How Did eCommerce Took Off In Malaysia?
The eCommerce sector is one of the fastest growing .....»»
Jim Cramer Says Do Not Buy These 11 Stocks
In this article, we will take a detailed look at the Jim Cramer Says Do Not Buy These 11 Stocks. For a quick overview of such stocks, read our article Jim Cramer Says Do Not Buy These 5 Stocks. Jim Cramer continues to challenge the market bears after NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) smashed the Wall Street estimates with another stunning […] In this article, we will take a detailed look at the Jim Cramer Says Do Not Buy These 11 Stocks. For a quick overview of such stocks, read our article Jim Cramer Says Do Not Buy These 5 Stocks. Jim Cramer continues to challenge the market bears after NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) smashed the Wall Street estimates with another stunning quarter, essentially proving that the AI rally that kept giving a boost to stocks in 2023 was not based on a hype after all. Cramer recently said in his program “Mad Money” on CNBC that NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) did not defy gravity with its latest earnings, rather it defied the “unwarranted negativity” and “cynicism.” Cramer said the performance of NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) stock has proved wrong the idea that stocks are “hostage” to an “all powerful Fed.” Cramer said that he kept recommending NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) shares all along because he knew the company’s chips are much faster than its competitors like Intel. Cramer said “for years” he believed Nvidia stock would look cheap in “retrospect” because its earnings would always be much higher than expected. Cramer lamented: “I documented this time and time again yet for ages nobody seemed to catch on.” Why Didn’t People Listen to Cramer on NVIDIA? Jim Cramer wondered why people failed to foresee the potential of NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) over all these years? Jim Cramer believes part of the reason why nobody was willing to listen to his advice on buying Nvidia stock was the Fed-related fears. Cramer said it makes sense to pay attention to what the Fed is doing but believing that you should not own any stocks if rates are high causes you to miss on the benefits of owning top stocks like NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT). Cramer said back in the day he made “millions of bucks” when the Federal Reserve was raising rates aggressively. Cramer said too many people dwell on unimportant details and “miss the big picture.” Cramer’s Advice: “Unshackle Yourself from the Chains of the Macro” Cramer also said that the Federal Reserve’s actions are mostly relevant for big hedge funds which “only invest in the averages.” Jim Cramer said people should notice “how rarely they (big hedge funds) talk about individual stocks.” Jim Cramer said people should pay attention to high quality names like Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) and NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) because the leadership at these companies have a long-term vision and investors have a high chance of making money if they “stick” with them. Cramer said you need “curiosity” and you have to “unshackle yourself from the chains of the macro” to see the true potential of companies like Nvidia before they become big. 11. Icahn Enterprises LP Common Stock (NASDAQ:IEP) Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 2 Jim Cramer has been bearish on Icahn Enterprises LP Common Stock (NASDAQ:IEP) for a long time. Earlier this month he yet again reiterated his bearish case on Icahn Enterprises LP Common Stock (NASDAQ:IEP), whose shares are up about 12% this year through February 25. “I have no idea what it really owns. I will not recommend stocks on Mad Money when I do not know what they own.” 10. AST SpaceMobile Inc (NASDAQ:ASTS) Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 8 Jim Cramer is bearish on Texas-based space-based cellular broadband network company AST SpaceMobile Inc (NASDAQ:ASTS) and recommends investors not to buy the stock. Cramer recently said that he does not see “any way shape or form that they’re going to be making money, so I’m going to have to hold off that one.” As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, eight hedge funds in Insider Monkey’s database had stakes in AST SpaceMobile Inc (NASDAQ:ASTS). The biggest stake in AST SpaceMobile Inc (NASDAQ:ASTS) is owned by Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management which owns a $4.5 million stake in AST SpaceMobile Inc (NASDAQ:ASTS). 9. Bigcommerce Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:BIGC) Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 10 Jim Cramer was recently asked whether ecommerce SaaS platform company Bigcommerce Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:BIGC) shares should be bought. Cramer’s reply was “no” because he thinks “we got Amazon.” Cramer has long been a believer of best of breed stocks like Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) and he believes when there’s a first-grade, top quality player available in any industry it should be given preference instead of buying other smaller players. 8. C3.ai Inc (NYSE:AI) Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 15 Jim Cramer has said in the past that there’s too much hype around the shares of C3.ai Inc (NYSE:AI). Earlier this month he was yet again asked about the stock. Cramer said he does not see “any earnings” there and he cannot recommend a stock “that has no earnings.” However, Cramer praised C3.ai Inc (NYSE:AI) CEO Thomas Siebel and said he’s a “bankable guy” and he’s known Siebel for 30 years. To ride the AI wave Cramer recommends buying Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT). Bireme Capital stated the following regarding C3.ai, Inc. (NYSE:AI) in its fourth quarter 2023 investor letter: “Our final new short position is in a company called C3.ai, Inc. (NYSE:AI). Originally named “C3 Energy,” C3.ai has changed its name multiple times based on whatever hot new trend they were supposedly capitalizing on. The “energy” theme was about smart grid and cap-and-trade. Then the firm changed its name to “C3 IoT” to attempt to capitalize on the Internet of Things buzz. After that trend fizzled out, the moniker was altered once more, with the company capturing the “AI” ticker in December 2020 – a savvy move if it wants to sell stock to credulous investors, but irrelevant to its business prospects. As Kerrisdale put it, the company is a “minor, cash burning consulting and services business masquerading as a software company.” 7. Cal-Maine Foods Inc (NASDAQ:CALM) Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 19 Jim Cramer was recently asked about his thoughts on Mississippi-based fresh eggs producer Cal-Maine Foods Inc (NASDAQ:CALM). Cramer said it’s an “unnecessary stock to own.” Cramer however said he does like Tyson Foods from a valuation perspective. The dividend-paying company missed fiscal Q2 estimates when it posted earnings in January. GAAP EPS in the quarter came in at $0.35, missing estimates by $0.48. Revenue in the quarter fell 34.7% year over year to $523.23 million, missing estimates by $2.16 million Diamond Hill Small Cap Fund made the following comment about Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. (NASDAQ:CALM) in its Q3 2023 investor letter: “On an individual holdings’ basis, top contributors to return in Q3 included Civitas Resources and Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. (NASDAQ:CALM). Fresh egg producer Cal-Maine Foods has positioned itself well to capitalize on the growing trend toward cage-free and specialty eggs. In May, the US Supreme Court upheld Proposition 12, whereby California can dictate only cage-free eggs be sold in the state — an outcome which will likely open the door for other states to either institute or maintain similar mandates, and which should drive increased long-term demand for Cal-Maine Foods’ eggs.” 6. Surgery Partners Inc (NASDAQ:SGRY) Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 22 Surgery Partners Inc (NASDAQ:SGRY) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer is recommending investors to stay away from. Last month Cramer said he was taking a “hard pass” on the stock. Surgery Partners Inc (NASDAQ:SGRY) shares are however up about 4.4% year to date through February 25. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, 22 hedge funds out of the 933 funds had stakes in Surgery Partners Inc (NASDAQ:SGRY). The most notable stakeholder of Surgery Partners Inc (NASDAQ:SGRY) was Henry Ellenbogen’s Durable Capital Partners which owns a $175 million stake in Surgery Partners Inc (NASDAQ:SGRY). Instead of SGRY, Cramer is recommending big stocks like Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT). Baron Health Care Fund stated the following regarding Surgery Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGRY) in its fourth quarter 2023 investor letter: “We established a small position in Surgery Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGRY), a leading operator of ambulatory surgery centers in the U.S. Like Stryker, the stock sold off during the quarter due to concerns about the impact of GLP-1s on its business, and we felt the sell-off offered a buying opportunity. The company, which operates primarily majority owned centers in partnership with physicians or hospital systems, is benefiting from a multi-year trend of surgical procedures migrating from inpatient to outpatient settings, facilitated by advances in medicine, payors’ push towards lower cost outpatient facilities and patient/physician preference and convenience. The company’s solid organic revenue growth profile has multiple drivers, including the mix shift to higher acuity, higher cost orthopedic and cardiac procedures, volume growth from additional physician recruitment and expanded medical specialties and better payor contracting. On top of this organic growth, management intends to deploy $200 million annually for acquisitions, leading to mid-teens EBITDA growth. We believe the stock can compound for many years as the company executes on its plan.” Click to continue reading and see Jim Cramer Says Do Not Buy These 5 Stocks. Suggested Articles: Jim Cramer’s 11 Latest Stock Picks Jim Cramer Says You Should Stay Away from These 10 Stocks Jim Cramer is Bearish on These 12 Stocks Disclosure. None. Jim Cramer Says Do Not Buy These 11 Stocks was initially published on Insider Monkey......»»
15 Hot Penny Stocks On the Move
In this article, we will take a detailed look at the 15 Hot Penny Stock On the Move. For a quick overview of such stocks, read our article 5 Hot Penny Stock On the Move. Strong inflation data from January and the Fed’s indications that it would take its time before initiating rate cuts threw cold […] In this article, we will take a detailed look at the 15 Hot Penny Stock On the Move. For a quick overview of such stocks, read our article 5 Hot Penny Stock On the Move. Strong inflation data from January and the Fed’s indications that it would take its time before initiating rate cuts threw cold water on investors’ hopes of getting rid of uncertainties. But more and more economists and analysts are starting to believe the US economy might dodge recession altogether. UBS and Goldman Sachs recently increased their 2024 targets for the S&P 500. A Wall Street Journal report cited Brian Rose, senior U.S. economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, who said that “it’s still looking good” based on a “very big picture perspective.” Rose was sharing his views on the latest reports on inflation, economic growth and the labor market. Market Experts Believe There Will be No Recession Another hope comes from Jan Hatzius, Goldman Sachs’ chief economist, who has a history of making prescient calls about the US economy in the past. Hatzius held a contrarian opinion before the 2007-2008 financial crisis and warned that mortgage defaults could lead to a recession. A latest report by Wall Street Journal said Hatzius’s opinion is given a lot of importance in Washington and Wall Street. The Journal also said Fed Chair Jerome Powell has met Hatzius “several times.” So what does Jan Hatzius think about the US economy’s future? Hatzius believes the US economy would be able to avoid a recession and tame inflation without high unemployment. He thinks the jobs market would cool down due to reduced vacancies instead of massive layoffs. Given the economy’s resilience and expectations that the US won’t see a recession, it’s time to see which risky equities with high upside potential are making moves. Photo by Adam Nowakowski on Unsplash Methodology For this article we used a stock screener to identify penny stocks (trading under $5) that have gained significantly over the past few weeks and have average daily volume of over 500,000. From these stocks we picked the penny stocks with the highest share price gains over the past few weeks. 15. Rigetti Computing Inc (NASDAQ:RGTI) Stock Performance Over the Past One Month: +48% Rigetti Computing Inc (NASDAQ:RGTI) makes quantum ICs used in quantum computing. The stock has gained about 48% over the past one month. Insider Monkey’s database shows that 11 hedge funds out of the 910 funds tracked by Insider Monkey had stakes in Rigetti Computing Inc (NASDAQ:RGTI). The most notable stake in Rigetti Computing Inc (NASDAQ:RGTI) is owned by Israel Englander’s Millennium Management which owns a $5 million stake in Rigetti Computing Inc (NASDAQ:RGTI). 14. MicroAlgo Inc (NASDAQ:MLGO) Stock Performance Over the Past One Month: +26% MicroAlgo Inc (NASDAQ:MLGO) ranks 14th in our list of the hot penny stocks on the move. MicroAlgo Inc (NASDAQ:MLGO) provides central processing algorithm solutions to customers in the internet and chips industries. 13. Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:LXRX) Stock Performance Over the Past One Month: +75% Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:LXRX) ranks 13th in our list of the hottest penny stocks on the move as of February 16. The stock has gained about 75% over the past one month. Near the end of 2023 Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:LXRX) signed an open market sale agreement to sell its common stock, having an aggregate sales price of up to $75 million. A total of 12 hedge funds out of the 910 funds tracked by Insider Monkey had stakes in Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:LXRX). The biggest stake in Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:LXRX) is owned by Mark Lampert’s Biotechnology Value Fund / BVF Inc which owns a $22 million stake in Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:LXRX). 12. Inspira Technologies Oxy BHN Ltd (NASDAQ:IINN) Stock Performance Over the Past One Month: +45% Inspira Technologies Oxy BHN Ltd (NASDAQ:IINN) shares have gained about 45% over the past one month as the company said it received a US patent for its orbiting blood oxygenation delivery system. As of the end of the third quarter of 2023, seven hedge funds had stakes in Inspira Technologies Oxy BHN Ltd (NASDAQ:IINN). 11. Hyliion Holdings Corp (NYSE:HYLN) Stock Performance Over the Past One Month: +28% Hyliion Holdings Corp (NYSE:HYLN) is on the move after the company posted Q4 results and gave an update on its planned closure of electric powertrain operations. Hyliion Holdings Corp’s (NYSE:HYLN) CEO Thomas Healy talked about Hyliion’s long-term plans: “For 2024, we expect to begin paid deployments with customers. However, the exact timing of payment may be subject to customers’ acceptance of the generator, including meeting certain performance requirements. For 2025, we expect to generate revenue in the low double-digit million in sales from the KARNO generator, and we’ve already begun building a backlog of customers who we expect will purchase these units. Lastly, I’d like to share some operational updates on Hyliion so that you can have a greater understanding on how we are shaping the organization post this transition. Our headquarters will remain in Texas at our existing Cedar Park facility in the outskirts of Austin. Long term, our plan will be to utilize this 120,000 square foot facility for manufacturing and assembly of the KARNO generator as we move into production. We also have a significant presence in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is where most of the engineering development and testing of the generator is taking place. We now have around 100 people in the company with a little over half of the team in Austin and the remainder in Cincinnati.” Read the entire Q4 earnings call here. 10. Jumia Technologies AG – ADR (NYSE:JMIA) Stock Performance Over the Past One Month: +53% African ecommerce company Jumia Technologies AG – ADR (NYSE:JMIA) stock is on the move after Jumia Technologies AG – ADR (NYSE:JMIA) posted Q4 results. Jumia Technologies AG – ADR (NYSE:JMIA) narrowed its losses significantly thanks to decreased tax provisions in some countries, a decline in advertisement and general expenses. As of the end of the third quarter of 2023, seven hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey had stakes in Jumia Technologies AG – ADR (NYSE:JMIA). 9. Canaan Inc – ADR (NASDAQ:CAN) Stock Performance Over the Past One Month: +15% Canaan Inc – ADR (NASDAQ:CAN) is a China-based company which makes hardware equipment used in bitcoin mining. The stock has gained about 15% over the past one month through February 22. Canaan Inc – ADR (NASDAQ:CAN) shares are gaining along with other crypto-related stocks after Bitcoin’s surge. 8. BioXcel Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:BTAI) Stock Performance Over the Past One Month: +26% BioXcel Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:BTAI) shares recently jumped after the FDA granted fast track designation to its experimental prostate cancer therapy, BXCL701. On February 13, BioXcel Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:BTAI) said it terminated its proposed public offering of $60 million of shares of its common stock or, pre-funded warrants to purchase shares of its common stock. As of the end of the third quarter of 2023, 10 hedge funds had stakes in BioXcel Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:BTAI). 7. D-Wave Quantum Inc (NYSE:QBTS) Stock Performance Over the Past One Month: +144% Canadian quantum computing company D-Wave Quantum Inc (NYSE:QBTS) shares are up about 144% over the past one month. In November D-Wave Quantum Inc (NYSE:QBTS) posted third quarter results. GAAP EPS in the period came in at -$0.12, beating estimates by $0.05. Revenue in the quarter jumped 50% year over year to $2.56 million, missing estimates by $0.33 million. 6. SoundHound AI Inc (NASDAQ:SOUN) Stock Performance Over the Past One Month: +99% Sound technology company SoundHound AI Inc (NASDAQ:SOUN) ranks sixth in our list of the hot penny stocks on the move. The stock jumped a whopping 99% over the past one month. Nvidia recently revealed a $3.7 million stake in the company. SoundHound AI Inc (NASDAQ:SOUN) is behind the Houndfly platform that is used by companies to develop voice assistants. As of the end of the third quarter of 2023, 10 hedge funds out of the 910 funds tracked by Insider Monkey had stakes in SoundHound AI Inc (NASDAQ:SOUN). Click to continue reading and see 5 Hot Penny Stocks on the Move. Suggested Articles: 13 Hot Penny Stocks To Buy According to Hedge Funds 10 Best Debt Free Penny Stocks To Buy Now 16 Most Profitable Penny Stocks Now Disclosure. None. 15 Hot Penny Stock On the Move was initially published on Insider Monkey......»»
A friend called her maternity leave a "holiday." It made her realize just how much she got wrong about it, too.
"I was thinking to myself the first week: Oh my God, this is true physical labor," Samira Shihab, a Jakarta-based founder, told BI. Samira Shihab, a founder and mom of three, holding her newborn baby.Samira ShihabSamira Shihab, a founder and a mom of three, says maternity leave is a crucial chapter.Shihab wrote about maternity leave misconceptions in a LinkedIn post.She said that she too was guilty of seeing leave as a time for relaxation.Samira Shihab was on a catch-up call with a friend when he used the word "holiday" to refer to her maternity leave.Shihab is a principal at AC Ventures, a venture capital firm that works with early-stage startups in Southeast Asia. She's the founder of two Indonesia-based companies: Tinkerlust, an ecommerce app, and Stellar Women, a community for women in entrepreneurship.Shihab, who is based in Jakarta, is also a mother to three kids, ages 12, 8, and three months. Her third child marked her first maternity leave — and it wound up being a time in which she reflected on the idea that maternity leave means you get a couple months "off.""I myself was guilty of it. Before maternity leave I was like I'm going to work on this and this. I'm going to be so energized, I'm going to write more articles," Shihab told Business Insider in a call."And I didn't get a chance to do any of that," she added.'This is much harder work than analyzing Excel spreadsheets'On the eve of her return to work after 90 days of maternity leave, Shihab wrote a LinkedIn post about her experience."First off, we need to recognize maternity leave for what it is: a vital period of adjustment and bonding. It's not a vacation; it's a crucial chapter for all working moms," Shihab wrote on LinkedIn on February 12.Before going on maternity leave, Shihab thought it would be a time for relaxation. But it was anything but a holiday: Taking care of a newborn meant constantly being at her demand, feeding her, changing her, all while not getting a lot of sleep."I was thinking to myself the first week: Oh my God, this is true physical labor. I'm in a leadership position — I do mostly strategy and managing different teams. But I should get paid more for doing this. This is much harder work than analyzing Excel spreadsheets," she told BI, referring to caring for her newborn.Shihab with her three daughters, who are 12, 8 and 3 months old.Samira ShihabShihab also said her new list of tasks as a working mother was a wakeup call: "You're not really going back to your old life. You're kind of going back to an updated life in which you need to then juggle."Shihab is in good company when it comes to women discovering and defining what maternity leave means for them.Anarghya Vardhana, a Bay Area-based venture capitalist, had just given birth, when one of the companies in her portfolio found itself in an emergency situation. So she cradled her newborn and logged on to a Zoom video call to help the company navigate an acquisition offer, BI previously reported."I have biological children and my portfolio companies, which are also children," Vardhana told BI.Saira Taneja is another business leader who balanced career growth and motherhood, BI reported.Taneja was pregnant during her job interviews and went on maternity leave two months after joining her new company, where she was the highest-ranking woman. She says was able to bond with her baby without compromising her duties as an employee because the company gave her time and resources from the start.Women in male-dominated fields such as venture capitalism are also taking it upon themselves to spearhead maternity policies.Allison Baum Gates previously told BI that she was the first pregnant person and the only female general partner at her firm, which meant the company had no policy for maternity leave. After talking to other women in the industry, Baum Gates put together her own proposal of five months leave.Parental leave policiesThe majority of Asian countries offer a minimum of 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, with countries such as Vietnam mandating six months of leave, according to the World Policy Analysis Center.In Indonesia, maternity leave is 90 days and most startups and smaller companies abide by that, said Shihab.Employees in the US are not guaranteed any paid maternity leave, making it one of seven countries with no paid leave policies.Mothers with full-time jobs in America work an average of 14 hours a day or 98 hours a week between child and home duties and their actual jobs, BI previously reported.Shihab said she took maternity leave on her own definition.She went back to work three weeks after having her second child, because her ecommerce startup was new and needed her: "I wasn't replaceable and I knew it."And with her third child, the lines between parenting and working were also blurred."I was always on Slack and plugged into my email, so not a hundred percent checked out. But that's not the company to blame – that's the person I am," Shihab said about her maternity leave.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
Global Payments Inc. (NYSE:GPN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Global Payments Inc. (NYSE:GPN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 14, 2024 Global Payments Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $2.65, expectations were $2.63. Global Payments Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here). Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank […] Global Payments Inc. (NYSE:GPN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 14, 2024 Global Payments Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $2.65, expectations were $2.63. Global Payments Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here). Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Global Payments’ fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will open the lines for your questions and answers. If you should require assistance during this call, please press star then zero. As a reminder, today’s conference will be recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to your host, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Winnie Smith. Please go ahead. Winnie Smith: Good morning and welcome to Global Payments fourth quarter and full year 2023 conference call. Our earnings release and the slides that accompany this call can be found on the Investor Relations area of our website at www.globalpayments.com. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that some of the comments made by management during today’s conference call contain forward-looking statements about, among other matters, expected operating and financial results. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, including the impact of economic conditions on our future operations, that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Certain risk factors inherent in our business are set forth in filings with the SEC, including our most recent 10-K and subsequent filings. We caution you not to place undue reliance on these statements. Forward-looking statements during this call speak only as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to update them. We will also be referring to several non-GAAP financial measures which we believe are more reflective of our ongoing performance. For a full reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed in this call to the most comparable GAAP measure in accordance with SEC regulations, please see our press release furnished as an exhibit to our Form 8-K filed this morning and our supplemental material available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Joining me on the call are Cameron Bready, President and CEO, and Josh Whipple, Senior Executive Vice President and CFO. Now I’ll turn the call over to Cameron. Cameron Bready: Thanks Winnie, and good morning everyone. We were pleased with our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results, which exceeded our initial expectations outlined last February. I am extremely proud of our teams around the world for their outstanding execution. Together, we accomplished a great deal in 2023. Starting with our financial performance, for the full year we achieved high single digit adjusted net revenue growth and increased adjusted earnings per share 12%. This includes a more than 400 basis point headwind from the divestiture of our Netspend consumer business, which we completed early in the second quarter. We also expanded adjusted operating margins 90 basis points, including the impact of EVO payments, which had a lower margin profile than Global Payments at the time of the acquisition. Importantly, we deliver this performance consistently throughout the year despite ongoing headwinds, including macroeconomic uncertainty, persistent inflation, FX volatility and geopolitical unrest highlighting the durability of our model. Strategically, we also made significant progress during the year executing on a number of key initiatives. First, we successfully closed the acquisition EVO Payments in March, which complements our strategy of providing further penetration into integrated payments, enhancing our B2B capabilities and expanding our exposure to stronger secular growth markets globally. Our integration has progressed quite well and we remain on track to deliver on our revised target of $135 million in annual run rate expense synergies within two years. While revenue synergies generally take longer to materialize, we are more excited today than when we announced the transaction about opportunities we have to cross-sell our products and capabilities into EVO’s existing customer base. We are continuing to invest in these opportunities in 2024 and expect them to scale more fully in 2025. Further, we completed the divestitures of our Netspend consumer assets and our gaming solutions business in April. These three transactions represent important milestones as we seek to advance our strategy and operate a simpler business model centered on our core corporate and financial institution customer base. In our merchant business, that strategy is spearheaded by a software-centric approach leveraging our strengths across our vertical markets, integrated and point-of-sale businesses, and we seek to drive distinction in our offerings by providing omnichannel capabilities and value-added commerce enablement solutions across our markets, including those that benefit from stronger payment digitization and secular growth trends. We continue to see good momentum in our merchant solutions as we execute these strategies. Starting with our vertical markets businesses, we had a number of notable achievements in 2023 across the portfolio. These include Xenial’s new partnerships to be the official commerce technology provider for both the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks as we look to further expand our market presence in the stadium and event venue vertical. In the United Kingdom, we renewed our relationship with Principality Stadium, home of Welsh rugby and football, and expanded our services with Wembley Stadium in London. We were also selected by leading food service management company, Sodexo, to be its preferred point-of-sale and kiosk partner, and are now the partner of choice for the three largest players in the food service management space. Our education solutions business delivered many new marquee customer additions across our K-12 and our university businesses and continue to expand to international markets with school solutions, launching MySchoolBucks in Australia, and TouchNet achieving new wins in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Our active network business had a record bookings year, singing 839 new logos, including it largest ever win in the community vertical with the City of Toronto. Moving to partner and software solutions, we achieved record bookings in 2023 with new partners increasing 23% from the prior year. This was in part driven by the strong momentum we have seen with our new progressive payment facilitation, or profac model that we launched midyear. This hybrid option provides many of the benefits of being a payment facilitator while minimizing the heavy burden that comes with it. Profac is unique to Global Payments and we are delighted to have signed 16 profac partners to date who already have thousands of merchant customers using our payment solutions. Some notable new partners in our integrated business include 402 Ventures, a leading provider of auction software in the heavy equipment and machinery vertical; Autosoft, which provides a software management platform for auto dealerships; Black Knight, a leading provider of mortgages and loan origination software; and Inovalon, a leading data analytics ISD in the healthcare vertical. These trends, including the momentum we are seeing with profac underscore our confidence in our ability to maintain consistent growth going forward as our differentiated capabilities continue to resonate with the ISB market. As for the third leg of our software strategy, our point-of-sale software business delivered strong growth for the full year as we continue to see solid demand for our solutions and benefit from the releases of new product enhancements. Notably, our average revenue per unit continues to expand, up 9% year-over-year as more merchants are using payments and other add-on capabilities in our evolving POS platform, and of course this is prior to the full launch of our complete next-generation restaurant and retail point-of-sale software platforms, which we continue to expect this quarter. Lastly, our exposure to some of the most attractive secular markets globally remains a core element of our strategy, both in terms of contributing to our overall rates of growth and providing us the global footprint we need to support complex multi-national corporations. We continue to see good trends across our businesses in Spain and central Europe, each of which delivered high teens growth, and key new European markets entered with EVO, including Poland and Greece, and also achieved double-digit growth. Further, we have seen favorable secular trends in LatAm, where we meaningfully increased our footprint with EVO. This includes new implementations in Mexico with large customers like dLocal, DHL and Petro 7 as we leverage our partnership with City Betamex. Turning to issuer solutions, where we have longstanding relationships with some of the most complex and sophisticated institutions globally, we are proud to have completed 11 customer conversions in 2023. In total, we added over 50 million accounts to our business and ended the year with record traditional accounts on file of more than 800 million. We continue to have a strong pipeline of new business that extends into 2025, as well as eight letters of intent with institutions worldwide. In 2023, we achieved 13 multi-year renewals and new customer agreements. This includes a new contract with a leading U.S. bank that is a longstanding Global Payments merchant partner, a relationship that provided the foundation for the growth of our partnership to include issuer technology solutions. We also continued to expand into new and faster growth markets, including in LatAm through our partnership with CAT, the credit card joint venture between Scotiabank and Chile’s largest retailer, Cencosud. The confidence that many of the largest and most sophisticated complex financial institutions have with us is enhanced by our issuer platform monetization efforts, which positions us to provide our clients market-leading, cloud-native, real-time solutions at scale in more markets than we ever have previously. We have made substantial progress with our modernization with two clients now in production leveraging products via our cloud solution. Further, we expect to complete the development of our client-facing applications this year and are planning to execute dozens of unique cloud-issuer platform pilots spanning multiple services, products and geographies as we prepare for the commercial launch of additional cloud-native capabilities. Moving to B2B, we continue to see solid demand for our leading capabilities across our three focus areas: software-driven work flow automation, money-in and money-out funds flow, and employer solutions. We have successfully integrated EVO’s PayFabric software into our merchant business, allowing us to go to market in B2B acceptance with a software-led approach. Further, our MineralTree business nearly doubled subscription bookings in its core midmarket, positioning the business well heading into 2024. As one of the largest virtual card issuers in the world, we are benefiting from accelerated adoption of virtual cards globally, which contributed to strong growth in commercial transactions this year. Additionally, our B2B bookings in merchant solutions increased over 20% in 2023 as more of this spend shifts towards digital channels. Our employer solutions are also seeing favorable trends, including our payroll business delivering mid-teens growth for the full year and our paycard and EWA solutions achieving nearly 2,000 new partnerships last year. After an eventful and successful 2023, I am pleased to report that we are carrying this momentum into the early part of 2024. In January, our merchant business announced a new joint venture with Commerzbank in Germany. This new entity, Commerz Globalpay, is expected to launch in the first half of 2024 and will deliver a comprehensive suite of innovative omnichannel payments and software offerings, including our GP point-of-sale software solutions and our GP touch on mobile technology at scale, providing merchants the capabilities needed to run and grow their businesses more efficiently in the largest economy in Europe. We are delighted to be partnering with Commerzbank, a premier financial institution with unmatched relationships with small and medium-sized merchants, to significantly enhance distribution in Germany, where there are substantial opportunities to further digitize the payment experience. This partnership was achieved because of Global Payments leadership in payments technology and commerce solutions and extensive JV experience across European markets, while our acquisition of EVO helped provide a foundation with its existing physical presence and merchant portfolio in Germany. In North America, we remain on track to launch our next-generation Heartland restaurant and Heartland retail offerings this quarter, which will provide best-in-class omnichannel experiences and further catalyze our success in point-of-sale software. Early feedback on our next generation restaurant point-of-sale solution has been overwhelmingly positive, including our new updated and enhanced features like online ordering, loyalty, mobile point of sale, and a simplified user interface on commercial-grade hardware. Our new retail POS solution allows us to extend into additional retail verticals, which is the cornerstone of our broader strategy of sub-vertical expansion, allowing us to increase wallet share while meeting the demands of a modern retail environment that brings supply chain, ecommerce, customer engagement and complex ERP functionality into a simplified and single ecosystem. This expansion not only aligns with our growth objectives but also ensures we stay at the forefront of retail technology, providing our clients with the tools they need to thrive in a rapidly evolving market. Our POS momentum also continues in the enterprise QSR space. We were delighted to be selected to power CosMc’s, a new concept from the McDonald’s universe. Xenial’s cloud point-of-sale drive-thru digital menu boards and nVision speed of service solutions are enabling an innovative new drive-thru traffic management system that supports CosMc’s multiple drive-thru lanes and pick-up windows, optimizing restaurant operations in a dynamic and flexible way. CosMc’s is also using Xenial’s back office suite to provide real time reporting and management of inventory, sales, labor, projections and scheduling. We are excited to have already launched with CosMc’s at the initial Bolingbrook, Illinois restaurant concept in December and look forward to helping future-proof all new pilot locations with our cloud-based technology ecosystem as they open in additional markets in 2024. Our issuer business has also started the year well, having executed multi-year renewal agreements with two of our flagship clients, Capital One and Navy Federal Credit Union, both longstanding relationships spanning decades. Our renewal with Capital One include both its consumer and commercial credit portfolios in North America, and for Navy Federal, a not-for-profit credit union serving the military, veterans and their families, our relationship supports its consumer portfolio as well as an array of value-added services, including loyalty, fraud, and digital engagement solutions. The extension of these partnerships further validates our strategy of aligning our business with clear market winners. Looking ahead, we remain encouraged by the resiliency we have seen in consumer spending and expect fairly similar trends in 2024. However, we recognize there remains a number of risks to the global economy and consumer and are appropriately reflecting this in our expectations. Our outlook does incorporate a slightly more tempered expectation for the macro environment relative to what we experienced in 2023, but is roughly aligned with what we saw exiting the year. January trends were fairly consistent with what you heard from the networks and broadly in line with our expectations. We are confident we have built a better and more durable business model which positions us well to manage through any environment if the current backdrop changes. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Josh. Josh Whipple: Thanks Cameron. We were pleased with our financial performance in the fourth quarter and for the full year, which reflects continued outstanding execution and the resiliency of our business model. I’m particularly proud that we delivered these results while simultaneously completing multiple transactions which serve to accelerate our strategy. Starting with the full year 2023, we delivered adjusted net revenue of $8.67 billion, an increase of 7% from the prior year. Excluding the impact of dispositions, adjusted net revenue increased 15% compared to 2022. Adjusted operating margin for the full year improved 90 basis points to 44.6%. The net result was adjusted earnings per share of $10.42, an increase of 12% compared to the full year 2022, which equates to over 16% growth excluding the impact of dispositions. For the fourth quarter, we delivered adjusted net revenue of $2.19 billion, an increase of 8% from the same period in the prior year. Adjusted operating margin for the quarter increased 30 basis points to 44.8%. This equates to 100 basis points of margin expansion excluding EVO payments and dispositions. The net result was adjusted earnings per share of $2.65, an increase of 10% compared to the same period in 2023. Taking a closer look at performance by segment, merchant solutions achieved adjusted net revenue of $1.67 billion for the fourth quarter, reflecting growth of 19% or approximately 8% excluding the impact of EVO and dispositions. Our performance was led by our software-centric businesses, which again delivered double-digit growth in the quarter. Specifically, we saw strength in Zego, school solutions, and AdvancedMD, which delivered strong double-digit growth for the fourth quarter, and our point-of-sale businesses again grew roughly 20%. Focusing on faster growth geographies, we achieved double-digit growth in Spain and central Europe, as well as in Poland and Greece. Our LatAm business was another bright spot for the quarter as we benefit from the strong secular payments trends in Mexico and Chile. This performance was partially offset by ongoing weakness in the macro environment in the U.K. and Canada. We delivered on adjusted operating margin of 47.7% in the merchant segment, a decline of 60 basis points due to the acquisition of EVO. Excluding EVO and dispositions, operating margins improved 40 basis points year-on-year. For the full year, we realized approximately 25% of our targeted expense synergies from EVO, and as Cameron mentioned, we expect to deliver on our raised expectation of $135 million in annual run rate expense synergies within two years. Our issuer solutions business produced adjusted net revenue of $531 million, reflecting growth of 6% or 5% constant currency growth. The core issuer business also grew mid single digits this quarter, driven by ongoing strength in volume-based revenue. This was partially offset by slower growth in managed and output services as we continue to focus our issuer business on more technology enablement. We added approximately 13 million traditional accounts on file sequentially – this equates to an increase of more than 50 million accounts year-over-year as we continue to benefit from the ongoing execution of our conversion pipeline, in addition to healthy consumer and commercial account growth with our large, existing FI customers. Issuer transactions grew high single digits compared to the fourth quarter of 2022, led by commercial card transactions which increased low double digits, highlighting ongoing strength in cross-border corporate travel. Focusing in on our issuer B2B portfolio, MineralTree delivered high teens growth and achieved record bookings this quarter in its targeted midmarket segment, while pay card saw improving trends as the business lapped the more difficult employment comparisons from the last year. Finally, issuer solutions delivered an adjusted operating margin of 47.3%. As expected, this was relatively consistent with our third quarter performance but represented a decline compared to the prior year, due to a difficult comparison resulting from vendor benefits reflected in that period. For the full year, our issuer margins expanded 100 basis points, which exceeded our initial guidance for 60 basis points of margin improvement compared to 2022. From a cash flow standpoint, we produced strong adjusted free cash flow for the quarter of $784 million and $2.5 billion for the year. This represents an approximately 100% conversion rate of adjusted net income to adjusted free cash flow for the full year, consistent with our expectations excluding the impact of the requirement to capitalize research and development costs for income tax reporting purposes. Capital investment was approximately $157 million in the fourth quarter and roughly $660 million for the full year. Since closing EVO in March, we have reduced outstanding debt by more than $1.4 billion and our leverage position was 3.4 times at the end of the fourth quarter. Our balance sheet remains healthy and we have approximately $3.5 billion of available liquidity. Further, our total indebtedness is approximately 91% fixed, with a weighted average cost of debt of 3.78%. While debt repayment was our top priority for capital allocation in 2023, we are pleased to have also repurchased 4 million shares for roughly $410 million prior to closing EVO. Turning to the outlook, we are pleased with how our business is positioned as we enter 2024. We currently expect reported adjusted net revenue to range from $9.17 billion to $9.30 billion, reflecting growth of 6% to 7% over 2023 or approximately 7%-plus excluding EVO and dispositions. We are forecasting annual adjusted operating margin to expand up to 50 basis points for 2024, driven by benefits to our business mix from our ongoing shift towards technology enablement, partially offset by the lower margin profile of EVO prior to full synergy realization. To provide color at the segment level, we expect our merchant business to report adjusted net revenue growth of 9%-plus for the full year. This includes growth in the 7% to 8% range excluding the impact of the acquisition of EVO and the disposition of gaming solutions. We will fully annualize the transactions by the end of the first quarter of 2024. We expect up to 30 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion for the merchant business in 2024 with a slower expansion in the first half relative to the second half as EVO synergy realization ramps as the year progresses. Moving to issuer solutions, we are anticipating adjusted net revenue growth in the 5% to 6% range for the full year compared to 2023, as we benefit from our strong conversion pipeline and continued account growth with our large existing FI partners. We expect core issuer to grow in the mid single digit range and for MineralTree and Netspend’s B2B businesses to grow low double digits. We anticipate adjusted operating margin for the issuer business to expand by up to 50 basis points as we continue to drive efficiencies in the business, which will be offset somewhat by faster growth in our lower margin B2B businesses. In terms of quarterly phasing, as I mentioned, we will anniversary the acquisition of EVO and the disposition of gaming by the end of the first quarter. We will also anniversary the impact of the divestiture of Netspend’s consumer assets at the end of April. As a result, we will continue to have some impacts from these transactions in the first half of the year. Moving to a couple non-operating items, we currently expect net interest expense to be slightly above $500 million this year and for our adjusted effective tax rate to be approximately 19%. We also are planning for our capital expenditures to be around $670 million in 2024, which remains roughly 7% of revenue. We anticipate adjusted free cash flow to again be in a comparable range of 100%, excluding the roughly five-point impact from the timing change for recognizing research and development tax credits. Regarding capital allocation, we plan to return to a more balanced capital allocation approach in 2024, and I’m delighted that our board of directors has approved an increase in our share repurchase authorization to $2 billion, as share buyback remains one of our priorities. We also plan to further reduce our indebtedness until we return to roughly three times levered on a net debt basis during the year. Putting it all together, we expect adjusted earnings per share for the full year to be in the range of $11.54 to $11.70, reflecting growth of 11% to 12% over 2023. Excluding dispositions, adjusted earnings per share growth is expected to be 14%-plus for 2024. Our outlook for the year reflects the ongoing positive momentum in our business. While accommodating for a more tempered economic environment, given the continued uncertainty, we remain confident in the resiliency of our model and our ability to adapt to potential shifts in the economic environment. Cameron? Cameron Bready: Thanks Josh. As I said when I was named CEO in May, it’s an exciting time for Global Payments, and I could not be more proud of all we accomplished last year. As we begin 2024, I remain enthusiastic about the opportunities in front of us. We have a compelling technology-enabled strategy, a world-class team, great partners and clients, and a global presence with diverse distribution capabilities. This year, I remain highly focused on the priorities for our business and customers I outlined at the time I stepped into this role. First, we will continue to execute against our strategies, which positions us well for growth and success across our markets. We will, however, sharpen our focus on the most attractive opportunities we see in these areas while seeking to further simplify our business and amplify the impact of our investments. Specifically, we are focusing on the most impactful of these initiatives and where we can drive further differentiation in our business, including with our software-centric channels across our own, partnered and POS solutions. Additionally, we will continue to harmonize areas of the business that are less differentiated with an eye towards further improving scale and enhancing margin characteristics. Further, in markets and businesses where we are subscale with limited potential to build scale, we may choose to exit certain lines of business and activities in order to better focus our investments, resources and management intention on opportunities with better long term growth prospects that can more meaningfully impact our business. Second, I am focused on making it as easy as possible to do business with Global Payments while providing more solutions that deepen our relationships with our customers. We will continue to prioritize meeting our clients and customers how and where they want to be met with innovative and distinctive capabilities that integrate seamlessly. This includes our issuer modernization program and cloud investments, which will provide our clients with greater enablement capabilities and allow them to consume the services they need with greater speed to market and flexibility while providing best-in-class experiences for their cardholders. Third, we will maintain our relentless focus on execution, which has been one of the hallmarks of Global Payments and a key component of our ability to produce consistent results through market cycles. We are, however, undertaking an initiative to further simplify our technology and operating environments across the globe to become more efficient and effective, placing greater focus on aligning with business outcomes. We are committed to redefining success with a continuous improvement mindset and increasing the speed of delivery and nimbleness of our business. Fourth, we remain committed to harnessing the power of generative AI to both innovate new products and solutions that deliver value and improved experiences to our customers, and increase the productivity and efficiency of our operating environments and workforce around the globe. We have already made meaningful progress in our journey to embed generative AI into our business to leverage its power and the richness of its data in our ecosystem. We have established a center of excellence to coordinate our adoption of generative AI technologies and provide a governance framework, implemented foundational tools and models that are being utilized throughout our organization, evaluating numerous use cases and deployed generative AI technology in a number of areas of our business. For example, in our issuer solutions business, our Foresight solution in partnership with Featurespace provider a market-leading fraud solution that uses generative AI to detect fraud strategies in real time utilizing our proprietary data. Clients using this solution have realized a nearly 50% reduction in fraud losses, and we are evaluating a number of development opportunities that use generative AI across our issuing and acquiring businesses as a key component of our next-generation applications to further combat fraud and identity risk across our portfolios. Finally, I’m focused on ensuring Global Payments’ culture is second to none. Our culture dictates how we accomplish our goals and achieve results as an organization. Having a world-class culture will further differentiate us in the marketplace while driving value creation and benefit for all of our constituents. Winnie? Winnie Smith: Thanks Cameron. Before we begin our question and answer session, I’d like to ask everyone to limit their questions to one with one follow-up to accommodate everyone in the queue. Thank you. Operator, we will now go to questions. See also 35 Biggest Football Clubs in the World and 20 Most Meat Eating States Per Capita. Q&A Session Follow Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN) Follow Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN) or Subscribe with Google We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy. Operator: Thank you. [Operator instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jason Kupferberg with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question. Jason Kupferberg: Good morning guys. I wanted to start with the guidance for 2024 on the top line. Looking at the merchant piece specifically, I know we’re talking about at least 7% organic. It did sound in your prepared remarks like you’re maybe being a little bit more conservative versus this time last year, so if you can elaborate on that, and just give us a sense–I mean, if the consumer doesn’t slow at all, are we looking at more, like, 8%? Just trying to calibrate what some of the underlying assumptions might be in that part of the guide. Cameron Bready: Hey Jason, good morning, it’s Cameron. Thanks for the question – it’s a good question. The way I think about it is we exited the year at basically 8%, and as we said in our prepared remarks, our expectation for merchant for 2024 is 7% to 8%, kind of quote-unquote organic, obviously excluding the pick-up that we get from EVO in the first quarter before we anniversary the deal. To me, that really reflects, as we said, a slightly more tempered view of the macroeconomic environment, given that we do see some risk to the consumer as we head into 2024. That being said, to your point, if the consumer hangs in better than we would expect, I would anticipate us being towards the higher end of that range. Obviously if the consumer is a little weaker, as our guide sort of contemplates or at least allows for, I think at the low end, we might be towards the lower end of that range. I think the way you’re thinking about it is right and it’s consistent with how we’re thinking about it. We’re being a little bit cautious around the consumer heading into the year. Obviously a continued resilient consumer who doesn’t weaken at all will put us towards the higher end, and if we do see a little bit of softness, we think we’d be towards the lower end of that range. But again, we wanted to be prudent with our expectations around the consumer heading into the year. Jason Kupferberg: Understood. I wanted to just pick up on your comments around simplifying the business. Some possible portfolio pruning sounds like it could be on the table. I’m wondering if that might be a 2024 event. And then if you can just comment on the M&A front about whether or not large scale acquisitions could be in the cards – there was obviously some media reports out a little before Christmas on that, which I know you guys denied, but just to get a sense of where M&A versus buybacks is sitting in your priority list right now. Thanks. Cameron Bready: Yes, happy to. Maybe I’ll address the latter part of that question first, and then I’ll circle back to the front in a second. I think on the M&A front, as Josh mentioned in his prepared comments, we’re kind of back to a business as usual mindset heading into the year as it relates to capital allocation. As I’ve said pretty consistently, whatever we do or consider from an M&A perspective obviously has to fit strategically, it has to fit culturally and financially, it needs to be attractive as a returns matter relative to the alternative uses of our capital, and given that leverage is right around our targeted level right now and we expect it to be for 2024, the alternative use of capital is buying back our stock, so I remain of the view that anything we do from an M&A perspective needs to be competitive from a returns standpoint relative to our ability to buy back stock and the returns that we think we can generate from that. That’s true, regardless of whether we’re thinking about smaller deals that present nice tuck-in or enhanced capability opportunities, or we think of larger deals that obviously provide more opportunity for increased scale and advance the strategy as well. As always from an M&A perspective, we’re open-minded. I think we’re very deliberate, I think in terms of how we think about M&A that’s going to fit our strategy and the things we want to pursue, and we’ll continue with that mindset as we move forward in time, but I’ll be clear – the return expectation for M&A need to be competitive, and that’s how we’ll view everything through that lens. I think as it relates to your first question around potential portfolio pruning, there is some chance that that will be in the cards for 2024, yes. It’s not contemplated in our outlook currently today, but it is something that we’re continuing to evaluate, and it’s really in the context of making sure that as we think about investing in the business, that we’re investing in those areas where we have scale, we have differentiation, we have prospects to be able to continue to grow the business at attractive rates going forward, and trying to minimize investment, minimize resources and management attention that’s focused on markets that may be sub-scale, or a line of business where we don’t have particular differentiation and we don’t see greater prospects to meaningfully impact the business moving forward. That’s the way we’re thinking about it. Obviously if we make decisions around that, we’ll provide updates as we work through the year, but it is certainly something that we’re contemplating, as I noted in my remarks. Jason Kupferberg: Thanks Cameron. Cameron Bready: Thanks Jason. Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of James Faucette with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question. James Faucette: Great, thank you very much. Wanted to ask in terms of your current competitive environment, I think, Cameron, you highlighted a lot of different things that you’re working on in areas of strength, but how do you generally assess the competitive intensity in the market right now, and where do you see opportunities versus challenges generally? Cameron Bready: I think it’s a good question. I would say we feel fairly good about how we’re positioned strategically across most of the markets that we’re in today. Certainly here in the U.S, we feel quite good about obviously our integrated business, the capabilities we have there, the differentiation, the distinction we think we can bring to ISB partners, and how that has allowed us to position that business for continued growth and success. Certainly we’re very excited about the rollout of our next-generation point-of-sale software solutions I talked about, which are coming obviously this quarter, which we think will give us a more competitive positioning obviously in the POS space here in the U.S. market, with feature-rich capabilities and obviously service that we think is distinctive, relative to again the competitors in the marketplace, and obviously we still see a long runway for growth around POS, whether it’s enterprise QSR with what we’re doing with CosMc’s, or small to medium sized merchants across restaurant and retail that we’re targeting through our Heartland restaurant, Heartland retail platforms. I think we feel very good about that, and then of course across the vertical market software businesses and those verticals where we do own the entirety of the software stack, again we think we’re well positioned in those verticals to continue to grow nicely and continue to gain share with those businesses in the specific verticals that they’re targeting. That’s really the software-centric strategies that we’re pursuing here in the U.S. market. I do think those are the areas of growth that we’re continuing to focus on and continuing to invest in, in our business, and that’s the best strategy for us competitively, I think here in the U.S. market. But I think we’re feeling pretty sanguine about the overall competitive landscape in the U.S. I think pricing has become more rationalized, obviously, with rates rising and competitors focusing on profitability and free cash flow, which I think creates a more constructive backdrop overall just from a competitive standpoint. I’d say outside the U.S, we’re pretty bullish how we’re positioned competitively, largely because of the capability that we can bring to bear on markets that are probably not quite as sophisticated from a product and solutioning standpoint as the U.S. market, so our ability to bring our point-of-sale solutions, our touch on mobile solutions, our commerce enablement capabilities, our Google running Grow My Business platform to markets outside the U.S., particularly in Europe, LatAm, and to some degree Asia-Pacific, I think competitively positions us really well in markets where I’d say the competitive dynamic in many cases is probably less intense than it is here in the U.S. market. From that perspective, I’m relatively bullish what we can do, putting aside macro, just in terms of competitive positioning in markets outside the U.S., bringing these distinctive and differentiated capabilities. James Faucette: Appreciate that. Then as a follow-up, and related to this year’s outlook, how should we be thinking about the targets, especially from a profitability standpoint vis-à-vis your cycle guide that was established a few years ago, and wondering the trajectory of that and how we should be thinking about medium term EPS targeted growth rates, etc. Thank you. Cameron Bready: Yes James, look – it’s a fair question, and I’m not going to get ahead of my skis today and sort of give a new, quote-unquote, cycle guide. Obviously as I’ve communicated previously, we intend to host an investor day this year – that will be one of the topics that we cover at that time, and we’ll provide a little more color about how we’re thinking about the business then. But I would say, if you just step back and look at how we’re thinking about the business heading into the year, as we said, excluding kind of the anniversarying of deals, if you think about the business on a normalized basis, we’re targeting 7%-plus revenue growth on the top line and 14%-plus from an earnings per share perspective, so think about it kind of in the high single digit top line growth and kind of mid-teens earnings per share growth, again reflecting a little bit more of a tempered view of the macro environment heading into the year. I think that’s generally fairly reflective of how we think about the business, and I think that kind of business is one that we can continue to execute against, and those targets and expectations are something we think we can sustainably achieve over a period of time, so I would characterize the outlook as broadly reflective of how we think about the business, obviously with the overlay of a little bit of a tempered macroeconomic expectation for 2024. James Faucette: Great, appreciate that. Good luck. Cameron Bready: Thank you James. Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question. Darrin Peller: Guys, thanks. I was actually going to touch on the medium term guide, but that was helpful. Just as kind of a quick follow-up on the guidance, when we think about the inputs, again you said more conservative in terms of the consumer, which is helpful. Are you incorporating any type of M&A or tuck-ins in that outlook that we should consider being at all material to the revenue growth rates? Then just going back to guide on margins, I think you’re saying up to 50 basis points. Can we just walk through that a bit? It’s a little lower than it used to be in terms of margin expansion. How much of that is synergies from EVO, how much of that is just operating leverage versus mix, any conservatism in that outlook as well, and just maybe the inputs? Oh, and then also, if your margins are coming to a level that’s higher, does that inform your view on capital allocation – more buybacks, perhaps? Cameron Bready: Yes, a lot is buried in there, Darrin. Maybe I’ll start and ask Josh to chime in as well on a couple of the comments. I would just say on the first question, the answer is no from an M&A perspective. We did a small portfolio buy in Q4, but it’s de minimis in terms of contribution to 2024 – I mean, less than 10 basis points, so that’s not a particular large impact. We don’t have any other M&A included in our guide. Obviously if we do M&A, we’ll update at the time, as we have historically, and provide an expectation of contribution for whatever M&A we do as we head into 2024. On the second question, I think as it relates to the margin guide, I’ll just give a couple opening comments and then I’ll let Josh maybe provide a little more color. I’d say two things, really. One is–you know, I think we’re taking a fairly prudent view of the outlook heading into the year. We have a lot of things that we’re trying to accomplish as a business, particularly as it relates to EVO integration, as well as continuing to invest in the business in areas that we think are going to help drive growth and sustain growth over longer periods of time. I think like everything in life, it’s a bit of a balanced view around how much of the benefit is flowing through margins to the bottom line versus how much we’re reinvesting in the business to support the rollout of our new POS platform, obviously to ensure that we execute integration of EVO seamlessly, effectively while we continue to invest in their underlying platforms to ensure stability and reliability. We continue to invest in bringing new product and capability to their markets, which we think will drive revenue obviously longer term, etc. I think the view around margins is pretty balanced around, again, wanting to invest in the business to drive growth as well as allowing some of that to flow through to the bottom line, to impact earnings. The last point I would make, and I’ll ask Josh to add any color he would like, is if you exclude the impact of EVO, which obviously is still coming in at a lower margin profile, I think overall margins for the year would be up closer to 75 basis points and merchant would be closer to 60. I’ll just remind you, that’s off of a base for merchant of 48%, so margins are fairly healthy in the business overall. We’re focused on continuing to find opportunities for market expansion, again while also continuing to find opportunities to invest to grow the business. Josh, I don’t know if you’d want to add anything to that? Josh Whipple: No, look – I think the only thing I would add is if you think about margins by segment, we continue to expect merchant margins to improve as synergies ramp. Darrin, you may recall if you go back to last year, Q2 margins were down 170 basis points, Q3 they were down 90 and Q4 60, so we’re seeing a continued consistent positive trend coming into the year. I’d also just echo what Cameron said – we continue to focus on balancing margin expansion with reinvestment in the business, and as it relates to our issuer margins, we’ll continue to see the benefit of strong volume-based revenue trends and ongoing expense management. In Q1 specifically, we expect margins to be slightly higher than the 50 basis points, given the lower Q1 ‘23 absolute margin figures, but otherwise margin expansion for the overall company will be pretty consistent across each of the quarters. Darrin Peller: That’s really helpful. Just quickly on the buyback question, I mean, is this–it looks like you raised your authorization, if I’m not mistaken, so is this an indication of more capital returning expectations going forward? Josh Whipple: Darrin, I would say that we plan to return to a more balanced capital allocation approach in 2024. Buybacks remain one of our priorities, but we plan to further reduce debt until we can return to that roughly three times levered target on a net debt basis during the year. Darrin Peller: Great. Cameron Bready: Darrin, the only thing I’d add – I mean, it was important to us going into the year to have the capacity to be able to do share repurchases if that’s what capital allocation plans call for, so obviously we’re pleased the board supports that and I think it sends a signal, obviously, that we’re very open minded to share repurchases if that’s the best alternative for capital allocation this year. Darrin Peller: Thanks Cameron, thanks guys. Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ramsey El-Assal with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.....»»
Resideo Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:REZI) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Resideo Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:REZI) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 13, 2024 Resideo Technologies, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.57, expectations were $0.34. Resideo Technologies, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here). Operator: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. […] Resideo Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:REZI) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 13, 2024 Resideo Technologies, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.57, expectations were $0.34. Resideo Technologies, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here). Operator: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, I’d like to welcome everyone to the Resideo Technologies Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded. All participants will be in a listen-only mode until the formal question-and-answer portion of the call. It is now pleasure to turn today’s call over to Mr. Jason Willey, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Willey, you may now begin. Jason Willey: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Resideo’s fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. On today’s call will be Jay Geldmacher, Resideo’s Chief Executive Officer; and Tony Trunzo, our Chief Financial Officer. A copy of our earnings release and related presentation materials are available on the Investor Relations page of our website at investors.resideo.com. We would like to remind you that this afternoon’s presentation contains forward-looking statements. Statements other than historical facts made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements and are not guarantees of future performance or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in Resideo’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. We identify the principal risks and uncertainties that affect our performance in our annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings. With that, I will turn the call over to Jay. Jay Geldmacher: Thank you, Jason, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We finished 2023 on a strong note. Q4 revenue and profitability were above the midpoint of our outlook and cash generation was strong. With full-year operating cash flow of $440 million. We built momentum throughout the year in order activity within products and solutions. We also made significant progress on our key strategic operational initiatives and in meaningful reducing structural costs. During 2023, we made substantial progress reshaping our portfolio and operations. With the divestiture of Genesis and the outsourcing of our casting facility in San Diego. Work continues on rebalancing our product portfolio, manufacturing operations, and ADI footprint to help position the business for profitable long-term growth. We expect to have more to share on both fronts as we move through 2024. We also advanced the ball on the partnership front, strengthening our relationship with major insurance providers establishing new relationships in the energy management market, including our recent announcement with Ford and meaningfully expanding the depth of homebuilder relationships. We have spoken previously about our progress building content with home builders. This work is led by our First Alert and BRK professional brands. We have expanded content with existing builders and increased the number of partners we’re selling to, adding over 20 new builder partners in 2023. We believe we are well positioned to drive growth in this channel, as the new construction market recovers. See also 20 Most Reliable Cars For Seniors and Top 20 Most Respected Countries in Europe. Q&A Session Follow Resideo Technologies Inc. (NYSE:REZI) Follow Resideo Technologies Inc. (NYSE:REZI) or Subscribe with Google We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy. We also expect this additional content will have positive long-term benefits to our potential replacement base. Our innovation within products and solutions, we significantly improved our new product introduction cadence. This included new video doorbell and outdoor camera products for our professionally monitored security offering, launching Pro Series for the EMEA security market. First Alert branded connected water leak detection and shut off products and the rollout of UL Eighth edition smoke detectors. We are seeing results based on all these actions. We are encouraged by ordered trends within products and solutions, which have stabilized year-over-year and grew sequentially in Q3 and Q4. Through executing a new product introductions and taking effective cost control actions, we are achieving gross margin expansion despite volume headwinds, and continuing to invest in key long-term initiatives. At ADI, we continue to grow our digital capabilities. Building a leading digital experience is critical to customer engagement and is expected to be margin accretive over time. For 2023, ecommerce sales were up 8% year-over-year. Total touchless sales which includes ecommerce, electronic data interchange and email automation now account for 38% of ADI’s total sales. We made significant investment during 2023 in our product information management and data asset management systems. This work helps to enhance the usability of our web experience with a focus on speed, intuitive search, and accuracy of availability and delivery information. ADI continues to make progress with its expansion into adjacent categories, particularly in the audiovisual market. ADI acquired BTX in early 2023, adding new capabilities in the professional AV market and in-sourcing custom fiber assemblies. ProAV was one of ADI’s better performing categories in 2023, growing 6% on an organic basis, and now accounts for 10% of ADI sales. With that, I will turn the call over to Tony to discuss our fourth quarter results and 2024 outlook. Tony Trunzo: Thank you, Jay, and good afternoon, everyone. Fourth quarter financial results exceeded the midpoint of our outlook range for a second consecutive quarter led by continued momentum in the products and solutions business. We drove sequential improvements in gross margin in P&S, for the third consecutive quarter and generated $263 million in cash flow from operations. For the year, cash flow from operations was $440 million, a record since then. Over the past three years, we have converted 89% of GAAP net income into free cash flow, demonstrating the strong cash flow characteristics of our business. Resideo fourth quarter revenue of $1.54 billion was 1% lower than Q4 last year, but flat excluding the sale of our Genesis wire business. Operating income for the quarter was $147 million, an increase of 50% compared to last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $136 million, up 11% compared to Q4 of 2022. Fully diluted earnings per share or $0.56, and $0.48 on a non-GAAP basis, compared with $0.26 and $0.25 respectively last year. Non-GAAP EPS exceeded the upper end of our guidance range for the quarter. Products and solutions fourth quarter revenue of $683 million was 1% lower than the fourth quarter 2022 but up 2% when adjusting for the sale of Genesis. Price realization added approximately $16 million to revenue and overall volumes excluding the Genesis impact, we’re down low single digits. First Alert delivered a strong quarter particularly in residential new construction. And we also saw growth year-over-year in water products. Orders were up sequentially following the stabilization experienced in the third quarter. While channel inventory remains elevated in some areas. We believe order activity and point of sale data indicates channel inventory overall is normalizing. Products and solutions gross margin in Q4 was 39.5%, up 110 basis points compared to last year. Gross margins improved sequentially in each quarter of 2023, as we achieved reductions in raw material costs, manufacturing headcount and freight costs, which more than offset the impacts of reduced volumes and labor rate inflation. As unit volumes and factory utilization rates recover, we continue to believe P&S gross margins can further improve. Products and solutions fourth quarter operating expense was down $14 million year-over-year, excluding restructuring costs. Products and solutions operating income was $147 million in the fourth quarter, up 50% compared with Q4 2022 and up 16%, when adjusting for prior year restructuring charges. Turning to ADI, Q4 revenue was $854 million down 1% versus the prior year. The business continued to experience pressure in residential security and video surveillance sales, which was partially offset by growth and access control and professional AV categories. ADI gross margin in the fourth quarter was 18% compared with 19.1% in Q4 last year. Gross margins were negatively impacted by transitory inflationary pricing benefits experienced in 2022, reduced vendor rebate activity due to lower volumes and more competitive pricing in certain categories. ADI operating profit of $59 million was down 14% compared with prior Q4, reflecting the lower sales and gross margin on flat operating expenses. Corporate costs were $55 million in Q4, down $12 million compared with the prior year. Adjusting for unusual items in both periods, we drove $3 million of structural cost savings versus the prior period. Q4 cash from operations was $263 million, up 89% compared with $139 million in Q4 last year. Improved cash generation, and specifically working capital performance was a major initiative throughout 2023, and we more than achieved our objectives. For the full year, we generated $440 million in operating cash. During the quarter, we repurchased 719,000 shares of our stock for a total cost of $11 million. For the full year, we repurchased 2.6 million shares, or $41 million and our fully diluted share count declined year-over-year. As we look toward 2024, our guidance is predicated on the following assumptions. We expect residential repair and remodel activity to be flat to down low single digits year-over-year. And residential new construction starts to grow by low to mid-single digits. We have assumed HVAC channel inventory levels largely normalized in the first half of 2024. We expect to drive 50 to 100 basis points of gross margin expansion year-over-year within products and solutions, moving sustained P&S gross margins close to 40%, based on the benefits of ongoing efficiency initiatives, in an essentially flat market. ADI gross margin is expected to be flat for the year, as we continue to see year-over-year headwinds from inflationary benefits in the first half of 2024. The sale of our Genesis wire business will reduce 2024 products and solutions security sales by approximately $105 million and operating income by approximately $10 million compared with 2023. At the end of December, we executed an amendment to our contract to directly supply ADT hardware for their North American Residential security offerings. Our agreement now runs through early 2025, at which time deliveries of these products will conclude. Based on this agreement, we expect our 2024 Security hardware sales to ADT to decline by approximately $100 million compared with 2023 levels, with a similar additional reduction in 2025. The impact of the new agreement is fully reflected in our 2024 outlook and is expected to be immaterial to products and solutions 2025 profitability. Our guidance moving forward will focus on revenue, adjusted EBITDA, non GAAP EPs and operating cash flow. We believe these metrics in combination provide the best view into the health of the business. That said, here is our outlook. For the first quarter. We expect revenue to be in the range of $1.46 billion to $1.51 billion. Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $120 million to $140 million and non-GAAP EPS of $0.28 to $0.38. The first quarter is typically a slower seasonal period for products and solutions due to reduced new construction activity and more limited restocking by our distribution channel. For the full year 2024, we expect revenue to be in the range of $6.08 billion to $6.28 billion. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $560 million to $640 million. Non-GAAP EPS is expected to be in the range of $1.48 to $1.88. We expect to generate at least $320 million of operating cash flow for the full year 2024. We finished 2023 on a positive note, with strong Q4 results driven by outperformance in P&S while uneven quarter-to-quarter, our cash generation was excellent in 2023, and has been strong since 2020. We are cautiously optimistic about a more accommodating macro backdrop as 2024 progresses. However, the current interest rate environment and related low housing turnover continues to provide headwinds to our business. Despite market uncertainties, our initial 2024 outlook implies low single-digit sales growth at the midpoint, adjusting for the Genesis and ADT impacts and higher adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin and non-GAAP EPS compared to 2023. As unit volumes, and factor utilization rates recover, we continue you to believe products and solutions margins will further improve. I’ll now turn the call back to Jay for a few concluding remarks before we take questions. Jay Geldmacher: Thank you. Looking back on 2023, both businesses navigated significant market headwinds, with an almost 20% reduction in existing home sales in the U.S., leading to the weakest housing turnover year since 1995, with that negative implications for our residential security business within both products and solutions and ADI. Consolidated sales fell only 2% in 2023, despite these headwinds, because of our strong product offering and customer relationships, we were able to drive price realization within products and solutions and ADI’s broad commercial market exposure provided diversification. We finished the year with strong cash generation, improving order trends, and gross margin momentum in our products and solutions business. As Tony noted in his remarks, we’ll be winding down the existing contractual hardware portion of our longstanding relationship with ADT. Since I arrived at Resideo almost four years ago, our team has built a collaborative constructive relationship with ADT from the executive level down. While, we are wrapping up this legacy contract, we believe these relationships have created a strong shared foundation for continued collaboration and partnership. As you looked at 2022, the products and solutions, we are focused on executing further portfolio and facility optimization efforts, as well as increasing velocity of MPI. With our costs, actions and transformation work, we believe we are well positioned to drive improved margin and profitability as market conditions improve. At ADI, we will continue to expand our digital initiatives and build upon our adjacent market and exclusive brands expansion opportunities. Our focus remains firmly on executing our key strategic initiatives, while driving profitability, expansion and strong cash flow. I want to again thank the entire Resideo employee base for their outstanding efforts during 2023, and I’m excited to continue to build on the momentum together in 2024. Operator, we are now ready for questions......»»
mdf commerce reports Third Quarter of Fiscal 2024 Financial Results
Q3 FY2024 revenues of $30.2 million compared to $31.7 million in Q3 FY2023, a decrease of $1.5 million or 4.6% Q3 year-over-year revenue decrease of $0.2 million or 0.6% when excluding InterTrade5 revenues and post-closing transition services revenues from Q3 FY2023 Revenues from eprocurement solutions increased by 4.5% to $20.7 million for Q3 FY2024 Adjusted EBITDA1 of $2.5 million for Q3 FY2024, a significant improvement of $1.6 million compared to $0.9 million in Q3 FY2023 Net loss and Adjusted net loss2 of $4.2 million for Q3 FY2024 compared to net earnings of $15.1 million which included a $22.9 million gain on the disposal of InterTrade5. Significant improvement of $3.6 million in Adjusted net loss2 compared to $7.8 million for Q3 FY2023. Net cash generated by operating activities of $6.4 million for Q3 FY2024, used to reduce long-term debt. Strong improvement over the net cash used in operating activities of $2.8 million in Q3 prior year. Over $5.0 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of Q3 FY2024 MONTREAL, Feb. 13, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mdf commerce inc. (the "Corporation") (TSX:MDF), a SaaS leader in digital commerce technologies, reported third quarter financial results for the three-month period ended December 31, 2023 ("Q3 FY2024"). All dollar amounts are expressed in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated. "We've seen a clear shift in public sector focus on digital transformation, with procurement process digitalization listed among the top priorities of state and local governments", said Luc Filiatreault, President and Chief Executive Officer of mdf commerce. "Our innovative suite of eprocurement solutions purpose-fit for state and local governments, provide efficiencies critical to government agencies who are ultimately seeking to generate taxpayer value. We are excited that we've seen year-over-year growth in our eprocurement products, implying broad strength across our product suite. We are well-positioned for strong growth as this digital transformation is primed to accelerate over the next few years." During the third quarter we welcomed new mid-market customers to our eprocurement community, closing several multi-year contracts for our eprocurement solutions, mainly focused on our Source, Contract and Connect offerings. Our full-suite of end-to-end procurement solutions offered in modules Source, Contract, Procure, Connect and Shop, are tailored for public sector procurement and provide a strong competitive advantage. New customer wins in the 2024 fiscal year, including the State of Hawaii which was announced last quarter, and new agency customers in the eprocurement mid-market strategy, are starting to show in our financial results as customer deployments ramp up. "The eprocurement platform revenue grew by 4.5% and 7.4% in Q3 FY2024 and in the nine-month period ended December 31, 2023 ("YTD Q3 FY2024") respectively compared to the same periods of prior year, and eprocurement Recurring Revenue4 continues to trend at 88% of total platform revenues", said Deborah Dumoulin, Chief Financial Officer of mdf commerce. "We reported a sixth sequential quarter of positive Adjusted EBITDA1 at $2.5 million, a significant improvement from $0.9 million in Q3 prior year, with notable improvements in profitability over the last year and positive cash flow from operations for the quarter. We reported positive net cash generated from operating activities of $6.4 million for Q3 FY2024, compared to net cash used in operating activities of $2.8 million in the third quarter last year and ended the third quarter with over $5.0 million in cash and cash equivalents and with $1.5 million drawn on the Revolving Facility available under the Credit Agreement. We are pleased that our results show a notable improvement in cash flows from operations." Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 Financial Results Revenues for Q3 FY2024 were $30.2 million compared to $31.7 million in Q3 FY2023, a decrease of $1.5 million or 4.6%. Q3 year-over-year revenue decreased by $0.2 million or 0.6% when excluding InterTrade5, a subsidiary that was sold on October 4, 2022 and contributed $0.4 million of revenue in Q3 FY2023 and other revenue from post-closing transition services of $0.9 million. On a Constant Currency3 basis, revenues decreased by $1.6 million or 4.9% compared to $31.8 million in Q3 FY2023. Recurring Revenue4 was $24.8 million or 82.2% of revenues in Q3 FY2024 compared to $24.7 million or 77.8% in Q3 FY2023. Recurring Revenue4 in Q3 FY2023 included $0.3 million from InterTrade5. Net loss was $4.2 million for Q3 FY2024 compared to net earnings of $15.1 million which included a $22.9 million gain on the disposal of InterTrade. Adjusted net loss2 was $4.2 million for Q3 FY2024, a significant improvement of $3.6 million compared to $7.8 million for Q3 FY2023. Adjusted EBITDA1 was $2.5 million in Q3 FY2024 marking the sixth sequential quarter with positive Adjusted EBITDA1, a significant improvement of $1.6 million from $0.9 million in Q3 FY2023. Profitability and cash flows from operations have improved significantly in Q3 FY2024 compared to the third quarter of the prior year from new sales, mainly for eprocurement solutions, and as a result of the various right-sizing measures, including a focus on operational efficiency. The US state transaction model agreements (TRX) in eprocurement, for which we collect fees based on a percentage of our customers' spend on eligible goods and services, have contributed positively to cash flows both for Q3 FY2024 and YTD Q3 FY2024 as compared to the same periods in the prior year. We reported net cash generated by operating activities of $6.4 million for the third quarter this year, compared to net cash used in operating activities of $2.8 million in the third quarter last year. The net cash generated by operating activities has been used to reduce long-term debt during Q3 FY2024. As at December 31, 2023, cash and cash equivalents was $5.0 million and the amount drawn on the Revolving Facility was $1.5 million, compared to cash and cash equivalents of $4.0 million and $7.4 million drawn on the Revolving Facility at March 31, 2023. Revenue The eprocurement platform revenues were $20.7 million in Q3 FY2024, an increase of $0.9 million or 4.5% compared to $19.8 million in Q3 FY2023, driven by higher right of use revenues. The Corporation's US-based eprocurement platform revenues were $15.5 million for Q3 FY2024, an increase of $0.4 million compared to $15.1 million for Q3 FY2023.Recurring Revenue4 for the eprocurement platform was $18.2 million for Q3 FY2024, an increase from $17.7 million in Q3 FY2023 and representing 88.0% and 88.6% of platform revenues respectively.The year-to-date Q3 FY2024 revenues from the eprocurement platform were $61.2 million, an increase of $4.2 million or 7.4% in comparison to $57.0 million for the same period of FY2023. The increase is mainly attributable to a $4.8 million increase in right of use revenues, partially offset by decreases in maintenance and hosting revenue of $0.3 million, and professional services revenue of $0.2 million.The eprocurement platform represents 69% of total consolidated revenues in Q3 FY2024. Our fully integrated end-to-end suite of eprocurement products are offered in modules: Source, Contract, Procure, Connect and Shop. Our full suite of products uniquely supports digital transformation in the public sector, bringing efficiency, transparency and modernization to customer procurement processes, and positions us well for increased market penetration.Our solutions and the services that we provide to customers are tailored for public sector procurement and provide a strong competitive advantage for both state, large cities and for mid-market agency customers, as well as the supplier network.Our supplier network in North America includes over 650,000 suppliers and over 6,500 buying organizations. This large customer base and a strong presence in US states position us well for market growth.During the third quarter of FY2024 we welcomed new mid-market customers to our eprocurement community, including several with multi-year contracts for our eprocurement solutions, mainly for our Source, Contract and Connect offerings. There is a large addressable market for mid-market offerings. Demand for eprocurement digitalization in the mid-market is strong and we expect to see continued acceleration as the mid-market offering gains traction with customers, pipeline conversion is a focus area to generate revenue growth. The ecommerce6 platform revenues were $5.4 million for Q3 FY2024, compared to $5.5 million for Q3 FY2023, when excluding Q3 FY2023 revenues from InterTrade5 and the related post-closing transition revenues recognized in Q3 FY2023 which represented a decrease of $0.4 million and $0.9 million respectively. Total Unified Commerce6 platform revenues were $6.8 million for Q3 FY2023.Recurring Revenue4 for the Unified Commerce platform, which included only ecommerce for Q3 FY2024 was $3.0 million and represented 55.0% of platform revenues compared to $2.9 million or 43.5% in Q3 FY2023 which also included InterTrade5 with Recurring Revenue4 of $0.3 million. The emarketplaces platform revenues were $4.1 million in Q3 FY2024, a decrease of $0.9 million compared to $5.0 million in Q3 FY2023. Certain emarketplaces solutions such as The Broker Forum and Jobboom benefited from the macro-economic conditions of recent years. As the worldwide supply chain issues experienced over the past few years subside, revenues from The Broker Forum, an electronic components marketplace, decreased by $0.7 million in Q3 FY2024 compared to Q3 FY2023. A softer labour market in FY2024 has impacted Jobboom which had a $0.2 million decrease in revenue in Q3 year-over-year. The closure of Reseau Contact and Power Source Online in Q3 FY2024 resulted in a $0.1 million decrease in revenues. Revenues from the other emarketplaces solutions were stable compared to Q3 FY2023. Recurring Revenue4 for the emarketplaces platform represented $3.6 million or 88.9% in Q3 FY2024 compared to $4.1 million or 81.0% in Q3 FY2023. Gross margin for Q3 FY2024 was $17.7 million or 58.5% compared to $17.8 million or 56.3% for Q3 FY2023. The gross margin percentage increased by 2.2% compared to Q3 of prior year. Revenues decreased by $1.5 million while cost of revenues improved by $1.3 million compared to Q3 FY2023, mostly due to lower salaries expenses of $0.8 million from workforce reduction initiatives implemented across the Corporation in FY2023 and in early Q1 FY2024, and from lower professional services expenses of $0.4 million due to a decrease in the use of contractual consultants. Operating expenses in Q3 FY2024 were $20.7 million, a significant decrease of $2.9 million or 12.3% compared to $23.6 million in Q3 FY2023. General and administrative expenses totalled $6.2 million in Q3 FY2024, selling and marketing expenses were $6.8 million and technology expenses were $7.7 million, compared to $6.4 million, $8.5 million, and $8.7 million respectively for Q3 FY2023. The reduction in operating expenses is mainly from $1.2 million of salary savings from workforce reductions and from the sale of InterTrade, a decrease of $0.9 million in restructuring costs mainly related to termination benefits, a decrease of $0.4 million in professional services expenses and a decrease of $0.3 million in amortization and depreciation expenses. This was partially offset by lower capitalized internally developed software of $0.2 million. Operating loss The Corporation significantly improved its operating loss by $2.7 million or 47.2%, from $5.8 million in Q3 FY2023 to $3.1 million in Q3 FY2024. This is mainly due to the decrease in operating expenses of $2.9 million. Net loss was $4.2 million, or $0.10 net loss per share (basic and diluted) for Q3 FY2024, compared to net earnings of $15.1 million for Q3 FY2023, which included a $22.9 million gain on disposal of InterTrade, or $0.34 net earnings per share (basic and diluted) for Q3 FY2023. Adjusted net loss2 was equal to Net loss of $4.2 million, or $0.10 Adjusted net loss2 per share (basic and diluted) for Q3 FY2024. Adjusted net loss2 for Q3 FY2023 was $7.8 million or $0.18 Adjusted net loss2 per share (basic and diluted). As a result of the operational efficiencies and cost saving initiatives in FY2023 and in early Q1 FY2024 to improve profitability, there was a significant improvement of $3.6 million in Adjusted net loss2 and $0.08 in Adjusted net loss2 per share (basic and diluted) in Q3 FY2024 compared to Q3 FY2023. Adjusted EBITDA1 was $2.5 million for Q3 FY2024, a significant improvement of $1.6 million compared to $0.9 million for Q3 FY2023. This significant improvement in Adjusted EBITDA1 is mainly due to decreases in operating expenses, following workforce reductions and other cost savings initiatives, partially offset by the reduction in total revenues. Our Q3 FY2024 financial results show the positive impacts of our focus on operational efficiency, profitability and cash flows, with significant Q3 year-over-year improvements in net loss, Adjusted net loss2, and Adjusted EBITDA1. Summary of consolidated results Financial HighlightsIn thousands of Canadian dollars, except number of shares and per share data Q3FY2024 Q2FY2024 Q3FY2023 YTD Q3FY2024 YTD Q3FY2023 Revenues 30,189 30,749 31,652 91,942 97,064 Recurring Revenue4 24,822 24,360 24,728 73,739 77,233 Gross margin 17,653 18,457 17,832 53,823 55,693 Operating loss (3,053 ) (2,031 ) (5,787 ) (8,138 ) (16,708 ) Net earnings (loss) (4,179 ) (784 ) 15,082 (10,078 ) (81,010 ) Adjusted net loss2 (4,179 ) (784 ) (7,804 ) (10,078 ) (18,896 ) Adjusted EBITDA1 2,501 3,998 898 9,139 1,168 Net earning (loss) per share (basic and diluted) (0.10 ) (0.02 ) 0.34 (0.23 ).....»»
Temu dropped tens of millions of dollars on its flurry of Super Bowl ads — and its big spending may pay off
Temu aired three commercials during Sunday's game as the Chinese-owned e-commerce company tries to keep momentum. Temu, the ecommerce site with cheap delights loved by older people.NurPhotoTemu's Super Bowl ads sparked a surge in online searches despite recent downturn among users. The e-commerce company splurged on three spots during Sunday's big game. The advertisement campaign comes as Temu seeks to win US users and sales. Temu was the talk of the town on Monday after its ambitious Super Bowl advertising campaign sparked a flurry of online queries about the Boston-based, Chinese-owned e-commerce company.The online discount marketplace aired three commercials during the big game, doubling down on efforts to raise its profile among Americans amid a drop in users and sales in recent months, according to Bloomberg.A 30-second spot in Sunday's game cost companies a whopping $7 million.Temu's advertisement featured animated characters using the app to transform their lives to the tune of a catchy jingle. The marketing campaign urged viewers — somewhat bizarrely — to "shop like a billionaire" as the ad's avatars filled their homes with $10 toasters and $6 skateboards (decidedly unbillionaire-like behavior).The company splurged on three ads during the game and two afterward, per CNN, also offering $15 million in giveaways and coupons as part of its Super Bowl promotion. Bloomberg, however, reported that six ads ran in total.A representative for Temu did not immediately respond to Business Insider's questions and request for comment.The company, which is known for its ultra-cheap online marketplace that offers low prices and spending deals on everything from apparel to household items, made its advertisement debut during last year's Super Bowl after officially launching in the US in September 2022.But while Temu saw massive growth in 2023, some of its numbers have started to fall off in recent months among American users, according to Bloomberg.Observed sales for Temu fell 12.5% month-on-month in December and 4.8% in January, per Bloomberg Second Measure data, which tracks a subset of US credit and debit card transactions. Overall, US retail sales for the company increased during December, the outlet reported.The number of Temu users in the US is also on the decline, according to Second Measure data, and a recent survey from Morgan Stanley suggests nearly a third of current Temu users intend to use the app less in the near future, Bloomberg reported.Online searches for the company have also been steadily declining since July, according to Google Trends.Temu has been plagued by low customer satisfaction due to reported long delivery times. The company's Better Business Bureau rating is currently just 2.5 stars, and a congressional report from last summer also found an extremely high likelihood that Temu's supply chains use forced labor — an allegation the company has denied.But its Sunday advertising campaign may have already helped Temu regain some of its early success in the US. Web searches for the company spiked during its ads, according to Google Trends, and the Temu app was sitting at second place among the most downloaded free apps for Apple on Monday, according to USA Today.Temu's biggest win, however, may be that its Sunday ads course-corrected the company's proper pronunciation, teaching viewers to emphasize the "teh" in "teh-moo," compared to previous pronunciations of "tee-moo."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
ContextLogic will sell off Wish for $173 million, but continue as a company
The company says it will use the funds to make a new acquisition, but not in the ecommerce space......»»
Masayoshi Son made $72 billion betting on Jack Ma"s Alibaba. Now he wants to do it again with AI.
More than two decades on from his first bet on Alibaba, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is ready to go all in on the AI revolution. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son is betting everything on AI.Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty ImagesMasayoshi Son has spent recent years unwinding his multi-billion dollar stake in Alibaba.The SoftBank CEO is betting everything on the success of AI.Chip designer Arm's success will embolden him, but problems remain with the Vision Funds.Masayoshi Son owes much of his success to an incredibly prescient dot-com era bet on Alibaba.The SoftBank chief first invested $20 million in Jack Ma's ecommerce upstart in 2000, when it was just a year old. Son continued to back Ma as Alibaba blossomed into China's answer to Amazon.That faith was handsomely rewarded, with SoftBank realizing an incredible $72 billion gain on its investments in Alibaba over the course of 23 years.But Son's late-stage success will have to come from somewhere else. The 66-year-old has spent the past few years unwinding SoftBank's stake in Alibaba to effectively zero.Limiting risks to a China crackdown on corporates, a need for cash after posting an annual loss last year of over $32 billion, and the wider economic turmoil triggered by soaring inflation and interest rates all pushed Son’s Japanese conglomerate to let go of its cash cow in 2023.Fortunately for Son, the time seems to have finally arrived for one of his most long-standing interests to take off: artificial intelligence.Masayoshi Son's bet on Jack Ma and Alibaba has proven to be incredibly profitable.Future Publishing/Getty ImagesLife after AlibabaWhile SoftBank’s position in Alibaba has receded, it has made AI its overwhelming focus at a moment when ChatGPT has triggered a frenzy around AI.Son has gone as far as suggesting that AI will be more intelligent than humans and likened anyone who doubts its potential to a “goldfish.”CFO Yoshimitsu Goto doubled down on the AI focus when SoftBank reported its third-quarter earnings on Thursday: “We have moved from Alibaba, and are focused on leading the AI revolution.” Its efforts to do this rest on two pillars that got started in the 2010s: its $32 billion acquisition of chip designer Arm, and the formation of the world’s largest venture capital investment vehicles, the Vision Funds.Success has been mixed so far.Arm, a British chip firm whose designs are used by everyone from Apple and Google to Nvidia and Samsung, enjoyed a blockbuster Nasdaq listing in September as it sought to grow and meet rising demand for AI chips. SoftBank, which still owns a 90% stake in Arm following its IPO, turned its first profit in five quarters after announcing 950 billion yen (about $6.4 billion) in net income for the final three months of 2023 off the back of strong interest in the chip firm. Arm, which reported its earnings on Wednesday, posted a 14% year-on-year increase in revenue to $824 million for the quarter, sending its value close to a record high of $117 billion. It was listed in September at roughly $55 billion.Replicating Arm's successMatching Arm’s big wins has been harder to do with SoftBank's startup betting efforts.The Vision Funds, headquartered in London, have been fueled by sovereign wealth fund money from the Middle East as well as SoftBank’s own cash to identify early-stage companies that can play a huge role in the AI revolution.Some of its biggest investments have included Uber, TikTok parent company ByteDance, and Nvidia, which it prematurely sold out of in 2019. Though the funds made $4 billion in gains over the past three months — a period in which VC funding broadly has been down — markdowns on over-valued companies and limited exit opportunities have left them with a cumulative loss of $2 billion as of December 31. That said, it’s a position that SoftBank is quietly confident about reversing. Its portfolio companies are taking a more efficient approach to growth after years of a growth-at-all-costs mindset, and are racing to integrate AI in any way they can. SoftBank is also actively seeking out new investment opportunities in companies across the AI spectrum as it seeks out any business trying to be the next OpenAI, Anthropic, or Cohere. Though SoftBank is yet to make an investment in a large language model player, Business Insider understands Son has had conversations with OpenAI boss Sam Altman.Arm and the Vision Funds collectively represent 70% of SoftBank’s net asset value, a key performance indicator that reflects the total value of its holdings. That’s up from 21% at the end of 2019, when Alibaba represented 50% of net asset value. For Son to emulate his early career success, he'll likely need both pillars to perform.Arm, SoftBank's latest golden child, is on course to deliver, but there is still much work to be done to get the Vision Funds back on track.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 6, 2024 Waters Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here). Operator: Good morning. Welcome to Waters Corporation Fourth Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in a […] Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 6, 2024 Waters Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here). Operator: Good morning. Welcome to Waters Corporation Fourth Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session of today’s call. This conference call is being recorded. If anyone has any objections, please disconnect at this time. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Caspar Tudor, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Caspar Tudor: Thank you, Cedric. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Waters Corporation fourth quarter earnings call. Today, I’m joined by Dr. Udit Batra, Water’s President and Chief Executive Officer, and Amol Chaubal, Water’s Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I will cover the cautionary language. I would first like to point out that our earnings release and the slide presentation supplementing today’s call are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.waters.com. In this conference call, we will make various forward-looking statements regarding future events or future financial performance of the company. In particular, we will provide guidance regarding possible future results and commentary on potential market and business conditions that may impact Waters Corporation over the first quarter of 2024 and full year 2024. These statements are only our present expectations and actual events or results may differ materially. For more details, please see the risk factors included in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, our Form 10-Qs, and the cautionary language included in this morning’s earnings release. During today’s call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures including in our discussions of the results of operations. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are attached to our earnings release issued this morning and in the appendix of our presentation, which are available on the company’s website. Unless stated otherwise, references to quarterly results increasing or decreasing are in comparison to the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022 in organic constant currency terms. In addition, unless stated otherwise, all year-over-year revenue growth rates and ranges given on today’s call are given on a comparable organic constant currency basis. Finally, we do not intend to update our guidance, predictions or projections, except as part of a regularly scheduled quarterly earnings release or as otherwise required by law. Now, I’d like to turn the call over to Udit to deliver our key remarks. Then Amol will provide a more detailed look at our financial results. After, we will open up the phone lines to take questions. Udit? Udit Batra: Thank you, Caspar. And good morning, everyone. I would like to begin today’s call by expressing my gratitude to all my colleagues. 2023 was another transformative year for Waters. Throughout the year, our teams kept an unwavering focus on customers, launched innovative new products, and delivered strong business performance, all during highly eventful times with dynamic market conditions. As 2022 ended, the results of our transformation clearly showed on the top line, having delivered several years of very strong, above-average sales growth. Since then, in 2023, we’ve demonstrated our ability to manage exceptionally well through a downturn while continuing to make investments for growth. In 2023, we also initiated the next phase of our transformation with the acquisition of Wyatt. This brings with it a new vector for value creation to our shareholders through M&A and we’re off to a great start. As an added benefit, it has accelerated our journey into high growth adjacent markets, where we made continued progress with our organic investments over the course of the year. We launched new and innovative products in 2023, including our Alliance iS next generation LC platform. We expanded our Xevo tQ mass spec into clinical applications and developed size exclusion columns for viral vectors that pair with Wyatt MALS instruments. We even had our first light scattering launch as a combined company with ZetaStar. Finally, we were recognized as one of the world’s most sustainable companies, achieving a variety of ESG awards. This includes our top five ranking on Barron’s Most Sustainable Companies list which scores over 1,000 publicly traded companies based on 230 ESG performance indicators. We’re very proud of what we’ve achieved at Waters in 2023. Today, as I share our fourth quarter and full-year results, I have three key messages. First, we’ve continued to execute well. Second, our transformation is contributing to our results. And third, we are well positioned for future long-term growth. Turning now to our results. In the fourth quarter, sales declined 4.5% as reported, which was in line with our expectations. Our non-GAAP earnings per fully diluted share landed at the high end of our guidance at $3.62, driven by strong margin performance. On a GAAP basis, EPS was $3.65. For the full year, sales declined 0.5% as reported and 2% in organic constant currency. Even with a constrained CapEx environment, all our regions outside of China grew in 2023 in organic constant currency terms. As expected, Wyatt successfully delivered on on-target M&A contribution of 2.5% to sales. And with a strong EPS result in Q4, non-GAAP earnings per fully diluted share came in at $11.75, which reflects underlying growth of approximately 2% before FX headwinds of 3% and 1% dilution from the Wyatt acquisition. I will now describe our sales results in more detail. The spending environment for instruments remained challenging into year-end. However, Q4 revenue increase increased Versus Q3 levels in all our geographies, even China as we continue to execute well in tough macro conditions. Reported sales were $108 million higher in the fourth quarter than the third quarter. This reflects a 15% ramp that was consistent with our guidance for a muted year-end budget flush. For the full year, our organic constant currency sales grew 3% year-over-year, excluding China. As I mentioned earlier, the Americas, Europe and Asia excluding China all grew in 2023. This took a lot of effort from our sales team who did a fantastic job capitalizing on the available opportunities in the market with our competitive portfolio. As a result, on a full-year stack basis, our ex-China growth remains at a healthy high-single-digits. A key challenge in 2023 was the abrupt turn we saw in China where conditions deteriorated as the year progressed. This was particularly the case in the pharma market where our revenues are most heavily weighted. For the full year, China sales declined more than 20% overall, which was a 5% headwind to our total growth. This brings us now to our margin performance. We believe that the best reflection of good operational execution is effective margin management when things slow down. During 2023, we saw volume and FX headwinds, while inflationary pressure continued. We responded with stronger pricing and added further discipline to our operational objectives. We redoubled our productivity efforts, including the opening of our global capability center in Bangalore, India. And we undertook proactive cost alignment as the slowdown began to emerge. This resilience, focus and commitment allowed us to deliver excellent operational results in our P&L. Our full-year gross margin was 59.6%, which is 160 basis points better than the previous year. Our full-year adjusted operating margin was 30.9%, which is 70 basis points of expansion. Now, let me share our progress with the acquisition of Wyatt Technology. The strong start to lead sharing between Wyatt and Waters allowed us to offset a slowdown in biotech spending, resulting in an on-target M&A contribution of 2.5% to our full year sales. I will now give some detail on how our revitalized portfolio and alignment with higher growth segments are contributing to growth as part of our transformation. Our strong results in 2023 was supported by our innovative portfolio, which helped drive customer spending on new products are gaining good traction in the market, including TQ Absolute, Alliance iS and MaxPeak Premier Columns, as well as several of our high res mass spec instruments such as Cycliq G3 and MRT. From an adoption perspective, this puts us in an excellent position when instrument budgets begin to normalize. Turning now to our adjacencies. We have continued to invest and expand into adjacent high growth markets, where our business model of solving problems in downstream regulated applications can be deployed. For bioseparations and bioanalytical characterizations, we made organic investments, launched new products, and deployed capital to M&A. Large molecule applications are now 35% of our pharma revenues and expected to trend higher, up from around 20%, just a few years ago. For diagnostics, we have invested in our clinical business and added workflows for specialty applications of mass spec. This has transformed related revenue growth from that of low to mid-single-digits to double digits in the past several years. Finally, our focus on batteries is paying dividends where very strong growth has remained throughout the year. Revenues from battery applications are now at over 10 times 2019 revenue levels and our TA business is increasingly aligned with their cyclical faster growing applications. Each of these exciting growth areas is delivering incremental revenue to the company. Now I will share some facts supporting the long term outlook for above average growth and provide our 2024 guidance. Since 2010, Waters has grown on average 6% in organic constant currency terms. For instruments, while the standard deviation is high, long term average growth has been 5%. For recurring revenues, the standard deviation is much lower and the average growth is 7%. As we look ahead, several vectors make us confident that this growth could be even higher. The first is even faster volume growth in segments that we serve, driven by global prescription drug sales and environmental regulations. Second is increased use of analytical instruments for characterizing large molecules and novel modalities. And third, it’s about historic pricing where we expect to sustain 100 basis point long term tailwind in incremental growth. Let’s take each of these growth vectors in turn. There are at least two key drivers of testing volume acceleration. The first is related to the adoption of GLP-1 drugs, where Waters’ instruments and columns are specified into in-process testing and QA/QC testing at the two leading manufacturers. We expect our position to contribute an average additional revenue growth of 30 basis points per year between now and 2030. The second is PFAS testing where we’ve been gaining share in a rapidly expanding market, in part driven by the sensitivity and compact size of our Xevo tQ Absolute mass spec. We expect PFAS testing to contribute an additional 30 basis points to our revenue growth for the foreseeable future. Finally, Wyatt light scattering is a high growth business, serving attractive large molecule applications. We expect it to contribute 40 basis points of core growth accretion to our business on an annualized basis. It also accelerates our ability to solve customer challenges at formulation development, bioanalytical characterization and QA/QC testing, which has positive repercussions for our Waters business as we increasingly tie our columns, LC and mass spec into these workflows. I will now cover our 2024 full-year guidance. We expect customer spending caution to continue in the first quarter of the year, with slow budget releases for downstream instrumentation. We then expect to see a gradual improvement for the remainder of the year as budgets open up, market conditions improve and as prior-year comparisons become easier. We expect weakness in China to continue, particularly in the first half of the year, which also plays into the growth phasing of our guide. With this initial outlook for 2024, we expect full-year organic constant currency sales growth to be between negative 0.5% to positive 1.5%. We expect continued strong operational performance to build leverage in our P&L with 20 to 30 basis points of further operating margin expansion, while still reinvesting for growth. And we expect adjusted EPS growth of 0% to 3%, in the range of $11.75 to $12.05. Now, I will pass the call over to Amol to continue covering our fourth quarter financial results in more detail and give additional commentary on our guidance for 2024. Amol? Amol Chaubal : Thank you, Udit. And good morning, everyone. We delivered a solid close to a tough year in the fourth quarter with sales that were in line with our expectations despite continued market challenges. In the quarter, sales declined 4.5% as reported, which aligned with our expectations for 15% increase in reported revenues versus Q3. Organic constant currency sales declined 8% against the high-single-digit growth comparison last year. We did observe a budget flush in the fourth quarter as sales grew across all geographies in Q4 versus Q3. However, this year’s budget flush was more muted than typical, consistent with our expectations. Our Wyatt acquisition delivered excellent results again, adding over 3% growth to the reported sales. In organic constant currency by end market, pharma declined 11%, industrial declined 4% and academic and government declined 9%. In pharma, our results were impacted by a further weakening in China, which declined 45% for the quarter. Outside of China, pharma sales declined 4% as instruments sales were impacted by a muted budget flush, in line with our expectations. In industrial, growth was flat outside of China against a tough high-teens prior-year comparison. China declined approximately 20% as weakness has broadened into non-pharma segments due to weak economic conditions. Overall, we observed continued strong growth in PFAS and battery-related applications, which have continued to partially offset weakness in more cyclical areas. In academic and government, our ex-China Business continued to perform well with mid-single-digit growth. However, this was more than offset by a decline of almost 40% in China, where demand has deteriorated after the benefits of stimulus ended in the second quarter. By geography, sales in Asia fell 16% as China weakness more than offset mid-single-digit growth in the rest of Asia. The Americas declined 2% and Europe declined 6%, driven by this year’s muted budget flush dynamics. By products and services, instruments declined 20%, recurring revenues grew mid-single-digits, with continued high-single-digit growth outside of China. There was one additional day in the quarter versus the prior year. Looking now at our full-year results, by end market, pharma declined 5%, industrial was flat, and academic and government grew 10%. Excluding China, pharma and industrial grew low-single-digits and A&G grew mid-teens for the year, each reflecting solid results against double-digit comps. Now by geography, sales in Asia declined 7%, with China declining more than 20%, while Asia, ex-China, grew high-single-digits. The Americas grew 1% and Europe grew 2%. By products and services, instruments declined 10%, which was primarily driven by China. Excluding China, instruments declined low-single-digits in 2023, reflecting healthy high-single-digit four-year CAGR. Recurring revenues grew 6% overall and high-single-digits outside of China, with robust growth throughout the year. Chemistry growth has been supported by strong customer demand for MaxPeak Premier Columns, serving large molecule workflows, and adoption of ecommerce. For service, growth has been supported by expansion of plan attachment. In 2023, we exceeded our objective for a further 100 basis points of service plan attachment and delivered a 200 basis point increase for the year. Now, I will comment on our fourth quarter and full-year non GAAP financial performance versus the prior year. Despite headwinds from lower sales volumes, FX and inflation, in 2023, our team responded to these challenges with resilience and commitment. Our continued focus on operational excellence with pricing, productivity, and proactive cost alignment, together with lower incentive compensation, allowed us to deliver a fourth quarter gross margin of 61.2%, an expansion of 170 basis points, and fourth quarter adjusted operating margin of 34.9%, an expansion of 120 basis points. For the full year, our focus and effort resulted in gross margin of 59.6%, an expansion of 160 basis points, and an adjusted operating margin of 30.9%, an expansion of 70 basis points, which is after reinvesting in our high growth adjacencies. Our effective operating tax rate for the quarter was 17.1%, 50 basis points below prior-year quarter. For the full year, it was 16.2%. Our average share count came in at 59.3 million shares, which is about 300,000 less than the fourth quarter of last year. Our non-GAAP earnings per fully diluted share were $3.62. On a GAAP basis, our earnings per fully diluted share were $3.65. For the full year, our non-GAAP earnings per fully diluted share were $11.75. Foreign exchange headwinds lowered our non-GAAP EPS growth by 3% and there was a 1% dilution from the Wyatt acquisition. On a GAAP basis, EPS was $10.84. A reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP earnings is attached to this morning’s press release and in the appendix of our earnings call presentation. Now turning to free cash flow, capital deployment and our balance sheet. We define free cash flows as cash from operation less capital expenditures and exclude special items. In the fourth quarter of 2023, free cash flow was $192 million after funding $42 million of capital expenditures. For the full year, free cash flow was $554 million after funding $161 million of capital expenditures. Excluded from the free cash flow were payments of $72 million related to tax reform, $26 million for Wyatt assumed liabilities, and $16 million related to investment in our Taunton Precision Chemistry operations. We maintain a strong balance sheet, access to liquidity and well-structured debt maturity profile. This trend allows us to prioritize investing in growth, including M&A, and returning capital to shareholders. We continue to evaluate M&A opportunities that will meaningfully accelerate value creation. At the end of the quarter, our net debt position further declined to $2 billion, a net debt to EBITDA ratio of about 2 times. This represents a decrease of approximately $150 million during the quarter as we delivered the Wyatt acquisition. As previously disclosed, our share buyback program has been temporarily suspended to enable us to pay down debt incurred as part of the Wyatt transaction. We will evaluate the resumption of our share repurchase program throughout 2024 as part of our balanced capital deployment objective. Now as we look towards the year ahead, I would like to provide you with our high level thoughts for 2024. Similar to others in the industry, our growth in 2023 was slower than usual, driven by unprecedented weakness in China and cautious spending from customers in other regions. We view these market conditions as temporary and anticipate a gradual recovery in sales growth throughout 2024. While our customers remain healthy, market uncertainty still remains and necessitates prudence in our guide. These dynamics support full year 2024 organic constant currency sales growth guidance of negative 0.5% to positive 1.5%. At current exchange rates, currency translation is expected to result in a negative impact of just under 1% on full-year sales. We expect Wyatt transaction to add approximately 1.3% M&A contribution to our full year 2024 revenues from inorganic sales incurred in the first four and half months of the year. Therefore, our total reported sales growth guidance is approximately 0% to 2%. We expect to extend our strong margin performance into 2024 and deliver a gross margin of 59.8% for the full year, which is 20 basis points of expansion versus 2023. We also expect to deliver 20 to 30 basis points of additional operating margin expansion versus 2023, resulting in an adjusted operating margin of slightly over 31%. We expect our full year net interest expense to be approximately $80 million. Our full-year tax rate is expected to remain largely consistent with 2023 levels at 16.3%. Our average diluted 2024 share count is expected to be approximately 59.7 million. Now rolling all this together, on a non-GAAP basis, our full year 2024 earnings per fully diluted share guidance is projected in the range of $11.75 to $12.05, which is approximately 0% to 3% growth and includes an estimated headwind of approximately 2% due to unfavorable foreign exchange. Turning now to our expectations for the first quarter of 2024. We believe that customer budget release timing will be slower than typical in the first quarter. In addition, current levels of market weakness in China are not fully reflected in last year’s first quarter comparison. Last year’s deterioration picked up significantly in the second quarter and thereafter. The first quarter also last year benefited from A&G stimulus in China. As a result, we expect our China business to decline approximately 40% year-over-year in Q1. Given these dynamics, we expect organic constant currency sales growth in the range of negative 11% to negative 9%. At current rates, currency translation is expected to subtract approximately 1%, while Wyatt is expected to add approximately 3.5% to sales for the quarter. Therefore, our total first quarter reported sales growth guidance is negative 8.5% to negative 6.5%. Based on these revenue expectations, first quarter non-GAAP earnings per fully diluted share are estimated to be in the range $2.05 to $2.15, which includes a negative currency impact of approximately 4 percentage points at current FX rates. Now, I would like to turn the call back to Udit for some summary comments. Udit Batra : Thank you, Amol. So, in summary, another transformative year for Waters. We will continue to navigate the current market environment well and deliver earnings growth for our shareholders in 2024. Before I close, I would like to share a few updates on our ESG efforts. We’ve made strong progress towards our environmental goals with 77% of our electricity now sourced from renewable or low carbon sources. In 2023, we started working with the Science Based Targets initiative to build on this progress and develop further emissions reduction targets. We’ve also enhanced our climate related disclosure with our TCFD related reporting. Waters was recognized as one of the best companies to work for but by the US News and World Report, and we achieved a perfect score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index. We’re also proud that our governance has been recognized. Waters Board of Directors was named the 2024 Public Company Board of the Year by National Association of Corporate Directors, New England chapter. So with that, I’ll turn the call back over to Caspar. Caspar Tudor : Thanks, Udit. That concludes our formal comments. We’re now ready to open the phone lines for questions. See also 10 Highest Quality Egg Brands in the US and 15 Highest Quality Creatine Supplements of 2024. Q&A Session Follow Waters Corp (NYSE:WAT) Follow Waters Corp (NYSE:WAT) or Subscribe with Google We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy. Operator: Our first question comes from Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI. Vijay Kumar: Udit, just on the annual guidance here, at the midpoint, I think it’s about 50 basis points growth. What is the guide you’re assuming zooming for price? And can you talk about end markets, pharma, government and academia, and industrial sort of assumptions? I know you gave the China assumption. China is expected to be down. But could you just parse out between China versus non-China for those end markets? Udit Batra: Look, a couple of high level comments, and then I’ll go to the end markets and let Amol comment on the pricing question. The 2024 guidance in general assumes that the trends that we saw in 2023 continue in large part. So, you start off just looking at what happened in 2023. outside of China, all end markets and geographies grew low-single-digits or thereabouts. So all geographies were low-single-digits, and we assumed the same trend for the balance of the year. And all end markets are in the similar sort of zip code. And in China, we assume roughly sort of mid-teens to high-teens decline for 2024. Now when you do the arithmetic, you basically look at the comps. The first half of the year will be slower than the second half, right? The first half of the year has significantly higher comps. When you look at the academic and government stimulus, especially in China, and then the second half of the year, that alleviates, so you’ll start to see a bit of a growth. So now to your question on the full year and the assumption for different end markets. For the full year, pharma, we are expecting to grow low-single-digits. And this is again on the back of what we saw in 2023. Industrial was flat in 2023 for the full year, expect to be there or thereabouts, low-single-digit growth. And A&G with a very strong year, roughly 10%, 12% for 2023. We expect it to be a low double-digit decline, basically in China declining quite significantly because of high comps, and the rest of the world, you sort of go back to the long term trends of low single-digit growth. So really, overall, expecting the same execution that we saw in 2023, basically really nice performance in markets outside of China with low single-digit growth in China, mid-teens decline. And by end market, sort of similar trends. Strength continuing in pharma due to our QA/QC focus. Amol, on the pricing. Amol Chaubal: On pricing, when we started 2023, we started with an assumption of 200 basis points, 250 basis points. But as the year panned out, our team gathered strength quarter after quarter, and you see full year, we finished about 300 basis points on price side. Now, long term, we’ve said we’ll do about 100 basis points better than what we’ve historically done. And historically, we had done 50 to 75 basis points. So that’s where our current assumption is starting, roughly around 200 basis points of pricing gains in 2024. But, again, the underlying trend is we’re doing better than that. And where better to see it, right? It reflects loud and clear in our gross margin expansion, which is where it should show up. Udit Batra: I think just to sort of emphasize that point even more, what gives me sort of a lot of confidence is what we saw on our gross margin and our operating margin. In such an environment, we took proactive cost actions. Operating margin for the full year expanded by 70 basis points and gross margin by 160 basis points. You can talk a good game on pricing, but at the end, it has to show up in the P&L, and that’s what we’re really proud off. Vijay Kumar: Amol, one for you. Operating margin expansion, that’s really pretty impressive considering revenues are almost flat this year organically. Is that all being driven by gross margins. I think in the past, you noted FX could have an impact on gross margins. Maybe just talk about what’s driving [indiscernible] and FX assumptions on margins. Amol Chaubal: We expanded our full year margins by 70 basis points. And on a constant currency basis, that’s 120 basis points of expansion because we had a good 50 basis points of FX headwind during the year. The negative leverage from volume was partially offset by mix and AIP. So net-net, it was negative 40 basis points. Pricing added 110 basis points, freight and material savings another 60 basis points, cost actions added another 60 basis points. And then we invested about 70 basis points in nurturing higher growth adjacencies. So that’s roughly the breakdown. Udit Batra: All hands on deck basically. Operator: My next question comes from Matt Sykes with Goldman Sachs. Matthew Sykes: Maybe just the first one, a higher level question. Udit, just on the replacement cycle impact, just given the outsized growth we saw in instruments during this sort of COVID period, what kind of impact do you think this has had on replacement cycles, particularly in biopharma, given a lot of the spend was concentrated there? Do you think the replacement cycle has been pushed out? Or do you think that you’ll see that impact of that coming back in this year? Or is it more of a 2025 impact? Udit Batra: Let me start by first just talking about what we have seen in Q4. You would have seen that, Q4, our sales ramped from Q3 to Q4 by about 15%. And this is typical in a QA/QC driven business. It’s muted versus historical trends, which are roughly 24% for Waters. But in a QA/QC driven business, you do see a ramp in replacement towards the end of the year. That trend is very much intact, especially outside of China. I think it’s naive to think that replacement cycles have suddenly stopped. This Q4 ramp tells us that replacement cycles are still ongoing. Now the underlying question is, what are driving these replacement cycles and how do you trigger them? In a muted CapEx environment, the conversations we’ve had with customers on replacements have largely centered around new products, Arc HPLC and Alliance iS, which have both gained a lot of nice receptivity......»»
Finding True Market Leaders: Anatomy of Winning Stocks
Want to outperform your peers and the market? Stock Strategist Andrew Rocco breaks down how to stack the odds in your favor Want to outperform your peers and the market? Investing is all about stacking the odds of success in your favor. Today we are going to discuss ways to do so:Are you in a Bull Market? (Important!!)Ensure that you are in a bull market because roughly 75% of stocks follow the market direction. Just like a farmer must wait for the right season before planting crops, an investor should wait for a bull market before aggressively buying stocks. In other words, a farmer would not grow crops in the dead of winter when the ground is frozen over, and a savvy investor should not take to on too much long exposure in a bear market environment.How do I Know if I am in a Bull Market?To determine market direction, overlay a 200-day moving average on the daily chart. Above the 200-day means stocks are in a bull market, and below it means investors should be cautious. But don’t just take it from me; take it from multi-billionaire investing legend Paul Tudor Jones. In an interview with Tony Robbins, PTJ revealed, “My metric for everything I look at is the 200-day moving average of closing prices. I’ve seen too many things go to zero, stocks and commodities. The whole trick in investing is: How do I keep from losing everything? If you use the 200-day moving average rule, then you get out. You play defense and you get out.”Image Source: Zacks Investment ResearchIn conjunction with the 200-day, investors can track the net new highs versus lows in the market. If more stocks are consistently making new highs than new lows on a daily basis, then you guessed it, we are in a bull market.Image Source: StockCharts.comA Body in Motion Will Remain in MotionBuy stocks that already have momentum. Newton’s First Law of Motion states that “A body in motion will remain in motion..”. The same applies for stocks. Want to find the next stock to double? Find stocks that already have doubled. Recent examples include Nvidia (NVDA) and Super Micro Computer (SMCI).Image Source: Zacks Investment ResearchFind and Invest in America’s Innovators & DisruptorsThe best stocks come from industries that are disrupting the way we live. Netflix (NFLX) took us from Blockbuster to streaming. Amazon (AMZN) took us from brick and mortar to ecommerce.Harness the Power of the Zacks RankThe fastest and most straightforward method to size up a company’s fundamentals is to look at its Zacks Rank. The Zacks Rank was created by Len Zacks, the Founder and CEO of Zacks Investment Research who has a Ph.D. from MIT and spent countless years on Wall Street testing statistical models to uncover ways to beat the market. His research led to a breakthrough discovery:“Earnings estimate revisions are the most powerful force impacting stock prices.”Stocks discount the future. With that in mind, find the stocks expected to grow the most in the future.Make Asymmetric Bets, Manage RiskDepending on how you look at it, the beauty of the stock market is that you do not have to be perfect. Even if you find fundamentally strong, institutional quality stocks, you will be wrong and wrong often, and that’s okay. Take asymmetric bets - I like to shoot for a 5-to-1 reward-to-risk ratio – meaning for every dollar I risk; I am shooting for a 5x the win. In baseball terms, you want to be a slugger like Barry Bonds, not a base hitter. By taking on an asymmetric reward/risk framework such as the 5/1 r/r, you only must be right 30% of the time to be profitable. Furthermore, if you are correct 40% of the time you will make a fortune. Let the simple math work in your favor when it comes to investing! Just Released: Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2024 Hurry – you can still get in early on our 10 top tickers for 2024. Hand-picked by Zacks Director of Research, Sheraz Mian, this portfolio has been stunningly and consistently successful. From inception in 2012 through November, 2023, the Zacks Top 10 Stocks gained +974.1%, nearly TRIPLING the S&P 500’s +340.1%. Sheraz has combed through 4,400 companies covered by the Zacks Rank and handpicked the best 10 to buy and hold in 2024. You can still be among the first to see these just-released stocks with enormous potential.See New Top 10 Stocks >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report Netflix, Inc. (NFLX): Free Stock Analysis Report NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): Free Stock Analysis Report Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»
Cushman & Wakefield"s John McManus talks CRE"s ecommerce boom and bee-keeping
John McManus is an old-school dealmaker. “I think too many people rely on the phone." Cushman's Oakland remains bullish on the East Bay......»»
Retail tech startup Trove to shut down main hub, lay off 130 workers
It's now unclear where the ecommerce-tech company maintains its corporate headquarters......»»
Business Insider Reviews: How we test the best home products
Business Insider Reviews' home team writes accurate, impartial, and thorough reviews of home products. Learn how we test and our product expertise. When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn moreAs part of testing for the best air conditioners, home reporter James Brains tests how loud a window AC unit is during operation using a decibel meter.James Brains/Business InsiderFrom soft-yet-durable sheets to powerful vacuums, the Business Insider Reviews team rigorously tests and reviews a wide variety of items for the home. For nearly five years, the team has tested hundreds of products, including mattresses, sheets, vacuums, home-office furniture, cleaning products, and many more.What types of home products we testMattresses: We test the best mattresses for all types of sleepers from a wide range of brands, including Casper, Helix, Leesa, Tempur-Pedic, and more. And yes, our sleep reporter sleeps on every single mattress he tests for at least two weeks.Bedroom furniture and bedding: Our reporters review and test bedroom products, including the best bed frames and linens, all price points and climates. They've tested practically every fabric and have tried sheets, duvet covers, pillows, and comforters from Brooklinen, The Company Store, Crane & Canopy, L.L.Bean, and more.Vacuums: From the best robot vacuums to cordless to upright, we use benchmark and objective tests for vacuums and recommend products from Bissell, Dyson, Roborock, Shark, and more.Bath linens and laundry care: It's important to keep your bathroom free of mold and mildew, so we test bath mats and towels to make sure they dry quickly. We've developed tests for clothes steamers, hangers, and drying racks, and have also evaluated laundry detergent for efficacy. Air conditioners, fans, and heaters: We've tested space heaters, air conditioners, and fans to ensure they provide great climate control without being too noisy or difficult to use.Furniture and large appliances: These are some of the biggest investments you'll make for your home. We use expert sources, in-depth research, and hands-on testing to review the best sofas, dishwashers, bathtubs, and more.Home office: From office chairs to standing desks, we put home-office furniture through the paces to ensure it's sturdy and easy to use while still being stylish and affordable. Home improvement tools: We methodically research the tools and equipment you need to care for and repair your home. We interview industry experts and do extensive research and testing to review the best lawn mowers, best paint, best drills, and more.Home accessories, decor, and services: We believe your home should be a safe and comfortable place to be. To help you find the best smoke detector, trash can, compost bin and more, we extensively research and test a wide variety of home accessories, decor, and home services. Our sleep reporter, James Brains in his testing room where he's slept on more than 60 mattresses.James Brains/Business InsiderHow we test home productsWe test home products by using them every day for weeks and months. We develop original testing methods and use benchmarks to evaluate home products and objectively compare them. We sleep on pillows for weeks, wash and rewash sheets, run cordless vacuums until their batteries run out, and assemble office chairs and standing desks. We take factors like price, durability, style, and other factors into consideration to offer quality options for all budgets.What sets us apart from other review sitesInstead of testing in labs, we use products in our own homes in real-life conditions. We test products as professionals to evaluate how each item meets industry standards, but we don't stop there. Where other sites may evaluate a mattress based on performance in lab tests, our reporters sleep on every mattress for a minimum of two weeks. Every product we test becomes part of our daily routines, so we know if a vacuum can keep up with heavy shedding or if an air conditioner is loud enough to keep you awake at night.Though we earn commission on products purchased through our stories, no company can pay us to be included. All of our top picks are researched, tested, and then compared to our previous experience. Meet our expert home teamOur home team has years of experience testing and reviewing products. Each editor and reporter is an expert in their beat, having reviewed dozens of products from their categories. Meet the home team below:Our writersBiosLauren Savoie, deputy editorLauren SavoieLauren is deputy editor of Business Insider Reviews and chair of Business Insider's editorial standards board. Lauren leads the home, kitchen, and pets teams and is deeply involved in all editorial decision-making, with a particular focus in strategic content planning, career growth of reporters and editors, and strong journalistic standards for the Reviews team. She's also served as an on-air product expert for news programs, including Good Morning America and CBS Money Watch.In 2022, Lauren attended The Poynter Institute's Leadership Academy for Women in Media, a prestigious program that recognizes leaders in the journalism industry. Lauren joined the Business Insider team in 2020, first as kitchen editor and soon after as senior home & kitchen editor, where she pioneered original testing methodologies for buying guides and built a diverse team of freelancers and reporters with deep expertise. You can see some of her work in our guides to the best flower delivery services, best pillows, and best sous vide machines.Jaclyn Turner, senior home editorJaclyn TurnerJaclyn is senior home editor at Business Insider Reviews, where she oversees home content, reviews and guides spanning mattresses to vacuums, an organization to smart home, and more, though she has a particularly soft spot for decor and interior decorating. She joined the Business Insider team in October 2023. Her work spans from scoping out the best candles to meticulously evaluating the best vacuums. Jaclyn previously held editorial and ecommerce roles with Homes & Gardens, Real Homes, Livingetc, The Spruce, MyDomaine, and Apartment Therapy. Jaclyn received a dual bachelor of arts in Journalism and American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Jaclyn currently resides in Atlanta, GA. James Brains, senior reporterJames BrainsJames is a Senior Reporter for Business Insider Reviews, specializing in sleep, HVAC, vacuums, and kitchen appliances. He has tested more than 80 mattresses from startups like Casper and legacy brands like Tempur-Pedic, using his background in experimental psychology to develop objective tests and evaluate comfort, support, motion transfer, and more. He authors our guide to the best mattresses.In addition to being Business Insider Reviews' mattress expert, James has extensively covered vacuums, air conditioners, space heaters, air purifiers, and more within the HVAC space. He's tested more than 40 vacuums from brands like iRobot and Dyson and is no stranger to keeping his house at a chilly 60 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks on end, all in the name of testing air conditioners.Read more about our teamsIf you want to learn more about how each team tests products and meet the rest of our editors and writers of Business Insider Reviews, check out these pages:TechPetsKitchenStyle and BeautyDealsRead the original article on Business Insider.....»»
Insider Reviews: How we test the best home products
Insider Reviews' home team writes accurate, impartial, and thorough reviews of home products. Learn more about how we test and our product expertise. When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn moreAs part of testing for the best air conditioners, home reporter James Brains tests how loud a window AC unit is during operation using a decibel meter.James Brains/InsiderFrom soft-yet-durable sheets to powerful vacuums, the Insider Reviews team rigorously tests and reviews a wide variety of items for the home. For nearly five years, the team has tested hundreds of products, including mattresses, sheets, vacuums, home-office furniture, cleaning products, and many more.What types of home products we testMattresses: We test the best mattresses for all types of sleepers from a wide range of brands, including Casper, Helix, Leesa, Tempur-Pedic, and more. And yes, our sleep reporter sleeps on every single mattress he tests for at least two weeks.Bedroom furniture and bedding: Our reporters review and test bedroom products, including the best bed frames and linens, all price points and climates. They've tested practically every fabric and have tried sheets, duvet covers, pillows, and comforters from Brooklinen, The Company Store, Crane & Canopy, L.L.Bean, and more.Vacuums: From the best robot vacuums to cordless to upright, we use benchmark and objective tests for vacuums and recommend products from Bissell, Dyson, Roborock, Shark, and more.Bath linens and laundry care: It's important to keep your bathroom free of mold and mildew, so we test bath mats and towels to make sure they dry quickly. We've developed tests for clothes steamers, hangers, and drying racks, and have also evaluated laundry detergent for efficacy. Air conditioners, fans, and heaters: We've tested space heaters, air conditioners, and fans to ensure they provide great climate control without being too noisy or difficult to use.Furniture and large appliances: These are some of the biggest investments you'll make for your home. We use expert sources, in-depth research, and hands-on testing to review the best sofas, dishwashers, bathtubs, and more.Home office: From office chairs to standing desks, we put home-office furniture through the paces to ensure it's sturdy and easy to use while still being stylish and affordable. Home improvement tools: We methodically research the tools and equipment you need to care for and repair your home. We interview industry experts and do extensive research and testing to review the best lawn mowers, best paint, best drills, and more.Home accessories, decor, and services: We believe your home should be a safe and comfortable place to be. To help you find the best smoke detector, trash can, compost bin and more, we extensively research and test a wide variety of home accessories, decor, and home services. Our sleep reporter, James Brains in his testing room where he's slept on more than 60 mattresses.James Brains/InsiderHow we test home productsWe test home products by using them every day for weeks and months. We develop original testing methods and use benchmarks to evaluate home products and objectively compare them. We sleep on pillows for weeks, wash and rewash sheets, run cordless vacuums until their batteries run out, and assemble office chairs and standing desks. We take factors like price, durability, style, and other factors into consideration to offer quality options for all budgets.What sets us apart from other review sitesInstead of testing in labs, we use products in our own homes in real-life conditions. We test products as professionals to evaluate how each item meets industry standards, but we don't stop there. Where other sites may evaluate a mattress based on performance in lab tests, our reporters sleep on every mattress for a minimum of two weeks. Every product we test becomes part of our daily routines, so we know if a vacuum can keep up with heavy shedding or if an air conditioner is loud enough to keep you awake at night.Though we earn commission on products purchased through our stories, no company can pay us to be included. All of our top picks are researched, tested, and then compared to our previous experience. Meet our expert home teamOur home team has years of experience testing and reviewing products. Each editor and reporter is an expert in their beat, having reviewed dozens of products from their categories. Meet the home team below:Our writersBiosLauren Savoie, deputy editorLauren SavoieLauren is deputy editor of Insider Reviews and chair of Business Insider's editorial standards board. Lauren leads the home, kitchen, and pets teams and is deeply involved in all editorial decision-making, with a particular focus in strategic content planning, career growth of reporters and editors, and strong journalistic standards for the Reviews team. She's also served as an on-air product expert for news programs, including Good Morning America and CBS Money Watch.In 2022, Lauren attended The Poynter Institute's Leadership Academy for Women in Media, a prestigious program that recognizes leaders in the journalism industry. Lauren joined the Insider team in 2020, first as kitchen editor and soon after as senior home & kitchen editor, where she pioneered original testing methodologies for buying guides and built a diverse team of freelancers and reporters with deep expertise. You can see some of her work in our guides to the best flower delivery services, best pillows, and best sous vide machines.Jaclyn Turner, senior home editorJaclyn TurnerJaclyn is senior home editor at Insider Reviews, where she oversees home content, reviews and guides spanning mattresses to vacuums, an organization to smart home, and more, though she has a particularly soft spot for decor and interior decorating. She joined the Insider team in October 2023. Her work spans from scoping out the best candles to meticulously evaluating the best vacuums. Jaclyn previously held editorial and ecommerce roles with Homes & Gardens, Real Homes, Livingetc, The Spruce, MyDomaine, and Apartment Therapy. Jaclyn received a dual bachelor of arts in Journalism and American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Jaclyn currently resides in Atlanta, GA. James Brains, senior reporterJames BrainsJames is a Senior Reporter for Insider Reviews, specializing in sleep, HVAC, vacuums, and kitchen appliances. He has tested more than 80 mattresses from startups like Casper and legacy brands like Tempur-Pedic, using his background in experimental psychology to develop objective tests and evaluate comfort, support, motion transfer, and more. He authors our guide to the best mattresses.In addition to being Insider Reviews' mattress expert, James has extensively covered vacuums, air conditioners, space heaters, air purifiers, and more within the HVAC space. He's tested more than 40 vacuums from brands like iRobot and Dyson and is no stranger to keeping his house at a chilly 60 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks on end, all in the name of testing air conditioners.Read more about our teamsIf you want to learn more about how each team tests products and meet the rest of our editors and writers of Insider Reviews, check out these pages:TechPetsKitchenStyle and BeautyDealsRead the original article on Business Insider.....»»
EBay to shed 1,000 jobs, 9% of ecommerce giant"s workforce
Employees are being told to stay home Wednesday and impacted workers will be informed of their termination over Zoom......»»
Netflix just threw shade at Amazon"s Prime Video: We didn"t "force" people to watch ads
Netflix said it is well positioned to compete with Amazon Prime Video for ads because it has better content and didn't "force" users to see ads. Greg PetersStephen McCarthy /Web Summit via Getty ImagesNetflix just took a swipe at Amazon as the ecommerce giant prepares to launch its ad-supported tier.Netflix is the dominant streamer by subscribers, but its ad business has a long way to go.Co-CEO Greg Peters said unlike Amazon, where ads will be the default, Netflix didn't 'force' people to see ads. Netflix just took a swipe at Amazon as the ecommerce giant prepares to launch ads in Prime Video starting next week, taking on Netflix for advertising dollars.Netflix is the dominant streamer, with 260 million subscribers worldwide, but when it comes to advertising, it's got a long way to go to catch up with rivals like Disney that have been selling video ads longer.Now, Netflix is about to face a heavy-hitting new competitor for ad dollars in Amazon, which will launch ads on Prime Video starting January 29. The ecommerce giant will offer much more scale than Netflix from the get-go because it's making ads the default for 115 million monthly users. Netflix's ad tier has shown strong recent growth but still boasts only 23 million users globally.Amazon also has other compelling ad products it can tie in, like NFL's "Thursday Night Football" and its core commerce ads.Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters fielded an analyst question during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call today about how the streamer will be positioning itself against Amazon — and whether Netflix had considered making ads the default option, as Prime Video is doing."We did consider making it the default option, but given our long history of not having ads, we thought it was better for our members — rather than force them into a change and give them ads — better to attract them to the ads plan for the ones that wanted it, with the benefits," Peters said. (Among those benefits is the significant price difference: Netflix's ad tier costs $7 per month, less than half the ad-free version.)Netflix said in its earnings report that 40% of its signups now are for the ad tier in the markets where it's available. And according to Peters, there hasn't been significant backlash to its strategy.Netflix has stayed way ahead in the streaming race by making a huge quantity of shows and movies people can't get enough of. It's no industry secret that Amazon has struggled to establish a brand identity and produce consistent hits. Peters didn't have to make an explicit comparison with Prime Video to make the point."We've got the most engaged audience, watching the most culture-defining films, series, and live events," he said. "That is an important place for brands to be, and that's what differentiates us from our competitors."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
Funko (FNKO) & Goliath Forge Exclusive Global Gaming Alliance
The exclusive alliance between Funko (FNKO) and Goliath marks a significant chapter in the gaming industry, promising enthusiasts a plethora of new and innovative gaming experiences. Pop culture aficionados and board game enthusiasts alike are in for a treat as Funko, Inc. FNKO and Goliath, the renowned family-owned global game company, join forces in an exclusive worldwide license and distribution agreement. The deal encompasses Funko's extensive portfolio of games under the Funko Games brand, signaling a strategic move to elevate the gaming experience.In a significant move, Goliath has not only secured the rights to distribute Funko's current lineup of games and puzzles globally but also acquired the assets of Funko's board game development studio, formerly known as Forrest-Pruzan Creative. This acquisition includes the celebrated board game design team, Prospero Hall, reinforcing Goliath's commitment to innovation in the gaming industry.The multi-year agreement positions Goliath as the exclusive worldwide distributor of Funko's games and puzzles, with plans to collaborate on the development and distribution of exciting new additions to the Funko Games brand. The partnership involves an initial payment from Goliath, followed by future minimum guaranteed royalty payments, underlining the shared commitment to the success of the venture.Jochanan Golad, CEO of Goliath, expressed enthusiasm about the collaboration, stating, "Funko Games is a highly regarded brand that includes hundreds of board games recently created, as well as a great portfolio from Forrest-Pruzan. We look forward to bringing the Funko brand and style to the game aisle in new and innovative ways."Image Source: Zacks Investment ResearchAs part of the deal, Goliath plans to leverage its extensive experience in the games and toys market to market key games globally. One of the highlights is the launch of "Bitty Pop! Chase," an exciting new game featuring Funko's popular Bitty Pop! miniature collectible characters.Mike Lunsford, Interim CEO of Funko, emphasized the strategic nature of the transaction, aligning with the company's goal of streamlining operations. The proceeds from the deal will be directed toward debt reduction, capitalizing on Goliath's size, scale and market expertise to strengthen Funko's position in the board game category.This exclusive alliance between Funko and Goliath marks a significant chapter in the gaming industry, promising enthusiasts a plethora of new and innovative gaming experiences on a global scale.Shares of Funko, which carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), have declined 8.5% against the industry’s rise of 9%.3 Stocks to ConsiderHere, we have highlighted some better-ranked stocks, namely Hibbett HIBB, GameStop GME and Abercrombie & Fitch ANF.Hibbett, which is engaged in the retail of athletic-inspired fashion products, sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). HIBB has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 24.2%, on average. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Hibbett’s current financial-year sales suggests growth of around 1.7% from the year-ago reported numbers.GameStop, a specialty retailer that provides games and entertainment products through its stores and ecommerce platforms, currently sports a Zacks Rank #1. GME has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 99.4%, on average.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for GameStop’s current fiscal-year earnings suggests growth of 107.8% from the year-ago reported numbers.Abercrombie & Fitch, which operates as a specialty retailer, currently sports a Zacks Rank #1. Abercrombie & Fitch has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 713%, on average.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Abercrombie & Fitch’s current financial-year sales suggests growth of 15.1% from the year-ago reported numbers.Disclaimer: This article has been written with the assistance of Generative AI. However, the author has reviewed, revised, supplemented, and rewritten parts of this content to ensure its originality and the precision of the incorporated information.Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Abercrombie & Fitch Company (ANF): Free Stock Analysis Report GameStop Corp. (GME): Free Stock Analysis Report Hibbett, Inc. (HIBB): Free Stock Analysis Report Funko, Inc. (FNKO): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»
First he was a teacher. Then he was China"s top tech titan. Now, meet Jack Ma 3.0 — a high-tech farmer.
Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma has stayed out of the limelight since angering Beijing. In the meantime, he's been busy in his retirement from the tech giant. Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group.Zhang Yazi/China News Service/Getty ImagesThree years after he criticized Chinese regulators, Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma is still lying low.Once the poster child of Chinese tech, his words angered Beijing and precipitated a crackdown on his business empire.Ma has since been busy touring the world studying high-tech agriculture and morphing into the next phase of his life.Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma was once the invincible poster boy of Chinese tech.Outspoken and flamboyant, the tech entrepreneur was everywhere from the media and conferences to headlining company events.Savvy and outgoing — remember that time he danced to Michael Jackson in front of thousands of people? — Ma charmed millions across the globe by appearing to be the antithesis of the typical, straitlaced Chinese executive keen to toe the Communist Party line. In short, Ma — a party member himself — appeared more American than Chinese.But after Ma criticized Chinese regulators, he disappeared from the public eye in late 2020 and Beijing cracked down on his businesses. Like many other Chinese CEOs before him, Ma vanished after falling from the party's favor, proving nobody is above President Xi Jinping's regime.Since his run-in with Beijing, Ma's whereabouts and what he's been up to have been the stuff of widespread public speculation and global media headlines — originating from social media posts, unannounced visits, and unnamed source tip-offs.Now, it appears Ma is debuting a refreshed version of himself, in what you just might call Jack Ma 3.0.Jack Ma 1.0: A struggling teacher who wanted in on the tech sceneIt's easy to understand why Ma is so popular in the US and China alike. A classic rags-to-riches tale, Ma's life story resonates well with the masses.Ma, whose birth name was Ma Yun, was born to a poor family in Hangzhou, China.He didn't excel in school. He failed his college entrance exams twice before passing on his third try and entering Hangzhou Teachers Institute.After graduating from college in 1988, he famously applied to dozens of jobs — with an equal number of rejections, including from KFC — before he was finally hired as an English teacher.Ma has said he loved his job — but it only paid $12 a month. He's also been open about the failures he's encountered throughout his career."As a young boy — even today — I never thought I would be here," Ma said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2018. "When I look back, every problem I met when I was a kid benefited me."He started his own business in translation services in 1994, and, after a business trip to the US in 1995, he launched a digital business in the early days of the internet.His first business — China Pages — failed, but he gathered a band of 17 friends in 1999 to set up Alibaba. The site they launched allowed exporters to list their products directly on the platform, ushering China into the ecommerce era.Even though Ma is arguably the most successful internet entrepreneur of this generation, he started Alibaba with no knowledge of marketing or computers.But his start as a teacher taught him how to rally the troops, identify and cultivate talent, delegate work, and chart the direction for Alibaba, he said at Davos in 2018."He was more of a teacher than a manager," Brian Wong, the 52nd employee of Alibaba, told Business Insider of Ma's management style. Wong spent nearly two decades at Alibaba over the course of three separate employment stints — from 1999 to 2020. Most recently, he was the company's group vice president and remains an advisor to an Alibaba unit focused on education and training."Jack does have an aspect of him that speaks his mind," Wong said. "For the most part, it's a positive asset in terms of how he has built the business."Jack Ma 2.0: An outgoing Big Tech exec — until he wasn'tAs an internet entrepreneur, Ma was pivotal in steering the company, and his charisma corralled the support he needed."He's a master at communicating a shared aspiration that so many people can relate to," said Wong.Ma founded Alibaba.com in June 1999. In October, the company managed to raise $5 million from Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs and another $20 million from Japanese tech investor SoftBank.The work culture at Alibaba was intense, but Ma was known for maintaining a sense of fun. In the early 2000s, when setting up the Taobao shopping platform, he made his team do headstands during breaks to boost their energy.Alibaba boomed through the 2000s in China. By the mid-2010s, Ma started dreaming beyond China.In 2014, Alibaba started trading on the New York Stock Exchange, making Ma the richest person in Asia by the end of that year with an estimated $25 billion fortune."What I'm thinking about is how we can make Alibaba a platform for global small business," Ma told journalist Charlie Rose at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2015.Ma himself cavorted with the biggest names in business, tech, and government globally — from Bill Gates and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son to then president-elect Donald Trump.But there was a problem: Outspoken Ma was starting to outshine his political masters in Beijing, as Financial Times reported in April 2021.Some of what he was saying could also be potentially embarrassing for Beijing, a person close to the Hangzhou government told the media outlet.After Ma openly hit out at Chinese regulators in October 2020 for stifling innovation, Beijing ran out of patience. What came next was an extended period in which he was, to the public eye, invisible.Jack Ma 3.0: a high-tech farming titanMa had already been retired from Alibaba for about a year by the time he vanished.Even though he was lying low, Ma kept busy. Over the past two years, he has been spotted at various institutes around the world that specialize in high-tech farming.In October 2021, Ma was in Spain learning about agriculture and technology related to environmental issues. He has also traveled to the Netherlands, Japan, and Thailand to study agrotech.In May, Tokyo College announced that Ma would be taking up a teaching position while researching sustainable agriculture and food production.In January, he was in Thailand, where he dined with Supakit Chearavanont, the chairman of Charoen Pokphand Group, a major animal feed producer.His entrepreneurial streak also appears to be back — or perhaps it never disappeared.In November, Ma incorporated a company called "Hangzhou Ma's Kitchen Food," according to media reports. The company is involved in the sales of pre-packaged food and the processing and retail of agricultural products, per South China Morning Post.Ma hasn't publicly talked about why he's moving into farming. He did not respond to BI's request for comment sent via his personal foundation.Wong told BI Ma has always been moved by how the digital economy helped connect rural communities to growth opportunities. His foundation supports educators in such communities as well.Agriculture is thus an extension of Ma's recognition that there are issues like climate change, scarcity, and inequality that need to be addressed, with technology as a driver, Wong said.Ma seems to have articulated the same thoughts in a video speech he delivered to rural teachers in August, SCMP reported. His words show that while he may be pivoting his attention to a new sector, the same entrepreneurial bent he's displayed all along is still there."I found that a place that does well in agriculture is not necessarily a place with good resources, but a place with unique thinking, and people with imagination," he said."The rural areas do need technology, while I think unique thinking and creativity are important as well," he added.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
3 Picks from the Attractive Internet Services Industry
Steadying interest rates and a stronger-than-expected economy are contributing to positive sentiments regarding the very broad-based Internet - Services industry. Valuation improvements are creating opportunities. Macro factors currently driving the economy, such as inflation, rate hikes, supply chain issues (though minimal right now and in pockets), the relative strength in labor and so forth have a varied impact on players in the extremely diverse Internet – Services industry. Since this is a capital-intensive industry with high fixed cost of operation and the fairly constant need to expand capacity, a high interest rate just isn’t very positive for it. Nor is the impending recession, or at least slowdown, since the industry tends to do better when the overall economy does well. As a result, steadying interest rates and evidence of the economy holding up better than expected are helping drive sentiments. While infrastructure investments may be continuing at a moderate pace, innovation remains the key mantra for these players and these actions are being buttressed with cost control measures and/or the maintenance of good operational efficiency. Valuations continue to drop, creating opportunities. Our picks are Shopify (SHOP), Upwork (UPWK) and Uber (UBER).About the IndustryInternet - Services companies are primarily those that rely on huge software and hardware infrastructure, referred to as their properties, to deliver various services to consumers. People can avail the services by accessing these properties with their personal connected devices from almost anywhere in the world.Companies in the sector generally operate two models: an ad-based model where the service is offered “free” and an ad-free model where the service is charged. Alphabet, Baidu and Akamai are some of the larger players while Dropbox, Etsy, Shopify, Uber, Lyft and Trivago are some of the emerging players.Because of the diversity of services offered, it is difficult to identify industrywide factors that could affect all players. Macro factors such as inflation, rate hikes, supply chain issues and so forth affect differently.Factors Shaping the IndustryIt goes without saying that increased digitization of different aspects of daily life is a driver for the entire industry, because digitization essentially transfers work online, which is where Internet service providers are required. To that extent, the pandemic has proved course-altering for the industry because of the huge volume of transactions that moved online. And people are not giving up all of these conveniences to go back to their old ways. The expansion of the installed base of connected devices beyond PCs and smartphones to IoT, automotive and more is creating additional opportunities for targeting. The ownership of multiple devices automatically drives people to use these services more as they increasingly automate routine chores. Being a capital-intensive industry, there is the need to raise funds to build out costly infrastructure. Funds are also needed to maintain this infrastructure. Capital spending continues to trend higher despite high interest rates and a possible recession, which if it happens in 2024, will impact revenue growth and, therefore, cost absorption. Companies are, however, trying to manage cost in case demand softens. Debt levels have been relatively steady this year, coming down slightly in the March quarter, as Alphabet’s debt levels were lowered. Two things typically trigger major increases in debt levels (and the two are not mutually exclusive): fixed asset investment and acquisitions. The 2023 capital spending trend looks non-exceptional. Following the seasonal dip in December, March and June followed patterns in earlier years. The appetite for acquisitions appears to be low, however, as seen from the aggregated intangibles balance. Alphabet, for which swallowing smaller players is all in the day’s work, also appears to be going slow this year. Traffic acquisition is one of the most important drivers of revenue, so companies invest in advertising or building communities that can draw more users to their online properties and get them to spend more time there, much like a store owner would try to attract and then keep a prospective buyer within the store. Some large players, including those providing infrastructure services, grow by tying up with other such large players for access to their customers. Since the personal touch is absent in an online store, many rely on cookies and other technologies to track users, collect data on them and profile them in order to analyze their needs. As these companies have grown over time, some of them have collected such a wealth of information on their users that the data itself is now helping them build artificial intelligence (AI) to generate revenues from new technologies and services and also lower the cost of operation. Ad-based services are no longer considered free. The EU’s GDPR and the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) for example require service providers to acquire explicit permission from users before collecting their data. While not all businesses are built on the same scale or have the same customer reach, AI tools are increasingly helping organizations of every size thus increasing demand for companies providing them.Zacks Industry Rank Remains PositiveThe Zacks Internet - Services industry is housed within the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector. It carries a Zacks Industry Rank #55, which places it among the top 22% of more than 250 Zacks-classified industries.The group’s Zacks Industry Rank, which is basically the average rank of all the member stocks, indicates that there are several opportunities in the space. However, the diverse range of companies makes stock selection tricky.Looking at the aggregate earnings estimate revisions over the past year, we see steady increases, particularly from July 2023. Overall, the industry’s earnings estimate for 2023 is up 17.1% from Jan 2023 and the estimate for 2024 is up 14.3% from Jan 2023.Historically, the top 50% of Zacks-ranked industries outperforms the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. So the industry’s positioning in the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries should be considered a positive, even if a recession, albeit a shallow one upsets current momentum.Before we present a few stocks that you may want to consider for your portfolio, let’s take a look at the industry’s recent stock-market performance and valuation picture.Industry Leads on Stock Market PerformanceWhile initially trading more or less in line with the broader Technology sector and the S&P 500, the industry pulled ahead in May. Since then, it has at times traded in line with the broader industry, although consistently at a premium to the S&P 500. Despite the dip in October (likely related to uncertainty about another rate hike, increasing costs for the company), the overall trajectory remained upward.Overall, the industry gained a net 55.8% in the past year while the broader sector gained 45.5% and the S&P 500 20.9%.One-Year Price Performance Image Source: Zacks Investment ResearchIndustry's Current ValuationOn the basis of forward 12-month price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, we see that the industry is currently trading at a 22.36X multiple, which is at a slight premium to its median value of 21.48X over the past year. Although a premium to the S&P 500’s 20.02X it is still a discount to the sector’s 24.92X.Forward 12 Month Price-to-Earnings (P/E) RatioImage Source: Zacks Investment Research3 Solid BetsGiven the attractiveness of the sector, there are many possible choices. The first two selected today carry a Zacks #1 (Strong Buy) rank while the third is rated Buy (Zacks Rank #2).Shopify Inc. (SHOP): Ottawa, Canada-based Shopify offers a platform facilitating a whole range of ecommerce operations across Canada, the U.S., the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific and Latin America. The platform allows merchants to display, market and sell products using web and mobile storefronts, physical retail locations, pop-up shops, social media storefronts, native mobile apps, buy buttons and marketplaces. It also enables product sourcing, inventory management, order processing and fulfilment, customer acquisition and relationship building, access to finance, cash, payments and transaction management, and reporting. The company also offers analytics.In the September quarter, Shopify posted a huge earnings surprise of 183.3% on revenue that surprised by a little less than 3%. In the last 60 days, estimates for 2023 and 2024 have increased a couple of cents each. SHOP estimates for 2023 and 2024 have increased 143.8% and 855.6% in the past year. Analysts currently expect 2023 revenue and earnings growth of 24.7% and 1,650%, respectively. For 2024, they’re expecting 19% revenue growth and 48.1% earnings growth.The shares are up 103.4% over the past year.Price and Consensus: SHOPImage Source: Zacks Investment Research Upwork Inc. (UPWK): San Francisco, California-based Upwork is a work marketplace connecting professionals in sales and marketing, customer service, data science and analytics, design and creative, web, mobile, and software development, as well as agencies with businesses in the U.S., India, Philippines and elsewhere. Its workflow management services also facilitate various business operations.Upwork’s business model benefits from the hybrid and work-from-home models. However, recent revenue momentum is attributable to its AI focus, where it is increasingly involved in bringing AI-enabled experiences, talent and work to clients. It is also entering into partnerships to deliver differentiated tools to customers. Management has said that enhancements to its AI Services hub has led to a ten-fold increase in average monthly visitors since its launch in the second quarter. The addition of generative AI apps in particular are expected to be a big draw for customers. Improved efficiency, effectiveness and matching speed also attract customers. Some of the new client wins include Dropbox, IT’SUGAR, Moderna and Florida State University. Overall, in the third quarter, the number of enterprise clients spending $5 million or more in the trailing twelve months rose 43%. Upwork also has cost optimization programs underway. These are driving unit cost improvements and thereby, profitability.The earnings surprise in the September quarter was a whopping 500%. What’s more it came on top of a very attractive revenue surprise of around 4%. The last 60 days have seen no change in the 2023 estimate although there was a 2-cent increase in the 2024 estimate. Its 2023 and 2024 earnings estimates have increased a respective 108.8% and 221.4% in the past year. At current levels, top line estimates represent 10.6% growth in 2023 (over 2022 levels) followed by 12.1% growth in 2024. Bottom line estimates represent 900% improvement in 2023 and 43.8% improvement in 2024.UPWK shares have appreciated 17.1% over the past year.Price and Consensus: UPWKImage Source: Zacks Investment Research Uber Technologies, Inc. (UBER): San Francisco, California-based Uber develops and operates proprietary technology applications in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia excluding China and Southeast Asia. The primary services offered include ride sharing, grocery delivery, freight and advertising.In the September quarter, Uber missed on the bottom line by 32.4% and on the top line by 1.8%. However, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2023 has itself jumped 177.1% since last January while the estimate for 2024 jumped 111.5%. Therefore, random misses are not a catastrophe. As things stand now, analysts are projecting revenue and earnings increases of a respective 16.4% and 108% for 2023 and 15.6% and 195.5% for 2024. The estimates are unchanged in the last 60 days.UBER shares have appreciated 118.0% over the past year.Price and Consensus: UBERImage Source: Zacks Investment Research Only $1 to See All Zacks' Buys and Sells We're not kidding. Several years ago, we shocked our members by offering them 30-day access to all our picks for the total sum of only $1. No obligation to spend another cent. Thousands have taken advantage of this opportunity. Thousands did not - they thought there must be a catch. Yes, we do have a reason. We want you to get acquainted with our portfolio services like Surprise Trader, Stocks Under $10, Technology Innovators,and more. They've already closed 162 positions with double- and triple-digit gains in 2023 alone.See Stocks Now >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Upwork Inc. (UPWK): Free Stock Analysis Report Uber Technologies, Inc. (UBER): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»