Give me an A! Alphabet, Amazon and Alibaba to report earnings

The week ahead

As we move into February, in the UK we have a splutter of October and November period-end results along with some December interims before we move into December annual results season in March.

(), which provides information management software and solutions to the public and asset-intensive sectors, reports final results on Tuesday.  The management team has shaken up the business since it joined in 2018, including selling the loss-making digital business in November of that year and acquiring Tascomi, a cloud-native supplier of solutions to local authority property and environmental services markets, in July 2019. In addition, it has carried out several operational initiatives including consolidating all UK operations into a single statutory entity and exiting sub-scale operations in Ireland and Malta. In the year-end trading update in November, the company said that the financial year 2020 (FY20) revenues grew by 4{f08ff3a0ad7db12f5b424ba38f473ff67b97b420df338baa81683bbacd458fca} to £68.0mln while adjusted underlying earnings (EBITDA) surged by 35{f08ff3a0ad7db12f5b424ba38f473ff67b97b420df338baa81683bbacd458fca} to £19.5mln, reflecting a 670bp increase in the EBITDA margin. Net debt fell by more than £10mln to end the year at £16.1mln.

 (), which designs and manufactures products for the critical communications, wireless telecoms and defence & aerospace markets, reports interim results on Tuesday. The company sold its antenna business a year ago, simplifying the business and strengthening the balance sheet and it appointed a new chief executive officer, Richard Gibbs, effective from September. In its annual general meeting trading update in late October, the company reported in-line trading and had cash at bank of £1.9mln along with undrawn debt facilities totalling £7.5mln. Last month the company announced a contract win from a new major UK defence customer for the supply of battlefield radio communications hardware valued at more than £1mln.

(), which operates in the cyber and software resilience spaces, announces its interim results on Thursday. In its period-end trading update in early November, it said it “now believes adjusted EBIT for the full year will be around the upper end of market expectations, although the ongoing challenges of the pandemic mean that there is still a range of possible outcomes for the full financial year.”.  The stock remains well below its 2016 highs but has recovered more than half of its losses since the late 2016 profits warning, and trades on around 30x current year earnings. As at 30 June 2020, the group had net borrowings of £4.2mlm along with IFRS 16 lease liabilities of £38.2mln for total net debt of £42.4mln.

Across the pond, the December quarter earnings season continues with Alphabet, the parent of Google, and Amazon both reporting fourth-qaurter (Q4) results on Tuesday. Also, China’s largest online retailer Alibaba reports Q3 results on Tuesday.

Other US tech-related companies reporting this week include Cirrus Logic, ON Semi, Rambus, NXP Semiconductors, Amdocs, Broadridge, FireEye, Marvell Technology, , Check Point Software, Paylocity, Teradata, DXC Technology, Fortinet, GoPro, Snap, Unity Software, Microchip, Synaptics, Zendesk, Pinterest, Onto Innovation and .