Not every stock is rocking these days. Chewy (CHWY 3.72%), AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC +0.00%), and AT&T (T 0.08%) have seen better days. Chewy and AMC Entertainment are trading 34% and 50% below the high-water marks they hit earlier this year. AT&T is fetching a quarter less than its late-2019 peak.
All three are prime candidates to bounce back this week. Let's take a closer look at why an upcoming financial update can get Chewy barking up the the right tree. Let's also explore why a big multiplex moment can help both AMC and AT&T.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Chewy
One of the more interesting quarterly reports during this holiday-abridged trading week is Chewy's. One would think that an online retailer of pet supplies would be thriving these days. Pet adoptions have surged during the pandemic, and e-commerce has become a safe and convenient way to stock up on food and other essentials for a family's furry friends. The surprise here is that Chewy has shed more than a third of its value since topping out last month.
Analysts see revenue climbing nearly 45% to hit $1.96 billion in Tuesday afternoon's quarterly report. Chewy is still not profitable, but Wall Street sees the red ink contracting to $0.10 a share from $0.15 a share during the prior year's holiday quarter. If this seems ambitious, the bonus here is that Chewy has blown past analyst profit targets with ease over the past year.
| Quarter | Estimated EPS | Actual EPS | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 2019 | ($0.17) | ($0.15) | 12% |
| Q1 2020 | ($0.16) | ($0.12) | 25% |
| Q2 2020 | ($0.16) | ($0.08) | 50% |
| Q3 2020 | ($0.13) | ($0.08) | 39% |
Data source: Yahoo! Finance. EPS = earnings per share.
Dogs and cats rule the home these days. You have to like Chewy's chances heading into this timely financial update to get its stock moving higher again.
2. AMC Entertainment
Last week was rough for AMC Entertainment. The stock plummeted 26% in a week that saw the country's largest exhibitor hit an important milestone with 99% of its theaters now open.
Selling tickets and popping popcorn obviously isn't enough. You need consumers warming up to the movie-going experience. You need Hollywood feeding your digital projectors a steady diet of blockbusters. Neither one has been on the menu as year-over-year attendance has fallen by more than 90% in each of the past few months.
Things should start to get markedly better starting this weekend. Godzilla vs. Kong -- put out by AT&T's Warner Bros. -- hits U.S. theaters later this week. It was a global juggernaut abroad over the past weekend, drumming up $121.8 million in box office receipts including $70.3 million in China. It's the kind of larger-than-life action film that fares well on the big screen, and unlike Wonder Woman 1984, which also fit that bill three months ago, this one is generating more positive reviews. It will take a lot to get AMC Entertainment back to where it was before the pandemic, but the headlines should be positive in the coming days as Godzilla vs. Kong gets a lot of movie buffs back to the corner multiplex for the first time in more than a year.
3. AT&T
The wireless carrier's push into content with its balance sheet-rattling Time Warner acquisition -- completed in 2018 -- may have been a case of lousy timing with the pandemic crushing the entertainment market less than two years later, but things are starting to turn around. AT&T's gutsy call to make all of this year's Warner Bros. releases available on HBO Max at the same time they hit theaters has been vindicated with strong subscriber trends, and now we might see a healthy take at the box office, too.
AT&T is about more than just a single movie, of course. It's a wireless behemoth ready to cash in on the 5G mobile revolution. It's a Dividend Aristocrat, at least through the end of this year. The telco giant's 6.9% yield has helped the stock hold up in recent weeks as investors rotate out of tech stocks with loftier valuations. There is baggage here with its struggling DIRECTV satellite television platform and its fading wireline business, but with Wall Street turning to value stocks again and a high-yielding AT&T trading at 10 times forward earnings, it's finally time for Ma Bell to shine again.
