Jim Cramer Says Biggest Earnings Surprise From Tuesday Was Not A Blue Chip Stock, But This Company

The earnings news flow has picked up pace this week and among the slew of high-profile, blue-chip companies that reported on Tuesday, CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer singled out Nucor Corp. NUE for high praise.

What Happened: “Biggest upside surprise yesterday [Tuesday] may not have been any of the Dow stocks, it might have been Nucor, our biggest steel maker,” said Cramer on X, formerly Twitter.

“Need strike to be settled at 25%,” he added.

Nucor reported Tuesday ahead of the market-open third-quarter earnings of $4.57 per share on revenue of $8.78 billion. This compares to the consensus earnings and revenue estimates of $4.25 per share and $8.31 billion.

Four Dow components reported on Tuesday, including The Coca-Cola Company KO, 3M Company MMM, Verizon Communications Inc. VZ, and Visa, Inc. V. Incidentally, all of these companies reported earnings beats.

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Why It’s Important: Nucor was one of Cramer’s 2023 stock picks. At the end of 2022, the CNBC host said Nucor is the “best steelmaker in America” and called for an upside for the stock in 2023. He premised his optimism on the company’s ability to churn out solid earnings results despite the Fed tightening and the likely benefit accruing from the $1 trillion+ bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Following the third-quarter beat, Nucor settled Tuesday’s session up 4.75% at $147.17, according to Benzinga Pro data. In premarket trading on Wednesday, the stock gave back some of the gains and traded down 0.79% to $146.

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