Alphabet returned to nearly pre-pandemic growth in 3Q20 led by Cloud and YouTube. Advertising revenues grew 15% adjusted for foreign currency, just below the high-teens level of late 2019. Revenues, margins, and operating profits all surprised materially to the upside, with the overall results relative to consensus estimates the biggest positive surprise in many years. […]
Comcast remains a tale of three cities: cable, NBC Universal (NBCU), and Sky. Fortunately for investors, the dominant business – cable – is a clear COVID winner with attractive secular prospects. On the other hand, NBCU and Sky are COVID losers facing secular challenges. Results in 3Q20 were very strong in cable led by broadband. […]
IBM reported 3Q20 earnings last week that were largely in line with expectations and consistent with trends over the past few quarters. The report came on the heels of a major announcement from the company that it will be spinning a big piece of its slow-growing business to increase concertation on its cloud and artificial […]
Activision Blizzard (ATVI) reported better than expected 2Q20 earnings, beating on both the top and bottom line. EPS of 97 cents crushed the consensus of 69 cents. Despite the 28 cent beat, management raised 2020 guidance by 45 cents to $3.05. Management showed a high degree of confidence in trends for the rest of 2020 […]
ViacomCBS (VIAC) reported better than expected results in 2Q20. Revenues were down -12% but good cost controls and some expense timing benefits led to adjusted EBITDA +8%. Free cash flow was much better than expected even after the timing benefits. Overall, the quarter showed progress for a company that has been viewed very negatively by […]
Home Depot shares are up about 50% since Northlake purchased them for clients in March. This is far beyond what we expected at the time. This also explains why the stock has sold off about -4% since reporting fantastic 2Q20 earnings. We have often discussed how in the short term stocks trade based on expectations. […]
Nexstar Media Group (NXST) reported better than expected results in 2Q20 across revenue, EBITDA, and FCF. The stock initially rallied sharply as would be expected but other traditional media companies that reported over the past 24 hours had lesser results and that eventually caught up with NXST and the shares traded down -4% which amazingly […]
Disney had a truly awful quarter. But the stock is up 10% today! Investors have chosen to look past the pandemic’s devastating impact on theme parks, ESPN (no live sports last quarter), and inability to release blockbuster films. Instead, the focus is on the continuing massive success (as measured by subscribers) of Disney+ and newly […]
Facebook (FB) reported a stronger than expected 2Q20 driven by large increases in engagement across its family of properties. Social apps like Facebook and Instagram have seen a huge boost in usage during the pandemic as people stuck at home looked for social interaction. Higher engagement led to more ads being delivered, which overcame a […]
Alphabet (GOOG/GOOGL) reported a good quarter relative to expectations but saw more mixed fundamental trends than the other tech giants including its closest peer, Facebook. There was nothing wrong with GOOG’s quarter but it paled in comparison to blowouts reported by Amazon, Apple, and Facebook and this led to a modest sell off of about […]
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