00:00 Speaker A

Brooke De Palma is here with me. We’re talking here with Apple. At least for today, investors don’t mind that the company doesn’t have much exposure to AI. Uh good piece in Bloomberg, Brooke, uh saying investors increasingly view Apple as an oasis of safety amid fears of AI disruption. Of course, we just heard Apple’s earnings results that was uh last week. Record quarterly sales, better than expected forecast.

00:25 Brook

Yeah, and if you take a look at the YF interactive where I’m looking at right now on my screen is really you see Apple kind of stand out in this sea of a bit of a mixed picture. You see NVIDIA, Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, Broadcom, Micron all selling off today. Palantir and AMD down double digits here. and then you have Apple. Apple up nearly 3%. Now keep in mind, year to date, the stock is up about 2%, but largely an oasis based upon the fact that not only is it yes, they’re getting into this AI game. they’re increasing their Siri take with Google Gemini. but on top of that too, that foldable iPhone, those iPhone sales last quarter hit record highs and there’s lots of momentum on the street about what exactly this company can do with tailwinds moving into 2026.

01:04 Speaker A

Next up, Silicon Labs, the company getting acquired by Texas Instruments in a deal valued at 7 and a half billion dollars. Bernstein Stacy Rasgon, very smart analyst. That’s Stacy, friend of the show. Here’s what he told his clients. He said at the end of the day, the deal is small enough that it won’t do any damage regardless of what happens, and we can see the overall fit. That being said, Stacy says, we still aren’t sure we really like it given the expense, minimal upside and what it might signal regarding shifts in strategy going forward.

01:34 Brook

Well, certainly what we’re seeing in in terms of the stock performance today, Silicon Lab up about 50% on the back of this news, but Texas Instrument investors, not sure how to feel about this one. Mostly flat, down about 7/10% as we make our way towards the close. But the CEO kind of banking over at Texas Instruments largely saying that this will allow the company to accelerate, saying that this transaction will add about 1,200 additional products and also projects that more than $450 million in annual manufacturing and operational synergies will come through over the next few years. And so Texas instrument investors sort of waiting to see how this all plays out.

02:07 Speaker A

And finally, Yum Brands and Yum China, Brooke, people are loving their Taco Bell, both in the US and China. Both companies reporting earnings earlier today. I saw with Yum Brands, they reported an EPS for fourth quarter that missed consensus it looks like. top line beats, the pressure was at Pizza Hut. Taco Bell though looks like chips beating sales as it should because it’s delicious.

02:27 Brook

Are you a big fan?

02:29 Speaker A

Who isn’t?

02:30 Brook

I guess he is. I mean, what we’re really seeing here is Taco Bell continuing to hit the mark and what investors are looking for, particularly here in the US and we heard on the call today from CEO Chris Turner that transaction growth across all income bands and more higher income consumers came to Taco about this past quarter. They also said they have higher growth between 18 to 24, somewhere that other restaurant chains have really been struggling with. And then take that on top of Yum China. If you take a look at Yum China though, outperforming today’s stock performance when it comes to Yum brands here in the US. And Yum China just continues to really hit the mark when it comes to innovation and price point. Joey Watt, the CEO of Yum China is saying in the in a release today that their fourth quarter performance really capped off 2025 on a high note and that largely is because of the performance that they’re seeing within the KFC brand, which Yum Brands here in the US has really struggled with. but around their pricing strategy and innovation, they have around 600 new or upgraded items annually over there at Yum China. I mean, the innovation is just absolutely wild. I’m dying to get there.

03:28 Speaker A

Thank you. Appreciate it.