Unusual Options Activity Thur 8/8/24

The following options are exhibiting notable trading, potentially indicating changing sentiment toward the underlying stocks, and/or potentially representing positioning for increased volatility.

Bullish Call Activity:

• CHWY Weekly Aug09 23 calls are seeing interest with the underlying stock up 5% (volume: 4.8K, open int: 920, implied vol: ~84%, prev day implied vol: 61%). Co is expected to report earnings late August.
• NIO Aug 3.5 calls are seeing interest with the underlying stock up 4% (volume: 2.7K, open int: 570, implied vol: ~77%, prev day implied vol: 71%). Co is expected to report earnings late September.
• BIDU Aug 90 calls are seeing interest with the underlying stock up 5% (volume: 3.0K, open int: 6.3K, implied vol: ~46%, prev day implied vol: 44%). Co is confirmed to report earnings August 22 before the open.
• OXY Weekly Aug09 58 calls are seeing interest with the underlying stock up 5% (volume: 4.9K, open int: 3.9K, implied vol: ~25%, prev day implied vol: 24%). Co reported earnings last night.
  

Bearish Put Activity:

• BMBL Aug 3.5 puts are seeing interest with the underlying stock down 31% (volume: 2.6K, open int: 0, implied vol: ~69%, prev day implied vol: 60%). Co reported earnings last night.
  

Sentiment: The CBOE Put/Call ratio is currently: 1.06, VIX: (25.72, -2.33, -7.7%).
August 16 is options expiration -- the last day to trade August equity options.

=Baidu (BIDU) reported earnings on Thur 16 May 2019 (a/h)

Baidu misses by $0.10, reports revs in-line; guides Q2 revs below consensus; announces $1 bln buyback program

• Reports Q1 (Mar) earnings of $0.41 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.10 worse than the S&P Capital IQ Consensus of $0.51; revenue +15% to $3.59 bln vs. $3.59 bln consensus, or 21% year over year excluding the impact of announced divestitures. Online marketing revenues were RMB17.7 billion ($2.63 billion), increasing 3% year over year, which was mainly due to strength in education, retail, and business services, while healthcare, online games services, and financial services sectors were less vibrant. Other revenues were RMB 6.5 billion ($963 million), increasing 73% year over year, which was mainly due to the robust growth in iQIYI membership services, cloud and other businesses. Revenue from Baidu Core reached RMB 17.5 billion ($2.60 billion), increasing 8% year over year, or 16% year over year excluding the impact of announced divestures, while revenue from iQIYI reached RMB 7.0 billion ($1.04 billion), increasing 43% year over year. Content costs were RMB 6.2 billion ($917 million), increasing 47% year over year, mainly due to increased investments in iQIYI content and, to a lesser extent, in content for BJH accounts, Baidu feeds' content network. Traffic acquisition cost was RMB 3.2 billion ($474 million), increasing 41% year over year
• Co issues downside guidance for Q2, sees Q2 revs -3% to +2% to $3.74-3.96 bln vs. $4.34 bln S&P Capital IQ Consensus (+1-6% ex-divestitures). 
• "In March, Baidu's mobile reach expanded to 1.1 billion monthly active devices, while DuerOS voice assistant installed base reached 275 million devices and generated 2.37 billion monthly voice queries. We are leveraging Baidu AI to provide enterprise solutions to businesses and local governments, which significantly expands our total addressable market," said Robin Li, Chairman and CEO of Baidu. "Looking ahead, we are quite excited about the opportunities to significantly improve content and service discovery through in-app search and increase customer ROI with our entrance into CRM, to deepen our offering to our marketing customers... margins were dampened by our successful CCTV New Year Eve Gala marketing campaign, which accelerated the traffic of Baidu family of apps and highlighted better in-app search user experience." said Herman Yu, CFO of Baidu. "Despite government policies to improve the market condition for SMEs, we anticipate online marketing in the near term to face a challenging environment. We will take this opportunity to improve our monetization capabilities and review our businesses for operational efficiency, while recognizing the importance to invest for sustainable long-term growth." 
• Board of directors authorized a new share repurchase program under which the Company may repurchase up to US$1 billion of its shares, effective until July 1, 2020.

Earnings this week : May 13 - 17, 2019 (wk 20)

 

Monday (May 13)

• Premarket: CPRX    

• After-Hours:  BILI HOLI IIIV IMMR KRNT LM MIME NVGS STE STNE TME TTWO

Tuesday (May 14)

• Premarket:  AZZ BEST CTST CYBR GDS HUD MIXT RL TAK

• After hours:  A ACB DOX EGHT FSM NEWR PAGS TCS TLRY

Wednesday (May 15)

• Premarket:  BABA ERJ M PLCE PPDF RUBY TSEM TSG
• After hours:  CSCO DDS FLO FTCH JACK NTES TRQ VRTU ZTO

Thursday (May 16)

• Premarket:  AZZ EXP FRO KEM MANU MMYT NICE QIWI WIX WMT

• After hours:  BOOT AINV AMAT NVDA BIDU IQ HUYA PINS

Friday (May 17)

• Premarket:  CAE DE LX
• After hours:  

=Baidu (BIDU) to use BlackBerry (BB) software in self-driving platform

(Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd (BB) and Chinese internet search firm Baidu Inc (BIDU) on Wednesday signed a deal to work jointly on developing self-driving vehicle technology, sending BlackBerry’s Toronto-listed shares up 8 percent to an over four-year high.

BlackBerry, which has developed software QNX Hypervisor 2.0 to run complex computer systems in vehicles, said Baidu would use its software for its self-driving open platform, Apollo.

“By integrating the BlackBerry QNX OS with the Apollo platform, we will enable carmakers to leap from prototype to production systems,” said Li Zhenyu, general manager of Baidu’s intelligent driving division.

The automotive industry is one of the fastest-growing segments of the technology market, as automakers race to add more features toward building self-driving cars.

It is a very material opportunity for technology companies that get well-positioned with automotive OEMs, CIBC Capital Markets analyst Todd Coupland said, adding that such self-driving features will be on all cars in the next few years.

“The opportunity is global, it’s for a very large market and I think it’s a very solid win for BlackBerry.”

BlackBerry has already signed various deals for next-generation automotive systems with chipmaker Qualcomm Inc (QCOM) as well as technology companies Denso (6902.T) and Aptiv Plc (APTV).

As part of the latest agreement, BlackBerry and Baidu will also combine Baidu’s smartphone integration software for connected cars and its AI system to run on the BlackBerry QNX Platform, the Canadian software maker said.

=Baidu.com (BIDU) reported earnings on Wed 24 Feb 2016 (a/h)

Baidu.com misses by $0.04, beats on revs; guides Q1 revs below consensus  :

• Reports Q4 (Dec) adj. earnings of $1.18 per share, $0.04 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus of $1.22; rev +33% to $2.89 bln vs. $2.84 bln consensus. 
  • Mobile search monthly active users (MAUs) were 657 million for the month of December 2015, an increase of 21% year-over-year Mobile maps MAUs were 302 million for the month of December 2015, an increase of 43% year-over-year Gross merchandise value[1] (:GMV) totaled RMB14.7 billion ($2.3 billion) for the fourth quarter of 2015, an increase of 397% year-over-year.
• Co issues downside guidance for Q1, sees Q1 revs of $2.379-2.465 bln vs. $2.51 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.