Leading stock indexes retreated after gaining mid-week when Wall Street biggies like Apple and Amazon reported impressive quarterly numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 190 early Friday, while the S&P 500 index shed 23 points since the last close. Meanwhile, weekly jobless claims dropped to about 553,000 – the lowest since the start of the pandemic – extending the recent improvement.
Broadcasting firm Sirius XM Holdings acquired Roman Mars’ podcast subsidiary 99% Invisible. Itwill become a part of Stitcher, which Sirius acquired last year. Health insurer Humana agreed to acquire the remaining 60% interest in Kindred at Home for about $5.7 billion. In another healthcare deal, Pfizer bought privately held Amplyx Pharmaceuticals for an undisclosed amount.
IBM clinched a deal to acquire Turbonomic, a Boston-based provider of application resource management software, on the heels of adding enterprise observability platform Instana to its fold in a similar deal.
The technology sector dominated the earnings scene and the spotlight was on FAANG components Alphabet, Facebook, Apple and Amazon, which reported on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The week started on a high note with Tesla‘s record-breaking first-quarter results and bullish outlook on production and delivery.
On Tuesday, Microsoft came out with better-than-expected Q3 numbers with a strong contribution from its fast-growing cloud business. On the same day, United Parcel Services, General Electric, Visa, and Advanced Micro Devices also reported.
Boing brought some relief to shareholders on Wednesday by posting a narrower first-quarter loss and better-than-expected revenues. It was joined by chipmaker Qualcomm and Ford Motor. The next day, Twitter reported double-digit growth in ad revenue and earnings, which topped expectations for the first time in four quarters.
The other major companies that reported on Thursday include McDonald’s and Mastercard. ExxonMobil posted positive results on Friday amid continuing improvement in its upstream business. After the hectic week, the market is headed to a relatively soft phase in terms of events.
Quarterly announcements of video game publisher Activision Blizzard and healthcare firms CVS Health and Pfizer are among the important events expected early next week. Lyft and Xilinx are also preparing to unveil their latest quarterly numbers on May 4. On May 5, investors will be closely following the earnings release of General Motors, which last year reported its first quarterly loss in more than a decade.
The other important events scheduled for the day are the first-quarter earnings of PayPal. Monster Beverages, Expedia Group, Moderna, and Roku will be reporting on May 6.
Key Earnings to Watch
Monday: Estee Lauder, Loews, ON Semiconductor, Sterling Bancorp and Zoominfo Technologies
Tuesday: Ametek, Akamai Technologies, Activision Blizzard, Cummins, Charles River Laboratories, Conoco Philips, CVS Health Corp., DuPont, Pfizer, Ferrari, Thomson-Reuters, Lyft, Under Armour, T-Mobile, Upwork, Warner Music, McAfee, Zillow Group, Pixelworks, trivago, and Xylem
Wednesday: General Motors,Hyatt Hotels, Hilton, Novo Nordisk, Bandwidth, Booking Holdings, Cognizant, Chesapeake Utilities, Cutera, Fox Corporation, Godaddy, HubSpot, PayPal, Twilio, Uber, and Zynga
Thursday: Anheuser-Busch, Becton Dickinson, Marathon Oil, Microchip Technology, Kellogg, Moderna, Murphy Oil, Rent-a-Center, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Cloudflare, Teradata, Beyond Meat, Marriott, ViacomCBS, Wayfair, Papa John’s, Metlife, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Expedia Group, GoPro, Motorola, News Corp., Roku, Shake Shack, Square, Teradata, and Yelp
Friday: Cigna Corp., Intercontinental Hotels, Groupon, Johnson Outdoors, and TripAdvisor
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.
Tesla Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
GE Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Eli Lilly Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Jet Blue Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
AMD Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Starbucks Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Microsoft Q3 2021 Earnings Transcript
Alphabet Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Boeing Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Facebook Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Ford Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Apple Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Merck Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
McDonald’s Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Amazon Q1 2021 Earnings Transcript
Twitter 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.