Earnings season has begun, and next Monday, Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCHW ) will release its latest quarterly results. The key to making smart investment decisions on stocks reporting earnings is to anticipate how they'll do before they announce results, leaving you fully prepared to respond quickly to whatever inevitable surprises arise. That way, you'll be less likely to make an uninformed kneejerk reaction to news that turns out to be exactly the wrong move.
Schwab has been a longtime leader in the discount brokerage space, taking advantage of the rise of the Internet to offer a wide array of services to customers. Yet the market meltdown hurt its core business in several ways, and the company has had to work hard to recover ever since. Let's take an early look at what's been happening with Schwab over the past quarter and what we're likely to see in its quarterly report.
Top 5 Internet Companies For 2014: IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI)
IAC/InterActiveCorp engages in the Internet business in the United States and internationally. The company�s Search segment develops, markets, and distributes various downloadable toolbars; provides search, reference, and content services through its destination search and other Websites, including Ask.com and Dictionary.com; and aggregates and integrates local advertising and content for distribution to publishers on Web and mobile platforms, as well as markets and distributes mobile applications through which it provides search and additional services. Its Match segment offers subscription-based and advertiser-supported online personals services through its Websites comprising Match.com, Chemistry.com, OurTime.com, BlackPeopleMeet.com, and OkCupid.com, as well as through mobile applications and Meetic-branded Websites. The company�s ServiceMagic segment offers Market Match service that matches consumers with service professionals; Exact Match service, which enables con sumers to review service professional profiles and select the service professional that meets their specific needs; and 1800Contractor.com, an online directory of service professionals. This segment also offers Website design and hosting services. Its Media and Other segment operates CollegeHumor.com, an online entertainment Website that targets young males; Vimeo, a Website on which users can upload, share, and view video; and Pronto.com, a comparison search engine. This segment also engages in the creation of video content for various distribution platforms; and operates as an Internet retailer of footwear and related apparel and accessories, as well as focuses on multimedia business. The company was formerly known as InterActiveCorp and changed its name to IAC/InterActiveCorp in July 2004. IAC/InterActiveCorp was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Lisa Springer]
IAC/InteractiveCorp. (NASDAQ: IACI) is perhaps the forgotten Internet company. This $4 billion Web property gets very little love and respect from Wall St. because it is such a smaller competitor and it is considered a hodge-podge of Web properties. It has media, shopping and the Ask.com search engine, and that search is said to be the glue that keeps it together. Its Ask.com is still one of the largest search engines running, at number four in most rankings, but it is incredibly small when compared to Google and even compared to Microsoft along with Yahoo! Its own efforts to become a content destination have been met with a mixed reception, and the stock chart shows no real read either way at the start of 2013. What is amazing is that the company has grown without many investors paying attention.
IAC/InteractiveCorp shares trade at $46.00, and its 52-week range is $40.87 to $55.57. Analysts have a consensus value of just over $60.00, for an implied upside of close to 30%, and IAC trades at only about 12-times earnings. Is this a Web value stock in the making?
Top 5 Internet Companies For 2014: eBay Inc.(EBAY)
eBay Inc. provides online platforms, services, and tools to help individuals and merchants in online and mobile commerce and payments in the United States and internationally. Its Marketplaces segment operates ecommerce platform eBay.com; vertical shopping sites, such as StubHub, Fashion, Motors, and Half.com; and classifieds Websites, including Den Bl�Avis, BilBasen, Gumtree, Kijiji, LoQUo, Marktplaats.nl, mobile.de, Alamaula, Rent.com, eBay Anuncios, eBay Kleinanzeigen, and eBay Annunci, as well as provides advertising services. The company?s Payments segment offers payment and settlement services for consumers and merchants on and off eBay Websites and other merchant Websites. This segment operates PayPal, which enables individuals and businesses to send and receive payments online and through mobile devices; Bill Me Later that enables the United States merchants to offer, the United States consumers to obtain, credit at the point of sale for ecommerce and mobile tra nsactions; Zong, which allows users with mobile phones to purchase digital goods and have the transactions charged to their phone bill; and BillSAFE that enables customers pay for purchases upon receipt of an invoice. Its GSI segment offers an ecommerce services suite for enterprise clients that operate in general merchandise categories, including apparel, sporting goods, toys and baby, health and beauty, and home; and marketing services comprising full-service digital agency, enterprise email marketing, mobile advertising, affiliate marketing, advertisement retargeting, and in-depth analytics services. The company also offers X.commerce platform that provides software developers access to the company?s applications programming interfaces to develop functionality for various merchants; and Magento Connect, which allows developers to market and sell add-on functionality and solutions to merchants that use a Magento storefront. eBay Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquarter ed in San Jose, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jeanine Poggi]
eBay's biggest story continues to be its PayPal business.
The payments business pushed eBay's fourth-quarter earnings ahead of expectations. During the quarter the e-commerce company earned $559 million, or 42 cents a share, compared with $1.36 billion, or 1.02 a share in the year-ago period. Excluding costs related to the sale of its Skype business, eBay actually earned 52 cents a share. Revenue climbed 5% to $2.5 billion. Analysts were calling for a profit of 47 cents a share on revenue of $2.48 billion.
This marks the 18th consecutive quarter eBay surpassed EPS estimates.
- [By Chuck]
Legg Mason had $259 Million of eBay shares. The stock gained 47.1% during the past year and outperformed the SPY, which returned 21.5% since then. Legg Mason reduced their eBay holdings by 26.4% during the 4th quarter of 2010. Stock returned 23.8% since then, outperforming the SPY by 18 percentage points.
- [By Sy_Harding]
eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) is starting out 2013 very close to its 52-week high. The company continues to dominate online auctions hands down, but the real value is in the PayPal and transactions unit. Investors have a hard time judging eBay now due to a perception that every person who will auction things already has signed up. Prior changes in customer and merchant service fees have also not been popular. Still, with the stock close to a 52-week high and not far from an all-time high, it is hard to say much bad about the company at all.
eBay trades at $53.50, its 52-week trading range is $29.89 to $53.70 and its market cap is $69 billion. Our area of concern is that eBay’s consensus price target of $56.03 leaves an implied upside of less than 5%. eBay trades at about 19.5-times expected 2013 earnings.
- [By Tamara Rutter]
Online marketplace eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY ) has also soared this year thanks to strength from its PayPal business. The stock is up more than 66% year-to-date and shows no sign of slowing down. The company's third-quarter revenue spiked 15% to $3.4 billion, as eBay continued to generate significant growth in both its payments business as well as its online marketplace business.
Looking to the future, eBay is heavily investing in mobile technology. In fact, the company's smartphone applications have been downloaded more than 100 million times worldwide. Meanwhile PayPal, which is eBay's fastest-growing business, "is now accepted by more than 60 of the top 100 retailers in the United States," according to research from Morningstar.
Top 5 Performing Companies To Own In Right Now: Symantec Corporation(SYMC)
Symantec Corporation provides security, storage, and systems management solutions internationally. The company?s Consumer segment delivers Internet security, PC tune-up, and online backup solutions and services to individual users and home offices. Its Security and Compliance segment provides solutions for endpoint security and management, compliance, messaging management, data loss prevention, encryption, and authentication services to large, medium, and small-sized businesses, as well as offers solutions through its software-as-a-service (SaaS) security offerings. This segment?s products enable customers to secure, provision, and remotely manage their laptops, PCs, mobile devices, and servers. The company?s Storage and Server Management segment provides storage and server management, backup, archiving, and data protection solutions across heterogeneous storage and server platforms, as well as solutions delivered through its SaaS offerings to large, medium, and small-s ized businesses. Symantec?s Services segment offers implementation services and solutions, including consulting, business critical services, education, and managed security services. The company also provides various enterprise support offerings, such as annual maintenance support contracts, including content, upgrades, and technical support. It sells its products through its eCommerce platform, as well as through distributors, direct marketers, Internet-based resellers, system builders, ISPs, and retail locations worldwide. Symantec markets and sells its products through distributors, retailers, direct marketers, Internet-based resellers, original equipment manufacturers, system builders, and Internet service providers; and its e-commerce channels, as well as direct sales force, value-added and large account resellers, and system integrators. The company was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jonas Elmerraji]
Symantec (SYMC) is having a better year in 2012. Shares of the $13 billion computer security firm have rallied around 18% year-to-date, besting the broad market's performance by a slight margin. Much of Symantec's performance came in the late Summer, when the stock gapped up and started moving higher extremely quickly.
But that straight-up trajectory wasn't sustainable, so shares have spent the last couple of months consolidating sideways in a price channel. Sideways consolidation isn't a bad thing -- it just means that investors are trying to catch their breath after a big volatile run. With resistance coming in at $19.25, buyers have a pretty well defined signal that the rest is over for SYMC and another rally leg is beginning. I wouldn't recommend buying until then.
Remember, these setups all come down to supply and demand from buyers and sellers. After the huge push higher at the end of the summer, sellers started coming in at $19.25 -- it was a price where sellers were more eager to sell and take gains than buyers were to keep buying. That's why the breakout above $19.25 is a buy signal; a breakout indicates that buyers have gained enough strength to absorb all of the excess supply above $19.25.
Without that upside barrier, this stock should be able to keep running higher…
Top 5 Internet Companies For 2014: Amazon.com Inc.(AMZN)
Amazon.com, Inc. operates as an online retailer in North America and internationally. It operates retail Web sites, including amazon.com and amazon.ca. The company serves consumers through its retail Web sites and focuses on selection, price, and convenience. It also offers programs that enable sellers to sell their products on its Web sites, and their own branded Web sites. In addition, the company serves developer customers through Amazon Web Services, which provides access to technology infrastructure that developers can use to enable virtually various type of business. Further, it manufactures and sells the Kindle e-reader. Additionally, the company provides fulfillment; miscellaneous marketing and promotional agreements, such as online advertising; and co-branded credit cards. Amazon.com, Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Karim]
Jeff Bezos is a very smart and committed CEO. They have a stranglehold as the world’s largest online retailer. It makes a lot of sense to buy stuff online and the younger generations are getting more and more comfortable doing so. The logistics and economies of scale make it almost impossible for any other company to come into this space. The stock price has risen considerably lately but there is still a lot more room for growth. When they start selling their tablets with the ability to sell the largely discounted e-books, expect the stock to jump. All the readers out there will love to buy this new tablet and they are continually making the online shopping experience better, cheaper, and easier. People are now even buying from their mobile phones with the Amazon App. Solid long term hold.
- [By Dennis Slothower]
Miller had about $270 Million of Amazon.com shares at the end of December. The stock returned 60.8% during the past 1 year, beating the SPY by a huge margin. The stock holdings were reduced by 30% during the last 3 months of 2010. AMZN returned 5% since then, 0.8 percentage points less than SPY’s return. AMZN is Miller’s best long-term pick. Facebook billionaire Chase Coleman and Roberto Mignone has large AMZN holdings as well.
Top 5 Internet Companies For 2014: Internap Network Services Corporation(INAP)
Internap Network Services Corporation provides information technology (IT) infrastructure services. The company operates through two segments, Data Center Services and IP Services. The Data Center Services segment provides colocation services, which include physical space for hosting customers? IT infrastructure network and other equipment, as well as offers associated services, such as redundant power and network connectivity, environmental controls, and security. This segment also offers managed hosting services that enable its customers to own and manage the software applications and content, as well as provides and maintains the hardware, operating system, collocation, and bandwidth. The IP services segment provides patented performance Internet protocol (IP) service; XIP acceleration-as-a-service solution; and flow control platform, a premise-based intelligent routing hardware product for customers, who run their own multiple network architectures, known as multi-homi ng. In addition, this segment offers content delivery network services that enable its customers to stream and distribute media and content, such as video, audio software, and applications to audiences through points of presence, as well as offers capacity-on-demand services to handle events and unanticipated traffic spikes. Internap Network Services Corporation provides its services and products through 76 IP service points, which include 20 CDN POPs and 1 standalone CDN POP, as well as through 37 data centers across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. It serves the entertainment and media, financial services, business services, software, hosting and information technology infrastructure, and telecommunications industries. The company was founded in 1996 and is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Harding]
Internap Network Services Corporation is an Internet solutions and data Center Company providing a suite of network optimization and delivery services and products that manage deliver and distribute applications. Its EPS forecast for the current year is 0.12 and next year is 0.21. According to consensus estimates, its topline is expected to grow 2.85% current year and 9.34% next year. It is trading at a forward P/E of 34.33. Out of eight analysts covering the company, three are positive and have buy recommendations and five have hold ratings.
No comments:
Post a Comment