CNBC's Jim Cramer has been known to take fantasy football way too seriously, and on Thursday, he took it to the next level.
"It's time for me to show my reality, not fantasy, but reality stock team, the one I drafted in my head last night while I was busily putting together what could be a championship Skidaddy Ski team, which, of course, competes in the Mad Money Schlumpadicka league," the "Mad Money" host said.
Alphabet and Facebook were Cramer's choices for running backs because even though their stocks seem overvalued, investors won't regret paying those prices later, he said.
"Facebook's a stud. I don't even know if there's an analogue in the NFL as I've never seen anything like this company," Cramer said. "Facebook's one of those backs that gets all-purpose yards for doing nothing but being a platform for two billion people. No NFL player has ever had that kind of pull. The only company that can stop Facebook is Instagram and Facebook owns it!"
Ingevity CEOÂ Sees Resurgence in Oilfields
As commodity watchers mark every turn of the crisis in Houston, the nation's energy capital, Ingevity President and CEO Michael Wilson offered CNBC a promising take on the state of the oil market.
"When we saw the collapse in oil prices back in 2015, we saw demand destruction. What we did is we went back to the laboratories, reformulated products to take cost out but to keep the efficacy of those products for our customers. And we've been very successful at that," Wilson told Cramer on Thursday. "And then since the beginning of this year, we've seen a real resurgence in our oilfield business. So it's definitely coming back."
Wilson pointed to the number of oil rigs as a loose measure for the comeback. They peaked in 2014, when there were about 2,000 rigs in place, the count bottomed at 400 rigs and has since been climbing. As of last Friday, there were 940 rigs in the United States.
Analog Devices' 'Mosaic' of Growth Drivers
To counter the rising interest in exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, Cramer wanted to explain why individual companies do still matter to these funds and the overall market.
"What was behind the incredible rally in non-FANG tech yesterday?" the "Mad Money" host asked on Thursday.
Cramer argued that it wasn't Warren Buffett's endorsement of Apple or the small jump in shares of Netflix.
"No, it was all about a little company called Analog Devices," Cramer said. "Of course, it's not really little anymore. It's a $30 billion semiconductor company, and it reported a terrific quarter and held a brilliant conference call."
Informatica CEO on Serving Top Tech Giants
Then, Cramer spoke with Anil Chakravarthy, the CEO of privately-held data management company Informatica.
Chakravarthy told Cramer on Thursday that even though Informatica helps integrate and bring data to companies including Amazon, Salesforce and Microsoft, it isn't affected by competition.
"We partner very well with Salesforce, with Amazon, with Azure, with Google, so we partner really well with anybody who is in the analytics space. We don't do that. We bring data to them," the CEO said. "We like to call ourselves 'from mainframe to the internet of things and everything in between,' and that's how agnostic we are."
And as Amazon develops artificial intelligence for its voice-enabled devices, Informatica is working on a slightly different AI application of its own, Chakravarthy said.
"We use artificial intelligence to find what data you have where," he told Cramer. "A lot of customers deal with so much data. They don't even know basic answers to basic questions, like how many databases do I have? Where do I have customer data? What data is secure? And this is all over the place, in their own enterprises, in the cloud, and it's growing every day. And AI is a great way of answering those basic questions."
FMC Corporation: The Right Chemistry?
Finally, Cramer turned to FMC Corporation, a diversified chemical company with a stock that has climbed almost 50 percent since the "Mad Money" host recommended it in January.
"From the beginning, ever since I started recommending FMC, I've argued that this is an overlooked company with a stock that simply doesn't get the respect it deserves from Wall Street. Even after its recent run, that's still true," Cramer said.
From its fast-growing lithium business to its deal with DuPont for that company's crop protection business, FMC has a lot going for it, Cramer contended.
Pierre Brondeau, FMC's president, chairman and CEO, responded to CNBC's request for comment on Cramer's piece in an email.
"We're excited about where we are today and more importantly about the opportunities ahead of us," Brondeau wrote. "Our transaction with DuPont crop protection will fundamentally reposition our Agricultural Solutions business as an innovation-led tier-one Agricultural technology company. The acquisition will significantly enhance our portfolio with strong IP protection, world-class innovation capabilities, and a strong pipeline of active ingredients that will feed new product introductions over the next decade and beyond. We expect FMC to be one of the fastest growing crop protection companies in the years to come."
Brondeau added that it was gratifying to see investors and commentators support management's initiatives.
"We are equally excited about our Lithium business, which is a leading supplier of high-value specialty lithium products. FMC is investing across our product lines to increase capacity in order to respond to strong market demand for our products. Additionally, we believe that spinning off this business as an independent company in 2018 will unlock shareholder value. We think the next several years promise to be among the most exciting in FMC's nearly 135 year history," the CEO wrote.
And for now, Cramer was on board with FMC's prospects.
"Just because FMC's stock has climbed relentlessly higher, that doesn't mean you've missed a thing. I'm not kidding," Cramer said. "[There's] a lot of value creation still to come. If you don't already own FMC, I suggest waiting for the next big market-wide pullback, and then do some buying."
Lightning Round: I Struggle With UAA
In Cramer's lightning round, he flew through his take on some callers' favorite stocks:
Under Armour Inc.: "I struggle. I struggle. I struggle. Because I was on the Foot Locker call, and then I've done a lot of work in this group, whether it be Finish Line, whether it be what's going on with the Hibbetts of the world, and, of course, Dick's, and I have to come back and say no thank you. I don't want to touch that stock."
Chesapeake Energy Corporation: "No, you know, look. With that, you've got to hope for a cold winter. We did not get the summer that they needed to be able to get the thermostat going so that people would buy it. And don't forget, the oil patch is no place to be right now."
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