Chevron CEO "First on CNBC," Netflix Falls Despite Beat, Riding the Record Rally 7/18/25

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Jim Cramer (0:47)

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

Carl Quintanilla (0:55)

Good Friday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla, Sara Eisen, a Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer and Faber have the morning off. Pre-market's pretty sturdy as we wrap up this important week of earnings, Fed speak and economic data. Housing starts a pretty good print. Pressure yields lower, 10-year back to 442 A roadmap begins with this record rally rolling on. S&P posting its ninth record close of the year so far, 10 for the NAS.

Sara Eisen (1:20)

Netflix beating estimates, raising its outlook as well. But the stock is trading down here in the early action. We'll get the streets take. And Chevron announcing it has completed its acquisition of Hess. After an arbitration panel cleared the way for the merger, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth joins us here first on CNBC to discuss what that big deal means for the company and its investors.

Carl Quintanilla (1:41)

Let's begin with this stock market's record run, got some new all-time highs. Again, as we said, NASDAQ for the week and for the year is going to be outpacing the S&P. A lot of that has to do with what we've heard out of the AI stack and the tech stack. Although some of the financials, including MX today, pretty reassuring.

Sara Eisen (1:58)

MX I thought was a good report. Revenue rises, card fee growth reiterated their guidance. Pretty good read on the consumer there, especially premium consumer. But you're right, Carl, the best performing sector of the week, information technology. Yet again, wins the day. Why? Because the chip sector. We did get that Nvidia news that they're going to be able to export the H20 chips to China.

That was fuel. But the second best performing sector is industrials. And the third is financials. So starting to get some signs from corporate America, and earnings season will really start to heat up next week. But so far, so good. I'm thinking about even companies that were under pressure and facing issues around price pressure and growth, like consumer staples. PepsiCo yesterday had one of its best earnings reactions ever. I'm not saying it's necessarily the strongest read on the consumer, but what we got from the banks, what we're starting to get from the industrials, GE Aerospace yesterday, United last night. It's positive.

Carl Quintanilla (2:56)

Yeah, 3M today with a beat on the top and the bottom line. All of their business segments grew. In sort of the classic fashion lately, they do raise the full year earnings estimate, but they do trim full year organic. They were two to three, now they're talking two. But that does point to some of the cost efficiencies that corporates are having to adopt because of the policy backdrop right now.

Sara Eisen (3:18)

I think the biggest underlying trend, Carl, is that all of the doom and gloom from early April, a lot of it has reversed. You know, United CEO used an interesting phrase. He said, it's less uncertain. And the less uncertain is really filtering through into these better results and better tones from management. You heard that from David Solomon when he was on the show earlier this week from Goldman Sachs as well. It's just this confidence boost. We're gonna get the first read, a preliminary read, University of Michigan sentiment at 10 a.m. for July. And what we have seen from sentiment is this big plunge after into the tariffs and after the initial retaliatory tariffs and then a rebound in sentiment. And with that, you have this better feeling about what the second half is going to look like. We hear it now from corporate America and from companies like a Delta and United who really do have an immediate read on consumer demand and how the consumer is planning and feeling.