Stocks rose last week, as both the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.13%) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.01%) touched new all-time highs with help from generally strong earnings reports.
Earnings season continues with several announcements over the next few trading days. Let's take a closer look at a few highly anticipated reports from this list, by Airbnb (ABNB 0.55%), MercadoLibre (MELI 0.64%), and Clorox (CLX 0.63%).
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Airbnb's earnings
Airbnb will announce its latest results after the market closes on Thursday, and there is a lot riding on this report. The hospitality specialist hasn't fully recovered from the pandemic's effects. While revenue is higher thanks to rising prices, the company noted a 1% drop in bookings last quarter as compared to the same period in 2019.
Investors aren't expecting Airbnb to bounce back to record booking levels in fiscal Q3, especially as resurgent virus case levels affected travel in the late summer. But management has said that adjusted earnings will paint a clearer picture about the business in the meantime. To that end, look for Airbnb to post a record adjusted earnings result on Thursday and likely its highest profitability to date.
Successes on these scores will imply quickly improving profit levels as booking volume returns to growth over the next few quarters.
Clorox's organic sales
Investors have some big concerns heading into Clorox's Monday earnings report. The cleaning supply giant revealed a few worrying trends in its last announcement. Organic sales fell 10% in the fiscal fourth quarter, Clorox said in early August, and earnings fell 61%, year over year.
Operating results look better on a two-year basis, which smoothes out the volatility associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. But Wall Street is still concerned that Clorox will struggle to pass along higher costs at a time when sales growth is slowing.
CEO Linda Rendle and her team said in August that sales will likely fall by between 2% and 6% in fiscal 2022, and we'll likely receive an update to that initial outlook on Monday. Earnings were predicted to fall by as much as 9%, too, although that forecast might worsen given the acceleration in cost inflation through the late summer and early fall.
The big question is whether Clorox's sales can stabilize near the high end of management's long-term target of between 3% and 5% per year following the volatile fiscal 2022. Look for a bit more clarity about that potential in Monday's report.
MercadoLibre's growth rate
Investors have high expectations about the Thursday report from MercadoLibre, Latin America's dominant e-commerce and payments platform. After all, sales more than doubled in the previous quarter thanks to booming transaction volumes and surging payments levels. MercadoLibre's management said those results were even more impressive when you consider how volatile the retailing environment was through late June in several of its biggest markets.
Most investors who follow the stock are looking for another strong growth showing this week, with sales likely rising over 90% to $1.85 billion. Earnings should soar to roughly $1.29 per share from $0.28 per share a year ago.
But the biggest factors influencing MercadoLibre's long-term growth are its improvements on the shopping, buying, and paying experiences. As the best-positioned e-commerce company in Latin America, MercadoLibre has an inside track at dominating that market well beyond fiscal 2021.
