Magnachip & PPL 4Q21 schedules, plus gas & India notes ?3

16:29 31-Jan-22

Magnachip has officially scheduled the report on its fourth quarter for the evening of February 16th, though we already knew this from its update three weeks ago.  MX has dropped since then along with the average estimates I provided then to 28 cents of EPS from $122M of revenue.  However, this quarter's average sales projection ticked up $1M to $119M.  I have nothing new to add to my commentary since then, and with MX priced pretty fairly now, I will mostly be looking at guidance and the market reaction.

PPL Corp. has scheduled its fourth quarter report for the morning of February 18th.  The average of analyst estimates comes to 32 cents of EPS from $2.0b of revenue, declining to $1.6b this quarter, due to the divestment of the U.K. business and purchase NEC in Rhode Island, which should be finalized later in the month.

In somewhat related news, the IEA came out with its 1Q22 gas report today, noting that recently high prices are likely to have "lasting negative effects" beyond Europe and the current heating season.  The summary echoes much of what I've already written:

Emerging economies are particularly vulnerable, and are already experiencing power cuts, industrial demand destruction and potential food supply issues in the absence of affordable gas-based fertilisers.

The current market situation is a stark reminder for gas-consuming countries of the importance of implementing and updating their security of supply toolboxes, including policies to protect consumers and to optimise the use of gas infrastructure, especially storage.

We'll see what Shell has to say on Thursday, as the transition of its business proceeds and that of its stock finishes; the ADRs should be visible under the new SHEL symbol by Wednesday.  For me, though, the larger opportunities lie with the New Fortress report, followed by Altus, and eventually Golar, and Xebec.  The alternative is abandonment of global efforts to mitigate climate change, and it's entirely possible that places like India will go that route.  Thus, it's hard for me to cheer Orbital's expansion there, and I continue to worry about the Ebix debt load and IPO, as well as Google's telecom investment in a country with such poor governance.

In light of all this, I will only give PPL's report cursory attention unless management has something surprising to say.  I'll be more focused on how PPL stock trades going into March instead.