Author: Cattolica Investment Club

May 1st, 2024 - In the current year, 2024, market trends have 3 main characteristics: medium growth, high inflation and elevated geopolitical risks. Such factors hinder investment strategies and opportunities across most asset sectors.  Said geopolitical uncertainties influence the equity market, as it can be deduced from growth expectations of 2-3% in the S&P 500. Thus warning investors to exercise extreme caution, specifically when dealing within the markets impacted by these economic hardships. Contrastingly, companies involved in AI show greater promise of growth. In fact, after careful consideration, the following companies have the highest growth potential: MSFT, NVIDIA (its one year return is over 211%- best performing stock for may 2024). Another possible investment would be Crowdstrike holdings inc. (CRWD). The company specialises in cybersecurity and has demonstrated robust performance…

April 28th, 2024 - After the challenges of the year 2022 as a whole, digital ad companies finally succeeded in not only recovering but mostly exceeding the expectations analysts had for the first months of 2024, reporting strong achievements and wonderful results for their investors this week, publishing their first-quarter results.  Companies have gone through tough times due to the crazy inflation of 2022 and the subsequent measurements of cutting costs and layoffs, mainly spread across 2023. Another major challenge digital companies had to face was the one of Apple's IOS privacy changes, which obviously made it harder for ads to track users and to “popup” anytime. Both the macroeconomic context and policy-making entities have played a significant role in hindering the giants but, efficient strategies, reallocations of investments and…

24 April 2024- One of our portfolio holdings, Boeing (BA) (Purchased 0.15 units @ $248.79) announced its first fiscal quarterly results better than expected. The analysts were expecting the adjusted loss per share to be $1.76 compared to $1.13 declared. The company also shared its revenue which is slightly above the expectations. $16.57 billion compared to the $16.23 billion estimated. Boeing had a tough year starting with their 737-MAX incident, followed by the FAA putting a restraint on the company’s output due to some issues of noncompliance in the supply chain. They lost almost 35% in value year to date. Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun, who announced that he will step down at the end of the year, expressed that their priority is to address safety concerns and that they started…

April 19th, 2024 - Netflix reported better-than-expected revenue and earnings for the first quarter of 2024 thanks to subscribers growth of 16% YoY. The streaming company posted an EPS of $5.28 and a 14% revenue growth to $9.37 billion, and they both have beaten analysts’ expectations. The company struggled in premarket because of a poor revenue guidance for the full year, compared to what analysts’ were expecting.  Paramount is in talks with Skydance Media for a merger, but as the New York Times reported, there is a potential opportunity of a takeover by Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management, which are in discussion for a potential joint all-cash bid to acquire the media and streaming company. Apollo already tried to acquire the company in the last months, but Paramount’s…

April 17th,  2024- One of our portfolio holdings, purchased recently, United Airlines (UAL) (1 unit @$41.78) announced its quarterly result after markets closed on Tuesday. United Airlines reported first-quarter revenue of $12.5 billion, compared to the consensus estimate of $12.4 billion. And an adjusted quarterly loss of 15 cents per share, outperforming analyst estimates of 57 cents per share. They also increased their capacity by %9 despite their projected fleet orders partly not coming due to Boeing’s halt in production of Boeing’s MAX 737. They announced that they expect to add 61 planes to their fleet revised from their previous 101 estimate, plus they are planning to lease 35 Airbus A321 in 2026 and 2027. The company CEO Ed Bastian said they had a good quarter driven by the increased…

April 16th, 2024 - Today, Bank of America (BAC) released an important statement in which it disclosed its disappointing  Q1 2024 profits, which marked a decrease of around 18% compared to their 2023 Q1.  The factor that determined this very poor performance was the huge difference  between the deposits’ costs and the combination of assets’ yields and loans’ growth, with the interest  paid on deposits exceeding BoA’s earnings. At the same time, other US financial giants like JP Morgan  Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup reported negative results because of the same trend experienced by  BoA. To have a clearer idea of how bad the situation is for Bank of America, it is sufficient to look at  the increase in the interest rate paid on US interest-bearing deposits, which rose from…

April 15th, 2024 - In the first quarter, Goldman Sachs witnessed a 28% increase in profits, well beyond what analysts expected, as a result of their strong performances in these months. Bloomberg’s compiled analyst forecasts were nearly $1 bln short for the bank’s reported net income for the first three months of the year, which actually amounted to $4.1 bln, up from $3.2 bln a year earlier. The reason for this memorable achievement lies into the refocus led by the CEO David Solomon: he decided that it was time for Goldman Sachs to “play to their core strengths”, that is to say centering again on investment banking and trading businesses, asset and wealth management and slightly “put aside” the concern upon consumer business. Investment banking experienced its most successful quarter…