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Anonymous ID: b41755 Jan. 30, 2020, 1:43 p.m. No.7969202   🗄️.is đź”—kun

U.S. farm bankruptcies hit an eight-year high: court data

 

U.S. farm bankruptcy rates jumped 20% in 2019 - to an eight-year high - as financial woes in the U.S. agricultural economy continued in spite of massive federal bail-out funding, according to federal court data. According to data released this week by the United States Courts, family farmers filed 595 Chapter 12 bankruptcies in 2019, up from 498 filings a year earlier. The data also shows that such filings - known as “family farmer” bankruptcies - have steadily increased every year for the past five years.

 

Farmers across the nation also have retired or sold their farms because of the financial strains, changing the face of Midwestern towns and concentrating the business in fewer hands.

 

“I just had a farmer contact me last week, telling me he can’t get financing for his inputs this year and he doesn’t know what to do,” said Charles E. Covey, a bankruptcy attorney based in Peoria, Illinois.

 

Chapter 12 is a part of the federal bankruptcy code that is designed for family farmers and fishermen to restructure their debts. It was created during the 1980s farm crisis as a simple court procedure to let family farmers keep operating while working out a plan to repay lenders.

 

The increase in cases had been somewhat expected, bankruptcy experts and agricultural economists said, as farmers face trade battles, ever-mounting farm debt, prolonged low commodity prices, volatile weather patterns and a fatal pig disease that has decimated China’s herd.

 

Even billions of dollars spent over the past two years in government agricultural assistance has not stemmed the bleeding. Nearly one-third of projected U.S. net farm income in 2019 came from government aid and taxpayer-subsidized commodity insurance payments, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

 

The court data indicates those supports did help prevent a more serious economic fallout, said John Newton, chief economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation. Some of the biggest bankruptcy rate increases were seen in regions, such as apple growers in the Pacific Northwest, that did not receive much or any of the latest round of trade aid from the Trump administration.

 

The bankruptcy data “signals that things have not turned around,” said John Newton, chief economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation. “We still have supply and demand uncertainty. If we see prolonged low prices, I wouldn’t expect this trend to slow down.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-farms-bankruptcy/u-s-farm-bankruptcies-hit-an-eight-year-high-court-data-idUSKBN1ZT2YE

Anonymous ID: b41755 Jan. 30, 2020, 1:53 p.m. No.7969325   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>9335 >>9394 >>9403

Amazon Soars After Blowout Q4 Earnings Smash Expectations, Joins $1 Trillion "Cuatro Comas" Club

 

Last quarter, when Amazon reported otherwise respectable Q3 earnings, the market hammered the stock after margins unexpectedly shrank to a 6 quarter low, its AWS cloud segment disappointed, and Amazon guided to surprisingly disappointing operating income guidance. But it wasn't just last quarter: AMZN shares closed lower the next day after four of the past five announcements. Such earnings disappointments were sufficient to create a material schism between the rest of the FAANG complex, which soared higher in the post-QE4 period, and Amazon which has failed to make much headway.

 

Well, Amazon's period in the penalty box is finally over, with the stock soaring 15% after hours after it reported Q4 earnings, joining its FAANG peers in the quatro commas club with a market cap finally well over $1 trillion.

 

Here is a summary of the fourth quarter highlights:

 

Q4 Net Sales $87.4B, above the consensus estimate of $86.17B, and above the high end of the company's own range of $80-$86.5BN

Q4 EPS $6.47, smashing expectations of $4.11

Q4 operating income $3.88 billion, up 2.5% y/y, and also smashing estimates of $2.75 billion

Q4 AWS Net Sales $9.95B, also modestly beating expectations of $9.89B, and up 34% Y/Y, a modestly slowdown from 45% a year earlier

 

In short, Amazon beat analyst expectations across the board during the holiday quarter: on revenue, operating income, and AWS sales (barely). Impressively, Jeff Bezos even defied predictions for a slump in net income, pulling in $3.26 billion, from $3.02 billion a year earlier.

 

Looking to Q1 2020, guidance was also solid:

 

Net sales are expected to be between $69.0 billion and $73.0 billion, or up between 16% and 22% Y/Y, vs Est. $71.56BN.

Operating income between $3.0 billion and $4.2 billion, compared with $4.4 billion in first quarter 2019.

 

It is worth noting that the guidance includes approximately $800 million lower depreciation expense due to an increase in the estimated useful life of our servers beginning on January 1, 2020.

 

And yet, despite the otherwise impressive outlook, taking the midline of Amazon's Q1 revenue guidance of $71BN would indicate another modest slowdown in total revenue, the lowest since March 2018. Another potential blemish: after the company's profit margin nearly doubled to an impressive 7.4% in Q1 2019, largely thanks to the increasing contribution from AWS, in Q2, Q3 and then again in Q4, profit slumped again, and the profit margin of 4.4% was the lowest going back to Q1 2018. Meanwhile, even though AWS beat revenue expectations of $9.89BN, reporting $9.95BN in sales, the growth rate continues to decline, and in Q4 dropped to 34%, the lowest on record.As usual AWS was the primary source of profit, and with $2.6BN in operating income (up from $2.2BN a year ago) or 67% of the company's total operating income of $3.879. Meanwhile, the international division continues to burn cash, and despite generating $23.8BN in sales, it resulted in yet another loss of $617MM in Q4.

 

To summarize, AWS revenue growth:

 

Q1 2018: 48%

Q2 2018: 49%

Q3 2018: 46%

Q4 2018: 46%

Q1 2019: 42%

Q2 2019: 37%

Q3 2019: 35%

Q4 2019: 34%

 

The good news however is that after declining for a year, AWS operating margin finally posted a modest rebound:

 

Q1 2018: 25.7%

Q2 2018: 26.9%

Q3 2018: 31.1%

Q4 2018: 29.3%

Q1 2019: 28.9%

Q2 2019: 25.3%

Q3 2019: 25.1%

Q4 2019: 26.1%

 

To be sure, it's not just AWS: Amazon's North America segment margins finally managed a modest rebound, from a 2 year low of 3.01% to 3.54%, even as international margins declined once more, dropping to -2.59%. This group has failed to generate positive cash flow for years.