American technology company Microsoft Corporation announced on Tuesday its revenue in the fiscal third quarter landed at $41.7 billion, marking a 19% increase on the year and slightly above analyst projections. According to the update, Microsoft had an operating income of $17 billion for the quarter, up 31% compared to the same quarter a year earlier. Meanwhile, net income was reported at $15.5 billion, up 44% year-over-year, on earnings per share of $2.03. “Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren’t slowing down. They’re accelerating, and it’s just the beginning. We are building the cloud for the next decade, expanding our addressable market and innovating across every layer of the tech stack to help our customers be resilient and transform,” CEO Satya Nadella said.
Alphabet Inc. published on Tuesday its first-quarter earnings report, revealing better-than-expected revenue of $55.31 billion in the trimester ending March 31. While Alphabet’s revenue annually soared 34%, its operating income surged 30% in the same period to reach $16.44 billion. Net income skyrocketed to $17.93 billion, with diluted earnings per share of $26.29. “Over the last year, people have turned to Google Search and many online services to stay informed, connected and entertained. We’ve continued our focus on delivering trusted services to help people around the world. Our Cloud services are helping businesses, big and small, accelerate their digital transformations,” CEO Sundar Pichai commented in the report. Nick Note: Some incredible powerful numbers……
The Conference Board’s monthly consumer confidence index soared in April to 121.7 from its March reading of 109.0, a number well above expectations and one that shows consumers are quickly returning to normal behaviors following more than a year of the coronavirus. The Present Situation Index – which tracks consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions – rose sharply to 139.6 from 110.1. The Expectations Index – which measures the short-term outlook of consumers – rose slightly to 109.8 in April from 108.3 in March. Analysts had predicted a reading of 112.0. But rising vaccination rates, along with a steadily improving labor market, have buoyed the feelings of consumers. “Consumers’ assessment of current conditions improved significantly in April, suggesting the economic recovery strengthened further in early Q2,” said Lynn Franco, senior director of economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “Things seem to be getting better and it would make sense that people are growing more confident in the future,” said Drew Matus, chief market strategist at MetLife Investment Management. “Instead, they are very optimistic about the now. Whether this translates into sustained consumer activity is likely dependent on whether a strong improvement in consumers’ view of the labor market is just a view, or being realized via lower unemployment.” Nick Note: One of the hottest consumer confidence reports ever.. And these assholes are still not sure. Well i can tell you for a fact I am sure. this is the hotttest economy ever… for now!
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has voted to approve the SpaceX plan to deploy Starlink satellites at a lower earth orbit, an FCC official confirmed to Reuters. The decision is expected to be made public as early as Tuesday, and includes a number of conditions to ensure the safety of the plan, the official said. The approval order is expected to address some concerns raised by Amazon.com’s (AMZN.O) Kuiper Systems satellite project. Elon Musk’s SpaceX had asked FCC for approval to fly 2,824 additional satellites at a lower orbit as part of its plan to offer space-based broadband internet service. Nick Note: The muskrat has connection. he also won the contract the contract for the lunar lander. Beating out Jeff Bozo. How doe he do it…. money. When the us abounded the space program and retired the shuttle. one of greatest space engineering teams was rendered redundant. Muskrat hired them and their connections….. he has got the managers engineers and lobbyists..
Consolidated Revenue Increased 27%; Growth Across All Segments
Consolidated Operating Profit Up 158% to $2.8B, Up 164% on an Adjusted* Basis
Diluted EPS of $5.47; Adjusted Diluted EPS Up 141% to $2.77
Revenue increased 22.3%, led by growth from small and medium-sized businesses.
Revenue per piece increased 10.2%, driven by Ground products.
Operating margin was 9.7%; adjusted operating margin was 10.4%.
ATLANTA, April 27, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — UPS (NYSE:UPS) today announced first-quarter 2021 consolidated revenue of $22.9 billion, a 27% increase over the first quarter of 2020. Consolidated average daily volume increased 14.3% year over year. Consolidated operating profit was $2.8 billion, up 158% compared to the first quarter of 2020, and up 164% on an adjusted basis. Diluted earnings per share were $5.47 for the quarter, 393% above the same period in 2020, and up 141% on an adjusted basis. For the first-quarter of 2021, GAAP results include a net benefit of $2.4 billion, or $2.70 per diluted share, comprised of an after-tax mark-to-market (MTM) pension benefit of $2.5 billion and after-tax transformation and other charges of $140 million. The MTM benefit was primarily driven by the enactment of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). The ARPA, which was signed into law on March 11, 2021, protects certain multi-employer pension plans from becoming insolvent through 2051, thereby eliminating the Company’s liability for potential coordinating benefits related to the Central States Pension Fund. Enactment of the ARPA required the Company to remeasure its UPS IBT Pension plan at current discount rates, which have increased since the previous measurement date. The overall result was a reduction in the pension liability of $6.4 billion.
“I want to thank all UPSers for delivering what matters, including COVID-19 vaccines,” said Carol Tomé, UPS chief executive officer. “During the quarter, we continued to execute our strategy under the better not bigger framework, which enabled us to win the best opportunities in the market and drove record financial results.” Nick Note: this is a shipping company. If people are shipping more they are selling more. Watch as the economy comes back from the dead.
Revenue jumped 74% to $10.4 billion on across-the-board gains; sales of emissions credits rose 46% to $518 million. They also made $100 million on sales of bitCoin.
Tesla Inc. posted first-quarter net income of $438 million amid record global vehicle deliveries and favorable comparisons to 2020, when operations were temporarily halted by the coronavirus pandemic. Revenue during the quarter jumped 74 percent to $10.4 billion, with automotive gross margins hitting 26.5 percent, the electric vehicle maker said Monday. The company was also aided by $518 million in sales of regulatory credits to competitors — a 46 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. Net income totaled just $16 million in the first quarter of 2020, when the pandemic shuttered plants in the U.S. and China. “Q1 2021 was a record quarter on many levels,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on an earnings call. “We’ve seen a real shift in customer perception of electric vehicles, and our demand is the best we’ve ever seen.” Tesla deliveries more than doubled to 184,877 from the year-earlier period, and officials said a new plant outside Austin, Texas, remains on track to start production by the end of 2021. The factory will produce the Cybertruck pickup and and Model Y crossover. Musk on Monday said he believes the Model Y will “quite likely” be the “best-selling car or truck of any kind in the world” in 2022. Nick Note: a very important component of the FANG and the NASDAQ. And they beat market expectations. The next 4 trading days set our course for the next year..
The bosses of America’s largest companies overwhelmingly believe Joe Biden’s proposed increase in the country’s corporate tax rate would have a negative impact on their businesses, according to a survey released on Monday. The influential business lobbying group Business Roundtable, whose members include Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook, released a survey of 178 CEOs on their thoughts on an increase in corporate tax. The survey specifically questioned the CEOs on the president’s proposed corporate tax hike, which would raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, to pay for his $2.3tn infrastructure plan. According to 98% of the CEOs surveyed, the corporate tax increase would have a “moderately” to “very” severe impact on their company’s ability to compete on a global scale. Three-fourths of the CEOs said that the tax would negatively affect their ability to conduct research and development innovation and 71% said it would negatively affect their ability to hire new employees. The increase in the corporate tax rate, along with a proposal for higher taxes on companies seeking to get lower tax rates abroad, is part of Biden’s plan to undo the tax cuts Donald Trump made in 2017. When the cuts were passed, Republicans argued that it would encourage domestic investment, which would increase worker productivity and ultimately raise wages. Democrats and some economists are skeptical that any of the benefits from the cuts were seen in the economy before the Covid-19 pandemic. A report released earlier this month from the progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that at least 55 of America’s top companies, including FedEx and Nike, paid no federal corporate income tax because of loopholes and substitutes. The report found that the tax breaks cost $8.5bn in potential tax revenue. Our tax revenues are already at their lowest level in generations,” Janet Yellen, treasury secretary, told reporters last week. “If they continue to drop lower, we will have less money to invest in roads, bridges, broadband and R&D.” But business leaders and lobbying groups have made clear in the last weeks similar concerns that Biden’s tax plan would hurt businesses and ultimately offset the progress made by his infrastructure plan. “It will actually obviate all the economic gains we could possibly gain in infrastructure,” Neil Bradley, executive vice-president of the US Chamber of Commerce, told the Washington Post . The US Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have made promises to lobby against the corporate tax increase. While Republicans have been generally supportive of spending on infrastructure, the party is unified in opposition to tax hikes. This means that moderate Democrats, especially Joe Manchin, the party’s most conservative member in the Senate, will be the stars of the debate around a potential increase. Manchin has already said that he would not support an increase to 28%, but said going up to 25% is something he could get behind. “We have to be competitive, and we are not going to throw caution to the wind,” he told a local West Virginia radio station. Nick Note: Biden has a 4 vote lead in the house and 1 in the Senate. Their is no way in hell with half the democrats facing reelection are they going to piss off the big banks and big corporations in their states. I ptedeict their will be a massive compromise on this. he does not have the votes
Defending US President Joe Biden’s plans to hike capital gains taxes for high-earning Americans, a senior White House official told the Financial Times (FT) on Monday, just 0.3% of people filing taxes in the US would be hit by higher levies on their investments under the plan. “There’s increasing evidence that over recent years in fact many, many of the returns at the very top are what they call above-market rates of return, rents and so on.” “Taxing the people who are doing extremely well in the economy is one way of asking somewhat more from that.” “This is consistent with what the president had said on the campaign trail, which was that we needed to fundamentally reform parts of the code that affect the very, very richest or very highest-income Americans, in ways to make sure that it is fair and not rewarding wealth overwork.” These come in response to the criticism from Wall Street and Silicon Valley, as President Biden is set to roll out a series of tax increases on the wealthy, including a near-doubling of levies on capital gains and dividends, in order to fund a new education and child care spending package that could top $1.5tn. Markets remain unnerved ahead of a big week, with a slate of US economic data on the cards alongside the Fed policy decision and eyes on Washington. The US dollar index trades in eight-week lows of 91.68, extending its third straight weekly decline into a new week. Nick Note: Blah bla blah. This is much adoo about nothing……
(Reuters) – Futures tracking the Nasdaq 100 index dipped on Monday as big technology stocks retreated ahead of first-quarter results later this week, while investors awaited clarity on a new tax plan from President Joe Biden. High-flying firms, including Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Inc, slipped between 0.2% and 0.4% in premarket trading. Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Inc shares edged higher as analysts expect the electric automaker to report a rise in first-quarter revenue when it reports after markets close following record deliveries for the period.
Of the 123 companies in the S&P 500 that have published results so far, 85.4% have reported earnings above analysts’ estimates, with Refinitiv IBES data now predicting a 33.9% jump in profit growth.
Investors are also looking forward to the two-day Federal Reserve meeting beginning on Tuesday and the first-quarter gross domestic product numbers later this week to gauge the pace of economic recovery. Market participants are also watching out for any fresh developments on Biden’s tax plan after reports last week said he would seek to nearly double the capital gains tax to 39.6% for wealthy individuals. Nick Note: forget the dog and pony show… Profits are booming predicted to be up close to 40%… Something that has never been seen before. everything else is noise……..
Bars, restaurants, cinemas and concert halls will partially reopen across Italy Monday in a boost for coronavirus-hit businesses, as parliament debates the government’s 220-billion-euro ($266-billion) EU-funded recovery plan. After months of stop-start restrictions imposed to manage its second and third waves of Covid-19, Italy hopes this latest easing will mark the start of something like a normal summer. Three-quarters of regions will drop into the low-risk “yellow” categories from Monday, with bars and restaurants permitted to restart table service outside — including, for the first time in six months, in the evening, although a 10:00 pm curfew remains in place. “Finally!” said Daniele Vespa, the 26-year-old head waiter at Baccano, a restaurant near Rome’s Trevi Fountain, as he made preparations for the return of customers. “Hopefully… we can soon reopen inside as well,” he told AFP, adding: “It’s the start of a return to normality.” Cinemas, theatres and concert halls can also open at 50-percent capacity, followed by the staggered opening of swimming pools, gyms, sporting events and theme parks by July 1. Prime Minister Mario Draghi has been under intense pressure from regional governments and increasingly regular street protests to ease restrictions, as Italy battles its deepest recession since World War II. He has admitted to taking a “calculated risk”, as infection rates and intensive care admissions fall but deaths still mount at more than 300 every day to more than 119,000. The vaccination programme is gaining pace with more than 17.5 million jabs administered so far in a population of around 60 million, but there are disparities between regions. “Clearly if the gradual reopening is interpreted as a ‘free-for-all’, a new surge in infections risks compromising the summer season,” warned Nino Cartabellotta, head of the GIMBE Foundation health think tank. Italy was the first European country to be hit by the pandemic in early 2020 and remains one of the worst affected, with the EU’s highest reported death toll and one of the deepest recessions. The economy contracted by a staggering 8.9 percent last year and a million jobs have been lost. Italy is pinning its hopes on a 222.1-billion-euro investment and reform plan funded largely by the European Union. Rome is the biggest recipient of the bloc’s 750-billion-euro post-pandemic recovery fund. In parliament on Monday, Draghi will formally present the programme he hopes will boost growth by 3.6 percentage points by 2026, ahead of a Friday deadline to submit the package to Brussels. In a statement Sunday, the government said the plan was a “historic intervention” that would repair the damage caused by the pandemic and address “the structural weaknesses” of the Italian economy, while putting it on a greener footing. Priorities include infrastructure, notably high-speed railways; green energy, including hydrogen power projects; investment in internet services and digitalisation. There will be money to help women and young people, who have disproportionately lost out during the pandemic, while around 40 percent will be targeted at historically under-performing southern Italy. Draghi, a former European Central Bank chief, has also highlighted the importance of reform, and the plan sets out an “ambitious programme” focused on modernising notably public administration and the snail-paced justice system. Disputes over the spending plan brought down the previous prime minister and his coalition, after which Draghi was parachuted in to lead a national unity government in February. His broad support in parliament “gives him significant room for manoeuvre to deliver the necessary reforms”, noted Jesus Castillo, an economist at Natixis. Nick Note: what you must understand is the beach going disco crowd mungers want their “freedom” back. The politicians and law enforcement have a great big problem. they can not keep a lid on this anymore. Especially with spring fling fervor. ….. you can bank on the fact the world economy (except for the ever loving shit holes) will be opening up. Keep your eye on the money ball. And the underclass of India where never good prospects for a iPhone or a smash burger. Not even a trip to Disney world in Orlando……
Consumption makes up about 70% of all U.S.economic activity. With savings rates near all-time highs, consumers are primed to turbo-charge the post-pandemic recovery. However, a full recovery will require more than another e-commerce spending boom. Nick Note The coming consumption boom will get the U.S. economy fully into gear. Only half of the happy checks have arrived. And with bossiness opening up jobs are plentiful. This week is very important to us. We got Fed Speak and key components of the FANG 2nd Qtr earnings come in…..
