So this was initially a Financial Times report saying that the U.S. is asking the European Union to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on India and China as part of a joint effort to try to pressure Russia to end its war in Ukraine. I can also say just in the last moment as I was coming on here, I can confirm on background as a source familiar that, yes, the White House has asked the EU to put these tariffs on China and India over Russian oil. Now, the FT reporting goes a little bit further. It also says, according to a U.S. official, that the U.S. says they would be prepared to mirror any tariffs that the EU imposes on Russia or China of up to 100 percent.

8:41So that's really significant here. They're saying that if the EU were to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on Russia or China over this, that the U.S. would match it, a potential for real escalation there, again, between the U.S. and Chinese, similar to what we saw earlier this spring. Melissa? All right, Megan, thanks. Megan Casella, what do you make of that, trying to squeeze them, basically, through tariffs? Well, Russian oil has been finding its way to India and China for years. It's interesting. Also, last time I checked, we have all kinds of sanctions against Russia, as do the EU. So, you know, tariff dynamics, there's very little the EU is importing from Russia.

9:19It is very clear that what, you know, certainly upon the invasion of Ukraine, what had to happen was a scramble to get nat gas and to get other forms of energy across other places. Like, I think it's I think it's fantastic. If you think about the relationship Russia has had with with China and India, China and India are the places where their demand for oil continues to go higher. If you look at a world where there has been plateauing of at least developed country growth, India's greatest import cost is oil. The fact that China and Rosneft did a big deal, you know, 10 years ago when I was a lot more focused on Russia, this is all in place for a long time, the fact they're going after it now.

9:57I don't think it's going to do anything to pressure Putin. I do think it's important to get everybody on the same side of the boat. All right. Meet you, Tom. We do want to get to Alphabet shares jumping to another all-time high. This after Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian made some bullish comments on the company's Gemini AI, saying that nine of the top 10 AI labs and nearly all of AI unicorns are customers and that more than half of its$106 billion in backlog will convert into revenue in the next two years. Alphabet shares up more than 12 % already this month. Courtney, this is certainly, I mean, this is all part of this sort of positivity coming out of the AI trade today.

10:32Yeah, I mean, it's very similar to the Oracle story where you were clearly seeing that AI demand is there and investors still want to invest in it, right? And I think with Google, one of the biggest things that was overhanging them was the antitrust ruling. And I think now that that has gone in their favor, that's really kind of lifted a cap. And it's invited a lot of investors here to come in, and they're really rewarding Google with that. So, again, I think a lot is probably going to continue. Investors are really excited about this trend. Is that where you should be pouring all your money? That's another question.

10:59Is it where it's going? Yes, it is. In the Mag7 space, though, Google is still the cheapest despite this very big run up. I mean, it's still a just tiny bit over a market multiple for a company that really has so much more going for it than your average market stock. So, I mean, the margins here are extraordinary. We still have a couple little things out there on antitrust, but the big ones are gone. And then the question, of course, of search. But all that Waymo and YouTube. I know YouTube is on fire. You get enough embedded credit, I think, in Google. So I like it staying long. I mean, YouTube is Netflix's biggest competitor at this point.

11:41It's bigger than they have much greater percentage of consumption hours out there. And demographically, it's it seems like it's actually YouTube game. I'm not arguing against the move that Netflix has had. But some of the parts we've talked about this would probably be positive for Google in the long run, even though the news of the last two weeks means you can actually just pile it all into the same holding company. Yeah. I mean, Google is a good example. Two, a couple of years ago, will AI kill search? Right. And now, you know, Heath Terry on our side did a hundred seventy five page report on AI.

12:13And Google comes out at the top of the stack across the most kind of AI verticals, if you would put it that way. So I do agree with Karen. I think AI, I think Google is way underestimated in terms of how many different levers they have to pull in this trade. And again, it's a shift from where we were a couple of years ago in terms of they might be a threat from this. All right. Let's get back to Mackenzie Cigales. It's got more from the Oracle conference call. Mac. Hey, Mel. So we're hearing from CEO Safra Katz now. They expect for fiscal year 2026 an updated CapEx spend of around$35 billion, adding that demand continues to dramatically outstrip supply.

12:47We also got some guidance here. They expect cloud infrastructure to grow 77 percent to 18 billion dollars this fiscal year. And projecting that out four years from now, 144 billion dollars over the following four years. Still listening in. So I'll come back to you when I have more. All right, Mac, thanks. Mackenzie Cigalos. Let's get more on both Oracle results and Google's big run. We're joined by Gil Loria, the managing director at D.A. Davidson. We know that you're on the last hour in overtime, Gil, and you've had some time now to digest the numbers. Are we going to look back on this day and say this is the day that Oracle got re-rated?

13:23Yes, the number is staggering. That$144 billion number five years out is absolutely staggering. That means that they will grow that business 10x in the next five years. So plenty of reason to get excited. Let me talk about a couple of things that we do need to consider here. So one of them is that what's happened, and this has happened dramatically over the last couple of years, is that the big hyperscalers, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, have gone through a strategy of offloading their capacity to other data center providers. That's the big Nebius deal. Those were the CoreWeave deals.

14:02And now all three of them are taking their capacity and putting it on Oracle. These are not organic customers to Oracle. This is Microsoft, Google, and Amazon's customers that will use Oracle capacity. So we have a shift of where the capacity is coming from. So let's keep that in mind. And those are the big deals that Oracle is now putting in its backlog. That's one. Two is, it's very unlikely that they're going to get to$144 billion of revenue in five years. The bottlenecks to get there are very significant. Electricity, we're going to run out as early as next year. We're not going to be able to 10x electricity capacity in the next five years.

14:44Chips. There's only so much that can come through TSMC, whether it's NVIDIA chips or Broadcom chips. TSMC can only grow so fast. And then finally, capital. All these companies are now relying on the ability to borrow tens of billions. And now we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that were previously not coming through the debt markets. So there's going to be competition for that debt capital, not just between Oracle and CoreWeave and Nebius and Crusoe and Lambda, but Meta is now going to the debt markets to borrow. Elon is going to the debt markets to borrow to fund data center capacity.

15:23So we're going to have multiple bottlenecks that mean we will continue to grow compute, but we're not going to 10x it in the next five years. So there are a lot of asterisks, basically, surrounding Oracle's guide. How much do you then put into your model and where does that get you in terms of P.E. or price target? Yeah. So what's important is that next year's number will be a lot higher. So we are all going to increase our numbers. Now, keep in mind, this revenue is coming in at a very low, if not negligible margin, where the revenue that most of Oracle's revenue is declining and going away at 50 percent margin.

16:00So the makeshift is very dramatically lower. That's why they missed. That's why earnings growth is not going to be anywhere near the revenue growth. But it doesn't matter. As long as the margins are positive, we're all going to be increasing our numbers based on this. And the valuation should be going up. The reaction to the stock is very understandable. Gill, it's Karen. Thanks so much for being on. Can you just drill down a little more on that margin from this kind of business versus the higher margin business you talked about? What is it? One, two percent, two or three? What are you thinking?

16:34Yeah, so even Amazon Web Services, which is the biggest hyperscaler, has talked about the GPU business being a very low margin business. Oracle Cloud is at an order of magnitude smaller and the lowest price provider. So they are willing to accept very low margins. So, yes, I would say it's very likely to come in at single digit margins, especially for the next few years. Again, as the mix is going from 50 percent margin, it's going to go to low single digit margins. But again, positive margins on revenue that that is incremental. And that's what they're focused on. Gil, I have to ask you this because we talked about Alphabet and you cover both stocks.

17:18Which which do you prefer right now? Which would you recommend to investors based on what Oracle has guided and what Google has said during the Communicopia conference? Yeah, Microsoft. Microsoft's growing Azure 39%. It is by far the leader. And again, it's the first one to figure out that it doesn't have to do all the CapEx. It can put the CapEx on Oracle and CoreWeave and Nebius and others and still get the customers paying it. It marks that up. It continues to grow. And again, it's leading the way because it's not only growing that business faster than Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, but it's attaching a lot more revenue around that.

17:58So they are the winner. With Google, we all understand, and I think you talked about the sum of the parts argument, that they have all these wonderful properties that should be standalone. YouTube, Waymo, Google Cloud. They should be selling TPUs. They'd be the number two provider in that market. But realistically speaking, that negative catalyst to Google hasn't happened yet. It wasn't about the DOJ, the negative catalyst that we need to be aware of is the day ChatGPT turns on ads. Because ChatGPT within a year is going to have a billion MAUs. It may even have a million daily active users within a year.

18:35At that point, they're going to turn on ads. And all of a sudden, all those advertisers that are 100 % Google search are going to have an alternative. And very quickly, those guys are going to rebalance. And so there really is still a threat to Google search. They are so much better off spitting off those rest of the businesses. All those businesses I mentioned would be the leaders in their category. All right, Gil, great to speak with you. Thank you. Gil Loria, DA Davidson, Oracle Stocks still holding on to that eye-popping 26 percent gain on the back of earnings. We're on the conference call.

19:08We'll continue to bring you any headlines that move the stock. Meantime, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon raising concerns about the economy in an exclusive CNBC interview earlier today. The economy is weakening. You know, whether that is on the way to recession or just weakening, I don't know. And that just confirms what we already thought. Those comments after the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the biggest adjustment to jobs numbers on record, saying non-farm payrolls grew by 911 ,000 less than previously reported in the 12 months through March. Yet the Dow, S &P and Nasdaq all closed at record highs today.

19:45So almost no response. Bond market also fairly quiet. Were you surprised at sort of the, you know, uh? No. I was surprised at the market or Jamie's comments you're talking about. Either. I'll talk about Jamie, of course. I'd rather do that. Yeah. Well, this is his job is to say, all right, no, you know, we've got to be sober here because things could end up turning quickly. And that's his job to be, to not be irrationally exuberant or exuberant at all. And so I don't take that as though the economy is really slowing. The payroll number and the bonds market's reaction to it did surprise me a little bit.

20:23I mean, I saw the dollar weaken, but then the dollar found some footing, and yet yields were higher. I don't know. Stu? Yeah, I was a little surprised, honestly, when the numbers came out. You had like a two or three basis point move in the two-year. It wasn't particularly significant. it. You know, in terms of Jamie Dimon, I agree their job is to kind of like talk stuff down. But I think the point he made in the middle of that statement is the most important one, which is we are slowing. We just don't know where it's going to end up. Right. And I think the investor base case now is you slow but avoid a recession.

20:54You have now have negative job growth in June, for instance, and you brought your three month average down to a level that's kind of troubling. So I think what he's really describing is there's really poor risk reward right now around the path of economic growth over the next three to six months. He's being cautious about it. To Karen's point, investors are not being cautious about that. And part of that's AI. But in general, I think equity markets are probably more bullish on economic growth than the economy itself seems to be. Yeah. I mean, PPI and CPI coming later this week. Yep. That'll really shape the discussion here.

21:23One of the more interesting discussions out there is not the year-end target on the S &P or where you think how many Fed cuts. It's talking to economists and strategists about where they actually think we are in the economic cycle. I mean, I've got people late cycle. I've got people early cycle. I've got people all over the map. And that is really the biggest question to ask, because if we're slowing down and we've actually been oscillating, look, a year ago, September, we cut 50 bps because we thought the labor market was falling apart. And it really didn't, although maybe it wasn't as strong.

21:51That's the big thing. Did bond yields actually sell off a little bit today? Because ultimately, if the economy is weakening and we're doing everything to cut revenue for the government and stimulate and whatnot, that's probably bond negative, even though the flight to quality is what you should expect. By the way, if we really have a scare, I think the U.S. is still the flight to quality out there. I think you want to be buying the 10-year. Yeah, and I think we definitely have a lot of conflicting data out there. I don't think there's any argument against that. But when you came to these revisions today, this is backwards-looking data.

22:20And I think that's why the markets really aren't as concerned about it, because we're looking back, especially as we were coming up to tariffs and just a lot of uncertainty for employers, where, of course, they weren't hiring. So now you're saying, OK, maybe that's not relevant in today's labor market. I think that's really why the markets are looking past this. You have to look at the data in agri. You have to look at what GDP numbers are, how the consumer is coming in. And even though Jamie Dimon talked about the economy weakening, they talk about how strong the consumer is right now. So I think you kind of have to pick and choose what it is.

22:47But I would say there's probably a little bit more positive data on the overall economy than negative right now. All right. We will hear, by the way, from more big bank CEOs tomorrow. Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf will be on Squawk Box 8, 10 a.m. Eastern Time. And Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO David Solomon will join closing bell overtime 4 p.m. Eastern, all right here on CNBC. Coming up, a major move higher for UnitedHealth with the insurance giant sees for next year's enrollment that has investors piling in. Don't go anywhere. Fast Money is back in two. Welcome back to Fast Money. Shares of UnitedHealth jumping more than 8 percent today.