US-China trade talks, Newark Airport, OpenAI: Market Domination

Markets edge closer to the weekend, with just one hour left in Friday's trading session. Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton cover developing stories, especially ahead of US-China trade negotiations taking place this weekend, in this episode of Market Domination.

As the Trump administration prepares for its talks with Chinese officials, Regan Capital chief investment officer Skyler Weinand outlines a hypothetical "black swan" event that would be a cause for concern for the US.

Mike Boyd, president of Boyd Group International and veteran aviation consultant, joins the program to speak about the state of Newark Liberty International Airport following another outage of its air traffic control.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.

0:08 spk_0

Hello and welcome to market domination sponsored by Tasty trade. I'm Julie and Josh Lipton live from our New York City headquarters. It is Friday, May 9th, the last trading day of the week, and we are giving you the ultimate investing playbook to help tune out the noise and make the right moves for your money.

0:23 spk_1

And here's your headline blitz getting up to speed one hour before the closing bell rings on Wall Street.

0:37 spk_2

The White House has created, I think, an expectation that there may be some major breakthrough with China this weekend in the talks in Geneva, and I think you know this is that we may get a few positive headlines on we're making some progress, but any deal with China is going to take months, if not even a year, to get done.

0:59 spk_3

I feel we could wake up to some disappointment. Um, again, to me, Trump's all about ebbs and flows, right? When things are good, he likes to stir it up. When things are bad, he steps back and calms things down. Things seem so good right now. I feel we're in that stage where we might get a disappointment coming into a week Monday, Tuesday next week, and that's when you want to start buying again.I worked for Jeff Bezos for a long time and he really taught me the importance of looking super closely, figuring out exactly what your riders and drivers in our case want and just uh really overdoing it to give it to him and our service levels have never been better. Uh, we're doing all sorts of great things for, for drivers. I'll give you one statistic we now have a 23% point advantage over the other guy in terms of driver preference, and that's because we treat drivers well and um and they, they deliver great service.

1:50 spk_0

We got one hour to go until the market closes. Let's take a look at the major averages today. Not too much going into the weekend. Everybody's waiting, right, because Treasury Secretary Scott Besson's on the ground in Switzerland. We're going to hear more details on that in a moment, but the hope is that this might be the beginning of a framework of a plan to maybe decelerate and de-escalate the trade war with China. We'll see, but the market is not doing anything ahead of that. They don't want to take any risks. The Dow down about.69 points or so, about a 51%. The S&P 500, very little change, hugging that un line today, as is the Nasdaq. So you know, not seeing anybig moves.

2:30 spk_1

Yeah, we are muted. We're cautious here, as you noted, Julie. You're heading into this meeting. US Chinese officials getting together for trade talks. President Trump did suggest on true social, maybe an 80% tariff on China. We'll see how it works out up to Scott B, up to Scott B reference.Of course, Treasury Secretary Besant and of course also though against a backdrop of what has been just a remarkable move in the market as well. I mean, S&P 500 as we sit here right now is up about nearly 15% in the past month. Yeah,

3:04 spk_0

yeah, we're talking about sort of the move from the lows that we have seen here. Um, that said, obviously still down on the year, and I also wanted to quickly look on the moves that we've seen on the week here because over the week we haven't done much of anything. So yes, we've had that big rebound.And this week it kind of stalled out when all was said and done. So, uh, the Nasdaq off about 0.25% on the week, the S&P off about 31%, and the Dow very little changed. So that momentum has come and now there's the calm. We heard Peter Cheer talking about that in his interview this morning, just a moment ago, the sound playing from that that maybe you want to.Be cautious and see what happens next, especially coming from President Trump now that we've gotten to that sort of period of equilibrium perhaps. Should we take a look at a quick look at the sectors too. Let's look here. We've got healthcare down, energy and real estate up here. Might as well look at the weekly move in these groups as well. Industrial is the winner on the week. Healthcare, the loser.On the week, which is interesting to see those kinds of moves. And then looking at the Nasdaq 100 here in large cap tech, that's again the 5 day look we know what happened alphabet this week. We're going to talk about a little bit about a big tech playbook later but getting hit on some comments from Apple and about AI coming more to the fore in search.

4:22 spk_1

All right, should we talk more about what to expect in Switzerland,

4:25 spk_0

yeah.All right, President Donald Trump has laid down a clear marker for de-escalation, posting earlier today that 80% tariff on China, that seems right. This comes as US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett and US Trade Representative Jason Greer set to meet with China's top economic official in Switzerland over the weekend. Here with more on the latest trade talk, we got Yahoo Finance's Ben Worshka. Ben, what are we hearing? What can we expect? What should we be looking for?

4:50 spk_4

Yeah, yeah, Julie, as you mentioned, a lot of, lot of waiting, a lot of anticipation for this. Both Treasury Secretary Besson and USTR Representative Greer are already on the ground in Geneva. Today was the first much smaller step with that. They met with the Swiss to talk about the 31% potential 31% tariffs on that country. Um, the Swiss president came out of that and actually was talking about China, as as everyone else says. She had a good line that alluding to the, um, the recent, um, elevation of an American pope to say she hopes.The Holy Spirit will come to Geneva this weekend and that and that's sort of indicative to me of the overall mood music here which is this question of de-escalation um on on the US tariffs 145% on China and China's tariffs of 125% on the US. Trump very much raised that prospect with his post earlier today that the 80% tariffs, but the latest from the White House this afternoon comes from White House press secretary Caroline.Levitt, who, who kind of batted that down a little bit to say that this was a number that Trump quote just threw out there as a suggestion and that it was that it was up to that and that the unilateral unilateral reduction from tariffs on the US side are not in the offing. So basically both sides have to agree to some sort of reduction before anything happens. So it's comments like that that are going to kind of keep the anticipation going with investors watching this meeting all set for this weekend. It's set to start on Saturday.

6:12 spk_1

And Ben, you know, to get an actual trade deal done between US and China, what kind of rough time frame could one be thinking about there? Weeks, months? I mean, we had some guests on Yahoo Finance today who said, you suggested even longer.

6:26 spk_4

Yeah, I think months is the is the short end of of an actual full framework. I think very few sides of this are even suggesting anything concrete coming this weekend beyond, beyond a sort of de-escalation on the terrorist front. There was sort of a Treasury Secretary and Scott talked about this as the start of talks, and I think the expectation.is that at least on a lot of these details, a huge number of details of issues between the US and China, that that's going to take months if not even not even longer to work out. The question is whether this de-escalation can be kind of a way to jumpstart things as as this what many have turned a long slog ahead.

7:04 spk_1

All right, thank you, Ben. I appreciate it.Stocks wavering on Friday after President Trump hinted more trade deals are coming. For more on the latest market action, let's welcome in our Skyler Winan, Reagan Capital chief investment officer. Sky, it's good to see you. So for investors, you know, we've been talking a lot about this meeting this weekend in Switzerland between US Chinese official talking trade, Skyler. I'm just curious as a CIO, how you're thinking through that headline, through that event and what it could mean for the market.

7:35 spk_5

It still rings like a pretty big number. 80%, uh, and overall tariff levels are higher than anyone that's, you know, a current investor has ever seen. We're going back to the 1920s to get anywhere close to the overall tariff number we're looking at. I think we're at 25%, um, so you know, for the market to have pulled back.Like it has over the last month and investors basically being flat over all this turmoil just seems insane uh and so you know.Might be time to take some chips off the table on the equity side and, and kind of batten down the hatches and maybe be happy with a 5 or 6 or 7% return you might be able to get in fixed income over the rest of theyear.

8:23 spk_0

OK, Skyler, let's dig into this a little bit because the worst case scenario at one point were tariffs that were a lot higher, right, that those, you know, the.Bored with all those reciprocal tariffs that the president, uh, initially, uh, put up there and we know we're not getting that scenario, but walk me through what you think is now going to happen that the market is not quite accounting for.

8:49 spk_5

Yeah, so let's just say I mean that was the worst, that was the known known, right? OK, here's where tariffs are and now we're talking about 80% versus 145% on Chinese goods, um, so what investors aren't thinking about and we're only talking about goods OK you know you have an iPhone.Or or you have an Android. I don't know if you're an Android person, but you, you think of your iPhone, you think of, OK, well the price might go up on this from $1000 to $1400. OK? What you're not thinking about is all of the apps and services you use on a daily basis. Think about all the subscriptions you use. Think about Microsoft Office, for example. So this is super tangible. So the United States is a huge exporter of services.That includes software that includes consulting business consulting that includes legal services, but let's just take Microsoft Microsoft Excel and Word. What if China.Puts a tariff and we're talking about uh let's just say they're paying for Microsoft. what if China puts a tariff of 100 or 300% on Microsoft Office? What if the entire world does that? We're not even talking about that yet, so think about anybody, any firm that is selling their products internationally, especially software firms, any service company that hasn't entered anyone's mindset yet.That is this huge black swan of well what if what if services start getting tariffed to the tune of of what we're talking about goods getting tariffed that that's that's what I'm worried about.

10:35 spk_1

So Skyler, given those unknowns, given those uncertainties, and you, you sound more cautious here, um, how does that inform your investment strategy, your investment decision making? How do you want to be positioned?

10:47 spk_5

Yeah, on the equity side, I would definitely hunker down a little bit more focus on US based businesses. If you're going to be exclusively a US based investor, you have to think about and filter out some companies, a lot of companies that are that have a either a a tremendous amount of exports internationally.If they're relying on more than 30% of their revenues from offshore or if they're relying on more than 30% of their inputs from offshore, OK, so what, uh, what are my alternatives? maybe looking at like discount retailers like a TJ Maxx or Ross stores where, uh, folks might be trading down from a Neiman Marcus or a Nordstrom to, um, you know.Like a TJ Maxx or Rosters also looking at I brought up uh I brought up cell phones. Think about a T-Mobile or a Verizon who is charging customers that subscription, and those are all US based customers primarily. Verizon is and you know that I would say is more of a of a tariff proof asset. Then when you look on the fixed income side.You've had this whipping around of the back end of the curve. Anything that has interest rate risk has been extremely volatile and extremely risky over the last 6 weeks. What hasn't been risky is the front end of the curve, and I'm talking about floating rate paper, very short duration paper, um, that continues to put up 4.25% to 5.5% yield depending on what asset class you're in, but stay short.And you know if you're a US based investor and you wanna continue to focus on US based investments, stay local companies that aren't relying on imports and exports as much as let's say a Microsoft might be.

12:38 spk_0

Um, what role does the Fed play in all of this, right? Because if what you're saying ends up coming to pass, right, and you do have the trade war sort of ratcheting up versus ratcheting down, um, one would think that then the Fed will step in and say, OK, we're gonna cut if this is hitting the US economy.So do you see that playing out that way?

13:05 spk_5

The Fed said nothing this week, right? And, and I'm surprised the market didn't react more negatively to the Fed. Um, the Fed highlighted, hey, there are a ton of ambiguities and we are in wait and see mode. I think they said wait something like 22 times, uh, in the press conference and so they're in wait and see mode and they have said they're going to treat unemployment and inflation equally.We can argue that if tariffs aren't getting materially better, inflation will be worse, um, but also unemployment will get materially worse. So I think, and you're not gonna, the problem is you're not gonna see those numbers for months. Uh, you're talking about July, August, September, even before the Fed actually does anything and and we had a great unemployment report last week, you know, 4.2% unemployment, everything else was pretty steady, so the Fed.Is kind of taking the summer off. We're we're gonna have to wait till September for I think the Fed to do much unless for some reason unemployment kicks up to 5%. Um, so the Fed's not, we're not going to see a Fed put anytime soon.

14:20 spk_0

Skyler, good to see you. Have a great weekend. Thank you.We're just getting started here on market domination. Coming up, it was a big week for earnings, but who is facing the biggest effects from tariffs? We're gonna discuss on the other side. Stick around, more market domination still to come.Air traffic controllers handling flights in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport experiencing another outage on Friday morning. This is the 2nd instance that we know of that's been reported upon in the past several weeks, and traffic has been snarled not just in and out of Newark, but has created a ripple effect across the other two major airports in the New York area, as well as really across the country here and raised questions about.Safety of the country's air traffic control system. For more, we're bringing in Mike Boyd, president of Boyd Group International, a veteran aviation consultant who watches the industry very closely. Um, Mike, when we were talking about who to talk to about this today, yours was the was the first name I thought of because everybody's wondering what the heck is going on at Newark and how it's gotten to this point. What's your take on it?

15:44 spk_6

It's not Newark, it's the FAA. It's the whole system. Newark is just the first little gas hole that's coming out of this volcano. It's a lot worse than that. It's not shortage of people. It's not bad equipment. Well, that's there. The fact we've had bad management over the last 30 years, wonderfully bipartisan, but unless we fix that bad management, I think we are, we're still gonna have this happen and keep in mind just by cutting back flights, that's fine. The safest airplane is one that doesn't leave the gate.But we have an air transportation system we need to support. It's not being done or has not been done, and we've known about it. This isn't some magic thing we just found.

16:22 spk_1

SoMike, on that point, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy did announce this, this plan, Mike, um, this week we play.The air traffic control system. It sounds like the plan includes installing 4600 new high-speed connections, replacing 618 radars across the country. You know, you read that plan, Mike. Does that sound like the right plan? Is that the right strategy?

16:46 spk_6

It is a plan. We haven't had 1. 30 years ago, myself and Mike Captain Mike Biata testified to Congress on this, and nothing's been done. Every DOT secretary since then we're going to do something. Don't worry about it. This is the first time I've seen any hard numbers like we're gonna get it by. We're going to get this. So I'm confident now, or I feel a lot more confident than I did, that it's going in the right direction. The issue is we need accountability at the FAA. That's why we got into this mess. There's never been any.

17:16 spk_0

And Mike, you know, as you said, if, if what's going on at Newark is just the sort of gas holes that are escaping from the, the volcano, why do you think it's happening now? Is it just a matter of it was inevitable that we would see this kind of stuff happening, or have there been kind of other signs popping up?

17:34 spk_6

Well there's been signs for years. Look at all these new missions we've talked about, things like that. We've known the equipment has been incompetent. Look, I mean 30 years ago it was vacuum tubes. Today it's floppy disks. What are we talking about? So it's things we knew about, but if it happens at Newark, it can happen in San Francisco and LA and Dallas Fort Worth, and Chicago too. That's what we're trying to avoid. they're, they're trying to avoid, but just don't think this is uh our friends in New Jersey are the only ones that have this problem, the nation does.

18:01 spk_1

I, I take your point, Mike, but on Newark specifically, I just want to get your take on this because I did see these reports. US rep Josh Gottheimer, he's pinning the problems on Newark, Mike, on it sounds like a couple issues. I'd love to get your take on this. One, apparently he's talking about the lack of proper air traffic controller staffing.said that there are currently 22 controllers working, said the numbers should actually be in the 60s, and two, he did talk about tech. He apparently said many of the lines connecting controllers to the radar are outdated copper wires. When you heard those arguments, Mike, I mean, does that sort of dovetail with your understanding of what's going on at Newark specifically?

18:42 spk_6

It dovetailed my understanding that no one's been held accountable. This guy has known about this for years. This isn't something new that he just found. He's just using it now because it's convenient, but he knew about this stuff 5 years ago. He could have known about it and did nothing. So he's part of the problem. It's great to bring it up after the iceberg hits the ship. We want to try to avoid the iceberg, and we need, you know, aA lot more attention from Congress and also from the aviation industry to say we're not gonna put up with this. The man running United Airlines has been doing that and he's been ignored. So I think what we have here is when the politicians come out and say we're using copper wires, well you should have known that years ago and done something before we had this problem.

19:21 spk_1

So let me ask you, Mike, a question and it's a personal question, but I think it's probably a question a lot of people thought when they saw that that headline dropped today about Newark.Would you fly out of Newark, Mike? Would you be comfortable with your friends and family flying out of Newark?

19:35 spk_6

In terms of safety, yes, but in terms of the possibility of sitting in a gate with nowhere to go and no hotels available, no, but in terms of safety, I'd have no problem with it, but I wouldn't book through Newark right now only because of these problems we know about. But I can make that same argument with almost any other connecting hub.America. So, um, it's a wider thing than just our friends in New Jersey, but what I do I think it's unsafe? No, because United Airlines is cutting 35 flights a day, 10%. That's a whole lot less pressure, but we really, they really needed to add another 20% because they've cut back so far in the past.The problem we've got here is we've had no accountability at the FAA for failure, and until we get that, I don't care how much money we spend, it's not going to get fixed.

20:16 spk_0

Well,in fact, it sounds like that there have been some cuts at the FAA, Mike, right, that that there's um tightening of belts, which was one perhaps one of the catalysts behind all of.This cascading effect or is that, is that a misunderstanding of thesituation?

20:34 spk_6

They were cutting fat. The FAA is more than just air traffic control. You've got oversight. You've got people who were looking what a new runway in Grand Island, Nebraska, that sort of thing. There's a lot of that factor that got cut, but none of it involved air traffic control, but there was a lot of.And I think in many cases, the fat started in the front office for years and they should start cutting that too. I'm confident we might see some changes with some hard numbers we've gotten already from the new Secretary of Transportation, but we'll see.

21:03 spk_0

So it's just a coincidence then that this seems to be bubbling up at the same time that they're cutting that fat in your words?

21:11 spk_6

Absolutely, that what they're cutting is not anything to do with air traffic control. People will tell you that we monitor it. They're not cutting controllers. They're not cutting anything involving getting airplanes into and out of the skies. What they're cutting are other things, oversight, things like that, that the FA is a whole lot more things than just air traffic control. So no, it's not something where it's, oh well.It's a coincidence. The two things are totally separate right now and what we have here is a system that didn't hire enough people over the years. We have a system that didn't upgrade equipment over the years. That's where the coreis.

21:42 spk_1

Mike, going back to Newark, I'm just curious, with those headlines, with, with all this, with all this drama, are there certain airlines, Mike, that are more exposed there than others?

21:53 spk_6

Well, sure, United Airlines is the one who makes Newark a hub. Newark is not a hub itself. United Airlines is making it a hub by putting airplanes to interconnect there, so it's hurting United Airlines very badly and United, you know, to their credit, uh, Scott Kirby is the one that's been talking about this for years and been ignored, but that's a big.But keep in mind it's a major airport and every airline that flies there is getting affected, so that means that airplane coming into Tucson may be late because it left Newark this morning way late. So it's going to affect our whole system, not just there, but United is the one that's getting hammered.

22:26 spk_0

How quickly can all of this be fixed, Mike?

22:30 spk_6

I was pretty amazed at what Scott, uh uh uh Duffy said about having an actual plan. Um, he's talking 3 to 4 years now, in terms of the safety side, that's gonna get fixed right away because it's gonna cut back on flights.But in terms of having a plan, we're talking 3 to 4 years of maybe, maybe getting to having something we need, but at least I see a timeline which I've never seen in the 40 years. I've been messing around with this.

22:55 spk_0

Mike, by the way, Josh and I both live not too far from Newark Airport. It's our home airport. If you ever get, if you ever can't find a hotel room, you just give us a call.

23:05 spk_6

That's very kind of you. Thank you. I'll do that.

23:07 spk_0

Thank

23:07 spk_6

you.

23:08 spk_0

Take care, Mike. Have a great weekend.

23:10 spk_6

Bye bye. Bye.

23:11 spk_0

Well we're watching for all the tariff mentions this earnings season. Let's recap some of the latest from this week. We got Ford, Crocs, and Mattel all updating investors on their guidance this week. Let's start with Ford. Ford Motors suspending its annual guidance on Monday because of uncertainty around President Trump's tariffs. The automaker saying.That the levies would cost the company about $1.5 billion. Ford CEO Jim Farley saying on the call that quote, it's still too early to fully understand our competitors' responses to these tariffs. It is clear, however, that in this new environment, automakers with the largest US footprint will have a big advantage.Stepping into crocs, the company withdrawing its full year outlook with consumer behavior remaining uncertain amid the tariff policies. The company highlighting the anticipated sourcing mix in 2025, with Vietnam shouldering almost half the load. Now for context, Trump's so-called Liberation Day tariff on Vietnam, remember, was 46%. That was later suspended for 90 days to allow time for trade talks is at that universal base of 10%.And taking a look at toys, Mattel pausing its full year 2025 guidance citing, you guessed it, tariffs. The Mattel CEO saying on the earnings call that quote, given the volatile macroeconomic environment and evolving US tariff situation, it is hard to predict consumer spending. So the drumbeat goes on.

24:28 spk_1

Well, while most of big tech earnings we know are in the rearview mirror now, tariffs remain a dark cloud of uncertainty for the sector as the threat of renewed volatility lingers. We're taking a look at the state of tech with Baird, managing director. That would be Ted Mortenson. Ted, good to see you. Good to see you. So maybe start, Ted.Big picture when it comes to tech, I'm just curious how you would how you would judge Ted, how you would characterize sentiment toward the sector right now. How would you describe it? Yeah,

24:54 spk_7

it'sa great question. Sentiment is pretty negative actually. If you look at some of the portfolios that have been structured, they're very defensive, so.If you look at what happened, uh, I would say the first week of February we had a lot of complacency and the market was at its all-time highs, then we really, uh, pivoted down to a down cycle. We're almost down 22%.Between that February and April time frame, uh, people got very defensive, and I had in my career I've never seen underweights the size as I've seen in tech going into, you know, I would say, um, April 7th was the lows, um, you've seen a snapback of roughly 15% and I think that's just people trying to get equal weight on certain sectors that they can see growth on that's sustainable.

25:43 spk_0

It's so interesting, Ted, because before that dip there was a lot of talk that tech was the new defensive in some ways or that it had defensive characteristics because of its size, because of the long term AI growth story, and it doesn't seem like those sort of underlying beliefs have necessarily gone away or have they. They

26:04 spk_7

haven't. I think one of the biggest reports of the whole earnings season was Microsoft, OK.They killed it. Uh, they killed it on Azure on 35% growth, and half of that growth was just people moving the cloud. They can't even maintain Gen AI, uh, supply demand curves. Same thing with Amazon. They can't, they can't meet the Gen AI demand. So these companies, if you look at Meta, Microsoft, um, specifically, they're free cash flowing better than than Argentina, quite frankly.They're putting, they're putting free cash flow out there in the $18 billion range, and that, that gives them a lot of latitude that they can spend like they're spending on Gen AI. I would argue they are somewhat defensive if you look at where the market's going.

26:51 spk_1

What one question heading into this earning season was the AI boom and whether those big tech companies were gonna keep spending on that boom. And then when you heard them talk about their capex plans though was Alphabet reiterated.And Microsoft reiterated meta raised and I guess the question is, do you think though this is peak cap X? I mean, if I'm I'm an Nvidia investor right now, I'm wondering about what what comes in 2026.

27:15 spk_7

So Wall Street got it wrong, to be honest with you, and I think, uh, there was a lot of misinformation from some of the read analysts that, you know, those reports were coming hot and fast. I know, yeah, and I think, I think it was just, uh, it's really kind of a sucker punch where.The reanalysts were saying, oh, I'm seeing Microsoft and Amazon pull back on Capa. The real issue is time to power. You cannot get some of these data data centers are being built the, the, the represent power that you need for the cloud titans. So that's number one. Microsoft has been so adamant that uh CapEx will moderate because they've built all these long term assets, the shelves and the utilities, right?So if you look at 25 and 26, they have to populate all these mega data centers with next generation equipment. So that's where we're focused. We're really focused on the picks and shovels versus the construction side of the business. And who's who's picks and shovels, Ted? Oh, like in a, you know, if you look at everything from um the supply and core silicon, that's Navidia and Avago primarily.And then you, you go up the stack on, on networking that's ERISA and even a name like Celestica that is doing the private label white white box networking, um, and then you go to some of the, the high voltage power players like, um, monolithic power or whatever that whole continuum of of build there's there's, there's companies that you should be focused on that are gonna have some pretty good growth over the next couple of years

28:46 spk_0

and thenTed we gotta ask you about the big one of the.Big stories of the week was the sort of Apple testimony that came out, right? that talked about, um, AI and the role it's playing in search and we saw Alphabet shares get really spooked here because I, I guess part of the leap was not only Apple leading more into AI but also the idea.That maybe people aren't using Google as much. Maybe they're just going straight to perplexity or or chat GBT or whatever to do their searching. How much do you think? Where are we on that sort of adoption curve? Well,

29:21 spk_7

Google has 100% of search, so yeah, obviously they can't maintain that amount. I think it's, it's interesting that Apple put out a press release when they are so far behind on Gen AI. I mean, they're a year behind on Siri.Uh, if you look at Google, the way I look at it is a little bit different. You look at Google, they pioneered GenI through deep De Mind, uh, and some other bets. That's number one. Number 2, they've been spending at billion dollar levels on cloud infrastructure. Apple has not, so I think it's shooting, it's throwing a rock in a glass house, uh, a, a little bit, and I think it's an overreaction personally. Uh, my clients are worried about Google's share account.Uh, but it's a brilliant company with unbelievably good technology. So, uh, there's, there's other pieces of Google you should look at.

30:14 spk_1

Ted, it was so great to see you, to have you on set today. It was terrific.

30:17 spk_7

It was a pleasure. Thank you for

30:18 spk_1

having me. Thank you. All right.Well, the inventor of chat, GPT OpenAI originally started with the intention of making humanity and tech better and more symbiotic. It's now evolved into the heart of a debate over who should owe and profit from that venture. We're gonna take a look at inside the controversy and the headlines, all that and more coming up.

30:43 spk_0

OpenAI's new restructuring plan remains a point of contention for Elon Musk as his legal claims against the creator of Chat GPT move forward. Yahoo Finance's Alexis Kinon joins us now with the latest. So OpenAI, as we know, has a complex structure and the structure was set to change. Elon Musk challenged that.In a lawsuit in a lawsuit, and then open an eye I said, well, we're gonna do a differentthing.

31:08 spk_8

Maybe not. We're going to backtrack a little bit. We're gonna stay a nonprofit open AI at the top of the pyramid being the parent company of a for-profit company in which Microsoft and others are invested, that is going to turn into that that subsidiary that's gonna turn into a public benefit corporation which is still essentially a for-profit business, but in a lawsuit in that lawsuit you mentioned that Musk has on.Going against OpenAI, Altman, other executives, and Microsoft, Musk said this about this about face. He said by all indications, OpenAI's latest announcement is a facade concealing OpenAI's prior looting of the charity and ongoing profiteering from it. He went on to criticize OpenAI's removal of for-profit caps that are in place with the nonprofit that uh is put on outside and.Investors, so that is going to go away according to this announcement. OpenAI has for its part responded and said that the continuing case they call it baseless by Elon Musk, the lawsuit saying it only provides and proves that it was always a bad faith attempt to slow down OpenAI's progress. Now it's unclear to me how this change, how this entity change is going to impact competition. You guys were just talking a lot about Google's advance.in this space you have Apple already using Chat GBT owned by OpenAI for its Apple intelligence features on its mobile devices. You had Eddie Q, head of services for Apple, testifying in Google's search remedies trial this week saying that Apple is also considering not only Chat GBT but also Perplexity, which is a corporation, by the way, Anthropic, which is a public benefit corporation, all of those in the mix as.Potential search possibilities for Apple. Uh, so you know you have all these different types of entities in the mix and what that does when you extrapolate out and go into the future and test these companies against each other, I don't know. You also had an open letter that came right before this about face that was signed by technology experts including some what some people call the Godfather who some people call the godfather of AI Jeffrey Hinton, AI Pioneer, also Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law professor.Saying that OpenAI should remain a nonprofit. So what exactly they think about this new idea?

33:39 spk_1

Has Microsoft weighed in yet, Alexis, on this new open AI structure? Do we? I

33:43 spk_8

don't think so. I haven't seen that. Um, the open letter from these experts said that OpenAI wasn't organized for this purpose, and their concern, of course, is that any for-profit structure is going to harm potentially humanity.Robots take over, um, so there's a lot of debate here still to come, I think, and regulators so far haven't truly weighed in, but there was some pressure from attorneys general on OpenAI to keep their structure in place as well.

34:18 spk_0

We'veall seen the Matrix. I don't think the nonprofit structure would stop the robots. I really wanted to get, I, I think if it gets to that point, Alexis, thanks so much. I appreciate it.Now time for some of today's training ticket sponsored by Tasty Trade. We're checking in on shares of Transmetics, Rocket Lab, and Toast. Let's start with Transmetics, uh, medical equipment company topping earnings estimates, um, in its most latest quarter, and it also raised its revenue guidance for the full year. Uh, the company beating on the top and bottom line here, total revenue coming in at $143.5 million here, um, and the company is seeing some.Success, um, in one of its liver products in particular, but overall, uh, doing well here.

35:07 spk_1

Yeah, it looks like, uh, most on the streets still like this one. the move on the stock so far this year is tremendous. It's up around 80%. Uh, Piper looked like to me raised the target to 125. They maintain the overweight. William Blair also likes it. They have an outperform, told their clients they view the results as strong, should help offset some of the.Debate regarding the company's market position. They say in an increasingly competitive environment they view the company say as one of the better organic growth stories in our coverage universe. Interesting,

35:37 spk_0

as you say, um, up about 80% this year. Yeah.

35:41 spk_1

All right. Shares of Rocket Lab tub in today after posting a wider than expected loss for the first quarter company also issued revenue guidance for the second quarter. They missed on the lower side. Uh, so for Q1, looks like revenue beat.Just IEDA lost 30 million. The estimate was 34 million. Uh, in terms of looking ahead, they forecast revenue for the second quarter 130 to 140 per Bloomberg. The estimate was 136.8. They've seen adjusted EBA loss of 28 to 30. The estimate was was a loss of 21.4 million. Also saying it intends to establish a holding company structure, a new parent company, Rocket Lab Corporation. Yeah,

36:19 spk_0

itlooks like that forecast.in particular, um, hitting the stock here but on the call they also talked about developing their new, uh, their own rocket to try to place some of their satellites in space. So that's sort of an ongoing effort on the part of Rocket Lab, but this has been one that um sort of retail investors have looked to to help them play this industry because there aren't a lot of publicly traded ways to play space, so to speak, um, you know, we were just talking about our first trender.Which is up 80% this year. This one is down about 19% year to date, so they haven't seen that bear fruit, but over the past year,

36:55 spk_1

huge, hugegains, nearly 400%, yeah, exactly. And despite that, I mean, despite 400%, still mostly fans on the street, does look like Cantor takes their target to 29, maintains the

37:06 spk_0

overweight. Got you. And then let's talk about toast, those shares popping today on the back of a guidance boost. The company raising its adjusted EEA guidance.For the full year topping estimates now Toast, um, provides both hardware and software um to restaurants and other types of businesses here. So also kind of a good read on what's going on in the economy, and they actually raised their forecast for IEA for the full year, um, as well as for, um, well, their second quarter forecast for beating estimates here, subscription revenue coming in, um, last quarter, the first quarter a little bit higher than estimated.

37:40 spk_1

Yeah, street is fairly divided on this one. Stock nice runs up about 12% this year, more than 50% over the past 12 months. Uh, just looking at some analyst notes, Evercore, which has the equivalent of a hold here, stock reaction they say likely due to a mix of offsetting data points like weaker new location ads.Balanced with promising ARR growth and the announcement of another large enterprise win that would be top golf. Julie,

38:05 spk_0

all right, there you go. As shares of Exxon higher this week following strong earnings, we're gonna hear from the company CEO on the other side. Stick around, much more market domination still to come.

38:21 spk_1

Shares of Exxon getting a boost this week following better than expected earnings on the top and bottom lines. Axon, the company that develops technology products for military and law enforcement, saw revenue for the first quarter rise 31% year over year. For more on the latest quarter and what's next, let's talk.And now Josh Ener, Axon present. Josh, it is good to see you. So you reported these results first quarter, uh, beats expectations. Josh, you raised your forecast. Walk us through the report, Josh, and, and what gave you the confidence to raise that forecast?

38:54 spk_9

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for having me on today. We're really excited about what's going on at Axon right now. We're coming off a great Q1 and really a great, you know, several year run where revenues have grown in the last 3 years by an average of 30% plus. Uh, we're seeing some even dub margin expansion as well. And, uh, the pipeline keeps growing into the future. And ultimately, when we're making customers really happy and they're expressing a lot of excitement about all the new products that we'reLaunching gives us more confidence to be able to raise our outlook, which, which we're excited to do a couple days ago on our earnings call.

39:29 spk_0

Josh, it's really interesting because most of the companies that we've heard from this earnings season have talked about the macroeconomic environment. They've talked about tariffs. I want to take those two things one by one. Firstly, you guys said on the call there were virtually no headwinds in terms of the macro environment. Why not? Why do you think you're not seeing that?

39:48 spk_9

Well, ultimately, uh, most of our business is tied to, uh, state and local government spending, and there, you know, we're seeing a lot of excited customers that are having great experiences with our technology. We see a very healthy pipeline filled with both existing and, and new product opportunities. And the way our customers buy generally is, is operationally in their budget. They're not going out and looking.For grants or one-time buckets of money to spend on Axon and and what that's led to is a very stable and predictable business and you know, we're honored to be able to service our customers in that way.

40:22 spk_0

And so, and then let's talk about tariffs. The other piece of that you guys talked about that on the call a little bit as well, that you have diversified your supply chain. Where have you diversified it to? And do you guys have any manufacturing in places like China?

40:35 spk_9

So, uh, we're big on seeing around corners at Exxon, and a couple of years ago, you know, we, we took a fresh look at, at how we're, uh, managing our inventory and what types of risks there are in inventory. And certainly we saw, you know, uh, what was happening with China as a whole, and then, you know, continuing on to the China, uh, Taiwan potential conflict, and we said, look, we've got to have, uh, uh, you know,Second suppliers for all of our components, not just the major ones. And so we've really diversified our supply chain globally to include more in the US. And what that's led to in, in addition to a lot more investment in inventory on hand, has just been more predictability and stability in times like these. And so, while there's a small impact to our P&L based on the tariffs,Uh, we're really happy to reiterate our EBITA margin guidance and, and raise our revenue guidance, and, and we think this is just a result of our operations team doing a really good job managing the situation and, and seeing, seeing ahead of it.

41:33 spk_1

Josh, I, I, I'm also curious how you all there are leveraging AI right now, how you're leveraging AI functionality into the portfolio, Josh, and what the customer response has been.

41:43 spk_9

Yeah, fantastic. There's actually two different ways we're, uh, we're, we're using AI right now. One to benefit our customers, and one, you know, to benefit our employees and their productivity internally. On the customer side, we launched our first AI product about a year ago called Draft one, and this analyzes the audio transcripts that you see in the body cam videos and writes the first draft of the report for the officer. This saves them about80 to 90% of their time they spend on writing reports, which in turn gets them out into the community doing the job that they're passionate about. Uh, on the back of that last week or a couple of weeks ago, we announced our real-time translator, which is another AI tool, uh, that sits on your body camera like a, a virtual assistant. It'll translate about 100 different languages for you. Uh, if you're an officer talking to someone who doesn't speak the same language.Language and I think you'll start to see more and more assistant type functionality on the body camera itself, which our customers are very excited about. And on top of all that, we're trying to rapidly adopt tools internally, uh, that, that, uh, you know, accentuate our ability to deliver products faster to customers and, and really limit the time we spend on long bureaucratic workflows, and I think this all amounts to really great.Opportunity for everyone in the value chain for our employees, for our customers, etc.

43:02 spk_0

Josh, I saw the, the translator tech. I thought that was really cool. I'm curious, are you guys using proprietary technology or are you using a different, you know, some kind of um Gen AI platform that you're putting that you're combining with that there? And then secondarily, what is the uptake been? I know that that's still in beta.

43:22 spk_9

Yeah, for sure. So internally, um, we use a number of different tools and platforms, uh, you know, for our AI product development, and we're really trying to diversify in that way. I think we're still in the early innings of Gen AI obviously. And so for us, it's really about, hey, how can we diversify and make sure that we're giving the customers the best tool for that exact use case. Um, and so, in terms of adoption, it's gone very, very well. Uh, you know, our sales cycles are usually.about 6 to 12 months long and within about 8 weeks of announcing our early Gen AI products, we've had phenomenal uptick and we closed, I think, 12 deals in Q4, shortly after we announced our new AI error plan that's continued to to Q1 and it will continue throughout the rest of the year. And so AI will be playing a bigger and bigger part in our results at Axon, and we're certainly excited about that.

44:15 spk_1

Josh, always good to see you. Always great to have you on the show. Thank you.

44:18 spk_9

Awesome. Nice to see you again as well. Thanks for your time.

44:22 spk_1

Well, while we're wrapping up today's market domination, don't go anywhere. We've got you covered with all the action following the closing bell. Stay tuned for market domination overtime.