Kiplinger’s Weekly Earnings Calendar (7/27-7/31): AAPL, AMZN, FB

Below is a weekly earnings calendar of the most important upcoming quarterly reports schedule to be released by publicly traded companies. There are also earnings previews for select companies. Please check back often. This earnings calendar is updated weekly.

(Editor’s Note: Many earnings dates are tentative but may be moved due to coronavirus-related concerns. However, companies featured in “Earnings Spotlights” have officially announced their earnings dates.)

Earnings Calendar Highlights

MONDAY

Noteworthy Earnings Reports

TUESDAY

Noteworthy Earnings Reports

WEDNESDAY

Earnings Spotlight: Facebook

Facebook (FB, $230.71) certainly hasn’t been immune to the effects of COVID-19. The company itself expects advertising sales to suffer a COVID-related hit, especially in the travel segment. And perhaps more notably, the company also is suffering from ad pullbacks in the wake of its policies on fake news and hate speech.

Nonetheless, FB shares stand 12% higher year-to-date, in large part because its services are being used more amid the rollout of new features in its primary platform, as well as Messenger and Instagram. Also, many expect that once advertising spending recovers, more of that money will be coming online, and that Facebook will be among the prime beneficiaries.

Monness, Crespi, Hardt analyst Brian White recently reiterated his Buy rating on the company, saying that it’ll come out of its current crises stronger than before, but that short-term results could be weak.

“The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the economy has resulted in a reduction in digital ad spending and recent ad boycotting campaigns have exacerbated this challenging environment,” he writes. “As such, we expect Facebook’s earnings to be depressed in the coming quarters and revenue growth well below historical trends.”

Other Noteworthy Reports

THURSDAY

Earnings Spotlight: Amazon.com

Amazon.com (AMZN, $3,008.91) is largely expected to report a stinker of a second quarter, profit-wise – something that CEO Jeff Bezos telegraphed during the company’s Q1 report. Bezos told shareholders “You may want to take your seat” before explaining that the company would be sinking the entirety of what it expected to be a $4 billion Q2 profit back into the company, including COVID-related expenses.

Wall Street has hardly been concerned.

AMZN shares are up nearly 63% year-to-date, including a 25% run over the past three months. And over the past quarter, 36 of the 39 analysts who have sounded off on Amazon.com have called the stock a Buy (versus two Holds and a lonely Sell).

Credit Suisse, as part of a preview of Amazon’s second-quarter results, maintained its Outperform (Buy) rating and raised its price target from $2,760 per share to $3,400. CS analysts expect that Amazon’s business gains from COVID-19 won’t be short-term in nature.

“The longer consumers remain under shelter-in-place, the higher the likelihood of the new behaviors learned during quarantine to become newfound habits,” Credit Suisse’s analysts write. “So whereas our model had conservatively assumed that all of the step-function improvement in GMV (gross merchandise volume) growth will be confined to 2Q20, we raise our 2H20 GMV estimates to forecast a more gradual drop-off. Longer term, this potential change in habit is most important for Amazon’s groceries effort, as it remains the largest pool of offline dollars for online adoption.”

As a group, the pros are looking for a 28.2% leap in Q2 sales to $81.31 billion when Amazon.com reports after the July 30 close, though profits should fall off a cliff, sinking 73.7% to $1.37 per share.

Earnings Spotlight: Apple

Despite an environment that would seem to make it difficult to sell $1,000 smartphones and other premium electronics devices, Apple (AAPL, $370.46) shares have held up extraordinarily well in 2020, up 26% year-to-date.

That said, analysts have started to sour a little heading into the company’s next earnings report, due after the July 30 closing bell.

Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall (Sell) thinks Apple won’t provide September-quarter guidance, though he does believe the iPhone launch will be on time – but that a delayed launch could be costly.

“We continue to assume that Apple will deliver the iPhone on time in late September,” he writes. “We are well aware of both supply and press speculation to the contrary but our experience and Apple’s strong supply chain presence suggest it is more likely to surprise on the upside in terms of execution.”

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