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Trading the Market Downturn: The Committee's Next Move 6/9/26
00:47:18
Scott Wapner and the Investment Committee debate how to trade the losses in the NASDAQ. They reveal their next portfolio moves. Plus, we hit the latest Calls of the Day. And later, Scott O'Neil, CEO of LIV Golf, joins us to discuss the fate of the league. Investment Committee Disclosures
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- [00:01]
Scott O'Neill
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Scott Wapner
I'm Scott Wapner and you're listening to CNBC's Halftime Report, the podcast the most profitable hour of the trading day. We record this live weekdays at 12 Eastern. Listen in. Carl, thank you very much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner at one market in San Francisco where the tech trade is front and center this hour. Can the space rebound from this ongoing sell off? We'll ask the investor investment committee. Joining me for the hour today, Josh Brown, Joe Terranova, Malcolm Etheridge and Jim Leeventhal will show you the markets here. We're pretty much the lows of the day. Tech trade is really leading us to the downside here. Nasdaq's off by near 600 points now, two and a third percent. But you do have some selling in other parts of the market. But as Mike Santoli was just talking a few moments ago, more stocks up and down at the New York Stock Exchange. That's notable, Josh, as we look at what this market is doing, I get that all eyes are on the tech trade. But as Mike said a few moments ago, this is what a rotation looks like. This is what a rotation feels like. It's not always pretty. And the S and P is being impacted more than anything else by the pullback in these tech names.
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Josh Brown
Yeah. So I think this is a larger problem for people who have these sort of one dimensional portfolios where they think they're diversified because they own Dell, Sienna, Cisco, Corning and Microsoft. And really what they've done is they've double, tripled and quadrupled down on the AI Capex theme. And then they say, well, wait a minute, one's a computer company, one's communications, one's a utility, blah, blah, blah. No, it's, it's a one dimensional theme that you've been invested in. And by the way, it's the highest momentum area in the market and that feels great when the tape is grinding higher a half a point every day. But that's not today. I think Friday was a really good wake up call. Take a lot of people took a look and said, all right, I'm up huge, but maybe I should have something else going on in my portfolio. Guys, do me a favor. Bring up, bring up the Halo etf LJ Scott. It's green today. It doesn't own any of that. Here are the top contributors in Halo. Ralph Lauren, Home Depot, Clorox, Masco, Lowe's, Colgate. These are all up. Coca Cola Consolidated Bottling, Signet Jewelers. Every one of these stocks up 3% today. Today, one day.
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Joe Terranova
Why?
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Josh Brown
There's no fundamental, there's nothing specific about those companies. It's this recognition, what Santoli was saying just now, the torque of these rotations. Well, if you start out from a position of diversification and you don't have an entire portfolio betting on Capex becoming more and more ludicrous into the future. Today's not that bad of a day. But you are being, you are being sort of tricked by what the S and P and the NASDAQ are doing and thinking that's representative of a stock portfolio. And it's not necessarily for most investors.
- [04:20]
Scott Wapner
Joe, this is, this is what if you use the word violent or not. But I mean, this is what a rotation was going to look like. It wasn't going to be, you know, this little low. Let's drain some of the gains that we've had in tech and we'll just put it in other areas of the market. I mean, tech's getting ripped up pretty good. Momentum has been downgraded at Barclays to neutral. That plays obviously right into your wheelhouse. And Jonathan Krinsky says today that tech is not out of the woods. Uses history as a guide and says when the NASDAQ loses 4% or more on a Friday, there's a 90% chance that Friday's low is breached in the next five trading days. And we don't think this time is any different. Maybe the market is starting to bear that out a little bit, that what happened on Friday needed to be retested, that yesterday's bounce was just that, a bounce and nothing more.
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Joe Terranova
Yeah, I like the way that you describe all of that. Look, whether it's lower oil, higher yields or Just the parabolic nature of the way AI has been trading. It is very clear that the market is undergoing a rotation. And if you remember, in the early weeks of March we identified that the market was rotating from value to growth. What I see now is concrete evidence in front of me that says the market's rotating. It's going S and P market cap to S and P equal weight. It's going growth to value, it's going momentum to quality. And to Josh's point, it's going intangible assets to tangible assets. Now, because of the very nature, Scott, of the S&P 500 waiting, you're not going to be able to avoid a lot of red on the tape. Let me give you a statistic for today. 20% of the S&P market cap today is 6 individual stocks. I'm going to give you Apple and Nvidia included there. But we're not going to go mag 7, we're going to go amd, we're going to go Broadcom, we're going to go intel, we're going to go Micron. Remember Micron, Broadcom, These are trillion dollar companies. Now every One of those six names is down greater than 3% today. That's 20% of the S&P 500. There's no way that the market can endure that type of a decline. But it is very clear that we are seeing the rotation. We're seeing laggards going to leaders. If I take the top 50, 50 in the S&P 500 based on year to date performance, currently I have 82% of those 50 names that are lower. Now if I look conversely at the bottom 50 based on year to date performance, guess what, 65% of those names are higher. So that's exactly what Josh has pointed out so far. And this is a very clear rotation that I don't think is a one day event. I think this is what you're going to see through the summer, Malcolm.
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Scott Wapner
You reap the rewards on the way up in a highly concentrated market. I think investors clearly, you know, experience that if they were mostly geared towards the AI trade, if they were at the higher market cap stocks, then obviously they reap the rewards of a one dimensional market. Today though, you feel the pain on the other side of that. As we said, the way that a lot of these stocks went up is potentially the way that a lot of them are going to come down now. You know Micron, there's a great chart to show you the huge ramp up. Who knows what the stock ends up retracing in terms of that run up. But obviously yesterday was a weak bounce because the stock's giving right back 7% along with many of these other chip names like the AMD's which Joe was talking about, which is down 7%. Intel is now down 7%. Many of the names in that orbit are following suit.
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Malcolm Etheridge
And I think it's safe to say that a lot of the bets that were being placed in the last few weeks have been somewhat speculative, even if there is some there there in names like intel and Micron and others. I think that Josh and Joe made a point that I hope they're both right about in the sense that folks are finally waking up and being willing to take some profits here and redeploy those dollars into other sectors and other cap weightings that might have been unloved up to this point. I'm not completely sure that it's that straightforward. I think we might actually be seeing people trying to line themselves up to get ready for the ipo. But I do think that maybe it's possible that folks are heeding what I've been saying for a few weeks now that in some of these more speculative names, especially a Micron, I'll pick on them since you brought them up, that has doubled their market cap within about two months. It's time to be realistic and say this whole thing can't go on forever. We've been unwilling to acknowledge that this does look a lot like the late 90s. We've been trying to bend over backwards and find ways to say no. Maybe we're more like 96, 97. I strongly disagree. We're talking about last year, in 2025, just to give you an example, IPOs raised about $43 billion in combined capital. In 2026, we're talking about three names raising somewhere around $200 billion. Where does that capital come from if it doesn't sell out of a lot of these more speculative names, including Bitcoin? And I think that's probably got to be infused somewhere. Even if there is a rotation going out of the AI trade and more to more quality names or more calm names that have been unloved through this year.
- [10:01]
Scott Wapner
Maybe so, Jim, that, you know, some of what you're seeing is undoubtedly due to positioning around the Space X ipo, just prepping portfolios to be able to buy that name on Friday when it opens for trading. And maybe the retail cohort has been leading a lot of that both on the way up and, and then on the way down. I feel like we need to address Apple because it's a significant mover. You own the stock, you were with us yesterday, it's moved sharply lower now. You know, they unveil this, you know, Siri AI, they got the app and there was a lot of enthusiasm I think in the lead up yesterday. But it sounds like, or at least it looks like the market is, is going to ask some serious questions about what this really means for their future. Whether they proved anything yesterday or it all remains to be seen.
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Jim Leventhal
Well, it probably does remain to be seen, Scott. I think they have defined what their strategy is, which is to not do a lot of capex, to partner with Gemini, with, with Google, Alphabet to use their technology. And that's a defined strategy. It has some advantages to it in terms of cost. But as you just said, I think we're going to have to wait and see whether the new models, the new Siri is attractive enough in the holiday season coming up. I think the tension here has always been, and we addressed this yesterday, the valuation versus the fact that it's Apple and it has the iPhone and it has the services. And today and yesterday that tension is breaking towards the idea that maybe it's a little overvalued as we're looking right now at 32 times forward earnings. And it's also maybe emblematic of the NASDAQ writ large. Not that there is something catastrophically wrong with Apple or the nasdaq, but that all of these stocks needed to pause, they needed a consolidation, which is what I think this is. I don't think it's something worse. The profit growth at all of these companies, the economic growth in the United States, it's just too strong to say that there's something worse than a consolidation going on. In an effort to be helpful to our viewers, I want to say that I'd be looking more to buy in the coming days. I think it's probably a little too late to sell. Unless you're saying to yourself that you think you can perfectly time a 5% move to the downside that may yet come in the nasdaq, to me, that's being way too cute. If you've trimmed your positions, as all of us have said, all of us have said trim your positions on the way up, you should have some capital with which to buy this dip in the next coming days.
- [12:37]
Scott Wapner
Maybe. Josh, you know what? Yesterday was in the eye of the beholder. I mean, because I see what the stock's doing. Let's not forget, it was at a record high. I think even at a moment yesterday, but certainly in the, in the, in the prior days. Dan Ives says it was impressive, didn't disappoint. Morgan Stanley says they've illustrated clear progress on the roadmap. They raised the price target. TD Cowan says it was a step in the right direction while going a bit further, saying it came in shy of expectations. KeyBank Lacking in context Barclays struggle to see what the monetization is UBS investors will be underwhelmed what about you? I mean you're a shareholder.
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Josh Brown
I think investors are underwhelmed in the short. I mean this obvious look at the stock price. Investors are underwhelmed in the short term, but I don't care. Henry Ford said if he would have asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. I'm not worried about Wall Street's knee jerk reaction to Apple technology. I think what ends up Happening is Siri AI comes out in September, which is three months from now. The iPhone 18 goes on sale. The only question that really matters for the stock price, not for the consumer and whether or not they're excited the stock price. What matters is will people want to upgrade the iPad, the watch, the, the AirPods and the phones in order to take better advantage of not just Siri AI but all of the different things that they announced? I think the answer is yes. I think having an ongoing conversation throughout the course of the day with Agentix Siri, asking it to complete tasks for you, having the only AI that actually is interoperable with all of the apps on your phone. Because working with Agentix Siri will become a prerequisite for third party apps to even be in the App Store to begin with. I think all of these things will make it an impossible to beat combination. I'd be way more worried if I were Chachi Beat than I would be if I'm an Apple shareholder. Because what will ultimately happen is that interoperability, having a gentic Siri working with all of the other things that you're doing with other apps on your phone, that's where the monetization part comes in. So all of these, all of these AI services that people are bankrolling with VC capital, they're just, they're, they're, they're building, they're building baseball teams to compete with each other and Apple is building the stadium in which all of these teams are going to be competing. And if you don't understand that, you should probably hand over your investment dollars to somebody else to manage for you.
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Scott Wapner
Well, speaking of ChatGPT, another big IPO entrant into the pool. Kate Rooney is sitting right here with me at One Market with those details of Open Air filing to go public, much expected now. Everybody's in here now it's official.
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Kate Rooney
Scott. Well, great to see you. We got that confidential IPO filer. We didn't get the file. It's interesting. It typically something that they don't really announce. They say, you know, closer to the ipo, that hey, we filed a prospectus. We kind of put the paperwork in, got the wheels in motion. They put out essentially a press release, a blog post saying, hey, by the way, we actually filed confidentially. They said in kind of a funny way, you know, we thought this was going to leak, so we figured better to hear it from us. Which Anthropic also put theirs out in a similar way, confidential filing about a week ago. So it comes after Anthropic. But we are getting this parade of IPOs. Interesting detail we found out yesterday too. In the meantime, first of all, in that blog post, I should also say they very much hedge said this gives us the option to go public, but it by no means signals that we have to go, that we need to go. So really leaving the door open in a lot of ways to say we may actually stay private. It could very much depend on what happens with Space X. And I'm told market conditions are going to be a big part of this. So they, they made that clear, saying it gives us the option, not the, not the obligation. They're going to do a tender offer, so they're going to give employees the ability to sell out. That takes off some of the problems, pressure, the internal pressure you feel from employees out here in Silicon Valley that say, hey, I've been at this company for 10 years, where's my paycheck? They're letting people sell out, which is becoming increasingly common, taking a little bit of the pressure off. We're not going to get the numbers until closer to listing date. I'm told earliest September for a listing. That would mean the numbers will probably come out in August. Biggest question I'm hearing from investors is, is the cash burn? We know it's burning cash, but is it negative gross margins? What is their operating leverage look like? I think that's going to be the thing, thing people are searching for.
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Scott Wapner
Whether they go or not, you know, based on this, this filing, they have to be feeling the pressure of the market pull. Knowing that Anthropic's in the queue, we'll see what Space X does and then market conditions, as you said. I think that's a smart thing to interject into the conversation to just see how the market absorbs Space X, to see what the environment is, the reason ahead.
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Kate Rooney
Definitely. I think that's another thing. We've heard from Sarah Fryer, the cfo, that they're going to try to save a slice of their allocation for retail, which is a page from the Space X playbook here, where they want people to buy in and want people to have the, the ability to get into chat cbt. I think there's also a question of the popularity of AI. If it is a popular retail buy, then there is the anthropic overhang. I have talked to a bunch of venture investors who are investors in both who say they are all looking over their shoulders saying, okay, we got to get out ahead of anthropic. I have been told that there would actually be if, if the other one wasn't listing, and this applies for both, there would be almost no pressure to go public. But they want to be the ones to get out there and tell their story to Wall Street. This is kind of a, you can think of it as basically a new asset class. These are labs they started in the case of OpenAI as a nonprofit. They've got to explain this entirely new business, really business model to Wall street. And they want to be the first ones to do it, to set the tone, to tell Wall street what it actually looks like and maybe explain some of those losses and not have to react to their competitors.
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Scott Wapner
All right, good stuff, Kate. Thanks. We'll see in a bit. That's Kate Rooney. We're just getting started here from one market in San Francisco. Coming up, calls the day. Plus Josh's best stocks in the market. And later, a halftime exclusive, the CEO of Live Golf. The fate of his league remains in question today. We'll discuss with Scott o'. Neill. Coming up,
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- [20:15]
Scott Wapner
All right. Welcome back to One market. Our calls of the day begin today with a one from Wolf. They say buy health care. Joe, this is interesting call. Okay. They talk about what's happened with tech. They say are you really going to put new capital to work at these levels, especially given what we saw on Friday. As for the rest of the market, nothing particularly jumps out to us as a must own like health care does. What do you think of that statement?
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Joe Terranova
I agree that health care provides an opportunity, but it does so in a very idiosyncratic nature. There are names that we own in Jyoti like Illumina, like West, Pharmaceuticals, like Merck.
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Scott Wapner
I think those Lilly Syncora. Right. Gilead, Agilent. I would say generation.
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Malcolm Etheridge
Yep.
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Joe Terranova
But Scott, I would say I feel stronger about West. I feel stronger about Illumina. So we own Agilent. We own Edwards Life Sciences. The life sciences are very popular theme right now, but Illumina is a little bit beyond in terms of market share and revenue growth, the two other names that we own there. So I think you have to be very stock specific here. I don't think you throw capital entirely at the sector.
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Scott Wapner
Ed Yardney today says by materials, which are one of the few sectors actually in the green, was certainly better than it is now. We're barely in the green, but nonetheless says go. Overweight accounts for just 1.9% of the S and P market cap. So an overweight is cheap to implement. Same logic, he says they applied to their energy recommendation on April 20th. What do we make, Josh, of that call?
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Josh Brown
Look, you've got some leaders in that, in that group. I think what Ed is saying is that there's a lot of growth there, but you haven't had multiple expansion, you haven't had a rerating and you haven't had these stocks being taken to egregious valuations. And maybe that happens at some point later in the cycle. But I do like the idea of pivoting and doing something different than, you know, the same thing everyone else is doing, which is trying to guess the next points up or down. In Micron, Uber gets a buy.
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Scott Wapner
Reiterated today, Target 125, Guggenheim, Apollo. An interesting call here, Jimmy. I'm Having you take this, you, you on the stock Rothschild and Redburn reiterates that that stocks a buy. Obviously been watching private equity, private credit related names, anything in the alts space. Given what's been happening there, what do you think about this name right here?
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Jim Leventhal
Well, first off, I think the market's speaking loudly on the name because it's up about 30% from the lows of back in the first quarter, whereas something like Blue Owl is kind of back on the lows. So the market does like Apollo here, but I think the space overall is still laboring under this competition between the narrative about redemptions. We saw that last week with Cliffwater and B Cred. And on the other hand, a lot of these companies are coming out and saying, listen, the credit quality, quality is just fine. I followed the institutional money which is actually coming into the space into the private vehicles. I think this is a good place to be. Apollo and private credit in general.
- [23:19]
Scott Wapner
All right, quick break then back to one market. Josh Brown's best stocks in this market, the two names he likes and one unloved sector. We'll reveal them next.
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- [24:33]
AT&T Business Wireless Advertiser
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- [24:57]
Venture Global Advertiser
AT&T business Wireless connecting changes everything.
- [25:04]
Scott Wapner
It is shaping up to Be yet another brutal day for the tech trade. Take a look at the Nasdaq here. Down 700 points, almost 3%. Many of the names that got a nice bounce yesterday, especially in the semi space, have rolled right back over. So we'll keep our eye certainly on that. Want to do Josh Brown's best stocks in the market. Right now your spotlight is on real estate, which is, I'm not sure if you saw Krinsky's note today of BTIG where he says REITs are ready. The worst sector of the last five years is starting to break out. You must be looking at similar things if you're highlighting a couple names in that universe.
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Josh Brown
I hadn't seen Quinsky's, but I do read his stuff. He's, he's great, he's timely, he's adorable. But Sean and I were looking at the tape on Friday and looking at green stocks and just a gut check like why is this, why is this working? Why is this green in a tape that looks like this? And we wanted to talk about real estate and we're seeing strength there too. Just coming at it from a different angle. Two of the REITs that are on the best stocks in the market list worth talking about. And the reason I love looking at the market through the prism of where is the strength? Where are the best stocks. It really forces you to rethink some of the biases and the narratives that you have. So let's take Prologis put up PLD. Guys, here's a stock that I was trading in 2021, probably talking about it on this show like it's the landlord of E Commerce, Amazon's landlord, like it's logistics and warehouses for E Commerce. And now you have a stock acting this way all year, this year. And you look at it, you say, I know what that is, that's E Commerce. Well, guess again fat boy. Because it's a new era and there's a new fundamental driver. And now this is the landlord to data centers. And 40% of their spending this year is going to go to data center development, both for third parties and for themselves. And now you have a stock that broke out in November, ran to 148, multi month consolidation range below that level breaking out again. And the stop here is very obvious I think for traders 138 to 140, for investors, 129. And until then this thing is in a pristine uptrend with a lot of new people learning a new story. Because whatever we thought this was years ago, it's a Different company. Let's put up Simon. Spg. Once again, the typical bias. I don't want to own real estate. I don't like where interest rates are or what the Fed's going to do.
- [27:49]
Joe Terranova
Quiet.
- [27:50]
Josh Brown
SPG is earning a four and a half percent yield, doesn't have a single tenant accounting for more than 5% of their revenue. Unbelievably diversified business. The stock spent the back half of 2025 doing nothing but going up. They beat it up in February during the Iran war starting and then the buyer stepped in. Textbook. Pull this back a little bit further. Textbook at 180, which was the rising 200 day moving average.
- [28:19]
Scott Wapner
Look at it.
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Josh Brown
Look at it. So here you have a stock that's breaking out today with the rest of the market selling off. The buyers keep coming in where they're supposed to and quite frankly, people have a miss have been misjudging this stock the entire way up. It's been compounding at 32% since the end of the pandemic. So this is why we do best stocks in the market. It's telling us about stories that we may not look at. If someone just mentions the name of the company, the sector, the ticker, it's forcing us to really understand where the strength in this market is.
- [28:55]
Scott Wapner
All right, we appreciate that. Thank you for the heads up. Don Chu has a CNBC news update for us. Hey, Dom.
- [29:01]
Don Chu
Good afternoon, Scott. The Trump administration has warned that more than 4, 500 hospitals that they will be fined up to $2 million every year if they don't create a plan to post clear pricing data. The list of hospitals acquired by the Associated Press are accused of failing to provide basic pricing information, which the Trump administration says is raising health care costs. Meanwhile, authorities say more than 100 people have died from Ebola less than a month after the outbreak was declared in eastern countries. Congo. Out of the 550 cases confirmed as of Sunday, 101 have reportedly died, while 19 people have recovered. Attacks on aid workers amid an ongoing armed conflict in the region have slowed the response to the virus outbreak. And Iran's football federation says its ticket allocation has been pulled just days before the World cup is set to begin, which it says raises questions about political interference. The Iranian Federation adding that it had already begun the ticket sales process and could no longer provide them to fans. Iran plays their first games in Los Angeles against New Zealand on June 15. So some world cup controversy on the
- [30:10]
Kate Rooney
eve of the event.
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Don Chu
Scott, I'll send things back over to you, Domino.
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Scott Wapner
Thank you Very much Don Chu Coming up next, of course, much more on the sell off in stocks today. Nasdaq right around session lows. First though, our exclusive interview with Live Golf CEO Scott o'.
- [30:25]
Jim Leventhal
Neill.
- [30:25]
Scott Wapner
Questions swirling about the fate of that league. We'll discuss next. Show you the markets here. Just past 12:30 in the east. We obviously are in the midst of another tech related sell off. Whatever yesterday's bounce gave the market, it is taking it away today. As you see, the Nasdaq's down more than 700 points. It's a near 3% loss. Important to note though, as Mike Santoli did, more stocks at the New York Stock Exchange up than down. So a rotation very much underway. It just shows up most dramatically in that pullback from tech as money flows into other areas of this market. We'll certainly keep our eyes on all of that. The future of the Live Golf tour very much in question. Following news that Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund will pull its funding at the end of the current season. The league hopes to stay alive by raising new capital and launching what it calls LIVE 2.0 with a more sustainable and financially disciplined business model. For the very latest on those efforts, we're joined for an exclusive interview today by the LIV Golf CEO Scott o'. Neill. Scott, welcome. It's great to have you on our program today.
- [31:37]
Scott O'Neill
Scott, it's great to see you again. Hope you're well.
- [31:40]
Scott Wapner
I am, thank you. There are many who believe that liv's days are numbered. That once the Saudi money truly runs out, that bankruptcy is the most likely option. What makes you think that you can save this league?
- [31:54]
Scott O'Neill
Well, I can tell you one thing is that I wouldn't rather be anywhere else with any group of players, with any group of executives or any group advisors in the world right now. I think we have a very, very special opportunity. Opportunity to create tremendous value. Now it's going to be different. It'll be certainly sustained, it'll be disciplined and very, very value accretive. I think what we've seen in terms of the increase of values of sports teams over the last 30 years since I've been in this business is absolutely incredible. There's a lot of disposable income knocking on the door. Wanting to get into ownership of league and teams. You don't have to look too much further than Formula One or MotoGP to see what's happening in the transaction part of leagues. And then man, I think the NBA just announced that their new expansion franchise is up for between 7 and 9 billion dollars. So we're in the right space. We're at here at the right time. I've got extraordinarily star power like Bryson Dechambeau, Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Cam Smith. We're playing at incredible events. We've got great business momentum. And look, I'm in the market one week and I can tell you it's been a really, really warm welcome reception in the market.
- [33:07]
Scott Wapner
We'll get to some of the issues that you just raised. I was reading one report that said live might not have enough money to even finish this current season, that the Saudis could actually pull their money earlier than they currently plan to. What can you say to that?
- [33:25]
Scott O'Neill
Well, I can say they've been terrific partners so far and you have to take an incredible organization like PIF at their word. And they've been very public about funding us through the season. So we are full steam ahead. The players are locked in. The management team is locked in. And with advisors like Alex Partners and Gibson Dunn and our new board members Gene Davis and John Zimmerman to Sarah is our lead bank. We're, we're pretty excited about where we are.
- [33:52]
Scott Wapner
I mean, can you guarantee today that the four remaining tournaments on your schedule will actually take place?
- [33:59]
Scott O'Neill
What I can guarantee is a heck of a return if you come invest in this business.
- [34:04]
Scott Wapner
I mean, you're trying to raise $350 million in new capital. You mentioned, you know, hiring the partners you have. The bankers are, from what I understand, very much on the case. They've already begun the conversation process with prospective investors. What's the response been like thus far?
- [34:22]
Scott O'Neill
You know, I've had five meetings, formal meetings so far. That's when people have expressed interest, gone through the NDA review, reviewed the first deck and started to dive into our data room. I've got 18 more meetings this week and about the same next week. The response has been positive. What's been really interesting is, is how do you slice this? How do you cut it? You know, is there one partner that comes in, maybe a big private equity firm at the full 300, or do you have 10 or 12 investors at 50s and $25 million units? And there seems to be an expression of interest on the family office side in the $50 million range, and their private equity firms are looking at one take all.
- [35:01]
Scott Wapner
Well, so you're, your, your eyes and arms, frankly are wide open as you look for prospective investors, potentially private equity, potentially high net worth individual, potentially a pool of high net worth people. You're looking far and wide. When do you feel you need to know whether you can raise the $350 million, the clock's obviously ticking.
- [35:25]
Scott O'Neill
While we have incredible business momentum, what we don't have is a lot of time. So we're very urgently out there talking to those who are interested. We like the pool, but, you know, we have to get this done through the summer.
- [35:41]
Scott Wapner
How do you convince some of your investors in the ones you're speaking with now who may end up being investors, that they're not throwing good money after bad? There must be some degree of conversation in the room of concern about that very idea.
- [35:57]
Scott O'Neill
You know, I think it starts with the billions and billions of dollars that have been built to create the foundation of this program, to build a brand this strong, to assemble this kind of star power, and to be a truly global league. I mean, this is a sports league that plays the most important sport in the world on five continents. There just aren't that many opportunities like that. Now the question is, is, will the business be different than it was over the last five years? I can say dramatically, this would be a very disciplined approach. We're cutting the rep, the expense side dramatically. And the revenue momentum that we've had, you know, my first year in and 25, we've done doubled revenue. We're already up 100 million over last year in. In 26. And so this, we have really good business momentum. This is about getting the costs under control, reimagining what the business could, should, and will look like, and then engaging our players as partners, like true equity partners.
- [36:51]
Scott Wapner
In this business, you're still not profitable, as you rightly note. Revenues, ticketing, sponsorships, attendance ratings, they're all up significantly over last year. What is your profitability roadmap look like? How far into the Future, under Live 2.0, will you be profitable?
- [37:10]
Scott O'Neill
This will take three years, but we won't be too far off. Hence, the raise, like this raise is designed and designated to get us to profitability.
- [37:19]
Scott Wapner
The commitments you talk about, the players, you have the biggest star, undoubtedly, Bryson DeChambeau. His contract is up at the end of this current season. What are the conversations that you're having with him? Is he. Can you say today fully committed to what you're trying to do with a new league?
- [37:35]
Scott O'Neill
The difference between our league and many others is that this is made for and by the players. Like this business plan was actually. But Bryson was involved in the design of the business plan. And so, yes, he's engaged, he's committed, but this is not about just about Bryson DeChambeau, who's an extraordinary story. Star and one of the great stars in sports, well beyond golf, but you have an incredible laundry list of megastars and I think it matters, it matters to have stars. You know what also is really interesting that we found as we've, we've had set records in Australia and we've set records in South Africa in terms of attendance is local works like Cam Smith being from Australia and having an Aussie team, you know, and, and Louis Oostays and having a South African team and Ben on having a Korean team and, and Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter having a UK team. I think it's actually really making an impact and a difference. And sometimes when we think about golf, especially, you know, growing up in the US we think about a very US centric business. This is very different. You have to really re. Rethink this. You think, think World cup meets Formula one meets world class golf.
- [38:42]
Scott Wapner
You know, Jon Rahm is another one of your stars and there appears to be some cool questions about what his longevity might be with live. Even if you're able to do this live 2.0, I read some stories that suggested he may be hoping for bankruptcy so he can get out of his current contract and make a move to the PGA Tour or elsewhere. What can you say to that?
- [39:07]
Scott O'Neill
Well, I can tell you first thing, he's one of the greatest golfers on the planet. Seeing what he's done, he's won twice on tour this year. And seeing him track down his teammate Terrell Hatton and almost catch him at Valderrama this week was very, very special, I can tell you. I spoke to him through text quite a few times. We were back and forth again this morning. This is different. And I know it's hard for others in the golf industry understand, but this is a group that is committed to their teams, they're committed to the league and they're committed to this program reimagining team golf, truly growing the game around the world and making an impact. It's a younger audience, it's a very much more diverse audience. And we take things that are tried and true in every other sport. Music, fashion, art, food, and we merge that with golf to create what I think is the best experience in sports.
- [39:56]
Scott Wapner
I saw where Bryson said, quote, if we all band together, there's an opportunity here. I read that. And it almost suggests that this only works if they all band together together and stay. You can't afford to lose any of your very top name stars. Correct.
- [40:13]
Scott O'Neill
The good news is, is we have a whole constellation of stars at LIV Golf. And not only that many of the names I mentioned before, we also have this young emerging corps of talent, the David Pujas, Jose Le Ballister, Caleb Surratt, Tom McKibben. Like these guys are going to the moon and back like these, these. There are some of those names that just mentioned that you may not have heard of. They may not, may not be household names, but man, they are getting mentored and taught by some of the greats in the game and they will win majors.
- [40:43]
Scott Wapner
What would happen to the existing contracts if, in fact the league does fold? Would the players who are owed money be treated as creditors?
- [40:52]
Joe Terranova
How?
- [40:52]
Scott Wapner
I think people are trying to get their arms around how that all would work. If for some reason this doesn't work out as, as you hope it will,
- [41:00]
Scott O'Neill
Well, I think we'd all be in the same boat at that point. And that's why we're so locked in, 100% focused on getting it to a transaction. And yes, we understand there's a time constraint, but what a special time in the world to be able to get into the world's most important sport, a global sport, and to come in at a ground level at a great price with an incredible return ahead. So that's where we're locked in. And that's our focus.
- [41:25]
Scott Wapner
Scott, we'll leave it there. Appreciate the time very much. Joining us exclusively for the very latest on LIV Golf, that's Scott o'. Neill. We do have breaking news out of Washington. Megan Casella has that for us. What do we know?
- [41:35]
Megan Casella
Meghan Scott, President Trump posting on Truth Social just now that the Iranians are responsible for the shooting down of a US army helicopter last night and that the US Will have to respond militarily. Here is the president's statement in full. He says, I have just been informed by our great military that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz. There were two pilots involved. Both are safe and uninjured. Nevertheless, the United States must of necessity respond to this attack. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Now, Scott, we knew last night that this incident had happened. The president told reporters at the time, late last night after the basketball game he attended that the pilots had been rescued and that the cause of the incident was under investigation. U.S. military through CENTCOM, had this morning said that they were looking into what had happened here, that we just knew that it was near the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Oman. But it wasn't clear at the time who was responsible. So now the president saying it was the Iranians and that the United States military will have to respond to the attack. We don't know at this point whether this is going so far as to say the cease fire might be broken or whether this might be an isolated incident. But Scott, this does, of course, come after a couple of days of where hostilities have increased in the region, especially between Iran and Israel. Iran firing at Israel for the first time since the cease fire was in place. Now, we don't know what this will mean for the status of negotiations, just that the United States, the president says, will be responding militarily to this latest attack.
- [42:59]
Scott Wapner
All right, Megan, appreciate that very much. That's Megan Casella with the latest there just another bit of uncertainty injected into what is already a rough market picture today. Certainly from a technology standpoint point. Nasdaq's at the lows of the session. Eight hundred and sixty points is the decline. It's three and a third percent. Crude oil, though lower, as you see. Did move up a little bit on that reporting that you just heard from Megan Casella. We're all over the market. We take a break. We're back after this. All right. From semis to software, most of the mega caps. Nasdaq under considerable pressure at this moment. About ten minutes remaining, Malcolm, in our, in our program, I just like for you to assess this once again. We're down more than 3% on the Nasdaq mentioned. The whole market is not red. It's important to make that distinction for all of those, Malcolm, that have been calling for a broadening and saying how great it would be for the health of this rally. You can't come in now and say, well, I didn't know it was going to look and feel like this money chases and it pulls out pretty quickly.
- [44:20]
Malcolm Etheridge
Yeah, I agree completely. I have been saying for a while that we should be taking profits. Yes. I have also been saying that it's not a bad thing to be raising cash to try and take advantage of any moments of market weakness that are sort of broad based. We haven't necessarily seen the broad based kind of selling that you would expect that would tell you it's all clear in time to push those chips back into the center of the table. I think that more than likely what we're seeing is a dip that's going to be specific to the tech sector for a whole host of reasons we started the show talking about. But I do think that maybe this is an area where you want to be looking at the themes that you really liked a few months ago that maybe ran up and got a little bit away from you because maybe this is a place where things start to come back in your direction, right? So if you've been wanting to own Nvidia for a while, you've been wanting to own Microsoft or Apple or Google or whatever for a while that you feel like you've been underweight on, it looks like based on the way the market is moving, you will have an opportunity to be stepping into some of those names. So I don't think we necessarily have to buy the dip immediately today as it's happening. I didn't think you needed to buy it last Friday either. But it does look like if things continue in the direction they're going, we are going to have that buying opportunity.
- [45:33]
Scott Wapner
Let's not forget either. Joe, we've seen only V shaped recoveries. Any pullbacks of magnitude have been bought. Who knows when prospective buyers come and look at this market and say, you know what, amd down another 10% today or micron down another 10. By the way, micron still up 15% over the last month. Even with the weakness that that it's had of late, you've got to believe that the DIP buyers, because this story hasn't changed at all. Nothing has changed. The durability question about the tech trade that the DIP buyers are lurking. They're lurking and at some point, and maybe not in the too distant future, they're going to look at some of these stocks have been sold off a lot and say enough is enough. I may not get the exact bottom, but if I know that the earnings trajectory is intact, why not?
- [46:29]
Joe Terranova
Well, a couple of thoughts in response to that. First of all, let's remember something. The personality of this market over the last 10 to 15 years has moved more and more towards growth. It is a growth market. So most people who are passive in their nature don't realize how exposed they are to growth. To your point about the DIP buyers, the DIP buyers will show up. And they'll show up because that's where the earnings growth has been exhibited. You have seen in the technology sector that you are rewarded for staying allocated in times of corrections because of the remarkable earnings growth. So I think you had that in play. Look, understand today's a difficult day if you own growth. I think you're looking across the board and understanding where your potential out will be. You know what I've done in Apple since the end part of March, I'm not selling Apple here. Apple would have to probably fall another 25, $30 below its critical moving averages for me to sell. And the last point I'll make on all this is as you're talking and oil is rising, that kind of works against the broadening out narrative. And I'll just give you an example. Royal Caribbean, it's a name that we own in Jyoti. Royal Caribbean was higher as we began this show. Now Royal Caribbean is lower. So if you're going to bounce oil higher, that broadening out narrative is not going to work too well.
- [47:55]
Scott Wapner
Yeah. Jimmy, love to know what's on your mind. You, you see a lot of opportunity out there. I mean, now NASDAQ's down 900. We very well may be in a, you know, bit of a retracement mode of what happened late last week when it was just downright ugly on that Friday afternoon.
- [48:13]
Jim Leventhal
Yeah, and I do think the catalyst today was the shoot down of the helicopter because we weren't doing so badly in the morning. That's the news that kind of tipped this. So when all of us are talking, as I think we're being consistent about this being a consolidation and a pause that refreshes, we have to ask the question of what could make it worse. And I think a real resumption of fighting in the Persian Gulf could make it worse, could tip this into a real correction. That's not my call right now. My call right now is to think about those names that I trimmed in the last couple of weeks, Cisco and Qualcomm. And I'm thinking about buying them back. Not today.
- [48:47]
Scott O'Neill
Not today.
- [48:48]
Jim Leventhal
This isn't a tape in which you commit new capital. But it will be soon as long as the Persian Gulf doesn't worsen. So bottom line, this is a consolidation, not a correction, not something worse.
- [48:59]
Scott Wapner
Jensen said you should buy Qualcomm. So I don't know if you're looking at.
- [49:02]
Jim Leventhal
He's. Is he gunning for a position on Mad Money?
- [49:07]
Scott Wapner
Final trades. We'll do those coming up. Closing bell three o' clock back here. One market will do that today. Glenn Kacher find out what he thinks about what's happening with that tech trade right now. Alex, cant you weighs in low. Tony looks ahead to Space X Anthropic. Now we know open. I will follow this market. The Dow is actually down now almost 1%. Russell 2000 down almost 2%. Got the NASDAQ down 3%. We could do some final trades. Got a little time to chat. Josh, what do you got?
- [49:41]
Josh Brown
Last week while I was on vacation, shake shack guided lower for the quarter. For those wondering my position, I'm still long the stock. I have not added in the wake of that downgrade. I also do not expect any kind of recovery for the stock until at least the next earnings call.
- [49:59]
Scott Wapner
All right, quickly. Malcolm.
- [50:01]
Malcolm Etheridge
Yeah, I'm going Morgan Stanley. Between the IPO boom and the wealth management boom, they can't win. I mean, they can't lose.
- [50:07]
Jim Leventhal
Sorry, Jim Abbvie if you're looking for a name in health care, this is the place to start.
- [50:12]
Scott Wapner
Joe C. Bo See you on the closing bell. You've been listening to CNBC's Halftime Report, the podcast. You can always catch us live weekdays at 12 Eastern only on CNBC.
- [50:28]
Halftime Report Disclaimer Narrator
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