Amazon Earnings
Amazon reported revenue and earnings of $87.44 billion and $6.47 a share, better than the Zacks Consensus Estimates of $86.00 Billion and $3.98 a share.
North America sales rose 22%, helped by one-day delivery while international grew 14%, impacted by the Japanese consumption tax and the timing of the Diwali season in India. AWS was up 34%, allaying fears that increased competition from Microsoft MSFT was hurting business. Microsoft did have nearly double the growth rate, but its revenue is estimated to be at about half of Amazon’s.” data-reactid=”16″>Amazon AMZN earnings, product-related news, executive changes and smartphone shipment details from IDC are covered in this roundup. Here are the details-
Amazon Earnings
Amazon reported revenue and earnings of $87.44 billion and $6.47 a share, better than the Zacks Consensus Estimates of $86.00 Billion and $3.98 a share.
North America sales rose 22%, helped by one-day delivery while international grew 14%, impacted by the Japanese consumption tax and the timing of the Diwali season in India. AWS was up 34%, allaying fears that increased competition from Microsoft MSFT was hurting business. Microsoft did have nearly double the growth rate, but its revenue is estimated to be at about half of Amazon’s.
<p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)–sm Mt(0.8em)–sm" type="text" content="Another piece that’s growing into a significant business for Amazon to compete with the likes of Netflix NFLX and Apple AAPL is the subscription and advertising business. The Prime membership fees (the company now has 150 million paid members, up from 100 million in April 2018) and digital content subscriptions contained in this piece, grew 32% while other (mostly advertising) grew 41%.
Investments in fulfillment may be expected to increase further as it continues to bring one-day delivery to more users. The growing subscription business is likely to mitigate margin impacts from increased shipping costs.” data-reactid=”17″>Another piece that’s growing into a significant business for Amazon to compete with the likes of Netflix NFLX and Apple AAPL is the subscription and advertising business. The Prime membership fees (the company now has 150 million paid members, up from 100 million in April 2018) and digital content subscriptions contained in this piece, grew 32% while other (mostly advertising) grew 41%.
Investments in fulfillment may be expected to increase further as it continues to bring one-day delivery to more users. The growing subscription business is likely to mitigate margin impacts from increased shipping costs.
<p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)–sm Mt(0.8em)–sm" type="text" content="Apple Map Redesign
Apple announced it was redesigning the maps within its Maps app back in June 2018 and the company has now started a broad rollout across the U.S. It’s principally adding greater detail into roads, parking spots, parks, etc and also includes indoor maps of airports and shopping malls.” data-reactid=”26″>Apple Map Redesign
Apple announced it was redesigning the maps within its Maps app back in June 2018 and the company has now started a broad rollout across the U.S. It’s principally adding greater detail into roads, parking spots, parks, etc and also includes indoor maps of airports and shopping malls.
<p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)–sm Mt(0.8em)–sm" type="text" content="The new maps are expected to launch in Europe later this year. Apple Maps has a strong competitor in Google Maps, which is great because that’s what drives a company to do more.
News Corp Counters Google, Facebook
The long-awaited knewz.com from News Corp has launched in “beta” and the countdown has started to show that its criticisms of news aggregating channels like Alphabet’s GOOGL Google and Facebook FB were justified.
Notwithstanding the cluttered look, it is presenting news from a large number of publishers (currently 400, more are planned) so that smaller publishers don’t get relegated to less attractive positions, the publishers’ logo is clearly displayed and original news providers receive a better position than others. Last year, Google also adjusted its algorithm to improve ranks of original stories on the search engine results page.
The other thing knewz is focusing on is the perspective of providers. The small group of its curators is ensuring the presentation of all views, right, left and anything in between, so it is “free of filter bubbles and narrow-minded nonsense.”
But the fun won’t start until it tries to make money, because ads will bring an entirely new dimension to the fight.
Off-Facebook Activity Tool
Probably as part of its measures to comply with California’s recently enacted Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Facebook has launched an Off-Facebook activity tool that enables users to delete the information the company has collected on them when they visit other websites and apps. This data is collected to help Facebook target ads better. The company says that while this will not reduce the number of ads the person sees, it will make the ads less personalized.
Other measures may be afoot because the act also imposes restrictions on the sale of data to third parties. It also gives users the right to ask Facebook to delete their data.
The situation is of course far from satisfactory because rather than the company having to ask explicitly to collect data, the user is required to request deletion. The EU’s GDPR is more stringent.
This may be partly what management referred to on the earnings call as increased regulatory pressure on revenue. Because while the deletion of data will make ads less personalized, users can still suffer through them. But reduced relevance will bring fewer clicks and so lower revenues to Facebook.
UPS Partnering Waymo
UPS just reported a strong quarter, as its number one partner Amazon had a record quarter. But the company isn’t sitting on its success. Package delivery has become a very important business since everything from cosmetics to groceries started getting home-delivered. So the company has partnered with Alphabet’s Waymo to test its automated Chrysler Pacifica minivans to deliver articles from its stores to its sorting facilities in Phoenix.
Global Smartphone Shipments
Apple became the leading global smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter with a 20% market share, up from 18.3% in the year-ago quarter. Samsung was unable to grow its 18.8% share, losing its lead to Apple. Huawei, Xiaomi and OPPO took the next three positions, acquiring market shares of 15.2%, 8.9% and 8.3%, respectively. While Huwaei’s share shrank from 16.2% in the year-ago quarter, Xiaomi and OPPO jumped from 6.7% and 7.9%.
Apple’s success was attributed to strong demand for the 11, combined with healthy trade-in promotions and financing plans that made the new device more accessible to a wider variety of consumers than ever before.
Samsung typically peaks in the third quarter, but its devices did reasonably well, according to IDC. New handsets will drive stronger sales in the current quarter.
Huawei remained strong in China but was notably weak in Europe, where it’s trying to build a presence after problems in the U.S. But it seems that the effect of the trade war has had a far-reaching effect on the company.
Xiaomi’s strength continues to come from India where a strong Diwali season helped sales. For 2019, Samsung continues to lead with a 21.6% global share, followed by Huawei with 17.6%, Apple with 13.9%, Xiaomi 9.2%, OPPO 8.3% and others 29.4%.
Google Cloud Executive Moves to Dropbox
A Google Cloud VP Olivia Nottebohm has been named the chief operating officer at file-syncing software maker Dropbox. Now, as Dropbox aims higher with its workspace app called Spaces that combines Dropbox with productivity apps, it is bringing in somebody who has the experience of selling to small and medium businesses. The COO position has been vacant since Setember 2018 when Dennis Woodside left the company.
IBM Has New CEO
Longtime CEO of IBM, Virginia Rometty has been replaced with Arvind Krishna, an IBM veteran who played a big role in its acquisition of Red Hat. He was behind many of IBM’s newer technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud and quantum computing and also strongly advocated a hybrid cloud approach to win in the current environment.
Lisa Su on Cisco Board
Cisco has appointed AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su to its board of directors. "Lisa is an accomplished business leader with deep expertise in the semiconductor industry," said Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO, Cisco. "We look forward to her contributions to Cisco’s board and our business as we continue to develop ground breaking technologies, and a new Internet for the 5G era that will help our customers innovate faster than ever before."
Google Shopping Executive Joins Coinbase
Google Shopping VP Surojit Chatterjee may have been with Google for 11 years, but it’s his 2-year stint as product leader at Indian online shop Flipkart that got him the chief product officer position at Coinbase. His role is to make it easy to use cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services, especially in cross-border commerce.
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Would you like to see the updated picks from our best market-beating strategies? From 2017 through 2019, while the S&P 500 gained and impressive +53.6%, five of our strategies returned +65.8%, +97.1%, +118.0%, +175.7% and even +186.7%.
This outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. From 2000 – 2019, while the S&P averaged +6.0% per year, our top strategies averaged up to +54.7% per year.
See their latest picks free >>” data-reactid=”27″>The new maps are expected to launch in Europe later this year. Apple Maps has a strong competitor in Google Maps, which is great because that’s what drives a company to do more.
News Corp Counters Google, Facebook
The long-awaited knewz.com from News Corp has launched in “beta” and the countdown has started to show that its criticisms of news aggregating channels like Alphabet’s GOOGL Google and Facebook FB were justified.
Notwithstanding the cluttered look, it is presenting news from a large number of publishers (currently 400, more are planned) so that smaller publishers don’t get relegated to less attractive positions, the publishers’ logo is clearly displayed and original news providers receive a better position than others. Last year, Google also adjusted its algorithm to improve ranks of original stories on the search engine results page.
The other thing knewz is focusing on is the perspective of providers. The small group of its curators is ensuring the presentation of all views, right, left and anything in between, so it is “free of filter bubbles and narrow-minded nonsense.”
But the fun won’t start until it tries to make money, because ads will bring an entirely new dimension to the fight.
Off-Facebook Activity Tool
Probably as part of its measures to comply with California’s recently enacted Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Facebook has launched an Off-Facebook activity tool that enables users to delete the information the company has collected on them when they visit other websites and apps. This data is collected to help Facebook target ads better. The company says that while this will not reduce the number of ads the person sees, it will make the ads less personalized.
Other measures may be afoot because the act also imposes restrictions on the sale of data to third parties. It also gives users the right to ask Facebook to delete their data.
The situation is of course far from satisfactory because rather than the company having to ask explicitly to collect data, the user is required to request deletion. The EU’s GDPR is more stringent.
This may be partly what management referred to on the earnings call as increased regulatory pressure on revenue. Because while the deletion of data will make ads less personalized, users can still suffer through them. But reduced relevance will bring fewer clicks and so lower revenues to Facebook.
UPS Partnering Waymo
UPS just reported a strong quarter, as its number one partner Amazon had a record quarter. But the company isn’t sitting on its success. Package delivery has become a very important business since everything from cosmetics to groceries started getting home-delivered. So the company has partnered with Alphabet’s Waymo to test its automated Chrysler Pacifica minivans to deliver articles from its stores to its sorting facilities in Phoenix.
Global Smartphone Shipments
Apple became the leading global smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter with a 20% market share, up from 18.3% in the year-ago quarter. Samsung was unable to grow its 18.8% share, losing its lead to Apple. Huawei, Xiaomi and OPPO took the next three positions, acquiring market shares of 15.2%, 8.9% and 8.3%, respectively. While Huwaei’s share shrank from 16.2% in the year-ago quarter, Xiaomi and OPPO jumped from 6.7% and 7.9%.
Apple’s success was attributed to strong demand for the 11, combined with healthy trade-in promotions and financing plans that made the new device more accessible to a wider variety of consumers than ever before.
Samsung typically peaks in the third quarter, but its devices did reasonably well, according to IDC. New handsets will drive stronger sales in the current quarter.
Huawei remained strong in China but was notably weak in Europe, where it’s trying to build a presence after problems in the U.S. But it seems that the effect of the trade war has had a far-reaching effect on the company.
Xiaomi’s strength continues to come from India where a strong Diwali season helped sales. For 2019, Samsung continues to lead with a 21.6% global share, followed by Huawei with 17.6%, Apple with 13.9%, Xiaomi 9.2%, OPPO 8.3% and others 29.4%.
Google Cloud Executive Moves to Dropbox
A Google Cloud VP Olivia Nottebohm has been named the chief operating officer at file-syncing software maker Dropbox. Now, as Dropbox aims higher with its workspace app called Spaces that combines Dropbox with productivity apps, it is bringing in somebody who has the experience of selling to small and medium businesses. The COO position has been vacant since Setember 2018 when Dennis Woodside left the company.
IBM Has New CEO
Longtime CEO of IBM, Virginia Rometty has been replaced with Arvind Krishna, an IBM veteran who played a big role in its acquisition of Red Hat. He was behind many of IBM’s newer technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud and quantum computing and also strongly advocated a hybrid cloud approach to win in the current environment.
Lisa Su on Cisco Board
Cisco has appointed AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su to its board of directors. “Lisa is an accomplished business leader with deep expertise in the semiconductor industry,” said Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO, Cisco. “We look forward to her contributions to Cisco’s board and our business as we continue to develop ground breaking technologies, and a new Internet for the 5G era that will help our customers innovate faster than ever before.”
Google Shopping Executive Joins Coinbase
Google Shopping VP Surojit Chatterjee may have been with Google for 11 years, but it’s his 2-year stint as product leader at Indian online shop Flipkart that got him the chief product officer position at Coinbase. His role is to make it easy to use cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services, especially in cross-border commerce.
Today’s Best Stocks from Zacks
Would you like to see the updated picks from our best market-beating strategies? From 2017 through 2019, while the S&P 500 gained and impressive +53.6%, five of our strategies returned +65.8%, +97.1%, +118.0%, +175.7% and even +186.7%.
This outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. From 2000 – 2019, while the S&P averaged +6.0% per year, our top strategies averaged up to +54.7% per year.
See their latest picks free >>
<p class="canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)–sm Mt(0.8em)–sm" type="text" content="Click to get this free report Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) : Free Stock Analysis Report Facebook, Inc. (FB) : Free Stock Analysis Report Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research” data-reactid=”28″>Click to get this free report Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) : Free Stock Analysis Report Facebook, Inc. (FB) : Free Stock Analysis Report Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research
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