NexOptic Technology Corp (TSXV: NXO)
You’ll Never See The World The Same Way Again
Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) is up 9.2% in early after-hours action after its Q4 report brought in subscriber numbers that beat expectations.
The company added a net new 8.51M subscribers (21.9% growth), vs. expectations for 6.06M. That brought its global total to 203.66M members.
And revenues came in line with expectations (up 21% Y/Y) though profits fell short.
Operating income of $954.2M beat consensus for $897.9M, though net income was down to $542M after Q3 was $790M.
And the free cash flow story that execs touted last quarter has reversed at least for now – with net cash used for operations at $138M, and free cash flow at -$284M.
“We believe we are very close to being sustainably FCF positive,” the company says. For the full-year 2021, it expects free cash flow will be “around break-even” vs. previous guidance for -$1B to break-even. “Combined with our $8.2B cash balance and our $750M undrawn credit facility, we believe we no longer have a need to raise external financing for our day-to-day operations.”
And: “As we generate excess cash, we intend to maintain $10B-15B in gross debt and will explore returning cash to shareholders through ongoing stock buybacks, as we did in the past (2007-2011).”
For Q1, it’s forecasting global streaming paid net additions of 6M (and thus an overall subscriber total of 209.66M). That sum would mark 14.7% growth, and Netflix has not been averse to lowballing its subscriber guidance.
For the full year, it’s targeting a 20% operating margin, which would be up 2 points from 2020, “due to a more favorable revenue outlook.” Despite occasional lumpiness, it still expects long-term its operating margin will grow an average of three percentage points a year.
Its executive interview, again conducted by Barclays’ Kannan Venkateshwar, will be online at 6 p.m. ET.
BlackBerry (NYSE:BB) rose 25.5% today and is logging its best week in just short of 20 years.
That’s being attributed to its settlement of patent royalty disputes with Facebook.
After rising just 1% in 2020, the stock is up 59% in the past few days – and is up 86% 2021-to-date, making it one of the new year’s hottest stocks.
Compared with average volume of about 21.5M shares, some 110.9M shares traded hands today and 153.9M shares moved the previous trading day, last Friday.
Before the rally began last week, The Globe and Mail reported that BlackBerry had sold 90 patents to Huawei in December, part of BlackBerry’s move to unload more IP.
The transfer to Huawei marks a very small part of BlackBerry’s 38,000 patents but covers key advances in smartphone technology.
Under the new long-term strategic relationship, autonomous vehicle company Cruise (NYSE:GM) will use Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Azure cloud platform to commercialize its vehicle solutions at scale.
Microsoft will also join Cruise majority shareholder GM, Honda, and other institutional investors in a more than $2B equity investment in Cruise at a $30B post-money valuation.
GM will work with Microsoft as its preferred public cloud partner to accelerate its digitization initiatives, including storage, AI, and machine learning capabilities.
Microsoft shares are up 0.8% pre-market to $214.43. GM is up 7.1% to $53.50.
