Bespoke’s Top Earnings Triple Plays

May 27, 2021

Here at Bespoke, our job is to identify winners and losers, and one of the ways we try to find earnings-season winners is through our list of “triple plays.”

Long-term Bespoke subscribers know how much we like triple plays, but for those that haven’t heard of the term, we came up with it back in the mid-2000s for companies that beat analyst EPS estimates, beat analyst revenue estimates and also raise guidance.  Investopedia.com is one of the best online resources for financial markets education, and they’ve given us credit for coining the “triple play” term on their website.  We consider triple play stocks to be the cream of the crop of earnings season, and we are constantly finding new long-term buy opportunities from this basket of names each quarter.

We’ve been covering epic earnings strength versus estimates for a couple of quarters now, but it’s worth mentioning again that companies are reporting triple plays at the highest rates we’ve seen since we began tracking this data in the early 2000s.  Since the Q1 2021 earnings season began on 4/12/21, we’ve seen 272 earnings triple plays.  Prior to COVID, a normal earnings season would see 50-100 triple plays.  Given their high numbers, triple play stocks are not seeing the same type of upside price reaction that they used to see.  We view this as an opportunity to find the triple plays that may still offer upside but haven’t seen it yet due to broader market trends.

In this regards, we’ve gone through the price charts of all 272 triple plays to find the ones that look the best either from a short-term or long-term technical perspective.  In all, we identified 49 triple play stocks that we cover in our just-published “Top Triple Plays” report.  This report is not meant to be a “buy list” but rather an idea generator that you can use as a starting point for further research into the names we’ve identified.

Learn how to see the 49 stocks in this quarter’s Top Triple Plays report below!

See our Top Earnings Season Triple Plays by signing up for a Bespoke Premium membership now.  Click this link for a 14-day trial!

B.I.G. Tips – Retail Sales Stall

May 14, 2021

After a couple of days of much stronger than expected inflation data, the trend of higher than expected readings didn’t continue with Friday’s Retail Sales report. While economists were expecting sales to increase by 1.0% versus March, the actual level was unchanged. After subtracting Autos and Gas, the report was even weaker showing a decline of 0.8%. While the April report was a disappointment, it wasn’t all bad; March’s report was revised higher by nearly the same amount that April’s report missed expectations by.

Since the outset of the COVID pandemic, there have really been some crazy swings in economic data.  One example is the total share of Retail Sales that Food & Beverage Stores account for.  Prior to COVID, the sector’s share of total sales had been slowly drifting lower over time in the low-double-digit percentage range.  The COVID lockdowns really changed that, though.  Over the course of a month from February to March 2020, the sector’s share of total sales spiked from just over 12% to more than 17%.  Obviously, Americans weren’t suddenly eating more (at least not that much more), but with the economy locked down, they literally couldn’t spend money on anything but the essentials like food, liquor, and lottery tickets.  Additionally, for the food they did eat, they were forced to buy it at the grocery store rather than at restaurants.

As the lockdowns ended and Americans were able to spend again, the sector’s share of total sales started to decline again.  While a reversion back down to its baseline level was expected, the sector now actually accounts for a lower percentage of total sales than it did before the pandemic!  Just as Americans weren’t necessarily eating more during the pandemic, they aren’t eating less now that the pandemic has ended.  The reason that the sector’s share of total sales has dropped below pre-pandemic levels is the exact opposite of why its share spiked so much during the pandemic.  Americans aren’t spending more or less on food now than they did before or during the pandemic, but instead, the pie is a lot larger now (thanks to savings and stimulus) and they are choosing to spend that food money at restaurants and takeout rather than at the grocery store.

In our just-released B.I.G. Tips report, we broke out the details of the April report including its bright and dark spots. For anyone with more than a passing interest in how the COVID outbreak and subsequent stimulus is impacting the economy, our monthly update on retail sales is a must-read.  To see the report, sign up for a monthly Bespoke Premium membership now!