Topic: Earnings Call

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared on "Meet the Press" to discuss the economic impact of tariffs and tax cuts. He pushed back against Kristen Welker's claims that Walmart is raising prices, explaining that the company's earnings call warnings were "worst-case scenarios" for legal transparency. Bessent emphasized that falling gasoline prices under the Trump administration act as a direct tax cut for consumers.

Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison discussed the company's 2025 guidance and the massive infrastructure requirements for artificial intelligence. Ellison, who recently transitioned to Chief Technology Officer, emphasized that the "race goes on forever" to build better neural networks. Oracle's stock performance remains tied to its ability to provide the compute power necessary for the next generation of AI models.

Service Corporation International (SCI), a major funeral and cemetery provider, raised its 2021 earnings guidance due to higher-than-expected death volumes. The CEO attributed the growth to the Delta variant and "non-COVID excess deaths." The hosts suggest that financial reports from the death care industry are a more reliable metric of mortality trends than government data.