Constellation Energy Surges 12% on Google Nuclear Power Deal | Closing Bell

Comprehensive cross-platform coverage of the U.S. market close on Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio, and YouTube with Romaine Bostick, Sally Bakewell, Carol Massar and Jess Menton.

And right now, we are two minutes away from the end of the trading day. Romain Bostic here with Sally Bakewell taking you through to that closing bell. It's a global simulcast. We're joined now by Carol Massar, Jess Meton in today for Tim Stenovec. Welcome to our audiences across all of our Bloomberg platforms, television, radio, our partnership with YouTube here on what looks like to be a record setting day for the S&P 500. It's first record high, should this hold over the next two minutes since mid-August.

I'm so lucky to have Jess with me because she said the last record was 77.98.99. So we are definitely above it. Does look like it's going to hold. I will point out though, we are definitely off our highs of the session. So some of the enthusiasm for the AI trade and other, Jess, I feel like running out of a little bit of steam here.

Also want to point out with these gains holding into the closing bell, 48 consecutive sessions, the S&P 500 has gone without a 1% drop. So the last time would have been July 29th, two Fed meetings ago, guys. So we'll see if that can continue on tomorrow too.

And another question is, what does this mean for the remaining US Treasury auctions this week on Wednesday and Thursday? Because record high equity markets and positive AI developments do create a bit of a challenging backdrop for them as institutional capital chases equity returns rather than government debt.

Yeah, and you're seeing a little bit of a dip today uh in yields that we should point out. Uh oil is still holding at least on Brent crude right around the $100 a barrel mark. Uh not necessarily going higher, but not necessarily going lower either. And of course, this is sort of the backdrop to the start, Carol, of the earnings season. We get Delta at the end of the week. That kicks it off.

I can't wait. We were talking with our Eric Weiner earlier at Bloomberg, and he said, you know, the big thing you got to watch for all the companies is CAPEX spending and seeing what we hear in terms of outlooks from these companies.

Expectations, at least in aggregate for earnings this season are high, but we should point out almost the entirety of the earnings growth that we're seeing uh for the S&P 500, at least anticipated is going to be coming uh from the technology and energy space. Green across the screen here on the day with the Dow Jones industrial average adding about 253 points or a half a percent. The S&P 500, 7,819.04, if you want to be precise, Jess. That's up 45 points or about 6/10 of a percent. and that is a record high. The Nasdaq composite up 122 points or a half a percent. Similar move for the Nasdaq 100, also closing at a record high. But here is the concern, and this gets back to the earnings. The Russell 2000 sitting this one out, down about 17 points or about 6/10ths of a percent. Some concern here that the earnings growth has not quite trickled down to the small cap space.

Yeah, that is concerning, uh, when you think about, uh, in particular the domestic economy. Hey, S&P 500, Sally, I'm going to go back to the big caps and you do have most names, no surprise, uh, in the index higher today, 339, uh gaining ground, 163 to the downside, one unchanged.

Indeed. If you look at what has been driving most of the action today, well, utilities are the standout mover and that's of course driven by AI power demand. Constellation and Vistra are both gaining on the back of Google's new nuclear deal, reinforcing this theme that hyperscaler demand for clean, reliable baseload power is where it's at. And uranium linked names are also catching a bit of a bid today.

All right, let's get to some of the individual gainers, if I may. Let's go on over uh to Nvidia rallying, uh and also on the verge of becoming the first company with a $6 trillion market cap. Investors rotating big time, we saw today into the AI uh trade overall, but in particular Nvidia, which for a while was kind of having a tough time getting investor's attention. The stock though, um off its highs of the session, just up about 1/10th of 1%, but I thought it was interesting uh to kind of point it out as we watch it kind of move towards that $6 trillion valuation. And we did see the stock uh hitting another record high today. It did give a robust uh revenue outlook, announced the biggest buyback we know in history. That's some of the backdrop of this story. So, uh maybe some of uh investors out there taking advantage of a valuation that had initially kind of pulled off some of those uh highs that we saw earlier. It's been near multi-year lows. So anyway, those twin pillars kind of giving some momentum to that name, although it really kind of ran out of steam too. Um, let's get

I know, but I mean it was higher in the session. I'm just saying. It's it's still interesting. A record high, but I'm just saying.

And up for a fifth straight day.

You're being quite the pessimist here. Why?

No, I just, you know, I like, you know, the market like I said, it was higher today. All right. All right.

I always love when you all do the back and forth.

I love it. I love when Romaine's the optimistic one. That's what I kind of like

I'm kind of like, yeah, exactly. Bizarro World. Um let's go to Constellation Energy. Big story. We all talked about it today. Uh number two gainer in the S&P 500, number one gainer in the Nasdaq 100. That one up more than 12%. You know the story. Um Alphabet agreeing to buy nuclear power from Constellation Energy. It's a 20-year power purchase agreement that will drive more than 4.3 billion is it investments to upgrade systems at 11 constellation reactors. Will Wade of Bloomberg said, this is really interesting. It's not about building new ones. Constellation has reactors, they're doing some upgrades, but we're also starting to hear that maybe they don't have a lot more room to do any more upgrades. So that's interesting for any kind of future deals and something. They have done deals also with Amazon, Walmart, and Microsoft. So there's a lot going on at Constellation. And then Marvell, let's go to Marvell if we may. Marvell Technology shares rising, um as high as 11% earlier in the session, a little bit more maybe, uh finishing the day just under 6%. Company raised its revenue guidance for fiscal year 2028 to 20 billion topping the average analyst estimate. And they had a lot more context, but optimism uh for that company. And you saw investors

And waiting to hear if I'm going to hear anything from Romaine.

I know, it's quiet over there. I was surprised.

All right, I'm going to go grab the decliners just a little bit.

Seagate Technology down 9%. It's worst day since not too long ago, October 2nd. Uh but it's said to battle privately held to Shiba for TDK hard drive ahead of unit as well. If you look over at some of its peers, Western Digital down almost 7%. It's worst day also since October 2nd, this past Friday. Uh but TDD shares, uh TDK rather, uh still rose about 5% in local trading in Japan. Looking over though, Blaze Technologies, BZAI's the ticker on this. Uh unfortunately, a flailing AI darling here. Uh it has a market cap that's less than 1 billion, trading actually under a dollar here. So down 33% today, it's worst day since August 14th, so just about a month ago. Uh but there's a lot of different things going on with this stock. It's a semiconductor device company, uh but it does have a negative pre-announcement that it warned about. It also had its guidance that was cut. And then there's some DOJ subpoenas that have prompted some Wall Street sell-side downgrades here. Uh and and among those looking at Rosenblatt Securities, lowering its price target from $2 to about 40 cents here, and it cut its neutral uh from buy at the firm. AnR function, there's only about two buys, three hold, zero sells because there's only about five companies that are covering that firm. And then lastly, looking at vaccine stocks. Moderna down about 7.7% today. It's worst day since August 20th. So a lot of that uh if you look at Novavax too, some of its peers falling on the back of that, some of the different cases that we've seen with Pneumonic uh where it comes to some of those reporting in Russia there. But um the Trump administration is still monitoring the situation, but among those, those are some of the the biggest decliners today, guys.

Freaking me out, the whole thing. No doom and gloom. No doom and gloom.

A quick look at yields here down for a second straight day, but still kind of got camped out, not far from some of those uh multi-year highs. Pick your uh year that you want, 202, uh 2005, 2007, we're still stuck right around there. So a bit of a relief on the day here, but of course things can change in a big way. Nevertheless, Carol, I mean there's one big story that I think everybody is reading on the Bloomberg Terminal today and it involves your money.

Carol Massar. Wait, I thought you were going to do constellation.

Sure, I'll do Constellation for you here. Constellation Brands. Of course, this is the maker of Modelo beer, Kim Crawford wines, which Carol is very familiar with, uh and as well as uh Casa Noble Tequila, uh which I think uh Jess knows a couple of things about here. The company's comp sales coming in uh for uh the quarter at about $2.63 billion. The street was looking for about $2.53, a modest beat here. EPS uh slightly below street estimates at $3.32 a share. And the company says that for the full year, it's going to stand by its previous EPS forecast of 11.20 to 11.90 a share. The street was looking for about $11.72. Remember, this is the company that's been dealing with a lot of sort of big structural shifts, uh just demographic shifts and what we drink, how we drink. It's also been dealing of course with immigration issues as uh a lot of its products, particularly beer are primarily sold to Hispanic communities, which have been reeling for a variety of variety of reasons here in the US. And then of course, there's the tariff issues that they're having to deal with as well.

Yeah, there's a lot, which explains why the stock uh is down about 16% year to date. All right, speaking of communities, we got to talk about the Wall Street community because uh one of the most read stories on the Bloomberg is about Wall Street eyeing record bonuses as profits are going to head uh past $90 billion. So keep in mind we're going to start getting um information, earnings, we get another update on kind of uh how business is going, but Jess, it also then, you know, end of the year we'll start hearing about bonuses.

That's right. And so there's Wall Street firms signaling record revenue in those key business lines so far this year. So a lot of that was when you hear about aided by volatility in markets, obviously, it feels like we don't have a lot of that right now, but obviously there were periods uh earlier this year where that really did help deal making, guys.

Remember it was a record last year, Romaine? 65.1 billion.

Yeah, I remember that well. It's going to be a good year uh for the Rolex market.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. We have a good story on the terminal by Chris Roser and how to buy a Rolex, folks.