Blue Owl Exclusive, Nvidia Earnings Countdown, Target's Revenue Miss 11/19/25

David Faber (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:12)

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Craig Packer (0:13)

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SPEAKER_4 (0:15)

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Jim Cramer (0:45)

It's Jim Cramer here. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC Squawk on the Street. Don't miss a minute of the action.

Carl Quintanilla (0:52)

Good Wednesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer and David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Bull's trying to take advantage of Tuesday's upside reversal. They'll get some help from consumer names like Lowe's and TJX on earnings, although Target's a different story. Ten year 411 with some FedSpeak, some FedMinutes, and a 20 year auction all on deck today. Our roadmap, though, will begin with Nvidia and the AI trade. The Street's eagerly awaiting signals from the chip giant and some indications whether these bubble fears are overblown.

David Faber (1:21)

Plus, the crypto roller coaster, Bitcoin plummets more than 25% from its record high and is now hovering near seven month lows this after giving up all of the gains from this year. And we'll have the latest read on retail and the consumer. Target reports its 12th consecutive quarter of week are falling sales. TJX, well, what do you guess they did? You're right. Yeah, they raised their annual force.

SPEAKER_2 (1:44)

They blew it out, man.

Jim Cramer (1:45)

They always do.

Carl Quintanilla (1:46)

Let's get to some breaking news this morning, though. For that, we're gonna turn to our Leslie Picker, who's in Las Vegas this morning. Hey, Leslie.

Leslie Picker (1:53)

Hey, Carl. I have learned from people familiar with the matter that Blue Owl has decided to call off its private credit funds merger. This is something we've been talking about all week. You all have been talking about all week, this controversial combination of one of its non-traded funds, Blue Owl Capital Corporation 2, with its bigger publicly listed vehicle, Blue Owl Capital Corp. News of the merger, if you recall, restricted investors from redeeming from the semi-liquid non-traded fund, the one being acquired, until the deal was done early next year. Additionally, investors in the non-traded fund would have faced paper losses of about 20% based on the share prices of the larger publicly traded fund. Now, shares of the parent company, Blue Owl, slumping 7% Monday, although it did gain a little bit yesterday. You can see it's currently up about 5.8% right now. In speaking with people familiar with the matter, the boards of directors of the two funds did not see the benefits of the merger outweighing the reputational criticism as well as the stock price slump from earlier in the week in terms of going through with it. And I'm told that assuming the board does approve this, that the non-traded OBDC2 fund will allow investors who want to redeem to do so starting in Q1, liquidity had only been on a quarterly basis before the merger was announced. And shares of alternative managers, particularly those with significant private credit portfolios, have slumped this year, led by Blue Owl's, about 40% declines up until today's move, guys.

David Faber (3:31)

Yeah, Leslie, any number of concerns involving Blue Owl in terms of underwriting, in terms of how many of their securities include or their holdings include pay-in-kind securities as opposed to cash-paying. But also this is an important channel for the company itself, that being the high net worth, this wealth channel, so to speak, selling these BDCs into it. I think this thing has a 12.5% yield, for example. And I guess my question is, what do they go, therefore do they feel like they've repaired the damage, and or what does it mean for the future of that channel, given how important it is to the overall growth of the company and the hopes that they have of increasing the dividend at Blue Owl itself over time?

Leslie Picker (4:12)

Yeah, you hit the key issue square on the head here, David, which is this idea that these semi-liquid products that are sold mostly to retail, of which this was one of the earliest iterations of this, the one that was being merged into the larger publicly traded vehicle, they're semi-liquid for a reason. You only get quarterly redemptions if you choose to do so. So when this merger was announced, it really brought to the forefront this key issue that, hey, you may not like this merger, but since it's being done at a semi-liquid fund, you can't really do much about it, even if you're facing paper losses of 20%.