Interesting earnings comments, particularly from Uber/Global PMIs

I'll start with some earnings calls and then go to the global October manufacturing PMI's. Everything still points to a mixed bag with pockets of strength and those of weakness.

From Apple:

With their new models, "iPhone revenue set a September quarter record of $46.2b up 6% from a year ago, with growth in every geographic segment." iPhone sales in China in particular were flattish y/o/y. Mac was up 2% y/o/y, iPad higher by 8% y/o/y and wearables/home/accessory sales fell by 3% y/o/y. Service revenues were up by 12% y/o/y. 

To a question on what is the early feedback on Apple Intelligence and analysts trying to get a read on the upgrade cycle, Tim Cook said "We're getting a lot of positive feedback from developers and customers. And in fact, if you look at the first three days, which is all we have, obviously, from Monday, the 18.1 adoption is twice as fast as the 17.1 adoption was in the year ago quarter. And so, there's definitely interest out there for Apple Intelligence."

Another analyst tried to dig deeper on new iPhone sales/upgrades and Apple Intelligence and the CFO said, "we've very early in the cycle, very early in the cycle with a lot of new products and features that we are launching, and we're very excited about them, but it's early, and the Apple Intelligence rollout is going to happen over time, not across the world as normally we do with software releases."

And more from Tim Cook on the staged rollout of Apple Intelligence and whether people will upgrade, "In terms of the demand curve, I would just say that what we believe here is that it's a compelling reason for upgrading, and that's both my personal experience and feedback that I'm getting, and so we'll see. We're not projecting beyond the current quarter, obviously. We just don't do that." So not much guidance and more a wait and see on how things play out with the new phones.

From Amazon:

"At a time when consumers are being careful about how much they spend, we're continuing to lower prices and ship even more quickly, and we can see this resonating with customers as our unit growth continues to be strong and outpace even our revenue growth."

Their CapEx numbers are quite astonishing. "Year to date, capital investments were $51.9b. We expect to spend approximately $75b in CapEx in 2024. The majority of the spend is to support the growing need for technology infrastructure. This primarily relates to AWS as we invest so support demand for AI services while also including technology infrastructure to support our North America and International segments."

And in 2025? "I suspect we'll spend more than that in 2025. And the majority of it is for AWS, and specifically, the increased bumps here are really driven by generative AI."

What are they seeing on the consumer? "we're seeing a continuation of many of the things we've discussed over the last few quarters. Customers looking for deals and are price conscious. This matches up well with our Prime events which were well received and saved billions of dollars for our Prime members."

And, "When you look at the split between revenue growth and unit growth, you do see some impact of the lower ASP (average selling price) products that we're selling as well as some of the trade down that consumers are doing."

The Fed and the renter will be happy with these stats from Camden Property Trust, a stock we own. They are heavily focused on the sunbelt and so is experiencing where most of the new supply is coming from. 'Signed New Lease Rates' fell 4.8% y/o/y in October 2024 and only partly offset by 'Signed Renewal Rates' which rose 3%, thus giving a 'Signed Blended Lease Rate of -1.7%. If you look at when these rates will become effective, the blended rate is down .8% y/o/y. Their conference call is this morning. 

From Mastercard, again benefiting from the secular trend of digital/card payments from cash: