Investors will be rewarded if they believe in Starbucks' turnaround story, CIO says

CNBC

27-05-2025

Starbucks is in the middle of a turnaround story as new management is expected to overhaul the struggling coffee chain, according to Nancy Tengler, Laffer Tengler Investments CEO and CIO. Tengler broke down her views on Starbucks, Nvidia, and EQT on CNBC's "Three-Stock Lunch" Tuesday. Starbucks Last month, Starbucks missed earnings and revenue estimates for its fiscal second quarter as same-store sales fell for the fifth straight quarter. Still, CEO Brian Niccol said the coffee chain is seeing "momentum" in its turnaround, even though the effort will pressure earnings. "I think it's presenting an opportunity to invest, for investors to step in," Tengler said. " New CFO [Nordstrom alumna Cathy Smith] is adding a level of urgency, and they are really investing in labor, which was a weak spot of the company. You're getting paid to wait. I think this is a name that you can add to just take your time, because it's going to take a little while to turn it around." SBUX YTD mountain Starbucks Nvidia Nvidia is in the sweet spot in the artificial intelligence boom, and investors should use the weakness from headlines to add to their holdings, Tengler said. She said she's been increasing her investment in the chip giant during key market events, including President Donald Trump's initial tariff rollout and the launch of a language model from Chinese competitor DeepSeek. "If you look at where they are in the stack of AI, they're in the sweet spot," Tengler said. "They are the go-to chip provider, and all of the hyperscalers have told us that they're capacity constrained." Nvidia is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on Wednesday after the bell. Many investors are focused on the impact of export restrictions to China. The Trump administration said it was requiring an export license for the company's H20 chip. Nvidia said it would take a $5.5 billion write-down on inventory for its H20 chip, what analysts called the biggest write-down in the history of the chip industry. NVDA YTD mountain Nvidia EQT Tengler is also bullish on Pittsburgh-based energy company EQT . The company has a current dividend yield of 1.1%. "This is a company that's pledged to return 60% of free cash flow to shareholders through buybacks and dividend increases," she said. "They are also generating free cash flow at two times the competition. And we think there's a tailwind behind natural gas prices and LNG export prices so we're pretty optimistic on the group." EQT YTD mountain EQT