Fast Money Blog- 12/13/24
The week on Wall Street was dominated by earnings releases from both Oracle and Costco.
Once again Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) posted outstanding Q1 2025 earnings with top line revenue of $62.15 billion, up 7.5% year-over-year.
Here are some of the highlights:
The company reported strong sales of meat and produce, as well as gold and jewelry, sporting goods and health and beauty products, which were all up by double digits year-over-year.
In addition, Costco’s private label brand, Kirkland Signature, is growing faster than the total business.
Costco's e-commerce sales increased 13%, while same-store sales were up 5.2% in the U.S.
The company also ended the quarter with 77.4 million paid household members, an increase of around 8% year-over-year. This means that almost 25% of the U.S. population has a Costco membership.
Shares of Costco are up nearly 50% in the past year.
Oracle Corporation (ORCL) reported Q2 2025 earnings with top-line revenue of $14.06 billion, an increase of 9% year-over-year.
Cloud services and license support revenues for the quarter were up 12% year-over-year, to $10.8 billion.
Record level AI demand drove Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue to $2.4 billion, up 52% in Q2.
For those of you who don’t know, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure trains several of the world's most important generative AI models.
The company also announced that it just signed an agreement with Meta, allowing the social media company to use its infrastructure.
Year to date the stock has gone from $103 to $176.
Oracle is quietly ruling the world because of their focus on cloud services and infrastructure. I will explain this further in 2025.
Select Dow and S&P stocks have been on fire and even The Walt Disney Company (DIS) which has been a laggard over the last 3 years is slowly rising to the top of the media heap.
Last month Disney released its Q4 2024 and full fiscal year earnings, along with announcing that Disney+ would add free ESPN streaming content starting in December.
Revenues increased 6% for Q4 to $22.6 billion from $21.2 billion in the prior-year quarter, and 3% for the year to $91.4 billion from $88.9 billion in the prior year.
Revenue for Disney’s Entertainment segment – which includes the traditional TV networks, direct-to-consumer streaming and films – was impressive, with a 14% increase year over year to $10.83 billion.
The summer blockbuster films Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine added $316 million of profit for the entertainment segment during the quarter. Overall, the entertainment segment reported nearly $1.1 billion in profit.
Disney’s combined streaming business (Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+) reported Q4 operating income of $321 million compared with a loss of $387 million year-over-year.
Plus Disney’s streaming entertainment ad revenue for Q4 was up 14% year-over-year.
In other unusual news, the company shared encouraging growth expectations for the next 3 years.
The retail sector including Costco, Walmart (WMT) and BJ’s Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. (BJ) is quickly emerging as one of the hottest sectors on Wall Street. In 2025 the educated investor will reap the benefits of owning retails stocks.
I want to point out that in this last quarter, Walmart generated $169 billion in revenue, while Disney generated $22.6 billion and Oracle generated $14.06 billion.
Stay open and stay positive!
2025 looks like it will be an exceptionally good year for Wealthy Investor students.
Tyrone Jackson
The Wealthy Investor