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Now time for some of today's trending tickers. We're watching CrowdStrike and Tapestry. And joining me now, we've got Market Domination co-host, Julie Hyman, here on set with us. First up, we got to talk US prosecutors and regulators reportedly investigating what senior executives at CrowdStrike may have known about a $32 million deal with IT Solutions provider Carahsoft Technology Group. Additionally, two other CrowdStrike transactions here are being examined according to Bloomberg. CrowdStrike shares on this, Julie, down by about 4.2%.

Yeah, they were down by more earlier actually. Um, so this is a little bit complicated because it is reporting by Bloomberg who are citing people familiar with the situation. And it seems to have to do with the practice of pre-booking where they sort of book the count as under the bookings column before the deal is actually signed on the dotted line, so to speak. So basically, what's happening here is the Department of Justice and the SEC according to Bloomberg are investigating this deal for $32 million to supply cybersecurity software to the IRS. So it was CrowdStrike via Carahsoft here. And the IRS apparently never purchased or actually received the products. Both Carahsoft and CrowdStrike have said they stand by the transaction. In fact, a spokesperson for CrowdStrike saying to Bloomberg in a statement, as we have stated previously, we stand by the accounting of this transaction. So part of it seems to have to do with accounting standards and how these things are booked here. Um, this was back in 2023, by the way, that this deal happened. So this is sort of looking back and trying to figure out how these deals are accounted for.

Especially when a lot of companies and similar kind of ERP or some of the larger resource planning software capacities would generally talk about that as pipeline opportunities that they see or active deals instead of kind of putting it on the books outright. So that is something that is interesting. We'll see how that continues to develop for us.

Yeah, like I said, a little complicated.

Yes. Also, we're tracking something a little less complicated perhaps for some of the weekend shoppers out there. Tapestry, they've gotten an upgrade to overweight from equal weight over at Morgan Stanley, and the firm says some concerns they previously held have improved. They think earnings will be better than expected, and they think the company is handling tariff uncertainty. Well, shares of Tapestry fractionally higher here today by about 7/10 of a percent.

Well, they got a boost earlier in the week because just to take a step back, Tapestry reported its numbers this week. It's the owner of Kate Spade. It's the owner of Stuart Weitzman, which is spinning off selling, and it is the owner of, um, uh, Coach is the other one that it owns here. So the company reported earlier in the week, they raised their outlook. They said they're not that exposed to tariffs. They don't get that many of their products from China, and it seems like demand is holding up pretty well. So that seems to be what was the impetus for this upgrade to overweight here. And basically, um, the folks at Morgan Stanley think the street, um, is underestimating what this company can earn in part because the company is seeing, uh, improved gross margins in some of its various brands. They actually say once the Stuart Weitzman sale happens, the margins will improve because that is a lower margin business than the other two brands here. And they also like that tariff resilient that the company talked about because of its low China sourcing. It's got high international revenue mix. So you know, even if it's affected by tariffs, it sells a lot of stuff abroad. So that stuff is not tariffed in the same way. So kind of interesting and counterintuitive, right? What you would think for this for a high-end, uh, retailer. And the shares are actually up this year about 20%.

It was interesting what they put in the notes saying that there's a long road from here on Kate Spade, and we're still skeptical of multi-brand portfolios, which was the entire reason that they rebranded as Tapestry, bringing all of these brands under one fold and saying, what should that new name be? And then they came up with Tapestry. We were like, all right, well, I guess we'll rock with that for now. And now to see some of the strategic moves that they're making, unwinding at least parts of that business to see where there's a potential deal and potentially some capital that can be infused into the business.

Yes, it's interesting.

Yeah.

I mean, hey, it's Tapestry. Could be worse. Could be Versant.

Sorry, sorry for the shade, Versant, but

At least it's a real, Tapestry is a real word, is what I'm saying. I like, you know, you can understand what Tapestry means and what it's going for.

We can envision it. We can see it.

Yeah.