Investing

Earnings Previews: Airbnb, Aurora Cannabis, Blink, Disney, Luminar

Paul Ausick

Published: May 12, 2021 1:45 pm

One Dow Jones industrial average component, along with four other closely followed companies, are set to report quarterly earnings late Thursday as another week of this earnings season winds down.

Looking at companies reporting earnings following Wednesday’s close and before Thursday’s opening bell, we expect to get results from Alibaba, Bilibili, Bumble, Coupang and Xpeng.
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This preview covers five firms reporting earnings after markets close Thursday afternoon.

Airbnb

Vacation rental giant Airbnb Inc. (NASDAQ: ABNB) came public in early December with an IPO price of $68 and an opening bid of $146. The share price peaked at near $220 in mid-February but closed at $142.73 on Tuesday, a drop of 34%. It almost seems like Airbnb was paying a price it didn’t pay in the first half of last year, when every other travel-related industry was being hammered by the coronavirus pandemic. What the company has to say about its outlook for the rest of the year may be more important to the share price than the actual first-quarter results.

Cautious optimism describes broker sentiment for the stock, with 19 of 33 firms rating the stock a Hold and 12 rating it a Buy or Strong Buy. At a recent trading price of around $139 and a consensus price target of $188.26, upside potential on the stock is 35%. At the high target of $245, upside potential reaches 76%.

Analysts expect Airbnb to report a per-share loss of $1.17 on sales of $713.18 million. The expected loss will grow to $1.64 for the full year on revenue of $4.78 billion.

Airbnb is not expected to post a profit in 2021 or 2022. The stock trades at a multiple of 17.5 times expected 2021 revenue and 17.4 times estimated 2022 revenue. The stock’s 52-week trading range is $121.50 to $219.94. The average daily trading volume is just over 5 million shares.

Aurora Cannabis

Shares of Canada-based pot grower Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NYSE: ACB) dropped by nearly 68% in 2020. After soaring to a gain of around 130% in mid-February, the shares have steadily dropped to where they now trade about 5% lower for 2021 to date. On Tuesday, an analyst at CIBC cut his rating on the stock from Neutral to Underperform and chopped his price target from C$15 to C$9.
Aurora Cannabis has neither a deep-pocketed partner, as does Canopy Growth, nor a major merger in the works, such as the recently completed Tilray-Aphria deal. This lack of help weighs heavily on Aurora’s prospects of posting a profit anytime soon.
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The majority of brokerages surveyed (nine of 16) rate the stock a Hold, while six have ratings of Buy or Strong Buy. At around C$9.55 and a 12-month average price target of C$13.94, the stock’s upside potential is around 46%. At the high target of C$31.01, upside potential rises to 122%.

Analysts are expecting a per-share loss of C$0.22 in Aurora’s fiscal third quarter, much better than 2020’s loss per share of C$1.37. Revenue, however, is expected to dip by nearly 10% to C$68.25 million. For the full fiscal year ending in June, analysts are looking for a loss per share of C$2.13 compared with a loss of C$33.94 in 2020. Revenue is expected to rise by nearly 3% to C$286.82 million.

Aurora is not expected to post a profit in 2021, 2022 or 2023. The stock trades at a multiple of 7.2 times expected 2021 revenue, 5.2 times estimated 2022 revenue and 4.3 times estimated 2023 revenue. The 52-week trading range is $3.71 to $19.68. The average daily trading volume is about 10.8 million shares.

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Blink

Electric vehicle charging station operator Blink Charging Co. (NASDAQ: BLNK) had a raucous 2020. Even before the November election brightened prospects for just about every company connected to the EV industry, Blink’s stock traded up nearly 400% for the year. The stock reached a peak percentage increase of more than 2,500% on Christmas Eve. Even a drop of 30% so far in 2021 can’t erase much of that. The question for Blink and its peers like ChargePoint is whether they’ll ever make money.

Blink does not get a lot of coverage, with just four sell-side ratings, three of which have the stock as a Buy. At a price of around $30, the stock’s potential upside to a consensus price target of $41.25 is 37.5%. At the high target of $60, upside potential is a doubling of the current price.

Analysts expect Blink to post a loss per share in the first quarter of $0.17 on sales of $1.98 million. Last year the company reported a quarterly loss per share of $0.11 on sales of $1.19 million. For the full year, analysts are looking for a per-share loss of $0.61, two cents worse than the loss in 2020, on sales of $11.28 million, up by 81% year over year.

The company is not expected to post a profit in either 2021 or 2022. The stock trades at a multiple of 112.2 times expected 2021 revenue and 56.4 times estimated 2022 revenue. The 52-week range is $1.55 to $64.50, and the average daily trading volume is around 4.7 million shares.

Luminar

Lidar maker Luminar Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: LAZR) began trading as a public company on December 3, following a reverse merger with a blank-check company. At its peak less than a week later, the share price was up more than 80%, and as of Tuesday’s close, the stock was down about 8.5% from the opening day of trading.
Luminar makes lidar (light detection and ranging, or laser-light) systems for self-driving cars and trucks. Neither Luminar nor any other lidar firm has been able to convince Tesla to adopt the technology for autonomous driving. Elon Musk has said he would not use lidar in Tesla cars even it were free.
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Luminar is another lightly followed company, with just five brokerages covering the firm. Four rate the stock as a Buy or Strong Buy. At a price of around $20.40, the stock’s potential upside based on a consensus price target of $30.29 is nearly 50%. At the high target of $40, the upside potential is double the current price.

The company is expected to post a loss per share of $0.06 in the first quarter on revenue of $4.83 million. For the full year, the per-share loss is expected to come in at $0.29 on sales of $27.95 million.

Luminar is not expected to post a profit in 2021, 2022 or 2023. The stock trades at a multiple of 228.8 times expected 2021 revenue and 168.8 times estimated 2022 revenue. The 52-week range is $9.95 to $47.80, and the average daily trading volume is about 5.9 million.

Walt Disney

Even though its theme parks were closed and its cruises stuck in port for much of the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) managed to post a share price gain of just over 25% for the year. For the year to date, however, shares trade less than 1% lower than they did in January.

The Dow Jones industrial was able to pump up its streaming video business last year and reported 146 million paid subscribers to its Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu services at the end of the fourth quarter. Now that the parks and movie houses are reopening, the outlook for this year is upbeat. Once the first quarter drops into the rear-view mirror.

Of 30 brokerage firms covering the stock, 27 rate the shares as a Buy or Strong Buy. Trading at around $180 a share, it has upside potential at a consensus price target of $209.42 of around 16%. At the high target of $230, the potential upside on the stock is almost 28%.

Analysts expect the company to report earnings per share of $0.28 for the first quarter, a drop of two-thirds year over year, on revenue of $15.87 billion, down nearly 12% year over year. For the full year, analysts are looking for earnings of $2.00 per share, just two cents below last year’s mark, on sales of $68.88 billion, up 5.3% over 2020’s total.

The stock currently trades at around 92.2 times expected 2021 per-share earnings, 26.3 times estimated 2022 earnings and 28.3 times estimated 2023 earnings. The 52-week range is $99.66 to $203.02. Disney has suspended its dividend. The average daily trading volume on the stock is 10.6 million shares.