The market rally gathered pace this week amid impressive quarterly results, led by the banking sector, and positive economic data. Leading stock indexes continued their winning streak, with S&P 500 maintaining the uptrend for the fourth week in a row and hitting a new high.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average breached the 34,000-mark for the first time, adding around 150 points in the last session. The sentiment was buoyed by encouraging retail sales data and reports of jobless claims falling.
The first-quarter earnings season got off to a good start, with banking giants JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs unveiling their latest financial data mid-week. They were joined by software firm Infosys on Wednesday.
The spotlight stayed on financial services Thursday also when the closely followed reports of Citigroup and Bank of America came out. Delta Air Lines and soft-drink behemoth PepsiCo released earnings on the same day. The first phase of bank earnings concluded on Friday with Morgan Stanley’s blockbuster Q1 report.
It’s going to be mixed bag next week. For instance, the companies scheduled to report on April 19 include United Airlines Holdings, IBM and Coca-Cola. The important corporate houses preparing to report on April 20 comprise Abbott Laboratories and Johnson & Johnson as well as streaming giant Netflix, which has been thriving on the COVID-driven boom. The earning reports of superbike company Harley-Davidson and Lockheed Martin are also slated for Tuesday.
The other major companies that can elicit investor interest include Halliburton, Verizon Communications, Chipotle Mexican Grill and Kinder Morgan – the companies will report earnings on April 21. The next day, it is the turn of American Airlines and Southwest Airlines as well as tech firms AT&T and Intel. American Express is probably the only big player to report on April 23.
The market was abuzz with the news of Microsoft’s $20-billion buyout of cloud software company Nuance Communications. In another important deal in the cloud space, Datadog completed the acquisition of the SaaS-based security platform Sqreen.
The otherwise quiet M&A market witnessed Dell Technologies becoming two standalone public companies by spinning off its 81% ownership in VMware. The other major deals include Amgen’s $2-billion purchase of Five Prime Therapeutics and the acquisition of Upchain by software firm Autodesk.
Key Earnings to Watch
Monday: Coca-Cola, Old National Bancorp, Prologis, IBM, Zions Bancorporation, and Cooper Energy
Tuesday: Xerox Corp, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Omnicom Group, Harley-Davidson, Abbott Laboratories, Autonation, United Airlines Holdings, Lockheed Martin Corp, Philip Morris, and Netflix
Wednesday: Rogers Communications, Roche Holding, Baker Hughes, Verizon Communications, Halliburton, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Kinder Morgan, and Netgear
Thursday: RENAULT, Discover Financial Services, Dow Chemical, Biogen, AT&T, American Airlines Group, Alaska Air Group, Southwest Airlines, Seagate Technology, Skechers USA, Mattel, Intel Corp, and Snap
Friday: American Express, Honeywell International, Schlumberger Limited, and Kimberly-Clark Corp
Key Corporate Conferences to Watch
Key Investor Days/AGMs to Watch
Key US Economic Events
Notable Transcripts
The following are notable companies which have reported their earnings last week. In case if you have missed catching up on their performance, click the respective links to skim through the transcripts to glean more insights.
Aphria Q3 2021 Earnings Transcript
TCS Q4 2021 Earnings Transcript
Infosys Q4 2021 Earnings Transcript
JPMorgan Chase Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Goldman Sachs Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Wells Fargo Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
UnitedHealth Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
BlackRock Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
PepsiCo Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Bank of America Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Wipro Q4 2021 Earnings Transcript
Citigroup Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Delta Air Lines Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
If you want to listen to how management responds to analyst questions and the tone they use, you can head over to our YouTube channel to listen to conference calls on the go.
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