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Earnings Previews: Amazon, Apple, Robinhood

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Between the time markets closed on Tuesday and before they opened again Wednesday morning, more than 600 U.S.-listed firms will have reported quarterly results. Here is a roundup of the stocks we have looked at that reported results.
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Google parent Alphabet missed analysts’ profit estimate and beat the revenue estimate with $68 billion in sales. Ad revenue from Google rose 22% year over year, while YouTube ad sales rose 15%. The company also announced a new $70 billion stock buyback. Shares traded down about 2.9% in Wednesday’s premarket session.

Microsoft beat estimates for both profits and revenues. The company expects Azure sales growth to be two points lower in the current quarter. Shares traded up more than 5% early Wednesday.

Visa also beat estimates for top-line and bottom-line results. Payment volume growth was “strong” relative to pre-pandemic levels. Shares were up about 5.6% in premarket trading.

General Motors beat analysts’ consensus profit estimate but missed on earnings. GM expects chip deliveries to continue improving and said it has a goal to build 400,000 electric vehicles in North America over this year and next, while building EV capacity to 1 million vehicles by the end of 2025. Shares traded up about 3.2%.

Chipotle Mexican Grill also beat on both profit and revenue estimates. Digital sales rose to 42% of all first-quarter revenue. Shares traded up 3.6% in Wednesday’s premarket.

Enphase Energy reported better-than-expected results, with profits more than 14% higher than estimates and revenue beating by about 1.7%. The company also raised second-quarter guidance. The stock traded up 9.5%.

Texas Instruments beat on profit and revenue estimates but lowered guidance, citing reduced demand in China due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. Shares traded down about 2.8%.

QuantumScape missed the consensus estimate for the quarterly loss. The company had no revenue. Shares traded up about 1.6%.


Before markets opened Wednesday morning, Boeing, General Dynamics, Kraft Heinz, Spotify, Teck Resources and T-Mobile were to report quarterly. We shall have summaries of these reports in a later story.

After markets close Wednesday, seven firms we have covered in our previews will report results: Ford, Meta Platforms, PayPal and Qualcomm, as well as Altria, Las Vegas Sands and Sirius XM.

Companies reporting before Thursday’s opening bell will include Caterpillar, Peabody Energy and Southwest Airlines, as well as Comcast, McDonald’s and Twitter.
Here is a look at three companies set to report results after markets close on Thursday.

Amazon

In mid-July, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) posted a new all-time high share price. Since then, the stock has dropped 25%. For the past 12-month period, shares have lost 16.6%, virtually all of it in 2022.
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Another vote to unionize some 1,500 Amazon employees at a Staten Island sorting facility started Monday, and that follows a successful vote at another New York location, where the union won an election at an Amazon warehouse that employs 8,300 people. Investors appear to be getting increasingly concerned about unionization among Amazon’s 1.1 million workers.

Because the company does not pay a dividend, share price growth is what keeps investors driving up Amazon’s value. The company needs a plan, and investors are going to want to hear it soon.

All but two of 52 analysts surveyed give Amazon stock a Buy or Strong Buy rating. Of the two holdouts, one rates the stock at Hold and the other at Strong Sell. At a recent price of around $2,787.80 a share, the upside potential based on a median price target of $4,000 is 43.5%. At the high price target of $5,000, the upside potential is 79.4%.

Analysts are looking for first-quarter revenue of $116.52 billion, which would be down 15.2% sequentially but up 7.3% year over year. Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) are expected to be $8.50, down 69.4% sequentially and 46.2% lower year over year. For the full 2022 fiscal year, EPS are expected to come in at $47.86, down 26.2%, on sales of $540.24 billion, up 15%.

Amazon stock trades at 58.2 times expected 2022 EPS, 38.4 times estimated 2023 earnings of $72.69 and 25.0 times estimated 2024 earnings of $111.56 per share. The stock’s 52-week range is $2,671.45 to $3,773.08. Amazon does not pay a dividend. Total shareholder return over the past 12 months was negative 18.2%.

Apple

The largest U.S.-listed company by market cap has added about 17.5% to its share price over the past 12 months. That’s about half its 2021 share price increase. For the year to date, however, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) shares are down 13.7%. The COVID-19 lockdowns in China have forced the recent closure of two facilities of Apple’s main iPhone supplier, Foxconn. Demand for the iPhone 13 has been strong all through the March quarter, and services revenues (an even higher margin business than iPhones) are also expected to rise sharply.

Of 44 analysts covering Apple, 34 give the stock a Buy or Strong Buy rating, and another eight rate the shares at Hold. At a share price of around $156.80, the upside potential based on a median price target of $192 is about 22.4%. At the high price target of $226, the upside potential is more than 44%.
Analysts expect the Dow Jones industrial average component to report fiscal 2022 second-quarter revenue of $94 billion, down 24.2% sequentially and up 4.9% year over year. Adjusted EPS are expected to come in at $1.43, down 31.8% sequentially but 2.1% higher year over year. For the fiscal year ending in September, analysts expect the company to report EPS of $6.54, up 9.6%, on sales of $395.42 billion, up about 8.1%. The fiscal year growth estimates are nearly double what they were at the end of the prior quarter.
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Apple stock trades at 25.5 times expected 2022 EPS, 24.0 times estimated 2023 earnings of $6.15 and 22.7 times estimated 2024 earnings of $6.89 per share. The stock’s 52-week range is $122.25 to $182.94. Apple pays an annual dividend of $0.88 (yield of 0.54%). Total shareholder return for the past 12 months was 17.1%.

Robinhood

Within a week of its initial public offering in late July last year, shares of Robinhood Markets Inc. (NASDAQ: HOOD) doubled in price. As of Tuesday’s close, the stock traded down nearly 86% below that high and 71% below its IPO price.

Late Tuesday, the company announced that it is cutting its full-time workforce by about 9%. Based on a reported 3,800 employees, that amounts to about 340 people who will lose their jobs. CEO Vlad Tenev said in a blog post that the firings are the “right decision” and are “a deliberate step to ensure we are able to continue delivering on our strategic goals and furthering our mission to democratize finance.” Shares dropped 3.8% on Tuesday and traded down another 4.5% in Wednesday’s premarket.

Just 15 brokerages cover the stock. Of those, five have a Buy or Strong Buy rating and seven more rate the stock at Hold. At Wednesday’s closing price of $10.00, the upside potential to the median price target of $15 is 50%. At the high price target of $41, the upside potential is 310%.


For the first quarter of fiscal 2022, revenue is forecast at $357.21 million, down 1.5% sequentially. Analysts are looking for an adjusted loss per share of $0.36, compared to a loss of $0.49 per share in the previous quarter. For the full fiscal year, current consensus estimates call for an adjusted loss per share of $1.26, far below the 2021 fiscal year loss of $7.49 per share. Revenue is forecast at $1.84 billion, up 1.4%.

Robinhood is not expected to post a profit in 2022, 2023 or 2024. The stock’s post-IPO trading range is $9.85 to $85.00. The company does not pay a dividend.

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