In this episode of MarketFoolery, Chris Hill chats with Motley Fool analyst Tim Beyers about the latest headlines and earning reports from Wall Street. They look at a global consulting business hitting an all-time high. They look at various factors that go into making an aircraft purchase decision and the investment opportunities therein. They have news about a social media giant and much more.
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This video was recorded on December 17, 2020.
Chris Hill: It’s Thursday, December 17th. Welcome to MarketFoolery. I’m Chris Hill, joining me from snowy Colorado, it’s Tim Beyers. Good to see you.
Tim Beyers: Good to see you too, Sir.
Hill: We’ve got some news out of Boeing (NYSE:BA). We have some, I’m going to call it, sort of news, out of Twitter (NYSE:TWTR); we’ll get to that in a minute. But we’re going to start with global consulting firm Accenture (NYSE:ACN).
First quarter profits and revenue came in higher than expected. And Tim, at a time when a lot of companies are still not offering any guidance at all, Accenture also raised their guidance for the full fiscal year.
Beyers: Yeah, it’s looking pretty good here, Chris. I mean, this is a company that as a consulting firm, it’s often forgotten, that these guys have an army of developers who are working on cloud projects around the world. I think maybe one of the hidden pieces of Accenture, although maybe it’s hiding in plain sight here, they do a lot of Teams integration. They are a big Microsoft consulting partner, and so for large companies that are implementing the Zoom alternative that we call Teams, boy! Accenture gets a lot of work on this. And in the latest quarter, Chris, I mean, I know this doesn’t sound like a big number, but if you are a multinational company and your average quarter is over $1 billion, 3.5% year-over-year revenue growth, especially in the middle of a pandemic, that’s pretty darn good, and that really crushed the average estimate here. This company generates cash flow, it generates profits; I mean, these guys are killing it.
And so, the pride of Ireland, Accenture, is doing incredibly — well, people don’t know that Accenture is headquartered in Ireland, but they are killing it here, Chris. They really did an amazing quarter.
Hill: And the stock is responding accordingly. And I’m assuming that’s not just a quarter, but also the guidance raise for the full fiscal year, it’s up about 8% this morning, it’s at an all-time high. This is a, just for the sake of context, this is a company with a market cap now north of $175 billion. When you look at the stock, does it look expensive to you?
Beyers: I…
Read More: A Look at Stock Market News From Boeing, Twitter, Accenture, and More