Palantir Soars, China's Rally, Lilly Gains, Tesla: Worst Performing S&P Stock in '24 2/6/24

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 Tuesday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, David Faber, at post nine of the New York Stock Exchange. Steady futures, tons of cross currents, though, underneath from Lilly and Spotify earnings, to news on Boeing and Tesla, four Fed speakers today, and a three-year note auction. A roadmap begins with global markets. China stocks come roaring back. But Palantir points to a world of, quote, increasing chaos and danger.

David Faber (0:31)

Plus the weight loss, boom. And it is a boom. Eli Lilly saying obesity drugs will help boost its sales by 20% this year.

And speaking of years, so far Tesla's no good. Very bad year. Shares are down nearly 30%. That's year to date. Of course, it doesn't make it the worst performing stock for 2024

Carl Quintanilla (0:54)

Let's begin with the markets and earnings. Palantir, as we said, surging on stronger than expected quarterly results and guidance, but China and growing geopolitical dangers also on Alex Karp's radar. This is what he had to say on last night's call.

Alex Karp (1:07)

The more dangerous, the more real it gets, the more battle tested and real your software has to be. I believe it's about to get very real. Why? Because our GDP growth is significantly better than China's. Now I know the always wrong crowd says we then should get peace, but I'm telling you that the rational result of the rational consequence of that is our adversaries are like, America's going to be stronger tomorrow than today.

They don't have a GDP story because they do not build these systems as well as we do. They do not have the tech community we do, and they do not have the US market like we do.

Look at our results. As this becomes more and more dangerous, every company in the world, whether they're small, big, whether they're a startup, whether they're one of the largest primes, whether they're us, is going to have to actually prove their software works on the battlefield.

Carl Quintanilla (2:01)

Meantime, Jim, US commercial business up 70 and the guy above on Q1 OperNet.

Jim Cramer (2:05)

Yeah, look, it was a remarkable quarter.

Now, I'm used to George Kirch from CrowdStrike and to Keshe Aurora from Palo Alto Networks. Now, they handle themselves a little bit differently from the way Karp does. I mean, they are, I would say, statesmen, where Alex Karp has now revealed himself as the Dave Portnoy of cybersecurity. I happen to like Portnoy very much. That's not a slam. My favorite line in the entire thing was when he started talking, he said, and then you compare your self-pleasuring to our operationally relevant, commercially viable, critical to your enterprise results.

I think that I had never really thought about comparing my self-pleasuring to his results, but bingo.

David Faber (2:49)

I never thought I'd hear that reference. I mean, nine o'clock hour on CNBC.

Jim Cramer (2:54)

Karp plays for real.

David Faber (2:57)

When I started here 30 years ago, there was a show on at 11 o'clock that talked a lot about that. I forget the name of it, but I'll get back to you on that.

Jim Cramer (3:04)

Well, I mean, there is just some tremendous discussion about how great our country is, but also Palantir is the only company that's working for both Ukraine and Israel.

He does have, you know, he's hot as a razor, they're getting the right people. Now, let me just step back on this guy.

When he first started, he was bad boy, okay? Now, he still speaks bad boy, but he ain't a bad boy. He's getting a lot of orders, and my only problem is, is that if Nikesh and Aurora from Palo Alto and George Kersh and Lesley from Krausevich, they'll say, get a grip, Jim. You don't handle yourself like this, but he is handling a lot of military orders. He's from Philadelphia, by the way.

Carl Quintanilla (3:43)

But is your point that you would prefer Palo Alto and CrowdStrike as a stock?

Jim Cramer (3:47)

Yeah, absolutely, because in the end, I find military fickle. I've witnessed Lockheed Martin, one of the greatest companies on Earth, run by James Takelid, one of the great CEOs on Earth, and it cannot get out of its way. And I don't want to deal with like sequestration or whatever.

In this case, there was a funding problem in the fourth quarter that made it so that you're at the mercy of the government, David. Do I really want to be at the mercy of what some people, but not me, of course, are calling a clown show?