Market scorecard
US markets ended on a moderately positive note yesterday after a quiet, late-summer trading session in New York. The technology sector firmed a little, with Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) rising by 1.5% ahead of its much-anticipated earnings announcement later tonight. We should see some fireworks tomorrow, depending on how those go.
In other company news, Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) is up 7.7% after the retailer raised its sales forecast. Elsewhere, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret that Facebook (NASDAQ:META) didn't push back harder against the US government's Covid-19 censorship requirements during the pandemic. Lastly, cannabis stocks including Curaleaf and Canopy went up in smoke (down about 10% each) over some regulatory disappointment from the DEA.
In short, the JSE All-share closed up 0.43%, the S&P 500 inched up 0.16%, and the Nasdaq also crawled 0.16% higher.
One thing, from Paul
Luca Maestri is stepping down as Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) financial chief. He will be replaced by his most senior lieutenant, Kevin Parekh, at the end of the year.
A few years back, Maestri made some very interesting comments about the way that Apple runs its business:
"We run very lean. We run the finances of Apple with a team half the size of a company one-tenth our size. Quality is more important than quantity. I have an investor relations group of two persons. The group that manages $230 billion of cash is seven people. If we have the right people we don't need a lot of them."
Apple is a well-oiled machine. It makes products that people love. They have fantastic profit margins and reward their shareholders with rising sales, steady dividends and share buybacks. We are very happy shareholders.
Byron's beats
We are very excited to see the Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) results out after the closing bell tonight. Take a look at the recent trends in capital expenditure by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Meta. In 2015 the combined amount was $18 billion. Over the last 12 months it has soared to a whopping $118 billion.
The vast majority of that spending went to building date centres to run AI apps and cloud services. By extension, a massive portion was to buy high-end chips from Nvidia.
Each of the tech titan CEOs have said similar things during their latest earnings calls - they are not risking being left behind in the AI race by underinvesting. In other words, they will not be slowing down anytime soon.
Michael's musings
Yesterday, Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) announced 50% price cuts to the two lowest doses of its blockbuster weight-loss medication, Zepbound. This is for patients who opt to purchase them via the company's telehealth platform, LillyDirect. The two doses will be sold in vials instead of inside expensive auto-injector pens.
Up until recently, there has been a shortage of Zepbound, partly due to the complexity of manufacturing large enough quantities of auto-injector pens. In times of shortage, the US allows competitors to sell non-branded versions of treatments containing the active ingredient, which they call compound drugs. It has created a massive parallel market.
Eli Lilly has managed to end the shortage and is now pushing hard to squash the compound drug market. These discounts will help Eli Lilly undercut the no-name competitors and assist in cutting out middlemen in the supply chain too. I suspect that once the supply of auto-injectors improves, and when the parallel market is crushed, Eli Lilly will slowly increase prices again.
Bright's banter
Amer Sports, owned in part by Lululemon (NASDAQ:LULU) founder Chip Wilson, beat market expectations with its latest earnings report, sending shares up by as much as 15%.
The company, which includes brands like Salomon and Wilson, saw a 16% rise in second-quarter sales to $994 million, driven largely by Chinese demand for its outdoor brand Arc'teryx. Despite this boost, Amer reported a small net loss of $1.8 million.
The Wilson brand, known for basketball and tennis gear, also showed signs of recovery after a tough start to the year, posting modest gains. This turnaround was bolstered by its new "Tennis 360" initiative, focused on expansion in China and a new product line with Roger Federer.
Additionally, one of my favourite basketball stars, Caitlin Clark's collection, sold out quickly, adding to the brand's momentum. Clark is set to be the face of Wilson basketball, further enhancing the brand's visibility and appeal.
Amer shares trade at around $14, their highest in two months, reflecting a 26% gain in the past month alone. This rally benefited Chip Wilson, who saw his stake in the company rise in value by over $125 million. Wilson and his partners acquired Amer for $5.5 billion in 2019 and took it public earlier this year. Amer's current market cap now stands at $7.1 billion.
Signing off
Asian markets are mixed again this morning. Equity benchmarks rose in India, Japan, and Taiwan but fell in Hong Kong, mainland China, and South Korea.
In local company news, Stadio (JO:SDOJ) reported strong results, with enrolment numbers surpassing 50 000 this month, the majority of whom are remote students. The company saw a 16% increase in revenue for the six months ending in June, which helped boost its earnings by 20%.
US equity futures are slightly higher pre-market. The Rand is trading at around R17.74 to the US Dollar.
In addition to Nvidia, Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) and CrowdStrike report their quarterly earnings today. The Crowdstrike (NASDAQ:CRWD) numbers include two weeks of trading after the massive outage. The market will be looking closely to see how much it dented sales momentum.
If you can make it through Wednesday it will be downhill from here to the weekend.