We saw closes in the green almost completely across the board, with the sole miss being the Nasdaq, which came in -0.01% on the day (so close!). Otherwise, we got +0.41% gains on the Dow for the day, +0.11% for the S&P 500 and +1.06% on the Russell 2000 — the second-straight day the small-cap index was far ahead of the other major indexes. Indexes sagged for most of the day following a strong open.
After the bell rang in normal trading this morning, Pending Home Sales posted a big disappointment: -4.4%. This was way down from the +1.0% expected and the +1.7% reported in March, which had been indicating a big rebound in Pending Home Sales. All regions except the Midwest saw drops, while contract signings grew 51.7% for the month. Surging housing prices are clearly giving buyers cold feet; drastically rising input costs have flipped on inflation in the market, causing flagging sales.
A busy afternoon for earnings reports leads with salesforce.com’s CRM Q1, which easily surpassed expectations on both top and bottom lines: $1.21 per share beat the 88 cents expected and the 70 cents per share reported in the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $5.96 billion took out the $5.88 billion estimate in the Zacks consensus. Fiscal year revenue guidance was ratcheted up, as well, to $26 billion. Our analysts had been expecting $25.7 billion.
The conference call will likely have a few questions regarding salesforce’s acquisition of Slack for $27.7 billion back in December. Integration looks to be key for the company’s growth trajectories to remain intact. In the company’s earnings statement, it continues to expect $50 billion revenue growth by full-year 2026, and the Slack business will likely be a big factor in this.
Costco COST also topped expectations on both sales and earnings in its fiscal Q3: earnings of $2.75 per share outpaced the $2.28 estimate and $1.89 per share reported in the prior-year’s Q3, on $45.28 billion, slightly beyond the $45.20 billion analysts were looking for. Comps came in at 20.6%, with the U.S. growing 18%. Its e-Commerce business has grown 41% year over year. Shares are down slightly on the news, however; COST has gained 25% over the past year.
Beauty products major Ulta ULTA more than doubled expectations on its bottom line in its Q1 earnings report this afternoon: $4.07 per share versus a $1.92 estimate. With masks coming off here toward the end of the pandemic, we see how companies like Ulta are already benefiting: last year’s quarterly EPS came in at -$1.12 per share (comps were an eye-popping 65.9%). Sales in the quarter reached $1.94 billion, easily bettering the $1.67 billion expected.
The Gap GPS also stomped expectations for its Q1 results today, posting +48 cents per share versus -2 cents expected and -$2.51 per share in the year-ago quarter, Just like Ulta, the interest in re-socializing post-pandemic has brought big fortune to the American classic apparel firm compared to a year ago. Revenues came to $3.99 billion in the quarter, well ahead of the $3.54 billion. Current-year EPS has been ratcheted way up to a range of $1.60-1.75 per share, way ahead of the Zacks consensus $1.39.
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