Cramer Remix: The one bright spot after a tough week

CNBC’s Jim Cramer welcomed Dropbox’s successful initial public offering on Friday as a reminder that even in a sell-off, good things can still happen.

Shares of the cloud-based data storage company closed up over 35 percent after its first day of trading, at $28.48 a share, well above the company’s stated price of $21.

“If you were paying attention over the course of the session, you know that this was a white-hot deal,” the “Mad Money” host said. “This is exactly the kind of stock that Wall Street wants right now.”

Cramer’s main point of concern was whether Dropbox would be able to keep turning its non-paying subscribers into paying customers. To maintain its growth rate, it needs to switch between two million and four million free users into paying customers each year.

But that’s less than 1 percent of its 500 million free subscribers, Cramer noted, adding that the company will now have millions of dollars to invest in and bolster the business.

“Put it all together and I’m a big fan of Dropbox the company and its CEO, Drew Houston,” he said. But for Dropbox the stock, he asked investors to be a little more careful.

Cramer was disheartened to see the market tumble again on Friday after a week of Washington turmoil turned stocks sour.

“I hate to say it, but I honestly think the president’s become pretty frightening to investors in the stock market,” he said. “Maybe if things calm down [and] the White House starts trying to make deals instead of making enemies, then the earnings will matter again. They sure didn’t matter to the market’s trajectory this week because we had some very good [reports], but I live in hope.”

With that hope in mind, Cramer turned to his weekly game plan. He’ll watch for earnings reports from Red Hat, McCormick and more, pay close attention to Nvidia’s investor day and host a health care conference for CNBC.

After a week of panic and selling for the stock market, Cramer zeroed in on a buying opportunity he thought could bounce back “like a coiled spring:” the stock of retailer PVH Corp.

Shares of the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger parent company fell sharply during February’s market-wide sell-off as investors cooled on retail stocks.

“But this company reports next Wednesday night, and based on the publicly available clues, … I bet it will deliver a very good quarter,” the “Mad Money” host said. “In short, I think this is your chance to pick up a high-quality piece of merchandise that’s now down almost 12 percent from its January highs.”

To back up his call, Cramer went over the six pieces of evidence that made him so bullish on PVH ahead of its earnings report.

Also on Friday, Cramer jokingly wondered whether President Donald Trump was shorting the stock market by the way his announcements sent stocks down during the week.

“I know he’s not actually betting against stocks, but when I try to make sense of his recent actions, it’s like somebody in the White House, after generating fabulous returns in his first year, now wants the averages to get crushed,” Cramer said.

With the uproar about tariffs, White House firings and back-and-forth about the omnibus spending bill, Cramer warned that more chaos would only make things worse on Wall Street.

“You have to wonder what the heck happened to the guy who used to grade his job performance based on the performance of the market,” he said. “As long as the president keeps firing high-level people, undoing policies from last week and antagonizing the Chinese with no clear objective, he’ll be a headwind for stocks, not a tailwind. A suboptimal and ill-advised situation indeed.”

Cramer also addressed a potentially dangerous type of IPO, as exhibited by home security play ADT: the private equity-backed IPO.

The company was taken private by Apollo Global Management two years ago before coming public again two months ago. But the speed of the turnaround was a major red flag for Cramer.

“The lack of time spent private was a real red flag,” he warned. “This is a sure sign that a private equity shop is looking to unload a dud investment, because, presumably, they don’t think it’s worth the effort to spend more time turning things around.”

But private equity-backed deals don’t always have to go poorly. Cramer pointed to Burlington, which was taken private by Bain Capital in 2006 and once again became public in 2013.

“The next time you see a private equity-backed IPO like ADT, I want you to run in the other direction,” he concluded. “When these firms take a company public again in less than two years, it may be a sign that something is wrong. When they take their time, though, like Bain did with Burlington Stores, these so-called vultures can work miracles.”

In Cramer’s lightning round, he zipped through his take on some callers’ favorite stocks:

Cypress Semiconductor Corp.: “Cypress Semi is a very good semiconductor [company]. However, there is a lot of speculative money in it. I think it can go down to $16. Don’t pull the trigger now.”

ON Semiconductor: “I like [it] very, very much. It’s an inexpensive semi. They’re coming down. It’s a buy.”

Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Nvidia.

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