Orange Bank Sees Modest Growth

Orange said its mobile financial services activities continued to grow in the first half of 2022.  At June 30, 2022, Orange Bank had nearly 1.9 million customers in France and Spain, up from 1.6 million nine months earlier. In Africa, where it has launched a new microcredit service, Orange Bank Africa had 845,000 customers at the end of June, up from 600,000 at the end of September.

Orange Bank reported deposits of 1.06 billion euros in special savings accounts and 718 million euros in current accounts.  That was set against overdrafts of 844 million euros and housing loans of 994 million euros.  Source: Orange statements

Amazon Expects Stronger Sales Growth

 

Amazon said its net sales increased 10% to 121 billion US dollars in the second quarter, excluding the negative impact of year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates.

It expects net sales to grow between 13% and 17% in the current quarter, compared with third quarter 2021. This guidance anticipates an unfavourable impact of approximately 390 basis points from foreign exchange rates.

In central London, Amazon has launched its first "micromobility" hub, which will coordinate local deliveries by e-cargo bikes (see pics) and walkers.

Amazon also said it has filed legal action against the administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups that attempt to orchestrate fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products. "These groups are set up to recruit individuals willing to post incentivised and misleading reviews on Amazon’s stores in the U.S., the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan," the company said. "Amazon will use information discovered from this legal action to identify bad actors and remove fake reviews commissioned by these fraudsters that haven’t already been detected by Amazon’s advanced technology, expert investigators, and continuous monitoring." Source: Amazon statement

Telefónica Ups Guidance Slightly

Despite the uncertain macro economic environment, Telefónica said it now expects revenues in 2022 to be at the high-end of its guidance for low single digit growth in 2022.  That guidance relates to organic growth and includes 50% of its joint venture with Virgin Media in the UK. 

In the second quarter of 2022, Telefónica's revenues rose 5.2% in organic terms, up from less than 4% in the previous quarter, with growth across all the group's markets. It said that service revenue and handset sales grew by 3.9% and 17.4% respectively. Group revenue in the second quarter was 10.04 billion euros.

The Madrid-based group continues to look for opportunities in adjacent markets. In June, for example, Repsol and Telefonica España launched Solar360, a new joint venture to "develop the solar self-consumption business."  Solar360 plans to serve private customers, communities of neighbours and companies, SMEs, and large companies. Telefonica said it brings distribution channels, technological capacity and "IoT capabilities to provide the installations with a differential connectivity in the market." Source: Telefónica statement

Apple Sees More Growth Ahead

Apple reported year-on-year revenue growth of 2% in the quarter ending June 25th to 83 billion US dollars. Services revenue was up 12% to 19.6 billion dollars. 

"Our supply constraints were less than we anticipated at the beginning of the quarter, coming in slightly below the range we discussed during our last call," Tim Cook, Apple CEO, said.

"Overall, we believe our year-over-year revenue growth will accelerate during the September quarter compared to the June quarter despite approximately 600 basis points of negative year-over-year impact from foreign exchange,"added Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO. "On the product side, we expect supply constraints to be lower than what we experienced during the June quarter. Specifically related to services, we expect revenue to grow but decelerate from the June quarter due to macroeconomic factors and foreign exchange." Source: Apple collateral

Alphabet Maintains Some Momentum

Alphabet reported a 16% rise in revenues in the second quarter to 69.7 billion US dollars at constant currencies. It also gave some new data points:

• People are using Google Lens to do visual searches more than eight billion times per month. 
• People are shopping across Google more than one billion times each day
• There are more than three billion monthly active devices running Android worldwide. Last year, consumers activated one billion Android phones.
• YouTube Shorts are watched by over 1.5 billion signed-in users every month, with more than 30 billion daily views. 
• YouTube TV has surpassed five million subscribers, including trialists.

Alphabet also reported that Waymo expanded rider-only testing with employees to include downtown Phoenix, and started testing at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport. It also began charging "Trusted Tester" riders in San Francisco, a step closer to launching a commercial service with fully autonomous trips.  Source: Alphabet collateral 

Verizon Lowers Revenue Forecast

Verizon said it now expects wireless service revenue to grow between 8.5% and 9.5% in 2022, down from the prior 9% to 10% range. In the second quarter, wireless service revenue growth was 9.1%, primarily driven by the acquisition of TracFone, together with "further progress on our Premium Unlimited strategy and strong business volumes," Verizon said. 

Fixed "wireless momentum accelerated as we added 256,000 subscribers in the quarter, up from 194,000 in the first quarter," it added. "Fixed wireless net adds have increased every month throughout 2022, and we expect to continue that trend in the third quarter." 

The telco reported "relatively flat" total revenue year-over-year, as wireless service revenue growth and higher wireless equipment revenue were offset by wireline declines and the sale of Verizon Media in 2021. Total revenue was 33.8 billion dollars in the second quarter. 

Capital spending for the first half of the year totalled 10.5 billion dollars, an increase of 1.8 billion dollars compared to last year, driven by a spend of 2.8 billion dollars deploying 5G in the so-called C-Band (3.7 GHz to 4.2 GHz). Source: Verizon collateral

AT&T Anticipates Milder Recession than in 2008

AT&T reported a 2.2% rise in "comparative revenues" for the second quarter to 29.6 billion US dollars. It said the rise was largely driven by wireless revenue growth and, to a lesser extent, higher Mexico and consumer wireline revenues, partially offset by declines in business wireline.

AT&T described the macro-economic environment as "dynamic". CEO John Stankey added: "Our most recent experience in looking at kind of a challenged cycle is probably coming out of the 2008 recession and the dynamic around it...  that was a pretty stressed time... my guess is it probably won't be quite as shocking as that cycle is, what's occurred in a worst-case scenario." Source: AT&T collateral

Tesla Moves Self-Driving Forward

Tesla said it has now deployed its "FSD (full self driving) Beta with City Streets driving capability" to more than 100,000 owners of its vehicles. "We've now driven over 35 million miles with FSD Beta. That's more autonomous miles than any company we're aware of... and that mileage is growing exponentially," Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, added. "FSD Beta is on track to be released for all of North American customers before the end of this year. And hopefully, if we get regulatory approval, we'll also be releasing it hopefully in Europe and some other parts of the world."

Musk also said Tesla "will increase the price of FSD sometime later this year. ..The value of FSD is, I think, extremely high and not well understood by most people. It is basically currently ridiculously cheap, assuming FSD materialises." Source: Earnings call transcript