Amazon

Dropbox (DBX) is the first loss-making company to go public, and it had an overwhelming response from investors when it did on March 23, 2018.

The Walt Disney Company’s (DIS) flagship sports network, ESPN, has been facing a continued decline in its number of subscribers over the past few years.

Retail giant Walmart (WMT) will expand its home delivery of groceries from its current total of six cities to 100 cities by the end of this year.

eBay (EBAY) continued boosting its R&D (research and development) budget throughout 2017, leading to a 9.9% increase in its R&D costs overall in the year.

Media behemoth the Walt Disney Company (DIS) has announced the purchase of another media company, 21st Century Fox (FOXA).

n 4Q17, Time Warner’s HBO segment reported quarterly revenue growth of 13% at $1.7 billion. HBO contributes ~19.5% of Time Warner’s total revenues.

Tech stocks with good growth prospects usually trade at a higher PE (price-to-earnings) ratio than the broader S&P 500, which is why they are considered relatively expensive.

The top three drugstore chains in the US are in the process of forming new associations through mergers and acquisitions to create a more diversified portfolio and protect themselves from the growing online threat.

In 4Q17, Alphabet set aside $9.9 billion to cover taxes on its accumulated foreign profits in relation to the recent US tax reforms.

According to Juniper Research, the value of the digital TV and video industry is expected to grow to $119 billion by 2022, up from an estimated $64 billion in 2017.

Etsy (ETSY) reported strong 3Q17 results and ended fiscal 2017 with its stock price rising 73.6%. This increase beat the S&P 500 Index’s (SPY) gain of 19.4%.

Amazon (AMZN) is raising its Amazon Prime membership fees for some subscribers.

In 3Q17, PayPal’s (PYPL) net profit grew 17.6% YoY (year-over-year) to $380.0 million. Its profit rose 27.0% YoY in 2Q17 and 5.0% YoY in 1Q17.

Target (TGT) stock was trading at a forward PE ratio of 14.8x on January 9, 2018, which seems compelling when compared to the peer group average of 24.5x.

With a market share of 41.6%, Oracle leads the database space. However, its market share has dropped 1.5% since 2016. Microsoft (MSFT) and IBM (IBM) are the top three players in this space.

Among hyperscale cloud providers that drove growth in the server space, the majority of the share was taken by ODMs, which are also known as white box manufacturers.

Amazon (AMZN) has finally launched its Prime membership in Singapore, thus expanding its reach in the fastest growing region of Southeast Asia.

Amazon’s (AMZN) cloud services unit, Amazon Web Services (or AWS), and Equinix (EQIX) have strengthened their partnership.

Amazon’s (AMZN) cloud computing business Amazon Web Services (or AWS) has decided to take its virtual assistant Alexa to offices.

Donald Trump’s promises of financial deregulation, infrastructure spending, and tax cuts played a major role in the stock market rally this year.

Consistent growth in the cloud and mainframe systems enabled IBM to post a lower-than-expected fall in its revenues in 3Q17.

Target announced several customer-friendly initiatives that are resulting in higher sales. The company ramped up its delivery mechanism.

Walmart (WMT) reported sales of $123.2 billion in fiscal 3Q18, which easily exceeded analysts’ expectation of $121 billion, rose 4.2% YoY (year-over-year).

In a bid to retain market share, Netflix (NFLX) continues to boost its investment goals by strengthening its content portfolio.

Across the five moat sources (network effect, intangible assets, cost advantage, switching costs, and efficient scale), efficient scale is the most likely to drive a “narrow moat” rating from Morningstar.

Netflix noted that it would spend $8 billion on original content in 2018.

The US drugstore market is dominated by two major players—CVS Health (CVS) and Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA). CVS and WBA accounted for ~29% of the country’s prescription dispensing revenues in 2016.

Red Hat’s dominant presence in the Linux space will further enable it to cross-sell its OpenStack to new and existing clients as hybrid cloud adoption increases.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) split with HP (HPQ) in November 2015. Almost two years after the spin-off, HPE is still struggling to grow revenue and improve its profit margins.

The technology industry is the most competitive industry, making it crucial for companies in this industry to have a competitive edge for survival.

In 2017 to date, Oracle stock has surged 33% and outperformed the computer software sector, which grew 24% year-to-date.

After bleeding in the stock market in 2015 and 2016, Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM) stock finally bounced back in 2017, rising 27.0% at the end of July 2017. But August turned out to be one of its worst months.

Amazon (AMZN) announced the acquisition of premium organic and natural food retailer Whole Foods Market on June 16, 2017. The deal sent tremors across the food retail sector.

As competition heats up in the grocery business, Walmart (WMT) is leveraging its strong retail presence, which gives the company an edge over the competition.

Walmart (WMT) reported its fiscal 2Q18 results on August 17. Walmart’s adjusted earnings per share of $1.08 beat Wall Street’s estimate and increased 1% year-over-year.

Amazon sold bonds to finance Whole Foods acquisition On August 15, Amazon (AMZN) sold $16 billion in bonds to fund its acquisition of Whole Foods (WFM). The bonds were met with robust demand from investors, as the tech giant rarely visits the bond market. Amazon is taking advantage of a good borrowing environment. Amazon’s bond sale is the […]

Google, Alphabet’s operating unit that manages cloud computing, noted that it is only a matter of time before it overtakes AWS to become the world’s largest cloud vendor.

Target’s (TGT) sales for 2016 fell 6.0% due to lower comparable store sales and weak store traffic.

The big technology companies (XLK) are expected to continue dominating the markets (SPY) (QQQ) thanks to their size, innovations, acquisitions, and investments in 2017.

In fiscal 4Q17, Alibaba’s international commerce retail business generated $353.0 million in revenues, up 312.0% YoY.

Yelp trimmed its 2017 adjusted EBITDA—a move stemming from, in part, the impact of its acquisition of Turnstyle.

If Intel is not able to compete with Xilinx in terms of technology, it can compete in terms of price.

Intangible assets are nonphysical and nonmonetary in nature, which makes it hard to measure and manage them. They can be worth more to a company than tangible assets.

Best Buy (BBY) stock fell 6.3% on July 10, 2017, in reaction to news of Amazon’s (AMZN) new service that will compete with Best Buy’s Geek Squad.

Microsoft’s Cosmos DB is expected to make conventional data migration easier. Although this bodes well for Microsoft, it is expected to have an adverse impact on Oracle’s cash cow—its database business.

PayPal (PYPL) is trading at a price-to-book value of 4.4x.

Amazon’s (AMZN) balance sheet reflects total debt of $7.7 billion. The company reported total capital of ~$29.4 billion, and its total-debt-to-total-capital ratio is 50%.

News of the Whole Foods acquisition has already given Amazon a boost, pushing its stock up 2.4% and adding $11.0 billion to its market cap, which nearly pays for the $13.7 billion deal.

Microsoft has already agreed to partner with Qualcomm to develop server chips.

In 1Q17, IBM’s GTS (global technology services) business’s revenue accounted for ~45% of its total revenue. Its performance is crucial to IBM’s overall growth.