My Top 10 Things to Watch Wednesday, February 18th 1. Meta commits to buy millions of Nvidia chips for AI data centers. It’s like the old days when every hyperscaler wanted an Nvidia chip. Nvidia has had a tough time, but its stock is up about 2% this morning. The meta was flat. We own both for the club. 2. Palo Alto Networks, the club’s name, had strong quarterly results, but its stock price fell more than 6% anyway after the company lowered its full-year profit forecast. CEO Nikesh Arora said the EPS reduction was due to an increase in the number of shares from the CyberArk and Chronosphere transactions. I believe him, and I still believe that cybersecurity should not be lumped in with software sales. 3. Workday was downgraded from buy to hold at Citizens after co-founder Anil Bhusri returned as CEO. He replaces Carl Eschenbach, who made a series of AI-focused acquisitions but failed to get ahead of what is seen as AI’s major threat to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) category. 4. Activist firm Elliott Management has amassed a more than 10% stake in Norwegian Cruise Line, arguing that improved profitability will help reverse a long period of stock price weakness. Mr. Elliott has been working with Adam Goldstein, the former chief executive of Royal Caribbean, as a possible director candidate. Will you give former Subway CEO John Chissey a chance? 5. Berkshire Hathaway acquired a stake in the New York Times Company in Warren Buffett’s last quarter as CEO. Berkshire also cut its position under the club name Amazon, which ironically pays the NYT $20 million to $25 million a year in an AI content licensing agreement, but the impact is even greater. NYT stock rose more than 2% this morning after yesterday’s record closing price. 6. Cadence Design Systems stock rose 7% after better-than-expected results and guidance overnight. Manufacturers of specialized software used in semiconductor design continued to fall in the rankings. These numbers are also good news for Cadence partner Nvidia. 7. Numerous price target reductions for club name Salesforce, our only non-cyber SaaS stock. Wells Fargo rose from $265 to $235 and maintained a hold rating. BTIG rose from $335 to $260, but I maintained my buy call. Citi, with a hold rating, rose to $197 from $257 and said “overwhelming” use of Agentforce could cap organic growth. 8. Barclays raised its price target on McKesson from $960 to $1,050 and maintained its buy rating. The best story? Analysts view McKesson as one of the health care sector’s “safe havens,” but note that the stock currently trades at a 15% premium to its three-year average price. 9. Citi raised StubHub’s rating from sell to hold and lowered its price target from $13 to $9. There’s nothing good about that PT. What an unmitigated misery this has been since the IPO in September. Analysts cited the stock’s decline of more than 40% in the past month as the reason for the upgrade. 10. Western Digital plans to sell part of its SanDisk stock for more than $3 billion to reduce debt. SanDisk stock is headed for a third straight day of declines. But the stock is up more than 140% year-to-date on memory storage deals. I have to buy SanDisk. Sign up for free for my Top 10 Morning Thoughts on the Markets email newsletter (See here for a complete list of Jim Cramer Charitable Trust stocks.) As a subscriber to Jim Cramer’s CNBC Investment Club, you’ll receive trade alerts before Jim makes a trade. After Jim sends a trade alert, he waits 45 minutes before buying or selling stocks in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim talks about a stock on CNBC TV, he will issue a trade alert and then wait 72 hours before executing the trade. The above investment club information is subject to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, along with our disclaimer. No fiduciary duties or obligations exist or arise from your receipt of information provided in connection with the Investment Club. No specific results or benefits are guaranteed.
