SOTS 2nd Hour: Coca-Cola CEO, & The State of Activist Investing w/Keith Meister, Lauren Taylor Wolfe 10/21/25

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Carl Quintanilla (1:06)

Good Tuesday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla, at post nine of the New York Stock Exchange. Sara Eisen, today's at the NASDAQ, and Faber is at 13D Monitor's Active Passive Investors Summit in New York. Well, he's gonna bring us two big interviews this hour. Corvex Management founder and CIO Keith Meister, and Impactive Capital Managing Partner Lauren Taylor Wolfe. Also ahead in just a moment, Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO James Quincey will join us in a first on CNBC interview as the company beats on earnings and says it's confident, and it can hit its 2025 goals. On an interesting day for markets, Sara, where stocks are up a bit, bonds are down, VIX is up, but gold is down.

Sara Eisen (1:45)

I'm watching what companies are saying. I'm listening to what companies are saying about what they're dealing with right now. Since we don't have the economic data and we don't have the Fed speak, it's really all about earnings right now. And just what kind of issues in the macro economy companies are dealing with.

Unilever was one that actually cited the shutdown as a headache for business. In fact, it had to delay its spin-off of its Magnum ice cream and Ben & Jerry's ice cream because of the US government shutdown. Why? It's a paperwork problem that they couldn't get done with the SEC. Remember, they're spinning off the ice cream business. They wanted to trade in both Amsterdam and in New York. And so that was the first instance I really saw where a company is impacted by the shutdown. But as far as some of the other impacts that we're hearing from earnings season so far, GM tariffs better than expected, at least on the full year guidance. They said that it was going to be three and a half to four and a half billion now instead of a four to five billion dollar hit on tariffs. And here's what the CEO said in the call, just to give you a little flavor about what they're dealing with. So earnings, they said, included a gross tariff impact of 1.1 billion. That was in the quarter, a little less than we expected. Due to lower import volumes from Korea, we were able to offset more than 30% of this amount through go-to-market footprint and cost initiatives. The administration's recently announced expansion of the MSRP tariff offset broadens the scope of parts eligibility for the program and will make US vehicle production more competitive. While we work to adjust our supply chains on heavy duty tariffs, the impacts to GM will be minimal. I just highlighted that one to show Carl that, you know, it's complicated obviously as the tariff rules are changing, but, for instance, the administrations moved last week to kind of simplify the parts supply chain tariff problem that automakers have been lobbying for to simplify that as the parts go back and forth the border. That's helping, and we got better tariff guidance, at least from GM. Maybe part of the reason the stock is up so much.

Carl Quintanilla (3:47)

Yeah, this is the best day for GM since March of 2020, highest level since 22 A lot of this revolves around the EV business, Sara, where they say the adoption of EVs is going to be slower, they can literally step on the gas when it comes to gas-powered cars.

Sara Eisen (4:02)

Yeah, and then obviously the other macro callout I just wanted to mention was from the homebuilder, Pulte. Homebuilders are still hurting and we still have this problem around housing affordability. I just thought this quote really summed it up well from the CEO of Pulte saying, lower interest rates are positive for housing demand, but rates don't operate in a vacuum. There's a clear offset. If rates are coming down because the economy is slowing and people are worried about their jobs, I believe that is the scenario when we're experiencing right now. That said, while demand conditions differ by market and buyer segment, we would characterize the US housing demand as good, albeit competitive and with some challenges. We're going to continue to listen just for any macro call-outs on demand and inflation and tariffs to see how companies are navigating. What is a tricky macroeconomic environment, but so far so good?