00:00 Speaker A
Now time for some of today’s trending tickers. We are watching Micron, Chime, and GameStop. Joining me to help break them down, we’ve got Yahoo Finance’s Josh Schafer. First up here, let’s set the scene with Micron, Josh. Micron planning to invest approximately $200 billion in semiconductor manufacturing and R&D in the US. The company plans to build a second manufacturing facility in Idaho and expand its existing manufacturing facility in Virginia. The investments will create an estimated 90,000 direct and indirect jobs. Shares of Micron just fractionally lower, almost down by about 1% pre-market on the back of this announcement here. And as we were talking about in the break, it really comes down to a multi-pronged approach as to how investors would think about this. Number one, what extent of time would this take for Micron to make, not just the investment, but to see the return on that investment come back? And there have been, I, I would say, far more investors that are out there and saying, okay, yeah, this seems like the time to make these big investment bets in order for the payoff that we’re anticipating to come forward over an extended period of time, plus the purchase obligations that they’re already starting to try and make sure that they can fulfill on the customer side.
02:05 Speaker B
Yeah, Brad, I mean, I think your point on timeline is sort of why you don’t see large moves off an announcement like this, right? It’s kind of, okay, big number, $200 billion, right? What does it mean as far as, is that a three-year, five-year plan? When does this actually start to impact the business here in the US too? I think that’s obviously the interesting part of this story as well, right? It’s sort of the manufacturing buildout in the US that, of course, has been talked a lot about over the last several months, and you’re starting to see those deals get signed with large companies that that is coming to the US. But I think overall for Micron as a stock, you look over the last year, stock’s down 14%, hasn’t really done a lot. Uh, and so I think it’s looking for sort of that next leg of growth. Is that going to be part of this deal as we start to sort of digest it, talk about it, and see what some of the analysts maybe are able to pencil in once they get a little bit more details too on those numbers, what does it actually mean for forward projections seems a little bit to be seen.
03:41 Speaker A
Right. And in the Trump 2.0 administration, the early days is the art of the deal mindset. How can we bring forward as many of these headlines and announcements, because at the top of the Micron press release for the investors out there that have been going to the website and lighting that up here today, as well as the Yahoo Finance platform to see how the stock is trading for MU. Micron and Trump administration announced expanded US investments in leading edge DRAM manufacturing and R&D. Now, here’s the breakdown of some of those figures just very briefly before we move on. $150 billion in domestic memory manufacturing, $50 billion in R&D, and then an additional $30 billion beyond prior plans for that second leading edge memory fab in Boise, Idaho. Boise, Idaho, of course, the land of great blue football fields out there.
05:02 Speaker B
Love the blue turf.
05:04 Speaker A
Love the blue turf, right. Next up, let’s talk a little Chime here on the day. Chime set to make its public debut on the Nasdaq. The online banking services provider pricing its IPO at $27 per share, valuing the company at $11.6 billion. The debut being viewed as a bellwether for other IPO candidates in the fintech industry here. We’re going to be watching closely when this one begins.
05:35 Speaker B
I’m fired up to just see how the stock trades. Honestly, when you think about how Circle has moved over the last couple weeks, Circle up about 240% from where it opened. You had Corvee up about 300% since its IPO in March. I recently wrote about this, actually, Brad, looking at the difference between tech IPOs and non-tech IPOs since 2024. So Carson Research had a great chart they were showing now. Look at the difference between the average price return from the deal price of tech IPOs versus non-tech IPOs. It’s essentially double. So the market has really been interested in any sort of tech company. Of course, when you think about the stock market over the last two years and sort of what the story’s been, this chart makes a lot of sense, right? You’re seeing tech companies, companies that are in online banking, companies that are into crypto, companies that are into AI. The market has received those companies well. Does that also happen with Chime and sort of continue this trend, I think is an interesting thing to watch.
07:20 Speaker A
You know, it’s so interesting because you said the banking services here, and one of the things in their S-1 filing, one of the top lines as they start to get into the disclosures and everything, Chime is a technology company, not a bank. And I, I’ve posed this question to good friend of the show, Chris Wayland before, who covers this space, if not bank, why bank shaped? Because there are so many of the financial services that Chime has become to be known for here. You think about the first quarter of 2025 and what they disclosed, active members used Chime for 54 transactions per month on average. That’s about as many bodega visits as I make per month. 75% of which were purchased transactions using Chime branded debit and credit cards, and then 70% of purchase transactions for non-discretionary expenses made in categories such as the criticals, the food, the groceries, the gas, the utilities here as well.
08:53 Speaker B
Yeah, I mean, you just want to position yourself as a tech company, right? For that reason that I said, you want
09:04 Speaker A
You want that multiple.
09:06 Speaker B
Yeah, exactly. You want to be a tech company, right? And I think if you look at similar companies, like maybe some other sort of payment online companies, maybe I’m thinking of an Affirm or something. Maybe that’s not the correct total comparison, but those companies trade like tech companies too.
09:26 Speaker A
Absolutely. Offering size, 32 million shares. The offering price here, they’ve priced the shares at $27 a piece. We’re going to be watching closely for when the window opens up, and that will be after the opening bell, of course. And then finally here, we’ve got GameStop announcing plans to offer $1.75 billion of convertible senior notes. GameStop, they intend to use the proceeds to make investments which could fund some of that Bitcoin buying. Of course, May 28th, everybody became well known with the tweet on that day. Just a very simple S-1 filing. GameStop intends to use the, or GameStop, excuse me, has purchased 4,710 Bitcoin. And then within this release today, they had mentioned that they intend to use the net proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, including making investments in a manner consistent with GameStop’s investment policy.
10:45 Speaker B
Just following the market action here.
10:48 Speaker A
Yeah.
10:49 Speaker B
It’s not working right now, right? This strategy that we’re going to stop selling video games and become strategy and become MicroStrategy. Just look at the stock. It’s just not really working, and they’re not getting the retail bid that I think was sort of part of this strategy. I don’t know what else would be part of the concept here. It seems like you’re going to buy Bitcoin. You want to be like strategy and Michael Saylor. And it’s just not quite working, right? You’re obviously going to have to raise money to buy this Bitcoin, and investors aren’t liking that. They’re dumping the stock. I’m just curious if this starts to work at any point. Like, how do you turn the corner as strategy has and become a stock that people want to hold because you’re going to buy Bitcoin? Feels like it doesn’t happen overnight, but does it ever happen for GameStop?
11:49 Speaker A
What’s also when the notes are convertible and do, they’re not due until 2032. So that is something that investors also have to take into consideration. Josh, thanks so much for joining me and breaking these down. You can scan the QR code below to track the best and worst performing stocks with Yahoo Finance’s trending tickers page.