Biggest winner of the amended Microsoft-OpenAI deal — plus, mixed news for Lilly

Every weekday, CNBC Investment Club with Jim Cramer publishes Homestretch, an actionable afternoon update just in time for the final hour of trading on Wall Street. Stocks are on the rise after a sluggish start to the week. Some semis and other AI infrastructure stocks were giving back some gains after historic rallies and parabolic moves, but Nvidia is heading for a record close. On the other hand, the slight increase in oil prices and Treasury bond yields indicates that uncertainty regarding the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz continues in the background. Part of the Microsoft-OpenAI amendment deal announced Monday was that OpenAI can now offer all of its products to customers on any cloud provider. Our first reading was that this news would be positive for Amazon Web Services, even if Amazon's shares didn't do much. To be fair, Amazon is up 26% this month, so a big move should be followed by a bearish day. Still, it was great to hear Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's thoughts on the news via his post on social media platform Amazon and OpenAI announced a strategic partnership in February, and the amended Microsoft agreement opens the door to further expansion of that relationship. AWS is hosting its "What's Next for AWS" event on Tuesday, and the focus is expected to be on Agency AI. After the closing bell on Wednesday, we'll see first-quarter earnings from both Amazon and Microsoft, along with quarterly results from Alphabet and Meta Platforms; The four major hyperscalers are all Club stocks, and they all went out overnight. Eli Lilly announced another small acquisition Monday, buying privately held Ajax Therapeutics in a deal valued at up to $2.3 billion. Ajax's leading asset is an investigational Type II JAK2 inhibitor, taken orally once daily, that is being studied in a Phase 1 trial in patients with the rare blood cancer myelofibrosis who have been previously treated with a Type 1 JAK2 inhibitor. The deal is another example of Lilly using its balance sheet to expand its portfolio beyond GLP-1s. Separately, Eli Lilly's price target on Leerink was significantly lowered. Analysts lowered their price target to $1,058 per share from $1,296 while maintaining a higher buy rating; This reflects a 25x multiple of 2027 earnings per share (EPS) forecast of $42.30. Previously, Leerink had a 30x 2027 earnings per share estimate of $43.21. Fundamentally, earnings estimates have changed little, but Leerink has changed how much investors should pay for those earnings. The reason for the target group reduction was due to competitive pressures, particularly on oral GLP-1 Foundayo. It is true that Foundayo failed to live up to very high expectations and had a slow start compared to oral Weogvy, which had the first mover advantage and the advantage of the same brand name. Lilly management has warned against mirroring Wegovy in Foundayo, but we think Foundayo could gain share over time because it has the advantage of not having food or water restrictions. We'll hear more about word-of-mouth dynamics and sales of tirzepatide (Mounjaro and Zepbound) when the company reports earnings before the opening bell this Thursday. The list of companies reporting earnings after the closing bell includes Celestica, Cadence Design Systems, Amkor and Nucor. Corning reports ahead of Tuesday's opening bell, and we'd like to see it announce another major partnership with a hyperscaler in the optical cable market. Other companies scheduled to report include United Parcel Services, Coca-Cola, Spotify, General Motors, Centene, Hilton Worldwide, S&P Global, Enterprise Products Partners, Kimberly-Clark and Sysco. On the data side, we will take the Conference Board's consumer confidence index. (See here for a complete list of stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust, including NVDA, MSFT, AMZN, META, GOOGL, LLY, GLW.) When you subscribe to the CNBC Investment Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trading alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable foundation's portfolio. If Jim talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trading alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTMENT CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY, TOGETHER WITH THE DISCLAIMERS. NO CIVIL OBLIGATIONS OR DUTIES EXIST OR SHALL BE RESULTING FROM YOUR RECEIVING ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTMENT CLUB. NO SPECIFIC RESULT OR PROFIT CAN BE GUARANTEED.