Tag Archives: amzn

Why You Should Watch FB, GOOGL, AMZN Ahead Of Earnings

Loading the player… Three top tech stocks are trading very near buy points as handles have formed on their bases: Facebook ( FB ), Google owner Alphabet ( GOOGL ) and Amazon ( AMZN ). And with each company reporting earnings in the coming weeks, these stocks deserve a watchful eye. JPMorgan noted Thursday that while FANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix ( NFLX ) and Google/Alphabet) have somewhat underperformed so far this year, their fundamentals are still solid. After rising nearly 18% from its February low, Facebook was trading 3% below a 117.09 buy point Thursday as it dipped less than 0.1%. If and when the stock breaks out, look for heavy volume, which signals institutional support. A catalyst for a Facebook breakout could be the company’s quarterly earnings report on April 27. Earnings are projected to jump 48%, marking a third straight quarter of faster growth. Revenue is also expected to rise 48%, a slowdown from the prior quarter’s 52% growth. Alphabet was trading 2% below a cup-with-handle buy point of 777.41, and closed down 1%. It’s 6% below its high reached in early February. Alphabet reports quarterly results on April 21. Analysts expect earnings growth of 23%, slower than the last quarter’s 28% gain. Revenue is estimated to climb 17%, slightly slower than the 18% gain it saw in Q4. Facebook and Alphabet are both members of the IBD 50 list of leading stocks and earn a highest-possible IBD Composite Rating of 99. Amazon has an 81 Composite Rating. The stock is trading 2% below a 603.34 buy point and 15% below its late December high. Shares fell 1.8% Thursday. The e-commerce giant’s bottom line is projected to skyrocket 583% when it issues its quarterly report in a couple of weeks. That would mark a second quarter of accelerating growth. The top line is estimated to climb 23%, faster than Q4’s 22% rise. Meanwhile, the fourth FANG stock, Netflix, is trading more than 20% below its high set in early December. Shares, which have been hitting resistance at the critical 200-day moving average, dipped 0.4% Thursday. Netflix reports its quarterly results on April 18.

Here’s How PayPal Hooked Rising E-Tail Startup Jet.com

PayPal ( PYPL ) subsidiary Braintree managed to nab e-tail startup Jet.com, a rising  Amazon.com ( AMZN ) rival, as a client because of its security features, pricing and service, a Jet.com executive said. Katie Finnegan, head of corporate development, told IBD that payments firm Braintree is “very startup friendly” and that the PayPal company has a “clear development roadmap.” “These were all purely commercial impulses,” Finnegan said, who added that Braintree was willing to implement security features that Jet.com was interested in. “ I think they’ve  been a good partner that has supported us as we’ve grown pretty exponentially since launch,” she said. Privately held Jet.com had a number of payments services options besides Braintree, including developing its own payments technology, which is the route Amazon.com has taken. Square ( SQ ), a digital cash register and payments processor, recently announced that it was adding functionality that would allow nearly any website to use it to process payments. Square’s clients are mostly small and midsize companies. New Jersey-based Jet.com raised $350 million in a Series B funding round that closed in November. The company has more than 3.5 million registered users as of January. The company declined to disclose sales figures. PayPal stock is down more than 2.5%, near 38, in afternoon trading on the stock market today . Shares are below a 40.03 entry and an earlier entry at 38.62.

Twitter Failure To Engage Mass Market Sparks Price-Target Cut

Twitter ( TWTR ) got a price-target cut Thursday from investment bank Morgan Stanley, citing falling user engagement and shrinking user growth at the social media site. Unlike its chief rival Facebook ( FB ), Twitter has yet to “break into the mass market,” wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak in an industry note Thursday. Remaining a niche service “makes us wary of Twitter’s addressable audience, and the question marks around the company’s ability to drive future user growth appear unlikely to go away in the near term,” he said. Nowak lowered his price target on Twitter stock to 16 from 18. Twitter stock was down a fraction in afternoon trading in the stock market today , near 17, but that was up 24% from its all-time low of 13.91 brushed on Feb 12. Morgan Stanley also trimmed its projections for Twitter’s user growth. Twitter will end this year with 307.1 million global users, the investment bank now says, down from its original projection of 310.6 million. The amount of time each user spends on the site is also declining, Nowak said, with those lower engagement levels “holding back revenue growth.” In Q4, Twitter’s U.S. mobile users averaged just 2.7 minutes daily on the site, said Nowak, compared to 40.5 mobile minutes for music streaming service Pandora Media ( P ), 30.3 minutes for Facebook and 8 minutes for YouTube, owned by Alphabet ( GOOGL ) subsidiary Google. That’s based on research from ComScore and Morgan Stanley. This year’s new users are expected to come mainly in the second half of the year, with major news events including the U.S. presidential election, the Rio Summer Olympics and the company’s recently announced deal  with the NFL. Twitter reportedly beat out Facebook, Alphabet,  Amazon.com ( AMZN ),  Verizon Communications ( VZ ) and Yahoo ( YHOO ) to capture digital rights to the NFL’s Thursday Night Football. It’s a high-profile foray into live programming for Twitter and for the NFL, which in the past has only streamed selected games. “An inability for these events to deliver would likely mean even more downside to our monthly active user estimates,” Nowak wrote.