Earnings By The (Lots Of) Numbers

Earnings, earnings everywhere, and so what do the numbers tell us? Across eCommerce, across payments giants, across social media, the last several days have been a deluge of data.

All too often, observers fixate on the gyrations of stock prices in the aftermath of earnings reports, or simply on revenues and earnings, when there’s so much … more … to be uncovered. We’ve given you a bit of a cheat sheet, or a refresher of sorts, as to what can be viewed as among the most important numbers coming out of the releases, the supplementals, the business units that give insight into where these firms have been and where they might be headed.

Amazon

• Revs of $72.4 billion beat estimates of $71.9 billion
• Earnings of $6.04 beat estimates of $5.68
• Amazon Web Services grew by 45 percent to $7.4 billion
• Physical retail sales were down 3 percent year on year
• Echo product were among the best selling Amazon products globally
• Subscription service revenues were up 25 percent to $3.96 billion; Amazon Prime has more than 100 million subscribers in the U.S.

Visa

• Net revenues were up 13 percent in the December period to $5.5 billion
• Payments volume and processed transactions gained 11 percent, a bit below the payments volume expectations of 12.3 percent
• Through Jan 21, said management, processed transactions are up 12 percent
• Cross-border transactions were up 7 percent in the quarter
• Total card growth across the portfolio was four percent to 3.3 billion cards

Mastercard

• Gross dollar volume up 14 percent to $1.5 trillion
• Debit transactions were up 12.2 percent in the December period, credit transactions up 6.6 percent
• Cards issued grew by 7 percent more than 2 billion
• Revenues were up 17 percent on an FX neutral basis $3.8 billion
• Switched volume through the end of January was up 15 percent on a global basis

PayPal

• Payment transactions were up 28 percent for the quarter, and came in at 2.9 billion transactions
• Total payment volume for the quarter was up 26 percent to $164 billon
• Through the end of the year the company had 242 million accounts tied to those who use them at least 37x annually, up 9 percent
• The company added 13.8 million new accounts in total in the fourth quarter, up 58 percent
• Venmo transactions hit $19 billion, up 80 percent year on year
• 21 million merchants, 267 million active accounts

American Express

• Net card fees were up 11 percent in the quarter, year over year, to $897 million
• Billed business was up 10 percent and total billed business was $136 billion
• Cards in force were up 7 percent to 54.5 million
• Net write offs were unchanged at 1.5 percent

Microsoft

• Revenues up 12 percent in the quarter to $32.5 billion
• Intelligent Cloud ops revenues were up 20 percent year on year to $9.4 billion
• Azure revenue growth held stead on a percentage basis, up 76 percent
• Commercial Cloud was $9.4 billion, Azure boosted server products and cloud services revenue by 24 percent

eBay

• Revenues were up 6 percent on a currency-neutral basis to $2.87 billion
• Active buyers were up 4 percent to 179 million
• Market Services and other revenues were up a bit less than 1 percent year on year
• Stubhub was down 1 percent year on year on weak World Series-related business
• GMV via intermediated payments stood at $143 million, cumulatively, sellers up 40 percent through the period

Blue Apron

• 25 percent year over decline in the customer base, to 557,000 at the end of the quarter
• Average revenue per customer up a bit from $248 to $252
• Fourth quarter revenues off by 25 percent to $140.7 million
• Loss narrows a bit to $23.7 million from $39.1 million
• Average order value was $58.12 compared to $57.99 last year

Facebook

• Daily active user base up 9 percent year on year to 1.52 billon on average
• Monthly active users up 9 percent during the quarter to 2.32 billion
• Average revenues per user at $7.37, up 19 percent year on year
• Mobile was 93 percent of advertising revenues in the fourth quarter, up from 89 percent in the fourth quarter of last year
• Revenues of $16.9 billion topped estimates of about $16.4 billion