Fast Money 9/24/25

0:02Live from the Nasdaq market state in the heart of New York City's Times Square this is fast money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Another investment in Intel, the semi-giant reportedly turning to Apple for its next team up, what it could mean for the stock and how Wall Street is looking at the name now. And nearly$9 billion bears, minority stakes setting an eye-popping valuation for Chicago's NFL team, the precedent it sets for future team sales. Plus, all the details on KB Home's latest earnings, the guidance that sends shares of Copperminer, Preport Mac Moran sinking and driving higher. Shares of GM getting a boost thanks to a bullish call from Wall Street by one analyst sees the stock revving up.

0:38I'm Melissa Lee. Come to you last in the studio of the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, C. Grasso, Karen Feinerman, Dan Nathan, and Bono in Eisen. We start off with what could be another big investment in Intel. Bloomberg reporting the company is seeking funding from Apple to help its turnaround efforts. It would be just the latest in a string of cash infusions. Our Christina Parts and Eblis is here on set with details here. Christina, what do we know so far? This is a potential investment that could be seen as a comeback of sorts for Intel. And the reason I say that is because, like you said, Bloomberg did put out this report just within the last 45 minutes or so, saying that they are in the early stages.

1:12Nothing is confirmed yet. I did reach out to Intel myself. They are not commenting. They're quite conservative when it comes to these types of reports and headlines. But they did also say that there could be a partnership. It would be limited at the moment. Nothing significant. And I'd like to point out, too, that Apple and Intel don't actually have a relationship right now. Apple creates its own silicon. And nonetheless, you do see a positive reaction in shares. Shares closed about 6 percent higher. But if they're signing on a new customer like Apple, you would expect the stock to jump even higher, right, even if it's just a headline.

1:43So we have to take this with a grain of salt that right now this is just a beginning of a conversation with a potential partner. And maybe we can just fast forward to just the part where we have all of these investors that are investing in. You have not just too long ago, NVIDIA making a$5 billion investment. You had Intel announced Intel's largest external shareholder. You had SoftBank at$2 billion injecting it. The White House, or I should say the administration at$8.9 billion, so a 10 % stake. So you have all of these, I guess, rescue squads, that's what I called it, really representing validation maybe for Intel's turnaround at this moment.

2:20but it doesn't necessarily change the problem for Intel, which is dealing with the losses at the foundry, the slowdown in the 18A advanced manufacturing processes. But nonetheless, it's, I guess, seen as a positive if Apple signs on or even just starts talking or invests, right? It doesn't necessarily mean they need to start working together on an actual product. It's just... But not working together on an actual product and asking for just money, like cash. Well, maybe they'll do something like NVIDIA, right? So NVIDIA said that they're going to be working specifically on a PC product and a data server product.

2:50But then they had a press conference and everybody was asking, why didn't you commit to the Foundry business? Why aren't you building any NVIDIA chips? Why aren't you even using Intel Foundry for packaging? Which is, I know, Karen, something you and I spoke to just offline. Intel could do packaging quite well as TSMC has backlogged. There's just not enough capacity for putting these chips all together. Intel could maybe step in on that. But no, NVIDIA didn't. So what is Apple going to bring to this equation? Perhaps they'll announce some type of small partnership. But it's just it's a rescue squad and it's not changing the underlying problems, but it's good.

3:23And the stock, people are liking it because the stock keeps climbing because it could signal good things to come. Right. Christina, thank you. Christina Parts Nevelis. As Christina pointed out, the stock was already higher during the regular session. And that was sort of eye raising. There wasn't any news. And so maybe this is the answer to that question there, Dan. It could be that Apple sees who the rescue squad is and says to itself, let's get in line with the administration. Yeah, but Apple spent the last 20 years trying to get away from Intel. I mean, let's be really clear. And KPAR just said this.

3:53I mean, less than 1 % of the revenue comes from Apple. So Apple has been designing all their own silicon. I think the only legacy sort of Qualcomm has like a modem in the iPhone, and they've been trying to do that. So at the end of the day, it is curious, especially if it's not for Foundry. I mean, Apple does have most of their chips are made at Taiwan Semi, which is the case for most chips that are out there on the planet. it. So it's curious. The one thing I'll say about Intel is that there are very few stocks in the S &P 500 with over a hundred billion dollar market cap that are as hated as much as this stock by Wall Street.

4:26I think there's only five buys. There's about four holds and like eight or so sells. So when you think about that, this is really I love the term rescue squad because no one's investing in this company because of their technology or their IP or their manufacturing prowess. There's something else there and I'm not really sure what it is. Yeah. And I'm with you. And I'm really curious what that something else is. I think what this does is essentially makes the pool a little bit murky. Are you investing in Intel, partnering with Intel, because you actually have a strong conviction around what that ROI or ROIC will be?

4:58Or is this a way for you to align yourself with the administration? And I just think I'd be a bit ignorant. Maybe both. Okay. Yeah? Maybe both. But my point is that, like, I certainly don't have a clear answer. And given what we're seeing in the recent positioning, the recent announcement of the White House ownership, to me, a murky picture is not what I want as an investor. Now, with that said, I think this is all tailwinds as far as the narrative is concerned. If you look at the performance of the stock over the last two years, clearly, like, you want an American turnaround, Phoenix from the Astra story.

5:31And I'm not willing to get in front of that because I do think that momentum can be quite powerful. I just do want to spend some time saying that I believe the narrative at this point has somewhat disassociated itself from the actual fundamentals of the company. Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything you said. I think, you know, the cash infusions, that helps. They need it. They're losing money, right? That's really important. So taking away some of that downside makes the calculus a little bit better. But there is this frenzy going on right now and just announcement of any kind of tie up, even with or without details, it seems like buy the stock and ask questions later, which I'm really not comfortable with that, you know, and thinking about the response.

6:07What could go wrong? What could go wrong, you know, to the NVIDIA OpenEye announcement of likelihood of a deal, I guess you would call it, expectation of a deal. I don't know. It just seems like the math is just starting to get out of whack. You know, I don't know if we'll touch on Alibaba later. Can I talk about it now? You just did. OK, so I mean, the response of the stock to this fifty three billion dollars of initial. First of all, I don't know if it's incremental or if that was always the spend. Let's just say it's somewhat incremental reaction. The stock of, you know, twenty nine billion dollars of market cap improvement for that is seems like a lot.

6:48And I like Alibaba. You know, it's fun when it goes up. But I feel like things are getting a little bit out of control. All that having been said, I am taking some money off the table either through put spreads or looking for other things to hedge what feels like a very frothy AI environment. I bought Intel on the new CEO and then three life preservers or rescue squads later, I sold 25 percent of the position. I think we can make it to mid 30s, but it's had an incredible move. This was a$50 stock back in December 2023. If it retraces half of it, it's 35. I'm going to sell the other 25 there. If it doesn't and it breaks down, I'll just liquidate the position.

7:31I get your points completely in terms of all the narratives and the question marks. But at the same time, you also have the juice potentially of a new CEO, a new CEO that is committed, has been brought on to make the story work. So that plus the life preservers, doesn't that change? If it were Pat Gelsinger still, the old CEO with these life preservers, I would agree that the narrative has not changed at all. Maybe we haven't got it. That's true. He was a technologist. I mean, these were people that were meant to do this every step of the way. I think they've had five CEOs in the last 20 years or something like that.

8:03These were not like chumps. You know what I mean? These were people meant to do this to actually figure out what's coming next, execute on that roadmap. And, you know, all the way along, I mean, AMD was eating their lunch. You know, obviously NVIDIA and GPUs. So, listen, these guys all see something. I'm just some dumb guy sits on this desk. You know what I mean? I'm looking at this thing. I'm like, they're all seeing something. I'm not buying it. But, you know, all of these equity infusions, they're all dilutive to equity shareholders. You know what I mean? So it doesn't mean that this is a great investment if you're buying the stock right here.

8:32If you are a strategic buyer like an NVIDIA or an Apple, there might be dividends that are paid that have nothing to do with the price appreciating one way or another. And the other thing I'll just say about the Alibaba, it is curious. You just mentioned that it got this market cap appreciation based on a CapEx number that they threw out there. We had seen that in the hyperscalers going back the last couple of years. Now we start to see it with those sorts of revenue guides that we're seeing like out of Oracle the last few weeks or so. So it's a little curious. I'd rather a stock go up because of revenue guide than a CapEx guide, which is way, you know, the returns on that, who knows when that's going to materialize.

9:07At the same time, the appreciation of Alibaba, you may be able to justify it a little bit more because the valuation of Alibaba is much lower than, say, Oracle or any of these other companies that have announced something and then, you know, got rewarded for it. Even with the extraordinary run of Alibaba, I think probably maybe the multiples moved to like 17 times earnings. Right. Yeah. After you take out the cap. Yeah. And then you still have some of the friction around the Hopper 20 and whether that's going to be accepted in China. So I think that there are tangible things that you can point to in terms of Alibaba.

9:38I hear you in terms of 50 some odd billion dollars translating to an increase in market cap of 30 billion overnight. Yes, that's pretty incredible. But I can at least wrap my mind around the narrative about how you get there. When it comes to Intel, the fact that the CEO has essentially just re-explored the 18A process, like undoing what was a poor investment to me is differentiated from a new winning strategy. And I've yet to understand what that is. Clearly, they've been able to kind of rally the troops and get this investment into a U.S. domicile company. But aside from that, I don't know what the deliverables are.

10:13All right. We mentioned Alibaba earlier. Shares jumping to four-year highs after the Chinese tech giant unveiled its latest AI model. Said it would invest even more into artificial intelligence than it already planned to. Our Yunus Yun is in Beijing with all the details. Yunus. Thanks, Mel. Well, Alibaba's CEO told a developer conference that spending on AI infrastructure would exceed$53 billion planned over three years. The cloud unit would open data centers in Brazil, France, the Netherlands in 2026. And the company unveiled an updated large language model. Now, this bullish outlook emboldened tech analysts to see Alibaba potentially as a serious competitor to the likes of Google and Microsoft.

10:56There could, though, be other reasons for the stock has been moving so much. One is that the state stock paper, the Securities Daily, recently headlined an article that said that the Alibaba stock rally epitomizes the strength of China tech. That was essentially encouraging a lot of Chinese investors to take the government's cues and buy into the stock. And then ARK CEO Kathy Wood had bought into Baba as well for the first time in four years. Another potential factor that Capital Economics, the research firm, pointed out was the ramping up of the national AI plus initiative. So this is essentially getting AI into everything.

11:37So it's AI plus manufacturing, AI plus health care. And so Capital Economics said we suspect there is more upside for MSCI's tech heavy China index as a country's own AI plus plan gets going. Guys. And of course, you know, there's the question of the chips that they're not probably going to come as much from NVIDIA anymore. And so it is coming from Alibaba created chips, internal chips. Yeah, well, that's what Alibaba says. But although Alibaba has also expressed an interest to maintain its relationship with NVIDIA, but that is seen as one key weakness for China's AI industry, that they don't necessarily have the chips, so then they wouldn't have the computing power.

12:24And another weakness is that a lot of people here believe that the Chinese AI industry doesn't have a lot of resources when it comes to financing. So even though the government has this big initiative that it wants to run, the local governments are kind of broke. And also private money and capital has been beaten down for so many years because of all the regulatory crackdown. So there's been kind of a reluctance on the part of VCs as well as private capital to infuse their money in a lot of different things such as AI. So that's another big factor that people have discussed as a key weakness for China's AI industry.

13:02All right, Eunice, great to see you as always. Thank you. Eunice Yun live from Beijing for us. Let's get more on the potential investment in Intel and AI. Alibaba with Susquehanna's Chris Roland. Chris, great to have you with us on a day when there's just so much chip related news in the air. I first want to get your take on this Bloomberg report that Intel has approached Apple for some sort of an investment. The stock was up curiously during the session, outsized gains relative to peers. What do you make of this report? Yeah, I think it does make sense on the surface. You know, our take right now is Intel's on a roll.

13:41Trump is behind him, of course, with that$20 Intel investment for the U.S. taxpayer. You know, they've added a bunch of guys here. SoftBank, obviously, NVIDIA as well. And really, Apple still probably owes Trump something for removing iPhones from tariffs. And so this could be, in some ways, a bit of a payback. Intel right now is also desperate to get themselves a 14A Foundry customer. And so that would presumably be linked with that investment. Hey, so Chris, the whole notion of like state capitalism, where the administration is taking stakes in strategically important companies, might you see something in like an AMD, for instance?

14:32You know, AMD is obviously trying to take market share from NVIDIA. the whole idea of having second sources or multiple producers of this technology make some sense. Are you expecting, you know, possibly any other investments by the Treasury? I am not expecting an investment in AMD. I think this is more about kind of boots on the ground, CapEx, actual manufacturing brought back to the United States, and AMD is fabulous. But there could be some manufacturing sites and related companies that the U.S. could invest in, particularly if there was a strong need. TI could be one of those companies, although I think TI is reluctant.

15:20Wolfspeed needs some money in order to continue their silicon carbide ambitions. You might see something there. But but but other than that, I think it has to be manufacturing based. Is this enough of a narrative, Chris, to be constructive on Intel, that there is a new CEO on board, that they are able to string together all these cash infusions from various parties, that the Trump administration seems to have a hand, at least on the surface, in arranging these extra lifelines to be there? I mean, is that enough? I don't know if it's enough. I think cash is good, particularly when you have these manufacturing ambitions.

16:02You need cash. But I don't know if it's enough. What they really need is a bona fide, large foundry customer and not just a one-off chip, you know, a few hundred thousand. We're talking about millions of units and a roadmap that extends through probably 2030. That's what Intel needs. And if they can share the costs of this manufacturing with their foundry customers, they might have a chance here. Chris, it's Karen. Thanks for being on. Can we talk about NVIDIA for a minute? A lot of news lately, all kinds of things. Where do you think the stock is? How do you think the stock is priced, given all the news?

16:47Yeah, I think it's priced. I think there is a little bit more upside. we could see in NVIDIA. Obviously, there's a ton of pushback right now about some of the circularity in the deal between OpenAI, NVIDIA, Oracle. Vendor-supplied financing is not a game that usually ends well. But the flip side of that coin is that the numbers that we are seeing, the projections that we are seeing are upsized. They are larger than we were anticipating. And there are more to come as well. It's not just about OpenAI. There are some other really big guys out there. Sorry to interrupt, Chris. The numbers that you are seeing in terms of the potential deals that have yet to be announced but are announced prematurely, I mean, I'm just trying to understand, you know, because a lot of this is sort of is tentative.

17:50I mean, specifically for NVIDIA and OpenAI, this is like the precursor of a deal because the details have not yet been finalized. We hear all these announcements. We don't really know the deployment of this capital or the cadence of the deployment of this capital. And so therefore, you know, as an analyst, how do you put that into your model? Sure. Some of the details are missing. You can back into using some basic assumptions, roughly what we're talking about here. So we think this is a$300 billion deal for NVIDIA. But there are more to come as well. There's Sovereign AI. There are other startups.

18:34Whether they will be on NVIDIA platforms or not, it's unclear. There is clearly a growing ASIC movement. TPU right now from Google is gaining a lot of momentum. We also have a bunch of other kind of startup infrastructure movements like MTIA from Meta and alluded to earlier the Chinese contingent, which now looks to be in country. Chris, always great to get your perspective. Appreciate it. Thanks, Melissa. Chris Rowland of Susquehanna. Just quickly, Steve, where do you stand on any of this? NVIDIA? Yeah, I do think that CapEx is unsustainable. You can't continue to spend. And they have it going out into eternity, the way that they're spending money right now.

19:26And I just think that that's something that we all have to come to grips with, that these seven companies or even 10 companies or 15 aren't going to be the only ones who benefit. We have to start broadening out that surge. Coming up, details behind copper's rise and Freeport Macquarie's drop in the week, guidance weighing on that name. But first, some after-hours action results from KB Home's latest quarter when Fast Money returns.

19:56Welcome back to Fast Money Earnings Alert on KB Home. The home builder is just down fractionally after reporting earnings and revenues that beat Wall Street estimates. Delivery is also slightly higher than expected for the quarter. The company, though, did lower its estimates for the full year housing revenues down to$6.1 to$6.2 billion from a prior guide of$6.3 to$6.5 billion. So not too much reaction here. We also got some other data in the home sector in terms of new home sales, which were up 20 percent. It was a massive increase there. Yeah, so apparently it's somewhat of a noisy figure. I mean, so KB Home's a couple of little dings.

20:33You know, average selling price, a little bit light. The backlog a little bit down. Nothing terrible. I mean, the sort of narrative around the home builders has been difficult, right? Some of the tariff things have really hit them. Some of them may be hard to get some of the labor they need. So I have exposure to the space primarily through Home Depot and Lowe's and Zillow. And Zillow this week hasn't been the right place to be. But I'm sticking with those other two. Not a bad report, though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Diana today, Diana Oleg was saying mortgage rate, 30-year fixed mortgage rates were back up to 6.37 percent.

21:09So that still is a hefty lift in terms of the buy-down of the rate by the homebuilders. You need these rates to drop to the middle fives. If they drop to the middle fives, then the lift that the homebuilders have to do is a lot less. But if rates are going down, I think you buy all of them. D.R. Horton has been the one that's outperformed. But if you go with a Pulte or a KB or the industry leader, Lenar. I agree with you. DHA is always interesting just because it has a scale. I think if you want a bit more nuanced approach, KB Homes does offer some value here. For one, it typically trades at somewhat of a discounted P.E.

21:42and price to book than the group. They also haven't had the same spec house building that you've seen some of the other players. So perhaps to Steve's point, if you start to see rates come down and they're able to lower that promotional value, I would expect it to have more of an incremental effect on their margins vis-a-vis some of the other partners. Yeah, there's another reason why rates might come down, though. And that might be the labor market. Right. Which would be a terrible thing for this sector. It wouldn't be good for housing. You know, one thing I'll just say, the stocks have run in front of the rate cuts, right?

22:09So we had a high in the 30-year, I think about two years ago, fixed mortgage at like 7.1%. So here we are, let's call it 6.4%. I mean, if we don't see yields come down meaningfully or rates for the right reasons, that's going to keep the housing market kind of stuck. But you look at the three-month average and you look at this big new home sales being, you say, that's pretty good. You know what I mean? So, I mean, maybe they're getting a bit more aggressive. That's why we're seeing these earnings misses and the like here. So it doesn't seem like, you know, this is an easy one from here. I just think they kind of run far fast in front of this.

22:39And we start having hawkish cuts the next two. I just don't see this group acting particularly well. Are you worried at all in terms of consumer discretionary spending and the pressure it might feel from a weakening labor market on a Home Depot and a Lowe's? Or is it more defensive? I think of it as more defensive. I also think, I mean, the projects will get done as long as, well, the employment thing is key, critical, of course. But I don't know. I also think the valuation, particularly for Lowe's, is not demanding, as Guy would say. And if rates come down, you get home equity loans, which helps people to make the purchases.

23:13So it's not a one-to-one with home builders. Or if rates come down, you could see those hard items like dishwashers and dryers be purchased more. And getting that inventory that's been stuck, those are Home Depot customers. It doesn't need to be a new build for someone to buy a new home and start to spend money. There's a lot more Fast Money to come. Here's what's coming up next. A mining meltdown. Freeport-McMarin forced to halt operations in Asia after a deadly mudslide. The details from the accident and the impact on copper prices. next. Plus, the next move for markets as major indexes pull back from record highs.

23:55What one top strategist sees in store for stocks after Fed Chair Jerome Powell raised a red flag on valuation. You're watching Fast Money live from the Nasdaq market side in Times Square. We're back right after this.

24:19Welcome back to Fast Money. Shares of Freeport, Mac Moran, dropping 17 percent today, the worst one-day move since the start of the pandemic. The company cutting its outlook for gold and copper sales after a mudslide halted all operations at a critical Indonesian mine earlier this month, killing at least two workers there. That news sending copper futures higher by more than 3 percent, hitting its highest level since June 30th. This is part, though, of, you know, aside from today, an overall bid for metals across the board. Gold, most specifically silver also, but also some copper showing signs of life.