Stocks seesawed on Wednesday, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.40%) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC 1.02%) jumped into the green in the closing minutes of the session.
Today's stock market
| Index | Percentage Change | Point Change |
|---|---|---|
| Dow | 0.25% | 59.70 |
| S&P 500 | 0.18% | 4.84 |
Data source: Yahoo! Finance.
Energy stocks made gains today, with the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE -0.92%) rising 0.8%. Gold lost ground; the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD 0.32%) fell 0.7%.
As for individual stocks, Twitter (TWTR) reported a strong quarter but shares fell anyway, and The Boeing Company (BA 0.25%) rose on sharply higher profit.
Image source: Getty Images.
Twitter tops estimates again
Twitter reported first-quarter results that were well above expectations, riding accelerating revenue growth to its second straight profitable quarter, but concerns about challenging comparisons in the rest of the year caused the stock to slip 2.4%.
Revenue increased 21% to $665 million, well above the $605 million that Wall Street was expecting. The company made $61 million in net income, or $0.08 per share, on a GAAP basis. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.16, beating the analyst consensus of $0.12. Adjusted EBITDA of $244 million also topped the company's prior guidance of $185 million to $205 million. Revenue growth came mainly from outside the U.S., up 53% year over year, with domestic revenue increasing 2%.
Twitter added 6 million new monthly active users since last quarter: 1 million in the U.S. and 5 million internationally. The growth rate of daily active users decelerated, though, growing 10% from the period a year earlier after growing 12% in Q4 and 14% in Q3.
Looking forward, CFO Ned Segal pointed out that the upcoming World Cup soccer tournament will be a big event for Twitter, but warned about comparisons later this year, saying in the conference call, "We're also facing tougher comps in the second half of this year as we lap the beginning of our strong business recovery that began in Q3 of last year."
It's clear that Twitter is making better-than-expected progress in monetizing its user base, but investors found something to worry about today anyway, and the stock gave up some of the gains made last week following a positive analyst report.
Boeing takes off on huge jump in earnings
Shares of Boeing popped 4.2% after the company reported sales and earnings that left expectations in the dust. Revenue increased 6.5% to $23.4 billion and non-GAAP EPS soared 67.7% to $3.64. Analysts were expecting the company to earn $2.58 per share on revenue of $22.2 billion. The aerospace giant also raised its full-year guidance for non-GAAP EPS by $0.50 to a range of $14.30 to $14.50, exceeding the analyst consensus of $14.11.
Tariff worries have weighed on the stock in recent weeks, but Boeing's business doesn't seem to be affected by the talk. Commercial airplane deliveries increased 9% to 184 airplanes. Defense, space, and security revenue jumped 13% and global services revenue grew 8%. Operating cash flow increased 49% to $3.1 billion, and the company spent $1 billion on dividends and $3 billion on share repurchases during the quarter.
"Across Boeing, our teams performed at a high level in the quarter, driving revenue and earnings growth at all three business units, increasing profitability and operating cash flow, and delivering more value to our customers," said CEO Dennis Muilenburg in the press release.
Also significant to investors was lack of concern about rising material costs. When asked about supply-chain costs in the conference call, Muilenburg said the company is not seeing increases that have any material effect right now.
With a healthy backlog of $486 billion in orders and growing profit and cash flow, it's no surprise investors sent Boeing stock higher today.
