Tesla, Microsoft, Chipotle and Whirlpool

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – July 23, 2020 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Tesla TSLA, Microsoft MSFT, Chipotle CMG and Whirlpool WHR.

Here are highlights from Wednesday’s Analyst Blog:

Tesla Homers, Sets Sights of S&P 500; Plus MSFT, CMG and More

Tesla appears headed for the S&P 500 following a big beat on top and bottom lines in its Q2 results, swinging to a boffo positive number on the bottom line to $2.18 per share from a Zacks consensus estimate of -$0.49. In the year-ago quarter, the last time Tesla posted an earnings miss, the electric car maker brought in -$1.12 per share. Revenues were similarly terrific: $6.04 billion easily outperformed the 4.96 billion expected in the quarter.

Shares of Tesla are up another 6% in late trading as of Wednesday afternoon following the earnings release. This follows a 1.5% gain during regular trading ahead of the report, and is up nearly 275% year to date — an astounding feat considering the lockdown from coronavirus hit markets very hard across the board earlier this year.

Operating cash flow came in better than expected for Tesla, its Model Y production is increasing, and the company has plans for a new Gigafactory in one of two sites the company has selected — but Tesla has not yet indicated where it is located in its quarterly letter to investors. Clearly, CEO Elon Musk is having a good time of it these days, following several combative quarters with short-sellers and tweets demeaning his personal conduct, but those days look light-years away today.

Microsoft, the best-performing stock on the Dow index year to date, topped estimates in both earnings and sales in its fiscal Q4 report: $1.46 per share outpaced expectations by 8 cents, +9 cents from the year-ago quarter; revenues of $38.03 billion surged past the $36.59 billion in the Zacks consensus. Shares, which had been up 34% from the start of 2020, began selling off roughly 3% on the release (Microsoft trade up 1.4% in regular Wednesday trading).

Segment by segment, we see mostly in-line numbers — Intelligent Cloud at $13.4 billion, Azure +47%, Xbox up. And beating bottom-line estimates is nothing shocking for Microsoft; the company has not posted an earnings miss since Q1 2016, fewer than two years after CEO Satya Nadella took the helm as CEO. The software giant is now a $1.6 trillion market-cap company. For more on MSFT’s earnings, click here.

Chipotle also posted positive surprises on top and bottom lines, though not by the margins we saw with Tesla and Microsoft: 40 cents per share beat projections by 2 cents, while sales of $1.36 billion in the quarter was a step up from the $1.33 billion expected. Same-store sales were down 9.8% in the quarter, but this was a better performance than expected following a huge 24% drop in the month of April. Digital sales, however, rose 216% in the quarter, now accounting for 61% of total sales.

Whirlpool benefited from the “shelter in place” quarter, posting a huge positive surprise of its own: $2.15 per share versus 74 cents anticipated. Revenues came in at $4.04 billion from the $3.57 billion in the Zacks consensus. A recovery in demand for washers, dryers and kitchen appliances boosted levels for the company in the quarter, whose stock rose 5.7% on the earnings release. For more on WHR’s earnings, click here.

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