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Business

Apple, Amazon, McDonald’s Headline Busy Earnings Week

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Amazon.

com Inc.,

Apple Inc.

and

Meta Platforms Inc.

are among the tech heavyweights featured in a packed week of earnings that investors will probe for indicators about the broader economy.

Other tech companies scheduled to report their latest quarterly reports include Google parent company

Alphabet Inc.

and

Microsoft Corp.

Investors also will hear from airlines such as

Southwest Airlines Co.

and

JetBlue Airways Corp.

, automotive companies

General Motors Co.

and

Ford Motor Co.

, and energy giants

Chevron Corp.

and

Exxon

Mobil Corp.

Nearly a third of the S&P 500, or 161 companies, are slated to report earnings in the coming week, according to FactSet. Twelve bellwethers from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, including

Boeing Co.

and

McDonald’s

Corp., are expected to report as well.

The flurry of results from a broad set of companies will give a sense of how businesses are faring as they deal with inflation denting consumer spending, ongoing supply-chain challenges and a stronger dollar.

People awaited the release of Apple’s latest iPhones in New York last month. The company will report quarterly results on Thursday afternoon.



Photo:

ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS

One area holding up to the challenges has been travel. Several airline companies have reported that consumers still have an appetite to spend on trips and vacations. On Friday,

American Express Co.

raised its outlook for the year in part because of a surge in travel spending.

“We expected the recovery in travel spending to be a tailwind for us, but the strength of the rebound has exceeded our expectations throughout the year,” American Express Chief Executive

Stephen Squeri

said.

In addition to airlines reporting, companies such as car-rental company

Hertz Global Holdings Inc.

and lodging companies

Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.

and

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Inc.

will offer reads into leisure spending.

Overall, earnings for the S&P 500 companies are on track to rise 1.5% this period compared with a year ago, while revenue is projected to grow 8.5%, FactSet said.

Other companies will serve as a gauge for how consumers have responded to higher prices and whether they have altered their spending as a result.

Coca-Cola Co.

and

Kimberly-Clark Corp.

on Tuesday and

Kraft Heinz Co.

on Wednesday will show how consumers are digesting higher prices.

Mattel Inc.,

set to report on Tuesday, will highlight whether demand for toys remains resilient. Rival

Hasbro Inc.

issued a warning ahead of the holiday season.

United Parcel Service Inc.

will release its results on Tuesday and provide an opportunity to show how it is faring ahead of the busy shipping season. The Atlanta-based carrier’s earnings come weeks after rival

FedEx Corp.

warned of a looming global recession and outlined plans to raise shipping rates across most of its services in January to contend with a global slowdown in business.

Results from credit-card companies

Visa Inc.

and

Mastercard Inc.

will offer insights into whether inflation has finally put a dent in consumer spending after both companies reported resilient numbers last quarter.

Wireless carrier

T-Mobile US Inc.’s

numbers on Thursday will give more context to mixed results from competitors

Verizon Communications Inc.

and

AT&T Inc.

AT&T

issued an upbeat outlook on Thursday after its core wireless business exceeded the company’s expectations, whereas Verizon on Friday said earnings tumbled as retail customers balked at recent price increases.

Other notable companies lined up to report include

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.

on Tuesday, chicken giant

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.

on Wednesday and chip maker

Intel Corp.

on Thursday.

Write to Denny Jacob at denny.jacob@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Lyft Lays Off About 60 Employees, Folds Its Car Rentals for Riders

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Lyft Inc.

has shed about 60 people while hitting the brakes on renting its cars to riders and consolidating its global operations team, according to people familiar with the matter and an employee memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The cuts covered less than 2% of staff and mainly affected employees who worked in operations, the people said. In a memo to some staff sent Tuesday, the company said it was folding the part of its business that allowed consumers to rent its fleet of cars on the app.

“Our road to scaling first party rentals is long and challenging with significant uncertainty,” according to the memo, sent by Cal Lankton, vice president of fleet and global operations at Lyft. Mr. Lankton wrote that conversations about exiting the business started last fall and “then accelerated as the economy made the business case unworkable.”

Lyft shares rose around 8% Wednesday to close at $14.70, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index climbed less than 2%.

The company said it is going to continue working with big car-rental companies. Lyft’s car-rental business had five locations while it has car-rental partnerships with

Sixt

SE and

Hertz Global Holdings Inc.

in more than 30 locations, a spokeswoman said.

“This decision will ensure we continue to have national coverage and offer riders a more seamless booking experience,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.

The company also is reorganizing its global operations team, consolidating from 13 to nine regions and closing a location in Northern California and its Detroit hub, according to the memo.

Lyft joins other tech companies that are trimming staff or scaling back hiring plans as economic challenges cool the once-hot sector. The industry has been hiring at a rapid pace for years, but easy money is drying up and share prices have been plunging amid the reversal of some pandemic trends, high inflation, supply-chain shortages and growing worries about an economic slowdown.

Lyft’s stock has fallen more than 70% in the past 12 months compared with the less than 20% decline in the Nasdaq Composite Index.

In May, rival Uber Technologies Inc. said it would slow hiring. Its stock has halved over the same period.

Last week, Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it will slow hiring for the rest of the year while Microsoft Corp. cut a small percentage of its staff, attributing the layoffs to regular adjustments at the start of its fiscal year. Rapid-delivery startup Gopuff cut 10% of its staff last week, citing growing concerns about the economy.

Earlier this month,

Facebook

-parent Meta Platforms Inc.’s head of engineering told managers to identify and push out low-performing employees, according to an internal post. Snap Inc. Chief Executive

Evan Spiegel

recently told staff the company would slow hiring, warning that the economy “has definitely deteriorated further and faster than we expected.”

In May, Lyft President

John Zimmer

said in a staff memo the company planned to slow hiring, reduce the budgets of some of its departments and grant new stock options to some employees to make up for its eroding share price. At the time, Mr. Zimmer said the company didn’t plan to cut staff.

After enduring the pandemic, ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft are now facing a new world of high inflation, driver shortages, and dwindling passenger numbers. WSJ’s George Downs explains what they’re doing to try and survive. Illustration: George Downs

Write to Preetika Rana at preetika.rana@wsj.com and Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Buybacks Hit Record After Pulling Back in 2020

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Stock buybacks are back.

Companies in the S&P 500 repurchased $234.5 billion in shares during the third quarter, topping the previous record of $223 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to preliminary data from S&P Dow Jones Indices. The wave of share repurchases has helped propel U.S. stock indexes to dozens of records in 2021. The S&P 500 is up 25% this year, notching 67 record closes.

More buybacks are coming. Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said he projects that S&P 500 buybacks will reach $236 billion in the fourth quarter.

S&P 500 component

Microsoft Corp.

said in September that its board had approved a plan to repurchase up to $60 billion of its stock. Car-rental company

Hertz Global Holdings Inc.

recently said it would buy back as much as $2 billion of its stock, while tech company

Dell Technologies Inc.

is planning a $5 billion share-repurchase program. 

Buybacks are just one of the forces behind the stock market’s rally. Asset prices have continued to benefit from the monetary and fiscal support that policy makers put in place to help the economy get through the pandemic. And analysts have consistently underestimated corporate earnings, which are expected to grow 45% in 2021 for companies in the S&P 500. 

Investors this week will scrutinize signals out of the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting, where officials may accelerate the process of winding down a bond-buying stimulus program. Central-bank officials could also shed more light on their expectations for interest-rate increases next year.

Microsoft has approved the repurchase of up to $60 billion of its stock. Its HoloLens headset.



Photo:

Thanassis Stavrakis/Associated Press

S&P 500 buybacks plunged from nearly $199 billion in the first quarter of 2020 to just under $89 billion in the second, as companies reeling from the onset of the pandemic moved to conserve cash. Share repurchases increased in each following quarter, approaching $199 billion again in the second quarter of 2021.

Repurchases can support stocks by reducing a company’s share count, boosting its per-share profits. And they can boost investor sentiment by suggesting executives are optimistic about their companies’ prospects and confident in their financial position.

“It’s always comforting to have a management team come in and tell you how undervalued they think their shares are,” said

Anne Wickland,

a portfolio manager at Easterly Investment Partners. “It’s a vote of confidence in the longer-term outlook.” 

Her team bought shares of

Lockheed Martin Corp.

in the summer, in part because of the defense company’s share-buyback program and dividend yield. Lockheed shares fell 12% on Oct. 26 after the company reported lower-than-expected quarterly sales and revised its full-year sales forecast lower. Ms. Wickland said she believes the shares are undervalued and continues to like them.

Stock buybacks have come under fire from politicians who say companies should use cash to invest in their businesses instead of supporting their share prices. The version of the $2 trillion education, healthcare and climate spending package that passed the House in November would ​​create a 1% tax on the net value of a company’s stock buybacks. 

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What is your reaction to this latest streak of stock buybacks? Join the conversation below.

The Senate hasn’t voted yet, but the buyback tax has so far generated less corporate opposition than the bill’s other tax increases. Strategists at BofA Global Research project that the proposed tax would result in a 0.3% reduction to S&P 500 per-share earnings, assuming that companies didn’t change the amount of stock they repurchase. 

Several investors said they don’t believe the tax would have much of an effect on companies’ behavior if it became law. “The 1% tax on buybacks is so low that I don’t think it will impact anything,” said

Olivier Sarfati,

head of equities at wealth-management firm GenTrust.

Write to Karen Langley at karen.langley@wsj.com

Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Tesla Stock Is Dropping. Here’s What’s Really Behind the Slide.

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Tesla shares are dropping. Recalls and uncertainty could be responsible. A third reason, however, is most likely.


Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Text size


Tesla

stock can’t go up forever, and finally turned lower on Tuesday. Reports of recalls and uncertainty about the company’s deal with Hertz are two potential reasons, but a third factor may be the real key.

Tesla (ticker: TSLA) stock was down 1.6% in morning trading, following a slump of as much as 5% before the open. The


S&P 500
and


Dow Jones Industrial Average
were up 0.3% and 0.2%, respectively.

Tesla stock has been on a tear. It has risen eight of the past nine trading sessions, and has gained 70% over the past three months. Its shares have been buoyed by signs that the company really has won the EV race, signing a deal with Hertz (HTZ) for 100,000 electric vehicles. Companies such as


Ford

Motor (F) and


General Motors

(GM) have announced enormous spending plans to try to close the gap.

No surprise, then, that the stock would react badly to potentially negative headlines. First, Musk himself tweeted that Tesla had yet to sign a contract with


Hertz

(HTZZ). Then came the announcement that the company would be recalling 11,700 vehicles.

The Musk tweet, however, was intended as a positive. The Hertz deal is Tesla’s first large fleet sale. Fleet sales tend to be lower-margin. Fleet buyers look for volume discounts and don’t often buy all the high-end options individual consumers do.

Musk has assured investors, on


Twitter

(TWTR), a couple of times that Tesla is selling all the cars it can make and isn’t giving any discounts these days.

Hertz shares initially took a hit because of the tweet, starting off with a loss of about 6% in premarket trading. But nothing happens in a vacuum.

Hertz’s peer


Avis Budget

(CAR) reported better-than-expected results Monday evening, sending the stock up about 1% in premarket trading, despite year-to-date gains of about 360%. Rental-car demand and operating metrics are improving.

In late morning trading, it looked as if meme traders were squeezing short sellers, as they did with


GameStop

stock at the start of the year. Avis stock was up 162% to $450 a share, bringing Hertz is along for the ride with a gain of about 16%.

For Tesla stock, the recall might be a bigger deal than the status of the sale to Hertz. The cars are being recalled because of a software-communication error that can activate automatic emergency braking. The fix is an over-the-air software update. Tesla has faced more regulator scrutiny over driver-assistance features in recent months.

What’s more, Tesla recently introduced a “beta” version of its latest full-self-driving software to Tesla drivers who qualified for the upgrade. Tesla believes its software makes vehicles safer. Regulators, however, still need to adjust to cars being improved by software updates and how to handle changes made to software to fix bugs.

Any news, however, could have sparked a selloff in Tesla stock. The stock is extremely overbought, which is to say that it is rising quickly relative to its own history. When things get extreme, stocks can revert to the mean. Tesla’s relative strength reading is at 94. A reading of 50 is, essentially, normal and levels of above 70 generally have traders looking for a drop.

Coming into Tuesday, Tesla stock has outperformed the S&P 500 by about 77 percentage points over the past 100 days, as Datatrek Research pointed out in a Tuesday note. That’s a lot, but not unheard of for Tesla.

“Crazy as it sounds, the stock’s recent rally is pretty normal action for this name,” the research outfit said. With outperformance like that, investors don’t really need an excuse to take profits.

Tesla stock has a long way to go before it will look ripe for a hit.

Write to Ben Levisohn at ben.levisohn@barrons.com

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