Monday evening’s and Tuesday morning’s earnings announcements from Best Buy, Medtronic, Palo Alto Networks and Pinduoduo all beat expectations. An expected announcement from Chinese tutoring firm New Oriental Education did not materialize.

After markets close Tuesday, we will hear from three firms: Nordstrom, Intuit and Heico, and before the markets open on Wednesday, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Express are scheduled to report quarterly results.
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Here’s a look at four notable reports due after markets close on Wednesday.

Pure Storage

Storage technology firm Pure Storage Inc. (NYSE: PSTG) has seen its share price plunge, then soar, then drop again since the beginning of 2020. Shares are up about 19% over the past 18 months and 24% over the past 12 months, but down nearly 10% since the beginning of 2021. Signaling Pure Storage’s troubles, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest exchange-traded funds held 15.25 million shares of the company’s stock on June 30. Today, the ARK Genomic Innovation ETF holds just 257,067 shares, the only position the firm has left in Pure Storage.

Analysts see a different picture. Of 20 brokerages covering the firm, 16 rate the stock a Buy or Strong Buy, and the other four have shares at Hold. At a recent price of around $20.40, the potential upside based on a median price target of $30 is 47%. At the high price target of $33, the upside potential is nearly 62%.

Pure Storage is expected to report second-quarter 2022 revenue of $471.56 million, which would be up 14.3% sequentially and nearly 17% year over year. Adjusted earnings per share of $0.05 are better than the prior quarter’s break-even finish and down a penny from the year-ago quarter. For the full year, current estimates call for EPS of $0.33, up 83%, and sales of $1.96 billion, or 16.4% higher.

The stock trades at 61.8 times expected 2022 EPS, 39.3 times estimated 2023 earnings times and 32.1 times estimated 2024 earnings. The stock’s 52-week range is $13.91 to $29.53, and Pure Storage does not pay a dividend.

Salesforce

Dow Jones industrial average component Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) saw its share price rise 25% on August 26 of last year following a blowout quarterly report. By early March, the company had given back all of that gain. So far in 2021, the stock is up about 17%, following a couple of stumbles. The company completed its $27.7 billion acquisition of Slack last month, and investors likely will be keen to hear how that will improve Salesforce’s stock price going forward.

Analysts remain bullish on the stock, with 39 of 49 brokerages rating the shares a Buy or Strong Buy. The other 10 have rated the stock at Hold. At a share price of around $260.50, the stock’s upside potential based on a median price target of $287 is about 10.2%. At the high target of $335, the implied gain is 25.6%.

Second-quarter 2022 revenue is forecast at $6.25 billion, up 4.7% sequentially and more than 21% year over year. Adjusted EPS are forecast at $0.93, down 23.3% sequentially, and down 35.4% year over year. For the full fiscal year, analysts are currently looking for EPS of $3.85, down nearly 22%, and revenue of $26.02 billion, up 22.4%.

The stock trades at 71.1 times expected 2022 EPS, 63.2 times estimated 2023 earnings and 52.3 times estimated 2024 earnings. The stock’s 52-week range is $201.51 to $284.50 and Salesforce.com does not pay a dividend.

Another big data company, Snowflake Inc. (NYSE: SNOW), came public in September of 2020 and the shares popped to a gain of more than 50% in early December. Shares came back to earth in January. Since the IPO, Snowflake stock is up about 11%, as of Tuesday morning. Cathie Wood’s ARK  Next Generation Internet ETF holds a mere 98 shares of Snowflake stock, unchanged since the end of the March quarter.
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Analyst sentiment on the stock is mixed, with 14 of 29 rating the stock a Buy or Strong Buy and another 14 having Hold ratings. At a price of around $283.40, the implied gain based on a median price target of $290 is 2.3%. At the high target of $515, the upside potential is 82%.

For the second quarter of fiscal 2022, analysts are forecasting revenue of $256.74 million, which would be 12.2% higher sequentially. The forecast loss per share is $0.15, worse than the $0.11 loss in the first quarter. For the full fiscal year, current estimates call for a loss per share of $0.58, compared to a loss last year of $1.55. Revenue is forecast to rise more than 88% to $1.12 billion.

Snowflake is not expected to post a profit in 2022, 2023 or 2024. The stock trades at 66.4 times its 2022 enterprise value-to-sales multiple, 40.5 times the 2023 multiple and 25.9 times the 2024 multiple. The stock’s 52-week range is $184.71 to $429.00, and Snowflake does not pay a dividend.

Splunk

Data analytics and security software maker Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) has had a tough past 12 months. The stock is down nearly 28% over that period and down about half that much in 2021 alone. Splunk’s good news is that, since early June, shares are up about 31%. Like Snowflake, the company’s stock is included in ARK Invest’s next-gen internet ETF, but the fund continues to hold 399,139 shares of Splunk stock worth about $57.6 million. That’s slightly less than the 429,357 held on June 30.

Analyst sentiment is somewhat bullish on the stock. Of 37 firms covering the stock, 23 rate it a Buy or Strong Buy, while 14 rate the shares a Hold. At a price of around $146.90, the upside potential based on a median price target of $164 is 11.6%. At the high price target of $225, the implied upside is more than 53%.

Splunk is expected to report second-quarter 2022 revenue of $563.27 million, up by 12.2% sequentially and by about 14.6% year over year. Analysts expect a loss per share of $0.69, an improvement over the first-quarter loss of $0.91 per share. For the full fiscal year, Splunk is expected to post a loss per share of $1.46, worse than the 2020 loss of $0.55. Revenue is forecast to rise by 13.7% to $2.54 billion.

The company is not expected to post a profit until fiscal 2024. At the current price, the stock trades at a multiple of 96.3 to the estimated 2024 EPS of $1.50. The stock’s 52-week range is $110.28 to $225.89, and Splunk does not pay a dividend.

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