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Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Cramerica. Other people My friends, I'm just trying to save you a little money here. My job's not just entertain, but I'm going to educate. I'm going to explain everything tonight because it's crazy out there. Call me 1-873CBC. Tweet me. ImKramer. Be nice. The clients win, the purveyors lose. Hardware companies triumph, Software companies shrivel up and die. Industrials profit. Enterprise service companies wilt sell, sell, sell. The result Yet a day like today where The Dow tumbled 167 points, S&P plunged 0.84%, Nasdaq pumping 1.43%, which seems horrendous but was much worse for the stocks of any connected with the once love cohort that was software. Is it really that simple? The market spoke up today and said yes, everything software must be thrown Anything remotely connected to software is suspect, including companies that just collect data. But any client, a bank, a consumer packaged goods company, an industrial company is golden. At least for now. Even if their earnings aren't so hot. Maybe you should have seen this coming. In the last two months, we've seen lots of different high quality enterprise software stocks. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Adobe Report really good numbers only to watch their stocks wither and get blown away. The market has collectively spoken. The pin action is awful. These companies either produce software that can be replaced by something that's made by AI, or at the very least I can cut into their user base. Which is which matters because these cloud software companies typically charge by what's known as per seat. Never mind. None of this has actually happened yet. Wall Street's convinced that it's going to happen because of AI. Wall street is a prediction machine and the prediction for software holders, the House of Pain. Now, we thought that some types of software were immune, like infrastructure software companies like Datadog, MongoDB, oh, they were so popular and favorite analysts were always recommending these things. Atlassian, I mean they could do no wrong. What I didn't count on was a story about how Anthropic, an AI service dedicated for businesses, business to business we call it, has developed programs to help automate legal work. And they're starting to make inroads at law firms. We've seen these before, but nothing ever caught fire. My contacts indicate that most law firms still don't trust these programs, and I don't blame them. But this story somehow resonated with the market. Anthropic's work was the first truly convincing product that some thought would cause the big layoffs that make bringing in the product worthwhile. Anthropic is a loved AI system. While there were many straws on the camel, that was the one that broke the camel's back. Now, most of what we've seen today does seem like panic selling with some buying of the companies that pay for software. Everyone from Procter and Gamble, which had a bad quarter, but it's way up FedEx, Union Pacific. Any company that spends a lot of technology on a lot of technology, especially software, is winning right now. But there are others who see this pattern. They decide to avail themselves of ETFs that allow them to short the heck and out of software, such as the iShares Expanded Tech Software Sector ETF or the IGV as it is known. How would you like to be known as ig? Hi, I'm igv. The ones with the biggest weighties in that fund, with the exception of Palantir, which reported a terrific quarter today, were obliterated, laid to waste the top 10, including Palantir are all familiar names. Listen to this. Microsoft down 3%. You know, that's already been hammered a lot. Salesforce down 7%. I can't look at it anymore. Oracle down 3%. Intuit down 11%. Hey, I like my taxes with Intuit. App loving down 4%. Whatever happened, that's app 8 now. Adobe down 7. Whoa, notes. So great. Palo Alto Networks down 5. CrowdStrike down almost 4%. And ServiceNow I knew or when down 7%. What do we do with this list? Are the declines overdone or are all of these enterprise software plays about to be rendered obsolete thanks to our artificial intelligence? As usually it's a little more nuanced. I'm of two minds here. One is to say we ought to take advantage of their sale to pick up the other tech stocks that are being dragged down by the blunt force instrument that is this etf. For example, you know what we did today? We bought CrowdStrike for the travel Trust. This is a cybersecurity company. It shouldn't, it shouldn't be in the enterprise software cohort. But it's being brought down by that stupid etf. The idea that somehow someone is going to use AI to create a software company that, that identifies and stops bad guys from North Korea and Albania just ain't going to happen. I'm calling that fanciful. I have no idea how CrowdStrike got in this stupid ETF in the first place. It doesn't belong there. And the makers of the index should know better. But they're faceless people. They hide behind the index. We'll never know who they are. How do they live with themselves? Well, probably pretty easily and make a lot of money. But the other mind says you can't jump in front of a speeding freight train. All aboard. Far better. Just own the stocks of companies with big software spending that can presumably save fortunes. Public companies that can begin to take out Wells Fargo. They just hired a technologist from Amazon Web Services. Help the bankers find the hidden savings. That's a winner. Oddly for the vast plurality of the punished companies, there have been and maybe won't there have been, but I haven't seen them any big estimate cuts. What's happening is simply that their price earnings multiples are shrinking. Something I painstakingly explain in the chapter about shrinking price earnings multiples and how to make money in any market. Wall Street's paying less and less for these earnings and the earnings aren't going away, they're just paying less for them because that's what you do when you're worried about the future. The problem with a shrinking price earnings multiple is that you don't know how low it can go. Will Salesforce trade down to 14? How about 13? How about 12 times earnings? I have no idea. Same with workday. Roper Technologies used to be a hardware company. Now it's a collection of ho hum enterprise software businesses. How could they do that to themselves? Many of these software stocks have almost no natural defenses, little to no dividends and not much in the way of buyback. They're poor little lambs who have lost their way. Sell, sell, sell. One more thought. You saw a lot of private equity stocks get hammered today. That's because many of them own enterprise software companies that want to come public. That window is now close. We don't want any more of those. There are already too many of them. Way too many. And by the way, who understands what half of them do? And that includes people work there. The bottom line bulls have to hope that the software stocks have no contagion. Theoretically, right now they don't. They shouldn't. There are winners, the users and losers the providers. Logic says the pain will not spread beyond this cohort. But then again, markets aren't always logical. Let's take calls. How about we go to Ian in Florida? Ian, hey.
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Booyah, Jim.
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How you doing? Booyah, Ian. I'm doing well. How about you? I'm doing great. Kanye from sunny Florida. Member of the club. Yes. Jim, wanted to ask you, what do you think about Broadcom here? Is it a good time to get into it? Okay, I'm too much of Broadcom. It's not a good time to get into it. But it's a great company. So what are we going to do? We're going to let it come down. It did bounce today. We're going to hope that Hock Tan does a buyback. He's got the earnings. I'm going to throw in. Let me throw in Nvidia because we're going to talk to him later. But these. This company is a winner in this environment, not a loser. And I will be right. Just going to take a little while. Okay, maybe it's a lot like Friday at 3am The Bulls had better hope there's no contagion outside of these software stocks. Logic says there shouldn't be. But you have to remember that the market isn't always logical. But look, great stocks will prevail if they're backed by great companies on Monday. Tonight, Nvidia and so Systems announced an expanded partnership day. Bring AI into more corners the economy including the $90 trillion real economy. I'm digging into details with the CEOs. Both companies also get to the bottom of the so called rocky relationship between Nvidia and OpenAI that some journalists every day. I hope you guys have fun then our burritos bouncing back. I'm sitting down with the top ranch of Chipotle. Fresh off of earnings yet up there on turnaround efforts underway at the restaurant chain. And they're real and I think they're going to pay off. And Merck managed to be a beacon of green in today's red tape. I'm digging the company's top and bottom line beat with the CEO to see what's ahead for the pharma giant. The stock was down instantly because people are so darn done. Never mind, I'm a little caustic today. Stay with Kramer.
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All right, what do we make of all this hand Wringing about artificial intelligence. Earlier today, Nvidia announced a partnership with Dassault Systems, that's a French maker of software for 3D modeling. Basically, this is all about creating digital twins and save money, do better industrial design applications. I bring this up because AI is genuine uses. It's not just about moving money around. Earlier today I got a chance to check up with Jensen Huang. He's the co founder, president, CEO of Nvidia, no stranger to the show. And Pascal Deloitte, he's the CEO of Dassault Systems. To learn more about this team up and how Nvidia is doing, take a look. Gentlemen, welcome to Mad Money. Hey Jim, how are you guys going? All right, Jen, so let me get right at it. Today you just announced a long term strategic partnership that I think centers on bringing artificial intelligence into the real world economy. It's part of the fourth industrial revolution. Now we're talking about trillions of dollars, trillions in creation of new iterations. Aerospace, autos, materials. You've been working together for ages. Why is this particular partnership so important?
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Well, we started working with Dassault Systems 25 years ago during the last platform major platform transition from workstations and mainframes to personal computers. Now we're working together again in this next computing platform transition when we move from classical general purpose computing to now accelerated computing and AI. This partnership between us is incredible because the next frontier of artificial intelligence is, is physical AI. This is where AI understands the physical world and we apply artificial intelligence to design, simulate, validate and operate incredible systems. And as you know, we're in the beginning of the next industrial revolution, the largest infrastructure build out in history. And we're building all of these plants, chip plants, computer plants and AI factories. And all of these plants are going to be powering the industrial industries of today. Car companies, aircraft companies, and, you know, so on, so forth. And so Dassault Systems, it's at the center of that. And for the first time, we're integrating all of Nvidia's platform technologies, Nvidia Cuda X, Nvidia AI, Nvidia Omniverse into the Dassault Systems suite of tools. This is completely revolutionary. We're so excited about it.
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All right, so I see a world where things that we envisioned but couldn't afford are going to be affordable with this. So Pascal, I've been thinking of one of the major airlines, aerospace companies told me we got to get back into the fast game. We got to be able to make it. So there's a plane that can leave New York and land in London in three hours. But it's too expensive to design. How would you make it so it's not too expensive?
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This is the purpose of the partnership, which is to accelerate the design and the simulation and everything we have to build virtually before to make it real. Now, right now, you know, we can uplift many, many things. There are many, many things like certification of the airplane, like the quality management, like the compliance check, which are becoming late into the process with what we are building together, we could uplift them and give the ability to squeeze the time to be much more productive and much more accurate the first time.
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I do want to say that.
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And Jim, look, the stuff that we're doing together will make it possible for us to simulate with artificial intelligence and accelerated computing so much larger scale and so much more quickly. Just give you one example. Instead of simulating some parts of your design and then using your putting your product into an air chamber or into a crash simulation, we're going to do everything digitally. This idea of a virtual digital twin so that we could basically do all product design and testing completely digitally is going to save enormous amounts of time, enormous amounts of money.
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Okay, so, Pascal, I was with an incredible fireside chat with Jensen and David Ricks from Lilly, and they're talking about developing new drugs. You have a life sciences division, but most of these drugs just cost too much money and the iterations are too expensive. What could you do to make it so that we would see iterations of things that we could never dream of because of this partnership?
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You know, it costs on average 2 billion to develop new drugs, and more than 60% is spent on the clinical trial. And why this is expensive because you have to test it physically in the reality. There is a way to virtualize part of the clinical trial. That's what we do. We call it the synthetic control arm, which is a way to create a virtual cohort if you want, and do a virtual trial, rather than to have to do it completely over the time. This is really squeezing it significantly. And based on the different case we have, we could probably gain something like 50% of the cost.
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We're going to do the same that we do with planes in a wind tunnel. We're going to do drugs in a virtual wet lab. And we could discover and engineer new drugs much, much more effectively as a result.
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I do hope people listening know that it's not just hyperscalers that use these chips and that this economy is 90%. 90% of the economy involves exactly what we're Talking about maybe 10% involves what I do want to ask Jensen about because there's a lot of confusion and I want to clear it up and want to clear it up right now because I think we can put a fork into the confusion that we're hearing. There's a lot of talk, Jensen, about the open air investment. Now. I find it after a while talk tedious. However many people in the press are convinced that you want to walk away from a major initial investment of $100 billion into OpenAI, that it stalled, that you're not that interested, that there's been a lot of private criticism even for the $10 billion per 1 gigawatt that you put in. Can we end this? Is there really controversy about this?
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No, there's no controversy at all. It's complete nonsense. We love working with OpenAI. We are incredibly honored and delighted to be able to invest in their next round. And so we're privileged that they're inviting us to invest for each one of their rounds. We would love to be invited and we would consider, of course, investing in it. This is one of the most consequential technology companies in history and this will by far be one of the most exciting investments and I'm delighted to be to be invited and we'll consider every single one. We are going to invest in their next round. We're looking forward to Sam closing it and he's doing terrifically and we will invest in the next round. There's no question about that.
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Okay, then. It is confusing to me why both the initial deal that was announced and we were talking about one that has not been confirmed, where you're talking about putting money with them. This is separate from the second one with the deal in order to be able to invest again, to be able to make it so that 1 gigawatt 10 billion. And then the second thing about the investment with the in a possible. In a possible ipo, we keep hearing from the Wall Street Journal, from Reuters that deals on ice that it can't be done, that there's so much dispute. Another thing that makes me upset, Jensen, is that perhaps it is possible that there's motivation here to kill the deal. Because I'm not hearing anything from either party that's to going sounds like this.
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Well, nothing that we're doing on the inside is that dramatic. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of. There's a lot of stories about it. But I think that, I think that OpenAI and Sam are doing a great job Raising this current round, this will be the largest private round ever raised in history. And I don't know any other company that possibly could do this. I mean, all of this is possible because the amount of offtake, the amount of traffic, the amount of interest that they have in their, in their product, what they need more than anything right now is compute. When they have compute, it will directly translate to revenues for them. Because as you know, in the world of AI infrastructure, the computing, the AI factories is what, what produces the tokens, the AI that ultimately drives their revenues. And so the more compute they have, the greater revenues they will have. And so I'm, you know, their trajectory, their revenue growth trajectory is going to be unlike anything the world's ever seen. And this is, this is a great investment opportunity. I'm delighted to do it. In working with, with OpenAI, there is no drama. Everything is, this round is going to get done. It's going to be the largest round in history. There's, it's going to be over six. Remember, it's going to be there to terrific.
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There's two rounds. This is timber deal where you talked about 10 billion per gigawatt and that was pre AMD, for instance. And then there's the round for the IPO. Are both of them on? Because the first one has, there's a lot of talk that that one has just kind of gone away that you're not going to do that, that deal, the original 100 billion. This is the last I will ask of this because I think we can put the end right here to questions about whether that first deal is on or off.
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The first deal zone.
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It's on that.
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I think there, yeah, I think there's a, there's a round that OpenAI is going to do that Sam's going to do before the ipo. And, and if, if that round is, is, is on, then we're, we're in. And I think the round is in. Is on.
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Okay.
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And then there's a, there's of course an IPO in the future and we'd love to be participating in that as well. And so this is, this is a fantastic company. And as you, as I've said before, this is a once in a generation company. We're delighted to invest in it.
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Well, it doesn't sound like that there's a rocky relationship between the two. It doesn't sound like the deal's on ice. It doesn't sound like there's grave problems. It doesn't sound like there are eight different sources saying this One can't happen. It doesn't sound like any of that to me.
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And there's no drama involved. Everything's on track.
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All right. I'd like to go back to substance. I appreciate the, the horse race deal. It's important for some people. I'd rather talk about the 90 trillion that is the world economy. And I want to go back to Pascal, because I think that it's only fair to say that maybe we can look to you to design quickly machines and factories involving memory, which is the single biggest block right now to what we all want to accomplish. It takes years. I was with Sanjay Marochi the other day. I cannot believe how long it takes to build even a disk drive factory. Can you cut it down?
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In fact, when you build virtually, you can automatically do not only the engineering part, but you could do the testing, you could do the commissioning, you could do the ramp up. So everything, usually you do physically, you can anticipate it. And to do virtually this is saving a lot of time and a lot of money to make this happen. And when you have to build so much factory around the world, that's the only way.
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Okay, and Jensen, last word. Humanoid robots. You showed me 1 almost 10 years ago and you weren't satisfied. You weren't satisfied with the hand. You weren't satisfied what you could tell them. The partnership together. Can you develop robots much faster than anyone else when you put, when you put your minds together on this.
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Dassault Systems builds the tools that the world makes machines from cars and factories and robots and, you know, all kinds of consumer electronics products, even luxury goods. It's designed in SolidWorks or designed in Catia. It's simulated in Somalia. It's Somalia. It's, of course, the factories are simulated and operated and planned, you know, using Dalmia. There's so many IAs, in fact, all of the SO Systems tools, these Catia and Simulias are built on top of Nvidia. And as a result, the speed and the capability and the scale are just incredible. The future, and this is where the era we're in now is using digital design, virtual twins of the products, they're going to be built by virtual twins of robots operating in virtual twins of factories. And all of this will be designed digitally in tools, and they will be designed, validated, operated, and all done inside these virtual twins running on top of Nvidia. Nvidia computing platforms.
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And I am.
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And so this is, this is just, this is the way it's going to be done going forward.
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I'm Just glad I saw it. My I hope to see it in my lifetime.
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Thanks, Jim.
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Thank you.
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Well, you've heard it. I think it's the last word. That's Jensen Wong, CEO of Nvidia. And Pascal Lula was CEO of Dassault Systems. Mayor Bunny is back at Blueberry.
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Coming up, was Chipotle able to cook up a tasty quarter? Kramer sitting down with the CEO to find out what's on the menu for the restaurant chain. Next. Hey Fidelity.
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What's going on with the stock of Chipotle? This stock been making a comeback over the last couple months. But when it reported after the close, Wall street was a little mixed about this one, even though the numbers came in better than feared. Management's full year, same store sales forecast was a slight light and the stock plummeted in after hours trading. I think that Wall Street's going to be wrong here. I think this is getting mighty attractive. So does the company. They've been buying stock hand over fist. Earlier we had a chance to dig deep with Scott boatwright. He's the CEO of chipotle. Take a look. Mr. Boatwright, welcome back to.
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Jim. Thanks for having us on this afternoon.
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Of course. Scott. I look at the numbers and I think, well, pretty, pretty much better than I feared all the way down the line, including operating margins are terrific. And I was concerned about comp stores. I think that you could alleviate that. What is make you feel like you have to feel this is the beginning, this is the beginning of the turn that we talked about.
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Yeah. Jim, I'll tell you, as I look back on 2025, I think about the year as a year that we made a lot of progress on many fronts which are critically important to informing the issue of strategy, but also a year of resiliency. We've, we have demonstrated through, you know, the past 10 years or so that the brand can be successful in any consumer cycle. 2026 will be no different. We will win. We have a winning strategy in front of us that I'm really excited about around recipe for growth and I'd love to talk to you about it.
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Well, why don't you tell me about the recipe growth and if I know that you've got a terrific chart which talks about what I think is very sound business judgment about what you're going to do. So why don't you go through that?
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Yeah. So at the core of it all, Jim, we've got to continue to protect and strengthen the core around operational experiences and culinary excellence for both the in restaurant consumer as well as the digital consumer. We're spend time this year really evolving the brand messaging, leaning into many menu innovation and new occasions that drive demand modernizing our business model by leveraging industry leading technologies in AI technology as we move forward as well as revamping or reigniting our rewards program which I'm super excited about. We'll continue to expand access around the globe for Chipotle consumers, whether that's here in North America, Western Europe or in our partner operating restaurants. And then leaning into industry leading talent that is not only energized but really focused on speed and agility.
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Well, I got to tell you Scott, of these, the one that has really caught my eye, the evolve brand messing accelerate menu innovations, new occasions. I love the protein cup and menu innovations that are both a little bit lower in price which is good because you said you wanted younger people to come back. But protein is it. It's what people want. The commercials really resonate. It's got to be driving people to your stores.
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Yeah, we're seeing a lot of really positive momentum in the business after the launch of the protein menu which gets us excited with an opportunity to really accelerate growth here in 2026 around new menu offerings as well as approachable price points that have a meaningful impact on the Consumer, specifically the lower income consumer, which we're seeing to rebound for us as well. So we're excited about what's in front of us. Menu innovation this year will be nothing like you've seen historically. We're going to launch four new protein ltos and also pepper in sides and dips that will drive new occasions. And what we're seeing, Jim, is when the consumer comes in and tries an LTO for the first time, their annual spend and frequency goes up exponentially as compared to a consumer that doesn't try an lto.
C
Now, will it matter if it's done before? For instance, you got a one, two punch. You have a terrific super bowl ad strategy. I mean, I think it's great. And then the next day we have chicken al pastor back in the stores. Will people gravitate to that? People who didn't know Chipotle? Because, you know, that's my. That's a lot of people's favorites lto.
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Yeah. So it's our most requested LTO in the brand's history. Jim. We couldn't be more excited to bring it back. It launches on February 10th. Full ad campaign, full media, you know, plan and strategy. So we're excited about the product, but it's only one of the really great LTOs we have teed up for the year.
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Can you give us a little bit of secret the others? You know what, we love the ltos. We talk about them constantly and chicken up. Our store is our favorite from really our favorite, too.
G
You may see another true and proven favorite. You may see something new on the menu. Jim, I can't give you the sneak peek that I want to give you. I will tell you our culinary teams have been working around the clock throughout 2025 to bring forward innovation that is on brand, on trend that we know our consumers are asking for and looking for that will drive meaningful transaction growth in 2026.
C
Now, you're doing a lot behind the scenes, too. I mean, you give. You're starting to promote. I saw all the promotions you gave for the people who run the great stores, which is what we want. We want people smiling at us, want people happy. But I guess you also have maybe let some people go. Not everybody bought into the plan. And I think I see it. I think a lot of us see it. Those us regular people see different Chipotle's. There's a different feel. I'm not kidding. There is.
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I appreciate you saying that, Jim. I couldn't be prouder of how hard our teams have worked this past year. On the Chipotle business, we are hiring a couple of new new key positions for the organization that will help us really support and strengthen our strategy. In 2026. We're going to hire a new chief Digital Officer that will really take on digital commerce. As we reimagine our rewards program, we continue to lean into our third party business to understand our strategy between different partners in three third party as well as bolstering and making our white label more approachable and more meaningful as well. We're going to hire a new VP of Emerging Technologies to help us really get our our business forward as it relates to industry leading technologies and really harness the power of AI to drive efficiencies in the business as well. And then of course lastly, we're looking for a new Chief Marketing Officer that will really take our brand through the new brand voice and the brand narrative that we're looking to create here in 2026.
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Well, it's happening. I want to know how I can win at least a part of $1 million on real food on game day with Instagram reels. You've got something good going. I think it's very funny and very exciting.
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We like it. It's our way into super bowl to do an activation that's meaningful for our most loyal guests. And so we're going to hand out over $1 million worth of free burritos. Couldn't be more excited about giving our wholesome and nutritious food to those that care about our brand the most. So it'll be a really exciting Super Bowl.
C
You know, I was talking to Brian Niccol the other day from Starbucks. Now he feels that some of the underperforming stores, he just has to close them. What is your, what is your feeling on the underperforming stores? What you have to do? Because I'm sure there will be people will say, listen, if he closed them, we'll get the comp stores up and then the stock will go higher, not lower.
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As we look across our portfolio and we go through an annual analysis. Jim, as you can imagine, we are very fortunate as a brand. Chipotle really doesn't have restaurants that are underperforming as it relates to margin impact or margin growth. We do have a handful that we see each year, but it's in the tens, not hundreds. And then we take a very hard approach to thinking how do we either have an offset strategy for that location or close the location permanently. But it is our goal to continue to grow this great brand with restaurants. And as you know, we have the lowest build costs of most restaurants in the space with the best economic model and the best returns. And so our restaurants just perform well.
C
All right. Well, you know, I'm always going to be concerned because I do want to see positive comps and people will sell restaurant stocks that don't have positive comps and will go down. But I saw you bought back $742 million worth of stock at 34 14. Then the stock did go higher, but now it's coming back. Are you done or would you keep buying?
G
We're going to keep buying, Jim. We bought back a record number of shares in 2025, just over $2 billion worth of shares. We have a plan in place this year. We just got board approval for another 1.8 billion for the year. We will continue to buy back opportunistically and continue to return value to the shareholders.
C
Well, look, I want to congratulate you. I know again, the stock doesn't necessarily reflect the changes. We do know the changes. They're definitely. You told me you're going to have to get tough. I know you had to do that. I know. No boss wants to do that. I know it's working. I can't wait till February 10th because Chicken Al Pastor comes back. Thank you so much. Scott Bartraght, CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill. Good to see you, sir.
G
Jim, thanks for having us on. Enjoy the conversation.
C
Thank you. Me too, man. Might even back after the break.
B
Coming up, after a strong surge in the past month, pharmaceutical giant Merck looks to be moving up. Kramer's meeting with the CEO to find out what could be in store next.
C
This morning, Merck reported a very solid quarter, but gave what some people thought was a soft full year forecast. Yet the stock finished up the session more than 2%. Why? Because investors realized that the guidance was dragged down by one time costs related to a big acquisition last year. How could they not know that this is one of my favorite pharmaceutical stocks. So let's take a closer look at Rob Davis, the chairman CEO of Merck. Mr. Davis, welcome back to Money.
D
Thank you for having me back. I appreciate it.
C
Absolutely, Rob. So when the news came over, I turned to my colleague David Faber. I said, don't you see? It's so much more than key. True to that was the theme of this quarter.
D
Was it really was. I mean, if you look at where we are, I would say our transformation is underway. We're starting to see new launches that are starting to drive our growth. But importantly, we have some really critical Data readouts that have come, new product approvals. And as we look forward now, given the progress of our pipeline, we now see line of sight to over $70 billion of potential commercial opportunity from probably one of the most diverse portfolios we've had in years. Over 20 big growth drivers contributing to that 10 alone, we can probably dive into that are really critical.
C
Well, we want to do it, but first I want to say people have to understand that is a very high number, a much higher number than you used when you were last year.
D
Yes, it's $20 billion more than where we were same time last year.
C
Right. So let's go over some of the big drivers because I know you've got some positive results for some phase three studies, 80 phase three studies currently underway, that a lot of these are going to pay off.
D
Yeah, no, they are. And if you look, you know, in fact we have so much that in some ways investors are asking us to try to, to compartmentalize it for them to understand it. So we've, what we focused on are really 10 key growth drivers. These are our three assets that are launched. One that has positive phase three data which is in licitide, and then six that have important phase three clinical readouts over the next 12 to 18 months. Those alone account for 70% of the 70 billion I was referring to.
C
Let's talk about Elicit. I take a drug called Repatha. My cholesterol has plummeted, but it hurts. It hurts like the dickens. I have to do it every two weeks and I don't look forward to it. You have something better for me? Please.
D
Well, you know, what we have is, and this is really the magic of macrocyclic peptide technology, which is something we've invested heavily in. But we're able to basically create in a pill form the same as a monoclonal antibody. So the same way it acts, the same binding characteristics that a monoclonal uses, we have in the form of a simple to take, easy to use pill that brings like efficacy that you would get with a drug like Repatha, but at affordable cost and something that we'll be able to take to the globe.
C
Now, before we go into some others, is there anyone who would choose a, give themselves a shot over a pill? I don't know.
D
Well, you know, what we see in the research would say that I think generally people, if they can take a pill, they prefer it, especially in this population, as you know, and I'm actually on all these medicines myself. You're taking multiple pills, so really you're used to it. It's something you do in the morning. And I think it's something that will be very easy for people to be compliant with.
C
Do you think it's possible that it could have like I feel for Repatha that it may be actually reducing plaque some, maybe even in my brain. I know that's just like could happen, could not. Would you ever do studies with your drug to see what else it might do?
D
You know, down the road we will. But obviously we're very focused right now on trying to drive for secondary prevention. And I would make a point because I know people often focus on us around what these use, the monoclonals. We're not necessarily trying to compete with the monoclonals. We think we need to expand the market. If you look today, only 6% of people who could be on these drugs, drugs are. Our question is why we need to get more people on them. And if we do this, it'll lift the tide for all boats.
C
Okay. Now you were here when men Revere, the great stuff is going now look at the numbers already. It's, it's doing pretty darn well.
D
Yeah. Now when Revere has been really. It's, it's a miracle drug. If you look at this and we talked about this, I think the last time I.
C
Yes, we did.
D
PH is a devastating disease. Primarily affects women and child, childbearing years of life, mortality rates are pretty high. And it's, it's really, it's just devastating. But what we've been able to do with, with what we have with Wind Revere is now bring a treatment that's starting to show positive results. And importantly we actually have just read out phase two results in the Cadence study which potentially could expand this beyond pH, beyond PAH into pulmonary hypertension related left heart disease. That could double the size of the.
C
I was going to say that is unfortunately very prevalent. Yeah. Now I had become a believer that I take the flu shot, but it doesn't really, it's not that effective. You've got something for us that's quite different.
D
We do. So we did a deal we actually just closed this month for the company called Sadara Pharma. They have a, an investigation, long acting antiviral, it's strain agnostic, so it doesn't matter. It works whether it's influenza A or B and it will last for the season. So you take shots at the beginning of the season, it protects you for the full season. And we showed 70%, 76% reduction in the risk of getting the flu. For patients who were on that in our phase two study, we've now moved into phase three and obviously we see it as very important. There's 110 people who are high risk or immunocompromised or over the age of 65. This is a perfect antiviral for that population because it brings the protection they need.
C
No, I really thank you for that. Now, one last thing that we were talking about before we started filming. I see something and you see it. We're starting to give a better price turnings multiple to really superior companies. We didn't even have to talk about Keytrudor. There's so much good here. There have been a fear that Kentucky would take you a single multiple somewhere. But really good companies are starting to get rewarded for really good science and your company's one of them.
D
Well, I appreciate that and I'm proud of what my scientific team have done. My superpower, if you will, is I get out of their way and I enable them to do what they do best, which is find great science and invest behind it. And we sit here today with one of the deepest, broadest pipelines we've had. And our ability to have a real impact for patients, I think is going to have a meaningful impact for years into the future, which I'm very excited about.
C
And at the same time, for people who are worried that there could be a government intervention, I'm not seeing anything from HHS that's against your vaccines. And I also know that you finished the Most Favored Nation and that's behind you. So it's. The government may actually be not really involved right now with Merck, other than to say, hey, listen, that's a good drug.
D
Yeah, no. So you look at it and maybe with the Most Favored nations agreement, you know, we shared the administration's concern that we have to find ways to lower out of pocket costs for, for people in the United States and we had to get prices up in other markets around the world to pay their fair share. So through the deal we were able to strike, we achieved those objectives. It does have impact, but it's manageable. And if it can ultimately achieve the goal set forth, I'm fully supported, supportive of it. So I think we're aligned with the administration and as you said, I feel like we've, we've job done on that, job done achieving the objectives they want.
C
Us and people need to know that they're not going to be blindsided. That's over. Well, I want to thank Rob Davis CEO and chairman of Merck. And remember we accepted that key true is an unbelievable drug and we dealt with all the future which is why don't worry about what's going on now. Keytrude is fantastic and it will be. But I think you need to know well into 30s line of sight. That's your takeaway. Mad money's back after he breaks. Thank you, Rob.
F
Thank you.
C
It is time for the white round. Bye bye bye sausage. I'll just put it in a core stock, quench it down my stamp square while you playing this down. And then the lightning round is over. Are you ready, ski daddy? Time of the light realm clears the right st with Bob in Ohio. Bob. Hey, Jimmy. Yo, yo, Bob. Good talk to you tonight. Long time, third time club member. Fantastic. Love it. What are your thoughts on Gladstone Land Corporation Land Symbol Land. Will you stop? I don't know what they actually owe. They own farmland. Don't know where, don't know when. I think. I think you should Ka Ching Kaching that one. Okay, next, let's go to David in Texas. David.
D
Yeah.
C
My stock, Jim, is Solstice advanced. Oh, I know Solstice is terrific. It's a spin off the Honeywell. It's been just a horse. We own some. We were too quick to sell it. It's a fantastic stock. And that, ladies and gentlemen, conclusion of the Lightning Round.
B
The Lightning Round is sponsored by Charles Schwab. Coming up, much has been made of the potential impact of OpenAI's financial commitments on the tech trade. So should you be worried, Kramer is doing the calculations next.
C
Not that long ago I thought that OpenAI, the company behind Chat CBT, could be the Achilles heel of the fourth industrial revolution. The one in video Jensemont talked about earlier in the show. We know OpenAI is blowing through billions and billions of dollars. They've made all sorts of deals, including a $300 billion transaction they owe to Oracle to build data centers over roughly five years. They don't have the cash right now, but they're number one in the general space. And despite what you may read in the endless hit pieces in the paper, I think they will be able to raise the money. Well open I get it in several tranches with one involving Jensen putting money into the company. Maybe 10 billion equip for each gigawatt. Will they get it in a private fundraising round involving many buyers at a valuation, say a 500,700,800, leaving room for $1,000,000,000,000 IPO. Will Nvidia come in with anything they want? Because they've been such close partners for such a long time. You heard Jensen earlier. It's a very close relationship, something that OpenAI see CEO Sam Altman posted on X just that he agrees last night. If that's the case, then why the heck did I have to ask Jensen about the relationship with Opening eyes symbol? There are a bunch of articles that indicate their partnerships on the rocks, that Nvidia might not participate in any fundraising rounds, that the deal is chimerical, that it might not work out at all because Open Air has problems with Nvidia's chips, or that Nvidia would like the deal to be more exclusive and exclude rivals like AMD or Broadcom or else. To me, this stuff is all inside baseball and probably wrong, but it's become the most important stumbling block to Open Air coming public, which would be the best way for them to raise a lot of money very quickly. I spent a chunk of valuable time with Jensen to clear this up. If you listen, I think you came away with a sense that no more questions need to be answered. It's done. There's no distance between Sam and Jensen. I did this interview in part to help you through the thicket created by the business media where negativity always draws more attention than positivity and many aren't constructive. When somebody writes that there are seven or eight people at OpenAI who don't like Nvidia or there are some sex in video that have objections to open, in the end, all I can say is this. These companies have CEOs, and for now Jensen Huang and Sam Altman are on the same page and last I looked, they are in charge. I like to say this always market summer problems are fine just for your year. Man Money. I'm Jim Cramer. See you tomorrow.
A
All opinions expressed by Jim Cramer on this podcast are solely Kramer's opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by Kramer on television, radio, Internet or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Kramer as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. Cramer's opinions are based upon information he considers reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full Mad Money disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com madmoneydisclaimer you know what they say. Early bird gets the ultimate vacation home. Book early and save over 500 doll on a week long stay with VRBO because early gets you closer to the action, whether it's waves lapping at the shore or snoozing in a hammock that overlooks. Well, whatever you want it to so you can all enjoy the payoff come summer with Vrbo's early booking deals. Rise and shine. Average savings 550 select homes only. Minimum seven day stay required.
Date: February 4, 2026
Host: Jim Cramer (CNBC)
This episode captures Jim Cramer's signature energy and analysis as he guides listeners through another tumultuous Wall Street session, with a sharp focus on the sector rotation from software to hardware and “real economy” companies, the role of AI-induced panic, and major interviews with top CEOs from Nvidia, Dassault Systèmes, Chipotle, and Merck. Cramer explores whether the sell-off in enterprise software is overdone, interviews leaders driving the next industrial revolution, and spotlights turnaround strategies and innovation at Chipotle and Merck. His “Lightning Round” offers rapid-fire stock takes, and he closes by dismantling rumors around Nvidia’s relationship with OpenAI.
Timestamps: 01:42–10:13
Timestamps: 44:21–45:23
Timestamps: 12:10–25:27
Jensen Huang (Nvidia, CEO)
Pascal Daloz (Dassault Systèmes, CEO)
25-Year Relationship, Next-Gen Partnership:
Digital Twins/Simulation:
Drug Development:
OpenAI/Nvidia Deal Rumors:
Robotics & Manufacturing:
Cramer’s Takeaway:
Timestamps: 27:25–36:17
Guest: Scott Boatwright, CEO, Chipotle
Timestamps: 36:41–44:12
Guest: Rob Davis, CEO/Chairman, Merck
Timestamps: 45:52–48:04
This Mad Money episode captures Jim Cramer’s vigorous style and broad Wall Street coverage, as he breaks down sector rotations driven by AI anxiety, challenges groupthink panic selling, and spotlights high-impact innovation across technology, consumer, and pharma. The featured CEO interviews go beyond earnings, offering listeners an inside view of how artificial intelligence is reshaping industries—while Cramer works to cut through sensationalist headlines with direct answers from top leaders.
For listeners: