00:00 Speaker A
Now, time for some of today’s trending tickers. We’re watching defense stocks, AMD and Cracker Barrel. First up, defense stocks. Commerce Secretary Howard Lucknick, opening the door to the federal government taking stakes in American defense contractors, telling CNBC the defense secretary is thinking about it. Joining us for more is Yahoo Finance senior reporter Brook DiPalma, and Brooke, we’ve just heard from the government taking a 10% stake in Intel. So it seems like this maybe could be the norm here.
00:44 Brook DiPalma
Yeah, largely what we’re seeing there is this notion of the government largely teaming up with companies that they already do business with. And so, of course, we saw a rally for Intel, and now what we’re seeing here is a similar market reaction across Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, as investors are excited about the potential implications that this could have of the government investing in these defense contractors. It’s important to note here that Lockheed Martin, 70% of its customers are here in the US. And so this would essentially be an extension of the government already taking stakes in companies like Intel. And just keep in mind, this is largely unprecedented. We haven’t had this before, but it’s an ongoing continuation of what we saw just last week.
02:01 Speaker A
Yes, absolutely. Next up, AMD. Shares trending on the Yahoo Finance tickers page after the chipmaker unveiled a quantum-centric supercomputing partnership with IBM and got a rating upgrade to buy at Truist. And Brook, AMD has just been on an absolute tear this year. It’s up nearly 40%.
02:32 Brook DiPalma
Yeah, in the last month alone, it’s roughly flat. But if you take a look year to date, it’s up nearly 40%. In the last six months alone, especially off that lows of April, the stock is up nearly 60%. And what we’re largely hearing here is this excitement around that plan with IBM. It’s important to check here. IBM shares, those are just roughly flat, up about 7/10% based upon this news. But largely, there’s excitement around the implications that this could have, you know, the combination of AMD’s technology with IBM’s quantum computers, something that it’s been working on for the past say nearly decade or more. And so there was no new products announced just yet, but certainly there’s excitement about what this could look like and the future implications. And that’s why we have AMD moving higher this morning. Once again, up nearly about 1.25%.
04:17 Speaker A
Finally, Cracker Barrel, President Trump weighing into the controversy around its new logo. Brooke, what can you tell us here? This seems to be a story that has really captured America’s attention.
04:40 Brook DiPalma
Yeah, from from when the company announced this new logo plan, which was just supposed to be this minimalistic logo focusing in, leaning into those colors and taking away Uncle Herschel, they said that they still plan to keep him on the menus, but they were going to remove him from the logo, which is still in effect. President Trump now weighing in on the conversation after Donald Trump Jr. and one of his advisors have been weighing in since it was announced on August 19th. But take a look at what President Trump said on Truth Social. He said Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response, the ultimate poll, and manage the company better than ever before. Now, Cracker Barrel did try to get ahead of this post. They did take to Instagram on Monday evening and they did write that they could have done a better job sharing who we are and who we’ll always be, leaning into the idea that the company was built on back in 1969, hard work, family and a scratch cooked food made with care. And I don’t think the company could have anticipated this sort of reaction, the backlash that they’ve gotten over the past, just really six days has led to a 9% decline in the stock. But as you could see here this morning after President Trump took to Truth Social, that stock now rallying up more than 4 and a half percent, and it was up nearly 6% just a few hours ago.
06:52 Speaker A
Thank you so much, Brooke. And you can scan the QR code below to track the best and worst performing stocks with Yahoo Finance’s trending tickers page.