Companies to Watch

CBA’s net interest margins are likely to climb as the central bank boosts rates, and the company faces less exposure to rising costs than peers.

CATL can look forward to a powerful combination of falling prices for the metals needed to make batteries, growing adoption of lower-cost technologies, and a recovery in electric vehicle production.

New features, including enhancements to payments, advertising, and authentication, could boost the share of overall revenue EBay keeps for itself—what the industry calls its “take rate"—by 100 to 200 basis points, well above consensus estimates.

As expensive nurse contracts roll off and physicians work through the backlog of inpatient surgeries, HCA and other hospital companies should see profit margins rise.

ITV faces threats to advertisers’ campaign budgets from inflation and weaker consumer spending, while Netflix and Amazon.com are becoming a threat as they prepare shows funded by ads.

Leonardo’s civil aviation margins stand to improve with increasing airliner production and helicopter utilization, while likely increases in European defense spending play to its electronics business, which includes optronics, infrared search, air traffic, and combat control.

Nomad’s BirdsEye and Findus brands will have a hard time passing on the increased costs of fish, meat, produce, packaging, and energy to consumers, and its debt load (now four times operating profit, up from 2.9 times in 2020) threatens to constrain acquistions.

Roblox, which benefited from the surge in online gaming during the pandemic, is adding offerings with growing content for virtual/augmented reality headsets, as well as shopping opportunities to buy branded goods such as Nike sneakers.

Salesforce has historically had high sales and marketing expenses. But its ability to serve customers virtually during the pandemic shows room for those costs to drop significantly.

Yum! Brands faces a trio of challenges in 2022: tough comparisons (from last year’s stimulus), rising inflation, and plunging disposable income for consumers.