Friday, November 13, 2020
Happy Friday the 13th, 2020! This is actually the second Friday the 13th this year; the first happened to be the last day many of us in Zacks’ Chicago location saw the inside of our offices. Soon after, all sporting events across the country were cancelled. I wonder what this Friday the 13th has in store for us, ahead of the holiday season…
We’ll take it one step at a time. The Producer Price Index (PPI) for October came in slightly better than expected, +0.3% compared with the estimated +0.2%, both down from the previous month’s +0.4%. This is the final demand number, which rose 0.5% year over year — the highest level we’ve seen since February, prior to the pandemic. Stripping out food and energy costs (the “core” read), +0.1% came in light of the +0.2% expected and the +0.4% reported the previous month. Year over year, core came in at +1.1%.
Food prices rose 2.4% in the month, while services came up 0.7% on +1.1% growth in Transportation/Warehousing. For headline PPI, this is the fifth straight up-month in a row, and constitutes good news from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) released yesterday, which disappointed estimates and came in unchanged for the month.
DraftKings (NASDAQ:DKNG) DKNG reported its third-ever quarterly report before the opening bell this Friday, posting 98% growth on revenues to $133 million. This was also slightly ahead of the Zacks consensus $132.2 million. The online betting company posted a wider-than-expected loss on its bottom line — ($0.98) per share versus ($0.63) expected — but investors in this growth company will not be too concerned with these numbers.
In fact, shares rose more than 10% on the news, as guidance for fiscal year revenues rose to a range of $540-560 million, well ahead of the current estimate of $527 million. DraftKings initiated full-year 2021 sales guidance at $750-850 million. We expect analysts will be busy upwardly revising estimates for the Boston-based company, which carried a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) ahead of the quarterly report.
Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) AMAT also outperformed expectations in its fiscal Q4 earnings report, bringing in $1.25 per share compared with the $1.17 analysts were expecting. Revenues recorded a record-high $4.69 billion, representing 25% growth year over year, on impressive Gross Margins of 45.4%. Applied Materials is a Silicon Valley semiconductor supplier, and as such is often seen as a bellwether for the Semiconductor industry looking ahead. Shares are up 2.8% following its earnings release.
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