SPECIAL ALERT: Trimming Back FB Calls Ahead of Earnings Tonight

Key Points from this Alert

  • We are selling half of our Facebook (FB) May 2017 $150 calls (FB170519C00150000) call position for an average return of 270 percent.
  • We will keep the remaining half in play to capture additional upside should Facebook deliver a knockout quarter.
  • As we do this, we will boost our protective stop loss on the FB calls to 4.00 from 1.90, which will serve to lock in a gain of more than 175 percent on the remaining call position.

Over the last week, our Facebook (FB) May 2017 $150 calls (FB170519C00150000) have moved substantially higher following strong earnings results at Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT) and in particular Alphabet (GOOGL), which like Facebook are all benefitting from the shift to digital advertising. Last night our FB calls closed at $5.35, which brings the average return across our two buy-ins to more than 270%:

  • 224.2% return from the initial position we took on March 30, 2017
  • 338.5% return from the second dip into the calls we made on April 20, 2017

Even though Connected Society company Facebook (FB) has a track record of beating Wall Street expectations when it reports its quarterly results, from time to time whisper expectations that are above published forecasts can get the better of a company. Given the strong quarterly results coming out of Alphabet, odds are Wall Street is expecting Facebook to deliver several pennies better than the consensus forecast for 1Q 2017 that calls for EPS of $1.12 on revenue of $7.83 billion.

While we too expect Facebook to deliver solid results, our concern is over the potential for whisper number expectations to be rather high, resulting in the shares getting hit even if they beat the published expectations number.

To manage that potential downside:

  • We are selling half of our Facebook (FB) May 2017 $150 calls (FB170519C00150000) call position this morning, while keeping the remaining half in play to capture additional upside should Facebook deliver a knockout quarter.
  • As we do this, we will boost our protective stop loss on the FB calls to 4.00 from 1.90, which will serve to lock in a gain of more than 175 percent on the remaining call position.

 

About the Author

Chris Versace, Chief Investment Officer
I'm the Chief Investment Officer of Tematica Research and editor of Tematica Investing newsletter. All of that capitalizes on my near 20 years in the investment industry, nearly all of it breaking down industries and recommending stocks. In that time, I've been ranked an All Star Analyst by Zacks Investment Research and my efforts in analyzing industries, companies and equities have been recognized by both Institutional Investor and Thomson Reuters’ StarMine Monitor. In my travels, I've covered cyclicals, tech and more, which gives me a different vantage point, one that uses not only an ecosystem or food chain perspective, but one that also examines demographics, economics, psychographics and more when formulating my investment views. The question I most often get is "Are you related to…."

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