Past week dominated by good news and a few corporate earnings (0:25). Taiwan Semiconductor and Intel and Broadcom (3:30). Medtronic down after results; healthcare sector sentiment (5:00). Highlighting earnings next week - Nvidia, Berkshire Hathaway (9:00). Walmart's cautious outlook (11:40). Fed's favorite inflation gauge coming (13:15).Episode transcripts: seekingalpha.com/wsbShow links: Forget The Price Of A Stock. What Is It Worth?FDA gives compounders short reprieve as Novo Nordisk GLP-1 supply normalizesWalmart Q4 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptSign up for our daily newsletter here and for full access to analyst ratings, stock quant scores, dividend grades, subscribe to Seeking Alpha Premium at seekingalpha.com/subscriptions.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Brian Stewart, our director of news at Seeking Alpha. Welcome back to Wall Street Breakfast. Great to have you.
Great to be here, Rena.
So talk to us about the markets. February 21st, here we are. What do you have top of mind, middle of mind?
Chapter 2: What are the highlights from the past week's corporate earnings?
I think this past week was dominated by a few corporate earnings stories. Don't know that there was a firm direction given to the market by macro. I think we're still trying to feel out the Fed, feel out the administration, the Trump administration. So I think that the back and forth of individual stocks was kind of the news for the last week. And in general, the news was relatively good.
What made it good? What was the good news?
Putting out a few of the highlights, Applovin had a brilliant earnings report. It is benefiting from a focus shift to AI and e-commerce. It's a software platform that advertisers use to enhance the marketing in content. And so it's a good kind of B2B platform. play if you're kind of trying to get the temperature of the market in general.
Chapter 3: How is AI influencing the stock market?
So the stock surged 24% on the earnings report and continued higher in the following session. It's off 11%, sort of a profit taking. So there are some valuation worries, but in general, its results were kind of a sign that AI is still filtering its way through company results.
And so if you're an investor who can kind of pick the next company that's going to see the big AI boost, you can still get in pre-catalyst for some of these stocks. And another one for last week that had a big move was analog devices. It had better inspected earnings and guidance. Its bookings were gradually improving and increased its share buyback program.
And that had the stock up 18% over the past week.
Any other names that you would add into the good news list?
Chapter 4: What is the significance of Taiwan Semiconductor and Intel's potential deal?
Yeah, I think ADI gives us a good boost to the chip sector in general. So you saw Micron up 14% in the past week and Texas Instruments up 9% in the past week. NVIDIA was up as well. I'm sure we're going to talk about that when we're looking into next week. But looking into the chips, an interesting story in itself was Intel.
It got a boost after Taiwan Semiconductor and Broadcom were reported to have interest in buying parts of Intel, so breaking it up. Intel's been a long running turnaround hope. So the company is looking to kind of get off the mat. And the M&A news, I think it's an interesting test of the new administration and what its kind of regulatory oversight will be in terms of approving or not approving M&A.
This one has a lot of complexities, especially with the overseas elements of Taiwan Semiconductor. I mean, there's no deal in place now, so there's really nothing for the Trump administration to say. But I think it's a good litmus test. I think if you're interested in this sector, I think watching the headlines surrounding Intel and possible M&A activity could be a good sign of the feeling for...
both players within the space about consolidation as AI becomes more important, and then also what the administration is going to do.
What's the public sentiment around the deal happening?
I think it's still up in the air. Generally speaking, the Trump administration was viewed as pro-business, low regulation. But obviously one of his other tenants is kind of a nationalist bent, a protectionist bent with the tariffs and immigration policy. So...
While it might look the other way in terms of general antitrust concerns in terms of dealmaking, the foreign aspect of parts of this deal might be problematic. So that's why I think it's a good test to just sort of see where sentiment actually lies within the administration.
And then any other names to add to the good news list and anybody to include on the bad news or not as good news list?
Yeah, I think Alibaba is one to look at. It was only up 6% in the past week, got a mild boost after its earnings report. It's up 7% post-earnings, but that was after already running up significantly in anticipation to the earnings. It was actually up eight sessions in a row in the days running up to earnings. The earnings announcement is up 67% since mid-January.
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Chapter 5: Which companies faced challenges in their earnings reports?
So I think that's something to watch going forward is when do these companies get into the next cycle of growth? Another company that was on the downside Unilever, which is a consumer goods company, was down after its earnings. And the larger thing to note there is just that one of the worries was commodity inflation.
So it's just a sign that inflation remains problematic for some of these consumer facing companies.
What are you seeing in terms of public sentiment, analyst sentiment, Wall Street sentiment about the health care sector? Are they looking for some catalysts to move the chains for health care stocks? Are GLPs not making enough of a dent in some of the players? Is it stock specific? What are you seeing from the market there?
Yeah, just using Medtronic as the jumping off point, some of the commentary after those earnings came out was just there was no visibility of when the next catalyst for that stock was, where the next wave of large growth. So the company might be executing well in terms of moving the products that it has, but it's just not clear where that sort of next jump forward was going to come from.
And I think that's probably true of a lot of these companies. the pharmaceutical companies that got a big boost from COVID, that was a lot of investment that they put into those drugs. So they basically put their pipeline on hold to move over to COVID during that time.
And so I think some of them have had a hard time getting back to diversifying their R&D in such a way that they can get the next big one. And I do think that the weight loss drug boost has kind of built in to the stocks. There's a lot of competition in that area now. And so data comes out and new products hit on that front. I think they're all kind of running into a crowded market.
So I do think there's sort of a look of what the next big, you don't want to call it a fad or a trend, but for lack of a better word, the next big healthcare trend is going to be.
It will be interesting to see, given how the GLP-1s have pretty much taken over society. It'll be interesting to see either what comes... Part of the problem is that they've already taken over, right?
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Chapter 6: What is the sentiment in the healthcare sector?
So where's the next growth? And everybody...
know whatever the your sort of political feelings on it everybody got the vaccine for covet everybody was um you know taking tests for covet and so there was sort of full saturation for those kind of things so what's the product that's going to tap into the broadest possible public adoption because obviously if you go through healthcare companies you're going to find a few winners you know companies that that had
an excellent test for a cancer drug or something like that. I mean, it's pretty easy to find big winners in the healthcare space. But when you're talking about the healthcare space in general, you kind of need those overarching themes that are going to drive the entire sector.
So looking to next week, you mentioned some big names coming up. We have Nvidia coming up on Wednesday. We had Raul Shaw on Investing Experts this week talking about him's and hers health and why he's bullish on the stock and looking forward to those earnings on Monday, which also has Berkshire Hathaway, a bunch of names reporting.
What are the ones that you're most or you think the market is going to be most reacting to or most interested in?
Yeah, Berkshire is always going to make headlines because people are going to look for Buffett's macro assessments. So it's not going to be the results of the company specifically, but more about what Warren Buffett sees generally for the market. So watch for headlines there. I think in terms of the healthcare conversation, I think HIMSS is a good...
company to look at just in terms of being sort of the low price direct to customer kind of company having kind of a different business model than a Merck or Pfizer. So seeing how its results are going, especially as we talk about weight loss drugs, and that's obviously a huge part of their business. So I think that that's definitely interesting.
Other than those names, NVIDIA obviously is the big one coming out. I think if you're talking about the AI trade, that'll be a good litmus test of how that's going. Especially look for commentary from them about DeepSeek specifically and growing competition in the AI space generally. Also, they might have something to say about trade concerns, both tariffs and restrictions of selling products.
certain chips to certain countries. So there might be questions asked in the earnings conference call about that. So that would be interesting to look at. And then just in a totally different sector, Home Depot and Lowe's are both reporting next week. The Home Depot especially saw a lot of strength in the second half of last year, but has been choppy lately. And
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