CE 100 Index Slips 0.5% as Porch’s 33% Rally Is Offset by Fastly’s Slide

The end of earning season is in sight — the last slew of reports will appear through the next few weeks.

And headed into the long President’s Day weekend, the CE 100 Index’s fortunes were dictated by dramatic swings in individual names, in most cases spurred by reports on how the December quarter fared.

Porch Group, which rocketed up nearly 33%, pushed the Live pillar 3% higher.

In an announcement detailing that fourth quarter results would be published early next month, Porch set optimistic expectations with its preliminary comments on the three months that rounded out 2023.

The company said that “business performed well in the fourth quarter, with 2023 revenue and adjusted EBITDA expected to be ahead of guidance.” Beyond that qualitative language, Porch noted that the company’s previously-provided full-year guidance looked for revenues of $415 million and adjusted EBITDA that would show a loss of $52 million.

Resideo Technologies followed with a 26.5% rally, adding to the Live pillar’s gains. The company announced fourth quarter results saying that fourth quarter revenues were down 1% year on year to $1.5 billion, while eCommerce sales gained 1% during the same period. Looking ahead, the company forecast 2024 revenues of $6 billion to $6.3 billion, where that tally had been $6.2 billion in 2023.

Uber Gains on Cross-Selling Momentum and Memberships

Uber, as we noted here, posted results that showed continued momentum in cross-platform use, and a boost in membership rosters. Uber’s surge moved the Move segment 1.8% higher. Supplementals released by the company detail that the active consumers were up 15% year on year to 150 million. Trips taken, overall, were up 24% to 2.6 billion, which means that the monthly trips per active user stood at 5.8 in the most recent quarter, up from 5.4 a year ago, Uber reported.

Uber One membership, per the remarks, now represents nearly 50% of U.S. Delivery Gross Bookings, up 10 percentage points year on year. There are 19 million members, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said, adding that “members buy more. They stay longer and just mathematically, members will account for higher percentage of gross bookings, which means a higher percentage of customers are going to stick around for longer and transact more frequently.” The number of consumers who order from Uber Eats who also order groceries has grown to 14% year on year, said Khosrowshahi.

But the Enablers group slid 3.5%, led by Fastly’s 35% share slide.  The company said this past week that it notched December quarter total revenues of $137.8 million, representing 15% year-over-year growth and 8% sequential increase. Total customer count was 3,243 in the fourth quarter, up 141 from the third quarter.

Average enterprise customer spend of $880,000 was up 3% quarter on quarter. But as financial news sites such as Yahoo Finance noted, Fastly’s first-quarter 2024 revenue forecast of $131 million to 135 million came in below expectations of $136 million.

Affirm shares gave up 13% in the wake of earnings. CEO Max Levchin said in a letter accompanying fiscal end-quarter earnings that “given the overall seasonality of our business, we expect Affirm Card GMV [gross merchandise volume] and user additions to begin reflecting normal seasonality, which may impact quarter-on-quarter GMV growth rates versus the seasonally strong December quarter.”

Guidance reflects GMV expected for the third quarter of the current fiscal year to stand at about $5.8 billion to $6 billion and revenues of $530 million to $550 million, where those numbers had been a respective $7.5 billion and $591 million in the most recent fiscal quarter.

In the December quarter, GMV was up 32% and active Affirm Card consumers were more than 700,000 at year end. Delinquencies were flat year over year and credit performance is returning to pre-pandemic levels, Levchin said in the letter. Supplemental materials show that transactions per active consumer were up 25% to 4.4.