Buy 75 shares of Starbucks for approximately $81. After Monday’s trading, the Jim Cramer Charitable Trust now owns 1,150 shares of SBUX stock, increasing its weight from 2.25% to approximately 2.4%. After Starbucks reported last week, we felt a little more confident in CEO Brian Nicol’s turnaround strategy. Stocks are back to their ‘Liberation Day’ tariff lows in early April, and we see this recent weakness as an opportunity to slowly dig deeper. Nikkor embarked on an ambitious plan to renovate the store, bringing back its coffeehouse feel through a new operating and staffing model called Green Apron Service. It took a few quarters, but the turn finally started. SBUX YTD Mountain Starbucks YTD Look no further than same-store sales, the most important metric when assessing the health of a retail or restaurant stock. Although sales continued to decline for multiple consecutive quarters, same-store sales, or profits, were flat in the July-September period. If you look closely, the month-to-month pace is encouraging, with revenue turning positive in September. Management said the momentum continued after the quarter ended and into October. This turnaround is being driven by increased trading, not higher prices or more orders. This is a sign that customers are coming back to your brand. More broadly, many consumer-focused businesses, including retailers and restaurants, have come under fire recently over concerns about weakening consumers. Many of them are turned into falling knives. You can see it in the Nikes we snagged on Friday. Catching a falling knife is never a wise investment strategy, but these two ideas, Starbucks and Nike, are more unique opportunities involving brand repair. If Nicole and Nike CEO Elliott Hill can do their jobs right, and we think they will, these iconic American brands’ revenues will grow as well. NKE YTD Mountain Nike YTD (The Jim Cramer Charitable Trust is long SBUX, NKE. See here for a complete list of stocks.) As a subscriber to Jim Cramer’s CNBC Investment Club, you will receive trade alerts before Jim makes a trade. After Jim sends a trade alert, he waits 45 minutes before buying or selling stocks in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim talks about a stock on CNBC TV, he will issue a trade alert and then wait 72 hours before executing the trade. The above investment club information is subject to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, along with our disclaimer. No fiduciary duties or obligations exist or arise from your receipt of information provided in connection with the Investment Club. No specific results or benefits are guaranteed.
