For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – February 4, 2022 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Amazon.com AMZN, Snap SNAP, Ford F and Pinterest PINS.
– Zacks Here are highlights from Thursday’s Analyst Blog:
Huge Upswings on Big Q4 Beats: AMZN, SNAP, PINS and More
Market indexes this Thursday took a tumble this afternoon, plummeting downward to session lows before ebbing very late in regular trading. Even still: ugly — the Dow dropped -1.46%, -519 points; the S&P 500 was -2.44%; and the Nasdaq posted its worst single day of trading since October 2020, 538 points or -3.74%. Remarkably, these top indexes remain in the positive for the week, with one more trading day to go. The small-cap Russell 2000 fell another -1.90% today.
We’re almost seeing a mirror image of Wednesday’s trading day, which saw a big surge during normal trading hours, but falling off a table after-hours with bad quarterly news from Meta and Spotify. Following today’s deep crater of a trading day, we see green shoots on fresh Q4 earnings after the bell, including from one of the FAANG stocks.
I speak of Amazon.com, which is up +18% on a truly gigantic earnings beat on slightly lower revenues than expected and notably lower revenue guidance for Q1 2022. But that $27.74 per share looks awfully splashy, especially seeing the e-commerce giant was only expected to fetch $3.89 per share. The late-trading performance looks to, amazingly, have brought Amazon into positive territory year to date, after a very dismal January.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) net sales outperformed estimates to $17.8 billion from $17.4 billion expected. Operating Income was also better than anticipated, $5.3 billion versus $4.8 billion. The company will be raising its Prime membership service from $119 per year to $139. This, while revenue guidance for Q1 is light, might forge a path toward increased income in future quarters.
Snap is experiencing an even huger jump in post-market trading, up an astounding +49% on giant beats for both top and bottom lines in its Q4 release after Thursday’s bell: 22 cents per share is more than 3x the 6 cents expected, and almost 2.5x the year-ago 9 cents reported. Revenues in the quarter grew 42% year over year to $1.3 billion, above the $1.2 billion expected.
It’s the first quarter of net positive income for the parent of Snapchat, and this is not insignificant. Daily Active Users (DAU) are growing to 319 million, one million higher than expected. Guidance for DAU is now 328-330 million from consensus 328 million. Citing Meta’s lower DAU reported yesterday, it may stand to reason that customers are leaving Facebook and Instagram for platforms like Snapchat. At least a +41% bump on an earnings report would suggest such a thing.
Ford put up mixed Q4 numbers Thursday afternoon, with revenues of $35.3 billion topping the $35.02 billion in the Zacks consensus, but earnings of 26 cents per share was a big miss from the 43 cents expected. Shares are down -3.5% on the news. Interestingly for an auto manufacturer not named Tesla, Ford is looking toward future growth as a justification for owning its stock: the company still expects 600K EVs delivered by 2023.
AndPinterest is also enjoying a big bounce on its better-than-expected Q4 report, with earnings of 49 cents per share on $847 million in sales outpacing the 45 cents and $831 million expected by Zacks analysts for the quarter. Forward revenue guidance is in-line with expectations. This marks the seventh-straight earnings beat for Pinterest in its relatively short history as a publicly traded entity.
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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.
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Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report
Ford Motor Company (F): Free Stock Analysis Report
Snap Inc. (SNAP): Free Stock Analysis Report
Pinterest, Inc. (PINS): Free Stock Analysis Report
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