This FinTech Giant Crushes Earnings and Revenue

Fintech payment company Square (SQ) has been a big pandemic winner. Cashless transactions are on the rise, and the company’s touchless technology has done a lot to avoid the physical exchange of cash, on top of its other features. So it’s no surprise that the company smashed its latest earnings report, bringing in $5.06 billion in revenue against expectations of $3.3 billion. The company even reported making $3.5 billion in Bitcoin transactions, up 10-fold from a year ago when it was ...
Read More
|

Signs Point to Further Gains in Housing Trends

Residential real estate has been a strong performer in the past year. Sales trends suggest that home prices will continue to appreciate as demand remains strong and supply remains tight. That bodes well for a number of companies that play to housing trends. That’s why most names in the space have beaten their quarterly estimates so far, and why they’re likely to perform well in the months ahead. One such play is Zillow Group (Z). The company saw revenue rise 8 percent ...
Read More
|

The Biggest Trend in Entertainment Continues to Point to Profits

Even before the pandemic, sales of video games were topping box office receipts. And with a world loaded with small indie studios to developers producing popular titles, video games are a growing source of revenue for the entertainment sector. That’s a trend likely to continue, thanks to the latest generation consoles and an endless stream of new games in production. The strong cash flows from creating video games has made for a massively profitable niche in the entertainment sector with room ...
Read More
|

Global Recovery Points to Strong Logistics Returns

The pandemic’s effect on the economy can be measured in many ways. One simple way to track its effects is by looking at the level of global commerce. A number of companies can provide a one-stop look at this information as they report earnings. That may be why shipping companies like UPS (UPS) and FedEx (FDX) have been in rally mode the past few months. They reflect a hot economy. Both companies are also getting analyst upgrades ahead of their next earnings ...
Read More
|

Strong Growth Trends Bode Well for this New Digital Sector

The past few years has seen the rise of entirely new businesses online. Areas such as e-Sports are overtaking physical sports in terms of value and customer interest. That’s also true with sports gambling, which, thanks to some legal changes, is now widely available online. The big player in that space is DraftKings (DKNG). The company went public last year via a SPAC and was an early winner in that way of going public. Like many SPAC and post-SPAC companies, however, shares ...
Read More
|

An Overlooked Player in Computing Points to Further Profits Ahead

With most of the tech space focused on the semiconductor shortage, a few areas are performing well in spite of the industry effects. One area? Memory. From solid state drives to flash drives, demand for storing more and larger amounts of data has remained constant. That’s great for companies that produce these products. And based on the latest earnings numbers, it’s clear that these companies are in an uptrend. For instance, Western Digital (WDC) just reported better-than-expected financial results. While revenue was ...
Read More
|

The King of Share Buybacks Ups the Stakes to $90 Billion

For most companies, share buybacks sound attractive. They can offset shares issued to executives. And as long as the market is rising, things look good. Most companies aren’t Apple (AAPL). The consumer tech giant just beat earnings and raised its share buyback program to a staggering $90 billion. That’s on top of a dividend payout as well, increasing the amount of cash the company returns to shareholders every year. The $90 bullion share buyback is pretty close to the $89.6 billion the ...
Read More
|

Another Rebound Play Emerges on Strong Earnings, but a Share Drop

Earnings season makes for some rich trades. While many traders expected shares of Microsoft (MSFT) to rally to a $2 trillion valuation after earnings, the company instead surprised with a drop instead. The company saw revenue up 19 percent compared to a year ago, its highest level. And the company beat analyst expectations. But revenues from the company’s Azure division, where it does its cloud services, seemed a little light to shareholders. The end result is that, in spite of great earnings, ...
Read More
|