The Week Ahead: Apple, Facebook, and Tesla to Report Earnings

A big week in earnings is on our calendar, and we expect to see reports from Apple AAPL, Facebook FB, and Tesla TSLA on Wednesday.

Tuesday is expected to be the busiest day in the week ahead with reports from several top companies, including Johnson & Johnson JNJ, 3M MMM, Starbucks SBUX, Advanced Micro Devices AMD, General Electric GM, Verizon VZ, and Microsoft MSFT.

Apple is one of the companies that has benefited from the work-from-home and learn-from-home trends. We maintain a stronger near-term outlook for the Mac and iPad segments because of these trends, but we do anticipate that growth trends could be unsustainable in the new year. iPhone sales were down due to the delay of the iPhone 12 launch, and we expect revenue for fiscal 2021 will be up in the low teens.

Following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, social media companies eliminated Donald Trump’s personal accounts. We think this will only have a slight impact on Facebook, and there won’t be any major changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This increase in content moderation may lead to more brand advertisers viewing the wide-moat social network as a safer platform to market on.

Tesla dominates the electric vehicle industry, but we do not see it having mass-market volume this decade. The vertically integrated sustainable energy company’s prices are too high for every consumer who wants an electric vehicle. The Model X crossover released in late 2015 starts at about $80,000, the Model S sedan's starting price is $69,420, the Model 3 sedan starts at $37,990, and the Model Y crossover starts at about $50,000. Tesla’s goal is to make the electric vehicles affordable, which will cost billions a year in capital spending and research and development.

AT&T T and Boeing BA are also expected to report earnings on Wednesday. On our list for Thursday, we anticipate reports from McDonald’s MCD, Altria Group MO, T Rowe Price TROW, and Visa V. To close the busy week, Chevron CVX is expected to report on Friday.