Amazon Reports Blowout Quarter, Bezos Stepping Down As CEO

With Amazon and Google, together representing a whopping $3.1 trillion in market cap almost as large as the entire Russell 2000, set to report earnings after the close Bloomberg noted that some investors were nervous that anything but a massive beat, well in excess of expectations would be required to avoid a dip in the Nasdaq (recall last week's drop in AAPL and TSLA stock following stellar earnings reports).

So what is the absolute lowest numbers that Amazon has to beat in Q4 to avoid sliding? Here are the consensus estimates:

Net sales: $119.70 billion

GAAP EPS: $7.34

AWS net sales: $12.77 billion

Operating income: $4.47 billion

Amazon is expected to post a record year, its sales supercharged by the pandemic with the online retail giant among the main beneficiaries. The debate retail watchers are having now is the extent to which people are going to go back to physical stores when the virus recedes.

As a reminder, 2020 was an investment year for Amazon, with the company opening warehouses and other logistics depots at a rate of about one a day. The pandemic’s surge in online shopping both drove demand for those facilities, and made Amazon’s operations more costly (mainly by reducing the efficiency of warehouses that weren’t designed for social distancing). Investors often take their cues after Amazon reports earnings by reading the tea leaves on the company’s spending plans. Does Amazon think it needs to keep building new warehouses and cloud-computing data centers? Or will Amazon use 2021 to grow into all the capacity it added a year ago?

With all that in mind, how did Amazon do? Well, it was another blowout quarter for the retailer:

Q4 Net Sales $125.56B, beating estimates of $119.70B

Q4 EPS $14.09, smashing estimates of $7.340, and more than double the $6.47 year ago.

Q4 Operating Income $6.9B, beating estimates of $4.47B, and up 77% Y/Y

Q4 AWS Net Sales $12.74B, just missing estimates of $12.77B

Amazon Web Services net sales +28% vs. +34% y/y, estimate +28.3%

Fulfillment expense $18.47 billion, estimate $18.52 billion

Looking ahead, the company's guidance was also solid:

Amazon Sees 1Q Net Sales $100.0B to $106.0B, Est. $95.72B

Operating income Q1 expected between $3.0 billion and $6.5 billion, compared with $4.0 billion in first quarter 2020.

… but the real bombshell in today's report is that CEO Jeff Bezos will step down as CEO and "transition" to the role of executive chair in Q3 2021, who after 27 years at the helm of the retailer he founder, is ending an era at Amazon.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/amazon-reports-blowout-quarter-bezos-stepping-down-ceo

Alphabet Shares Soar To New Record High After Crushing Expectations

Alphabet shares surged after hours following a huge, across the board beat tonight, topping $2000 for the first time.

Top- and Bottom-lines surged (with revenues up 23% YoY)…

4Q EPS $22.30, Est. $15.58

4Q Rev. $56.90B, Est. $53.54B

Additionally, Revenue in "Other Bets," the category that includes Waymo, comes in at $196 million, beating estimates of $176.2 million. That unit lost $1.14 billion, which is less than the $1.74 billion loss that Wall Street anticipated.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/alphabet-shares-soar-new-record-high-after-crushing-expectations

Biden Justice Department Nominee Faces Ethics Minefield From Father’s Corporate Interests

President Joe Biden cast Vanita Gupta as an upstart civil rights lawyer when nominating her for the number three position at the Department of Justice. But Gupta is also the daughter of a wealthy and powerful chemical executive—prompting ethics concerns that she did not address in her Senate nominations questionnaire.

Her father is Rajiv L. Gupta, a chemicals magnate turned Wall Street adviser and board member for Fortune 500 companies. Gupta made no mention of her father's sprawling corporate network on a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire that asked her to identify prospective conflicts, despite the fact that the Justice Department has repeatedly sparred with her father's businesses in recent years.

The issue is especially pressing since Biden has made integrity and public confidence touchstones of his DOJ picks, in light of purported damage to the department's prestige under former president Donald Trump. If confirmed, Gupta will serve as associate attorney general, the officer that advises the A.G. on Justice Department priorities and oversees key units like the antitrust division, the civil division, the tax division, and the environment and natural resources division, all of which could conceivably abut her father's businesses.

Rajiv Gupta was a decades-long employee of the Rohm and Haas Company, a Philadelphia-based manufacturer and distributor of speciality chemicals for electronics and construction. Gupta, an immigrant from India, joined the company as a financial analyst in the early 1970s. He was chairman and CEO by the turn of the century. Under his leadership, the company expanded its presence in China, opening a manufacturing plant in the Guangdong province and a $60 million research center in Shanghai. He orchestrated Dow Chemical's $18 billion acquisition of Rohm and Haas in 2009.

Since stepping down as CEO, Gupta has served on the boards of Fortune 500 companies like Avantor, HP, and DuPont de Nemours Inc. He also advises the private equity firm New Mountain Capital, which manages over $30 billion, and sat on the board of the Vanguard Group, one of the big three index funds.

The Justice Department has investigated or supervised Gupta-connected entities in recent years. It had to approve a proposed merger between DuPont and Dow Chemical and set terms before greenlighting the move in 2017. In 2020, Justice Department lawyers and the EPA settled a lawsuit with DuPont involving environmental law violations at a chemical manufacturing facility in Texas. The antitrust division and the natural resources division handled those matters. Vanita Gupta would oversee both sections if confirmed as associate A.G.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-justice-department-nominee-faces-ethics-minefield-from-fathers-corporate-interests/

Navy, Coast Guard seized $211 million worth of drugs from Pacific smugglers

SAN DIEGO — An estimated $211 million worth of cocaine and marijuana seized by the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy from smuggling vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean has been brought to San Diego.

The 11,400 pounds (5,171 kilograms) of cocaine and 9,000 pounds (4,082 kilograms) of marijuana was offloaded from the USS Gabrielle Giffords on Monday, a Coast Guard statement said.

The Navy ship and the Coast Guard cutters Seneca, Legare and Spencer made the seizures between October and December.

The interdiction effort is aimed at supply networks in Central and South America.

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2021/02/02/navy-coast-guard-seized-211-million-worth-of-drugs-from-pacific-smugglers/

Mayor Lori Lightfoot Blames TRUMP for Turmoil with Chicago Teachers Union

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered teachers back to school on Monday for in-person learning during a press conference on Sunday.

Lightfoot added that her administration “will take action” against those teachers who do not report back to work.

The Chicago teachers refused to go back to work anyway.

On Tuesday Lori Lightfoot lashed out — not at the teachers union — but at President Donald Trump.

The Democrat Party needed President Trump to have someone to blame for their failures. Their rants now ring hollow as President Trump is out of the headlines and silenced by social media.

Lightfoot is just a clown at this point and everyone knows it.

The Chicago Tribune reported:

But although she told MSNBC Monday that the issue was “uniquely local,” during a Tuesday appearance on CNNs “New Day,” she instead laid blame far beyond the scope of the city’s dueling factions.

Lightfoot didn’t invoke the name of the nation’s 45th president but she suggested the ongoing impasse between Chicago Public Schools and CTU, over whether it is safe to return to in-person instruction as early as Thursday, stems from the failed vaccine rollout under former President Donald Trump.

“This is a very difficult situation and we’re in it, still, because of the incompetence of the previous administration. So I think it’s important for both sides to come to the table in good faith, recognize that we’re both trying to work through a very challenging situation but we must get a deal done,” Lightfoot said to “New Day” cohost Alisyn Camerota.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/mayor-lori-lightfoot-blames-trump-turmoil-chicago-teachers-union/

Can Ibogaine Solve the Opioid Crisis?

The opioid crisis rages on behind the scenes of Covid and every other thing occupying public attention, and in many big cities last year the crisis has deepened. For example, in heavily locked down San Francisco, 360% more people died from overdoses than Covid-19.

We’ve been reporting on this issue for years but, unfortunately, this is one of those public health issues, like medical cannabis, where the war on drugs is at odds with rationality, common sense and compassion.

Regarding opioids, there is a very promising natural cure for the deadly withdrawals which keep so many from detoxing, but the DEA has it listed as a Schedule I drug, outlawing its possession. Ibogaine is the psychoactive alkaloid in the visionary drug iboga, which is the root bark of a small African shrub, and for decades it has been known to be very effective in treating opioid addicts.

The government, however, criminalizes possession of ibogaine, because according to the DEA, “schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

This is from an article I wrote in 2014, Opiates, Iboga and the Roots of Self Destruction…

Iboga is a psychoactive plant medicine derived from the root bark of a small African shrub, tabernanthe iboga, and has been used for perhaps thousands of years as a shamanic medicine and healing sacrament for tribal Africans of the Bwiti tradition and Pygmy peoples. The bark of the roots is removed, shredded, then ingested in raw form, or an extract of the primary psychoactive alkaloid, ibogaine, can be derived. Discovered as an anti-addictive medicine and potential cure for heroin addiction by Howard Lotsof in 1962, when properly administered as part of a comprehensive opiate detox program, it interrupts chemical dependence, remarkably stopping withdrawal symptoms almost immediately.

Most importantly, though, iboga reveals and can heal the root causes of addiction by triggering an intensely profound spiritual journey that can uproot and overcome the psychological basis of compulsive behavior.

As the war on drugs grinds on leaving a generations deep trail of death, destruction and terror in its wake, it appears inevitable that drugs will eventually win. This is frustrating to those who need help now, of course, but as things go in this capitalistic world, changes often come when profitability enters the picture.

In a remarkable look at how ibogaine has become the most promising potential treatment for the opioid crisis, Bloomberg financial news produced this informative and honest look at the emerging market for this incredible treatment.

The film features footage from the African village where 10th Generation Mossoko Bwiti Shaman Moughenda Mikala teaches and works with this sacred medicine. The footage was commissioned by the proprietor of Iboga Wellness, an outstanding iboga retreat center in Costa Rica.

https://www.naturalblaze.com/2021/02/can-ibogaine-solve-the-opioid-crisis.html

Superintendent of Public Instruction Who Swore in on a Children’s Book, to Deliver State of Education Address in Arizona Today

Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Kathy Hoffman, will deliver a state of education address today in Arizona.

Ms. Hoffman, who was born between 1985 and 1986 (her exact date of birth is unknown), is famous for swearing into office on a children’s book, instead of a bible, two years ago in January 2019.

Elected officials have the option of taking their Oath of Office with one hand on a variety of books. At the inaugural ceremony on Monday, Kathy Hoffman swore her oath of office to become Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction on the children’s book “Too Many Moose,” a book she enjoyed using in her classroom to help children with speech impediments.

Hoffman, a transwoman, joined in on a case in Arizona related to LGBTQ rights in April 2019, shortly after she was sworn in:

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on behalf of Equality Arizona, a non-profit organization that advocates for the equality of LGBTQ people. The organization includes student members, two of whom are described in the complaint. One student, referred to by the anonymous initials, “A.A.,” is a gay freshman in a greater Phoenix high school. Another student, Santi Ceballos, who is identified by the initials S.C. and is also named as a plaintiff, is a seventh-grade student at a middle school in Tucson.

On April 11, 2019, exactly two weeks after the lawsuit was filed, Governor Doug Ducey signed into law an amendment that repealed the anti-LGBTQ curriculum law. Kathy Hoffman – the Arizona Superintendent of Public Education and a defendant in the lawsuit – herself acknowledged that the law needed to be repealed, and she in fact welcomed the filing of the lawsuit. There had been repeated failed legislative efforts to repeal the law before the legislature’s historic vote following the lawsuit.

On May 20, 2019, as the final step in resolving the lawsuit, the state Board of Education voted to repeal language in a state regulation, which was also challenged in the lawsuit, that required sex education classes “to promote honor and respect for monogamous hetereosexual marriage.”

Today(((Ms. Hoffman)))will be presenting to the state her thoughts on the public instruction status in Arizona.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/superintendent-public-instruction-swore-childrens-book-deliver-state-education-address-arizona-today/

PRAY FOR EACH OTHER

https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/1356716155608645638