| | Welcome to Wall Street Breakfast, our preview of stock market events for investors to watch during the upcoming week. You can also catch this article a day early by subscribing to the Stocks to Watch account for Saturday morning delivery. Outlook  Shutterstock It's that time again, as second-quarter earnings season kicks off in earnest with the usual early reports from banks - JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) get it started on Tuesday, though PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP) may be getting up a little earlier that day to report - while traditional earnings-season harbinger Alcoa (NYSE: AA) reports on Thursday. And it should be a barnburner season one way or the other, as expectations are for S&P 500 earnings to rise by nearly 64%, a near-record (second to a season during the rebound from the Global Financial Crisis more than a decade ago). Financial firms are expected to be part of that broad boost, but so are industrials, materials and consumer discretionary stocks - those sectors sensitive to a challenged but rapidly recovering economy. For inflation watchers, CPI figures come out on Tuesday, and producer prices on Wednesday, while Friday brings Retail Sales figures. | | Earnings Earnings spotlight: Monday, July 12th: Simulations Plus (NASDAQ:SLP). Earnings spotlight: Tuesday, July 13th: PepsiCo (PEP), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), Conagra Brands (NYSE:CAG), Fastenal (NASDAQ:FAST). Earnings spotlight: Wednesday, July 14th: Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Citigroup (NYSE:C), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL), Cinedigm (NASDAQ:CIDM). Earnings spotlight: Thursday, July 15th: Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW), U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB), Taiwan Semi (NYSE:TSM), Progressive (NYSE:PGR), UnitedHealth (NYSE:UNH), Alcoa (AA). Earnings spotlight: Friday, July 16th: Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), State Street (NYSE:STT).
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Crowd-funded investment opportunities offer easy access to institutional-caliber real estate. Fundrise can help you develop a diversified portfolio strategy across numerous investment funds. More than 150k active investors have earned $100M+ in net dividends so far. Start building wisely today. | | IPOs IPO watch: A slower week on the new initial public offering front, though the start of the week brings the end of quiet periods for several names, including (on July 12) Angel Oak Mortgage (NYSE: AOMR), Convey Health (NYSE: CNVY), Lyell Immunopharma (NASDAQ: LYEL), Verve Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VERV), and WalkMe (NASDAQ: WKME); and on July 13, Ambrx Biopharma (NYSE: AMAM), Cyteir Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CYT), Codex DNA (NASDAQ: DNAY), Century Therapeutics (NASDAQ: IPSC), AiHuiShou International (NYSE: RERE), and Tremor (NASDAQ: TRMR). Meanwhile, lockups expire for Affirm (NASDAQ: AFRM) on July 12; Poshmark (NASDAQ: POSH) on July 13; and Driven Brands (NASDAQ: DRVN) and Playtika (NASDAQ: PLTK) on July 14. | | M&A M&A tidbits: The week brings key votes for a few combinations. On Tuesday, July 13, Knoll (NYSE: KNL) shareholders and Herman Miller (NASDAQ: MLHR) holders vote on their proposed combination. Also that day, Diamond S Shipping (NYSE: DSSI) holders vote on an acquisition by International Seaways (NYSE: INSW). And on Friday, July 16, Brookfield Property Partners (NASDAQ: BPY) holders vote on a $6.5B offer from Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE: BAM) for the rest of its shares. | | Dividends Stock splits: Thursday, July 15 brings a 2-for-1 split to the shares of FS Bancorp (NASDAQ:FSBW). And Friday, July 16 brings the 1-for-10 reverse split of shares of Ashford Hospitality Trust (NYSE:AHT).
Projected dividend increases (quarterly): Companies expected to boost dividends next week start with the banks: Morgan Stanley (MS) expected to double its dividend to $0.70 from $0.35; Goldman Sachs (GS), raising to $2.00 from $1.25; Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE:BK), to $0.34 from $0.31; and State Street (STT), to $0.57 from $0.52. Also expected to hike are Ryder (NYSE:R), to $0.60 from $0.56; Stanley Black & Decker (NYSE:SWK), to $0.72 from $0.70; and Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ:WBA), to $0.4775 from $0.4675. | | Events Corporate spotlight: On Wednesday and Thursday, July 14-15, there's Microsoft Inspire, Microsoft's biggest partner event of the year, with a particular focus on cloud computing. Monday and Tuesday, July 12-13, brings Google's (GOOG, GOOGL) Google for Games Developer Summit. MongoDB (NASDAQ:MDB) holds MongoDB.Live on Tuesday and Wednesday July 13-14. XPO Logistics is holding a virtual investor day for its planned GXO spin-off on Tuesday, July 13. And Coupa Software (NASDAQ:COUP) has a virtual analyst day set for Thursday, July 15. ARK Investment Management and CEO Cathie Wood will hold ARK's monthly webinar for July on Tuesday, July 13 at 1:30 p.m. ET. Check out Seeking Alpha's Catalyst Watch for a detailed list of events to watch. Conference calendar: Notable conferences in the week ahead include VB Transform: Accelerating Enterprise Transformation with AI and Data, which runs all week (July 12-16) virtually. Co-sponsors include Five9 (NASDAQ:FIVN) and Accenture (NYSE:ACN), and speakers include Verizon (NYSE:VZ) Consumer Group CEO Ronan Dunne, Redfin (NASDAQ:RDFN) CTO Bridget Frey, Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) CTO Matthew Zelesko and Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) CTO Marianna Tessel. And on Thursday, July 15, Evercore ISI's fireside chat series focuses on Lowe's (NYSE:LOW) in a visit with Chief Financial Officer David Denton. Notable annual meetings: Annual meetings of interest scheduled for next week include Chewy (NYSE:CHWY) and Steelcase (NYSE:SCS) on Tuesday, July 13, and RH on Thursday, July 15. | | Analysis Videogame sales: Monthly videogame industry sales for June are due from NPD Group on Friday, July 16, and we'll see if companies could build on some solid relative success in May: Sales then rebounded from April's first year-over-year decline in 14 months and actually gained against a tough COVID-19 pandemic comparison. Hardware sales remain strong as Nintendo (OTCPK:NTDOY) holds its own against new (but short-supplied) consoles from Sony (NYSE:SONY) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT). Meanwhile games Resident Evil: Village (OTCPK:CCOEY), Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (NASDAQ:EA), MLB: The Show 21 (SONY) and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (NASDAQ:ATVI) will look to consolidate heavier sales.
Box office preview: Fast & the Furious sequel F9 (CMCSA) set the pace for recovery at the box office; now it's time to see if Scarlett Johansson and latest Marvel offering Black Widow (NYSE:DIS) can surpass it. After two years since the last blockbuster from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Widow is expected to gross $75M domestically, Disney says, though some think it could reach $80M-$90M. That would be a pandemic record, surpassing F9's $70M, and it could pace the first $100M overall weekend at the box office since March 2020 - though it's also appearing on Disney Plus Premier Access for a $29.99 upcharge, which might cut into theatrical receipts. Globally, Black Widow could draw $140M.
| | Barron's mentions It's been half a year, but "meme stocks" including AMC Entertainment (NYSE: AMC), GameStop (NYSE: GME) and BlackBerry (NYSE: BB) are still being held up by retail investment support even as Wall Street struggles to respond, and Barron's cover says "The meme stock trade is far from over." As banks kick off earnings season, investors shouldn't get their hopes up, but it urges "Keep an eye on Citigroup ( C)" (and Oakmark's Bill Nygren thinks Citi, and Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), are deals). And some Chinese stocks are starting to look like bargains, it says: While pressured stocks like Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and JD.com (NASDAQ: JD) are starting to pop up on value investors' radar, some investors are looking past it to names like Tencent ( OTCPK:TCEHY), and otherwise names listed in Hong Kong or the mainland, more accessible to foreign investors through ETFs. | | | |
