Three stocks to watch this week: SAFE, Best Buy, Dell Technologies

This week, the U.S. stock market may still be volatile. Investors will focus on the Fed's interest rate policy. There is speculation that the Fed may tighten its policy soon.

Fed officials said in a recent speech that as the economy recovers, the Fed may begin to slowly reduce its monthly bond purchase program of $120 billion.

This week's Jackson Hole Central Bank Annual Meeting may also send a similar message. The speech of Fed Chairman Powell is usually the highlight of the meeting, and many chairmen of the Federal Reserve have used the meeting to convey important messages many times.

In addition to the direction of monetary policy, investors will also pay attention to the earnings reports of some of the top US companies. These companies will be the last companies to announce earnings in this issue.

1. SAIFX Corporation

Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), a company that sells enterprise software and provides cloud services for customer relationship management, will release its quarterly earnings report after the close of business on Wednesday, August 25. This software supplier is expected to generate 6.24 billion U.S. dollars in revenue and earn 0.92 U.S. dollars per share.

In May of this year, the San Francisco-based company gave an optimistic earnings forecast, stating that its annual profit will exceed analysts’ expectations.

Since many companies hope that at least some of their employees can work remotely and tasks such as sales calls can continue through teleconferencing technology, Salesforce customers are accelerating the pace of software modernization.

With the acquisition of Tableau in 2019 and MuleSoft the previous year, Salesforce further consolidated its position in the industry and brought a favorable growth environment. Salesforce is acquiring Slack Technologies at a price of $27.7 billion, aimed at driving the company's sales growth by more than 25% each year.

In the past quarter, Salesforce's stock price has risen about 16%, outperforming the Nasdaq index, which is dominated by technology stocks. The stock closed at $256.13 last Friday.

2. Best Buy

Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) is a large electronics and technology chain with stores in the United States and Canada. It will release its second-quarter earnings report before opening on Tuesday, August 24. Analysts predict its profit per share is $1.89 and revenue is $11.49 billion.

In the past quarter, BBY’s stock price has been under pressure because people are worried that as the US economy reopens after a year of blockade, the retailer will be able to maintain the level of growth during the epidemic.

Although the demand for its products is still higher than normal, Matt Bilunas, the company's chief financial officer, told investors this year that there is great uncertainty about the impact of the new crown pandemic, so it is difficult to predict the sustainability of these trends. .

Best Buy's stock price fell by about 2% in the last quarter and closed at $112.63 last Friday.

3. Dell Technologies

Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) will release its second quarter fiscal year 2022 performance report on Thursday, August 26 after the close. Analysts expect profit per share of 2.03 US dollars and revenue of more than 25.54 billion US dollars.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the strong demand for personal computers for home office and school benefits IT product and service providers. However, at the same time, due to the economic recession triggered by the virus, sales from corporate customers have been affected.

Dell CEO Michael Dell is trying to reduce his eponymous company’s reliance on one-time hardware sales. Instead, his goal is to transform it into a subscription-based computer service seller.

Currently, about half of Dell's revenue still comes from the purchase of personal computers by businesses and consumers. Dell's stock price has risen 36% this year and closed at $98.50 on Friday.