More Big Tech Results… And Dissecting The Latest Pharma Moves 10/30/25

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. The busiest day of earnings culminates with big gains for Apple and Amazon. The company's adding more than$400 billion to their combined market caps after hours. We'll dig into the latest numbers from big tech and beyond. Netflix, meantime, popping on news of a 10 for one stock split. Is this a move to become the next Dow component? We'll debate that. Later, a meta meltdown. Shares of the social media giant seeing one of their worst days on record. What the move says about investors' appetite for AI spending.

0:34Plus, a burrito blowout for totally shareholders. Eli Lilly widens the gap with rival Novo Nordisk. In gold's next move, the precious metal well off record highs. How much lower could it go? We'll go into the charts to find out. I'm Melissa Lee coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. On the desk tonight, Carter Worth, Courtney Garcia, Dan Nathan, and Guy Adami. We start off with another big night of tech earnings, kicking things off with Apple. Stock rebounding from early losses now higher by just about 4 percent. After beating earnings in forecasts, giving strong guidance, the conference call kicked off at the top of the hour.

1:06CNBC's Steve Kovac is in Cupertino with the numbers. Steve. Yeah, sure. I mean, this price increase or the stock increase that we're seeing right now, Melissa, this is all because of that strong guidance. I'll get to that in just a second. But first, let's go over these results because there's a lot to unpack here. EPS was a beat at$1.85. Street was looking for$1.77. Revenue, just a small beat here,$102.47 billion. Street wanted to see$102.24 billion. Services revenue, this is the first time in a year that they've booked over$100 billion in services revenue. And for the quarter, it was up 15%.

1:43Now, over to China, things didn't look quite as good. Sales were down 3.5%. But like I said, the guidance is incredibly strong. I was talking to Tim Cook about these results. He was literally smiling and beaming about how excited and strong he expects this December quarter to be. He says revenue for the whole company, top line revenue, 10 to 12 percent growth they're expecting. And iPhone revenue, just the iPhone segment, they're expecting double digit year over year growth and saying it's going to be the best December quarter ever for the iPhone, obviously the whole company as well. I also caught up with Tim Cook about just this iPhone 17 cycle.

2:24We've been hearing so much, guys, about the momentum behind it and excitement behind it and the growth behind it. And even translating to the 16, because remember, this September quarter only represents about a week and a half of iPhone 17 sales. So here's Cook telling me about that quote on the 16 and 17 for Q4. several models were supply constrained and currently were supply constrained on several models of the iPhone 17. So there you go. That is a lot of the demand driving the strong guidance in the December quarter on China, telling me, quote, we expect China to return to growth at this quarter because of the reception of the iPhone there or the iPhone 17 family.

3:06And then, of course, we had to talk about artificial intelligence, especially this question about which company Apple may want to partner with. as it pushes out that big update to Siri expected next year. On artificial intelligence, Cook telling me, in terms of integration, we've integrated with ChatGPT, and our intention is to integrate with more people over time. No specific partnership to announce today, but you can think of it as more coming. So obviously a bunch of names have been thrown around in the last few months, whether it's Google Gemini, Anthropics, Claude model, and of course ChatGPT could play in there as well.

3:41Mel, I'll send it back over to you. Any color from Cook in your conversation, Steve, about the demand for the base level model versus the Pro and the Pro Max? We didn't get into the mix of iPhone sales. I did ask him a little bit about delay in China of the iPhone Air. It was delayed by a few weeks. He said he expects that just to pull forward the demand. I know we saw some reports a couple of days ago about really strong demand for the Air in China. But we've also seen just globally, it seems like the iPhone Air, and this is according to third-party reports, of course, that is a little bit of the weaker of the family, while the base model of the iPhone, which Tim Cook did tell me has been attractive because a lot of those pro features have made its way down to that base model of the iPhone.

4:29So you can get some pro features at that base level. And then, of course, the pros are always hot sellers, especially in the U.S., Mel. All right, Steve, thanks. Keep us posted on what goes on the call. Steve Kovac and Cupertino. Overall, there's not a lot to pick at in terms of the quarter guy. But when Tim Cook is smiling, talking about the results, I know that it irks you. Of course you're smiling. I'm smoking me ear to ear, baby, smiling ear to ear. If you wanted to say, hey, but wait. I'll give you a few hey, but waits. Now, people will say the numbers are astronomical. We'd never dismiss the numbers.

5:05They are. $102 billion, record quarter in revenue. Absolutely. If you look at their services now, 27 percent of overall revenue, tremendous growth there, 76 percent margins in services. They deserve it of a higher valuation. But then you say to yourself, well, wait a second, they're still growing high single digits, maybe low double digits revenue, mid high single digits, low double digits earnings growth. And you're paying at this price almost 34 times next year's numbers. So the numbers are great. that's the valuation that should still be concerning, despite all those accolades I just gave out.

5:42Not concerning to people in general. I mean, the stock's up 30 percent going into earnings over the past three months. 52-week high in today's session. Yeah, if you don't care about valuation, and I think in a market like this, really people don't. I think with a company like Apple, you want to see this move back towards double-digit hardware sales, or iPhone in particular. They haven't had that in a very long time. And to Guy's point about accelerating services, you know, getting back to that 20 percent, I think one of the biggest differentiations of this story versus the other in the MAG-7 is we've been going back, forget Tesla, but the hyperscalers and the like.

6:12We've been going back and forth as like, is this CapEx over the last couple of years? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it misallocation of resources here or there? You're throwing caution to the wind. Apple, as a percent of their revenues, their CapEx has been tiny, and it's been tiny relative to that of their big mega cap peers. Now, you could say that's bad because they're not building the infrastructure they're going to need going forward. You could also say it's all going to be commoditized and they're going to be able to build businesses on the back of it. And I think that's probably what's coming out right here.

6:41I don't think that this cycle on the hardware, while it is good, I don't think it has much to do with AI in general. Like, let's see what the Siri roll out. Let's see what some of the services that are built in and around. Let's see who they partner with. I think this is going to be really important. But I do ultimately believe that if they're in a partner with Gemini and they have that deal with Google Search on Safari, I think that's probably the best bet for them going forward. And then let app developers figure out what the experience is going to be on an iPhone. Does the valuation of Apple concern you, Courtney?

7:10And relative to, you know, what we got from Meta yesterday, where CapEx is going to, you know, increase notably next year with no fixed number given at a lower valuation than Apple with a higher valuation. I mean, which one would you prefer? Yeah, I think that is the problem with Apple. It is the valuation and the no AI story. So I do think it's good that you are going to continue to see these iPhone sales that are picking up. We were hoping that was going to happen with the iPhone 16. It didn't happen. It's hopefully happening with the iPhone 17. I do think it's concerning seeing how there aren't any China or the China sales were actually quite a bit of a miss there.

7:46But hopefully that's going to look better moving forward. But, you know, as good as the numbers look, I just don't think it justifies that kind of evaluation. I do think compared to Meta, which is reported, people are anxious about the amount of CapEx spending and at what point they're going to monetize that. And I think that's been a positive for Apple because they don't have it. So I don't think it's a benefit for Apple. It's just like if you're going to compare the two and you're worried about CapEx, well, maybe you look back at Apple again. And that's what happened back in April. If you remember when people were concerned about it, Apple was doing fine.

8:13You're kind of starting to see that trend pick up again. I mentioned the run into the earnings, Carter, of Apple. You could have easily seen a reason to sell, sell in the news kind of event. What does the chart look like? Well, what do we know? That Apple has been a major laggard, right? Its relative performance to its sector peaked in 2022, and it has been playing catch up ever since. The stock is only just now breaking out above its pre-tariff sell-off high. So that high was 260. It lost some 34 percent in the tariff sell-off, much more than the S &P. It has now recouped that loss and is only slightly above where it started.

8:47I would play for higher prices. We've got another earnings alert we want to get to. Amazon shares surging after the company beat top and bottom line estimates. Cloud revenue growth was up 20 percent. That was well above expectations and higher than last quarter's growth. Let's bring in McSBee's Mackenzie Cigalos for the details. Mac. So, Mel, Amazon stock trades on cloud, and that business is finally back in acceleration mode, rising at its fastest pace since 2022 and beating Wall Street's expectations with$33 billion in revenue. And that's helping ease fears about Amazon losing big-ticket AI deals to Google and Microsoft.

9:21CEO Andy Jassy saying in the shareholder letter that AWS is seeing strong demand in both AI and core infrastructure, noting that the company has been focused on expanding compute capacity to meet that surge. The report helps offset softer retail growth with online store revenue slowing down and ad service revenue. Amazon's high, fast-growing business, high-margin, fast-growing business came in flat. But AWS, it's setting up Amazon for its first ever$200 billion quarter, with the company expecting nearly$210 billion in revenue in Q4. That's what they're projecting. And that call, which is underway now, they say backlog has grown to$200 billion by the end of Q3.

10:02And that doesn't include several unannounced new deals in October, which together is more than their total deal volume for all of the third quarter. That's probably why you're seeing those shares up around 13 percent right now, Mel. All right, Mac, thank you. Keep us posted on the call. Mackenzie Sigalos, Guy, finally beat expectations on AWS. And good for them. And I'm looking at this. Remember, there were days when we used to do the show where operating margins for Amazon were three, four percent, 12 percent operating margins. And so they're obviously doing things the right way. And it's deserved of even this valuation, which is not ridiculous.

10:36So this move to me makes sense. I don't know how Carter feels technically, but you're through those prior highs. I think the stock can continue to go higher in the back of this quarter. How do you feel technically? Yes. Well, as opposed to fundamentally or quantitatively or politically. But here's the reality. We know that this has been a major laggard, right? You're talking about a stock that its relative performance peaked to the S &P in 2020. And that's because it was such a massive outperformer during COVID when they were the provider of everything to everybody locked at home. It is a laggard that is only now playing catch up.

11:07I suspect this gap up has room to run. Once you clear a former high in principle, as a matter of technique, you're in sort of free territory and you can move higher. There's no overhead supply. Courtney, what do you make of the quarter? Yeah, I think this is what you want to see when we're talking about these AI stories. You need to see that they're having the growth to go along with it. And I think the fact that you're finally seeing their cloud segment is actually growing faster than expected. People were worried that Google and Microsoft are really eating their lunch and you're not seeing that happening.

11:36They're actually finally starting to accelerate. So this is exactly what you want to see in earnings report. When there's this big question of is AI in a bubble, you want to see them actually having something to show for it. Right. That and also the prime subscription fees are going to go up in 2026. There's some operational fulfillment efficiencies which can be wrenched out of the system here. So they could actually pull the lever. Yeah. I mean, one thing I'd say is that 17 % year-over-year growth in AWS last quarter, if it had come below that right now, I mean, the stock would be down 13%. So, like, the fact that it's up 20%, that's great.

12:07So you're seeing a reacceleration in that growth. You know, we've seen, like, the shifting fortunes as it relates to Azure and GCP from Google. I mean, those companies are growing their clouds faster, but AWS has more market share, right? And they don't – and we talked about this week. I'm totally wrong about that. I thought of all these names, this one was probably going to be the worst result. And, you know, I think the jury's still out because you talk about from a margin perspective, that is what this company has been built on over the last 15 years, this mix shift between AWS and their core business.

12:39But, you know, and Mac just said this, that advertising business, which has been a monster, it's been pure margin. There is going to be pressure on that. I don't know if it happens. Maybe Gene can help us out later, whether it's, you know, Q1, 2026 or Q4 or 2027. But that's going to be something that's going to be a problem as OpenAI and some of these other models look to monetize and do it through advertising. And they're going to do it with e-commerce. And I think that's going to be put pressure on this ad business for Amazon. I mean, Dan brings up the point when we've talked about it back and forth, this setting up was the worst setup.

13:08It turns out to be the best performer. We had it as a sell going into earnings this week. But again, it's always about sequencing. If this stock is up since the autumn of 2020, 30 percent, the S &P is up 100. and the Nasdaq 100 is up 150, is it a winner or isn't it? Meaning this is good here and now, and if one has played it, okay, profits have been realized or there's more to come. But it has really been a disaster. There has been no alpha in Amazon for four years. A disaster. It is. I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. I mean, if you're up 30 % and an index is up 100 plus and a Nasdaq 100 is up 150, you lose.

13:44I mean, your money was not allocated to the right area. Carter will tell you that if you went to a cocktail party this weekend and bragged to your friends that you're up 30 % in Amazon, and they looked at you and said, loser, the broader market's up 100%. That's exactly right. So, yeah, you're happy with that until you see what the broader market has done, and he talks about the relative strength. It's been an underperformer. Now's the time, though, at least in terms of Amazon, where I think we can play a little bit of catch up. All right. Meantime, President Trump and China's President Xi coming away from this morning's talks with something of a trade truce.

14:17China agreeing to buy more soybeans from the U.S. and postpone tighter rare earth export controls for one year while the U.S. dropped fentanyl related tariffs. But questions remain over chip exports and tick tock. Broader markets seeming to shrug off the deal with the Nasdaq's one and a half percent drop, highlighting where investors are really focused. And that would be A.I. Meta getting hit hard after saying in yesterday's earnings report that it will continue to increase A.I. CapEx. The company now expects to spend a minimum of$70 billion this year. Shares seeing their worst day in three years.

14:48So is this a sign of what is really on the market's mind? And how does the earnings picture that we've gotten tonight with two winners so far in the after our session change that calculus? Well, it's hard. I mean, we go into these weeks and we're like, well, if they all go in the same direction, there's$17 trillion in market cap, then the market's going to get killed. And look at this. We're down one and a half percent in the NASDAQ and probably in the aftermarket, we'll probably get up half a percent or something like that. So at the end of the day, I think you have to think about it as a bit of a mosaic, right?

15:15And so what are these companies, what is their capbacks, what is their growth? What does it mean for the economy here? And I think it means a lot for the economy here. And I think if you look under the hood, yeah, there's some industries are doing just fine. We started earnings season with the banks. It looked really good. The consumer seems to be kind of fine. But if you look at the performance of the S &P and if you look at the performance of earnings and earnings growth in the S &P, it really is tied to these top 10 names. So the fact that none of them were disasters, Meta seems pretty idiosyncratic.

15:41And, you know, and Apple, we don't even have to throw into the AI trade, and they're not spending a lot, as we just talked about. But I think we're getting close to a period, and you could say, well, you said this before. I think we're getting close to a period where a lot of this stuff is going to matter. Where are we going to monetize this? How are these companies going to get the sort of return on these sorts of investments? You could say, well, a lot of these companies are not spending a lot yet. Well, they kind of are. You know, I mean, they really are. I don't mean the hyperscalers, but I mean, Meta is a perfect example.

16:08They are building out all of this infrastructure, and they're not even leasing it out the way AWS and Google Cloud does and Oracle does and everything like that. So this is one that I think a lot of investors are going to get a little bit more specific about how this capital is being allocated and what they expect to get a return on. We're showing the cues in the after-hour session, so we're up more than a percent in the after-hour session based on the results tonight. So it seems to sort of turn the markets around here based on the earnings reports we've gotten, Courtney. I mean, what's your feeling in terms of isn't this, I mean, the mosaic being everything except for meta being an idiosyncratic is actually a good one.

16:43Big cap tech is actually doing OK. All the earnings came in pretty strong. And here we are. Yeah. And I mean, this is happening with all of your big tech earnings. But I mean, it's been happening with the broader markets in general. You're seeing the earnings have been beating expectations, which is what we hoped, especially we're in this period where the government is shut down and we're getting no data on GDP. We're not getting this data on consumer spending, et cetera. So we really have to look at these earnings and see how are companies faring, how are their consumers faring. And the fact that we're continuing to see this all come out positive, I think, is a generally good sign for the economy moving forward, which I've been really happy to see.

17:12All fair points. What we didn't mention the other day, and Doug Cass has been writing about this, over the last couple of days, I think it was, let's say Thursday, Tuesday, the breadth of the market on an up day, 69 percent of stocks were low on the day. That had never happened before. Never is a long time. So the internals of the markets have been breaking down. Obviously, some drivers are still continuing. But if you look under the hood, there are things to be concerned about. And I'll add this to the mosaic. Very quietly, bond market is starting to sell off again, which I think is going to be a continuation of a theme.

17:42So we'll see how that plays in as well, Mills. All right. So how about the chart specifically, aside from the mosaic, Carter? On which one? S &P, NASDAQ. It's all the same. It's all the same sequence. We have a general uptrend, and then you get an event. It's news. It's tariffs. S &P dropped 21 percent. NASDAQ drops almost 30. You've recovered all that. And then some. So is this a steep and uncorrected move from the April 7th low? Working on seven months, up 45 percent for an aggregate without a single setback as much as 5 percent. So if you look at all seven month runs going back the past 50 years where you haven't had so much as a 5 percent, you get two, three, four.

18:23This is the 20th longest in 50 years. They're ones that go over a year, but we're in the outer stretches of what's normal without a general setback. I mean, resets are good. It's just like the pause at the jammer, the pause after hours of work, you get up and walk around. So the question is, does this need a pause? It hasn't had one, and that makes it vulnerable. All right. We're watching shares of Amazon, by the way, after-hour session highs. We're looking at gains of up 15 % right now, so that is definitely helping buoy the NASDAQ 100 in the after-hour session. We're going to be keeping an eye on Apple as well as Amazon as we get the details from the conference calls, the headlines, plus the after-hours action in shares of Roku, Reddit and more.

19:03All those moving to you, all that ahead. And a safe haven sell while the chart master is doubling down on his sell gold call. The move, the next move for the metals, it remains off record highs. Do not go anywhere. Fast Money is back in tune.

19:23Welcome back to Fast Money. Another pair of after-hours movers catching your eye. Let's kick things off with Coinbase, the crypto exchange platform higher after-hours following a top and bottom line B transaction revenue passed$1 billion to the quarter, up 37 percent from Q2, while total revenues grew 25 percent. Coinbase also announcing it will double its share buyback program to$2 billion, up 2.5%. Dan, what do you make of this? Interesting in a quarter where we saw a number of competitors come public, right, or at least over the last four or five months or so. And, you know, when you look at these earnings, you look at these sales, they're really lumpy, right?

19:55It has a lot to do with the trading. And we know that a lot of the trading goes on among retail investors. And Bitcoin's kind of stuck in the mud, right? So I wonder if we're going to start to see more and more revenue as it relates to stable coins and what that means. And you can say that's a largely institutional sort of thing. But, you know, Coinbase, I'd probably rather buy Bitcoin than buy Coinbase. It just kind of like it seems like it's more of a potential asymmetric sort of payout. Would you rather buy Coinbase over Bitcoin or neither? Well, so as patterns go, each is a pair of twos from my seat, which is to say don't play or bet very small directionally, however you're biased.

20:33OK. Let's now get to Julia Borson, who's got the latest on Roku's results. that stock lower after hours. Julia? Yeah, Roku shares are off their post market lows, but they're still down about 7 % on the company's streaming hours falling short. Sorry, now down about 6 % on the company's streaming hours falling short of expectations. Streaming hours for the quarter, 36.5 billion. Now that's more than a billion less than analysts had expected. Roku's revenue was in line with expectations and EPS beat for the company's first quarter with positive operating income since 2021. CEO Anthony Wood saying on the call that they're confident in their ability to grow ad demand.

21:15He also said they're testing a redesign of their home screen to drive engagement. And he noted that their Amazon partnership is just starting to ramp up, saying they're focused on opening up a whole new category of advertisers. He revealed that 90 % of advertisers on Roku's ads manager platform were new this quarter. Melissa, didn't help the dealership numbers. Yeah. Meantime, we're also getting news from Netflix about a stock split, Julia. Yes. Netflix doing a 10 for one stock split. And the company is saying that though it doesn't change anything fundamentally, this is all about making the stock more accessible to employees who participate in the stock option program.

21:58Our markets editor, Robert Humm, points out that this could make Netflix a potential Dow component, which is an interesting item here. The stock is up over 3%. And just in terms of the timing, this is for shareholders as of November 10th, receiving nine additional shares for each one they hold on November 14th. And then the stock begins trading at its new post-split price on Monday, November 17th. Melissa? All right, Julia. Thanks, Julia Boorstin. Guy, your pick, Roku or Netflix? Roku, real quick. You are on the verge of a bearish divorce reversal in Roku. Carter can probably speak to this. Obviously, this doesn't help it, but I still think we're on the precipice of that, number one.