26th July 2024 – 02nd August 2024 | Another week in the markets
| S&P 500 | Nasdaq | VIX | DJIA | Russell 1000 | NYSE |
| 5,346.56 | 16,776.16 | 23.39 | 39,737.26 | 2,914.73 | 18,162.26 |
| -2.06% | -3.35% | 42.71% | -2.10% | -2.26% | -2.17% |
| Nifty 50 | Gold | Silver | Brent crude | USD-INR | EUR-INR |
| 24,717.70 | $2,486.10 | $28.685 | $77.56 | 83.80 | 91.42 |
| -0.47% | 4.10% | -2.19% | -2.87% | 0.09% | 0.58% |
Source: MarketWatch
Hello Saturday,
This week, Shell pushes ahead with a buyback programme as its second-quarter results beat estimates, E-commerce major Amazon’s shares slid on the back of elevated spending dimming revenue outlook and a record 72.8 million ITRs are filed by July 31.
- Shell keeps up with a $3.5 billion buyback programme, the same as the last quarter as earnings manage to beat market expectations.
- Amazon’s shares slip as spending on AI takes the front seat, and the revenue outlook turns dim.
- Delhivery delivers a strong profitable quarter, net profit jumps to ₹54 crores from a loss of ₹89 crores last year.
- Record 72.8 million people file ITRs by July 31
Taking stock | Buyback bonanza | Amazon ramps up AI spending | Delhivery delivers a good quarter | Tax toils!| Invest wisely | Another week in the markets
Taking stock
A harsh jobs report spoilt the market sentiment for all the three major indices and triggered a broad-based selloff. The Dow shed over 600 points and ended the week with a drop of 2.1%. Nasdaq closed Friday with a 2.4% fall and S&P500 declined by 1.8%.
Buyback bonanza!
Shell added its name to the list of European energy majors that managed to beat market expectations in the second quarter. However, Shell’s profit halved sequentially due to lower refining margins and a fall in integrated gas trading.
Shell’s profit measured as per the current cost of supplies calculation nearly fell by half to $3.75 billion on account of lower refining margins and conspicuously low natural gas trading. Nevertheless, the oil major’s profit in the second quarter rose 7.5% compared to the profit reported in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal year.
The company also declared a dividend of $34.40 and stressed that it will continue with its buyback programme amounting to $3.5 billion worth of shares in the third quarter.
On the bright side, contributions from the upstream and marketing segments came in higher than estimates by a respectable 9% and 32% respectively. With this result, Shell became the fourth European oil major to deliver results that trumped the estimates. London’s BP, Italy’s Eni and Portugal’s Galp are the other three majors.
Analysts had estimated that the earnings in the second quarter would take a hit on account of muted demand from large segments, which would end up squeezing downstream margins.
Shell enjoys the distinction of being the world’s largest liquefied natural gas trader. It produced 6.9 million metric tonnes of LNG and total integrated gas production amounted to 980,000 oil barrels per day. Total output slumped by 1% in this quarter.
Amazon ramps up AI spending
Amazon’s shares took a beating after its second-quarter results as the E-commerce giant indicated that it would continue to ramp up spending on AI services to meet anticipated demand, even as the revenue outlook turns negative.
Amazon’s total sales rose 10% on a Y-O-Y basis to $148 billion. Meanwhile, its net profit stood at $13.5 billion, which beat market expectations. There was good news in store for the company from Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing unit, which reported a higher-than-expected revenue of $26.28 billion.
However, the market was far from impressed and registered its disappointment with the results leading to a 7% tumble in the share price. The fall on Thursday deleted a sizable chunk of 20% returns that the company has clinched for its investors this year.
One bone of contention that the investors held onto was the elevated capex spending on artificial intelligence. The company has been incurring higher expenses on account of data centres, real estate and computer chips, geared specifically to meet an anticipated demand surge. The retail platform incurred capex spending of $17.62 billion, which is 50% over the expense incurred on this front in the same quarter last year. This is the highest capex that the company has borne since 2021.
Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told reporters that Amazon’s strong capital spending will continue in the coming quarters as well.
“There’s a lot of money at stake here,” he said. “It’s a high-stakes business. It’s a revolutionary shift in a lot of industries. We think we can participate in that in a very high-class way based on our existing position in cloud computing.”
Delhivery delivers a good quarter
Logistics firm Delhivery swung back into black in the latest quarter reporting a net profit of ₹54 crore for the first quarter against a loss of ₹89 crore reported in the corresponding quarter of the last year.
The company’s revenue also jumped a little over 12% on a Y-O-Y basis to ₹2,172 crore from ₹1,930 crore reported last year.
The EBITDA figure for the quarter rose to ₹97 crore compared to ₹13 crore loss stated in the second quarter of FY24. The company’s express parcel shipments grew 4% sequentially to ₹18.3 crore in the first quarter as against ₹17.6 crore in the last quarter of FY24.
Revenue for the Part Truckload (PTL) segment expanded 25% to Rs 435 crore in Q1 FY25 as against ₹347 crore in Q1 FY24. The company reported a 16% growth in PTL volumes in Q1FY25 on a year-on-year basis to 399K MT, compared to 343K MT in Q1 FY24.
Supply Chain services also improved as revenues grew to ₹259 crore. Sequentially, this was an 11% spike from ₹234 crore in Q4FY24, and a 26% growth from ₹206 crore on a YoY basis.
Source: Google Finance
Tax toils!
A record 72.8 million individuals filed their ITR by July 31, while a majority of them, that is, 52.7 million opted for the new tax regime.
Last year, the figure stood at 67.7 million. Only when one does not have a business income, is he free to choose between one of the two. Otherwise, the new tax regime is the default one.
The Union Budget of 2024-25 made changes to the income-tax slabs to make the new tax regime attractive. The changes catered especially to the lower tax slabs, with an eye at benefitting the salaried classes. An ITR filed after the deadline will be liable for a late fee of ₹5,000. However, if one has a taxable income up to ₹5,00,000 the penalty payable would be ₹1,000.
Reflecting the fact that the tax base is widening, the ITR filing, this year, had a little over 5.85 million new tax filers.
Invest wisely
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Warm regards,
Another week
in the markets
