4Q25 Earnings Updates:  Part One – META, IBM, and AAPL

Meta Platforms (META): There are two big takeaways from Meta’s latest quarter: it showed AI is boosting growth in advertising, and it outlined the next spending wave. Ad impressions rose 18% while pricing rose 6%. Management attributed ad strength to clearer proof of results for advertisers, better ad targeting in feeds, and AI tools that […]

3Q25 Earnings Updates: Part One – IBM, TMUS, META, GOOG, LLY, VICI, and AAPL

IBM (IBM): IBM is growing again and the long-term setup looks better, but the stock’s run has lifted expectations. The focus now is on Software turning strong orders into recognized revenue, and on AI showing up clearly in earnings, with Red Hat anchoring the mix and durability of that growth. Early-cycle mainframe strength and tight […]

2Q25 Earnings Updates: Part One – GOOG, IBM, TMUS, META, VICI, and AAPL

Alphabet (GOOG): GOOG delivered a strong reassurance to investors with its 2Q25 earnings report, underscoring its market leadership and the successful execution of its AI-first strategy. The company reported robust consolidated revenue growth of 14% year-over-year, driven by double-digit gains across Google Search & other, YouTube ads, and Subscriptions, alongside a significant 32% surge in […]

1Q25 Earnings Updates: Part One – IBM, GOOG, TMUS, META, and VICI

IBM (IBM): IBM reported better than expected 1Q25 results and maintained guidance for 2025.  However, the mix of underlying datapoints disappointed investors and the shares are trading down more than 5%. We think the decline is overdone and partially related to the excellent performance of IBM over the past 12 months.  Expectations were elevated and […]

4Q24 Earnings Updates: Part One – TMUS, IBM, META, and AAPL

T Mobile USA (TMUS): We were a little nervous about TMUS heading into the company’s 4Q24 earnings report. Growth has slowed modestly, while AT&T and Verizon have seen improved growth. TMUS has been a great stock performer on a consistent trend of better-than-expected subscriber, revenue, operating profit, and free cash flow growth. In early December, […]

3Q24 Earnings Updates: Part One – IBM, TMUS, GOOG/GOOGL, META, AAPL, VICI

IBM (IBM): IBM shares sold off following a mixed report for 3Q24.  The selloff is mostly related to elevated expectations after the stock had doubled since October 2022, with over half of the gain coming since the start of 2024.  Our original purchase of IBM just over five years ago was based on an investment […]

3Q23 Earnings Updates: Part One – GOOG/GOOGL, TMUS, META, IBM, and VICI

Alphabet (GOOG/GOOGL): GOOGL reported mixed results for 3Q23.  The two dominant businesses, Search and YouTube, had better-than-expected revenue growth as advertising accelerated ahead of high expectations.  On the downside, Cloud revenue grew more slowly than expected, up 22%, with management alluding to cloud spending optimization that has previously tripped up Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS, […]

2Q23 Earnings Updates: Part One – IBM, GOOG/GOOGL, META, VICI, TMUS

IBM (IBM): IBM reported an inline quarter with the normal give and take that any large, diversified corporation will experience.  All guidance was reiterated with a slight boost to the growth rate for software revenue.  Software was a little better than expected driven by double-digit growth at Red Hat for hybrid cloud and transaction processing […]

Bard Does Northlake 1Q23 Earnings Updates: Part One – IBM, GOOG, ATVI, META, TMUS, and SONY

Given the excitement surrounding Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) since Microsoft and OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in November, we thought it would be educational, interesting, and fun to let GAI write our regular quarterly earnings updates.  ChatGPT only has data through 2021, so we are using Google’s GAI app, Bard. Kind of fun to […]

4Q22 Earnings Updates: Part Two – SONY, META, AAPL, GOOG/GOOGL, ATVI and DIS

SONY Corporation (SONY): SONY reported a good quarter with modest beats on operating income driven by profit margins.  The company passed through a portion of the beat to its full-year operating income forecast.  Often companies that only pass through a portion of an earnings beat are penalized, but that usually does not apply to SONY […]