There were a ton of stocks that moved higher last week, however, there were only a few who managed to make moves in double-digits. Only 54 U.S. listed stocks who have market caps of at minimum $10 billion witnessed their shares hit 10 percent or higher. Three of those companies are Tesla, Alphabet, and, strangely, Wingstop. Wingstop is a chain restaurant I didn’t even know existed until I once saw a viral video of a young woman going bananas in the passenger seat of a vehicle because she worked a full 10-hour shift without eating and was desperate for a taste of Wingstop.
So let’s dig in and see what made these three stocks so dang successful last week.
First up, let’s look at Alphabet.
“It was an uppercase week for Alphabet, when shares of the world’s top dog in search and online advertising soared 12%. The upticks happened primarily on Friday after the tech bellwether posted well-received financial results. It also introduced a dividend, so it’s no longer the most valuable U.S. company by market cap not to declare quarterly distributions,” the Motley Fool’s Rick Munarriz wrote.
Here’s more on Alphabet’s rise from Munarriz:
Revenue rose 15% to $80.5 billion for Google’s parent company through the first three months of this year, just ahead of the 13% that analysts were targeting. A 15% increase may not seem like a lot for a growth stock, but this is actually the fifth consecutive quarter that Alphabet has come through with accelerating top-line growth.
There was double-digit growth across most of Alphabet’s segments, including ad revenue, which accounts for the lion’s share of its business. A big winner was Google Cloud. Revenue soared 28% for the segment, and its operating profit soared nearly fivefold. This is just 12% of the revenue mix at the company, but it’s starting to move the needle.
The bottom-line story was even better. Earnings shot 57% higher, roughly double the 29% increase Wall Street pros were expecting. Cost cuts and layoffs aren’t typically good for morale, but investors are applauding the widening margins in the process. This was a blowout performance. Alphabet had topped analyst profit estimates by 3% to 9% in each of the four previous quarters. This was a 25% beat.
Okay, so let’s take a look at the company’s new dividend. Dolling out a total of 0.20 a share in a cycle composed of three months equals a yield that is just a little bit south of 0.5 percent. But a dividend isn’t the only means being utilized to return cash to its shareholders. The board also authorized a generous additional $70 billion in share buybacks.
Next up, well examine Tesla.
According to Munarriz, a company can actually fall short of earnings expectations and still be a winner, which seems to go against logic, but that’s just how the market works. Tesla’s shares shot up by 14 percent last week.
The company’s revenue actually dropped 9 percent for the quarter and its adjusted net income was chopped almost in half. The stock’s performance came up short of what the market had been expecting on both ends of its income statement, Munarriz wrote.
The market still bid up the stock on comments made by CEO Elon Musk about the future of its FSD autonomous-driving platform, even as Tesla itself slashed the price of the premium service that helps automate many driving tasks. The company is stepping up its robotaxi efforts and reaffirming plans for a cheaper model that’s coming out soon. This helped squeeze out the shorts, despite the problematic financial performance.
Finally, it’s Wingstop’s turn. Surprisingly, this is the only mover in the bunch that showed a significant uptick without any sort of financial update. The restaurant chain went up a total of 10 percent, however, the company is not set to release quarterly results until Wednesday.
“It’s easy to see why investors are bidding Wingstop higher ahead of its upcoming earnings release. The past few months have been strong for fast-growing restaurant stocks, and this chain, in particular, has a habit of trouncing expectations. It has posted double-digit percentage beats in each of its last four reports,” the report continued.
The stock is actually rocking as it’s up 49 percent already this year and has almost doubled over the course of the past year the expectations for it indicate a belief it’s going to continue on its current trajectory.