JP Morgan All Set to Report Second Quarter Earnings Today

The article discusses the earnings whispers for JP Morgan, as the firm prepares to release its second-quarter results before the opening bell today.

JP Morgan Chase & Co. is scheduled to report its second quarter earnings for fiscal year 2015 today. Both the top line and bottom line estimates look positive for the bank, as it most likely to surpass the consensus forecasts for both these figures in this quarter.                                 

According to Earningswhispers.com says JP Morgan is most likely to post earnings of $1.50 per share for the quarter, surpassing the Street estimates by almost 0.05%. On the other hand, Estimize.com estimates average revenue of approximately $24.67 billion for the period, expecting the company to report more than the Street estimate of $241 million. The Street believes the bank to report a year over year decline of 8.98% in earnings and 3.63% year over year decline in sales for the second quarter.               

JP Morgan Chase & Co. reported earnings of $1.60 per share for first quarter of fiscal year 2015, beating the analysts’ expectation by nearly $309 million. During the last eight quarters, the bank was able to beat the Streets estimates seven times, and has surpassed the top line forecasts 5 times.

Majority of analysts are bullish on the stock of JP Morgan. Out of 40 analysts having coverage on JP Morgan stock, 29 gave it a Buy, while the remaining assigned a Hold. The analysts gave an average twelve month stock price target of $71.91, demonstrating an upside potential of 5.61% over the latest closing price.

According to some analysts, the company is expected to report earnings of $1.45 per share, a decline of 7.4% year over year. Earnings per share in the previous quarter were reported at $1.58. On the other hand, revenue is most likely to arrive t $24.42 billion, a decrease of almost 100 basis points. In the previous quarter, it was recorded at $24.06 billion. In the meantime, operating income is forecasted to be $9.02 billion.

JP Morgan’s consumer and community banking segment is most likely to generate robust results this period, however the investment banking segment is most likely to see revenue decline.

With an optimistic sentiment in the stock market, JP Morgan Chase & Co. stock was up 1.42% to $69.06 at market close on Tuesday July 14. As per Bloomberg terminal, 40 analysts covered the bank stock, out of which 29 suggested a Buy. The investment bank has 52 week low and high of $67.76 and $69.10, respectively. The company has $248.90 billion of market capitalization.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. downgrades Deere & Company stock

JPMorgan downgrades Deere & Company to Underweight from Neutral, reducing the stock price target from $84 from $90, quoting  liquidity crunch for farmers as the major reason.

JP Morgan revealed the meeting details with several participants of industry including farmers, dealers and industry experts. The sell side company demoted Deere & Company to Underweight from Neutral mentioning difficult times for the industry and said that the equipment manufacturer of agricultural industry is expected to get impacted sharply. The firm also reduces its stock price target to $84 from previous $90.

While talking about the situation of farmers’, Ann Duignan analyst at JP Morgan said, “We believe it was clear from what we heard that the industry is currently in dire straits with the potential for a liquidity crunch for farmers into 2016.” Moreover she said that the dealers also acknowledged that there are a lot of used HP Deere tractors in company’s inventory, and this is expected to impact the sales of new tractors in the coming years.

Ms. Duignan also revised her earnings guidance for Deer &Co. as they believe that the agriculture industry will be under pressure in the coming year. She cut her fiscal year 2015 earnings estimate to $5.2 from $5.28 per share. She also reduced her fiscal year 2016 earnings estimate to $4.2 from $5.27 per share.

Recently, the company also noted that the United States Department of Agriculture’s grain stock, total 7.75 billion bushels of US corn stock increased by 11% in year over year basis. Majority of farmers kept the last year’s crop, hopeful that the price will reach a new and attractive level, but as they shrub their corn in the perfect condition, the mixture of these fresh crops with old burdensome stocks is expected to decrease the prices.

As per Tractorhouse.com, there are over 6 thousand Deere, 175 HP+ tractors used less than 4 years available in North America for sale. This shows roughly 60% of altogether used 175 HP+ tractors. The company applies 20 times multiple on its expected fiscal year 2016 earnings in order to reach $84 of new stock price target.

As per the survey conducted by Bloomberg, Out of 23 analysts, 5 gave Buy rating, 10 of them assigned Hold rating, while remaining 8 recommended Sell rating to the stock of the company. The twelve month consensus mid-point price target stood at $85.33 that shows a downside potential of almost 4.3% as compared to current stock price of the company.

The stock price was down 3.34% to $89.13 at market close on Friday May 15.

Plug Power First Quarter earnings report for FY15

Plug Power reported its first quarter earnings and posted earnings per share of 7 cents in line with analysts estimate.

Plug Power reported its first quarter earnings for fiscal year 15 on Monday May11. The company posted 7 cents in earnings per share in line with Thomson Reuters consensus forecast of 7 cents per share, as reported by Stock Market News. The company also reported $9.40 million n revenue for the period as compared to $18.13 million of consensus estimate. The revenue of the company was up 68% on year over year basis.

For t full fiscal year 2015, the company provided revenue guidance of $100 million against consensus forecast of $103 million. The fuel cell manufacturer said that these sales will incline throughout the year with almost 35% to 40% of the yearly revenue estimated in the first six months of current fiscal year.

Chief Executive Officer and President of Plug Power, Andy Marsh said, “The backlog for our products and services continued to grow in the first quarter. This has provided us with a high level of confidence in meeting this year’s financial projections”.

During the first quarter, Plug Power earned $9.4 million in revenue; this includes 1 hydrogen station and 265 GenDrive units. Furthmore, the company shipped almost 419 GenDrive units and progress its construction on 7 different hydrogen fueling stations. The amount of these shipments will be reflected in revenue part in the Q2 of fiscal year 2015. The Company shipped around 175 units out of these 419 GenDrive units to a new customer.

Related to GenCare services, Plug Power had around 5,500 unit of GenDrive and 8 infrastructure sites of hydrogen as of March 31 service contract against 3,000 unit of GenDrive and no hydrogen infrastructure sites in the similar quarter last year.

Total administrative costs for the quarter were $10.7 million compared to $5.1 million in the prior year quarter.

Plug Power stock opened at $2.43 on Monday. The company has twelve month low and high of $2.40 and $6.47, respectively. The stock has 50 day and 200 day moving average of $2 and $3, respectively. Plug Power had $421.38 of market capitalization.

Plug Power stock was up 4.94% to $2.55 at market close on Monday.

eBay Inc. first quarter fiscal year 2015 Earnings Preview by Cantor Fitzgerald

Cantor Fitzgerald expects eBay Inc. to report in-line first-quarter results, while reiterating a Buy rating on the stock.

On Monday in a research note, Cantor Fitzgerald restates its rating of Buy on the stock of eBay with a price target of $60. The sell side company supposes the company to post its first quarter financial results as per the Street’s estimation. The e-commerce giant is all set to report its 1QFY15 earnings on Wednesday APRIL 22^nd after market close.

Youssef Squali an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald mentioned we expect 1Q:15 results to come in line with muted Street expectations given the maturing auction business.” He thinks that the exchange rate volatility will put substantial pressure on the quarter earnings, and the currency impact is likely to continue towards the next quarter as well.

Cantor Fitzgerald expects the company to post around $4.39 billion of revenue somewhat less than the $4.43 consensus estimate in the first quarter. The research firm believes company’s earnings per share to be in line with consensus estimate of 70 cents. The sell-side firm said, “We expect revenue growth to dip ~560 bps Q/Q to 3% Y/Y, largely reflecting F/X headwinds and continued underperformance of Marketplaces.”

Mr. Squali decreased his EPS estimate for fiscal year 2015 to $3.09 from $3.26 less than consensus forecast of $3.10, mainly due to currency headwinds. He believes that eBay will report $3.41 EPS in FY2016 more than consensus projection of $3.39.

Furthermore, Cantor is optimistic that the spinoff of its payments unit PayPal will unlock great value for the e commerce company. The firm supposes eBay to release robust 2^nd quarter guidance, and update the whole year future guidance including the spinoff of PayPal. EBay is all set to finish the spinoff later this year.

The management of EBay Inc. expects 1QFY15 revenue to be in the range of $4.35 to $4.45 billion down by 10.6% from previous quarter slightly less than $4.61 billion of Zacks estimate.

As per the analysts polled by Bloomberg, 23 assigned a rating of Buy with 21 hold ratings, however only four have rated the stock of eBay as Sell. The twelve month consensus price target on the company stock is $54.64 which reflects 6.9% of upward potential compared to current stock price.

EBay stock is up by 0.50% and trading at $56.07. The e-commerce has market capitalization of $67.65 billion.

Netflix Inc. first quarter FY15 earnings release

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Netflix Inc. reported its first quarter earnings on April 15, with net addition of 4.9 million new subscribers.

The January to March 2015 quarter was good for Netflix in terms of subscription. International, domestic and entire streaming accounts reached 40 million, 20 million and 60 million, respectively.

Netflix Inc. in the first quarter 2015, added almost 4.9 million more members to its streaming network compared to previous quarter, the company now have around 62.27 million members. However, the company was targeting 4.1 million new subscribers but it was able to cross the target.

It’s the consistent fourth quarter in which the streaming giant was able to add more international subscribers than domestic. The stateside still contains 70% of revenue.

Revenue of the company rose by 24% since the previous year quarter to reach $1.57 billion, which is according to the estimate by Wall Street’s top line forecast, but reported outcomes were held back due to falling foreign currency. Company’s net profit of $0.38 per share was much less than analysts’ estimate of $0.69 and its previous quarter net profit of $0.86 per share , but the reason for this miss was mainly because of exchange rate volatility. The company would have pocketed a $0.77 per share profit for foreign exchange volatility.

The better than expected addition of subscription did not come as a surprise, as last week Netflix tweeted “Netflix members watched 10 billion hours last quarter. That’s about 905,892,833 seasons of @HouseofCards”

Things for Netflix are moving into the right direction. The Online Streaming company is seeking to extend its streaming base by almost 2.5 million in the next quarter. That number does not look attractive after adding almost twice of this in the first quarter, the reason is past results shows that the 2^nd quarter is usually sleepy for the company. It added only 1.7 million users in the prior year second quarter.

After the announcement of first quarter result, Netflix stock went down in the first 45 minutes on Wednesday. The stock was 3.25% down to $475.46. However, during after hour trading it went up by almost $59.

Netflix stock closed at $475.46 after falling by 0.68 on Wednesday. The Los Gatos based company has 52 week low and high of $471.55 and $480.93, respectively.

International Business Machines stock; Time to buy?

Is IBM a good investment for the long term or not.Perhaps it is one of a few "fairly valued" companies in this market at the moment.

IBM stock has plunged by 16% in the last 12 months, and gained 9% by under performing the S&P index 500.however, after that douse, majority of shareholders may be speculating I the stock quotes of IBM is valuable long term buy or not.

During the past year, IBM  sprawling price to earnings has vary in the range of 11.5 too 15.5.at the moment, it currently stood at 13x, which makes it cheaper than that of industry fellows Accenture and Microsoft , which were trading at 19x and 17x times respectively. It is somewhat higher than Hewlett Packard with price to earnings ratio of 12.5. But, the company stock is still trading at S&P 500 on discount which is 19 times.

The company’s did not have high expectations regarding its earnings in future. According to Thomson Reuter’s projection, company’s five years price to growth ratio is 2.2, which is similar to Microsoft’s. HP and Accenture PEG ratio is slightly less than IBMs and Microsoft’s of 2.1 and 1.9.However, all these statistics related to ratios shows that none of these companies will be able to report stable earnings growth in the coming years.

The New York based company vital asset is its increasing cloud business that helped the company to grow its revenue by 60% annually to almost $7 billion in last year.

In the year 2013, Softlayer Tech –a cloud computing firm was acquired by IBM for around $2 billion.

In 2014, it also bought Lighthouse security group and CrossIdeas companies. IBM spent $1.2 billion to extend its cloud business along with the development of its Watson Group. Ginni Rometty Chief Executive Officer of IBM thinks that Watson group is going to develop into a $10 billion worth of a company in the coming years.

The Tech giant company enters into a joint venture with Apple. IBM is looking to launch applications for businesses and cloud computing on iOS, which will be built-in on iPads.

In spite of the company’s potential development in cloud business, it only accounts for 7.5% in last year’s revenue.

Company’s worldwide sales have plunged continuously for 11 quarters in a row. During the previous quarter, business and technology services, software and technology sector business have tumbled on year over year basis. Company believes that the reason for this decline in demand was less client spending, strengthening US dollar, and divestment of businesses with lower profits.

One of the major problem which has troubled the company was promise of Former CEO of increasing the yearly EPS to $20 from $10.01.IBM assertively buy back its share, cut jobs, reduced lower margin company’s and was not successful in putting investment in high margin business. That perhaps intolerant strategy grounds IBM's growth to fall.