Friday, August 3, 2018

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Own Right Now

tags:CDXS,GHM,JST,FSS,AMAT,

Making money over the last three years meant holding just five stocks, icons of the new internet revolution. Those five stocks -- Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google -- drove gains that averaged 177% over the three years through June compared to a modest return of 33% on the S&P 500.

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Big blue chips like these almost NEVER raise their dividend more than 5% or 6%. But one of these four shot it up 383%... turning a $1 dividend into $4.83. What's really crazy is how much higher it has to go. You need to see this.

But the thing about momentum trades is that investors rush en masse to the exits when that momentum slows. Nobody wants to be the last one holding terrifically-overpriced shares of a company that is no longer the darling of Wall Street and Main Street.

Over the past month, the FAANG portfolio has returned just 0.3% with heart-stopping, double-digit losses for both Netflix and Facebook. All this is as the S&P 500 bounced 3.7% in anticipation of Q2 earnings and solid economic growth.

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Own Right Now: Codexis, Inc.(CDXS)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Keith Noonan, Daniel Miller, and Maxx Chatsko]

    Having even a few of these companies working in your favor over the long term can be a life-changing event. To help put readers on to some high-growth stocks that still have big potential, we asked three Motley Fool investors to profile a top growth investment. Read on to see why they identified Codexis�(NASDAQ:CDXS), Activision�Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI), and Control4 Corporation (NASDAQ:CTRL) as top stocks for growth-seeking investors.

  • [By Maxx Chatsko]

    Growth stocks can deliver most of your portfolio's gains, and even make up for a few laggards. But they have a downside: One misstep can be all it takes for Wall Street to turn against them. That's exactly what's happened in 2018 to the world's top lithium producer,�Albemarle (NYSE:ALB), and the most reputable marijuana stock,�Scotts Miracle-Gro (NYSE:SMG).�That shouldn't scare investors from buying high-growth companies, however. For instance, it looks as if tiny biotech Codexis (NASDAQ:CDXS) will grow into its premium valuation (and then some) sooner rather than later.

  • [By Logan Wallace]

    Get a free copy of the Zacks research report on Codexis (CDXS)

    For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Own Right Now: Graham Corporation(GHM)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Logan Wallace]

    Graham Co. (NYSE:GHM) declared a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, May 30th, RTT News reports. Investors of record on Wednesday, June 13th will be given a dividend of 0.09 per share by the industrial products company on Wednesday, June 27th. This represents a $0.36 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.38%.

  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    Boston Partners cut its position in shares of Graham Co. (NYSE:GHM) by 13.8% in the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 113,865 shares of the industrial products company’s stock after selling 18,215 shares during the quarter. Boston Partners owned about 1.17% of Graham worth $2,439,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Shares of Graham Co. (NYSE:GHM) reached a new 52-week high during mid-day trading on Friday . The stock traded as high as $27.51 and last traded at $27.41, with a volume of 80000 shares. The stock had previously closed at $26.10.

  • [By Shane Hupp]

    Graham (NYSE: GHM) and Twin Disc (NASDAQ:TWIN) are both small-cap industrial products companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, dividends, analyst recommendations, profitability, risk, valuation and earnings.

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Own Right Now: Jinpan International Limited(JST)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Logan Wallace]

    A number of firms have modified their ratings and price targets on shares of JOST Werke (ETR: JST) recently:

    5/25/2018 – JOST Werke was given a new €46.00 ($53.49) price target on by analysts at Deutsche Bank AG. They now have a “buy” rating on the stock. 5/25/2018 – JOST Werke was given a new €46.00 ($53.49) price target on by analysts at Deutsche Bank AG. They now have a “buy” rating on the stock. 5/25/2018 – JOST Werke was given a new €47.00 ($54.65) price target on by analysts at Warburg Research. They now have a “buy” rating on the stock. 5/24/2018 – JOST Werke was given a new €45.00 ($52.33) price target on by analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co.. They now have a “neutral” rating on the stock. 5/8/2018 – JOST Werke was given a new €46.00 ($53.49) price target on by analysts at Deutsche Bank AG. They now have a “buy” rating on the stock. 4/4/2018 – JOST Werke was given a new €47.00 ($54.65) price target on by analysts at Warburg Research. They now have a “buy” rating on the stock.

    Shares of JOST Werke traded down €0.15 ($0.17), hitting €38.10 ($44.30), during mid-day trading on Friday, according to MarketBeat. 8,510 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 35,469. JOST Werke AG has a 52 week low of €27.20 ($31.63) and a 52 week high of €47.50 ($55.23).

  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Warburg Research set a €47.00 ($55.95) price target on JOST Werke (ETR:JST) in a report published on Friday. The firm currently has a buy rating on the stock.

  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Deutsche Bank set a €46.00 ($53.49) price target on JOST Werke (ETR:JST) in a research report sent to investors on Friday. The firm currently has a buy rating on the stock.

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Own Right Now: Federal Signal Corporation(FSS)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Max Byerly]

    Prudential Financial Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Federal Signal Co. (NYSE:FSS) by 63.1% during the first quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 234,061 shares of the conglomerate’s stock after purchasing an additional 90,560 shares during the period. Prudential Financial Inc.’s holdings in Federal Signal were worth $5,154,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

  • [By Logan Wallace]

    OppenheimerFunds Inc. lowered its holdings in shares of Federal Signal Co. (NYSE:FSS) by 14.6% in the 1st quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The fund owned 33,592 shares of the conglomerate’s stock after selling 5,741 shares during the period. OppenheimerFunds Inc.’s holdings in Federal Signal were worth $739,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Get a free copy of the Zacks research report on Federal Signal (FSS)

    For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    News stories about Federal Signal (NYSE:FSS) have trended somewhat positive recently, according to Accern. The research group identifies positive and negative news coverage by monitoring more than twenty million news and blog sources in real-time. Accern ranks coverage of publicly-traded companies on a scale of -1 to 1, with scores closest to one being the most favorable. Federal Signal earned a news impact score of 0.07 on Accern’s scale. Accern also gave press coverage about the conglomerate an impact score of 45.1967635640765 out of 100, indicating that recent news coverage is somewhat unlikely to have an effect on the company’s share price in the near term.

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Own Right Now: Applied Materials, Inc.(AMAT)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Lisa Levin]

    Breaking news

    Deere & Company (NYSE: DE) reported weaker-than-expected results for its second quarter. Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) reported stronger-than-expected results for its second quarter, but issued weak sales outlook for the third quarter. Nordstrom, Inc. (NYSE: JWN) reported upbeat results for its first quarter. Comparable-store sales rose 0.6 percent. Boot Barn Holdings Inc (NYSE: BOOT) disclosed a 7.2 million common stock offering.

  • [By Chris Neiger]

    Shares of Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) tumbled 10.7% last month,�according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, after reports surfaced that China may speed up its plans to increase local production of semiconductors.

  • [By Logan Wallace]

    Ostrum Asset Management lifted its holdings in shares of Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) by 214.5% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 17,386 shares of the manufacturing equipment provider’s stock after buying an additional 11,857 shares during the period. Ostrum Asset Management’s holdings in Applied Materials were worth $967,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Emerge Energy Services Says the Frack Sand Market is Softening, but It's the Only One

Wall Street wasn't impressed with Emerge Energy Services (NYSE:EMES) second-quarter results: Traders sent the stock down more than 10% on Wednesday after it�announced earnings. Not only did the company�miss expectations, management indicated that it was seeing a minor slowdown in the frack sand market. Funny thing, though: There aren't many other frack sand suppliers echoing that sentiment.

Let's take a look at what happened this past quarter, and why Emerge seems to be hitting a soft spot when others aren't.��

By the numbers Metric Q2 2017 Q1 2018 Q2 2018
Revenue $101.8 million $106.7 million $82.6 million
EBITDA $21.5 million $16.9 million $7.3 million
Diluted�EPS $0.30 $0.05 ($0.20)
Distributable cash flow $17.3 million $8.7 million $2.6 million

DATA SOURCE: EMERGE ENERGY SERVICES EARNINGS RELEASE. EPS = EARNINGS PER SHARE.

Emerge's revenue and earnings seem to be stalling out a bit lately. Revenue for this quarter was actually down compared to six months ago even though volumes are up considerably. While management said that rail disruptions were to blame for lower margins and weak cash flow numbers in Q1, the issue this time was that fewer sales originated from its own terminals -- 26%, compared to 39% in Q1 -- and that sales through other terminals carry lower margins.

The one upbeat point in the report was that facility costs were down. That's partly because Emerge is getting some production from its new sand mine near San Antonio, and partly because its Wisconsin facilities are running at full capacity, which lowers per unit costs.�

Sand mine equipment.

Image source: Getty Images.

What management had to say

If Emerge's lower-than-expected earnings weren't enough of a concern, Chairman Ted Beneski's press release statement on the company's outlook suggested that the frack sand market is weakening.�

The demand for frack sand remains healthy, but we experienced a minor slowdown to finish the second quarter, and the softness has partially continued into early third quarter. Conversations with our customers indicate that the conditions are temporary given the Permian takeaway constraints. However, we acknowledge that the frack sand industry faces a state of transition with the utilization of new in-basin plants increasing throughout the year. As a top-five producer in the frack sand industry in�the United States, we believe we are at the forefront of diversifying our business model to meet the new needs of the industry with both northern white and in-basin capabilities.

Here's the strange part about this statement: None of Emerge's competition mentioned anything about a slowdown in demand. Instead, they were talking about how strong demand is in places like the Permian Basin. Hi-Crush Partners just last week announced a supply contract that will require it to construct a new 3 million ton per year facility in the Permian just to meet demand.�

EMES Chart

EMES data by YCharts

Not in the best competitive position

Over the past 18 months, every frack sand supplier has benefited from the same macro trends. Drilling activity is up on higher oil prices, and the amount of sand used per well is way up because producers have found that using more improves well economics. Now that those trends have played out, and the frack sand market is becoming more competitive� again, the wheat is getting separated from the chaff.�

Unfortunately, Emerge's position is weaker than many of its peers. It doesn't have any in-basin supply in the Permian Basin, it doesn't offer the last-mile logistics services that attract long-term supply agreements and wider margins, and its current operations still aren't generating enough cash to distribute to shareholders.�

Management is trying to be clever by focusing its efforts outside the Permian, as an in-basin supplier for other shale regions such the Eagle Ford in South Texas and the Anadarko in Oklahoma. Management has struggled to get its Eagle Ford facility up and running, though, which isn't a great sign.

It may have been worth deferring judgment on Emerge while it brought these new facilities on line, but it's looking more and more like its operations just don't hold a candle to those of its competitors.�

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

LuckChain (BASH) Reaches One Day Volume of $0.00

LuckChain (CURRENCY:BASH) traded flat against the US dollar during the twenty-four hour period ending at 11:00 AM Eastern on July 22nd. LuckChain has a total market capitalization of $2.95 million and $0.00 worth of LuckChain was traded on exchanges in the last day. In the last week, LuckChain has traded up 18.6% against the US dollar. One LuckChain coin can now be purchased for about $0.0041 or 0.00000061 BTC on exchanges including YoBit and C-CEX.

Here is how other cryptocurrencies have performed in the last day:

Get LuckChain alerts: TokenPay (TPAY) traded 0.8% higher against the dollar and now trades at $3.73 or 0.00049977 BTC. GoNetwork (GOT) traded up 4.2% against the dollar and now trades at $0.56 or 0.00007564 BTC. SaluS (SLS) traded 3.3% higher against the dollar and now trades at $25.93 or 0.00347473 BTC. Nectar (NEC) traded 3.2% lower against the dollar and now trades at $0.32 or 0.00004241 BTC. HempCoin (THC) traded 8.3% lower against the dollar and now trades at $0.0707 or 0.00000947 BTC. ECC (ECC) traded down 2.1% against the dollar and now trades at $0.0006 or 0.00000008 BTC. Linda (LINDA) traded 5.4% lower against the dollar and now trades at $0.0016 or 0.00000022 BTC. VeriCoin (VRC) traded 2.5% higher against the dollar and now trades at $0.32 or 0.00004265 BTC. ToaCoin (TOA) traded 5.6% higher against the dollar and now trades at $0.0031 or 0.00000042 BTC. Phantasma (SOUL) traded 6.4% higher against the dollar and now trades at $0.13 or 0.00001698 BTC.

LuckChain Coin Profile

LuckChain (CRYPTO:BASH) is a PoW/PoS coin that uses the Scrypt hashing algorithm. LuckChain’s total supply is 715,868,299 coins. LuckChain’s official Twitter account is @Luck_Chain. LuckChain’s official message board is bbs.luckchain.org. The official website for LuckChain is luckchain.org.

LuckChain Coin Trading

LuckChain can be traded on the following cryptocurrency exchanges: C-CEX and YoBit. It is usually not possible to purchase alternative cryptocurrencies such as LuckChain directly using U.S. dollars. Investors seeking to acquire LuckChain should first purchase Ethereum or Bitcoin using an exchange that deals in U.S. dollars such as GDAX, Changelly or Gemini. Investors can then use their newly-acquired Ethereum or Bitcoin to purchase LuckChain using one of the exchanges listed above.

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Sunday, July 22, 2018

OncoSec Medical (ONCS) Receives Coverage Optimism Rating of 0.09

News articles about OncoSec Medical (NASDAQ:ONCS) have been trending somewhat positive this week, Accern Sentiment Analysis reports. Accern identifies positive and negative media coverage by reviewing more than twenty million blog and news sources in real-time. Accern ranks coverage of companies on a scale of negative one to one, with scores nearest to one being the most favorable. OncoSec Medical earned a news sentiment score of 0.09 on Accern’s scale. Accern also assigned media coverage about the biotechnology company an impact score of 43.2515581770241 out of 100, indicating that recent media coverage is somewhat unlikely to have an impact on the stock’s share price in the next several days.

Here are some of the headlines that may have effected Accern Sentiment’s rankings:

Get OncoSec Medical alerts: OncoSec Medical (ONCS) Given Buy Rating at Dawson James (americanbankingnews.com) OncoSec Presents Update from Triple Negative Breast Cancer Program at 3rd Global Insight Conference on Breast Cancer (finance.yahoo.com) OncoSec appoints Sara M. Bonstein as CFO and COO (seekingalpha.com) Oncosec Medical (ONCS) Appoints Sara M. Bonstein as CFO and COO (streetinsider.com) OncoSec Appoints Sara M. Bonstein as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer (finance.yahoo.com)

ONCS stock traded down $0.02 during trading on Thursday, reaching $1.28. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 367,800 shares, compared to its average volume of 916,959. OncoSec Medical has a 1 year low of $0.88 and a 1 year high of $2.95. The firm has a market capitalization of $68.05 million, a PE ratio of -1.21 and a beta of 2.98.

A number of equities research analysts have issued reports on the company. Dawson James reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of OncoSec Medical in a research note on Monday. HC Wainwright set a $4.00 price target on OncoSec Medical and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Maxim Group set a $5.00 price target on OncoSec Medical and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, May 8th. Finally, ValuEngine upgraded OncoSec Medical from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Wednesday, May 2nd. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the company. The stock has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $4.33.

In other news, CFO Richard B. Slansky sold 84,984 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, July 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $1.39, for a total transaction of $118,127.76. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 255,000 shares in the company, valued at $354,450. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, Director Avtar S. Dhillon sold 37,575 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, July 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $1.39, for a total value of $52,229.25. Following the transaction, the director now owns 181,002 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $251,592.78. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 300,106 shares of company stock valued at $419,658 in the last quarter. 5.50% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

OncoSec Medical Company Profile

OncoSec Medical Incorporated, a biotechnology company, engages in developing DNA-based intratumoral immunotherapies in the United States. The company's investigational technology, ImmunoPulseis designed to enhance the local delivery and uptake of DNA-based immune-targeting agents, such as plasmid encoded IL-12 (tavokinogene telseplasmid or tavo) for the treatment of cancer.

Featured Story: Are analyst ratings accurate?

Insider Buying and Selling by Quarter for OncoSec Medical (NASDAQ:ONCS)

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Top Energy Stocks To Watch For 2019

tags:HERO,TRIP,CPRX,

Whether it is on the demand side in China, India, South Korea, or on the production side, in Brazil, Russia and more, emerging markets exchange traded funds have some exposure to oil prices. While the MSCI Emerging Markets Index allocates just 7.29 percent of its weight to the energy sector, oil prices play a part in the benchmark's performance.

For example, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index allocates almost 45 percent of its combined weight to China and South Korea, both of which are net oil importers. The index devotes 10.59 percent of its geographic exposure to Brazil and Russia, which are major crude producers.

Some emerging markets ETFs, including the WisdomTree Emerging Markets High Dividend Fund (NYSE: DEM), are better-suited for taking advantage of rising oil prices.

What Happened

The $2.25-billion DEM tracks the yield-weighted WisdomTree Emerging Markets High Dividend Index.

“The WT EM High Dividend Index was launched in 2007 to track the performance of the highest dividend-paying companies in the region,” WisdomTree said in a recent note.

“The index weights companies that rank in the highest 30 percent by dividend yield using annual cash dividends paid. Since its inception more than 10 years ago, the WT EM High Dividend Index has outperformed its benchmark, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, by 151 basis points annually — raising the question about whether an investor really needs an active manager to outperform in this 'inefficient' asset class.”

Top Energy Stocks To Watch For 2019: Hercules Offshore Inc.(HERO)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Ethan Ryder]

    Hero (CURRENCY:HERO) traded 2.1% higher against the dollar during the 1-day period ending at 23:00 PM E.T. on June 26th. In the last week, Hero has traded 9.8% lower against the dollar. One Hero token can currently be bought for $0.0935 or 0.00001542 BTC on exchanges including HitBTC and Qryptos. Hero has a market capitalization of $0.00 and approximately $985.00 worth of Hero was traded on exchanges in the last day.

Top Energy Stocks To Watch For 2019: TripAdvisor, Inc.(TRIP)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Chris Lange]

    The S&P 500 stock posting the largest daily percentage loss ahead of the close Wednesday was TripAdvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP) which traded down about 8% at $38.47. The stock��s 52-week range is $29.50 to $50.95. Volume was 3.3 million compared to the daily average volume of 2.8 million.

  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    Schwab Charles Investment Management Inc. raised its holdings in Tripadvisor Inc Common Stock (NASDAQ:TRIP) by 16.1% in the 1st quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 633,261 shares of the travel company’s stock after purchasing an additional 87,859 shares during the period. Schwab Charles Investment Management Inc. owned 0.46% of Tripadvisor Inc Common Stock worth $25,895,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

  • [By Demitrios Kalogeropoulos]

    TripAdvisor�(NASDAQ:TRIP) shares shot up 39% last month, compared to a 2% increase in the S&P 500, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

  • [By Lisa Levin]

     

    Companies Reporting After The Bell Marriott International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAR) is projected to post quarterly earnings at $1.22 per share on revenue of $5.72 billion. Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) is estimated to post quarterly earnings at $1.04 per share on revenue of $5.68 billion. The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) is projected to post quarterly earnings at $1.68 per share on revenue of $14.05 billion. Papa John's International, Inc. (NASDAQ: PZZA) is expected to post quarterly earnings at $0.62 per share on revenue of $441.73 million. Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc (NASDAQ: JAZZ) is projected to post quarterly earnings at $2.77 per share on revenue of $434.87 million. Sun Life Financial Inc. (NYSE: SLF) is estimated to post quarterly earnings at $0.89 per share on revenue of $6.38 billion. LATAM Airlines Group S.A. (NYSE: LTM) is expected to post quarterly earnings at $0.16 per share on revenue of $2.70 billion. Liberty Global plc (NASDAQ: LBTYA) is projected to post quarterly earnings at $0.02 per share on revenue of $4.05 billion. TripAdvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP) is expected to post quarterly earnings at $0.16 per share on revenue of $362.11 million. The Wendy's Company (NASDAQ: WEN) is projected to post quarterly earnings at $0.1 per share on revenue of $379.98 million. A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMRK) is expected to post quarterly earnings at $0.06 per share on revenue of $1.69 billion. Monster Beverage Corporation (NASDAQ: MNST) is estimated to post quarterly earnings at $0.4 per share on revenue of $849.38 million. Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG) is expected to post quarterly earnings at $0.4 per share on revenue of $670.10 million. ScanSource, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCSC) is projected to post quarterly earnings at $0.7 per share on revenue of $875.91 million. KAR Auction Services, Inc. (NYSE: KAR) is expected to post quarterly earnings at $0.76 per share on revenue of $923.13
  • [By Lisa Levin] Gainers Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: LTRPA) shares jumped 31.6 percent to $12.18 following TripAdvisor Q1 earnings beat. ZAGG Inc (NASDAQ: ZAGG) rose 26.5 percent to $14.55 after the company posted better-than-expected Q1 earnings. OPKO Health, Inc. (NASDAQ: OPK) shares gained 25 percent to $4.0234 following Q1 beat. Axon Enterprise, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAXN) jumped 23.5 percent to $55.12 following a big Q1 beat. The company raised its fiscal 2018 sales growth guidance from 16-18 percent to 18-20 percent. Penn Virginia Corporation (NASDAQ: PVAC) gained 23.3 percent to $59.00 after reporting Q1 results. TripAdvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP) rose 22.5 percent to $47.51 after the company reported stronger-than-expected results for its first quarter on Tuesday. Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ: SHLD) shares surged 21.7 percent to $3.36. Amazon.com's partnership with Sears started in 2017 with an agreement to sell Kenmore-branded appliances online. On Wednesday, the companies announced an extension of their relationship to now include tire delivery and installations. EP Energy Corporation (NYSE: EPE) jumped 21.3 percent to $2.68 following Q1 results. LendingClub Corporation (NYSE: LC) surged 20.4 percent to $3.395 following better-than-expected Q1 earnings. Superior Industries International, Inc. (NYSE: SUP) gained 19 percent to $15.82 after reporting Q1 results. Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: BLCM) shares rose 18.5 percent to $8.13 following Q1 results. Twilio Inc. (NYSE: TWLO) rose 18.3 percent to $52.47 after the company posted strong quarterly results. Cerus Corporation (NASDAQ: CERS) shares jumped 18.3 percent to $6.47 following quarterly results. IEC Electronics Corp. (NYSE: IEC) shares climbed 17 percent to $4.68 after reporting better-than-expected quarterly earnings. New Relic, Inc. (NYSE: NEWR) rose 16.8 percent to $90.10 following Q4 results. Gulfport Energy Corporation (NASDAQ: GPOR)

Top Energy Stocks To Watch For 2019: Catalyst Pharmaceuticals, Inc.(CPRX)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Lisa Levin] Gainers Oragenics, Inc. (NYSE: OGEN) shares surged 66.67 percent to close at $2.00 on Wednesday after the company’s AG013 for oral mucositis in head and neck cancer patients showed favorable safety profile in mid-stage OM study. Sigma Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGLB) shares jumped 49.24 percent to close at $1.97 on Wednesday. Sigma Labs demonstrated proof of concept for closed loop quality control during metal additive manufacturing. ASLAN Pharmaceuticals Limited (NASDAQ: ASLN) rose 34.45 percent to close at $9.21. BTIG Research initiated coverage on ASLAN Pharmaceuticals with a Buy rating. Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. (NYSE: DKS) shares rose 25.82 percent to close at $38.35 after the company reported upbeat Q1 earnings and raised FY18 earnings outlook. TapImmune, Inc. (NASDAQ: TPIV) rose 24.15 percent to close at $5.09. WBB Securities upgraded TapImmune from Speculative Buy to Buy. Legacy Reserves LP (NASDAQ: LGCY) jumped 23.3 percent to close at $5.98 on Wednesday. Summer Infant, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUMR) gained 22.92 percent to close at $1.18 after announcing commitment for $60 million credit facility from Bank of America and $17.5 million term loan from Pathlight Capital. Cloud Peak Energy Inc. (NYSE: CLD) rose 21.95 percent to close at $4.00. SpartanNash Co (NASDAQ: SPTN) gained 21.4 percent to close at $22.92 after the company reported upbeat earnings for its first quarter on Tuesday. Motus GI Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: MOTS) rose 17.14 percent to close at $5.40. Movado Group, Inc. (NYSE: MOV) gained 16.59 percent to close at $49.20 after the company reported better-than-expected Q1 results and raised its guidance. Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ORMP) climbed 15.61 percent to close at $8.22. Oramed Pharma disclosed that its patent has been allowed in the US for oral administration of proteins. Dorian LPG Ltd. (NYSE: LPG) rose 14.89 percent to close at $8.41. Dorian LPG confirmed receipt of unsolicited proposal fr
  • [By Lisa Levin] Gainers Sigma Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGLB) shares rose 90.9 percent to $2.52. Sigma Labs demonstrated proof of concept for closed loop quality control during metal additive manufacturing. Oragenics, Inc. (NYSE: OGEN) shares surged 58.4 percent to $1.9005 after the company’s AG013 for oral mucositis in head and neck cancer patients showed favorable safety profile in mid-stage OM study. Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. (NYSE: DKS) shares climbed 23.2 percent to $37.5370 after the company reported upbeat Q1 earnings and raised FY18 earnings outlook. Summer Infant, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUMR) rose 21.9 percent to $1.17 after announcing commitment for $60 million credit facility from Bank of America and $17.5 million term loan from Pathlight Capital. TapImmune, Inc. (NASDAQ: TPIV) jumped 18.8 percent to $4.87. WBB Securities upgraded TapImmune from Speculative Buy to Buy. Movado Group, Inc. (NYSE: MOV) gained 17.2 percent to $49.45 after the company reported better-than-expected Q1 results and raised its guidance. ASLAN Pharmaceuticals Limited (NASDAQ: ASLN) jumped 16.2 percent to $7.96. BTIG Research initiated coverage on ASLAN Pharmaceuticals with a Buy rating. Legacy Reserves LP (NASDAQ: LGCY) rose 15.5 percent to $5.6011. InspireMD, Inc. (NYSE: NSPR) gained 13.3 percent to $1.36 following PR announcing sustained benefit of CGuard EPS. Immutep Limited (NASDAQ: IMMP) shares climbed 13.2 percent to $2.7724 after the company reported new data from its ongoing TACTI-mel Phase I trial, which evaluated the combination of eftilagimod alpha, its lead compound, with Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MRK)'s Keytruda in unresectable or metastatic melanoma patients, who have had a suboptimal response or had disease progression with keytruda monotherapy.. SpartanNash Co (NASDAQ: SPTN) rose 12.2 percent to $21.20 after the company reported upbeat earnings for its first quarter on Tuesday. Amtech Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASYS) rose 12.1 percent to
  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Shares of Catalyst Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:CPRX) have received a consensus rating of “Buy” from the seven research firms that are currently covering the company, MarketBeat.com reports. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, one has given a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average twelve-month price objective among analysts that have updated their coverage on the stock in the last year is $6.25.

Friday, July 13, 2018

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Watch Right Now

tags:PNBK,UVSP,CME,IYF,BRKL,

The Walt Disney Company (DIS ) just released its second quarter financial results, posting adjusted earnings of $1.84 per share and revenues of $14.55 billion.

Disney is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), which is subject to change based on today’s results. Shares of Disney are down 8% over the last year, but have popped 2.8% over the last four weeks. The company also saw its stock price sink 0.70% on Tuesday to hit $101.76 per share prior to the release of its quarterly earnings results.

Disney stock is currently up 0.60% to $102.40 per share in after-hours trading shortly after its earnings report was released.

DIS:

Beat earnings estimates. The company posted adjusted earnings of $1.84 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.68 per share.

Beat revenue estimates. The company saw revenue figures of $14.55 billion, topping our consensus estimate of $14.23 billion.

Disney saw its quarterly revenues pop roughly 9% from $13.34 billion in the year-ago period. Meanwhile, the media and entertainment giant’s adjusted EPS figure climbed roughly 23% from $1.50 per share.

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Watch Right Now: Patriot National Bancorp Inc.(PNBK)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Shane Hupp]

    Patriot National Bancorp (NASDAQ: PNBK) and Community Bank, N.A. (NYSE:CBU) are both finance companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, earnings, valuation, institutional ownership, risk, analyst recommendations and profitability.

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Watch Right Now: Univest Corporation of Pennsylvania(UVSP)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    Univest Co. of Pennsylvania (NASDAQ:UVSP) was upgraded by BidaskClub from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report issued on Wednesday.

  • [By Ethan Ryder]

    The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company raised its position in shares of Univest Co. of Pennsylvania (NASDAQ:UVSP) by 65.2% in the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 353,718 shares of the financial services provider’s stock after buying an additional 139,590 shares during the period. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company’s holdings in Univest Co. of Pennsylvania were worth $9,799,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

  • [By Shane Hupp]

    Get a free copy of the Zacks research report on Univest Co. of Pennsylvania (UVSP)

    For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Watch Right Now: CME Group Inc.(CME)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    First American Trust FSB grew its stake in CME Group Inc (NASDAQ:CME) by 4.1% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 16,167 shares of the financial services provider’s stock after buying an additional 639 shares during the period. First American Trust FSB’s holdings in CME Group were worth $2,650,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

  • [By Money Morning Staff Reports]

    Bitcoin prices slumped under $6,000 per coin on a day when futures contracts expired at CME Group Inc. (NYSE: CME).

    But despite the recent downturn, many cryptocurrency bulls expect that institutional investors will pour into the market.

  • [By Ethan Ryder]

    CME Group (NASDAQ:CME) was downgraded by investment analysts at BidaskClub from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report issued on Thursday.

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Watch Right Now: Ishares Trust Dj Us Financial (IYF)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Todd Shriber, ETF Professor]

    The challenges facing EUFN may indicate the ETF will be challenged to deliver compelling risk-reward for investors. EUFN's three-year standard deviation is 18.23 percent, or more than 500 basis points above the same metric on the iShares U.S. Financials ETF (NYSE: IYF).

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Watch Right Now: Brookline Bancorp Inc.(BRKL)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    These are some of the headlines that may have effected Accern Sentiment Analysis’s scoring:

    Get Brookline Bancorp alerts: Head to Head Analysis: Brookline Bancorp (BRKL) & Kearny Financial (KRNY) (americanbankingnews.com) Head-To-Head Contrast: Brookline Bancorp (BRKL) versus Northfield Bancorp (NFBK) (americanbankingnews.com) The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Kforce, Burlington Stores, Brookline Bancorp, Federated National Holding and Salem Media Group (finance.yahoo.com) Brookline Bancorp (BRKL) vs. Charter Financial (CHFN) Critical Comparison (americanbankingnews.com)

    A number of equities research analysts have recently issued reports on the company. BidaskClub upgraded Brookline Bancorp from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday. ValuEngine upgraded Brookline Bancorp from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, May 23rd. Finally, Zacks Investment Research upgraded Brookline Bancorp from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $19.00 price target on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, May 16th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. The company currently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $17.17.

  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Brookline Bancorp (NASDAQ: BRKL) and People's United Financial (NASDAQ:PBCT) are both finance companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, valuation, earnings, profitability, risk, analyst recommendations and dividends.

  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL) – Equities research analysts at Piper Jaffray upped their Q3 2018 EPS estimates for shares of Brookline Bancorp in a research report issued on Thursday, May 3rd. Piper Jaffray analyst M. Breese now anticipates that the bank will post earnings of $0.28 per share for the quarter, up from their prior estimate of $0.27. Piper Jaffray has a “Hold” rating and a $16.50 price objective on the stock. Piper Jaffray also issued estimates for Brookline Bancorp’s Q4 2018 earnings at $0.29 EPS, FY2018 earnings at $1.08 EPS, Q1 2019 earnings at $0.29 EPS, Q3 2019 earnings at $0.30 EPS and FY2019 earnings at $1.18 EPS.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Brokerages Anticipate SAP SE (SAP) Will Announce Quarterly Sales of $7.11 Billion

Analysts forecast that SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) will post sales of $7.11 billion for the current quarter, according to Zacks. Six analysts have made estimates for SAP’s earnings, with the highest sales estimate coming in at $7.23 billion and the lowest estimate coming in at $6.94 billion. SAP reported sales of $6.36 billion in the same quarter last year, which would suggest a positive year over year growth rate of 11.8%. The business is expected to announce its next quarterly earnings report before the market opens on Thursday, July 19th.

On average, analysts expect that SAP will report full-year sales of $29.20 billion for the current financial year, with estimates ranging from $28.49 billion to $29.74 billion. For the next financial year, analysts expect that the business will report sales of $31.52 billion per share, with estimates ranging from $30.58 billion to $32.74 billion. Zacks Investment Research’s sales calculations are an average based on a survey of research analysts that follow SAP.

Get SAP alerts:

SAP (NYSE:SAP) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, April 24th. The software maker reported $0.82 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.57 by $0.25. The firm had revenue of $5.26 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5.30 billion. SAP had a return on equity of 18.33% and a net margin of 18.00%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was down .5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $0.73 EPS.

Several analysts have recently weighed in on SAP shares. Barclays raised their target price on SAP from $132.00 to $134.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, April 25th. Zacks Investment Research upgraded SAP from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, April 9th. Royal Bank of Canada restated a “neutral” rating and set a target price on shares of SAP in a research note on Tuesday, April 24th. Jefferies Financial Group started coverage on SAP in a research note on Friday, June 1st. They set a “buy” rating and a $140.00 target price for the company. Finally, DZ Bank restated a “buy” rating on shares of SAP in a research note on Wednesday, June 27th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have given a hold rating and eleven have given a buy rating to the stock. The stock currently has an average rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $113.30.

Hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. Raymond James & Associates lifted its position in shares of SAP by 7.9% during the fourth quarter. Raymond James & Associates now owns 287,516 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $32,305,000 after purchasing an additional 20,957 shares during the last quarter. Northern Trust Corp lifted its position in shares of SAP by 6.2% during the first quarter. Northern Trust Corp now owns 1,564,517 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $164,525,000 after purchasing an additional 90,998 shares during the last quarter. Royal Bank of Canada lifted its position in shares of SAP by 13.3% during the first quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 692,387 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $72,811,000 after purchasing an additional 81,282 shares during the last quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp lifted its position in shares of SAP by 0.7% during the fourth quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 277,368 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $31,164,000 after purchasing an additional 1,993 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Sustainable Growth Advisers LP lifted its position in shares of SAP by 6.0% during the first quarter. Sustainable Growth Advisers LP now owns 3,099,490 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $325,943,000 after purchasing an additional 176,456 shares during the last quarter. 10.78% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Shares of SAP opened at $119.20 on Friday, Marketbeat.com reports. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.25, a current ratio of 1.32 and a quick ratio of 1.32. The stock has a market cap of $143.89 billion, a PE ratio of 27.83, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.54 and a beta of 1.15. SAP has a 1-year low of $99.20 and a 1-year high of $121.94.

SAP Company Profile

SAP SE operates as an enterprise application software, and analytics and business intelligence company worldwide. It offers SAP HANA, which enables businesses to process and analyze live data; SAP Data Hub, a solution that enables businesses to manage data from various sources; SAP Cloud Platform, which enables businesses to connect and integrate applications; SAP BW/4HANA, a data warehouse solution; SAP Leonardo, a system that enables customers to make business sense and opportunity of disruptive technologies; and SAP Analytics Cloud, which leverages the intersection of business intelligence, planning, and predictive analytics.

Get a free copy of the Zacks research report on SAP (SAP)

For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

Saturday, July 7, 2018

The 5 Best Restaurant Stocks of 2018 (So Far)

This year hasn't been great for the broader restaurant industry. Leading companies, including Starbucks�and McDonald's, have been struggling with negative customer traffic trends as more diners opt to stay closer to home, or to have their food delivered.

A few restaurant chains have managed to buck that downtrend, though, and their business success has contributed to market-beating stock-price gains for shareholders.

Below, we'll take a closer look at a few of these outperforming chains.

A couple eating breakfast out.

Image source: Getty Images.

Domino's Pizza: Up 48%

Investors had been worried that Domino's�(NYSE:DPZ) impressive growth streak was coming to an end, but the pizza chain put those fears to rest in its fiscal first-quarter earnings report. That announcement revealed that sales gains sped up to an 8% pace from 4% in the prior quarter thanks to market share gains in both the U.S. and international segments. Domino's franchised business model, meanwhile, continued to show off its strength as operating margin jumped to 38% of sales from 31%. The company is hoping to continue expanding sales at existing locations at a healthy clip, but its long-term growth plans�center on building out its store base to an even deeper penetration in the U.S. and in other countries around the world. ��

Fiesta Restaurant Group: Up 53%

Fiesta Restaurant Group�(NASDAQ:FRGI), home of the Pollo Tropical and Taco Cabana fast-casual chains, is back in Wall Street's good graces after a tough 2017 that was marked by falling sales at existing locations and an overall net loss. Its rebound plan, which includes cost cuts, menu improvements, and increased marketing investments, appears to be working. Sales returned to modest growth in the Pollo Tropical segment and are looking better at Taco Cabana. Those gains represent just the first small step in bringing the business back toward the nearly 10% operating margin shareholders saw in 2015, up from roughly 3% today.�

Chipotle Mexican Grill: Up 55%

Former highflier Chipotle�(NYSE:CMG) has had an impressive rally this year. Investors are happy to see both sales and profits headed in the right direction after a brutal multiyear stretch of declines that was brought on by food safety issues in 2015. In the fiscal first quarter, revenue rose 2.2% as higher menu prices offset slight traffic declines. Profit margin jumped to 20% of sales from 18% a year ago. Investors betting on the stock today have to hope that new CEO Brian Niccol can extend those modestly positive results through a risky turnaround plan that includes new menu items and a revamped loyalty program.

BJ's Restaurants: Up 69%

California-based brewhouse chain BJ's Restaurants�(NASDAQ:BJRI) has had a good year so far. Comparable-store sales rose 4.2% in the first quarter, and while most of those gains came from higher menu prices, the restaurant was also aided by modestly higher customer traffic. BJ's has seen many of its newest menu initiatives, including slow-roast prime rib, hit a chord with in-store diners even as its delivery sales spike. CEO Greg Trojan and his team are hoping to press both of those advantages over the coming quarters, but investors are even more optimistic about the company's balanced approach to store launches. It plans to open six restaurants this fiscal year, down from 10 in 2017, and surpass 200 locations across just over 26 U.S. states.

Noodles & Co.: Up 131%

It might seem odd that the industry's biggest winner so far this year isn't growing. In fact, Noodles & Co. (NASDAQ:NDLS) recently posted a quarterly net loss while revenue decreased 5%. But that result still shot past investors' expectations by showing surprising progress in the casual-dining chain's recovery efforts. Noodles & Co. has lots of work ahead of it before it can snap out of its four-year stretch of annual net losses. Yet, with shares having fallen by over 80% since 2013, even modestly good news proved to be enough to spark at least a short-term rally in the stock.

Picking favorites

The above list offers investment opportunities that include powerful, established franchises in addition to struggling rebound candidates. If you prefer the first category, you might want to take a closer look at industry leader Domino's. As for those riskier turnaround options, Chipotle offers an attractive mix of brand power and modest growth expectations that could lay the foundation for solid long-term returns from here.

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Redfin: Weak Home Sales Data A Major Threat

By now, most real estate market observers have noted that it's not a good time to be a realtor. Existing home sales have been on the wane for several consecutive months, driven by a confluence of factors. Tight supply is the main one: homeowners are choosing to hold onto their properties for longer, and new construction isn't enough to keep up with fresh demand from first-time homebuyers. At the same time, put off by rising home prices, people are renting their homes at higher rates than in previous years, with Pew Research noting last year that the share of households that was renting their homes is at a 50-year high. None of this is good news for realtors, who rely on robust home turnover and a deluge of sales to earn their living.

Of all the technology IPOs of last year, none is as dependent on the real estate market as Redfin (NASDAQ:RDFN), the tech-enabled real estate brokerage that makes the bulk of its revenues from realtor commissions. Later this month, we'll come upon the one-year anniversary of Redfin's IPO at $15 per share. Early investors have clearly done well, but as you can see from the chart below, most of the gains in the stock were already had at the beginning of its life as a public company. Over the past few months, Redfin has traded in a jagged pattern without a clear direction.

Chart RDFN data by YCharts

Though I previously noted that Redfin might be a buy under $20, at its current share price of ~$24, the stock is slated for a correction - especially with real estate fundamentals so weak. Redfin is incapable of escaping the gravity of the real estate industry, which is encountering its first major stumble since the financial crisis. Unlike last time, the problem is not the hangover effect from a glut of subprime demand - rather, it's limited supply, rising (not falling) prices that are keeping buyers at bay, and a new tax code under the Trump administration that is less favorable to homeowners than before.

To touch on the last point in more detail - as most investors know, the tax reform act increased the standard deduction to $12,000 for individuals, nearly twice what it was before. This means that for the owners or prospective owners of moderately priced homes, the interest tax deduction may no longer be advantageous relative to the standard deduction - eliminating one of the bedrock textbook reasons to buy a home in the United States. The mortgage interest deduction has long been considered a sacred cow of the U.S. tax code, and it has remained in there - but now, it will benefit fewer taxpayers to take advantage of it.

In addition to that, the Trump tax plan also capped state, local, and property tax deductions to just $10,000. For taxpayers in high-tax states like California and New York (we'll touch on the latter in further detail), this makes homeownership even less appealing, as many of them will already be using up the full deduction on state income taxes with nothing left over to deduct for property taxes. Adding insult to injury, the mortgage interest deduction has also been capped to just $750k, or $250k less than the prior cap of $1 million. Unfavorable tax shifts have already hurt the pace of home sales in New York; the same effect is likely to spread into other high-valued coastal markets in which Redfin draws the lion's share of its revenues.

Redfin is up against several structural challenges that may take years to overcome. The company's revenue growth began decelerating last quarter in Q1, and that isn't likely to change when it reports earnings early next month. In three out of three times that Redfin has reported earnings since going public last summer, the stock has fallen by 5% or more - even after beating Wall Street estimates as it did in Q4 and Q1.

In my view, it's not a good time to make a bullish bet on the company. The entire real estate industry is undergoing chills, and Redfin can't do much to deviate from that weakness.

NAR data shows third consecutive month of contraction

Numerous data points this year have pointed to a slowdown in the housing market, but perhaps none is important as the monthly data package released by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), often considered the authoritative voice on the real estate market.

The data released two weeks ago covered the month of May; later this month, NAR will release data for June. According to NAR, May was the third consecutive month of declines in existing home sales. Sales were down 3% y/y, continuing a trend of protracted weakness in the market since the beginning of the year (January saw the biggest drop, as shown in the monthly chart below):

Figure 1. NAR monthly home sales data

Source: National Association of Realtors

Some other interesting highlights from the NAR report: first-time homebuyers fell to 31% of all existing home sales, down from 33% in the year-ago period. This corroborates the notion that many younger millennials are choosing to rent for longer periods of time before buying their first homes, causing a further lull in the housing market.

NAR's chief economist noted the following in the report:

Incredibly low supply continues to be the primary impediment to more sales, but there��s no question the combination of higher prices and mortgage rates are pinching the budgets of prospective buyers, and ultimately keeping some from reaching the market.��

With prices up, mortgage rates up, and tax code changes all favoring rentals to home-buying, real estate sales (and thus, the lifeblood of realtors and real estate agencies like Redfin) are facing a major threat.

Manhattan

The nation's unofficial capital and most famous real estate market deserves a special mention. As reported by CNBC, a new report from Douglas Elliman proclaimed that Manhattan real estate has had its worst Q2 since the financial crisis.

The island of Manhattan, of course, has long had intricacies and market dynamics that distinguished it from the rest of American real estate. But the freeze in America's largest real estate market certainly puts a damper on forecasts for the rest of the country. According to the report, sales in Manhattan fell 17% y/y in the second quarter (compared to single-digit declines reported in the NAR data for the country as a whole), while the average sale price declined 5% y/y to $2.1 million.

As usual, a number of local factors are to blame, in addition to the countrywide headwinds from the tax code and rising interest rates. The major New York-specific issue is a flood of new supply, particularly in the high-end luxury condo segment, where there is now a 16-month supply inventory (most agree that 5-6 months of supply denotes a healthy supply-demand balance in the real estate sector).

One factor that is often overlooked, however, is a slowdown in foreign buying activity. The Elliman report claims that apartment sales to foreign buyers are down by 40% y/y. This could in part be attributed to the global rout in emerging market stocks, where China's indices have entered into a bear market after falling more than 20% from recent highs. Wealthy foreigners are suddenly feeling less flush and buying fewer trophy properties in leading U.S. cities.

Redfin doesn't break out its revenues by market. Even so, it's fairly easy to judge that Manhattan is one of the company's most important markets and a large source of its revenues. If weakness in Manhattan bleeds over into Redfin's other important expensive coastal markets like San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle, the company could see its first y/y revenue decline. Redfin has been dropping its listing fee to 1% (versus the 3% industry standard) in many of these high-priced markets in an attempt to win market share, but even these fee reductions might not be enough to stimulate growth if the broader market continues to contract.

Key takeaways

For all the negative noise on the real estate market, Redfin shares haven't dropped nearly enough. It has somewhat been protected by its facade of being a "technology" company, but at the end of the day, Redfin can't escape the fact that real estate sales and agent commissions are down - which are the lifeblood of its business.

Second-quarter earnings are coming up in August, and earnings releases have historically been a hugely negative catalyst for the stock. With most data sources pointing to unusual weakness in the real estate market in Q2, it's almost inevitable that Redfin will also post a disappointing quarter. In my view, it's a good time to exit this trade and stay on the sidelines until the real estate market returns to healthy conditions.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Constellation Brands Explains Why Rising Costs Are Hurting Profits Today

Alcoholic-beverage giant Constellation Brands�(NYSE:STZ) posted first-quarter earnings results last week that delivered mostly positive news to shareholders. The owner of the popular Corona and Modelo beer franchises met management's overall forecasts and stayed on pace to reach its fiscal 2019 sales and earnings targets.

Yet there was a lot more to this report than those top- and bottom-line figures, since Constellation is engaged in several projects aimed at spurring faster long-term growth at the expense of short-term profits.

Executives updated investors on that trade-off in a conference call with Wall Street analysts. Below, I've picked out a few of the highlights from that presentation.

A beer and snacks on a coffee table.

Image source: Getty Images.

Adding to the portfolio

The successful launches of Corona Premier and Corona Familiar are the first two major Corona initiatives in more than 25 years. Premier has achieved record speed to shelf with [volumes] increasing each month since launch. Familiar has already achieved a healthy [market] share of the category in its regional expansion with [volumes] outpacing our expectations. -- CEO Rob Sands

Constellation's beer portfolio didn't miss a beat this quarter, with depletion, a metric measuring consumption,�rising 9%. The national rollout of two new Corona brands is off to a good start, executives said, and the company stole more market share during the Cinco de Mayo and Memorial Day holidays with strong demand for Corona, Modelo, and Pacifico beers.

About those rising costs

Beer operating margin decreased 230 basis points to 37.8%, as the benefit of favorable pricing was more than offset by marketing investments, higher [cost of goods sold], and unfavorable foreign currency.-- CFO David Klein

The profitability of the beer business took a rare step backward, with margins dropping from 40% of sales to 38% of sales. Pricing trends continued improving, but that benefit was overwhelmed by higher spending. Marketing costs leapt to 11% of sales from 10% a year ago as Constellation shelled out cash to support the Corona releases and aggressive advertising around the Modelo and Pacifico brands. Executives said strengthening the brand is key to protecting its positive sales momentum.

Making bold moves

We still have significant spending plan[s] for the balance of the year, as our full-year [capital expenditure] guidance of $1.15 billion to $1.25 billion remains unchanged.-- Klein

Constellation Brands booked another significant financial gain from its investment in Canopy Growth, the cannabis producer that's giving it early access to what could become a large global market for cannabis-infused drinks.

Two men holding bottled beers.

Image source: Getty Images.

But management's capital spending plans go much further: Constellation is expecting to invest almost $900 million in upgrading and expanding its Mexican beer brewery network this year while continuing to hunt for new beer, wine, and spirits brands to add to its premium-focused portfolio.

Looking ahead

While our first half financial results are being impacted by the investments behind the marketing, innovation, and growth initiatives I noted earlier, we're confident that we'll produce top tier financial performance.-- Klein

Considering that the company has been boosting earnings at a 20% clip for the past five years, it was jarring for some investors to see profits decline in the first quarter. Management expects cost to rise at an even faster pace in the second quarter, too, due mainly to the cadence of advertising spending and new-product releases.

However, Sands and his executive team believe that the second half of the fiscal year will bring more profitable growth such that they'll meet their initial goals of roughly 10% sales and profit gains for the beer business and 3% growth in wine and spirits. These figures should translate into a 10% earnings expansion that, while below the company's prior 20% pace, is still far higher than the rate industry peers are achieving right now.

Sunday, June 24, 2018

$0.93 Earnings Per Share Expected for Six Flags (SIX) This Quarter

Equities analysts expect Six Flags (NYSE:SIX) to report $0.93 earnings per share (EPS) for the current fiscal quarter, according to Zacks. Nine analysts have provided estimates for Six Flags’ earnings, with the lowest EPS estimate coming in at $0.83 and the highest estimate coming in at $0.98. Six Flags reported earnings of $0.59 per share during the same quarter last year, which would indicate a positive year over year growth rate of 57.6%. The business is expected to issue its next earnings report on Wednesday, July 25th.

On average, analysts expect that Six Flags will report full year earnings of $2.84 per share for the current fiscal year, with EPS estimates ranging from $2.55 to $3.08. For the next year, analysts expect that the firm will post earnings of $3.14 per share, with EPS estimates ranging from $2.80 to $3.70. Zacks’ earnings per share averages are a mean average based on a survey of sell-side analysts that follow Six Flags.

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Six Flags (NYSE:SIX) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, April 24th. The company reported ($0.74) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the Zacks’ consensus estimate of ($0.79) by $0.05. The firm had revenue of $128.96 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $118.75 million. Six Flags had a negative return on equity of 31.58% and a net margin of 19.38%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 29.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business posted ($0.63) EPS.

A number of research firms have recently issued reports on SIX. Macquarie raised their price target on Six Flags from $56.00 to $58.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, April 26th. Stifel Nicolaus raised their price target on Six Flags from $78.00 to $80.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, April 26th. Oppenheimer set a $80.00 price target on Six Flags and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, April 24th. B. Riley raised their price target on Six Flags from $78.00 to $80.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, April 26th. Finally, Zacks Investment Research upgraded Six Flags from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $68.00 price target on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, April 25th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, one has assigned a hold rating and eleven have given a buy rating to the company. The stock presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $69.55.

In related news, Chairman James Reid-Anderson sold 64,185 shares of Six Flags stock in a transaction on Friday, June 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $72.56, for a total transaction of $4,657,263.60. Following the transaction, the chairman now directly owns 3,375,768 shares in the company, valued at $244,945,726.08. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Insiders have sold 201,811 shares of company stock worth $14,401,216 over the last quarter. 6.90% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. MetLife Investment Advisors LLC purchased a new position in shares of Six Flags in the fourth quarter valued at about $3,282,000. Millennium Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of Six Flags in the fourth quarter worth about $20,136,000. Teachers Advisors LLC increased its holdings in shares of Six Flags by 1.2% in the fourth quarter. Teachers Advisors LLC now owns 75,132 shares of the company’s stock worth $5,002,000 after purchasing an additional 874 shares during the last quarter. BB&T Securities LLC increased its holdings in shares of Six Flags by 2.7% in the fourth quarter. BB&T Securities LLC now owns 40,300 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,682,000 after purchasing an additional 1,041 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Two Sigma Advisers LP bought a new stake in shares of Six Flags in the fourth quarter worth about $10,293,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 94.56% of the company’s stock.

Shares of Six Flags traded up $0.50, reaching $72.70, on Friday, Marketbeat reports. The stock had a trading volume of 953,095 shares, compared to its average volume of 974,160. The company has a market cap of $6.08 billion, a P/E ratio of 34.13 and a beta of 1.13. Six Flags has a 1 year low of $51.25 and a 1 year high of $73.38. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of -2.90, a current ratio of 0.37 and a quick ratio of 0.30.

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, June 11th. Investors of record on Thursday, May 31st were given a dividend of $0.78 per share. The ex-dividend date was Wednesday, May 30th. This represents a $3.12 annualized dividend and a yield of 4.29%. Six Flags’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 146.48%.

About Six Flags

Six Flags Entertainment Corporation owns and operates regional theme and water parks under the Six Flags brand name. The company's parks offer various thrill rides, water attractions, themed areas, concerts and shows, restaurants, game venues, and retail outlets. It owns and operates 20 parks, including 17 parks in the United States; 2 parks in Mexico; and 1 park in Montreal, Canada.

Get a free copy of the Zacks research report on Six Flags (SIX)

For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

Earnings History and Estimates for Six Flags (NYSE:SIX)

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

How Is Lear Corporation Likely To Grow In The Next 2 Years?

&l;a href=&q;http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=lea&a;amp;tab=searchtabquotesdark&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Lear Corporation&l;/a&g;, (NYSE: LEA), a leading supplier of automotive seating and electrical systems globally, has had a strong start to 2018. Lear&a;rsquo;s stock price has gained close to 16% since the beginning of the year and we expect the company to gain further momentum given its strong presence in the seating segment and the global shift towards &l;span class=&q;ql-size-large&q;&g;energy efficient and connected vehicles. We expect Lear&a;rsquo;s top line to grow at a CAGR of 8% over the next two years.&l;/span&g;

&a;nbsp;

&l;a href=&q;http://dashboards.trefis.com/no-login-required/EciblOmu?fromforbesandarticle=how-is-lear-corporation-likely-to-grow-in-the-next-2-years&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;&l;img class=&q; wp-image-185174 size-full&q; src=&q;http://blogs-images.forbes.com/greatspeculations/files/2018/06/lea13.jpg?width=960&q; alt=&q;&q; data-height=&q;346&q; data-width=&q;728&q;&g;&l;/a&g;

&l;span class=&q;ql-size-large&q;&g;Lear backed the &l;a href=&q;http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/LEA/6007557890x0xS842162-18-7/842162/filing.pdf&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;second position&l;/a&g; (based on revenue) in the seat systems assembly market globally in 2017 which was estimated at &l;a href=&q;http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/LEA/6007557890x0xS842162-18-7/842162/filing.pdf&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;$65 billion&l;/a&g; by the company. The company&a;rsquo;s &l;a href=&q;http://www.lear.com/Press-Room/4422/lear-completes-acquisition-of-grupo-antolins-automotive-seating-business.aspx&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;recent acquisition&l;/a&g; of Grupo Antolin&a;rsquo;s automotive seating business is expected to further boost the company&a;rsquo;s growth prospects in the seating segment in the upcoming years as Antolin posses a strong market presence in Europe. Lear&a;rsquo;s 2018 first quarter seating sales increased by 12% year-on-year (y-o-y) and the company attributed a large proportion of this growth to its recent acquisition. Additionally, a shift in consumer preference towards sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and crossovers are expected to further aid Lear&a;rsquo;s top line as bigger cars such as SUVs and crossovers command premium content per vehicle (premium/ additional seating and more advanced electric content) leading to higher revenue for Lear. Lear&a;rsquo;s content per SUV is &l;a href=&q;https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/01/20/lears-seating-division-is-primed-to-grow-through-decade-end/#7a0304ed3e7a&q;&g;estimated&l;/a&g; at $1,000 as against the $700 average content per vehicle. &l;/span&g;

Furthermore, Lear&a;rsquo;s E-Systems segment is also expected to experience a substantial growth rate over the next two years driven by a changing global &l;span class=&q;ql-size-large&q;&g;trend towards energy efficient and autonomous vehicles. &l;/span&g; The company expects the electrical content growth rate in vehicles to be higher than the overall industry growth rate by &l;a href=&q;http://www.lear.com/Site/Products/E-Systems/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;almost 5%&l;/a&g;, which would require more complex vehicle electrical architectures to cater to this growth. The company has been gearing up its E-systems operations to accommodate this growth and the company&a;rsquo;s recent announcement to &l;a href=&q;https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-lear-to-acquire-exo-technologies/brief-lear-to-acquire-exo-technologies-idUSASB0BX9X&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;acquire EXO Technologies&l;/a&g; coupled with the additional advanced technology obtained through its &l;span class=&q;ql-size-large&q;&g;Grupo&l;/span&g; Antolin&a;rsquo;s acquisition will enable Lear to remain at the top of its game.

&a;nbsp;

Lear in 2018 expects 145 new launches in its seating segment and 160 launches in its E-system segment which would favorably enhance the company&a;rsquo;s results. China is expected to remain a major growth driver for both of the company&a;rsquo;s segments with an expected sales growth rate of 10% y-o-y in 2018. Our estimates for Lear&a;rsquo;s two years&a;rsquo; projected growth are elaborated in our &l;a href=&q;http://dashboards.trefis.com/no-login-required/EciblOmu?fromforbesandarticle=how-is-lear-corporation-likely-to-grow-in-the-next-2-years&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;&l;strong&g;interactive dashboard&l;/strong&g;&l;/a&g;. You can make changes to our assumptions to arrive at your own revenue estimate for the company.

&a;nbsp;

What&a;rsquo;s behind Trefis? See How it&a;rsquo;s Powering New Collaboration and What-Ifs

For &l;strong&g;&l;a href=&q;https://www.trefis.com/info/trefis-technology&q; target=&q;_blank&q; rel=&q;noopener noreferrer&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;CFOs and Finance Teams&l;/a&g;&l;/strong&g; | &l;strong&g;&l;a href=&q;https://www.trefis.com/&q; target=&q;_blank&q; rel=&q;noopener noreferrer&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Product, R&a;amp;D, and Marketing Teams&l;/a&g;&l;/strong&g;

&l;strong&g;&l;a href=&q;http://www.trefis.com/&q; target=&q;_blank&q; rel=&q;noopener noreferrer&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;More Trefis Research&l;/a&g;&l;/strong&g;

&l;!--nextpage--&g;

Like our charts? Explore &l;a href=&q;https://dashboards.trefis.com/signupDashboard&q; target=&q;_blank&q; rel=&q;noopener noreferrer&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;example interactive dashboards&l;/a&g; and create your own.

&l;strong&g;

&l;/strong&g;

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Hot Small Cap Stocks To Buy For 2018

tags:INFU,DEST,EMR,

China’s central bank on Thursday refrained from immediately following the Federal Reserve in raising borrowing costs.

The People’s Bank of China had been widely anticipated to react to the U.S. hike by lifting the cost of reverse-repurchase agreements for the second time this year, following three increases in 2017.

“It appears the PBOC decided that growth is slowing and inflation is low and well below target, while money market rates are relatively high so they don’t want to boost them further,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior emerging-market strategist at Credit Agricole SA in Hong Kong.

Chinese equities were boosted by the news. The Shanghai Composite Index erased a loss of 0.5 percent to rise 0.3 percent, while the ChiNext gauge of small caps and tech stocks led gains, climbing 0.9 percent. Government bond futures also rallied, with the most active 10-year contracts spiking 0.45 percent, the most since April 18 -- the day after the PBOC cut reserve requirement ratio. The yield on sovereign notes due in a decade was little changed at 3.68 percent as of 10:10 a.m. in Shanghai.

Hot Small Cap Stocks To Buy For 2018: InfuSystems Holdings, Inc.(INFU)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Logan Wallace]

    These are some of the news headlines that may have impacted Accern Sentiment’s scoring:

    Get Scynexis alerts: Steady Activities: SCYNEXIS, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCYX), LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LPLA) (oracleexaminer.com) Do Analysts Think You Should Buy �� SCYNEXIS Inc (NASDAQ: SCYX) (stockspen.com) Notable Runner: SCYNEXIS, Inc. (SCYX) (nasdaqplace.com) Most Active Stocks Now: SCYNEXIS, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCYX), China Pharma Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CPHI), Kala … (journalfinance.net) Overview on price to free cash flow: SCYNEXIS, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCYX), InfuSystem Holdings Inc. (NYSE:INFU) (stocksnewspoint.com)

    Several research analysts have recently issued reports on the company. Roth Capital assumed coverage on Scynexis in a research note on Tuesday, May 8th. They set a “buy” rating and a $6.00 price target for the company. Seaport Global Securities assumed coverage on Scynexis in a research note on Tuesday, April 10th. They set a “buy” rating and a $4.00 price target for the company. Zacks Investment Research raised Scynexis from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $1.25 price target for the company in a research note on Tuesday, May 8th. HC Wainwright assumed coverage on Scynexis in a research note on Monday, May 7th. They set a “buy” rating and a $5.00 price target for the company. Finally, ValuEngine raised Scynexis from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Wednesday, May 2nd. One research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the stock. Scynexis currently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $4.45.

  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Infusystem Holdings Inc (NYSEAMERICAN:INFU) major shareholder Meridian Ohc Partners, Lp purchased 40,548 shares of Infusystem stock in a transaction dated Monday, May 14th. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $2.76 per share, for a total transaction of $111,912.48. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Large shareholders that own at least 10% of a company’s shares are required to disclose their transactions with the SEC.

Hot Small Cap Stocks To Buy For 2018: Destination Maternity Corporation(DEST)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Alexander Bird]

    Here are last week's top-performing penny stocks:

    Penny Stock Current Share Price Last Week's Gain �Ambow Education Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: AMBO) $5.70 77.11% Nano Dimension (Nasdaq: NNDM) $2.61 75.11% Destination Maternity Corp. (Nasdaq: DEST) $5.79 71.84% CLPS Inc. (Nasdaq: CLPS) $9.72 71.15% NII Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: NIHD) $3.20 56.33% Viveve Medical Inc. (Nasdaq: VIVE) $3.78 51.98% Galectin Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: GALT) $9.18 41.82% Apricus Biosciences Inc. (Nasdaq: APRI) $0.36 34.70% Polymet Mining Corp. (NYSE: PLM) $1.01 31.13% Xenon Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq: XENE) $8.20 28.46%

    Many investors struggle with finding stocks with this sort of breakout potential because they don't know where to look.

  • [By Lisa Levin] Gainers Comstock Holding Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ: CHCI) shares climbed 154.95 percent to close at $5.15 on Thursday. Comstock reported conversion of the majority of its unsecured, short-term debt into non-convertible preferred equity. Tyme Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: TYME) jumped 33.45 percent to close at $3.87. Universal Corporation (NYSE: UVV) gained 29.72 percent to close at $62.85 after reporting fiscal Q4 results. Evolus, Inc. (NASDAQ: EOLS) shares rose 22.93 percent to close at $23.80. nLIGHT, Inc. (NASDAQ: LASR) jumped 21.52 percent to close at $36.37 following Q1 results. Hudson Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: HDSN) gained 20.28 percent to close at $2.61. The Cato Corporation (NYSE: CATO) shares rose 19.57 percent to close at $21.45 after the company posted better-than-expected first-quarter results. AXT, Inc. (NASDAQ: AXTI) gained 18.8 percent to close at $7.90. Catasys, Inc. (NASDAQ: CATS) rose 16.33 percent to close at $6.41. HUYA Inc. (NYSE: HUYA) rose 15.68 percent to close at $23.09 on Thursday. Marinus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: MRNS) climbed 15.11 percent to close at $6.02 on Thursday after gaining 6.30 percent on Wednesday. Baird initiated coverage on Marinus Pharmaceuticals with an Outperform rating. Destination Maternity Corporation (NASDAQ: DEST) shares rose 14.48 percent to close at $3.32 after the board announced late Wednesday the election of four activist-backed director nominees. Three women and one man comprise the selected group championed by NGM Capital’s Nathan Miller and Kenosis Capital’s Peter O’Malley. Destination Maternity had advocated for another slate of three men and interim CEO Melissa Payner-Gregor. The new directors are Holly Alden, Marla Ryan, Anne-Charlotte Windal and Christopher Morgan. China Rapid Finance Limited (NYSE: XRF) gained 11.53 percent to close at $3.29 after announcing preliminary Q1 results. Bilibili Inc.. (NASDAQ: BILI) shares rose 11.33 pe
  • [By Lisa Levin] Gainers Comstock Holding Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ: CHCI) shares surged 115.8 percent to $4.3591. Comstock reported conversion of the majority of its unsecured, short-term debt into non-convertible preferred equity. Stellar Biotechnologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SBOT) jumped 38.2 percent to $3.0251 after the company disclosed that it achieved robust viral clearance for its manufacturing process. Universal Corporation (NYSE: UVV) surged 26.7 percent to $61.40 after reporting fiscal Q4 results. Hudson Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: HDSN) rose 18.9 percent to $2.58. Evolus, Inc. (NASDAQ: EOLS) shares gained 17.8 percent to $22.8009. The Cato Corporation (NYSE: CATO) shares gained 17.5 percent to $21.07 after the company posted better-than-expected first-quarter results. Tyme Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: TYME) rose 15.9 percent to $3.3613. Destination Maternity Corporation (NASDAQ: DEST) shares gained 15.5 percent to $3.35 after the board announced late Wednesday the election of four activist-backed director nominees. Three women and one man comprise the selected group championed by NGM Capital’s Nathan Miller and Kenosis Capital’s Peter O’Malley. Destination Maternity had advocated for another slate of three men and interim CEO Melissa Payner-Gregor. The new directors are Holly Alden, Marla Ryan, Anne-Charlotte Windal and Christopher Morgan. AXT, Inc. (NASDAQ: AXTI) rose 15 percent to $7.65. nLIGHT, Inc. (NASDAQ: LASR) gained 14.5 percent to $34.27 following Q1 results. Achieve Life Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACHV) rose 14.3 percent to $11.4303. Bilibili Inc.. (NASDAQ: BILI) shares climbed 13.9 percent to $14.16 after announcing Q1 results. Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: BW) gained 13.2 percent to $2.91 after an amended 13D filing from Steel Partners Holdings shows a raised stake in the company from 6.99 million shares to 29.98 million shares, or a 17.8 percent stake. HUYA Inc. (NYSE: HUYA) gained 13.1

Hot Small Cap Stocks To Buy For 2018: Emerson Electric Company(EMR)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    Here are some of the headlines that may have effected Accern Sentiment Analysis’s analysis:

    Get Emerson Electric alerts: Stocks This Week: Wells Fargo, Emerson Electric and CSX (finance.yahoo.com) Emerson Electric (EMR) & Philips (PHG) Financial Review (americanbankingnews.com) Emerson Electric (EMR) Given Consensus Rating of “Hold” by Brokerages (americanbankingnews.com) Is It Time To Buy Emerson Electric Co (NYSE:EMR)? (finance.yahoo.com) Emerson Electric: An Autonomous Future (seekingalpha.com)

    EMR has been the topic of a number of research reports. Zacks Investment Research raised shares of Emerson Electric from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $78.00 price objective on the stock in a research note on Thursday, February 8th. UBS initiated coverage on shares of Emerson Electric in a research note on Monday, January 22nd. They issued a “buy” rating and a $73.26 price objective on the stock. Cowen reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $78.00 price objective on shares of Emerson Electric in a research note on Wednesday, April 18th. Stifel Nicolaus increased their price objective on shares of Emerson Electric from $79.00 to $80.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, May 3rd. Finally, Berenberg Bank raised shares of Emerson Electric from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating and set a $69.00 price objective on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, April 24th. They noted that the move was a valuation call. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have issued a hold rating and eight have given a buy rating to the stock. Emerson Electric has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $73.00.

  • [By Shane Hupp]

    Element Capital Management LLC acquired a new stake in Emerson Electric Co. (NYSE:EMR) in the 1st quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The fund acquired 202,986 shares of the industrial products company’s stock, valued at approximately $13,864,000.

  • [By Benzinga News Desk]

    Former President George H.W. Bush has been hospitalized in Houston with an infection, just after attending the funeral of his wife, Barbara, a spokesman said Monday: Link

    ECONOMIC DATA Redbook Reports US Retail Sales During First 2 Weeks Of Apr. Up 0.3% MoM, Up 2.8% YoY USA S&P/CaseShiller House Price Index (MoM) for Feb Up 0.7% MoM New home sales report for March will be released at 10:00 a.m. ET. The Conference Board’s consumer sentiment index for April is schedule for release at 10:00 a.m. ET. The Richmond Fed manufacturing index for April will be released at 10:00 a.m. ET. The Treasury is set to auction 4-and 52-week bills at 11:30 a.m. ET. The Treasury will auction 2-year notes at 1:00 p.m. ET. ANALYST RATINGS Leerink upgraded Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) from Market Perform to Outperform Berenberg upgraded Emerson Electric (NYSE: EMR) from Sell to Hold Mizuho downgraded Skyworks (NASDAQ: SWKS) from Buy to Neutral BMO downgraded Texas Roadhouse (NASDAQ: TXRH) from Outperform to Market Perform

    This is a tool used by the Benzinga News Desk each trading day — it's a look at everything happening in the market, in five minutes. To get the full version of this note every morning, click here.

  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    Wilkins Investment Counsel Inc. cut its stake in shares of Emerson Electric (NYSE:EMR) by 1.8% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 111,625 shares of the industrial products company’s stock after selling 2,015 shares during the quarter. Emerson Electric makes up approximately 2.4% of Wilkins Investment Counsel Inc.’s portfolio, making the stock its 17th biggest position. Wilkins Investment Counsel Inc.’s holdings in Emerson Electric were worth $7,624,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

  • [By Lee Samaha]

    In common with many other industrial companies, like Danaher, Pentair has been taking action to become a more focused investment proposition for investors. The sale of its valves and controls business to Emerson Electric (NYSE:EMR) in the spring of 2017 turned out to be well-timed for Emerson, as it occurred precisely at the time when oil and gas capital spending started picking up.

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Salesforce.com Inc (CRM) Q1 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

Logo of jester cap with thought bubble with words 'Fool Transcripts' below it

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE:CRM)Q4 2017 Earnings Conference CallMay 29, 2017, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Erica, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Salesforce Q1 Fiscal 2019 Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press * then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the # key. Thank you.

Mr. John Cummings, you may begin your conference.

John Cummings -- Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you, Erica. Thanks so much. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our fiscal first quarter 2019 results conference call. Our results press release and SEC filings, including our form 8-K, which contains recaps and financial information under new accounting standards ASC 606 and ADC 340-40, and a replay of today's call can be found on our IR website at www.salesforce.com/investor. With me on the call today is Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO; Keith Block, Vice Chairman, President, and COO; Mark Hawkins, President and CFO; and Bret Taylor, President and Chief Product Officer.

As a reminder, our commentary today will primarily be in non-GAAP terms. Reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP results and guidance can be found in our earnings press release. Additionally, our commentary and our guidance today are under accounting standards, ASC 606, ASC 340-40, and ASU 20-16-01, all of which we adopted in first quarter.

Some of our comments today may contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Should any of these materialize or should our assumptions prove to be incorrect, actual company results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. A description of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions and other factors that could affect our financial results are included in our SEC filings, including our most recent report on Form 10-Q.

With that, let me turn the call over to you, Marc.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

All right. Well, hey, thank you so much, John, and thank you to everyone on today's call for being here with us. As you'll recall, fiscal 2018 was a record year for Salesforce, and Q4 was our best quarter ever. In fact, the most recent Fortune 500 ranking, Salesforce has moved up nearly 200 positions over the last few years. And based on last year's revenue, we're now the 285th largest company in the United States. And we're thrilled that our phenomenal momentum continues right now in the first quarter of fiscal year '19.

Revenue for the quarter rose to more than $3 billion, up 25%, putting us on a $12 billion revenue run rate. That was just amazing. And we now have $20.4 billion of future revenues under contract, which is the remaining transaction price. That's up 36% from a year ago. Based on these strong results, we're raising our full-year top line revenue guidance to $13.125 billion at the high end of our range, 25% growth for this year.

Well, and just as we'll be the fastest enterprise software company to reach $13 billion, we're well on our way to surpassing the $20 billion revenue goal faster than any other enterprise software company in history. With another quarter of amazing growth, we've strengthened our position as the world's leading CRM company. Earlier this month, IDC named Salesforce the number one CRM provider for the fifth consecutive year. In fact, according to IDC, we increased our CRM market share in 2017 by more percentage points than the rest of the top 20 CRM vendors combined. We're the number one in sales, number one in service, number one in marketing, and we have the number one CRM platform. We continue to be the fastest growing of all the top five enterprise software companies, and these incredible results are because of our relentless focus on customer success.

In fact, I've just returned from a series of meeting with customers around the world. I was in Tokyo, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York. I was in Washington, DC. And I'll tell you, everywhere I go, every CEO wants to talk about digital transformation, which begins and ends with the customer. Only Salesforce can deliver highly personalized and engaged B2B and B2C customer experiences powered by the world's number one CRM customer success platform. Across sales, across service, across market and commerce, communities, analytics, and even application development through our platform, only Salesforce is giving customers an intelligent 360-degree view of their customer. And this month, we closed our acquisition of MuleSoft, giving us the industry's leading integration platform as well.

Well, integration has never been more strategic. So many of the CEOs I spoke with told me that data remains locked in their legacy systems and is holding them back. With MuleSoft, we're now enabling our customers to connect all of their data across any public or private cloud and on-premise to radically enhance innovation and create incredible customer experiences. So, we couldn't be more excited to welcome MuleSoft to Salesforce.

And just this morning, Forbes named Salesforce again one of the world's most innovative companies for the eighth year in a row. Since Forbes started the list in 2011, Salesforce has placed in the top three every single year. In fact, our innovation in artificial intelligence is delivering incredible value to our customers. Salesforce Einstein now delivers nearly two billion predictions every day, and that's a doubling of our daily predictions just last quarter. This is the most strategic technology for our customers.

How are we growing so consistently quarter after quarter? As I described before, it's about staying true to our values, including customer success and innovation. But our number one value at Salesforce is trust -- earning and keeping the trust of our stakeholders, or employees, our customers, our partners, our shareholders, and all of our communities. That's why I've called for a national privacy law to protect the personal data of American consumers and help restore trust in the tech industry, similar to what's happening in Europe with GDPR.

In closing, as I've pointed out before, CRM is the fastest growing enterprise software category. It's a massive $120 billion market opportunity, and we are determined -- we are determined to continue leading the way for our customers and for their success. And we're keeping our eyes focused on the future. After record world tours in New York, Washington, D.C., Amsterdam, Toronto, London, and Paris, we're looking forward to welcoming 10,000 attendees to Connections in Chicago in two weeks. I hope you will attend. It will be the digital marketing, commerce, and customer success event of the year. And as I said before, we're well on our way to surpassing $20 billion in revenue, and doing it faster than any other enterprise software company in history. You can see that in the numbers from this quarter. The trajectory is clear. Anybody who sees the numbers in these financial results can see it's gonna happen, and we could not be more excited.

So, we're incredibly proud of another quarter of remarkable growth. Of course, none of this would be possible without the partnership and dedication of all of our stakeholders, especially our 30,000 Salesforce employees, the world's largest team dedicated to CRM. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of our Ohana. We're number one in CRM because our employees, our customers are number one. And to all of them, and to all of our Ohana, again I say thank you.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Keith.

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

Thanks, Mark. Good afternoon, everybody. As Mark said, we're off to a fast start to the year, and we're taking share through our relentless focus on the customer. We continue to grow internationally and expand across industries and leverage our partners on this drive toward $20 billion and beyond. Our momentum from Q4 carried over into Q1, and we signed several significant deals in the quarter, including the largest transaction in the company's history. And we delivered outstanding performance across all of our clouds.

Sales Cloud grew at 16%, 33% faster than the market, a clear indicator of our strength of our core business. And we are taking share. Service Cloud grew 29% in the quarter, as creating connected customer experiences has become a priority for every company all over the world. Field Service Lightning is a key part of that growth. In fact, one of the world's largest food and beverage companies selected Field Service Lightning for retail execution to boost employee productivity and improve customer experiences. Retail execution is the lifeblood of consumer package goods companies.

Marketing and commerce grew 41%. In Q1, we strengthened our relationship with Citi, who is rolling out marketing cloud across their business in Asia. And we also continued to see incredible momentum with Commerce Cloud, as more and more customers select our platform as part of their broader engagement with Salesforce. We had notable expansions with another meeting athletic apparel maker, who is enhancing and expanding their direct-to-consumer business. We also deepened our relationship with one of the largest luxury groups in the world, who is transforming the retail experience with Commerce Cloud.

And finally, our Lightning platform grew 36% as customers continue to build intelligent, connected apps fast with Lightning App Builder and Heroku, and leverage the power of Einstein. In fact, one of the largest media and entertainment companies in the world is using Einstein Analytics to get deeper business insights and build more personalized customer experiences.

Now, we not only delivered strong growth across our clouds but across all of our key regions. EMEA grew 31% in constant currency, fueled by expanding relationships with brands like Philips and Santander UK, as our international investments continue to pay off. In May, we opened our first European innovation center at Salesforce Tower in London, and now plan to expand our data center capacity in the UK to support our growing customers in the region. APAC grew 30% in constant currency, driven by remarkable growth in Japan, where we strengthened our relationships with SoftBank and luxury e-commerce site LUXA.

In Asia, we also expanded with Cathay Pacific Airways and Lazada, the leading e-commerce player in Southeast Asia. Our ability to speak the language of customers is deepening our relationships with the most important companies in the world, and you can see that in our results. In Financial Services, we expanded with Manulife in Canada and formed a new relationship with Investors Bank. And we continue to see incredible momentum with Financial Services Clouds. In Q1, we had a significant expansion with a Fortune 50 financial services firm that is clearly betting their digital transformation on us and is now one of our largest customers.

The public sector continues to be a huge opportunity for us as well. We had our most significant public sector win ever with U.S. Department of Agriculture, and are using service clouds to transform how they engage with constituents across the country. We also deepened our relationship with one of the largest federal agencies in United States, and they're deploying Service Cloud and Einstein Analytics to improve the services they provide to millions of Americans every single day.

Our strong ecosystem is helping us gain lion's share and drive success for our customers as well. In Q1, partners helped generate 59% of new business and were involved in 75% of our largest deals. And Salesforce continues to be the growth lever for our partners. In fact, the top five global FIs increased their Salesforce practices by more than 70% year-over-year. In Q1 alone, Bluewolf and IBM Company increased the number of certified consultants by more than 200%, a huge indication of demand. We're also seeing tremendous momentum in our thriving ISV community, which grew 52% year-over-year.

Now, let me give you a quick update on our most recent acquisitions. First, every company wants to deliver the same buying experience to businesses that they provide to consumers. And to capture this opportunity, we acquired long time partner CloudCraze, a leading B2B e-commerce platform, similar to our acquisition of SteelBrick, and CloudCraze is both natively on the Salesforce platform. So we're off to a good start on that integration.

Second, as Marc said, unlocking data is critical to accelerating our customers' digital transformations. Just last week, I was with a CEO of a major corporation that has data trapped in disparate legacy systems. It is a huge barrier to innovation. But through our acquisition of MuleSoft, Salesforce now provides one of the world's leading platforms for building application networks that connects enterprise apps, data, and devices across any cloud on-premise, whether they connect with Salesforce or not.

And that integration is going extremely well. We have received an overwhelmingly positive response from our customers and those who've incorporated MuleSoft into global strategic events, including the World Tours and Dreamforce. This has been highly successful thus far. And we'll continue to invest further in MuleSoft's distribution capacity and R&D to build innovative products that enable our customers' success. So ,to close, I want to thank our customers, our partners, our employees, for their continued trust in us and for a very, very special start to the year.

Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mark Hawkins, who will discuss our financial execution and updates to our accounting standards. Mark?

Mark Hawkins -- President and Chief Financial Officer

Great. Thanks, Keith. Before discussing the results, I want to remind everyone that the results that were released today are under the new accounting standards ASC 606, ASC 340-40, and ASC 2016-01. Additionally, with our release today, we provided recasted financial results under the full retrospective method for the full year of fiscal 2017, fiscal 2018, and each quarter of fiscal 2018 under ASC 606 and ASC 340-40. With that, let me turn to the first quarter results.

First quarter revenue grew 25% in dollars and 22% in constant currency, reflecting continued strength in the demand environment, strong organic growth, and keeping us on pace to achieve the FY22 target of $21 billion to $23 billion, including MuleSoft. Now, the dollar attrition exited the first quarter below 10. It was down a bit from Q1 of last year. First quarter GAAP EPS was $0.46 compared with the breakeven last year, and non-GAAP EPS was $0.74, up 155% over the last year.

Mark-to-market accounting for our strategic investment portfolio, as required by ASC 2016-01, benefited GAAP EPS by approximately $0.25, and non-GAAP EPS by approximately $0.22 in the first quarter. We had a record quarter of operating cash flow, delivering $1.47 billion in the first quarter, up 19% over year-over-year. And I'm very pleased with this result, especially coming up on our strong collections and cash flow quarter in Q4 of last year. Free cash flow, defined as operating cash flow less capex, was $1.34 billion in the first quarter, up 25% over last year.

Turning to the balance sheet. As a result of the new accounting standards, we now report unearned revenue in place of deferred revenue. And as you know, the new revenue standard has us recognizing certain revenues sooner than under prior standards, and therefore, reduces unearned revenue at a faster rate than historical deferred revenue. This causes our unearned balance to be lower than our historically reported differed revenue.

Unearned revenue ended the quarter at $6.2 billion, up 25% in dollars and 23% in constant currency. As we've always said, deferred revenue was an imperfect growth predictor, as it was impacted by a number of factors, including invoicing timing and billing terms. To provide more transparency and a better indication of our future revenues, we are providing a new disclosure called remaining transaction price, which represents all future revenues that are under the contract -- essentially, our prior billed and unbilled deferred revenue. This balance is broken down into the amounts we expect to recognize as revenue in the next 12 months or current, our remaining transaction price, and the amount we expect to recognize as revenue beyond 12 months, which we're calling non-current remaining transaction price.

At the end of the first quarter, our total remaining transaction price was $20.4 billion, up 36% over last year. And the current remaining transaction price was $9.6 billion, up 26% year-over-year. Now, keep in mind, this balance is not impacted by invoicing terms, unlike deferred revenue was. We believe that this metric will be a better indicator of our future revenue than unearned or deferred revenue.

Before turning to guidance, let me take a minute to discuss MuleSoft's accounting practices going forward. During the transaction close process, we made the decision to conform MuleSoft's revenue recognition policy to Salesforce's policy under the new accounting standard ASC 606. Through this process, it was determined that a portion of the revenue related to on-premise implementations will be recognized as license revenue going forward. As we will be providing MuleSoft results separately for the remainder of the year, this license revenue will be included in our subscription and support line for FY19, and will be recognized upfront upon delivery.

Moving onto guidance. With our strong first quarter results giving us a fast start to the full year, we're raising our full year 2019 revenue guidance to $13.075 billion to $13.125 billion for 24% to 25% year-over-year growth. The guidance includes approximately $315 million from our acquisition of MuleSoft, which closed on May 2nd.

Turning to operating margin. With the close of the MuleSoft acquisition, we now expect our year-over-year non-GAAP operating margin improvement to be flat to plus 25 basis points. This guidance includes approximately a 125 basis point headwind from MuleSoft. We are updating our FY19 GAAP diluted EPS guidance to $0.49 to $0.51, and our non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance to $2.29 to $2.31. Keep in mind that that guidance does not take into account the possible future impact from mark to market adjustments related to ASC 2016-01, which may cause EPS volatility based on the market conditions.

We now expect full year 2019 operating cash flow of 14% to 15% year-over-year for an operating cash flow yield of approximately 24%. This guidance includes a headwind of approximately $150 million, related to the MuleSoft acquisition. For Q2, we're expecting revenues of $3.22 billion to $3.23 billion, GAAP loss per share of minus $0.09 to minus $0.08, and a non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.46 to $0.47.

As I mentioned previously, we believe the current remaining transaction price provides you a better-looking metric than unearned revenue. However, given the limited historical remaining transaction price data, we are going to provide incremental transparency by temporarily providing guidance for unearned revenue for the remainder of this year. In context, we expect year-over-year unearned revenue growth of 22% to 23% in Q2, excluding MuleSoft. Once we have our full year comparables numbers, we will expect to stop providing unearned revenue guidance.

To close, we delivered a strong first quarter that positioned us well for another year of durable growth. I'd like to thank our customers, our partners, our employees, and our shareholders for your continued support.

And with that, we'll open up the call for questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press * followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. And we'll pause for just a moment to compile to Q&A roster.

And your first question comes from Phil Winslow with Wells Fargo.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

Thanks, guys, and congrats on a great start to the year. And a particular shout out to Hawkins, Benioff, and Cummings for the awesome 606 data historically. Super helpful. A question for Marc B. on MuleSoft, I mean obviously, nobody knows CRM data better than salesforce.com. But wondering if you could talk about Einstein and MuleSoft, and that in the AI context, because obviously you're delivering already two billion predictions. How do you think MuleSoft, or how do you see MuleSoft augmenting that? And what kind of uptick do you think you'll see there inside customers?

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, as we go deeper into our vision with so many of our customers, the key thing that we are focused on is their single view of their customer. We just talked about so many of our key wins in the quarter. I mean, it could be Caren with their replatorming, or incredible brands like Gucci, or Bottega, or Yves Saint Laurent; the USDA and their relationship with their farmers and ranchers; it could be the work that we're doing with the line, giving their farm -- giving their orthodontists the ability to connect with their consumers in a whole new way; or it could be the incredible work that you're seeing with Adidas. In each and every case, they are working to understand and have a 360-degree view of their customer.

And the power of that is really augmented by our suite of CRM applications that do that for them. Things like our sales, commerce, service, communities, analytics, our core platform, collaboration, marketing, and exactly what you said -- by adding integration in that, it helps us bring in data from multiple public clouds, because many of our customers are now using multiple public clouds, and/or they might be, let's say, for example, the healthcare company seeking data from the healthcare system itself like an insurance system, or maybe some other type of key databanks associated with the healthcare industry. Integration is mission-critical for our customers to gain that 360-degree view of their customer.

Now, we've always known that at Salesforce. That's why we built an open system. That's why we we've had an application program interface. That's why we've had an AppExchange. That's why we focused on ISVs and had relationships with companies like MuleSoft. But it has become more important for our customers to be able to have and rely on an integration cloud. This idea that's deeply embedded inside our products, they can rely on this technology to be able to integrate all the key data so they can build that single view of the customer.

And we have Bret Taylor here, who is our President and Chief Product Officer. And Bret, do you want to just touch on that and your -- I know you've been traveling the country and talking to hundreds of our customers about their vision for integration. Can you tap that for us?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

Yeah, sure. When we talk to our customers, they talk about three main priorities as it relates to integration. They want to create customer experiences that transcend individual customer touch points. They want to integrate sales, service, and marketing into a single seamless customer experience. They want to make sure that they have multiple acquisitions and multiple regulatory climates, because they exist across international borders, that they can accomplish that with our platform. And they want to unlock the data from other legacy systems and bring into these customer systems so they can do these transformations around their customers.

And about the point you're asking about, Einstein is very insightful. They know that their AI is only as powerful as data it has access to. And so, when you think of MuleSoft, think unlocking data. The data is trapped in all these isolated systems -- on-premises, private cloud, public cloud. And in MuleSoft ,they can unlock this data and make it available to Einstein, and make a smarter customer-facing system. And that's what we're hoping to achieve with MuleSoft. And I think the thing you heard from Marc that I've heard over and over again from our customers is that integration is a strategic priority for our customers, because without it, they can't move fast enough on their customer-facing systems. So we like to say it unlocks the clock speed of innovation, and that's what we're really seeing from our customers. And I hope we'll accelerate our ambitions with Einstein.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

And Bret, I just want to ask before we go on. When we look at this next generation of intelligence, obviously Salesforce has done it a little bit differently than other companies, because we've taken a consistent artificial intelligence platform, Einstein, and we've now allowed all of our applications to flow through that. So, whether it's our Commerce Cloud, or our Sales Cloud, or our Service Cloud, they're all augmented now through Einstein. And I guess one of the major results that I'm so proud of, of your team and our engineering teams is two billion predictions a day. Where do you see that going?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

Well, I think the reason why Einstein has gotten so much adoption and so much traction is because it's simple to use. The power of the Salesforce platform is you just turn it on. And with things like our Commerce Cloud, you can do very simple things with Einstein to sort the products different in your product listings, and you'll drive more GMV, and drive more transactions because it's a better customer experience, right, and better products to the right people at the right time. Every single one of our cloud benefits from Einstein in this way. And by making it easy to adopt and easy to use, our customers are actually seeing the value of AI without hiring a legion of data scientists, and that's really the promise of Einstein and really our philosophy behind building the AI for CRM, is our ability to make it easy for our customers to use and adopt and benefit from this revolution we're seeing in AI.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

So, what you're saying is just by turning on Einstein or Commerce Cloud, customers, for example, have seen some incredible increase -- what is it, 15% or 20% in revenue, just by turning on artificial intelligence, the ability for that AI to start working with consumers who are using those Commerce Cloud Services?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

That's definitely right. I mean, we see one of the biggest barriers for our customers in adopting AI is just how challenging it is to understand and use. And we do know the value of Einstein and the value of integrating it deeply into our platform is that ease of turning it on and actually seeing the impact on your business immediately. And that's what we aspire to achieve with Einstein.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

It's not a programmatic interface. I mean, it is programmatic, it can be, but it's really declarative. It's easy to just get going.

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

That's accurate.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks so much.

Operator

And your next question comes from Heather Bellini with Goldman Sachs.

Mark Grant -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Hi, thanks. You've gotten Mark Grant here on for Heather. Just a quick one for me. You saw some acceleration in Service Cloud growth in the quarter. Can you give us a sense of how those conversations are going with customers, specifically around that cloud, and maybe an update on the appetite you're seeing in the market for some of those larger transformative multi-cloud deals?

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

Yeah. So, hi, this is Keith. Let me try to address this. So, generally speaking, if you think about how companies differentiate themselves, they do it on service, and they do it specifically around the consumer experience. And so, that's why we're seeing quite an uptick in our Service Cloud business. Now, also another piece of that is Field Service Lightning. So, we see just an incredible amount of demand for Field Service Lightning, again, because customers are taking advantage of these amazing technologies to drive and gather insights around what their customers are doing.

Service Cloud reached about a $3.4 billion run-rate in Q1. That's more than double the market, which is pretty amazing. And as Marc has indicated in his early comments, we're number one in the market, and we continue to take share in a very, very strategic market for us and our customers. So, that differentiation by service is very, very strategic for these customers. Many times, service is at the core of our all their digital transformations, which obviously piques the interest of the CEOs that we're having these conversations with. And it's not just service. It's all of our other core products that rotate around service that allows us to drive these transformations, and that's where you see these very, very large multi-cloud deals that I talked about earlier.

Mark Grant -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Keith, I want to ask you a question about -- in the quarter, you closed one of our largest transactions ever, and also just an incredible transaction with a very large insurance company. And one of the things about working with that company is you're really building a complete family of applications around the customer, like I mentioned. That is, they're not using just one cloud, right? They're really looking to us to bring together the entire customer experience. And we see that -- I mean, insurance is a great example of an industry where we've seen incredible transformation across all different types of insurance, and globally too, not just here in the United States, but in Japan and Europe, etc. Now, how does that idea that we're able to come in with a complete customer experience differentiate you in the marketplace?

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

Yeah. I mean, first of all, they're blown away when they see the capabilities that we have. I was with -- just a couple weeks ago, I was with the CEO of one of the largest insurance companies in the world. And we were having a conversation about changing their business model and transformation around how their agents can be more productive, how they can retire all these legacy systems so that they have a single unified view of the customer, how they can leverage Einstein for artificial intelligence and insights, how they can have issues around locking or unlocking the legacy data from their legacy systems. And all of these things together, we're the only company in the industry that can provide solutions as it relates to that 360-degree holy grail of the customer. And that's why -- I mean, insurance is obviously a sweet spot for us, but all financial services is a sweet spot for us. And that's why we're having so much momentum in that industry.

Mark Grant -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

So, you're able to put together many different types of solutions to offer to that customer than that 360-customer view?

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

That's exactly right.

Mark Grant -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

That's great. Thanks so much.

Operator

And your next question comes from Brad Zelnick with Credit Suisse.

Brad Zelnick -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Thanks very much, and congrats on a great start to the year. I have a question for Marc B. on the Marketing Cloud, which obviously had a great quarter in Q1. But one of your competitors in the space is now adding commerce functionality by way of an acquisition, which I think, as many investors comparing the different strategies in the market, and if we look out in the future when Salesforce is, say, $20 billion-plus in size and then reflect back on how you got there, how much of the battle will have been won in B2C versus B2B, and do you think you need to be deeper in content management to get there?

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, thanks so much for that question. You know, I think that as we've expanded our vision of what the customer experience is and where the market is going, of course, we've inspired other competitors to think about the future as well. And you know, that's our job, too, is to create followers. And we've seen a lot of other companies, smaller companies like the one you're talking, really try to look at where are they going in the future? And I think that that's great, because of course we want a competitive environment. So, our approach is really different, because we really see every B2B company and every B2C company becoming a B2B2C company, and I see that over and over and over again.

I mean, I gave a great example of Adidas. So, I think you know, when you look at a huge commerce story like Adidas, of course, when there's a new shoe like the Yeezy 350 that's launching, we have to be able to provide that tremendous customer experience that's highly differentiated for Adidas on our Commerce Cloud. But of course, that's not the only cloud that Adidas is using with us, because they need to be able to provide many different types of services to their customers. And that's really where we're gonna be able to jump in and offer them great success.

But of course, with an example of a company like that, you're gonna find that maybe only 20% of their revenue is in that B2C commerce experience. Many of those companies, 80% of their revenues is then complemented in that B2B commerce experience. This is why one of the most exciting acquisitions that we did in the quarter was a relatively small company that had been built natively on our platform called CloudCraze, because it really all of a sudden extended us into not just B2C commerce, but B2B commerce as well. And I don't think anybody can really touch the tremendous success we've had since acquiring Demandware, where it's been an awesome journey in just a couple years. But it's really because we've provided that complete experience around the customer.

Now, when you think about that, there's three major components to that. There's the system of record, of course, which is kind of where Salesforce started. You know, I would say that we probably have the strongest system of record experience in the industry. Then there's the system of engagement itself, whether it's internal users or externally. Again, we have such tremendous capability, whether it's a Heroku or communities, or even our Commerce Cloud. And three is the system of intelligence. Bret touched on it with Einstein, with AI. But even looking at our advanced analytics capabilities that we now bring to bear, no one else can provide that experience.

Now, we're not a closed solution. We're gonna work with every company. Of course, we have to, because our customers have many different types of solutions in their companies, and so, we're gonna do that. But when you look at some of these core areas, like the customer experience; the ability to provide enablement, like you've seen with our Trailhead capabilities; the ability to have that deep engagement, like I just mentioned; the level of intelligence; and now, integration -- having the number one integration cloud in the world. It really helps when we walk into a customer and say, look, we're the number one sales cloud in the world; the number one service cloud in the world; you know, we're the number one marketing cloud in the world according to IDC; and we've done all that in the flash of an eye. And I think that that's why you can see a very fast line. I mean, you guys are all tremendous financial analysts. You can put the numbers together and figure out when we're gonna get to $20 billion.

I mean, we think that we're gonna get there faster than we could have imagined. And that's why we're so excited about our business. And then we're going on, by the way. This is not -- this is, I think, the most exciting ever in our industry. I've never seen customers more excited about investing, especially in their digital transformation and their customer transformation. And we're well positioned as the number one CRM provider in the world. I hope that answers your question.

Operator

And your next question comes from Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley.

Keith Weiss -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Excellent. Thank you guys for taking the question, and very nice quarter. A question that's for Bret, and maybe one for Mr. Hawkins as well. I was wondering if we could get an update on the product strategy around MuleSoft now that it's closed. I guess maybe some timeframes on when we should see the integration cloud, the Salesforce.com integration cloud, rolling out, the product plans for the course of the existing MuleSoft platform that they have. And then maybe one for Mr. Hawkins. Any plans on sort of expense reductions, or any expense synergies you plan to get out of the MuleSoft platform as you do the integration with Salesforce.com?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

Okay, thanks for the question. To start, to talk about our integration cloud and MuleSoft, our focus right now is bringing MuleSoft into the company and making sure that we're consulting with every single one of our customers and every single one of our engagements about their integration strategy. Just helping them -- knowing that every digital transformation starts and ends with the customer, how can we help them set up an application network and unlock this data to transform their customer experience, is not starting now. MuleSoft has just incredible customer success, and so, we're looking to accelerate that with our amazing distribution team and all the deep customer relationships we've had. And really attaching to the strategy that Keith's team has around speaking the language of our customers and talking through the lens of healthcare, the lens of finance, and really helping people realize to transform the customer experience, you need to unlock the data from every system at your company. We'll be adding to that over the course of Connections and Dreamforce with sort of out-of-the-box solutions for across our cloud built on MuleSoft and built on the integration cloud over the course of the year.

Mark Hawkins -- President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, great. So, thanks, Keith, on that point. A couple of things here. One is that, as called out, we know that as per normal protocol, we'll have the headwind in the current year in FY19 due to things such as deal costs, integration costs, purchase accounting, and the entire DR writedown. We're taking all that onboard within the guide. And then of course, we're gonna invest to accelerate the success of this to really help drive the reality of helping our customer do all the things the customer wants and their success. So, we'll make the appropriate investment.

The key point to your question is, yes, we will be driving appropriate progress and synergy over time after we get through the -- bring them onboard, get them integrated and plugged in, much like we did with ExactTarget and Demandware. And when you look back and see what the effect was, and you see -- you fast-forward a little bit, these both penciled out very, very nicely. We pick up gains across where we need to, and this will be part of the picture where we continue to expand profit while we grow as well. So, you should expect that over the longer term, yes.

Operator

And your next question comes from Walter Pritchard with Citi.

Walter Pritchard -- Citi -- Analyst

Hi. Question for Keith Block, just on large deals. It sounds like this Q1, maybe it was stronger from a large deal perspective, and it's not usually a quarter with that as a driver. Could you help us understand, are you seeing an uptick in large deals generally that you expect to sustain this year, and what's driving that?

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

Hi, Walter. Thanks for the question. So, obviously, we had this terrific fiscal year last year. We had this amazing Q4. That momentum has absolutely carried into Q1. I would say that is a little bit different than the typical Q1. And we're very, very pleased with all these transactions and these relationships that we've extended and created in the quarter. Again, I just think it's an indication of our position in the marketplace, what our customers are looking for, and our ability to answer the bell for those customers and paint a vision around the 360-degree view of their customers. And that has just become more and more important with these amazing technologies.

This notion of the 360-degree view of the customer is the holy grail, and we've been talking about it for a very long time. And as I said earlier, we're really the only CRM platform that can deliver on that promise to our customers. So, the new wave of digital transformation is all about the customer. Everything starts and begins and ends at the customer. So, we're just in a tremendous position, and we have very, very strong execution, and that's why you're seeing these results.

Walter Pritchard -- Citi -- Analyst

And then for Mark Hawkins, just curious on the MuleSoft contribution to Q2, or the year, any possibility giving us that just so we can calibrate our modeling?

Mark Hawkins -- President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure, absolutely, Walter. I think a couple of things you should think about for the revenue. Top line revenue of $315 million, additive Q2 through Q4. That's on top of a powerful core growth where you can see we did an organic raise separate from that. So, $315 million at the top. And again, as per expectoration, we'll have the 125 basis point impact on what our operating margin would otherwise be. We're fully taking that onboard with all the deal costs, purchase accounting, a lot of those types of things that you would expect, and positioning it for the years ahead. We're pleased with this, especially post-close. I think we like what we see. So, that would be the effect there.

On the cash flow side, Walter, we would expect about a $150 million impact on the headwind, on the cash flow. Again, putting it together, if you think about our core cash flow, absolutely on track with a very attractive cash flow margin. Even with this temporary impact of some of the more transitional issues you would expect with an M&A integration and deal cost and such, we still have an operating margin yield of roughly 24%. So, those will be the attributes that will impact us this year, and we look forward to having this also continue to progress much like ExactTarget and Demandware.

Operator

And your next question comes from Adam Holt with MoffettNathanson.

Adam Holt -- MoffettNathanson -- Analyst

Hi, thanks so much. Just a follow-up on Walter's question first for Mark. Could you maybe narrow that commentary around Mule for the second quarter specifically? That was very helpful for the year, but just for the second quarter? And then secondly, for maybe Marc Benioff or Keith, you had another really good quarter on the platform side stand-alone. 35% growth, now you're layering in Mule, and you're doing much more big deals. Could you talk -- why don't you sort of talk us through the synergies and symbiotic relationships between the larger customer relationships where it might be more integration, more middleware, more what have you, and the business, because it seem like you're doing so well, both at the stand-alone and now that you layer in Mule. Thank you.

Mark Hawkins -- President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Adam, I guess a couple of things here. One is that we're pretty much sort of giving you the attributes for the full year. We haven't broken it down to guide every single quarter on that side of it. So, just to let you know, kind of think about the full picture of the year is the view that we're taking. That would be what I would say there. And I'll just kind of leave it at that.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

And I'll just fill in for you on -- you know, I think that when we walk in -- I was in New York last week, and I was with the CEO of a very large life insurance company. And they're a very large service cloud customer. And he actually had the service cloud running at his desk, and we were going through that. And it turned out he's also a very large MuleSoft customer as well. And it expands our relationship with that customer, and it makes us much more strategic with them. And then at that point, my ability to consult with that customer is really around, OK, now let's look at each one of your policyholders and your ability to have a 360-degree vision with them. And that goes for everything from their internal systems and their policy management systems, to even their capabilities that they have in other public clouds that they're using.

We're gonna wrap all of those things with all of our customer capability, because what he's mostly focused on is what are his customer relationships, and how is he driving those customer relationships forward? And that ability to have that conversation, well, it just gets extended each and every year. I mean, I was even able to start to talk to that CEO about enablement, that we have this tremendous platform called Trailhead, where we're giving this opportunity to enable, you know, so many of our customers. And now, giving that platform to them as well, the ability for them to enable their employees and their customers, it becomes a very critical part of our story, and gives our customers the ability to realize that we are a strategic part of their future, and we're gonna help them become more successful than ever through that fully integrated complete CRM platform.

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

Yeah. One thing I might add on too, just one tack-on here thing that might help you, Adam, is that one attribute that might help you in Q2 is just to know that when we guided the UR, we guided it off of our core, which excluded the MuleSoft. And the one thing you should think about is that we think about URs adding for MuleSoft, $75 million to $100 million. So, that might be useful to you as one other attribute that might be helpful.

Operator

And your next question comes from Kash Rangan with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Kash Rangan -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Yeah, thank you very much. Congratulations on the quarter. When you look at these mega transactions that happened in Q1, can you talk about what the pipeline for these mega transactions looks like? Is it from existing customers that had the longest period of runtime with Salesforce.com? And this largest deal that you did today, if I heard it right, can you talk -- if you've not already spoken about this customer, can you give us a little bit more color on the deployment? What exactly are they looking to achieve, and how much of a driver of digital transformation? I want to wrap it up with Mark Hawkins. Previously, when you announced Q4 results, you gave guidance for deferred revenue growth rate of 23%. Can you -- if you were to recap the unearned reported in Q1 in the light of deferred revenue growth rate, what would that have looked like? Thanks so much.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Mark, why don't you take that last part?

Mark Hawkins -- President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure, let me take the last part. Thank you, Kash ,on all accounts here. First thing that I would say to you is when you look at our UR, you look at a growth rate of 25%. And again, as described in the UR, it's basically the DR less the cumulative effect of revenue pull forwards related to the ASC 606 revenue implementation. So, by definition, UR, in this particular case, is less than DR. And so, one of the things that you could see is when you look our growth rate on an apples-to-apples basis growing 25% adjusted for this accounting change, that's obviously a number that we're happy with. And so, in that respect, just look at the growth rate of UR that we're actually reporting compared to the DR apples-to-apples growth rate that we're guiding, and we're actually pleased with the outcome.

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

Kash, this is Keith. Just to answer the first part of your question, we're looking at this market that we've created and we're really driving. And if you go out to 2021, this is a $120 billion-plus marketplace. And if you look at every category in that market, whether it's sales, or service, or marketing, or commerce, or platform, or analytics, etc., we are vastly outstripping the market in terms of growth. Again, whether it's sales, or services, or marketing, in some cases, nearly three times the pace of the market. So, why is that? Well, number one, it starts with the fact that we're one of the world's most innovative companies. Number two is that with all this amazing technology, again, these CEOs are looking for transformation opportunities around the customer, which is the new frontier. And we're basically the market leader, and the only one that can provide the 360-degree view of the customer and the insights associated with that.

So, we have become and continue to become very, very strategic to these customers. And lastly, they trust us. They trust our brand. They trust our platform. They trust our partnership. And as they think about their future and the future relationship that they want to have with their customers, they're turning to us. And that's why you're seeing these very, very large deals.

Now, I would love to tell you that we wake up every day and we need a new customer, and we sign one of these large deals. But the reality is that we work very, very hard. The team's doing incredible job of establishing that trust, speaking the language of the customer, having a global scale, and painting a vision for the future. And that's why you see these large deals. They really represent the customer's endorsement and trust of us to bring them into the future.

Operator

And your next question comes from Mark Murphy with J.P. Morgan.

Mark Murphy -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Yeah, thank you, congratulations. Question for Marc Benioff. Where do you stand philosophically on positioning as 100% pure cloud architecture versus being open-minded, which you seem to be too, crossing over into the edge of the hybrid cloud once in a while, if it make sense? And I'm asking in the context of MuleSoft and your future plans for it, because MuleSoft seems to succeed by offering a mix of cloud and on-prem deployments. And I'm just wondering, is that going to be the exception to the rule, or do you think that your infrastructure layer would actually increasingly have more of a hybrid cloud feel to it?

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

I think that's a great question, and yeah, MuleSoft, because of the nature of MuleSoft and the nature of integration itself, and the ability to do complex integration, which is what MuleSoft is really excellent at, and building this tremendous integration layer we call a bus across the enterprise, the ability to have an application interface to that bus, the ability to accelerate innovation, the ability to build the mobile apps or other kind of capabilities while unifying all these services to provide this 360-degree customer view, this is what MuleSoft excels at. I mean, we think it's absolutely the best in the category, and that's what our customers have said. Of course, we've been involved with the company almost from its very start, where we were very early investors in the company and carried it all the way through to IPO.

And it has an architecture where it runs partly on-premise. And that's one of the reasons it's able to do everything that it can do from an integration layer. From Salesforce's core platform, we're still 100% public cloud. I don't see that changing. There's going to be little instances here and there, especially when we acquire a company like MuleSoft or maybe other things in the future. I think that we've talked about, we begin and end our day at Salesforce with a beginner's mind and what the Japanese call shoshin, the idea that, look, we're not attached to any kind of religious dogma around the cloud. We're gonna do what's best for our customers and what's best for our company. And in the case of MuleSoft, I think it very much reflects that vision, that idea that we're gonna be able to deliver the best integration cloud. Bret, how do you see this?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

Yeah, I think MuleSoft is interesting because the power of integration is you can integrate every system, every device, and every user you want to reach, every customer. And that means you have to go wherever your systems are -- on-prem, on mobile devices, everywhere. So, we are extremely committed to the neutrality of the MuleSoft platform. When I say neutrality, it means it connects every system, whether or not the system is related to Salesforce, because that's the power of integration. And we want to unlock data from every system and bring all of that data to wherever your customers are, on every device. And so, I think MuleSoft is special in that respect, because that's the power of integration.

And as Marc said, though, from technology standpoint, we're committed to the cloud because it means we can deliver innovation to the customers faster three times a year, consistently since the company was founded. And we think that's the power of the cloud. But as you'll see with MuleSoft is, if our customers need us to have different architectures to unlock innovation, we'll go there. And I think you're seeing that with integration. And, you know, we'll continue to have that beginner's mind, which I think is vital for innovation. But we're committed to the cloud, and we're committed to that piece of innovation delivery, which is really the reason why we've seen so many customers recommit to us over the years. It's because they know they're not just getting the products we have today, but the products that we'll be delivering over the coming years.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

And I think you can see that also in how we deliver our product. Of course, we have many first party data centers where we have our own proprietary data center and capability. But in other cases, we've partnered with great companies like Amazon, like Google, and IBM, in many cases at the customer's request, to be able to deliver an alternative delivery experience. And so, if you're using Salesforce in Canada, for example, you're using that on the back of AWS, and there are so many other examples of what we're doing with different type of cloud deployments. And it's really driven by what our customers want for flexibility. And the ability to have great relationships and great alliances with companies like Amazon or with Google and with IBM, give us even more capability to deliver this kind of, what I would say, highly flexible execution environment for the customer.

Operator

And your last question comes from Alex Zukin with Piper Jaffray.

Alex Zukin -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst

Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions. Congratulations on another great quarter. Marc, maybe two quick ones for you. You mentioned GDPR, and you mentioned the push for a data privacy law domestically. I wanted to ask what impacts, if any, have you seen or anticipate on your marketing cloud business? And then maybe bigger picture, you know, as we think about the move from systems of record to systems of intelligence, how are you positioning the company as a system of automation for customers as well?

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think it's a great question. And as we head toward Dreamforce and as we head toward -- if you don't have it on your calendar, it's the week of September 24th here in San Francisco. It feels like we were just at Dreamforce. But Dreamforce is approaching very fast, and you should all plan on coming back to San Francisco for what will e our biggest and best Dreamforce ever. I think about how does that look for customers? And things are changing, and some of that has been induced by our industry, where for the first six months, I think, that in many aspects of our industry, we've been going through a crisis of trust, and where the headlines in many of the newspapers have been about vendors who are having trust issues with their customers. We saw that a little bit last year in San Francisco, and this year, we've seen it again.

I think from the European perspective, the way they look at data is data belongs to you. It's your data. Now for us at Salesforce, we understand that. We've had that position from the beginning. And our customers' data belongs to them. It's their data. I think in some cases, the companies that are start-ups and next generation technologies here in San Francisco, they think data is theirs. I think the Europeans with GDPR have really flipped the coin, especially in advertising, but in another areas, saying hey, this data belongs to the consumer or to the customer. You guys have to pivot back to the consumer; you have to pivot back to the customer. We need a national privacy law here in the United States that probably looks a lot like GDPR.

This is gonna help our industry. It's gonna set the guardrails around trust, around safety. It's gonna provide the ability for the customers to interact with great next generation technologies in a safe way. I think that this is going to accelerate with artificial intelligence. We saw that recently with an AI demonstration from our industry, where average customers could not tell, were they interacting with a computer or were they interacting with a human being? That starts to cross the line on what is trust. And that's where our industry really has to come forward and say, we're gonna make sure that these technologies are trust-based. And I think the Europeans definitely got that figured out. And I think the rest of the regulators in the world are looking strongly at that.

When it comes to the advertising industry and companies that serve the advertising industry exclusively, honestly, while I think that that advertising is a model that will continue to be successful, and digital advertising, well, I think that the idea that you need to build a one-on-one relationship with your customer, something that we've been saying now for almost 20 years, is probably more true than ever. Because ultimately, your ability to have success with your customer, whether to be able to sell, or service, or market to them, or conduct commerce with them in a one-on-one way based on the system of record that you have with that customer. Salesforce is a system of record oriented company. That's where we started. And then we evolved into the system of engagement. We evolved into the system of intelligence.

And in many ways, we're becoming a system of systems, which I think we'll show you at Dreamforce. But at the end of the day, where we see the world going is, we have -- we're providing to our customers the ability for them to have that unique customer experience. To say that you're gonna have this fully anonymized relationship with your customer, and if that's the future, I am really not buying into that. I know, Bret, you've straddled both worlds. Where do you think is going?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

I think, you know, the thing that I've noticed from the industry is the confluence of the controversy that's driving a lot of technology companies and Silicon Valley recently with GDPRs, making trust really the number one topic for a lot of our customers with us. And you've heard us talk a lot about trust in the context of our customers' trust in our platform. We also want our platform to be a mechanism that our customers can use to engender trust with their consumer and with their customers. And if you're a multinational right now, you're dealing with different regulatory frameworks in different regions. And one of the strengths of our platform is to be able to not only have maybe a personalized marketing and commerce experience with your consumers, but do so in a trusted way. They can handle all the different regulatory permutations that you deal with on a daily basis as a multinational company.

I mean, when you think of the strength of having one platform for your system of record for your customers, I think it's really the rapidly changing regulatory landscape and the rapidly changing expectation of consumers, is really strengthening our position with our customers right now, because it's so challenging for any company to navigate. And I think that really comes with -- that really amplifies the value proposition of Salesforce, because you can build these systems of engagement and systems of record in a way that actually follows consumer trust and follows the evolving regulatory landscape. So, I think it's really turned into something that we are really trying to lean into and really lean into the value of trust as our number one value.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Amy, you've done so much work with GDPR and you're helping so many of our customers around the world implement GDPR. And of course, Salesforce has now become a system that is allowing our customers to implement GDPR. Where do you see this going from a legal and privacy point of view?

Amy Weaver -- General Counsel

Well, thanks, Mark. I think this is really a critical point for the U.S. with privacy law. We're seeing kind of a global conversion around the importance of privacy. And it's going to be important for the U.S. to be a leader now and not just a follower. I think there are three things now that we really have to focus on as a country. One is insisting that organizations are transparent about their data practices. That's what's collected, how it's used, who it's been shared with. The second is giving individuals more rights to control about their personal data. As Marc said, it starts with the individuals, their privacy and their rights. And then the third is holding organizations truly accountable for their privacy practices. And I think that this is going to be a key for our entire industry in establishing and maintaining trust.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Amy, you see a big movement here in California. There's a group of very well respected executives, not just from our industry, but also from the privacy and legal community, trying to build the California GDPR. We've called for a U.S. version of GDPR, a national privacy law. How do you see these things coming together? What is your dream for privacy in the United States?

Amy Weaver -- General Counsel

Well, I don't think that there's any doubt that federal privacy law is the best for the go. One of the nice things about GDPR is that it replaced the patchwork of laws throughout Europe. Now, it may be necessary to have some state-by-state implementation in the United States as a practical step forward, but the ideal is really to get us to one national privacy law that we can all agree to.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

What can Salesforce do to help customers implement GDPR today, Amy?

Amy Weaver -- General Counsel

I think we can do a lot. We have spent the last year working very, very carefully with our customer data. We have some terrific res