Amazon reported earnings on October 24 and the company came up short on the earnings estimate, but beat on the revenue side. The stock dropped sharply when it opened for trading the next day, but the stock rallied throughout the day and ended up only losing a little over 1%. Fellow FAANG member Netflix reported on October 16 and it beat its EPS estimate and its revenue estimate, but came up short on subscriber growth. Netflix jumped after its earnings report, but fell in the subsequent days.
With those two FAANG members out of the way, this coming week will bring earnings reports from Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), and Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG). Alphabet is set to release results on October 28 and Apple and Facebook will both report on October 30.
Looking at these three stocks from a fundamental perspective based on Tickeron’s fundamental analysis tools, we get an idea of how these companies compare to other investment opportunities. I put together the following table to show what each company is expected to report compared to last year and where each company ranks in various categories.
The first thing that jumped out at me is the fact that Apple and Alphabet are expected to see earnings decline slightly from last year’s results. This reflects the economy we are in to some degree and it reflects the impact the trade war is having on tech companies. We see that Facebook is the only one with a valuation that is a little higher than average and that could be a concern.
All three companies rank above average in terms of the SMR (sales growth, profit margin, and return on equity) ratings. Apple and Alphabet are both better than average in terms of the Profit vs. Risk rating while Apple and Facebook are above average in the P/E Growth Ratings. The only rating out of all of them that is in the bottom 20th percentile is Alphabet’s P/E Growth rating.
Looking at different metrics from Investor’s Business Daily, we see pretty solid ratings for all three companies. Alphabet gets green marks across the board with the composite rating, the EPS rating, and the SMR rating all falling in the top 20th percentile and the Relative Price Strength rating is in the top 25th percentile.
Apple’s composite, Relative Price Strength, and SMR rating are all in the upper 20 percent of readings, but the EPS rating is in the average range. Facebook doesn’t have any ratings in the top 2oth percentile, but the composite, RS rating and SMR rating are all above average while the EPS rating is in the average range.
The sentiment indicators for the three show pretty bullish readings for the most part, but that is to be expected given how the stocks have performed. All three stocks have been in the top 25th percentile in terms of price performance for the past year, so bullish sentiment is to be expected.
The one area that stood out was the analysts’ ratings for Apple. There are 42 analysts covering the stock and only 22 have the stock rated as a “buy”. There are 15 “hold” ratings and five “sell” ratings. This puts the buy percentage at 52.4% and that is below average. The short interest ratios are all skewed to the bullish side and the analysts ratings for Facebook and Alphabet are both extremely optimistic.
Looking at the weekly charts for the three, Facebook just went through a pullback and its overbought/oversold indicators are considerably lower than the other two. Alphabet has been trending higher since June and its indicators are approaching overbought levels. Apple is in overbought territory based on its weekly stochastic readings and its 10-week RSI.
I did find the weekly chart for Apple particularly interesting.
We see that the stock was trending higher within a trend channel in 2017 and through most of 2018. The stock broke below the lower rail last fall but then rallied back. What used to be the lower rail of the former trend channel then acted as resistance in April of this year and it appears as though a new trend channel has formed. The stock has rallied sharply since May and the stock just moved above the former lower rail.