We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. This includes personalizing content and advertising. To learn more, click here. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, revised Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
You are being directed to ZacksTrade, a division of LBMZ Securities and licensed broker-dealer. ZacksTrade and Zacks.com are separate companies. The web link between the two companies is not a solicitation or offer to invest in a particular security or type of security. ZacksTrade does not endorse or adopt any particular investment strategy, any analyst opinion/rating/report or any approach to evaluating individual securities.
If you wish to go to ZacksTrade, click OK. If you do not, click Cancel.
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights Meta Platforms, Shopify and MercadoLibre
Read MoreHide Full Article
For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – January 16, 2024 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) , Shopify (SHOP - Free Report) and MercadoLibre (MELI - Free Report) .
Here are highlights from Monday’s Analyst Blog:
Surf's Up in Davos: Global Week Ahead
In the Global Week Ahead, the world’s political and business leaders meet up in the Swiss resort of Davos, Switzerland.
This 54th annual Davos confab occurs against a complex geopolitical backdrop. It is beset by war, tectonic shifts in monetary policy, climate change, and comes early in an uncertain U.S. Presidential election year.
The global economy appears to be avoiding recession, for now.
On Wednesday, the latest U.S. Retail Sales data will shed light on that economy’s 2024 outlook.
Finally, a key mark for Mainland China arrives, with real 2023 GDP growth figures out.
Next are Reuters’ five world market themes, reordered for equity traders—
(1) The World Economic Forum in Davos kicks off this week.
The 54th annual World Economic Forum meeting kicks off in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Central bankers, financiers and business leaders will discuss a challenging global economic picture, shifting monetary policy and rising debt levels.
They will try to seek answers on how to navigate a complex geopolitical framework that includes war in Ukraine and Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, French President Emmanuel Macron and key Middle East leaders are due to attend.
One key event is the Jan. 17 closed-door Financial Services Governors Meeting, which will bring together 100 chairs and CEOs from banking, markets, insurance and asset management.
A separate survey released by the WEF showed extreme weather and misinformation were seen by risk specialists as most likely to trigger a global crisis in the next couple of years.
(2) On Wednesday this week, the latest U.S. retail sales data will come out.
The health of U.S. consumers will be in the spotlight, through the lens of retail sales data and bank earnings.
The Wednesday Jan. 17th retail sales numbers are expected to give a glimpse into consumer spending and offer evidence of the resilience of the U.S. economy in the face of 525 basis points of rate increases from the Federal Reserve since 2022.
Signs that consumers may be pulling back might undermine the expectation of a economic soft landing that helped boost stocks 24% last year. Economists polled by Reuters expect retail sales rose a monthly 0.3% in December, matching November's increase.
Investors are also keen to hear what big financial institutions say about consumers and their own operations, with Goldman Sachs and Charles Schwab both reporting.
(3) Also out on Wednesday, we get a fresh batch of U.K. consumer price inflation data.
The next batch of U.K. consumer price data could be exactly what Bank of England officials and politicians are hoping for: a big enough slide to declare victory on the war on inflation.
With headline inflation at +3.9%, the U.K. doesn't look like such an outlier anymore compared with other advanced nations -- a welcome development for a government expected to hold a general election later this year.
Typically, stickier price pressures, such as those in services and workers' wages, are softening, but only marginally. And the near-21% rise in inflation since 2020 still outstrips that of any other G7 economy and is the joint-highest increase in Western Europe.
The pound has got off to a relatively firm start to the year, supported by a rise in UK government bond yields. A soft read of inflation on Jan. 17th may prove an unwelcome development for sterling bulls.
(4) For Mainland China, their full-year GDP growth figures land on Wednesday.
Just how close China got to realizing the official 5%-or-so growth goal for 2023 will become clear on Wednesday, with the release of full-year GDP figures.
That it hit the target is not really in question. The challenge is how to do the same this year, if Beijing follows its advisers and keeps the goal unchanged. Unlike last year, there's no 2022 COVID-lockdown slump to flatter the result.
A hint of what Beijing has planned has come from a key central bank official, who was reported by state media as saying policy tools would be used to support reasonable credit growth.
Chinese government bond yields have neared a nearly four-year trough and the yuan slid to a one-month low, as the market speculated on a rate cut as soon as Monday.
(5) Taiwan headed to the polls on Saturday, and elected a new president and parliament.
Taiwan headed to the polls on Saturday and elected a new president and parliament under the shadow of its increasingly assertive neighbor Mainland China, which said the vote was a choice between "peace and war.”
Lai Ching-te, from Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won the closely-watched presidential election. Mainland China had warned against voting for Lai, calling him a “separatist."
The high-stake geopolitical event marks the start of one of the busiest election years ever: countries making up over 60% of the world's economic output and more than half of its population hold elections this year.
The United States, Britain, Russia, South Africa, India and Indonesia are just some of the more than two dozen countries holding national elections.
The heavy election calendar has fueled fears that financial market volatility could soar and fiscal discipline be at risk as growth prospects face and debt hits record highs.
Zacks #1 Rank (STRONG BUY) Stocks
To no surprise, 2024 kicks off with three major tech growth stocks on our #1 list.
(1) Meta Platforms: This is a $370 a share stock, with a current mega-cap tech market cap of $950B. I see a Zacks Value score of D, a Zacks Growth score of B and a Zacks Momentum score of B. It is founds in Zacks Internet – Software industry.
Meta Platforms is the world’s largest social media platform. The company’s portfolio offering evolved from a single Facebook app to multiple apps like Instagram and WhatsApp, owing to acquisitions. Along with in-house developed Messenger, these apps now form Meta’s family of products used by almost 3.96 billion people on a monthly basis as of Sep 30th, 2023.
Newly introduced metric, which is the family daily active people (DAP) that measures daily users of its family of products, was 3.14 billion, as of Sep 30th.
Meta uses metrics like daily active users (DAUs) and monthly active users (MAUs) to measure Facebook’s user base. As of Sep 30th, 2023, DAUs and MAUs were 2.085 billion and 3.049 billion, respectively.
Headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, Meta generated revenues worth $116.61 billion in 2022. Advertisement accounted for 97.5% of revenues. Marketers buy ads that can appear on multiple platforms including Meta, Instagram, Messenger and third-party applications and websites.
Meta, thanks to its huge user base, gained a significant market share in the advertising space wherein it faces tough competition from Google, Twitter, Amazon and Snapchat-parent Snap.
Meta also faces significant competition from the likes of Apple (messaging), YouTube (advertising and video), Bytedance (social media) and Tencent (messaging and social media).
Meta’s core app enables people to connect, share, discover and communicate with one other on mobile devices and personal computers. User engagement on the core Meta platform is fostered by News Feed, which displays an algorithmically-ranked series of stories and advertisements customized for each user.
Instagram is a community for sharing photos, videos and messages, enabling people to discover interests that they care about. People can express themselves through photos, videos and private messaging via Instagram Feed and Stories.
Messenger helps people to connect with friends, family, groups and businesses across platforms and devices. WhatsApp is a simple, reliable and secure messaging application, used by people and businesses around the world to communicate in a private way.
Meta also offers virtual reality (VR) products through its Oculus division.
(2) Shopify: This is a $81 a share stock, with a current market cap of $104.2B. I see a Zacks Value score of F, a Zacks Growth score of C and a Zacks Momentum score of A. It is found in the Zacks Internet – Services industry.
Ottawa, Canada-based Shopify Inc. provides a multi-tenant, cloud-based, multi-channel commerce platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The company completed its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in May 2015.
Merchants use the company’s software to run business across various sales channels, including web and mobile storefronts, physical retail locations, social media storefronts, and marketplaces.
Shopify’s platform enables merchants to manage products and inventory, process orders and payments, ship orders, build customer relationships and leverage analytics along with reporting from one integrated back office.
Moreover, Shopify hosts a huge database of merchant and customer interaction. Merchants leverage this transactional dataset to get meaningful insight into the sales channel growth prospects and consumer behavior. This improves their ability to target prospective customers more easily, which drives sales growth.
Apart from the company’s own payment solution, payment wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay are also available to the merchants, which they offer to customers on the Shopify platform.
In 2022, revenues came in at $5.60 billion. The company generates revenues from two sources: Subscriptions Solutions (26.6% of 2022 revenues) and Merchant Solutions (73.4%).
Subscription revenue is recognized on a ratable basis over the contractual term. The terms range from monthly, annual or multi-year subscription terms. The company earns revenue based on the services it delivers either directly to merchants or indirectly through resellers.
Shopify generates the majority of merchant solutions revenue from fees that it charges merchants on their customer orders processed through Shopify Payments.
The company also derives merchant solutions revenue relating to Shopify Shipping, Shopify Capital, other transaction services and referral fees, as well as from the sale of Point-of-Sale (POS) hardware.
(3) MercadoLibre: This is a $1,591 a share stock, with a current market cap of $80.5B. I see a Zacks Value score of D, a Zacks Growth score of A and a Zacks Momentum score of F. It is found in the Zacks Internet – Commerce industry.
MercadoLibre, Inc. is one of the largest e-commerce platforms in Latin America.
The company offers a bunch of six integrated e-commerce services:
MercadoLibre Marketplace enables businesses and individuals to conduct sales, purchase online and list their merchandise.
MercadoLibre Classifieds offers online classified listing services for motor vehicles, real estate and services. These listings charge only optional placement fees and hence they are different from Marketplace listings.
MercadoPago FinTech platform allows users to send and receive payments seamlessly within MercadoLibre's marketplace.
Outside of this, merchants are allowed to process payments via websites, mobile apps and mobile point of sale.
MercadoLibre Advertising program enables advertisers and seller to display their product ads on the company's webpages.
MercadoShops online webstores solution aids users in managing and promoting their online stores.
Why Haven’t You Looked at Zacks' Top Stocks?
Since 2000, our top stock-picking strategies have blown away the S&P's +6.2 average gain per year. Amazingly, they soared with average gains of +46.4%, +49.5% and +55.2% per year. Today you can access their live picks without cost or obligation.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.
See More Zacks Research for These Tickers
Normally $25 each - click below to receive one report FREE:
Image: Shutterstock
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights Meta Platforms, Shopify and MercadoLibre
For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – January 16, 2024 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) , Shopify (SHOP - Free Report) and MercadoLibre (MELI - Free Report) .
Here are highlights from Monday’s Analyst Blog:
Surf's Up in Davos: Global Week Ahead
In the Global Week Ahead, the world’s political and business leaders meet up in the Swiss resort of Davos, Switzerland.
This 54th annual Davos confab occurs against a complex geopolitical backdrop. It is beset by war, tectonic shifts in monetary policy, climate change, and comes early in an uncertain U.S. Presidential election year.
The global economy appears to be avoiding recession, for now.
On Wednesday, the latest U.S. Retail Sales data will shed light on that economy’s 2024 outlook.
Finally, a key mark for Mainland China arrives, with real 2023 GDP growth figures out.
Next are Reuters’ five world market themes, reordered for equity traders—
(1) The World Economic Forum in Davos kicks off this week.
The 54th annual World Economic Forum meeting kicks off in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Central bankers, financiers and business leaders will discuss a challenging global economic picture, shifting monetary policy and rising debt levels.
They will try to seek answers on how to navigate a complex geopolitical framework that includes war in Ukraine and Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, French President Emmanuel Macron and key Middle East leaders are due to attend.
One key event is the Jan. 17 closed-door Financial Services Governors Meeting, which will bring together 100 chairs and CEOs from banking, markets, insurance and asset management.
A separate survey released by the WEF showed extreme weather and misinformation were seen by risk specialists as most likely to trigger a global crisis in the next couple of years.
(2) On Wednesday this week, the latest U.S. retail sales data will come out.
The health of U.S. consumers will be in the spotlight, through the lens of retail sales data and bank earnings.
The Wednesday Jan. 17th retail sales numbers are expected to give a glimpse into consumer spending and offer evidence of the resilience of the U.S. economy in the face of 525 basis points of rate increases from the Federal Reserve since 2022.
Signs that consumers may be pulling back might undermine the expectation of a economic soft landing that helped boost stocks 24% last year. Economists polled by Reuters expect retail sales rose a monthly 0.3% in December, matching November's increase.
Investors are also keen to hear what big financial institutions say about consumers and their own operations, with Goldman Sachs and Charles Schwab both reporting.
(3) Also out on Wednesday, we get a fresh batch of U.K. consumer price inflation data.
The next batch of U.K. consumer price data could be exactly what Bank of England officials and politicians are hoping for: a big enough slide to declare victory on the war on inflation.
With headline inflation at +3.9%, the U.K. doesn't look like such an outlier anymore compared with other advanced nations -- a welcome development for a government expected to hold a general election later this year.
Typically, stickier price pressures, such as those in services and workers' wages, are softening, but only marginally. And the near-21% rise in inflation since 2020 still outstrips that of any other G7 economy and is the joint-highest increase in Western Europe.
The pound has got off to a relatively firm start to the year, supported by a rise in UK government bond yields. A soft read of inflation on Jan. 17th may prove an unwelcome development for sterling bulls.
(4) For Mainland China, their full-year GDP growth figures land on Wednesday.
Just how close China got to realizing the official 5%-or-so growth goal for 2023 will become clear on Wednesday, with the release of full-year GDP figures.
That it hit the target is not really in question. The challenge is how to do the same this year, if Beijing follows its advisers and keeps the goal unchanged. Unlike last year, there's no 2022 COVID-lockdown slump to flatter the result.
A hint of what Beijing has planned has come from a key central bank official, who was reported by state media as saying policy tools would be used to support reasonable credit growth.
Chinese government bond yields have neared a nearly four-year trough and the yuan slid to a one-month low, as the market speculated on a rate cut as soon as Monday.
(5) Taiwan headed to the polls on Saturday, and elected a new president and parliament.
Taiwan headed to the polls on Saturday and elected a new president and parliament under the shadow of its increasingly assertive neighbor Mainland China, which said the vote was a choice between "peace and war.”
Lai Ching-te, from Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won the closely-watched presidential election. Mainland China had warned against voting for Lai, calling him a “separatist."
The high-stake geopolitical event marks the start of one of the busiest election years ever: countries making up over 60% of the world's economic output and more than half of its population hold elections this year.
The United States, Britain, Russia, South Africa, India and Indonesia are just some of the more than two dozen countries holding national elections.
The heavy election calendar has fueled fears that financial market volatility could soar and fiscal discipline be at risk as growth prospects face and debt hits record highs.
Zacks #1 Rank (STRONG BUY) Stocks
To no surprise, 2024 kicks off with three major tech growth stocks on our #1 list.
(1) Meta Platforms: This is a $370 a share stock, with a current mega-cap tech market cap of $950B. I see a Zacks Value score of D, a Zacks Growth score of B and a Zacks Momentum score of B. It is founds in Zacks Internet – Software industry.
Meta Platforms is the world’s largest social media platform. The company’s portfolio offering evolved from a single Facebook app to multiple apps like Instagram and WhatsApp, owing to acquisitions. Along with in-house developed Messenger, these apps now form Meta’s family of products used by almost 3.96 billion people on a monthly basis as of Sep 30th, 2023.
Newly introduced metric, which is the family daily active people (DAP) that measures daily users of its family of products, was 3.14 billion, as of Sep 30th.
Meta uses metrics like daily active users (DAUs) and monthly active users (MAUs) to measure Facebook’s user base. As of Sep 30th, 2023, DAUs and MAUs were 2.085 billion and 3.049 billion, respectively.
Headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, Meta generated revenues worth $116.61 billion in 2022. Advertisement accounted for 97.5% of revenues. Marketers buy ads that can appear on multiple platforms including Meta, Instagram, Messenger and third-party applications and websites.
Meta, thanks to its huge user base, gained a significant market share in the advertising space wherein it faces tough competition from Google, Twitter, Amazon and Snapchat-parent Snap.
Meta also faces significant competition from the likes of Apple (messaging), YouTube (advertising and video), Bytedance (social media) and Tencent (messaging and social media).
Meta’s core app enables people to connect, share, discover and communicate with one other on mobile devices and personal computers. User engagement on the core Meta platform is fostered by News Feed, which displays an algorithmically-ranked series of stories and advertisements customized for each user.
Instagram is a community for sharing photos, videos and messages, enabling people to discover interests that they care about. People can express themselves through photos, videos and private messaging via Instagram Feed and Stories.
Messenger helps people to connect with friends, family, groups and businesses across platforms and devices. WhatsApp is a simple, reliable and secure messaging application, used by people and businesses around the world to communicate in a private way.
Meta also offers virtual reality (VR) products through its Oculus division.
(2) Shopify: This is a $81 a share stock, with a current market cap of $104.2B. I see a Zacks Value score of F, a Zacks Growth score of C and a Zacks Momentum score of A. It is found in the Zacks Internet – Services industry.
Ottawa, Canada-based Shopify Inc. provides a multi-tenant, cloud-based, multi-channel commerce platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The company completed its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in May 2015.
Merchants use the company’s software to run business across various sales channels, including web and mobile storefronts, physical retail locations, social media storefronts, and marketplaces.
Shopify’s platform enables merchants to manage products and inventory, process orders and payments, ship orders, build customer relationships and leverage analytics along with reporting from one integrated back office.
Moreover, Shopify hosts a huge database of merchant and customer interaction. Merchants leverage this transactional dataset to get meaningful insight into the sales channel growth prospects and consumer behavior. This improves their ability to target prospective customers more easily, which drives sales growth.
Apart from the company’s own payment solution, payment wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay are also available to the merchants, which they offer to customers on the Shopify platform.
In 2022, revenues came in at $5.60 billion. The company generates revenues from two sources: Subscriptions Solutions (26.6% of 2022 revenues) and Merchant Solutions (73.4%).
Subscription revenue is recognized on a ratable basis over the contractual term. The terms range from monthly, annual or multi-year subscription terms. The company earns revenue based on the services it delivers either directly to merchants or indirectly through resellers.
Shopify generates the majority of merchant solutions revenue from fees that it charges merchants on their customer orders processed through Shopify Payments.
The company also derives merchant solutions revenue relating to Shopify Shipping, Shopify Capital, other transaction services and referral fees, as well as from the sale of Point-of-Sale (POS) hardware.
(3) MercadoLibre: This is a $1,591 a share stock, with a current market cap of $80.5B. I see a Zacks Value score of D, a Zacks Growth score of A and a Zacks Momentum score of F. It is found in the Zacks Internet – Commerce industry.
MercadoLibre, Inc. is one of the largest e-commerce platforms in Latin America.
The company offers a bunch of six integrated e-commerce services:
Why Haven’t You Looked at Zacks' Top Stocks?
Since 2000, our top stock-picking strategies have blown away the S&P's +6.2 average gain per year. Amazingly, they soared with average gains of +46.4%, +49.5% and +55.2% per year. Today you can access their live picks without cost or obligation.
See Stocks Free >>
Media Contact
Zacks Investment Research
800-767-3771 ext. 9339
support@zacks.com
https://www.zacks.com
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.