Trade Alert: Earnings analysis for Tesla, Twitter, Snap, Amazon and First Solar

I got home from NYC and to bed late at 3am in NM last night (this morning?) and got play with Amaris for a while before I came into the office a few hours late. We’ve had a few wild earnings reports this week while I was in NYC. Here’s my take on them.

Snap – Snap added 7 million daily active users this quarter to hit 210 million, up 13% year-over-year. Snap also beat on revenue, notching $446 million, which is up a whopping 50% year-over-year, at a loss of $0.04 EPS. That flew past Bloomberg’s consensus of Wall Street estimates that expected $437.9 million in revenue and a $0.05 EPS loss. Those are all impressive numbers and I continue to like the potential for Snap’s fundamentals, especially user growth, to continue to improve. Snap’s been public for about two and half years now. Do you realize the IPO came at $17. We’ve owned the stock this time since $6 or so per share and I continue to hold most of it, though I’ve trimmed some on occasion, as noted in past Trade Alerts.

Twitter – Twitter’s approach to privacy is such that they actually will take a hit to their revenues when they realized they’ve been violating their own privacy policies. I’m not sure Facebook would ever do something like that. In the long-term, I continue to think that Twitter is going to maintain its unique place in our global society. I’m buying some more TWTR here around $30 per share and it’s one of my largest positions.

Tesla – Well, this turned out to be prescient when I’d written it a few weeks ago: “Tesla can finally recognize some of their Full Self Driving computer revenues since they finally delivered some self driving to me. Which means let’s say 200,000 cars out of 500,000 Teslas sold so far have FSD….if they recognize $1000 (I paid $6000 for our FSD) for each of the 200,000 cars with FSD, that would be $200 million in almost pure earnings with huge margins to add to this quarter’s 100,000 deliveries. It won’t affect free cash flow or anything, but with articles like this one from the WSJ this weekend talking about how much money Wall Street is expecting Tesla to ‘lose’ in their earnings report in a few weeks, it’s probably a net positive at least. Tesla’s still not out of the woods, so be careful, of course.”  The truth is that Tesla is still not out of the woods, so be careful. I’m trimming just about 10% of my TSLA here as it was already my biggest position and I need to be disciplined about managing its size.

Amazon – Look, it’s fine. I’d buy more if it crashes to $1600.

First Solar – The report wasn’t terrific, but it’s also fine. I’ve just gotten started buying FSLR and I nibbled a little more this morning on this sell-off. Revenue growth will return, I expect, and longer-term, solar is the best way to produce energy and First Solar is one of the best solar companies in the world.