03May 2024 by Cattolica Investment Club No Comments
Wall street opened 24/7: an opportunity or a threat?

Wall street opened 24/7: an opportunity or a threat?

Markets
A highly debated topic today concerns the possibility of keeping the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As of today, only a consultation has been launched with the aim of making this idea legal and effective. Many investors hope that this is just the beginning of a process that will end with the implementation of such a rule in all markets worldwide, not just in Wall Street. This initiative prompts us to reflect on the real advantages of uninterrupted market opening, considering the increasingly strong competition from cryptocurrencies, which are open to trading without hourly and daily limits. It is still premature to express an opinion on the acceptance of this initiative, but we can highlight the advantages and disadvantages of continuous…
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30Apr 2024 by Cattolica Investment Club No Comments
META AND ALPHABET: REACQUIRED CONFIDENCE FOR DIGITAL GIANTS 

META AND ALPHABET: REACQUIRED CONFIDENCE FOR DIGITAL GIANTS 

Portfolio Management
April 28th, 2024 - After the challenges of the year 2022 as a whole, digital ad companies finally succeeded in not only recovering but mostly exceeding the expectations analysts had for the first months of 2024, reporting strong achievements and wonderful results for their investors this week, publishing their first-quarter results.  Companies have gone through tough times due to the crazy inflation of 2022 and the subsequent measurements of cutting costs and layoffs, mainly spread across 2023. Another major challenge digital companies had to face was the one of Apple's IOS privacy changes, which obviously made it harder for ads to track users and to “popup” anytime. Both the macroeconomic context and policy-making entities have played a significant role in hindering the giants but, efficient strategies, reallocations of investments and…
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26Apr 2024 by Cattolica Investment Club No Comments
Portfolio holding rises on earnings.

Portfolio holding rises on earnings.

Portfolio Management
24 April 2024- One of our portfolio holdings, Boeing (BA) (Purchased 0.15 units @ $248.79) announced its first fiscal quarterly results better than expected. The analysts were expecting the adjusted loss per share to be $1.76 compared to $1.13 declared. The company also shared its revenue which is slightly above the expectations. $16.57 billion compared to the $16.23 billion estimated. Boeing had a tough year starting with their 737-MAX incident, followed by the FAA putting a restraint on the company’s output due to some issues of noncompliance in the supply chain. They lost almost 35% in value year to date. Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun, who announced that he will step down at the end of the year, expressed that their priority is to address safety concerns and that they started…
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25Apr 2024 by Cattolica Investment Club No Comments
Acquisition of Real Estate property by Kering group in Milan

Acquisition of Real Estate property by Kering group in Milan

Corporate Finance
Introduction Kering is a global Luxury group that manages the development of a series of renowned Houses in Fashion, Leather Goods and Jewellery: Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen. Acquisition On April 4th, the French luxury group Kering bought a prestigious retail block in Monte Napoleone’s street (Milan). The sale of the 18th century building amounted to 1.3 billion euros and belonged to Blackstone since 2021. Indeed, Keering declared that they remained focused on proactively managing its real estate portfolio with the short to medium term objective of retaining a stake in its prime assets alongside co-investors in dedicated vehicles. This investment is part of Kering’s selective real estate strategy, aimed at securing key highly desirable locations for its Houses. This is Italy’s biggest property deal, indeed the…
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20Apr 2024 by Cattolica Investment Club No Comments
EARNINGS REPORTS AND MERGER TALKS

EARNINGS REPORTS AND MERGER TALKS

Portfolio Management
April 19th, 2024 - Netflix reported better-than-expected revenue and earnings for the first quarter of 2024 thanks to subscribers growth of 16% YoY. The streaming company posted an EPS of $5.28 and a 14% revenue growth to $9.37 billion, and they both have beaten analysts’ expectations. The company struggled in premarket because of a poor revenue guidance for the full year, compared to what analysts’ were expecting.  Paramount is in talks with Skydance Media for a merger, but as the New York Times reported, there is a potential opportunity of a takeover by Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management, which are in discussion for a potential joint all-cash bid to acquire the media and streaming company. Apollo already tried to acquire the company in the last months, but Paramount’s…
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20Apr 2024 by Cattolica Investment Club No Comments
Portfolio Holding delivers killer earnings

Portfolio Holding delivers killer earnings

Portfolio Management
April 17th,  2024- One of our portfolio holdings, purchased recently, United Airlines (UAL) (1 unit @$41.78) announced its quarterly result after markets closed on Tuesday. United Airlines reported first-quarter revenue of $12.5 billion, compared to the consensus estimate of $12.4 billion. And an adjusted quarterly loss of 15 cents per share, outperforming analyst estimates of 57 cents per share. They also increased their capacity by %9 despite their projected fleet orders partly not coming due to Boeing’s halt in production of Boeing’s MAX 737. They announced that they expect to add 61 planes to their fleet revised from their previous 101 estimate, plus they are planning to lease 35 Airbus A321 in 2026 and 2027. The company CEO Ed Bastian said they had a good quarter driven by the increased…
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17Apr 2024 by Cattolica Investment Club No Comments
BoA DISCLOSES DISAPPOINTING Q1 PROFITS WHILE GOLDMAN  SACHS BETS ON A PROMISING COMPANY 

BoA DISCLOSES DISAPPOINTING Q1 PROFITS WHILE GOLDMAN  SACHS BETS ON A PROMISING COMPANY 

Portfolio Management
April 16th, 2024 - Today, Bank of America (BAC) released an important statement in which it disclosed its disappointing  Q1 2024 profits, which marked a decrease of around 18% compared to their 2023 Q1.  The factor that determined this very poor performance was the huge difference  between the deposits’ costs and the combination of assets’ yields and loans’ growth, with the interest  paid on deposits exceeding BoA’s earnings. At the same time, other US financial giants like JP Morgan  Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup reported negative results because of the same trend experienced by  BoA. To have a clearer idea of how bad the situation is for Bank of America, it is sufficient to look at  the increase in the interest rate paid on US interest-bearing deposits, which rose from…
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17Apr 2024 by Cattolica Investment Club No Comments
GOLDMAN SACHS QUARTERLY RESULTS BEAT EXPECTATIONS: REDISCOVERING THE CORE BUSINESS

GOLDMAN SACHS QUARTERLY RESULTS BEAT EXPECTATIONS: REDISCOVERING THE CORE BUSINESS

Portfolio Management
April 15th, 2024 - In the first quarter, Goldman Sachs witnessed a 28% increase in profits, well beyond what analysts expected, as a result of their strong performances in these months. Bloomberg’s compiled analyst forecasts were nearly $1 bln short for the bank’s reported net income for the first three months of the year, which actually amounted to $4.1 bln, up from $3.2 bln a year earlier. The reason for this memorable achievement lies into the refocus led by the CEO David Solomon: he decided that it was time for Goldman Sachs to “play to their core strengths”, that is to say centering again on investment banking and trading businesses, asset and wealth management and slightly “put aside” the concern upon consumer business. Investment banking experienced its most successful quarter…
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16Apr 2024 by Cattolica Investment Club No Comments
Investments in AI

Investments in AI

Markets
Ever since the discovery of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the attention towards Artificial Intelligence has now touched an all time high. With a burgeoning market valued at an estimated USD$200bn, many companies are pivoting towards the sector. Amongst the many firms investing in the market, the most important worth mentioning is Microsoft. Its strategic investments in AI have significantly enhanced its product offerings across its vast portfolio, further solidifying its position as a titan in the tech industry. After the USD$13bn invested in OpenAI, Microsoft has struck a deal with French artificial intelligence start-up Mistral AI as it seeks to broaden its involvement in the fast-growing industry. Born in April 2023 from ex DeepMind Arthur Mensch and ex Meta Timothée Lacroix and Guillaume Lample, the Paris based company is currently building both…
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14Apr 2024 by Cattolica Investment Club No Comments

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS QUARTERLY EARNINGS RESULTS

Uncategorized
April 12th, 2024 - Following the publication of the first-quarter report, JPMorgan shares fell around 5% on Friday. The company beat analysts’ expectations on diluted EPS, by almost 0.50 cents, reporting a $4.63 diluted EPS (+ 12.9% YoY). Revenue also were better than expected ($41.9 billion vs. the estimated $41.28 billion) and they grew 9.3% YoY. The international bank did though miss analysts’ expectations on its net interest income, that was at $23.2 billion and well below the record just set in the last quarter of fiscal 2023, which was $24.1 billion. Earlier this week CEO Jamie Dimon in his annual letter to shareholders warned investors saying that he believes that the chances of a soft landing are a lot lower than what the market is currently pricing (70/80% chance),…
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