Morning Brief: Google parent Alphabet has strong Q1
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
What to watch today
The busy week for corporate earnings will really kick into high gear on Tuesday. In the morning, Caterpillar (CAT), Coca-Cola (KO), United Technologies (UTX), Lockheed Martin (LMT), 3M (MMM), and Verizon (VZ) will be among the S&P 500 reporting results before the bell. Caterpillar, which is a bellwether for global manufacturing activity and could be sensitive to increasing trade tensions between the U.S. and China, will be a closely-watched result for business sentiment in what’s been a choppier first quarter than what was seen during 2017.
Top news
Google parent Alphabet beats expectations, shares jump: Google’s (GOOG, GOOGL) parent company Alphabet reported its first quarter 2018 financial results on Monday, posting earnings of $13.33 per share on $31.15 billion of revenue. Those numbers beat analyst expectations of $9.30 per share on $24.75 billion in revenue, respectively. The company’s revenue reflects a 26% jump over last year’s levels, or 23% on a constant currency basis. [Yahoo Finance]
China’s Didi reportedly in talks for IPO as early as this year: Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing is in talks for a multi-billion-dollar initial public offering that could take place as early as this year, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The company is hoping to fetch a valuation of at least $70 billion to $80 billion if it goes public and has been in talks with bankers in recent weeks over the feasibility of raising cash through an IPO in the second half of 2018, the Journal said. [Reuters]
United Airlines CEO to skip bonus, chairman is stepping aside: United Continental Holdings Inc.’s (UAL) top executive is forgoing a bonus for last year and its chairman is stepping aside. Chief Executive Officer Oscar Munoz asked the board not to award him the payout for 2017, the airline said in a regulatory filing Monday. The announcement came a year after United sparked a public-relations fiasco by dragging a passenger from a plane. The carrier’s image took another hit this year when a dog died in its care. [Bloomberg]
Facebook releases long-secret rules on how it polices the service: Facebook Inc. (FB) on Tuesday released a rule book for the types of posts it allows on its social network, giving far more detail than ever before on what is permitted on subjects ranging from drug use and sex work to bullying, hate speech and inciting violence. Facebook for years has had “community standards” for what people can post. But only a relatively brief and general version was publicly available, while it had a far more detailed internal document to decide when individual posts or accounts should be removed. [Reuters]
For more of the latest news, go to Yahoo Finance
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