CNBC Investing Club: Cramer’s Morning Take on Apple 6/16/26

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Jim Cramer (0:47)

Jim Cramer here to share a short preview of my take on the market from today's members only CNBC Investing Club morning meeting. Join the club for full access to the morning meeting every day. That's what we're here for at 1020 AM. Visit cnbc.com/morningtake to sign up today. That's one word, morning take.

Jeff Marks (1:09)

You know, maybe bigger picture here. Yes, the CPU story, the agentic AI story. That's one part of our thesis. Part two is Foundry. And as we know with Apple has struggled to get a full supply from Taiwan Semi, many other tech companies as well. They're looking for alternative sources, especially US based sources.

Jim Cramer (1:32)

Right.

Jeff Marks (1:32)

Given always the geopolitical risk is always out there with Taiwan Semi. So Intel is just a logical winner.

Jim Cramer (1:39)

But I'm also worried about a different kind of political risk that someone runs for president, maybe both parties, and says, listen, these hyperscalers have bid up the price for everything, including your phone with DRAM.

And we ought to put a tax on them and give it back to phone buyers. I'm worried about things like that because frankly, I got to tell you, there's going to be a backlash against AI.

Jeff Marks (2:02)

Well that gets to the other big story of the day, which is Apple and the company planning to raise prices on its products to offset surging memory costs. Tim Cook tells The Wall Street Journal, we're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us. And we've been trying to shield our customers from the increases. But the situation has become unsustainable. Wall Street Journal, they tried to do the math here, estimating prices may need to increase by 200 bucks or more. Evercore thinks that number might be closer to 100 But as you call out, too much competition for memory by the hyperscalers, who are willing to pay any price. Memory companies, they're more focused on building out AI memory chips because it's higher margin, consumer chips getting left behind.

I was going to say, I think Apple, they will be better equipped at passing through prices compared to probably their peers, the non-premium side, the customers can't handle it. So they could actually gain market share ironically from the industry dynamic.

Jim Cramer (3:03)

I think it actually, the stock is up because of that. I know that I talked with Tim Cook last night. He's very grieved, obviously.

You could price out people. He certainly does want to do that. But he did mention to me, that you have to understand, that we've exhausted all our, whatever we have in DRAM. And that in the old days, they used to be able to really bargain for DRAM. But now, the hyperscalers just say, I'll pay anything. And there used to be kind of this agreement, where there were business-to-business chips and business-to-consumer chips. Now, everything's business-to-business, because the hyperscalers want to overpay. So just be aware that this could be a winner, Apple. But the consumer could be a loser.

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SPEAKER_2 (4:17)

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