Apple and Amazon Earnings Reaction, Chevron CEO "First on CNBC," Jobs Report Surprise 11/01/24

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Market insight and analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street.

Carl Quintanilla (0:11)

Good Friday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber has the warning off. Stocks do try to claw back some of Thursday's losses. Worst day for the NAS since September. The jobs number is weird, 12,000, but plenty of noise. Unemployment stays at 4.1. Roadmap begins with big tech and AI, though. Amazon pledging its investments will pay off, and Tim Cook saying Apple Intelligence is, quote, a compelling upgrade reason. Job growth, as we said, flattens in October. Unemployment stays stable, a sign that labor market may be solid. Big oil with an exon profit beat, and Chevron's Mike Wirth will join us in a few minutes, talk about their quarter. Let's start with Apple, though, posting a beat for the September quarter, including record revenues, thanks to stronger demand for iPhones. As the company ramps up its AI strategy. Services revenue, though, hits a new milestone of 25 billion, but total sales guidance for holiday quarter does come in just shy of consensus. Jim, and everyone is talking about the services revenue miss and the margin that falls out from that.

Jim Cramer (1:13)

Well, look, I spent some time talking with Tim last night, and I feel that the direction of the chatter is wrong. I think that people have to realize that Apple is going to be far more of an software issuance company, maybe get a little bit away from the hardware. Where services greater bet, I mean, look, I think that Tim would emphasize a little bit, it's 100 billion. You're very strong, by the way. The idea that China is supposed to be strong, we got to lose that, that's silly. But the most disappointing thing, Carl, was that the sell side analysts were sticking with this 6% to 7% forecast. There was no way that was going to be good. I came out here every day, and that's not going to be any good. The buy side knew that it isn't any good, but it was a little disabling because on the one hand you have this guidance, this low to mid single digits, which is disappointing.

Carl Quintanilla (2:05)

For the December quarter.

Jim Cramer (2:06)

For the quarter, right. But on the other hand, you had Tim Cook say some things about the excitement, about I've never heard Tim be more excited about a phone release before because there's just a lot of word of mouth building, said please don't concentrate on the lead times, they tell you nothing.

I think that we're in for an elongated software cycle that is going to surprise people. And I think that if you want the expectations finally to get to where they have, that they can beat them, that's fine. There will be people who say, Jim, how can you give something with 2 to 3 percent growth a 30 PE? And I come back and say, we have to start thinking about one services, missed a little bit, but to India. India is being left out. He's got an India, Tim's got an for India, another by India. And what's going to happen is India is going to go like this, and one day will come in and it will have inflected against China. And we'll be saying, why are we still focused on China? This is going to happen sooner rather than later. So what is my feeling? Oh, and it don't trade it. The real disappointment was the analysts, not Tim. You couldn't do that number. You just don't have the horses.

Carl Quintanilla (3:21)

Your point about China increasingly is that the news is getting washed out in a sense. Cover of the FT is about all these multinationals, ABMBEV and others, EL, saying the stimulus is not moving the needle there.

Jim Cramer (3:34)

I mean, EL, this is the day new mom of EL, which is a shame. It was the once great company. When I say day new mom, they're not paying up for any sort of anything, anything that's expensive, whether it be Nike or whether it be Estee Lauder, anything. You know, you don't even have good numbers like Brightline. So what you're having here is this conundrum of people who are on the sell side doing brokerage research continue to hope that China is going to come back. And it because of the so-called stimulus and there even some data last night from China.

Carl Quintanilla (4:06)

I saw you mention the Kaishan PMI.

Jim Cramer (4:08)

I mean, like, you know, Carl, there's a company I'm dealing with right now. I'm not going to mention their name because it's just unfortunate. There's a big, big dispute. But they're telling me, look, Jim, you got to stop measuring companies by earnings per share. And I come back and I say, well, Bill Parcell's, Belichick, they may say, you know, it still matters whether you win more or lose more. But how about if you rig the numbers? How do you rig the numbers to win? And why do we trust China? What did China really do here with their buyback? They wanted to stay in the MSCI as a growing concern, which then brings in more money. I think that the numbers from China are suspect. And I think that we act as if somehow the Chinese Communist Party is putting out some real solid numbers, like they know. Now there are people like Dave Tepper, who I truly respect, who write about Alibaba, what in the 70s, 80s. But why did Alibaba go up? Was it because of consumption?