US equities are rolling to kick off arguably the busiest earnings week of the quarter. Monday kicked off the last trading week for the month of July, and despite initial general weakness (especially on the Nasdaq), the biggest indexes are on track for their best month of the year. In the month of July so far, the best performer through Monday’s close is Qualcomm QCOMBath & Body Works BBWINXP Semiconductors NXPIKLA Corporation KLACand Netflix NFLX – while the worst performing index so far is Newmont NEMBaker Hughes (BKR), Verizon (VZ), AT&T (T), and ServiceNow NOW.
Just five companies control nearly a quarter of the S&P 500’s market cap, and all of them are expected to report earnings this week. The five companies – Apple AAPLAmazon AMZNMicrosoft MSFTAlphabet GOOGLEand Meta Platforms META – together are worth about $7.5B, even given the group’s extensive softness so far this year. In total, the companies generated revenues of approximately $320B last year, with total sales of more than $1.4T. Based on these numbers alone, it ranks the five companies 13th in GDP as a country, ahead of Australia and just behind Brazil.
In the coming quarter, all the managements of the five companies indicated looming recessionary fears, indicating to reduce costs or plans to do so soon. Apple reportedly plans to cut costs next year, while Microsoft announced it is closing open positions and making minor layoffs. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says we’re facing one of the worst downturns seen in recent history, and Alphabet recently announced that while it works to increase its year-end totals, the company will restructure its layoffs. This afternoon, Alphabet will kick off tech heavyweight reports. According to the Street consensus, earnings are expected to total around $1.28/share on revenue of $70.8B.
Microsoft will also report today after the close, with revenue expected at $52.4B on earnings of $2.29. Much of the focus has centered on its cloud computing business, which has been the main driver of its 255% stock price growth over the last half of a decade.
Other major names after today’s close include Chipotle CMGMondelez MDLZSkechers SKXTexas Instruments TXNVisa v, and Boyd Gaming (BYD). Notable names reporting on Wednesday are Meta Platforms METABoeing BABoston Scientific BSXBristol-Myers Squibb BMYKraft Heinz KHCSpotify SPOTFord FLam Research LRCXQualcomm QCOMand Etsy ETSY. Thursday was another day full of company earnings – with big tech names Amazon AMZNApple AAPLIntel INTCand Roku ROKU also scheduled to report.
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