Buffett on Apple and AI, Apollo Global CEO at Milken, Disney Earnings Watch 5/6/24

Carl Quintanilla (0:00)

Market moving insight and analysis. Join Jim Cramer, David Faber, and me, Carl Quintanilla on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street.

Good Monday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer at post nine of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber's at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. Pretty steady market ahead of the open. Light on data this week, but plenty of high profile earnings from Disney and Uber to Airbnb and Arm. Ten year remains below four and a half. Our roadmap begins with Berkshire's boom, a 39% gain in Q1 operating profit. That's a new record. Meantime, Buffett says they did trim Apple and sold off Paramount at a loss.

David Faber (0:38)

Speaking of Paramount, the company is or its special committee is opening up negotiations with Sony and Apollo who are teaming up. They're also still talking with Skydance as well about their bid for the overall company.

And from here at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles over the next two hours, we're gonna be joined by Apollo Global's Marc Rowan, Goldman Sachs's David Solomon and Exxon's Darren Woods. So nice line up ahead, guys.

Carl Quintanilla (1:03)

Let's begin, David, with Buffett and Apple. After that day's, after that Stocks Friday rally, Berkshire says it did trim its stake in the iPhone maker by about 13% to over, just over 135 billion in Q1. Didn't stop Buffett from praising Apple at the meeting over the weekend. Take a listen.

Warren Buffett (1:19)

At the end of the year, I would think it extremely likely that Apple is the largest common stock holding we have now. When we look at Coca-Cola and American Express and Apple, we look at them as businesses. Now there's differences in tax factors, there's difference in managerial responsibility, a whole bunch of things. But in terms of deploying your money, we always look at every stock as a business and we have no attempt made to predict markets, we have no attempt made to pick stocks.

Carl Quintanilla (2:04)

Jim said the business may be even better than Coke AXP and said the iPhone is probably the best product of all time.

Jim Cramer (2:12)

Yeah, look, I think that he definitely endorsing Tim Coke there.

I struggled to try to figure out whether he was in that camp, which just says there's nothing new, or the camp that says he didn't give us exactly a world service.

And also remember, Tim Coke is, Adam, it's a tech company. And I wasn't sure whether Buffett thought it was a service company with tech. Now, he, none of these have to do with the fact he's selling some. David, you know that Apple's become very controversial because of whether it has growth or not, and whether it's just an iPhone company without something new. What is your impression about what people are saying? Say about VisionPro, does it matter? What else is moving the needle that they're doing? And does that impact, you think, what Buffett's thinking?

David Faber (3:00)

I don't, I really don't know, Jim. You're the only person who's talking regularly about VisionPro. And as our viewers know, you are single-handedly trying to make sure it becomes a key part of the enterprise, so to speak, that businesses use it. But beyond that, as you well know, I think the focus now is what? About a month away, right? At the Developer's Conference and what the company will be saying specifically about generative AI, its inclusion in the next-generation iPhone, and whether that will truly drive an upcycle in sales. Obviously, we are coming off a quarter that was well-received by investors, Jim, as you know.

And I mean, Buffett's gonna be an owner here for a long time to come, even with that, obviously, reduction a bit in the overall size of the position.

Jim Cramer (3:43)

Well, David, there's no doubt that if you have a refresh cycle in this AI, which is what Tim Cook told me last week, that wait and see, you won't believe the AI that we have, then you would upgrade your phone because that is the first real change, not incremental change, but real change.

I postulated that some of the things that Samsung has, the Android system, including, you get to circle things and the one where if you speak, it allows you to speak in the language that you're with. I mean, I didn't go specific to that, but Tim Cook told me, don't worry about that, that this stuff will be so much better than Apple has. So David, I mean, I can't imagine not wanting to get that phone if it has AI in it.