Wednesday’s First Moves: AAPL Smart Home Devices, NTAP Upgrade, STZ Earnings

today give some of that back down 2.7% 83,004 90. It's time for first m after the open. And we're joined by Diane King Hall and a few nameso watch. And we'll start off with Constell Brands with its earnings yesterday. Good morning. Good morning. Good to see you Nicole. Yeah. Constellation brands in focus off the back of its quarterly results. It did beat expectations. But there is some concern about what the overall demand picture looks like for beer. W and spirits were a bright spot here. Let's through some of the headline numbers. Adjusted earnings per share coming in at 3.74. That was better than expected. Sales rising 6%, coming in ahead consensus at more than 2.6 billion. But again, investors looking past the headlinet. heads or tails of this nowk because in the premthose shares were under pressure pressure. But we're a little bit higher right now. Better by about a half a percent. Now beer net sales didrease by 5%. That was thanks to increasing shipmen wholesalers and distributors. Now here's where there is some concern. Depletions thosel 6/10 of a percent. That's the numberhat tells what consumers are actually buying. It means products moving from distri to bars to restaurants to retailers here. So that's a big picture about what does overall consumer demand actually like. Mode Corona. That's where Depl were where you saw declines. Those are constellatioiggest brands. So there's some concere. You did see some demand increase thank the World Cup. Also the NBA finals as well. So again, beer is the reason that there is some, you know, kind of investors trying to make sense of the numbers because it accounts for the vast majority of Constellation Brands. Let's talk about bright spot and what investors do like here. Sales of wine and spirits, those increased 17%. That segment generated 6.1 million in operating income. And that is swingingo the black from the red. A year ago.a $19.8 million loss. So y seeing a turnaround there. And, you know, keep in mind we've been having this conversation about a decrease in alcohol consumption. So it's interesting to see this shift i. Nicole. Okay. Well, you know, that is we, younow, beer has certainly gained in popularity. As you said, it's up 3% there and some of those things, right? The World Cup and things like that. Let's talk about some of the other names. And we have NetApp a winner on the S&P 500. Number two best performer.h this one has had a str year increasing those gains right now. Those shares higher by more than 2%. We'll have to check and se we're hitting a new record here. e I know we've been on records watch fy, many companies recently lik you know had been Nvidia, AMD yesterday, NetApp. That may be the tale of the tape today. And those shares have more than doubled on a year over year basis. Evercore ISI sees more room to run for from here. It believe rally can continue. They've upgrad stock to outperform from ine. They've raised their price target up to 300. That's all the way up from 210. That im more than 30% upside fr yesterday's closing levels here. Why is Evercore more bullish right now. They see two main drivers ongoing strength in Netapp's existing business and larger AI deployments as companies move beyond testing. that's part of the story here. indeed, hitting a new all time high right n the view is that growth could slow less than what the outlook curr suggests here. The bullish case doesn't actually require a major near-term contribution from newer ts. The opportunity it sees is going beyond data centers. Here, Evercore sees opportunity in Netapp's product support and its public cloud businesses here. In other words, the growth case here is not ju existing customer load but expanding AI workloadsere. And it sees AI lifting, storage demand and all of this just benefiting NetApp And you've seen actually a lot of different analyst takes on this one recently. But again, this one, the latest from Evercore ISI. Earlier this week you had t D Cohen taining ag their price target on NetApp. lee seeing an all time high there for the shareholders. Went from $70 a few years ago here to 2.34 this morning. Last but not least, you know, we used to have a friend here on the floor. He's not here anymore. But he always saider short Apple in the fourth quarter because peant a lot of these things for the holidays. And now there's more. You can get into the smart home products. Let's hear about what people may want. We'll call this a smart reset here. And this is based on some Bloomberg reporting here, with Apple reportedly planning a broader push into the home. Andk they've done this to some degree with the HomePod. But they're reportedly introducing or going to beducing a new hub an upgraded HomePod mini, a refreshed Apple TV, a box here. And also not just that smart doorbell, smart door lock, o indoor and outdoor security cameras. So to me, that signals that it's trying to come for Amazon's ring trying to make a dent in that. Herere partnering with LG. Reportedly in order to do this, LG would handl manufacturing androduct support. Apple's hubould serve as kind of the control commenter for all of this and bringing the devices together. I don't know why we couldn't jushis on our phones for all of that, because there's probably a way to set a home lock on your on your iPhone. partnership matters here, obvio because while Apple can shape the d and features of this, LG will le a ll work and the behin scenes angle of this. But look, Apple's been one of the ones that's been er this year and it turned pe while you were talking. Okay. Thank Diane King