CE 100 Index Gains 2.1% as Porch Soars and Fiverr Roars After Earnings

The avalanche of earnings reports continued this past week, driving the CE 100 Index 2.1% higher.

Porch Group shares surged nearly 73%  and drove the Live segment ahead by 7.6%.

The company said this week that the Texas Department of Insurance has approved its application to form and license Porch Insurance Reciprocal Exchange, a new homeowners insurance reciprocal exchange.  The company said in its announcement that “forming PIRE is a key step in Porch’s strategy to increase profitability and stabilize earnings in its go-forward Insurance reporting segment by reducing direct exposure to claims and weather risks.”

In terms of the mechanics,  a reciprocal insurer is owned by its policyholders, much like Farmers Insurance and Erie Insurance operate. Porch will be the operator managing PIRE’s operations, the company said.

Fiverr, Roblox Stand Out

As earnings rolled in, Fiverr shares gained 34.6%, rallying the Work Pillar by 2.8%.  The company’s latest earnings results highlighted that programs geared toward encouraging buyers to spend more — as they seek freelancers for “complex” projects — are bearing fruit.

And as been seen with past earnings reports, ongoing and upcoming artificial intelligence (AI)-driven initiatives to match buyers and workers efficiently remain front and center.

The company’s earnings release and related materials noted that revenues were above the guided range for the quarter, up 8% year over year to $99.6 million. Though active buyers were down 9% to 3.8 million, the company noted that spending per buyer was $296, up 9%. CEO Micha Kaufman said in his remarks that buyers are coming to the company to meet the needs of “larger and more complex” projects.

Roblox was 22% higher, and the Have Fun segment advanced 3.3%.

The company’s own earnings report showed continued traction with users over 13 are now a majority of the company’s hundreds of millions of users.

The runway is considerable, as executives said that the company has garnered 3% its TAM [total addressable market] in the gaming market space. Daily active users of Roblox’s virtual worlds for the quarter grew 27% to 88.9 million, the platform’s highest growth rate in around two years. Per Roblox’s call, total hours engaged on the platform increased by 29%, outpacing analyst forecasts.

Visa and Mastercard each were about 3% higher through the week on earnings but were not enough to stave off the Pay and Be Paid segment’s 0.2% loss.

Visa’s results detailed that flows, in particular, gained momentum. Commentary from the call and from the earnings supplement and earnings release show that overall payments volume grew 8% year over year. In the U.S., payment volume grew by 5%, and international payment volume grew by 10%. Cross-border volume, excluding intra Europe, rose 13%. In consumer payments, CEO Ryan McInerney detailed that Visa’s credential count was up 7% year over year, to 4.6 billion, and has issued cumulatively 11.5 billion tokens.

In Mastercard’s earnings, CEO Michael Miebach said on a conference call with analysts: “On Halloween, well, there’s nothing spooky here.” Revenue growth of 14%, to $7.4 billion, was boosted by healthy consumer spending, which also spurred cross-border volume growth of 17% year over year.

Commercial volumes gained 11% year over year in the quarter on a currency-neutral basis. Supplemental materials from the company detailed that transactions were 11% higher, and the number of cards wielded by consumers was 6% higher, to 3.4 billion, globally. Card-present growth was aided by an increase in contactless payments, which now represent 70% of all in-person transactions.

But Xerox lost 16.7%, as the company’s quarterly revenue came in at $1.5 billion, missing analysts’ estimates of $1.6 billion; the consolidated top line was 7.5% lower year on year. Equipment revenues were short of expectations, executives said in tandem with the earnings announcement; revenues for the current year are projected to be down 10% year over year.