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Semiconductors

Super Micro Q3 Earnings: Strong EPS Beat, But Revenue Misses; Upgraded Guidance Boosts Outlook

source:supermarco

Super Micro Earnings Release. Source: Seeking Alpha

  • Super Micro Computer press release (NASDAQ: SMCI): Q3 Non-GAAP EPS of $6.65 beats by $1.08.
  • Revenue of $3.85B (+200.8% Y/Y) misses by $50M.
  • Guidance is better: 
  • For the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2024 ending June 30, 2024, the Company expects net sales of $5.1 billion to $5.5 billion vs $4.86B consensus, GAAP net income per diluted share of $7.20 to $8.05 and non-GAAP net income per diluted share of $7.62 to $8.42 vs $6.96 Consensus.
  • For the fiscal year 2024 ending June 30, 2024, the Company is raising its guidance for revenues from a range of $14.3 billion to $14.7 billion to a range of $14.7 billion to $15.1 billion vs $14.59B consensus and establishing guidance for GAAP net income per diluted share of $21.61 to $22.46 and non-GAAP net income per diluted share of $23.29 to $24.09.

The stock is down 1.5% to $846 after losing 3.5% during market hours.

Categories
Fintech

Toast Inc (TOST): A Potential Pullback Opportunity for Investors

Toast (TOST) $23

Positives

Focused on restaurants – therefore scale in that segment helps in a commodity market, where they can compete on price.

One Stop Shop for restaurants, provides several financial/accounting/CRM/Marketing tools besides payment processing, reducing the need to go to several vendors. These have a strong attach rate and will be a key growth catalyst.

Non-GAAP profits with operating margins improving, hope to be GAAP profitable by 2025.

Good growth prospects – 23-25% revenue growth, priced at 2.5x sales, reasonable.

Negatives

Commodity, crowded business with a large number of competitors, little product differentiation, many compete on price alone.

Will find it difficult to perform outside its niche.

The stock is already up more than 60% from its low of $14, so expect some pullback.

This should be worth looking at $18-$20, I think the appreciation from here may be limited

Categories
Consumer Staples

Apple Stock Analysis: Bernstein Upgrade Signals Potential Turnaround

Apple (AAPL) $174 

Apple had an upgrade from Bernstein this morning after a spate of bad news, notably weaker China sales, and fewer iPhone sign-ups in the US. 

“AAPL has de-rated significantly amid a weak iPhone 15 cycle and fears that Apple’s China business is structurally impaired,” analyst Toni Sacconaghi wrote in a note. “We believe prevailing weakness in China is more cyclical than structural and note that historically Apple’s China business has exhibited much higher volatility than Apple overall, given its very feature-sensitive installed base.” Sacconaghi raised his rating on Apple to Outperform from Market Perform and kept his $195 price target.

While Sacconaghi acknowledges there may be short-term headwinds for Apple, the potential use of generative artificial intelligence features in the next iPhone and tailwinds from the replacement cycle could set up the company “well,” he said. It’s possible the company could top 2025 estimates of $416.9B in revenue and $7.40 in earnings per share, Sacconaghi said.

There are other positive developments.

A possibility of a tie-up with Open AI/Google Gemini for a co-pilot. Apple does have a treasure trove of data, there is no way they haven’t thought about monetizing it with AI. I suspect they are fairly advanced in the process but are as secretive as ever.

Nvidia’s omniverse is to be used with the Vision Pro – to be sure this is not revenue accretive, as the Vision Pro is still likely two years in beta before the product even becomes useful and less of a novelty. It is a step in the right direction for better use cases / commercial or other applications.

Apple steadying out around $167-$170 is a good sign for the rest of the market. They report on Thursday after the market, and while the quarter should be weak, the guidance should be key, along with product announcements or hints for announcements in their June developer conference. I don’t think they should be written off yet.

Categories
Enterprise Software

Rubrik’s IPO: Evaluating the Potential of a Microsoft-Backed SaaS Player in Data Security

Rubrik’s IPO is priced at $32 per share. Microsoft is backing this company.

SaaS business – data and data-centric security – this is a growing business with overall industry growth in the low twenties, from migration of on-prem to cloud.

Co-founder is Ex Nutanix

Company-wide revenue growth was only 5%, and the company is still in an early growth stage to have decent profitability but has shown a lot of promise with declining losses last year. Sales and marketing expenses take away a lot of revenue – they’ll need to keep this high to convert pure license customers to SaaS customers, at least 2-3 years.

Net Retention Rate at 133% is good for SaaS customers but this number drops over total revenue because of the large license revenue base.

A lot of big competitors in this industry, including Dell EMC and IBM.

Overall, given the slowing revenue growth, I would prefer to wait. I suspect the valuation is coming in too hot at an estimated 8x sales without the growth. Let’s keep an eye out, it has promise but I think we’ll need a better price.

Categories
Fintech

Marqeta (MQ) at $5.35: Promising Growth Amid Challenges in a Competitive Market

Marqeta (MQ) $5.35

Marqeta is a credit card processor with clients like Block (Square), Affirm, and DoorDash.

Marqeta should grow in 2025, after two years of a slowdown in 2023 and 2024 (estimated). 

Total Bookings with new clients and expansions with existing clients are growing well at over 50% and 60%. They’ve also done a good job on cost reduction.

The stock, though, could likely stagnate since they’re far from profitability. The other negative is that this is a commodity business with a lot of strong older players and several new upstarts, without any real competitive advantages. But Marqeta has a strong business relationship with Block, (51% of business) so that’s a plus, and their contract is in place through 2028.

The valuation is around 5X sales, and once growth resumes should be seen as cheap.

I think it’s worth looking into around $5. I’ll keep an eye on updates.

Categories
Cloud Service Providers

Microsoft Q3 Earnings: Strong Revenue Growth Across Key Segments, Stock Rises 5%

  • Microsoft press release (NASDAQ: MSFT): Q3 GAAP EPS of $2.94 beats by $0.11.
  • Revenue of $61.9B (+17.1% Y/Y) beats by $1.01B.
  • Shares +5%.
  • Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $19.6 billion and increased 12% (up 11% in constant currency)
  • Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $26.7 billion and increased 21%
  • Revenue in More Personal Computing was $15.6 billion and increased 17%
  • Microsoft will provide forward-looking guidance in connection with this quarterly earnings announcement on its earnings conference call and webcast.
Categories
Cloud Service Providers

Alphabet Surges 12% on Strong Q1 Earnings: YouTube, Cloud, and Search Drive Growth

Alphabet stock surged by double digits — (NASDAQ: GOOG) +12%, — after its first-quarter earnings easily cleared analyst expectations as revenues jumped 15% with strong performance, particularly at YouTube.

Revenues rose to $80.54B, easily topping consensus for $78.7B. Advertising revenue rose 13% to $61.7B.

Meanwhile, YouTube ads revenue — previously an area of concern — rose a full 21% to $8.09B. Subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenue jumped 18%.

And the momentum in Cloud continued, with 28% revenue growth and operating income that more than quadrupled year-over-year.

Operating income jumped 46% year-over-year, to $25.47B. Earnings per share landed at $1.89 vs. $1.50 expected by Wall Street.

The operating margin also expanded, to 32% from a year-ago 25%.

“Our results in the first quarter reflect strong performance from Search, YouTube, and Cloud,” said CEO Sundar Pichai. “We are well underway with our Gemini era and there’s great momentum across the company.”

Revenues by segment: Google search and other, $46.16B (up 14.4%); YouTube ads, $8.09B (up 20.9%); Google Network, $7.41B (down 1.1%); Google subscriptions, platforms and devices, $8.74B (up 17.9%); Google Cloud, $9.57B (up 28.4%); Other Bets, $495M (up 71.9%).

Operating income by segment: Google Services, $27.9B (up 28.3%); Google Cloud, $900M (up 371%); Other Bets, -$1.02B (vs. year-ago -$1.23B); Alphabet-level activities, -$2.3B (vs. year-ago -$3.3B).

The company also authorized the buyback of up to an additional $70B worth of shares and declared a cash dividend of $0.20 per share.

Categories
Semiconductors

Intel Q1 Earnings: Solid Results Overshadowed by Weak Q2 Guidance, Stock Drops 6%

Intel’s misery continues…

Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) significantly weaker-than-expected guidance for the coming quarter overshadowed better-than-expected first-quarter results.

For the coming second quarter, the Pat Gelsinger-led firm expects revenue to be between $12.5B and $13.5B, well below the $13.61B analysts were anticipating.

It also anticipates earning an adjusted $0.10 per share with adjusted gross margins of 403.5% and a tax rate of 13%. Analysts were anticipating adjusted earnings of $0.25 per share.

Shares fell more than 6% in extended-hours trading.

For the period ending March 30, Intel earned an adjusted $0.18 per share on $12.7B in revenue. The quarter is Intel’s first period in changing its reporting structure to focus more on its foundry business. Intel products, which now include client computing, data center, and network and edge, came in at $11.9B, including a 31% year-over-year rise in Client Computing revenue to $7.5B.

Datacenter and AI revenue came in at $3B, while revenue attributed to Mobileye (MBLY) was $239M, down 48% year-over-year. The Network and edge segment generated $1.4B, while the company’s foundry segment saw revenue decline 10% year-over-year to $4.4B.

Analysts expected a year-over-year increase in both the top and bottom lines, with the Pat Gelsinger-led firm expected to earn $0.14 per share on $12.78B in sales.

A consensus of analysts expected Intel to earn an adjusted $0.14 per share on $12.78B in revenue.

Categories
AI

IonQ and the Quantum Computing Gamble: High Risk, High Reward

IonQ -(IONQ) $8

Quantum computing is still in its infancy and a difficult and risky endeavor. The scale that quantum computing wants to achieve – 3.6 billion GPUs would be required to simulate a 64-qubit system. To do this in a commercially successful way at scale will take a lot to go right.

Several methods are competing with one another: 

  • Solid state is used by the likes of Google, IBM, and Rigetti Computing (RGTI) to use artificially manufactured qubits that are engineered into the system.
  • Exploiting naturally occurring substrates (photons or atoms) that exhibit quantum properties. This method is used by Quantum Computing (QUBT)
  • Trapped atomic Ions – IonQ’s methodology uses trapped atomic ions as qubits to construct quantum computers.

None of them have had much commercial success, but are seeing orders and bookings.

IonQ –  has a $ 25Mn grant/order from the US Air Force.

Total revenues for 2024 = $42Mn and 2025 = $82Mn 

Achieving the 64-qubit system in 2025 is a must-reach milestone for IonQ, simply to have a shot at commercialization or even survival.

The big negative besides the commercialization risks is that the two founders have left – for academia, though not for competitors. 

It has cash of $460Mn so will survive through 2027.

No system has achieved a broad quantum advantage – where developers prefer quantum computers to traditional ones – it could be three to five years on the horizon/ or not at all

Quantum wants to combine GPUS, networking, and AI, but hardware and software innovations have to produce systems economically at scale, as well as demonstrate to enterprise-level customers why it needs a quantum computer. 

A LOT OF IFS — of competing systems, need to preserve cash, race to innovate, race to scale operations, and do we even need quantum computing?

Bottom line – this is like a biotech or a drug discovery bet, high risk/high reward.