Investing Club: What Cramer is watching Wednesday — the stars and losers of earnings season so far

Published Wed, Feb 2 20229:42 AM EST

What I'm looking at Feb. 2, 2022 Alphabet (GOOGL) earnings report was amazing ... and while YouTube was fantastic and Google Cloud—while still losing money—is growing, there is no doubt that search is the driver ... The company is such a cash generator that the $50 billion buyback is a drop in the bucket ... Youtube v. Netflix (NFLX): The former pays for content the latter you pay it ... YouTube delivered $8.6 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter vs. Netflix's $7.7 billion. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is pulling away from Intel (INTC) in every category from notebooks and PCs to servers and the data center. The roadmap is clear and the customers are abandoning Intel in droves. PayPal (PYPL) guidance down is surprising and awful. The anatomy of a defeat by me for not seeing the signs. It is important not to gloss over what happened here and to OWN it. Is $125 the right amount? EPS of $4.50—a worse case scenario to management's $4.60 to $4.75 guide—with a 27.75 multiple? Or is it a bank with no real return of capital? Which would put it below $100. Or is it about to return to 20% growth and you have to give it a higher multiple on that growth? Net new actives of 15 to 20 million, down from 50 million ... PayPal CEO Dan Schulman makes the case that the less-well-off are starting to spend less. Could this be an harbinger of a tough week of retail earnings coming up? Reminder for paid Club members: Our next live Investing Club monthly call is this Friday at 12:30 p.m. EST. Special guest is AMD CEO Lisa Su. We'll also try to answer many of your questions on stocks in the portfolio. Starbucks (SBUX) will come out of this better than we think and it is a buy if you think we are done with Omicron. New stores in China comping incredibly well ... still supply chain disruptions and labor shortages could continue ... Goldman downgrades, sees cost pressures throughout … UBS with good upgrade of Edwards Lifesciences (EW) to buy from hold—multi-year growth on aortic valves once Omicron goes. Same with Intuitive Surgical (ISRG): we recommended it last night on Mad Money. Etsy (ETSY)—Neutral from sell by UBS, noting it now has a more reasonable multiple. I like this call as the analyst sidestepped a big decline ... With PE of 16, could Qualcomm (QCOM) be the star of tonight's show? Could be big given it has both Apple (AAPL) exposure and top share in all of Chinese phone makers like Xiaomi. Morgan Stanley upgrades Under Armour (UAA)—constant theme. Less supply chain risk and an acceleration of sales in China ... General Motors (GM) still in flux. The high number of electric vehicle models—more than 30 expected over next few years—is being used against them ... a discordant conference call yesterday ... How big is autonomous driving? It's very confusing. Ford's (F) EV strategy leaked. It wasn't supposed to come out like that and it appears a little more disjointed than we expected ... How many ICE (internal combustion engine) people can make the transition? Is Google a share take from Amazon (AMZN), or is there just that much business to go around? Is Alphabet's stock split going to bring back more investors? The Robinhood (HOOD) conundrum. Pandemic to epidemic—the ability to switch even as death rate much higher here than other nations ... Mizuho lifts price target on NXP Semiconductors (NXP) to $225 from $222. Three other analyst firms are up targets. Mizuho also raises Mastercard (MA) price target to $435 from $400 ... This is a direct reaction to a possible acceleration in business. Visa (V) pt up to $235 from $220 ... same ... PulteGroup (PHM): this was a nice beat. EPS $2.51 v. 2.31 estimate ... However it is not liked and there are PT cuts. Rather amazing that new orders were down 4% ... which is better. Order value up big—16%, closings increased 26%. Gross margin actually increased 180 points. Backlog increased 19% ... still a very strong market with great demand ... Buying back $1 billion in shares, 27% increase in revenues, historic low debt, maturing millennials and empty nester demand, could see double-digit price increases ... Bernstein— Colgate-Palmolive (CP) upgraded to hold from sell ... great call as stock has underperformed. Kimberly-Clark (KMB) and Clorox (CLX) to sell from hold ... KMB expensive ... CLX earnings on Thursday ... United Parcel Service (UPS) –way too hot—lots of price target boosts—dividend ... Electronic Arts (EA)—weakness in games—Battlefield 2042 did not meet expectations ... Beyond Meat (BYND) Market performance "Not Beyond a Reasonable Doubt": BMO Capital ... Waste Management (WM) earnings in line, 13% dividend boost ... Emerson (EMR) posts solid numbers ... Industrial raised full EPS, same for sales. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long AAPL, AMD, AMZN, F, GOOGL, MA and UPS. 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