Author: Cattolica Investment Club

May 5th, 2024 - Founded in 1926, United Airlines is an international airline company with more than 100,000 employees headquartered in Chicago, Illinois that provides air transportation services worldwide. Its business lines include people transportation, which is the primary source of revenue, and cargo transportation, which offers freight and mail services. These two segments contribute to form the company’s operating income, alongside with other revenue, that includes revenue generated from third-party businesses such as maintenance services and flight academy.  The company’s motto is “Connecting People. Uniting the World” and it is what drives its decision making. Their approach, as reported in their website, is based on seven pillars: safety, environmental sustainability, people and human capital, community, supply chain integrity, cybersecurity, and governance.  The company is also very active on ESG,…

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…