Medicare Agent News: Busy Day, Flat Market

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Busy Day, Flat Market

By Nicholas Jasinski | Tuesday, April 18

Details, Details. It was a micro-driven trading day, with a bevy of company earnings reports dictating individual stock moves and no overarching direction for major indexes.

The S&P 500 ticked up 0.09%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.03%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.04%.

The earnings parade began this morning with results from more big U.S. banks: Bank of America, The Bank of New York Mellon, and Goldman Sachs. The former two impressed, while Goldman bucked the trend among recent bank earnings with a sour report, sending shares lower. More on that below.

Also weighing on the Dow today was Johnson & Johnson, which reported solid results for all of its major divisions and beat on both the top and bottom lines. The healthcare giant gave more details on the long-coming spinoff of its consumer health division, which includes brands like Tylenol and Band-Aid. Management also raised its full-year guidance for operational sales and adjusted profit.

Nonetheless, Johnson & Johnson’s stock slid 2.8% on the day. It's a bit of a head scratcher. Read more from Josh Nathan-Kazis here.

Lockheed Martin delivered better-than-expected sales and earnings in the first quarter, but orders for new equipment came in light. Still, management said all the right things: supply-chain issues are getting better, the lower orders didn't impact guidance for the full year—implying a rebound later—and Lockheed Martin space sales took off. That segment includes products like missile defense and satellites.

Fueled by geopolitics, defense spending is on the rise around the globe. Conflict is bad for humanity but good for Lockheed's business. The aerospace and defense contractor's stock added 2.4% today. Al Root has more on the results here.

After the closing bell, United Airlines Holdings showed a smaller-than-expected loss for the first quarter and in-line revenue, which was up 51% from a year ago. Management continues to forecast a big summer of travel, especially for more-profitable international flights. Guidance is for earnings of $10 to $12 a share this year, inclusive of the first quarter's loss of 63 cents per share.

United stock had sold off ahead of the release and was gaining in after-hours trading this evening. Callum Keown and Janet Cho covered the results here.

Finally, Netflix reported a lackluster result this evening, with a narrow beat on earnings and as-expected revenue. Subscriptions rose by 1.75 million in the quarter—half a million short of consensus—and management said that second-quarter additions would be “roughly similar” to that figure. Wall Street analysts had been forecasting growth of 3.7 million subscribers in the June quarter.

Netflix had some updates: the U.S. launch of its “paid sharing” program—a euphemism for cracking down on password sharing—is planned for the second quarter. Management said they were "pleased" with the early results of the program in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain, where it launched earlier this year.

As for Netflix's recently introduced ad-supported subscription tier, management said they were..."pleased." There wasn't much numerical evidence offered to back up the pleasure. Analysts will continue to estimate the financial impact of Netflix's new initiatives, but investors will want to see the proof in the numbers. Shares remain down more than 50% from their all-time high.

Traders didn't seem to know what to do with the report. Netflix stock initially plunged as much as 9% in after-hours trading, before rebounding to trade flat. Read more about Netflix's results from Eric Savitz here.

On deck tomorrow are earnings reports from IBM, Las Vegas Sands, Nasdaq, Tesla, and several other firms.