A Flurry Of Earnings Results

Market participants are looking for a fourth-straight “up” week today, as the final trading day sees futures up across all major American indexes. It does not appear equities trading is factoring in anything like a tax bill failure to passage, regardless of headlines concerning Florida Senator Marco Rubio to the contrary.

21st Century Fox (NASDAQ:FOXA) looks to have a good start to the weekend, with not only a $52.4 billion buyout deal on the table from Disney (NYSE:DIS) but a new Star Wars movie, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” hitting theatres today around the world. Some calculate this — reportedly the most favorably-reviewed Star Wars epic since “The Empire Strikes Back” — to be one of the strongest grossing films of all time, right out of the gate.

The film, budgeted at an ungodly $200 million, also looks to foster a gigantic merchandising industry, which may bring a cool $3 billion in Star Wars-related products alone. And because the Disney deal is unlikely to take place soon — the companies themselves self-imposed a 12-18 month span — Fox shareholders should reap the rewards in the meantime.

Escape to Earnings Island

Each quarter, there is a strange bit of business where a few key names in the S&P 500 report quarterly earnings — outside the heavy traffic of “official” earnings season — and yesterday after the closing bell was one of those days:

Although Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) beat earnings in its fiscal Q2 2018, weaker-than-expected results from its cloud business has helped sell off Oracle shares in the pre-market roughly 5% at this hour. For more info on ORCL’s earnings release, click here.

Zacks Rank #2 (Buy)-rated Adobe Systems (NASDAQ:ADBE) beat estimates and raised guidance, on strength in its Digital Media Solutions business, which rose 29% year over year. For more info on ADBE’s earnings release, click here.

Costco’s (NASDAQ:COST) fiscal Q1 2018 kicked off the new term on the right foot, topping earnings estimates by a penny on better-than-expected sales in the quarter. Revenues grew more than 13% year over year. For more info on COST’s earnings release, click here.