The outlook on (FB) remains positive despite still-soaring expenses and guidance for continued slowing growth. Late Wednesday, the social network leader said Q2 revenue rose 39% from the year-earlier quarter to $4.04 billion, edging the consensus estimate, as did earnings per share. It marked the company’s fifth straight quarter of slower year-over-year sales growth, but Facebook has plenty of growth levers it has yet to pull, while other
Fitbit (FIT) is proving to be a tough competitor for Garmin (GRMN) in the fitness tracker market. Garmin entered the market for health and activity trackers with high expectations, but its sales in the category slowed dramatically in the second quarter. On Wednesday, Garmin posted lower-than-expected Q2 earnings after issuing a warning about weaker results on July 16. Garmin earned 72 cents a share excluding items on sales of $774 million in the June quarter. On a year-over-year basis, earnings per share fell 29% and sales slipped 0.5%. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected Garmin to earn 78 cents a share ex items on sales of $771 million. Before the earnings warning, Wall Street was modeling Garmin to earn 91 cents a share. The company blamed lower profits on currency exchange issues and the “competitive environment in the fitness market.” Garmin CEO Cliff Pemble said the…
Oracle (ORCL) has struggled in transitioning to cloud computing, but investment bank Jefferies says the company is doing better and gave the enterprise software giant a rare upgrade. Analysts John DiFucci and Brad Zelnick, in a research report Thursday, raised their rating on Oracle stock to buy from hold and hiked their price target to 50 from 41. Oracle stock was flat in afternoon trading in the stock market today, near 40. “While changes to the