The Week Ahead: Macy's, Airbnb, and Berkshire Hathaway to Report Earnings

To start off the week, Home Depot HD and Macy's M are expected to report earnings on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we expect a report from Nvidia NVDA, followed by reports from Salesforce.com CRM, Anheuser-Busch BUD, and Airbnb ABNB on Thursday. Closing out the week, we will be looking out for word from Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B on Friday.

The pandemic has accelerated the e-commerce trend, therefore accelerating the loss of market share for department stores. No-moat Macy's, which has been struggling for some time, has responded to these market changes with its Polaris plan. This plan includes store remodeling, store closures, improved e-commerce, and expansion of its Backstage concept. We do not think Macy's can regain the lost sales.

We predict 13% of 2025 U.S. workers will be working from home full-time, benefiting companies like Airbnb. However, rivals like TripAdvisor TRIP have increased the pressure and competition in this space. We still crown TripAdvisor with the leading position in the experiences and dining segment.

Berkshire Hathaway's fourth-quarter 13-F filing did not surprise us too much after the company's September quarter filing noted that it had acquired 58.3 million shares of Verizon VZ (worth $3.5 billion at the end of the third quarter), 44.3 million shares of Chevron CVX ($3.2 billion), and 3.4 million shares of Marsh & McLennan MMC ($386 million) before the end of that period. Berkshire Hathaway also raised an estimated $10.6 billion by selling positions in 11 different stocks, but trimming its stakes in Apple AAPL (57.2 million shares for an estimated $7.1 billion) and Wells Fargo WFC (75.0 million shares for $2.0 billion) accounted for most of the wide-moat firm's capital.