Cramer: Lyft IPO likely to surge, drawing investors back to whole stock market

Lyft is slated to have a blockbuster initial public offering, drawing investor attention back to the stock market, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Thursday.

Cramer said the highly anticipated IPO could open as high as $100 a share. His comments came after the ride-hailing company increased its expected offering price range to between $70 and $72 per share from between $62 and $68. The company would be valued around $20 billion in the updated pricing range.

"You know how the games play. Should we just stick with the game? Should we just admit that this thing could go up to $75, $78, and they are going to upsize the deal and it opens at $100," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street."

Lyft is expected to price its shares Thursday and go public Friday on the Nasdaq under the ticker LYFT.

The company's expected success in its public offering will turn the spotlight back on the stock market, Cramer noted. Investors have been grappling with the yield curve inversion that occurred Friday, which sparked new recession fears as the phenomenon has been a reliable recession indicator in the past.

"This is the most important thing that's happened. This is it. If they price this deal well and it pops right, you are going to find people come back to our market. ... This will eclipse any talk about the yield curve," Cramer said.

Cramer added the start-up's prospectus for the deal "reads like a millennial prospectus," as the "holistic" and "mindful" document details how cars hurt the environment, Cramer said, even calling it "Gandhi meets Lyft."

Disclaimer

Olive Garden-parent Darden is not warning of a recession, Jim Cramer says

Darden Restaurants' "stellar quarter" of strong sales growth is one of the signs that the U.S. economy is far from a recession, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Monday.

Cramer praised CEO Gene Lee, saying he "has a terrific grasp of what's going on in the restaurant industry" to bring more guests into its thousands of its eateries across the country. The restaurant operator, which owns casual dining chains such as Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, and Bahama Breeze, bested Wall Street expectations in its Thursday earnings report and raised its forecast for 2019.

Darden did not attribute the higher sales and outlook to last year's tax cuts, Cramer pointed out.

"Sometimes the big picture stuff is irrelevant and it all comes down to a better bowl of pasta," said the "Mad Money" host. He said commentators love discussing macroeconomics and generalizing individual stocks, but "rather than focusing on these aggregate data points, I prefer following the largest companies and just listening to what they have to say."

Lee told stockholders that same-store sales at Olive Garden, which has 2,100 restaurants in all 50 states, was up 4.3 percent thanks to the franchise's decision to add 50 percent more meat to its Chicken Alfredo and strong consumer spending. He said the 2018 tax breaks did not play a large factor in sales growth.

"Confidence remains strong, wages are growing across all the different parts of the population ... I'm not really worried about year-over-year changes, based on 'was there a little bit more tax money with the consumer,'" he said on the conference call. "We're going to continue to be able to grow share in that environment."

On top of strong sales, Darden mitigated its year-over-year labor costs and turnover, with the backdrop of 4 percent wage inflation, Cramer noted. He emphasized that investors should study companies' fundamentals to find and buy stocks that are being dragged down by the sell-off tsunami without warrant.

"Every time I see the futures get knocked down by Japanese selling or European weakness or Chinese things, I've gotta remind myself that America has a robust economy that's nowhere near going into a recession," he said. "Believe me, if we were really in trouble, you would hear about it from the likes of Darden or Chipotle, and not to mention Walmart, Costco and Target. They said nothing about that sort.

"If they say business is good because taxes are lower, O.K. great. If they say it's something else then it's something else," he added.

Despite the positive information, there's a lot of selling going on the S&P 500, Cramer said. Darden and Chipotle are two stocks worth filling up on, he said.

Dardens' shares are up about 18 percent in 2019 and 40 percent in the past year.

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