For Immediate Release Chicago, IL – October 23, 2015 – Zacks Equity Research highlights Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (HA) as the Bull of the Day and Halliburton Company (HAL) as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT).
Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:
Bull of the Day:
Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (HA), the parent of Hawaiian Airlines, continues to cash in on strong travel demand and low fuel prices. This Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) is expected to grow earnings by 95% this year.
Hawaiian is Hawaii's biggest airline. It has been serving the islands for 86 years and offers non-stop service to 11 gateway US cities.
It also has been expanding its international offerings, with service from Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, New Zealand, American Samoa and Tahiti.
Hawaiian also specializes in inter-island travel, with more than 160 daily flights between the Hawaiian Islands.
A Third Quarter Beat
On Oct 19, Hawaiian reported its third quarter results and beat the Zacks Consensus by 10 cents. Earnings were $1.29 compared to the consensus of $1.19.
Lower fuel prices and strong demand is making up for growth in industry capacity between the US west coast and Hawaii as well as the strength of the US dollar.
Adjusted pre-tax margin was 20% compared to just 12.6% in the prior year period.
The company is flush with cash. As of Sep 30, it had unrestricted cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $611 million.
Bear of the Day:
Halliburton Company (HAL) continues to feel the pressure of the weak energy industry. This Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) is expected to see declining earnings the next 2 years.
Halliburton provides services and products to the energy industry worldwide. It offers products to customers from exploration to drilling to well construction and completion to optimizing production.
Beat on Earnings in Q3 But Revenue Declined
On Oct 19, Halliburton reported third quarter results and surprised the Street by actually beating the Zacks Consensus by 4 cents.
However, total company revenue fell 6% to $5.6 billion sequentially. North America led the decline, falling 7% sequentially, due to continued declines in activity and pricing pressure.
Mirroring what Schlumberger said, it saw another step down in activity in the industry in the third quarter.
It continues to move forward with its acquisition of Baker Hughes, however. That deal is still expected to close later this year.
Analysts Down Beat
There's nothing the energy companies can do but admit that the market conditions are challenging.
But the turnaround doesn't seem imminent either.
16 estimates were cut for the full year in the last 30 days. It has pushed the Zacks Consensus down to $1.47 from $1.60. That is an earnings decline of 63% compared to 2014 when it made $4.02.
The analysts don't see a turnaround in 2016 either. Earnings are expected to decline another 14%.
Additional content:
Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft All Beat Earnings
After the bell on this busiest day of earnings season so far, three major tech firms -- Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) -- reported earnings. Bottom line, all three companies posted positive surprises and each of these companies is trading higher in the after market, following a strong Thursday in regular trading.
Perhaps most surprising is Microsoft's impressive results in its fiscal Q1 of 2016: the company brought in 67 cents per share on $21.66 billion in quarterly sales. With the company's Surface line, it would appear business is up, particularly in the cloud solution space. Its PC group, which includes advertising business and mobile, brought in $9.4 billion, which is higher than expected. The Productivity segment brought in $6.3 billion, which is also a beat, though Cloud was actually down from estimates at $5.9 billion.
Microsoft will not be issuing detailed guidance on its conference call coming up in a few minutes, but suffice it to say investors are happy with Microsoft's results. Shares are trading up roughly 5.5 percent in the after-market following a 1.76 percent climb in regular Thursday trading and a 9.4 percent gain over the last month alone. Microsoft was carrying a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) up until its earnings report.
Alphabet -- the publicly traded firm formerly known as Google -- also brought in impressive numbers, with revenues of $18.68 billion (not including traffic acquisition costs [TAC]) beating the Zacks consensus estimate. Paid clicks overall climbed 23 percent in the quarter; expectations were for paid click to gain somewhere in the 18 percent range. Also, GOOGL announced a stock repurchase plan of $5 billion in Class C capital stock, which has been something investors have been clamoring for from Google, er Alphabet, for years.
As a result, shares of Alphabet are up 8.6 percent in late trading, which is actually down from an 11 percent jump immediately after the announcement. And this follows a strong ride among Alphabet investors over the course of 2015, where the stock had climbed more than 28 percent year to date, even before the company's latest earnings announcement.
Finally, Amazon brought in 17 cents per share on $25.4 billion, which is a big beat from the $24.85 billion expected. In the company's earnings statement, Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos made its Fire tablet repricing under $50 a centerpiece of its forward outlook. Amazon also bumped up its guidance for Q4, with revenue expectations between $33.5 - $36.75 billion, the high end reaching noticeably above the Zacks consensus of $35.2 billion.
This is the second quarter in a row AMZN had been expected to post a negative earnings number and wound up besting expectations by a wide margin. Now with a boost to guidance, we may see some analyst activity among those covering Amazon; prior to the earnings report the company was listed as a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), with Zacks Style scores of A for Growth and B for Momentum. Amazon shares are currently up more than 10 percent in after-market trading.
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HAWAIIAN HLDGS (HA): Free Stock Analysis Report
HALLIBURTON CO (HAL): Free Stock Analysis Report
AMAZON.COM INC (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report
ALPHABET INC-A (GOOGL): Free Stock Analysis Report
MICROSOFT CORP (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report
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