Investment "Logic"

Back on August 7, On Semiconductor posted and had an earnings call for second quarter results.  Revenues came in at just under $1.34B.  Earnings, unfortunately, missed analyst estimates of $0.32, by six cents, coming in at $0.26.  Despite the mixed quarter, people seem relatively pleased with the results.  Perhaps that had something to do with the guide up in revenues and free cash flow.  On the latter, the increased their free cash flow guidance by 20%, raising it $100M for the year to a range of $600M to $650M.  On the revenues, they guided the third quarter up above what analysts expected, to a range of $1.34B to $1.39B.  The automotive group, in particular, was surprising as they guided a flat guidance on what is seasonally a down quarter - all despite the obvious automotive sales slowdown in the US.  I think the biggest tell of the future quarters was a specific line from management:  "Customers continue  to remain  concerned  about potential supply tightness as demand

Yesterday, Home Depot announced the results from its second quarter operations.  If you look back at my previous 2 quarterly reports ( here and here ), you'll notice how I used the screaming baseball video to describe the results of those quarters.  I figured I'll spare you from that again, but that ball is clearly still screaming - in fact it might be accelerating it's trip through space.  That's how strong the results from the quarter were.  They reported sales of $28.1B, which resulted in a beat of last years sales by 6.2% and beat estimates by $300M.  Earnings also topped expectations of $2.21, coming in at $2.25 - a 14.2% increase from the same quarter a year ago.  Same store sales also blew away expectations, which were expected to be in the high 4% to low 5% area, with results of 6.2% and the US had 6.6% same store comps.  So results were exceptionally impressive. Next up, management pushed guidance up again for the second quarter in a row and this guide u

Ionis Pharmaceuticals had a lot going on last week.  I'll do my best to summarize it all within the earnings analysis to simplify my work.  We'll start with the earnings announcement.  Ionis announced the results from their second quarter operations on Tuesday and provided what has been viewed as a set of mixed results.  Earnings were reported as a loss of nine cents, below analyst consensus of a four cent loss.  Revenues, however, beat expectations of $92.1M, coming in at $104.1M.  Headlines jumped out talking about missing marks and the stock dropped rather significantly - approximately 8% on that day alone.   During the course of the quarter, SPINRAZA, a therapy for spinal muscular atrophy, went commercial and made an impressive first move.  Their partner, Biogen Idec, announced $204M in SPINRAZA sales, as the drug is clearly making inroads for intended patients.  When this was announced, earnings estimates for Ionis were dramatically altered.  Originally, estimates we

Earlier this week, Cedar Fair announced their second quarter earnings results.  Revenues came in at $393M and earnings came in at $0.55, both were significant misses to expected targets of $405.88M and $1.04, respectively.  All this despite the fact that the company continues to report record quarterly revenues, expecting another year of record results, and increased attendance.  This seems to be a very mixed message.  Were these good results or bad?  Who was right, who was wrong, and what does this mean going forward?  I hope I can dig into this a little and create some sense from it. First off, let's look at the story the earnings and revenues misses tells.  Earnings, which typically drives headlines was off a whopping 47%.  That's a huge miss.  However, revenues were off only a little over 3%.  That's a disappointing miss, but it's no 47%, so that's a plus.  Something happened between revenues and earnings, so what was it?  Are expenses out of control?  Whe