Meta’s antitrust win, Salesforce’s deal closure, and iPhone’s popularity in China
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer releases the Homestretch — an actionable afternoon update, just in time for the last hour of trading on Wall Street. Markets: Stocks continued their recent declines Tuesday as megacap tech lagged on worries about valuations within the artificial intelligence trade. The S & P 500 was on track for its worst losing streak since August as it closed in on its fourth consecutive session of losses. Club stocks Amazon and Microsoft weighed on the market, shedding 4% and 2.7%, respectively, in the afternoon. Club holding Nvidia ‘s 1.5% drop didn’t help sentiment either, going into its highly anticipated earnings report Wednesday evening. The Club also had a busy day of trades. We bought more Home Depot on its post-earnings decline , and sold half of our Disney stake following a disappointing quarter last week. Later in the session, we booked some big profits in Eli Lilly , while adding to our Nike position. The Club also initiated a position in Procter & Gamble , a consumer powerhouse behind household brands like Tide, Crest, and Gillette. Done deal : Salesforce closed its $8.3 billion acquisition of AI-powered data management company Informatica ahead of schedule. The companies had been targeting early next year for completion. “The market didn’t really care for this deal when it was announced in May,” Jeff Marks, director of portfolio analysis for the Club, said Tuesday afternoon, recalling Salesforce shares sinking on reports of the deal and the subsequent announcement a few days later. Marks added that the early completion of the purchase is a “good sign of confidence in the integration that Salesforce expects the deal to be accretive to non-GAAP operating margin and non-GAAP earnings per share one year faster than originally believed.” Despite these positive developments, Marks said Salesforce is still a “show me” story. Salesforce has yet to convince investors that AI doesn’t threaten the software giant’s core business, which operates using a seat-based model. The stock lost more than 1.5% in Tuesday’s trading. Big win: Meta Platforms got a big win Tuesday afternoon in an important antitrust case against the Federal Trade Commission. A federal judge ruled that the FTC did not prove its claims that Meta holds a monopoly in social networking or that the company should not have been allowed to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp back in 2012 and 2014, respectively. The agency, which wanted those two units to be divested, argued that there are no major apps like Facebook and Instagram. The judge, however, said that there are plenty of competitors, citing TikTok and YouTube, and contended that the social media landscape has changed radically since those Meta acquisitions were made over a decade ago. Shares of Club name Meta turned positive late Tuesday. The favorable Meta ruling came 10 weeks after Alphabet’s Google avoided the harshest penalties in the antitrust case it lost last year. Good news: iPhone sales in China surged in October, taking Apple’s dominance in the country’s smartphone market to one in every four phones sold, according to the latest data from Counterpoint Research . Apple last achieved this milestone in 2022. Overall, sales for Apple’s flagship device in China jumped 37% last month from the year prior. Analysts at Counterpoint pointed to solid demand for the iPhone 17, in particular, for the market share gains. All three iPhone 17 variants have outperformed iPhone 16 models in sales, according to Counterpoint, posting mid-to-high double-digit percentage growth from year-earlier levels. The base model of the iPhone 17 continued to grow at the fastest rate. Apple shares were up slightly on Tuesday. Jim Cramer has pounded the table on the new iPhones since the September launch. He previously described its debut as “gigantic” and argued that Apple’s newest devices are “more of a bargain” than past versions. The Club maintains its long-held “own it, don’t trade it” thesis on Apple stock. Up next: Club holding TJX will report quarterly earnings Wednesday morning, along with other retailers like Target and Lowe’s . Then, Nvidia and Palo Alto Networks , both Club names, will release their results after Wednesday’s market close. Investors will also get the minutes from the October Fed meeting at 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. 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