Early Look

Monday, August 16, 2021

U.S. futures are pulling back from all-time highs as investors await Tuesday’s town hall event by Fed chair Jerome Powell where they’ll be looking for clues as to whether recent economic data is sufficient progress for the central bank to consider tapering stimulus, while geopolitical market concerns also weighing. Several Fed officials lately have discussed just when the central bank might begin its tapering of bond purchases. The Fed has been buying $120 billion a month in Treasury, agency and mortgage bonds to keep interest rates low and support the economy during the pandemic. The concerns come after the Dow and the S&P 500 both pushed to their fourth straight record closes Friday as Wall Street looked beyond falling U.S. consumer sentiment in July. U.S. consumer sentiment fell in early August to the lowest level in nearly a decade as Americans grew more concerned about the economy’s prospects, inflation and the recent surge in coronavirus cases. The University of Michigan’s preliminary sentiment index fell by 11 points to 70.2, the lowest since December 2011, data released Friday showed. In Asian markets, The Nikkei Index tumbled -453 points (1.62%) to 27,523, the Shanghai Index was little changed at 3,517 and the Hang Seng Index dropped -210 points to 26,181. In Europe, the German DAX pulls back -85 points from record highs to 15,890, while the FTSE 100 slips -80 points (1.1%) to 7,140. Oil prices hitting 15-month lows as WTI crude futures fall below $67 per barrel. Cryptocurrency-exposed stocks rise with Bitcoin edging higher. Chinese large cap stocks listed in the U.S. fall in premarket trading on Monday amid another round of criticism from state media over online games

Market Closing Prices Yesterday

·     The S&P 500 Index gained 7.17 points, or 0.16%, to 4,468.00

·     The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 15.53 points, or 0.04%, to 35,515.38

·     The Nasdaq Composite edged higher 6.64 points, or 0.04%, to 14,822.90

·     The Russell 2000 Index declined -20.96 points, or 0.93% to 2,223.11

Events Calendar for Today

·     8:30 AM ET         Empire Manufacturing for Aug

·     4:00 PM ET         Net Long-term TIC flows for June

Earnings Calendar:

·     Earnings Before the Open: BLDE, CBLI, DLPN, MICT, MLSS, ONDS, RAIL, SGBX, TLGT, TSHA, UAVS, UWMC, VEI, VYNT, YOU

·     Earnings After the Close: ACRX, ATCX, BIOC, BKYI, CTEK, CVV, DNMR, DPW, EDR, ETON, EVLV, GERN, GOEV, IDEX, MBII, NVGS, OSMT, POWW, QRHC, QSI, RBLX, RMO, SMTI, SSKN, TLS, XSPA, ZEV

Other Key Events:

·     EnerCom Oil & Gas Conference (virtual), 8/15-8/18

·     BWS Financial Growth and Value Conference (virtual), 8/16-8/17

·     Needham MedTech and Diagnostics Conference (virtual), 8/16-8/17

·     Truist Atlanta Bank Summit (virtual) 8/16-8/17

World News

·     Taliban fighters on Sunday took over the Afghan capital and President Ashraf Ghani fled abroad, leaving the government in collapse, as a U.S.-led military operation began to airlift Western diplomats, civilians and Afghans likely to be targeted by the country’s new rulers, the WSJ reported. By evening, the main road to the Kabul airport was packed with Afghans desperately trying to escape and with thousands of U.S. troops protecting the evacuation effort

·     China July Industrial Output missed: y/y 6.4% vs 7.8% consensus; China July Retail Sales missed: y/y 8.5% vs 11.5% consensus; China July House Price Index lower: y/y 4.6% vs 4.7% previous

·     Japan Q2 GDP beat: q/q 0.3% vs 0.2% consensus; Japan Q2 GDP Annualized beat: 1.3% q/q vs 0.7% consensus

Sector News Breakdown

Consumer

·     Carvana (CVNA) still has room to run according to Barron’s noting shares went public in 2017 at $15 a share but has rocketed higher since then, including roughly quadrupling in price since just before the pandemic, to a recent $360. Barron’s noted Wall Street expects Carvana to continue to grow revenue at rates north of 30% vs. mid-single-digit rates for CarMax (KMX).

·     Wendy’s (WEN) mentioned positively in Barron’s saying it wasn’t that long ago that Wendy’s briefly became a meme stock, but on Wednesday, the company reported quarterly results, and even analysts who were lukewarm about the stock walked away impressed,

·     Stitch Fix (SFIX), a subscription service for clothing with over 4 million customers, could become the “Nordstrom of the future,” said Mario Cibelli of Marathon Partners Equity Management to Barron’s. Shares have fallen on concerns about potential churn, but the company has potential outside of the U.S. and U.K. markets.

·     Marriott Vacations Worldwide (VAC), one of the top companies in the timeshare industry with high exposure to Hawaii and Orlando, could produce 20% annual returns for shareholders in the coming years, according to Barron’s, as per David Baron, a manager of the Baron Focused Growth

·     Hyatt Hotels (H) announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Apple Leisure Group from affiliates of each of KKR (KKR) and KSL Capital Partners for $2.7 billion in cash

·     JELD-WEN Holding Inc. (JELD) said its largest shareholder, Onex Corp. is selling off nearly half its stake in the building products company (14.88M shares of its 32.1M disclosed stake), equating to about 15% of the shares outstanding, with the company planning to buying back close to half of the shares being sold. JELD said it plans to repurchase about $200 million of the offering

Energy, Industrials and Materials

·     Boeing’s (BA) shares could rise by 35% if they fix their problems noting shares trade nearly 50% below their March 2019 high of $440.62, and few if any Boeing watchers expect the stock, now around $238, to revisit that record in the next few years. If CEO Dave Calhoun takes bold steps to restore the company’s engineering supremacy and repair its balance sheet, shares could rise.

·     Compass Minerals (CMP) Q2 EPS loss (-$0.49) vs. est. loss (-$0.05); Q2 revs $199.4M vs. est. $221.77M; said expects Q3 Salt segment revenue to benefit from strong volume growth as well as year-over-year operating earnings improvement, partially offset by slightly lower pricing.

·     Woodside Petroleum is in advanced talks to buy BHP’s (BHP) petroleum division in a ~A$20B (US$14.7B) deal – WSJ

Financials

·     Capital One Financial (COF) July net-charge offs were 1.45% vs. 3.82% YoY and delinquencies 1.71%vs. 2.44% YoY

Healthcare

·     Enlivex Therapeutics (ENLV) obtains authorization from Israel’s ministry of health to initiate a clinical trial evaluating the safety and effectiveness of its Allocetra therapy on Covid-19 patients

Technology, Media & Telecom

·     The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) issued a decision on a case involving Google (GOOGL) and Sonos (SONO), ruling that the Alphabet unit infringed five of Sonos’ patents

·     DouYu (DOYU) Q2 adj EPS loss (-$0.05) vs. est. loss (-$0.34); Q2 revs $361.92M; average mobile MAUs in Q2 increased by 3.9% to 60.7M from 58.4M in the same period of 2020; quarterly average paying user count in Q2 was 7.2M, compared with 7.6M in the same period of 2020

·     T-Mobile US (TMUS) said it was investigating claims of a data breach that involves the personal data of 100 million users. T-Mobile said it was aware of the claims made by a hacker in a forum post and has been “actively investigating their validity.”

·     Ping Identity (PING) announces 6M share common stock offering for holders