SOTS 2nd Hour: AI optimism, Iran latest (+Fmr. Defense Sec. Esper), and LIVE: Celsius CEO, Chime CEO 5/7/26

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Sara Eisen (1:04)

Good Thursday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber. We are live as always from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Stock's coming off another record-breaking session here, driven by more strength for tech. We'll talk to one market expert who says the AI momentum is just getting started. Plus, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper are back with us as oil pulls back further, and the US awaits a response from Iran on the latest peace proposal. And two CEOs fresh off results with unique insights into the American consumer. Let's talk to the head of financial tech company Chyne and the CEO of energy drink company Celsius about what they're seeing on the ground right now.

Carl Quintanilla (1:40)

Busy day for data and Fed speak. Let's get some construction spending with Rick Santelli.

Sara Eisen (1:44)

Hey, Rick.

Rick Santelli (1:46)

Yes, good morning, Carl. This is a March read on construction spending, and Feb's being released simultaneously, so my comp will not include Feb. Well, March is up six-tenths of percent. That's double the expectations. And even with the missing February, what I would like to point out is that at the end of last year, we really finished strong with up six-tenths and up eight-tenths, and that's where we comp to up eight-tenths in December. But we started out slow with minus three-tenths in January, so this pickup is as expected, especially without the missing February, which will be out shortly. We see that interest rates, boy, they continue to shadowbox oil, Carl, as the crude futures in June start to tick up and approach the 93 level. We see interest rates on the 10-year moving up a little bit, basically unchanged on this session. Sara, back to you.

Sara Eisen (2:40)

Okay, thank you, Rick Santelli. A lot of corporate results coming out this morning, and we are getting some signs of stress in parts of the consumer discretionary economy, particularly around the war and the commentary that we're hearing from CEOs. How about Whirlpool? I mean, that one's front and center. That stock is plunging after the company cuts guidance and dividend and says, US appliance industry demand declined 7.4 in the first quarter. This level of industry decline is similar to what we have observed during the global financial crisis and even higher than during other recessionary periods. They say, well, we do believe the negative industry demand in March was somewhat of an outlier. We do not anticipate a full recovery and are now forecasting industry demand being down by 5% on a full year basis. Now, there were a number of factors they pointed to, including the war and the drop in consumer sentiment. But they also talked about the Supreme Court reversal on the tariff decision. And this is a company that benefits from tariffs. They make most of their products domestically, about 80%.

So encouraged by the now 25% tariffs across the board think that'll help the business. But overall, housing market not helping, people just aren't buying appliances, washing machines and dishwashers in the same way. If you look, let's look at McDonald's. Because McDonald's had a good quarter, it was a beat, a beat on sales as well. But there was some talk on the CEO on the call, I think it's probably fair to say that it's certainly not improving and it may be getting a little worse when talking about the consumer there. So we see Papa John's down, Shake Shack down as well. So some concerns around the restaurant space. DoorDash though was pretty good.