Markets Finish Higher Yet Again; Plus UBER, TMUS, DBX Earnings

Markets took the better-than-expected jobless claims report from this morning — when pre-markets were in the red following down days in Europe and elsewhere — and just kept on going. With little intra-day news to draw from, the general “What, Me Worry?” exuberance continues apace for the major indexes.

The Nasdaq has finished in the green for a 7th straight trading session, up an even 1.00% or 109.67 points to 11.108, a new all-time high. The S&P 500 has now finished higher 5 straight trading days, as has the Dow — these indexes closed up 0.64% and 0.68%, respectively.

Yes, the U.S. State Department lifted its “Do Not Travel” advisory, granting some additional positive sentiment to trading, but there isn’t much to hang our hat on this afternoon. Should tomorrow morning’s non-farm payroll report and Unemployment Rate be much better than expected, this would be a strong indication that the U.S. economy is definitely showing improvements as we continue to climb out of the global pandemic crisis. For instance, what reason would investors have to bid up Apple AAPL an additional 3.5% on no new news, following strong buying in the wake of its earnings report a week ago?

Q2 Earnings at a Glance

After the market close, Uber UBER delivered its Q2 earnings report, missing estimates on the bottom line but posting a beat on the top: -$1.02 per share was well off the Zacks consensus of -78 cents, though still much better than the -$472 per share reported in the year-ago quarter — which was also the last time Uber missed bottom-line estimates. Revenues of $2.24 billion surpassed the $2.17 billion expected, but was still down nearly 30% year over year.

Everyone knew “shelter in place” was going to be tough on Uber, and it was. Mobility (ride-sharing) revenues fell 67% from the year-ago quarter to $767 million; however, Delivery revenue did much stronger than expected, coming in 103% better than a year ago. That said, its Delivery business is still a ways from bringing home quarterly profits. In all, Gross Bookings were -35% from the year-ago quarter. For more on UBER’s earnings, click here.

TMobile TMUS, now having absorbed competitor Sprint and displaying synergies in its operations, missed slightly on both top and bottom lines: 9 cents per share amounted to a 2-cent miss from the Zacks consensus, while $17.67 billion in sales was short of the $17.77 billion estimated. Still, this figure represents better than 50% growth over the year-ago quarter. At 65.1 million customers overall, the company now claims to be the #2 telecom service, surpassing AT&T T.

Dropbox DBX also posted Q2 results Thursday afternoon, beating on the bottom line by 5 cents to earnings of 22 cents per share, while $467 million in quarterly sales rose 16% year over year. Forward guidance was expected in the company’s conference call. Average Revenue per User (ARPU) dipped slightly but unexpectedly in the quarter, and long-time CFO Ajay Vashee announced he will be stepping down from his post to pursue other interests in the world of finance. Shares came down 5% in the post-market.

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