Title: The Mega-Cap Bounce Back: How to Trade it Show: CNBC Halftime Report (podcast) — Scott Wapner + the Investment Committee Panel: Joe Terranova, Steve Weiss, Bill Baruch, Rob Sechan ("Rob Seats" in the auto-transcript); plus Mike Santoli (midday word), Matt Hong (Versant/USA Sports guest segment), Kate Rooney (Anthropic IPO news), McKenzie Sagalos (news update) Date: 2026-07-15 URL: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yK4cHdHxWjwAnDfxFF8qh Length: 44 min Note: Spotify audio — untimestamped auto-transcript (speaker labels approximate; "Rob Seats" = Rob Sechan, "gold mine/Goldman" = Goldman Sachs, "Lily" = Eli Lilly, "Bistro VST" = Vistra, "Space XI" = SpaceX, "Warsh" = Kevin Warsh per context). Verbal fillers (um/uh/you know/stutters) removed; wording otherwise verbatim. Section headings are the episode chapter titles. I'm Scott Wapner and you're listening to CNBC Halftime Report, the podcast, the most profitable hour of the trading day. We record this live weekdays at 12 Eastern. Listen in. Carl, thanks so much. Welcome to the halftime report. I'm Scott Wapner front and center. This hour, money into the mega caps. Just as Carl was saying, it's Apple. All of the hyperscalers ramping as we come on the air. We're trading the markets with the investment committee. Joining us for the hour today, Joe Terranova, Steve Weiss, Bill Baruch, Rob Seats, and let's go to the scorecard here. I'll tell you what we're seeing today. And yes, the Nasdaq's only up by 1/4 of 1%. And what is a green across the board tape. But let's look at some of the mega caps. Take a look at Apple, look at Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, 3% thereabouts for everything in that group. We weren't going to start here today. And then we saw this big move and all these names and said, well, let's start at this place in the market. Speaker 2 This seems to be the pattern for the month of July. We have these rotations that's allowing the overall market to inch its way higher. But every time the momentum factor maybe takes a couple of steps backward, we see capital coming out of memory semiconductor equipment. They're finding value opportunities in the mega caps and it's interesting because three weeks ago we were hearing people suggesting that the MAG 7 was the lag seven, that they've certainly defeated that description. And right now they are fighting for leadership once again. You could never count out these trillion dollar corporations with staggering revenue growth. They're breaking out. Apple's breaking out. And I said yesterday, I think NVIDIA is going to follow. It's down today. It had a strong afternoon yesterday. It's going to participate as well here in the coming weeks. Speaker 1 Steve. I mean, they're breaking out now. Let's see if it's durable because there have been some head fakes in this group of late. But week to date, they're all looking good. Meta's up 15% over the last month. And it's really a story across the board, led by this run that Apple's had. Speaker 3 And I also think that Meta has been positively complicated when they came out and said we're loading up on all this extra compute. These data centers, they've got 33 now, or when the one in Canada will be finished, it'll be 33. So now the market's saying, hey, let's go from the providers of the AI solutions because we're worrying about price cuts coming from China in terms of their AI models versus the tokens here, they're very expensive. So let's see now who we can take advantage of and they're taking that Meta's announcements or what we've heard about Meta as positive that they're getting generated return. Now to me, this is like Groundhog Day. One day the market's up and yesterday the headlines were all semis are back, semis are back. And then we're taking a look today and guess what, semis are gone again. So you see a series of lower highs when this is happening. And to me that once again signals, and the reason I exited Micron, is that we're closer to the end of the AI trade, not AI fundamentals, but AI trade. Speaker 1 Difficult closer to the end of the. Speaker 3 AI trade, not in terms of the outperformance of the stocks, the fundamentals and the revenues for those companies will continue to grow. That spending is far from over. But I think the market's earlier than anybody expected. Tudor Jones came out and said right, you got another year or two right, but now the market all knows that, so they're getting out earlier. Speaker 1 David Solomon was talking about early innings of this phenomenon really that we've. Speaker 3 Seen. I'm not saying it won't be back. I'm saying right now that's markets. Speaker 1 There's the semis trade, which seems impossible right now, like good luck if you're trying to figure out directionally where the semis are going because as we've seen, the swings are huge and the swings seem to have no stickiness. What is one day up could tomorrow be down as much as we've seen the up? And therein lies the issue with that. I wonder if some of that is why the mega caps are seeing the money come back once again viewed as a safety place within the AI orbit. People still think there's a lot of juice to be squeezed from these names. I thought it was really telling and I loved hearing from Warren Buffett today with Becky. I think anytime you get to hear from him, especially these days, is a treat. And the fact that he said he initiated Berkshire Hathaway's investment in Alphabet, as we all wondered, well, was it him, was it not, said he made a mistake not investing in Google. The company's now quote more likely to be a winner based on its record. I don't think it's an accident that that revelation came today with Becky, that he made those comments and that the stock is doing what it's doing. Speaker 4 That's our largest overweight in the mega caps. I think that it has some of the most attractive characteristics. You could go back a year and they were being indicted as being taken over by chat and Anthropic, their business being flawed. So you're going to have opportunities in these names, especially well capitalized names. I think it's interesting that Apple's the most expensive of all these names right now, all the mega cap names. It's certainly leading the bunch. I think Josh has a great thesis, Josh Brown, that that is the consumer entry into AI. If they want to get to the consumer, they have to go through a device. And that's why you're seeing so much energy being expended by the OpenAIs and the Metas to develop their own type of a product in this space. I want to go back to what Steve said because I think it's really important we try to rhyme with history as it relates to the semi names. And what has happened is these volatile reactions that we've seen have been a result of something that might have happened in 2000 where fundamentals didn't deteriorate to a year after price deteriorated. And so every time there's a scare, people run for the exits because they know price leads in that segment so far. You should believe that they are going to be innocent until proven guilty and be a buyer of those dips because you have enormous visibility now that you may have not had then, multiple years out. And so listen, hyperscalers are viewed as a hedge to that. So you're going to see the hyperscalers rally every time this Momentum Group sells off. I think you got to own both. I think what David Solomon said is right. This AI ecosystem is under a long build out. No one is slowing their jets on that. They're flying full speed into it and the beneficiaries are going to continue to be the beneficiaries for a while. Speaker 3 I think you have to like Apple here a lot. This is, you're getting the best of both worlds and this is a breakout. I think it'd go to 370. Speaker 1 Josh Brown members talking 400. Speaker 3 Right. So 370, 400, you get the range that we've had recently and kind of giving that 100% extension, but you get the consumer dominating front end. I think that's terrific, the best of both worlds because you're also getting the anti CapEx trade here and that's why the multiple is going higher. So I really like what we're seeing here with Apple. It's something that we've leaned into over the last two months. June 12th, we added more Apple in our concentrated portfolio. It's our number three name in our main portfolio. We're going to let this thing ride. And I think our base house case in the back half of the year is Mag 7 is going to perform. I talked about it on the show last week as well. And NVIDIA is a name too that I like a lot here. It's been kind of consolidating. The free cash flow there is becoming amazing relative to the other Mag Sevens. And if it wasn't a $5 trillion company might even think that they take that thing private at some point. But at this size that's obviously not on the table. But the one thing I would look to mention, what Steve touched on with the memory names is Micron and some of those names. Yeah, maybe they got ahead of their skis. Micron's our largest position here and it's just because we've been cost basis like $70.00. But at this point, I think that you're seeing it come in a little bit. You're seeing some leverage unwind out of South Korea. You're seeing some of this trade just maybe kind of get tossed aside. And that's fine heading into, because a lot of them report the back half of earnings season. And I'd like to see them not at the highs going into that because we saw what happened just over the last few weeks. They have these terrific reports and then the stocks sell off. So I think that is right. You're seeing a lot of rotation into the seven that's coming out of some of these high flyer AI infrastructure names. Speaker 1 How about this, remember leading into the SpaceX IPO, part of the narrative was while the mega caps were weak pretty substantially into that money's coming out of mega caps and it's reading itself to go into SpaceX, which it did on the open. Why SpaceX Stock Fell Below Its Initial Public Offering Price Well, look at SpaceX, because now it has traded below its IPO price for the very first time. Is there a coincidence that money is all of a sudden now going back into the mega caps? It's a role reversal in some respects, don't you think? Speaker 2 Well, first of all, as it relates to SpaceX, I think a lot of the appreciation at SpaceX was built upon scarcity in the equity market. The debt market really has been the adult in the room for SpaceX, and the debt offering in the secondary market was not strong. You saw spreads wide and concurrent with that, you've seen the equity in SpaceX collapse. I don't have a position, so I'm not going to speak to the fundamental future of where this price goes. But I think it's right to point out what is happening right now as it relates to momentum funds. First of all, you have the seasonality of July. So we're beginning to see liquidity weaken. We're seeing volumes begin to decline somewhat and while that's going on, you're building momentum in an area of the market that's proven itself over the last several years, the MAG 7. From a valuation perspective, for those that care, they were ridiculously cheap except for Apple. You saw Nvidia's valuation at a level it hasn't been in the last seven years. And there's the opportunity to rotate as you saw the memory names like Micron go parabolic. If we could show a chart of Micron, Micron's not close to 10% today. I think the SK Hynix US listing really exemplified that maybe there's just too much supply as it relates to the memory name for the marketplace to digest. You have SK Hynix down 12%, so you broke the fever in memory. It doesn't mean it eliminates the fundamentals from memory, but it means that capital is going to go to other places and while this is all occurring, you're in the middle of earnings season and guess what? You have these money centre banks reporting historic record quarters. Speaker 1 Let's go back to SpaceX. What do you make of that move? Now below, for the first time, the 135 IPO price. Remember, this was a set price. There's no range. It was a set price of 135, 20% on the opening day, what was deemed to be a sweet spot, right? And here we go. It's been on almost steady decline since, give or take, but here we find ourselves. What do you make of that? Speaker 4 So you had asked me that day, the day of the offering, because we were investors privately at various levels across time. We even had some investors participate in the LBO. Our advice to them and our advice that day was there's likely to be an opportunity to be a better buyer. We didn't think it would come this quickly. We thought it would come a little more after their inclusion into the indices and as lock ups started to release because we understand the characteristics of those lock ups coming off or how some of the special purpose vehicles that were set up were going to be paid their economics now which supported that. And we weren't sure how far it would drop below the price. It's, A, it's an unbelievable business, right? B, there's an evangelistic following of this entrepreneur. Speaker 1 Let me stop you real quick. When you said you didn't think it would be this quickly, that it would drop like this, why do you think it is? Speaker 4 I don't know if it's a rotation. I think it's caught up in the momentum. Let me take a step back on that. There is a lot of hot money in this market. You have levered ETFs on Micron, you have levered ETFs on SK Hynix. You have tons of people playing fast money moves and they're in and they're out quickly. So when something isn't working, you're going to see it re-rate much more quickly in those spaces where you've seen parabolic moves and this was parabolic. So I think that might have something to do with it. I don't know that I lend too much to the supply of these issues because there's not an extraordinary amount of supply in the market. You realize that companies are being taken out. There's much less public float broadly than there was years ago. Speaker 3 So it's a difference of sectors though, are we? Speaker 1 Gaming out lock up stuff, which is trying to get ahead of the market, trying to get ahead of all that. Speaker 3 I think it's kind of symptomatic of the market and short termism. So the weakest holders of any stock are the new holders because they have no history with it. So this is all new money that came into this and a lot of money as we saw came in on the IPO day. So they don't want to be underwater. A lot of those that came in that day sold as it moved up, we start seeing over 200. I traded, lost a little money, but not a lot. And I just think it's the unwind of the momentum names that we're continuing to see. So I don't know if it's anything to SpaceX. SpaceX is a faith stock. Yes, tremendous business, but you can't value it. There's no valuation you could put on this and yet we know they're spending a lot of money and we don't know when they'll be profitable. In terms of the overall market, I think you see short termism as well because we have real issues with Iran that we'll take a look at the numbers today. PPI came down nicely. All the inputs that drove it lower, oil, those have already reversed. Well, oil went back to where it was the middle of June. So it's not like gasoline is back above where it was. You're missing the point. It was down today because oil is lower, right, oil was lower. That influenced the number. What I'm saying is momentum to oil is higher and with everything that's going on in Iran, it's going to drive it higher as well. And that will reverse the decline in inflation we saw today and tomorrow. It's not where oil was a month ago or even 3 months ago. Speaker 4 It is all the core, all the core PPI was softer too. So I don't buy that narrative. I don't buy that narrative. You look at all the, you just look at the core number ex energy. Speaker 3 What leads into CPI? What's the leading indicator of CPI? Speaker 4 One of them's the PPI we're talking about today, which is the market. High Expectations and Disruption in Semiconductor and Software Stocks I want to talk about ASML rather than go deeper into that. What are we to make of, Rob, you own the stock, this price action today. So it was a nice gainer, wasn't it? There's the intraday, which sort of gives you some green on the screen. They hike their forecast, they have strong chip demand. Stock goes down by 2%. Is that just because, as Wolf talks about today, semis in general have gone from parabolic to chaotic and this is an evidence point of the chaos in this group? Speaker 4 I mean, the key takeaway to me is it seems like the markets want to sell this group because they increased 4 year guidance, raised it by 15% and now they're expecting 30% revenue growth for years to come. The company has incredible pricing power. There's virtually no way that you can make a chip without this advanced etching that they do, the lithography. So they are the ultimate bottleneck. Maybe the stock's a little pricey relative to history. Maybe it's that it's up 70% year to date and some people are taking money off the table. But this is a good earnings report that we saw today. Speaker 2 Nothing wrong with the earnings report for ASML. Nothing was wrong with the earnings report for Micron. Speaker 1 Nothing was wrong with Broadcom, remember that, correct. Arguably the first sort of rumble in the space, right? Yes. Speaker 2 And you know what was wrong? The expectations. And that's basically what price is reacting to, very lofty expectations across the board for semis and memory. And despite really good earnings, there's just not enough incremental room to advance the stock higher based on those high expectations. Speaker 1 So we hit IBM. You've had a chance to sleep on this now and sort of digest what happened to that stock yesterday, the worst day ever. It's worth another check in as it gets downgraded at Oppenheimer today to perform. That's after the pre announcement. If you were looking for a rebound today, you're not getting it. Is there a statement in that down 25% or whatever it was today? I think the narrative's changed a bit, at least near term. Speaker 4 Well, there's no question they're seeing a reset because it's clear that their ability to leverage AI versus being disrupted by it is being challenged. I still think it has to do with redirection of corporate spending into other areas, which is why you've seen the cybersecurity companies do so well. And so who knows, maybe this quarter you can see more of a pickup. The spillover into things like ServiceNow has not been too traumatic. So I don't think this is a whole sell every part of the software ecosystem. I think what it's done is created haves and have nots. And IBM admittedly said they stubbed their toe here. And so I think they can get back on track. Remember, we're still up 60% even after this. Speaker 1 No, I know, but you don't want to come back a month from now and say, hey, we're still up 40%, hey, we're still up 30%. Therein lies issues like this. Speaker 4 You know what I'm saying, that's fair, and we continue to be patient with it because all the metrics meet except the disruption that we had this quarter where they missed. Speaker 3 I think we really are in this environment now where if there is a winner, it does start to come at the expense of others and we're seeing that with the cyber yesterday and IBM. That was the implication. I know Sara Eisen hit on that with Arvind Krishna. The other thing too is a lot of this story is compute. We are constrained on compute and the hyperscalers are trying to spend to raise compute. But there needs to be a clear path to more compute, not headwinds. And until that happens, we could be going through this up and down phase where there's good days and then the next day's a bad day. And that's kind of how I see it right now. We'll see how it turns out in the earnings. Speaker 1 Yeah, right. There's a sort of dearth of information. Speaker 3 Exactly. We just don't know like how the spending patterns change. So our companies and they have finite technology budgets. Where are they transitioning those budgets? And I think it's pretty clear they've been going away from software to what's going to drive their AI performance. Speaker 1 So I just want to mention you cyber guys mentioned crowd strike new record high today. I mean, that's been obviously in the spotlight, even more so perhaps after IBM. Exploring the Near-Record Buying and Bullish Outlook for Financials So what we were going to begin with today until we saw these mega caps starting to ramp into the program is the near record buying in financials. It's the best performing group over the past month. So let's take a look at those. That's according to B of A's flow show. You have the biggest buying in that group according to that flow since 2020. There's a record high, Goldman was ripping yesterday on its earnings. That was a blowout report, a blowout stock move given a smidge back today, but it's insignificant really considering what the stock has done. JPM, Bank of America record highs. Morgan Stanley the latest to knock it out of the park with their own earnings report, their shares a little underwhelming. It was red, turned green. Look at MS if you could for me because I'm not sure where it is now. It gives you an idea a little bit of the volatility in here. So it's negative again. What do you think of this? I think money move into the financials. Speaker 2 I think it's going to continue. I focus on position, I focus on sentiment. Sentiment was depressed coming into the second quarter for financials, there was disappointment. There was high expectations at the beginning of the year and they didn't meet the expectations. If you remember, we were sitting here in April talking about really strong quarters across the board for money centre banks. The reaction was negative to that. So you have a tremendous opportunity to rebuild that sentiment, to rebuild positioning. That's exactly what's going on. It's one of the reasons why I tried to get in front when we're out at the US Open of buying JP Morgan on the anticipation that this in fact could happen. I think it continues. I think it spreads throughout the financial sector into the regional banks. It's not just isolated to money centre banks. Speaker 1 Is this the group now to own? Speaker 3 I think selectively, yeah. Speaker 1 You still have to be selective of the big banks. Speaker 3 Yeah, I prefer, I mean I prefer Goldman honestly, that's what I own. I think they're the most leveraged, the underwriting to the M and A cycle. And I think the market's basically OK here and it being OK, you're seeing a lot more of that. Look, you've got open AI, you got Anthropic. At some point, they're not going to be able to raise the capital. They've been raising non-stop. So they need the IPO market. Now they may have second thoughts about it after looking at SpaceX. I don't think they will. So that's going to continue. That's going to drive that. It's going to drive more M&A when they have a public company stock. So to me, Goldman and the humility that they have, I'm not talking about an e-mail change, but the humility they have where they're saying that the battle's ahead of us still and that it's one day at a time. I think it's impressive given the quarter they put up. I would add that rate volatility is a tailwind. I think the steepening yield curve under Warsh is what we're going to see. That's also going to be a tailwind. But in the near term, I would add that when these banks come out with terrific earnings reports, we see them higher for a day or two. A week later they are typically lower. So if you were looking to be buying banks right here, be patient. Speaker 1 Let's talk about the equities, no one's even mentioned the equities trading in Morgan Stanley's case up 69%. I don't remember off the top of my head what it was for the others that have already reported, but it was as much of a wow factor in many of the other names too. You own Morgan Stanley. Speaker 4 Yeah, we added it on the show not long ago because we wanted to go overweight financials coming into this. We actually trimmed a little WFC going into it because of the more capital markets exposure you have with Morgan Stanley. In addition, their banking franchise and that wealth management franchise, 14% year on year growth. And I think what was the number on net new money, it was blindingly impressive. Speaker 2 150% year on year, net new money and that strong environment is good for the asset managers. Take a look at BlackRock. If we could show that chart to date nicely, BlackRock's only up 2% year to date. So the move that I was talking about anticipating for JP Morgan, you're at the same moment where you're beginning at the initial stages to build momentum. I like BlackRock. I don't know if anyone's willing to step out and take a chance on the private equity names. I said last week I think Blackstone would be the one name that's up about 10% here so far in the month of July. I think Blackstone's probably seen the worst. Speaker 1 Target moves today, just real quick, Goldman 1325, that's the high on my list of many calls today on that name in terms of prices, Wells goes there, that's Mike Mayo, which is noteworthy in and of itself. JP Morgan from Mayo also goes to 375. The highest I have in front of me is Barclays going to 4:20. So there is some renewed bullishness, there's no doubt about that, out of the financial space. Coming up, we have committee moves. Steve Weiss selling 1 stock reports earnings this week, so he's doing that. Ahead of that, I'll tell you what it is. And later, big news out of our parent company, Versant. Today, a new sports media rights deal to tell you about. USA Sports President Matt Hong joins us with those details. The Investment Committee Debates Netflix's Future Amidst Competition Welcome back, a new committee move to tell you about. You've been negative on this name, I think for a while. It's Netflix, yeah, which now you're finally just out of, right. Speaker 3 I'm just, I sold a lot of it down as I've mentioned on the show and here are my concerns that one, streaming has gotten more competitive, not just from Paramount, Time Warner, but you see probably even Apple everywhere and they seem to be trying to find a lever for growth. First of all, the Warner Brothers acquisition, you get in the rumors of Lionsgate and now reselling other streaming subscriptions on their side is the talk. So you only do that when you see growth slowing down. It's not expensive, but the growth's not going to be there. So I do have concerns going into the quarter. I didn't sell it for this quarter because I think the stock's pretty depressed and if you look at the odds, the odds are more that it'll trade up because after they miss a quarter usually bounce back the next. But it was more, look, it's small enough position now, not been a great position for me lately versus when I owned it last year and got out and came back and I'm just hoarding capital cash right there. Speaker 1 Give me a couple of years, 2-3 years on this guys, please. Sentiment. It's incredible how sentiment has turned. You own it. Speaker 4 We do. We bought it recently on the latest dip. You've been paid to buy these dips in this name. As Steve said, it is cheap. There's valid concerns around saturation, competition, stickiness of their content, slowing subscriber growth. But let's not forget, this company is expected to generate 15 billion in free cash flow this year. They have the lowest content spend per subscriber, which means they can dive into sports. They have the optionality to do that and drive more growth. They have been incredible at engineering that and I'm willing to be patient to wait for this. Speaker 1 Give me that chart back guys, please, the three-year because this is to your example, I forgot which one we were talking about before, but the lower high risk, right, trending lower, you get a little bit of a move up and then you start moving lower again. Speaker 4 300 million users still growing, driving more users, driving more content. I think they're going to be fine. Speaker 3 If you take a look at the bounce after the last quarter and when they did not get Warner, the stock moved up, I don't know why it didn't hold there. Frankly, it should have. Speaker 1 Well that's the biggest, I guess mystery in some respects given what the narrative was when the bidding war was happening, that there was I think a better view from at least those in our orbit on this program that if they don't get the asset, it's better for the stock. Speaker 3 Exactly. Speaker 1 And it did jump and then it was wiped. Speaker 3 Yeah. And one of the reasons why I bought it was because you've got a debt constrained competitor in Paramount, right. We're seeing that. So their leverage is significant, too significant for this industry. Speaker 1 And by the way. Speaker 3 Too content, could they buy? Speaker 1 Who was it yesterday? I can't remember who had the call asking the question whether Disney should get out of the streaming business all together. It used to be, you know, Disney can't compete, if maybe nobody can compete with what Netflix has built. Yeah, they have the pricing power in the way that others don't, right? They raise their prices. It has had no impact on the stock at that moment. When the news hits, there's no negative move in Netflix when they raise prices, in fact the stock generally goes up because we say on this program, in other words, they're one of the few who has pricing power. Speaker 3 Yeah. My market on the earnings report is 6870 on downside, 85 on the upside, slightly more on the upside, but I just still got out. Speaker 2 Netflix has lost market share over the last several years. The likes of Amazon, the likes of Apple TV, the likes of Paramount. That's just statistically factual. Speaker 4 Not all, but many, as was just pointed out, are going to struggle with the investments in new content that they can make. Speaker 2 It's a lot of spending, a lot of sports. Speaker 4 I mean they have the free cash flow to do it. Speaker 1 All right. Well, speaking of buying sports rights, big money on the pitch, our parent company Versant inking a new sports media rights deal. USA Sports President Matt Hong is standing by with those details. He joins us next. Speaker 5 We're back on halftime report. I'm McKenzie Sagalos with the CNBC news update. President Trump has overturned a new directive suspending most ICE vehicle stops, according to a White House official who confirmed the move to MS Now, the directive to pause the stops came after two deadly ICE shootings within a week. But the president pushed back Wednesday on Truth Social, writing that ICE cannot give up what he called one of his most important crime fighting tools. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is facing tough questions today at his Senate confirmation hearing. Blanche, President Trump's former personal attorney, says he is restoring trust in the Justice Department. But senators are pressing him on whether he has politicized the DOJ, including investigations into Trump's perceived enemies. Blanche likely needs every Republican on the committee to advance and the House voted to make daylight savings time permanent and the twice a year clock change for most of the country. Supporters, including the president, say it would give Americans more evening daylight and reduce disruption. But its critics warn that it could mean darker, more dangerous winter mornings. The bill still needs Senate approval. Scott, back to you. Speaker 1 All right, Mac, thank you. Matt Hong on CNBC Parent Company's New Sports Media Rights Deal Mackenzie Sagalos, the parent company of CNBC, reaching a deal to carry the US media rights to Germany's premier Football League, the Bundesliga. Versant to air more than 300 live games in a deal said to be worth $100 million / 5 years. Matt Hong is the president of USA Sports, the sports division of Versant. Joins us now live. It's good to see you. Welcome to our program. Speaker 6 Good to see you Scott, hello from Royal Birkdale. Speaker 1 Yeah, it's nice to have you today. Can you first address for us why this deal makes sense for the company? Speaker 6 Yeah. So I think it's no secret that one of the assets that we utilize across our portfolio, Versant, is live sports. So live sports and live news, 62% of our programming on our TV networks falls into one of those two categories. So this deal with Bundesliga is a great addition to our portfolio of live sports that includes NASCAR, the PGA Tour, Premier League, WWE and others. And so really it's more live sports, which is good for our company. And then strategically we're spreading out the Bundesliga matches across both USA Network and our newly relaunched Fandango Avon service. So the highly accessible free to consumers Fandango, which I think our company is announcing the new strategy for as we speak, Scott. Speaker 1 That's a really interesting part of this too. And just to underscore what you just said, you don't need a paid Fandango account to stream these games. Speaker 6 That's 100% correct. So Fandango, most people currently know Fandango as what I would describe as the predominant way to buy movie tickets. But Fandango has a history and a legacy in streaming content as well. And so the newly relaunched Fandango is an Avon service, supported by advertising, highly ubiquitous, highly accessible. You don't need a credit card. You don't even need a username and password. So you'll be able to watch multiple hundreds of Bundesliga matches on Fandango. And I can't imagine it in any sort of easier way. Speaker 1 You've talked about the portfolio, it is certainly rich with sports properties. Now you've also talked, as I've read, about all of this being part of what you've described as an Omni platform strategy. Can you elaborate on that? Speaker 6 That's right. So we've talked about the strength of live sports. And so live sports transcends whether that furthers our core business, which is pay television, or whether it furthers now a newly relaunched platform like Fandango. So whether it's across our core business or whether it's the new direct to consumer businesses, live sports transcends and is an asset that we'll deploy across various of our platforms, hence the Omni platform strategy. Speaker 1 Stocks reacting positively to the news, the street's talking about it as well. Goldman Sachs today, pretty complimentary, Matt, on this deal. They say the deal quote should support future USA carriage agreements given continued investment in the network as well as create synergies in existing soccer rights. Wondering if you can speak a little bit to that because soccer is already obviously near and dear to what USA does. Speaker 6 Yeah. So going back to our heritage as part of NBCU, but newly so as part of Versant USA Sports, we have a multi year super strategic relationship with Premier League. So that's been a mutually beneficial relationship between us and the Premier League. We think the Bundesliga is complimentary to that. So it's maybe premature to call us the home of soccer in the United States or the home of European football in the United States, but this is a good start. And like you noted, Premier League has been an amazing partner for us and an amazing asset for us on USA network, will continue to be, but there'll be some great synergies between Premier League programming and Bundesliga programming starting in a few short weeks. So August 21st and 22nd will kick off both the Premier League season on USA, but it will also have the Bundesliga Super Cup match on Saturday the 22nd. So even a few weeks from now you can begin to see how from a programming standpoint, these two pre eminent European Soccer leagues will complement one another. Speaker 1 The timing of all this isn't lost really on anybody. I don't think you're going to be able to capitalize in many respects on the World Cup momentum. And because we're talking about the Bundesliga and a star like Harry Kane, who has probably become more of a household name in this country than he has ever been before, of course a star for England, he will be part of all of that. The league itself also notes that in the US, the number of Bundesliga fans is up 43% over the past five years. So you're going to get a bit of a running start on all of this. Speaker 6 Yeah. So obviously World Cup has been a huge hit not only globally but also here in the United States. It's European soccer and soccer generally is up and to the right in the United States. So whether it's luck or great timing, we'll take it. It's a great jumping off point. World Cup will be a great jumping off point for our existing Premier League package, but the timing's also great for this new Bundesliga package. Speaker 1 Before I let you go, the other part of the Goldman note today that I thought was very timely is they make the case that smaller sports rights deals are being crowded out by the bigger ones. There's so much emphasis these days on the NFL wanting to open its deal early, the NBA rights deal and what the BIG4 has been able to do. And because of that, it's created an opportunity like the one that you and Versant have now seized upon. Speaker 6 Yeah. I think it's important for us as Versant to know who we are. We've said publicly that as amazing as the NFL is and as amazing as the NBA is in terms of properties, those given our balance sheet are properties that it's tough for us to get ROI from. I think most everything else is fair game. And I think we will continue to look for and be on the front foot and add properties that can drive our core business. But then as we talked about, that can also help us as we launch new businesses across new platforms. Speaker 1 Appreciate you coming on. Congrats on this deal. Enjoy the Open Championship out at Royal Birkdale. Matt Hong. Speaker 6 Good to see you, Scott. Thanks. Speaker 1 All right, we'll see you soon. Want to call your attention while we're at it to a big event happening tomorrow right here in New York City. It's the CNBC and Boardroom Game Plan Summit, it's at Fanatics Fest, and we're bringing together athletes, investors, and innovators to discuss the future of the sports industry. You can scan the QR code or visit cnbcevents.com/gameplan for more details. Maybe I'll see you there. Anthropic's Upcoming IPO and Midday Market Commentary You have a news alert on Anthropic. Kate Rooney has it for us. What did we learn here, Kate? Speaker 7 Hey, Scott, we are learning that Anthropic is now in the process of starting to line up meetings with investors ahead of its IPO. This from what we're hearing is coming in the next couple of weeks here. It's according to one person familiar with the company's plans, Hugh Son with some of this reporting, Bloomberg was first out with this news, but it does signal a step towards what could be a trillion dollar IPO when it comes to Anthropic. Also reporting here from Bloomberg that the listing could come as soon as October, it does signal that Anthropic is likely to get a rival, OpenAI here. If you remember, both of these AI labs have filed confidentially with the SEC. It was about six weeks ago that we did get that filing. So it could be in the next few weeks here that we get the flipping of the S1 where we get more of the financials. But again, this is a pivotal step in moving towards an IPO and it would mark the first of these pure play AI labs when we do see the numbers for Anthropic. But a little bit of IPO news there for you, Scott. Speaker 1 All right. Well and exciting news at that, Kate. Thanks, Kate Rooney. Coming up next, Mike Santoli is midday word after this break back on the halftime report, Senior markets commentator, overtime co anchor Mike Santoli. There he is for his midday word. Mega caps go up, chips go down. I guess that's where we're at. Speaker 5 Right. And how many times in the last couple of weeks, Scott, have we talked about you never quite know when the momentum trade is flushed out, except in retrospect and today momentum down like 4% on an unlevered basis. So it does show you that the bar was incredibly high. We've had this series of pretty poor market reactions to pretty phenomenal AI hardware type results going back to Micron, obviously TSM and then ASML today. And then I think the IBM warning is kind of filtering through perhaps a little bit of caution in that trade. The rest of the market as is often been the case is managing to hang in there. The majority of stocks are up. Banks are still firm. Banks breaking out are a positive thing. The S&P 500 was within 1% of its all time high coming into today. That's all net positive, but it does show you that you just can't overcome necessarily this kind of dedicated selling in the kind of lead dog of this phase of the bull market. So we'll see where it settles out. Yields are having a pretty friendly day today in terms of backing off a little bit on the cool CPI news. That means broadening can work in a vacuum when the macro cooperates. We'll see if that's the way it continues. Speaker 1 And I'll see you at 3:00, Michael. Thank you. Mike Santoli. Previewing United Airlines Earnings and Committee's Final Stock Picks We'll do the set up next. So the set up, we do have United Airlines after the bell, Joe T owns United. What do you think? Speaker 2 Well, I mentioned earlier in the show expectations, and I think they benefit here from Delta reporting last week and the expectations being lower, look for $1.76 to $1.88 EPS, 17.6 billion as it relates to revenue, the capacity outlook's going to be important. And also the commentary on the recent spike. Keep in mind you have jet fuel and oil prices up double digits this month and you've seen United decline double digits accordingly. Speaker 1 Did you say expectations are lower after Delta? Speaker 2 I think they are. Speaker 1 Why so? Speaker 2 I think the expectations are lower because of what we've seen with crude oil. You've already seen the price reaction to Delta not really be favourable to what is really strong demand, higher fares and capacity in the favour of the airlines. So price is corrected somewhat. Speaker 1 OK, we'll do final trades right after this break. Closing bell 3:00 Dan Greenhouse, Brian Belski, Brian Levitt, Mike Mayo, Dan Ives, Jonathan Krinsky, Alex Lazary. He's heading up the New York, New Jersey World Cup effort as we reach the culmination of that amazing tournament. I hope you'll join me. Then final trades. Who's going to go first? Speaker 3 Today, Bill Baruch, Lily, it's back testing, it's breakout and on the downslope of a CapEx cycle. Real exciting here. Speaker 1 All righty. Thank you, Robert. Speaker 4 Vistra, VST. It's done nothing for the year but woke up this past month. I think energy can be a trade in the second half. Speaker 1 All right, Mega caps, as we said, are having a good day across the board today. So who's Meta? Speaker 3 Meta would be me Scott. Speaker 1 OK, Vice. Speaker 3 So it may be slightly ahead of itself, but I still like it. I still think it's reasonably valued. Speaker 1 Joey T, Rowe Price. All right, I'll see you on the bell. The exchange is now. Halftime Report Podcast Wrap-Up and Important Disclaimers You've been listening to CNBC's Halftime Report, the podcast. You can always catch us live weekdays at 12 Eastern only on CNBC. Speaker 8 All opinions expressed by the Halftime Report participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, Internet, or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of opinion. Such opinions are based upon information the Halftime Report participants consider 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 Halftime Report disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com/halftimereport disclaimer.