Fed Decision On Deck… And Novo Nordisk Gears Up To Report 5/6/25

0:02Live 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 tale of two semi-stocks, AMD and Supermicro, moving in very different directions after their latest reports. What they have to say about the state of the AI trade. We're dialed into the calls, bringing you all the details. And slimming down, shares of Novo Nordisk dropping ahead of earnings tomorrow. What the company could say about the weight loss drug space and looming tariffs on the industry. Plus, Palantir loses its top spot at the top of the S &P leaderboard. And what we should hear from the Magic Kingdom when Disney reports tomorrow morning.

0:33And Uber readies its own Q1 report. Will it widen its gap with rival lift? We'll debate that. I'm Melissa Lee. Come to you live from the studio. Be at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Dan Nathan, Guy Dami, and Michael Schumacher, Wells Fargo Securities Global Head of Macro Strategy. Welcome to you, Michael. Well, stocks lower as investors get ready for tomorrow's Fed decision, the Dow leading the losses down almost a percent, but all three major indices extending their losses for the week. While 10-year yields tick lower, we'll get more on what to expect from the central bank in a few minutes.

1:00But we start off with a double dose of earnings from the semi-sector. AMD jumping on better than expected data center revenue while Supermicro falling after officially cutting its sales and earnings forecast for the year. Christina Parsonev, with Scott, all the details, is here on set. Hi, Christina. Hi, Melissa. I'm going to start with Supermicro because shares are under pressure, like you mentioned, over 3 % lower after the company delivered weaker guidance, even after last week's warning that they were going to do so. The CEO pointed to customer purchase delays for data center technology, though he attempted to reassure customers, or I should say everyone today in the release saying, We do expect many of those commitments to land in the June and September quarters, but cautioned that tariffs could create short-term headwinds for the AI server maker.

1:41Why are you seeing shares lower? AMD, on the other hand, popping over almost 4 % after hours on strong performance, specifically in his bread and butter business. That would be data centers and client segments. Traders are going to be listening closely on the call right now that begins about any hints about tariff-related demand pull-ins, similar to what Intel reported not too long ago. AMD's outlook is showing impressive confidence despite these headwinds, protecting$7.4 billion in sales while absorbing, and this we already know, the hefty$800 million hit from U.S. export restrictions to AI chips in China, which could be a lot bigger impact to revenue.

2:15This quarter, though, really just illustrates the tug of war playing out in AMD's business model right now. You've got traditional segment strength while China-related AI ambitions face these regulatory hurdles. Tune in, though, for more tomorrow at 9 a.m. when CEO Lisa Su joined CNBC's Squawk on the Street for her first post-earnings chat. Well, it's interesting, Christine. I mean, if you take these two reports, you can try and triangulate what NVIDIA might say on May 28th when it reports its earnings. I mean, of course, Jensen Huang spoke today. We'll get to some of that interview later on. But AMD, which is seen as sort of it would be heard more from the export restrictions out of China, actually did OK with that front.

2:52But NVIDIA is also very tied into Supermicro. So you have sort of a push and a pull dynamic. Yeah, I guess the portion of total revenues for AMD is a larger portion goes towards China. So that's the concern as well. Their latest AI chips, you know, haven't really the 300 series, MI300 series really is not up to par just yet. And so that's a concern. And there's a lot riding on the next 400 series chips that are coming out next year. So that is something for AMD to consider. Supermicro, though, what does that tell you about the company if they're delaying? Is it because of the hopper? Customers want to wait for the greatest server.

3:25Who knows at this point? You and Christina were just talking about Marvell pulling their basically June 10th investor day. I think they're postponing it. So I think about that and that juxtaposed with Christina with the fact that AMD actually gave good guidance for the next quarter. So you have to wonder how do they have that kind of clarity? I mean, I think it's encouraging because we haven't seen it in a while from AMD. And in the release, they said nothing about tariffs or a super micro blame tariffs for the short term. So you really have two sides of some saying, you know, addressing it head on.

3:53like Intel, whereas others are saying, no, we're not seeing any impact just yet, like TSMC, for example. It's also a little concerning, I would say. I don't know what your take on it. It's saying basically it's going to be sort of a back-end loaded year for Supermicro, right? A lot of these companies. How can you possibly say? I mean, if it's uncertain now, I don't know what the environment is going to be in a month or two. And yet, so then to your point, that could be applied to every single company out there. We keep asking and searching for these answers in the reports from these CEOs. And most CEOs are just saying, I don't know.

4:25You take these write downs,$800 million for AMD, 5.5 for NVIDIA. That's going to be a lot bigger and they don't have a crystal ball. Right. So I feel like everybody's searching for something that we're not getting a concrete answer just yet. So any bit of positive news is seen in the in the stock reaction. It's funny. So, you know, usually as a rule of thumb, you see, you know, AMD, they guide up three, four percent or something like that. The stock's up three, four percent. The stock's down 60 some percent from its highs last year. I mean, the market has basically said that these guys are not a player in this space.

4:54They're not a competitor for all intents and purposes to NVIDIA. But Kparts, when you put that together with this back-end loaded sort of situation, in my career, especially with tech, anytime you hear this is going to be back-end loaded, rarely does it materialize in the way that you're hoping for in the push-out. So I'm just curious, as you think about it as a mosaic, what we've heard over the last two weeks, do you find the semis, do you find what they've had to say encouraging as we lead into over the next two weeks with NVIDIA? Because, like to Mel's point, a lot really hangs on the balance for what, you know, I guess NVIDIA has to say.

5:25Quickly, to your point, AMD hasn't been, you know, very popular, so not very owned, which is why maybe you're seeing more positive reaction in the share price. I do feel that there's too much riding on the second half of this year. And I feel like that confidence is not going to follow through necessarily because there's the warnings from so many other of the non-AI plays. And I think we should really factor that in. Chips are cyclical, right? So NVIDIA may come out and do really well. AMD is a lot stronger. But overall, SMH, VanEck, ETF, just not doing as well. And so I think we have to remember the cyclical nature of these companies.

6:03Christina, thank you. Thank you. Christina Parts and Nevelis, how do you feel about back-end loaded guidance? Probably not very good. No, not good at all. I mean, think about that and contrast that with the Federal Reserve tomorrow, Melissa. So what is the Fed likely to tell us? Chair Powell is going to say we just don't know. And if we don't know, why should we act? So it's really flipping it around. Corporates seem more confident, at least given Christina's comments. The Fed, I think, will be much less confident tomorrow. You know, but I am interested to see, like, why, again, Marvell postponing a June 10th date, AMD being able to give guidance for a quarter.

6:33I mean, it's a tale of two cities right now. And I think, listen, AMD's been awful. We've actually talked about it. We've been pretty critical. But in my opinion, this quarter and the guidance is enough at least to get it back to the March high with if you pull up a chart, it was about 115. Yeah, the Marvell thing is not great for a couple reasons. One of the, I guess, headwinds to NVIDIA would be this custom silicon, right? The fact that Microsoft and these major hyperscalers, AWS, Google Cloud, they're working with companies like Broadcom and Marvell to create their own chips. We know that Google has their TPUs, this Tensor processing unit, right?

7:09So going forward, NVIDIA is going to have more competition. If AMD were ever to get their act together, if the performance of some of their chips are matching that of NVIDIA and then they can compete on price a little bit because they're trying to take some market share back. You know, a lot of things point to some headwinds as it relates to NVIDIA. We say this every quarter. We've done it for the last two years. You know, this is going to be a really important event for this AI trade. I just think there's been very few good headlines for NVIDIA. So they're going to have to put up a big beat and raise, I think, for this stock to keep going or kind of reverse the course lower to, you know, get back towards this high.

7:43Let's take a listen to what Jensen Huang had to say about China's AI market earlier today on Power Lunch. China is a very large market. It's probably going to be a$50 billion AI market in a couple of two, three years. It would be a tremendous loss not to be able to address it as an American company. It's going to bring back revenue. It's going to bring back taxes. It's going to create lots of jobs here in the United States. And that really underscores the point that they don't know. Because if it's going to be a huge market, it'll be a huge loss for companies like NVIDIA to not participate in that growing China market.

8:19Then export restrictions now will certainly hit them sooner rather than later. No question about it. I think he's been trying to sort of curry some favor with this administration. It all sort of makes sense. And listen, as the CEO of a publicly traded company, you have a fiduciary responsibility to do exactly that. The question is, you know, are they in the crosshairs right now? I will tell you, and Christina just mentioned in terms of the SMH, I mean, this is a space that is not traded particularly well. You've seen bounces along the way. But, you know, NVIDIA at 113, yes, it's bounced off the lows.

8:48But since January, it's not been a particularly good stock. These export controls, they're not about chat apps or picture apps or this and that or whatever, making them better. They're about, like, sovereign AI. They're about the very issues that we think about when it comes to investing in defense and the like. So if we're going to ship our best technology to China and we're going to actually be in the midst of a trade war, it just doesn't make any sense. So Jensen, go to Mar-a-Lago as much as you want to try to curry favor. At the end of the day, you know, there's more important things that are basically going to kind of have to take hold of this industry pretty soon, whether it's a year or two.

9:20And we've been talking about this. There is going to be considerable regulatory oversight of this industry. It needs to happen for all the reasons we're talking about. really from a national security standpoint. Yeah, it's hard to make the case with just massive tariffs on China that the administration's tone is going to shift anytime soon. We're not getting any sense of that. Are they actually talking to China? We don't know. Besson said, well, sort of, maybe, kind of, not clear. So what's the time frame? Don't know. What's the outcome? Probably not good. Well, the 10-year yield dropping after better than expected demand at today's Treasury auction.

9:49The results calming fears that foreign buyers are avoiding U.S. debt as a protest against tariffs. The move in rates coming ahead of tomorrow's Fed decision, the first since President Trump announced sweeping tariffs at the start of April. Let's get more on what we can expect from the Fed tomorrow, bringing CNBC contributor and former Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher. Richard also served as U.S. trade representative and is now a senior advisor at Jeffries. Richard, it's always a pleasure to welcome you to Fast Money. Great to have you. Honored to be with you guys. What do you think the Fed should do?

10:19Not what the Fed will do, should do. I think it's like any other business. They can't make a decision here given all the uncertainty. How do you model out the economy going forward and make decisions where you don't know what the variables are? So I don't expect anything tomorrow. And I may not even be expecting anything in June. We'll have to see. We need clarity. If we don't have clarity on what's going to impact the economy, then I can't see them making a firm decision here. When do you expect the impact of tariffs to flow through to the hard data? Some economists are saying May, which would give them a possible data point for that June meeting coming up.

11:02You know, it really depends. Agreements in principle don't give you much guidance. I'm expecting them to make some announcements. Let's say they do an agreement in principle with Korea. Korea's in the middle of an election cycle. They have to go to their own legislature. They I negotiated the opening of Vietnam when I was in the Clinton administration as deputy U.S. trade rep. You know, when it was finally signed, we got all the specifics done after four years of work by the Bush administration. So these things and every manufacturer I talk to and every business I talk to, what they're interested in are the specifics, not just the grand sweeping statements.

11:42So I think market operators need to be very, very careful here. If we get these announcements, it doesn't tell you very much. It tells you intent. And then the nuts and the bolts have to be worked out. We have a very good USTR right now. It may be that he can move us faster than anybody else been able to do before him. But we'll just have to see. Hey, Dick, when you were a Fed president, I assume that there were times in which you would vote within that room. And, you know, a lot of what goes on there, from what I understand, is the Fed chair tries to kind of rally support for a different view.

12:16If you were considering what the dissenters would have to say, like, help us think through that right now, because it seems to be one of these things where it makes sense to most economists not to move right now. But I'm just curious if you were in the room, where would some of that dissent come from? Well, I think they're first of all, Jay Powell's been able to hold this group together pretty well. The dissent often comes from an honest disagreement. It's not harsh. I happened to dissent a few times and others did the same thing. And then typically the chair will acknowledge your dissent, but then ask you if we are going to proceed as we have written it up.

12:59How would you make this better? You understand what we're trying to get done here. You've been overruled. Help us put into effect whatever we have decided. And so you work on the wording a little bit. We used to have a straw vote all the time. Bernanke was very good about that. Yellen was very good about it. And it was in that way that the statement gets formed. So were I at the table right now, by the way, I'd be arguing we don't have the clarity to make a decision. But I'm not at the table. I'm a retired dot, by the way, a former plotter. So, by the way, I hope we're going to talk about energy because there's a lot going on in that sector.

13:40We'll get to that in a minute, Richard. Trying to avoid this forecasting of what they're going to do. When you think about the Fed not moving tomorrow and probably not in June, it sounds like that sets the stage for the Fed to have to go bigger later. So almost bakes in the Fed being late and increases the chance that the economy tips toward maybe it's recession, maybe it's just a bad result. but the Fed has to get really aggressive late in the year. Do you think that's right? Do you agree with that line of thinking? I don't know. I mean, we'll just have to see. First of all, a lot of data has to come forward before June, perhaps more clarity.

14:17We'll just have to see as this goes through time. It's unusual for the Fed, except for under dire circumstance, to make a dramatic move. And really what you're looking at when you're at the table is the health of the credit markets. It's not the stock market. Of course, you're worried about inflation, deflation, employment, unemployment. But the one thing that could force them to move dramatically is always going to be if the credit markets seize up, which is what we saw in 2008, 2009, what we saw in March of 2020. And then you announce a new facility as well as perhaps rate cuts. So don't forget, they're also trimming the balance sheet, but that's slowed down.

14:57They're getting close to the right size. So there are several tools you can employ to make announcements. You can create new facilities if you need to. They may not even be used, which is what happened in 2020. Or you can cut rates. So we'll have to see. Mr. Fisher, you know I'm a fan. Have you noticed what's going on in the energy space? I mean, oil has obviously been a story. And I'll say this real quick. I mean, 10 years ago, this is probably not great for Texas, but the state has diversified maybe enough where they can withstand its thoughts. No, I think you're right. And let me just walk you through this, because, again, Jeffries, which I happen to be senior advisor to, handles 50 percent of all the transactions in the oil and gas and energy sector in the United States and is number one globally.

15:40So we talk about this a lot. You know,$56,$57 oil. What's going to happen there is the U.S. producers are just going to lay down their rigs. At the same time, by the way, they're suffering from the inflation and the cost of pipe and the cost of sand and all the things, nails and screws have gone through the roof. You have to build a rig with. So I think basically, as someone has often said, low prices are cured by low prices. So I think they will lay down their rigs at these prices. They're not going to proceed. They're getting twisted by inflation as well. And one of the interesting things, though, is we're seeing natural gas prices rise significantly.

16:24And that's due to the expectations of what's going to finance or rather fuel AI. So we'll just have to see what happens here. But I think we have to be careful. Drill, baby drill, sounds good. I hope it works. But it doesn't seem to be working. And the oil patch guys that I talked to are not terribly happy. Now, what you have to understand about the Texas economy is oil and gas and mining, in terms of employment, only employ 1 % of our working force in Texas. We are thoroughly diversified. And we now, of course, in North Texas have become a financial center, with Goldman Sachs having 5 ,000 people down here, J.P.

17:07Morgan having more people in North Texas than they do in New York. And if you listen to Jamie Dimon or you listen to guys at Goldman or you listen to guys at Jeffries, we're saying this is where the future lies. And, you know, I would urge you to take a look at what just happened today. And if you go outside the New York Stock Exchange today, you'll see people demonstrating to increase the transactions tax and restore it. And I think that's what the governor of New York wants to do. What do we do today by a huge majority in the Texas Senate and House? We made a constitutional amendment that we will not financial transaction taxes.

17:49And in addition to that, we changed the shareholder laws to compete with Delaware and Nevada. And so a lot is going on here. It's just acknowledging the fact that we are very diversified, in fact, equally diversified to the rest of the economy. And the service sector, particularly financial services, is playing a huge role here, which is why people have moved in this direction. So it's not just oil and gas in the tax economy. Please understand that. But what's happening in that sector is there's a slowdown. Again, U.S. producers are going to lay down their rigs if we stick in the$56,$57 range.

18:27Yep. Richard, great to get your perspective. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm sorry to be such a Texas chauvinist, but that's me. Well, you know, we called you out because we wanted to get that perspective. So we do appreciate it. Thank you, Richard. All right. Thank you all. All right. Richard Fisher. Michael, do you think that cuts are back and loaded? Should we be prepared for that? I do, actually. Yeah, we do think the chance of pretty much what I laid out for Dick Fisher is coming to fruition. And the Fed will wait, wait, wait. It'll get clarity. Clarity will be not very good. So it'll have to come in and go pretty aggressively.

19:00Yeah. So I think chance of a hundred odd basis points second half of this year, it's increasing by the day. Wow. Four cuts by the end. I mean, that's, you know, again, what is that predicated on? Because the data has been soft, but it hasn't been catastrophic. And so I'm in the camp where less is more at this point. And I think you're going to hear, I think, a pretty hawkish Fed tomorrow, which will not make the administration happy. But I think that's the way they have to be. How will the markets interpret a very hawkish Fed? Not good. I don't think it will be good, but that's me. Yeah, silver lining over here.

19:29I mean, the market's down a few percent, right? We just got that jobs number. GDP is going to be explained away. Interest rates, 10 years, basically the exact same spot it was a year ago. I mean, you can make the argument if you just looked at Q1 earnings and Q2 guidance. I saw some data from FaxEd today that it's a remarkably low list of companies that actually pulled their guidance. Now, we just saw what Mervell is doing and some of these others. So if you just took a snapshot right here, you can say to yourself, OK, maybe we priced in the worst case scenarios that was in early April. That's the silver lining.

20:02The flip side of it is I'm probably more inclined to take Paul Tudor Jones's view about equities not really pricing in. You know, kind of a little worse than base case scenarios. You don't need worst case scenarios. And the other thing about yields, I mean, they cut rates 100 basis points in September, November and December. You know what I mean? So I don't even think back end loaded 100 basis points seems so aggressive. it. Still, I mean, if you look at other markets, too, think about the currency markets going absolutely crazy in a lot of respects. Yen's been all over the place. Taiwan dollar.

20:30When's the last time you talked about the Taiwan dollar in the show? Probably not often. Six percent in a couple days. Euro's gone nuts. We were talking about parity for euro dollar at the beginning of the year. Now it's 113. Big signals there, I think, that are tough to miss. All right. Coming up, more earnings action to bring you shares of Rivian, Wynn, Electronic Arts, all on the move after reporting the numbers. We got the full details from the quarters next. And speaking in results. Palantir plunging after their earnings report last night. Why an earnings and revenues beat was not enough to thrill investors and who they're teaming up with to bring AI into your finances.

21:00Don't go anywhere. Fast Money's back in two.

21:11Welcome back to Fast Money. We got an earnings alert on Rivian. Shares, the EV maker falling after cutting its forecast. CNBC's Phil Lebeau's got the latest. Phil. Hey, Melissa, good news, bad news in the Rivian Report. Let's give you the good news off the top if you're a Rivian investor. A smaller than expected loss for the first quarter. They lost 41 cents a share. The street was expecting them to lose, what, 76 cents a share. Gross profitability,$206 million. Why is that important? Two consecutive quarters with gross profitability means they unlock another$1 billion in financing from Volkswagen.

21:44Now the bad news, and it has to do with the guidance when it comes to deliveries. The company has cut its 2025 delivery guidance to between a range of 40 and 46 ,000 vehicles. Just last month, their guidance was 46 ,000 to 51 ,000. What changed? Call it uncertainty. Uncertainty with the consumer, uncertainty with tariffs. Here's CEO RJ Skaring last hour. But as you said, there's a lot of uncertainty, and both in terms of our cost structure on CapEx, that's equipment we're buying. with the trade and tariff situation. We are reflecting more CapEx spend for the same content. And we're also looking at the overall consumer sentiment just more broadly in conjunction with what's happening around trade.

22:30As you take a look at shares of Rivian over the last three months, keep in mind that they do maintain that they are on track to open the new plant that they are building in Georgia that will build their more affordably priced vehicle that will happen next year. Quickly, I want to take a look at shares of Lucid. They posted a smaller than expected loss of 20 cents a share below the street estimate. The revenue coming in at$235 million, which is shy of what the street was expecting. But there is some optimism here because, Melissa, they have affirmed their guidance of building 20 ,000 vehicles this year.