Comcast tops estimates, Merck pulls back on full-year guidance, PayPal misses on Q2 profit
Brian Sozzi, Julie Hyman, and Myles Udland dive back into earnings which include: Comcast beating estimates with a strong push from parks reopening and broadband subscribers, Merck cutting full-year guidance despite drug sales rebounding, and PayPal stock dipping after profit misses analysts’ expectations.
Video transcript
JULIE HYMAN: OK, so Comcast.
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah.
JULIE HYMAN: The company coming out, adding more internet subscribers than had been anticipated.
MYLES UDLAND: Adding more internet subscribers, interesting. We've seen with both AT&T and Verizon, our parent companies, adding more [? boring ?] wireless subscribers, so maybe there's something in the water out there for good old fashioned business. Of course, a lot of the attention here is going to be on Peacock. 54 million Peacock subscribers as of last week, 42 million in the US. They did not break out paid versus free. I think we've all seen or maybe even we've had experiences trying to get Peacock to work-- complaints about the interface, where can I find the Olympics, is it all --
MYLES UDLAND: Ultimately, for any business like this, and we saw it with HBO Max, the question now is, how many subscribers can you add? There was the announcement of NBC News, some streaming thing they're doing with CNN+ kind of-- everyone's doing the thing, right?
JULIE HYMAN: Everyone's doing it.
MYLES UDLAND: And you've got to be on the over the top, so--
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, there's the opening bell.
MYLES UDLAND: Traeger.
JULIE HYMAN: Fancy grills--
MYLES UDLAND: Look at this.
JULIE HYMAN: --ringing the opening bell, and it looks like-- I'm not seeing any grills there on the podium, which--
MYLES UDLAND: I'm sure they're down on the floor.
JULIE HYMAN: --is kind of a shame, but I'm sure they're outside--
BRIAN SOZZI: They're wood pellet grills.
JULIE HYMAN: --many grills outside the [INAUDIBLE].
MYLES UDLAND: And a great ticker. A great ticker.
JULIE HYMAN: What is it? Cook?
MYLES UDLAND: Cook.
JULIE HYMAN: How does that not exist? That's amazing.
MYLES UDLAND: Well, they've reserved. Them they reserved them, right, for the right.
BRIAN SOZZI: CEO will be on in the next hour. I am psyched to talk to him.
JULIE HYMAN: Excellent.
BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, we talked to the BBQGuys' CEO recently, so grilling is hot.
BRIAN SOZZI: Love me some wood pellet grills.
MYLES UDLAND: Next program, right?
BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah.
MYLES UDLAND: OK.
BRIAN SOZZI: Next program.
MYLES UDLAND: You said next hour. I was like, we're talking to Traeger?
BRIAN SOZZI: Oh, wow. I thought it was almost, like, 10:30.
JULIE HYMAN: That would be nice.
MYLES UDLAND: I was like, we don't-- that's news to me. OK.
JULIE HYMAN: All right, let's talk--
MYLES UDLAND: 11 o'clock.
JULIE HYMAN: --talk PayPal for a minute too. Those shares are trading pretty sharply lower here this morning. Brian's still laughing about grilling.
BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah.
JULIE HYMAN: What's up with PayPal?
MYLES UDLAND: Screwing up the run down.
BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, well, PayPal has been trending-- a trending ticker on Yahoo Finance platform all morning long. It has now moved from its first place position to the third place position, replaced, surprise, surprise, by H-O-O-D, HOOD. We'll talk more about Robinhood a little bit later on.
Now as PayPal shares under pressure here, their guidance was a little bit left to be desired here in the minds of the Street. Company being hit by the ongoing migration of eBay's payments business away from PayPal. The Street knows that, but perhaps PayPal didn't guide the Street to the extent they should have with regard to that transition. Myles, you'd appreciate this. They're talking more about crypto, launching some new crypto services, I believe, in the UK this quarter, so they're full steam ahead with crypto.
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, it's a little bit surprising to see the company that has had so much buzz around crypto come out with a disappointing bottom line, particularly just on the back, Julie, of a quarter where literally every company comes out and beats in the top and bottom line. 88% of companies in the S&P through last week had beat on the top and bottom line, so it's always jarring when you see a fast growing company like PayPal miss their profit.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, and it is interesting too. Like, you think of PayPal as being so dominant in what it does that the eBay business is a little bit of a forgotten-- you forget about it.
BRIAN SOZZI: It's a relic of the past, really, with that eBay-PayPal thing. I remember using that 15 years ago.
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, I've been locked out of my PayPal account for, like, 10 years.
BRIAN SOZZI: Dan Schulman, if you're listening, please help my man Myles out.
MYLES UDLAND: Can't create another one because it's the same email.
JULIE HYMAN: Let's talk about Merck here too this morning. That company came out-- missed analysts' estimates, actually, with its earnings. Earnings per share, $1.31. $1.33 is what analysts had been anticipating. It narrowed its revenue forecast for the full year. It brought down the top line of that revenue forecast, brought up the bottom part of that revenue forecast, so the narrowing of that range there.
But you see there, the overall numbers. So the shares trading a little bit lower here this morning. One more thing to mention if you go through its different drugs, keytruda, a big cancer drug, that beat estimates, but its diabetes drugs missed estimates. So that might be a source of some disappointment. And then-- so I'm sure we could talk about more earnings, but we're going to pause from earnings.
