Earnings Watch: Alibaba, Walmart and Target are about to show retailers’ view of the pandemic

Chinese government data showed slower overall growth for online purchases of physical goods in January and February, but the April growth numbers were back near pre-virus levels in what one analyst said was a positive sign for Alibaba. BABA, +1.18%

Many U.S. retailers are set to report earnings in the week ahead as well, though they’re still bearing the brunt of the pandemic. And unlike Alibaba, which does almost all its business online, retailers like Walmart Inc. WMT, +2.04% and Target Corp. TGT, +0.83% have physical stores to worry about.

U.S. retail companies likely have a limited sense of what the rest of the year looks like for their businesses, given questions about the trajectory of the COVID-19 outbreak and what governments will do in response. Investors can expect little in the way of forward-looking financial commentary, in keeping with a broader trend that’s spanned sectors.

Roughly half of the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.39% companies that made financial announcements by May 12 yanked their earnings forecasts, according to a recent Gartner analysis, and a fifth more revised their outlooks. Only 11% maintained their prior forecasts.

Analysts currently model a 42% drop in earnings for the second quarter, compared with their forecast for an 11% drop as of the end of March. They also project a 20.5% decline for the full calendar year, while they had been expecting only a 1.1% contraction as of March 31.

Most companies have declined to offer second-quarter forecasts, according to Gartner, and the overall dynamics with corporate guidance highlight the “depth of uncertainty company leaders are coping with at present,” Gartner Finance director Steve Adams said in a release.

Of those companies that entirely withdrew their forecasts, 20% were in the industrials sector, which “includes airlines, construction companies, and manufacturing companies—all of which are deeply struggling to forecast consumer demand across 2020,” Adams said. Industrial companies accounted for the largest proportion of rescinded outlooks, followed by the consumer discretionary sector, and the IT and financial sectors.

We’ll hear more from the technology sector in the week ahead with several big names on tap, including Nvidia Corp. NVDA, +5.73% , Expedia Group Inc. EXPE, +3.71% , and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. TTWO, +0.76% In retail, Alibaba and Walmart will be joined by Best Buy Co. Inc. BBY, +1.84% , Home Depot Inc. HD, +2.06% and others.

Here’s what to watch for as 24 members of the S&P 500 and two Dow Jones Industrial Average components post results.

A rush of retail

The coming week offers a glimpse at how U.S. retailers have been dealing with store closures and managing their shifts to e-commerce. Walmart, Home Depot, and Kohl’s Corp. KSS, +5.09% kick things off with their Tuesday morning reports, followed by Lowe’s Companies Inc. LOW, +3.07% and Target on Wednesday morning and L Brands Inc. LB, +3.62% Wednesday afternoon. Best Buy gives a read on personal-tech spending Thursday morning.

Walmart recently “accelerated the development” of a new two-hour delivery offering that will cost $10 on top of existing delivery charges. The company began a pilot of the service in 100 stores in April and planned to expand it to 1,000 in early May. Morgan Stanley analyst Simeon Gutman will look to see if that service helps Walmart attract more middle- and upper-income customers.

L Brands’s report is expected to show the “increasingly stark bifurcation between the performances of Bath & Body Works and Victoria’s Secret” given “increased soap demand,” wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Tiffany Kanaga. The company will also discuss its new strategic vision now that the deal for Sycamore Partners to buy Victoria’s Secret is off the table, with L Brands now planning for Victoria’s Secret to operate as a standalone company.

Alibaba is in an interesting position as it typically gives a financial outlook once a year in conjunction with its March-quarter report, which marks the end of the company’s fiscal year. The results Friday morning “are largely unimportant, with much more investor focus on the pace of recovery this quarter,” wrote Loop Capital’s Rob Sanderson.

“We would expect an unusually large range in FY21 guidance and would not be surprised if management postpones offering a full-year view,” Sanderson wrote.

Fellow Chinese internet names Baidu Inc. BIDU, +3.99% and iQiyi Inc. IQ, +2.68% report after the market closes Monday.

Enterprising

Nvidia will report a few weeks after peer Advanced Micro Devices Inc. pointed to “good activity” around cloud and large-enterprise spending. CEO Jensen Huang laid out his company’s plans for its next-generation data-center offerings this week and said that the products are already being produced and shipped, which should lead to interesting discussions about pace of deliveries and rollout.

“Overall while we will see how the consumer discretionary/gaming business holds up in the near term around COVID, we believe data-center, with current beneficial market trends and new product offerings can remain a source of relative support,” Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon wrote.

Fellow enterprise technology companies Palo Alto Networks Inc. PANW, +1.48% , Splunk Inc. SPLK, +3.06% , and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. HPE, -0.65% join Nvidia on Thursday afternoon.

Staying grounded

Expedia Group Inc. EXPE, +3.71% takes the stage Wednesday afternoon to discuss trends in the travel industry as JMP Securities analyst Andrew Boone expects that April marked the trough in demand.

“While Expedia announced preliminary results that were mostly worse than we expected, we are more focused on the company’s organizational changes that we expect will lead it to better compete for bookings as travel begins to recover,” he wrote.