Asana Inc. on Wednesday reported and forecast narrower-than-expected losses, saying the figures reflected a firmer path to profitability, and its stock skyrocketed in after-hours trading.
The project-management software provider — whose chief executive is a co-founder of Meta Platforms Inc.’s META, +0.25%
Facebook — forecast first-quarter sales of $150 million to $151 million, with an adjusted net loss of between 18 cents and 19 cents a share. That’s better than FactSet forecasts for a 23-cent per-share loss with revenue of $150.4 million.
For the full year, Asana ASAN, +1.83%
said it expects revenue of between $638 million and $648 million, with an adjusted net loss of 55 cents to 59 cents. Analysts polled by FactSet expected a 79 cent-per-share loss, on sales of $645.8 million.
The company reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $95 million, or 44 cents a share. That compares with a loss of $90 million, or 48 cents a share, in the same quarter last year. Revenue rose 34% to $150.2 million, compared with $111.9 million in the same quarter last year.
Adjusted for stock-based compensation, restructuring and other costs, Asana lost 15 cents a share, compared with 25 cents a year earlier.
Analysts polled by FactSet expected Asana to reported an adjusted loss of 27 cents a share, on revenue of $145.1 million.
Shares soared 24% after hours.
The company reported earnings as other workplace-oriented cloud-services platforms, like Salesforce Inc. CRM, -0.20%
and Workday WDAY, -1.69%,
scale back and lay off workers. The tech industry has tried to shrink, after hiring to meet digital demand brought by the pandemic that later fizzled as COVID restrictions lifted.
Shares of Asana have fallen 60% over the past two months. By comparison, the S&P 500 Index SPX, +0.14%
has lost 4.3% of its value over that period.
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Wall Street’s expectations for 2023 have been diving as forecasts for the new year come in light, and the news could get worse once they factor in disappointing results from Big Tech. But at least Bob Iger is coming back for a sequel.
Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple all disappointed with holiday earnings this week. Their forecasts ranged from nonexistent to piecemeal to meh, and the fallout will only add to the biggest dive in Wall Street’s expectations through the beginning of a year since 2016.
Analysts’ average forecast for 2023 earnings from the S&P 500 index SPX, -1.04%
dropped by 2.5% in January, according to FactSet Senior Earnings Analyst John Butters, the worst in seven years. Those projections began heading lower last year, and the decline is only steepening — analysts are now projecting 3% earnings growth in 2023, and that is contingent on a big holiday rebound from the results being released this quarter.
Uncredited
The news was even worse for the first quarter, for which projections declined 3.3% in January as companies whiffed on their forecasts at a rapid pace: 86% of the 43 companies that have guided for first-quarter earnings have missed projections, Butters reported. Earnings are now expected to decline 4.2%, which would be the first year-over-year earnings decline since the third quarter of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic write-offs started to come in.
Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, -2.75% GOOG, -3.29%
and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. META, -1.19%
also missed their respective earnings targets amid problems with the digital-advertising industry, leading to the communications-services sector having the worst earnings season in the S&P 500. Profit has declined 25.2% in that sector so far, the worst among the 11 S&P 500 sectors, but would be down just 6.5% without the effects of Meta and Alphabet, Butters reported.
After the busiest week in earnings season wrapped up, don’t expect much of a breather — 95 S&P 500 companies are expected to report in the week ahead, the third consecutive week with at least 90 companies reporting. There will be plenty of intrigue among companies not in the S&P 500 too, including Robinhood Markets Inc. HOOD, -3.59%
and Affirm Holdings Inc. AFRM, -14.14%
reporting together on Wednesday afternoon.
Only one Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.38%
stock will report, but that is the Wednesday call you will want to tune in for: Bob Iger’s return to the Walt Disney Co. DIS, -2.21%
earnings show.
Ride-hailing prices and demand: In their most recent results, Lyft Inc. LYFT, -0.97%
disappointed with its number of rides, but showed much higher revenue per ride, while Uber Technologies Inc. UBER, +0.12%
rides increased 19% as gross bookings ran up 45% on a constant-currency basis. Both of those suggest rising prices, which could affect demand that has been steadily growing in the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Compare bookings and revenue growth with riders and rides growths when Uber reports Wednesday morning and Lyft on Thursday afternoon. Read more: Food prices keep rising. Food-company execs are betting Americans will keep paying.
Meta Platforms Inc. shares soared in after-hours trading Wednesday despite an earnings miss, as the Facebook parent company guided for potentially more revenue than Wall Street expected in the new year and promised more share repurchases amid cost cuts.
Meta META, +2.79% said it hauled in $32.17 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, down from $33.67 billion a year ago but stronger than expectations. Earnings were $4.65 billion, or $1.76 a share, compared with $10.3 billion, or $3.67 a share, last year.
Analysts polled by FactSet expected Meta to post fourth-quarter revenue of $31.55 billion on earnings of $2.26 a share, and the beat on sales coincided with a revenue forecast that also met or exceeded expectations. Facebook Chief Financial Officer Susan Li projected first-quarter sales of $26 billion to $28.5 billion, while analysts on average were projecting first-quarter sales of $27.2 billion.
Shares jumped more than 19% in after-hours trading immediately following the release of the results, after closing with a 2.8% gain at $153.12.
GOOG, +1.56%
Google and Pinterest Inc. PINS, +1.56%
benefited from Meta’s results, with shares for each company rising more than 4% in extended trading Wednesday.
“Our community continues to grow and I’m pleased with the strong engagement across our apps. Facebook just reached the milestone of 2 billion daily actives,” Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement announcing the results. “The progress we’re making on our AI discovery engine and Reels are major drivers of this. Beyond this, our management theme for 2023 is the ‘Year of Efficiency’ and we’re focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization.”
Facebook’s 2 billion-user milestone was slightly better than analysts expected for user growth on Meta’s core social network. Daily active users across all of Facebook’s apps neared, but did not crest, another round number, reaching 2.96 billion, up 5% from a year ago.
Meta has been navigating choppy ad waters as it copes with increasing competition from TikTok and fallout from changes in Apple Inc.’s AAPL, +0.79%
ad-tracking system in 2021 that punitively harmed Meta, costing it potentially billions of dollars in advertising sales. Meta has invested heavily in artificial-intelligence tools to rev up its ad-targeting systems and making better recommendations for users of its short-video product Reels, but it laid off thousands of workers after profit and revenue shrunk in recent quarters.
The cost cuts seemed to pay off Wednesday. While Facebook missed on its earnings, it noted that the costs of its layoffs and other restructuring totaled $4.2 billion and reduced the number by roughly $1.24 a share.
Meta executives said they now expect operating expenses to be $89 billion to $95 billion this year based on slower salary growth, cost of revenue, and $1 billion in savings from facilities consolidation — down from previous guidance for $94 billion to $100 billion. Capital expenditures are expected to be $30 billion to $33 billion, down from previous guidance of $34 billion to $37 billion, as Meta cancels multiple data-center projects.
In a conference call with analysts late Wednesday, Zuckerberg called 2023 the “year of efficiency” after 18 years of unbridled growth. He recommitted to Meta’s emphasis on AI and the metaverse, a platform for “better social experiences” than the phone, he said.
“The reduced outlook reflects our updated plans for lower data-center construction spend in 2023 as we shift to a new data-center architecture that is more cost efficient and can support both AI and non-AI workloads,” Li said in her outlook commentary included in the release.
Meta expects to increase its spending on its own stock. The company’s board approved a $40 billion increase in its share-repurchase authorization; Meta spent nearly $28 billion on its own shares in 2022, and still had nearly $11 billion available for buybacks before that increase.
“Investors are cheering Meta’s plans to return more capital to shareholders despite worries over rising costs related to its metaverse spending,” said Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com.
“At first glance…Meta getting its mojo back,” Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian said in a note late Wednesday. “Results and guidance look particularly solid after Snap’s dismal report; however, further cuts to operating and capital expenditures announced this afternoon were perhaps the biggest surprise.”
UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley said he anticipates double-digit revenue growth exiting 2023 and strong growth in earnings and free cash flow.
The results came a day after Snap Inc. SNAP, -10.29%
posted fourth-quarter revenue of $1.3 billion, flat from a year ago and the worst year-over-year sales growth Snap has ever reported. But they also arrived on the same day Facebook scored a major win in a California court. The company successfully fended off the Federal Trade Commission bid to win a preliminary injunction to block Meta’s planned acquisition of VR startup Within Unlimited.
Snap Inc. stumbled through another bleak quarter to end 2022 and executives refused to provide guidance Tuesday, sending shares sliding.
In a potential barometer of what’s to come from advertising-dependent internet companies, Snap SNAP on Tuesday posted a loss of more than a quarter-billion dollars in the holiday quarter and declined to provide a forecast for the current quarter, which is likely to rattle investors in Meta Platforms Inc. META and Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL GOOG Google, both of which report financial results later…
In the biggest week of the holiday-earnings season, Big Tech results will receive the spotlight amid thousands of layoffs that could only be the beginning.
After tech stocks were decimated in 2022, investors will be looking for signs of a turnaround in holiday reports and potential forecasts for the year ahead from three of 2022’s top five market-value losers: Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -0.66%,
Apple Inc. AAPL, -0.63%
and Meta Platforms Inc. META, -0.60%.
The other two stocks on that list — Microsoft Corp. MSFT, -1.38%
and Tesla Inc. TSLA, -0.15%
— reported last week, and Microsoft’s results in the wake of a mass-layoffs announcement did not bode well for its Big Tech brethren.
Those companies — along with Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, -1.32% GOOG, -1.49%
— will deliver results after finding themselves in unfamiliar territory: A backdrop of layoffs amid slowing demand for core products like digital ads, electronics and e-commerce, after a two-year pandemic surge and a two-decade-plus honeymoon with investors. Some analysts say the bottom hasn’t arrived, for either their finances or their workforces.
The one Big Tech company that hasn’t taken a sword to its payroll is Apple, which also increased its staff the least among the group during the COVID-19 pandemic. Apple shed $846 billion from its market cap last year, and now reports after its core product was part of the smartphone industry’s worst year since 2013 and worst holiday-season decline on record. The iPhone maker could also face questions from Wall Street about changing up its product sourcing, which has relied heavily on China, a nation whose COVID-19 restrictions have constrained production of some phones.
“Similar to other big technology companies, we expect Apple to adjust its head count to reflect an increasingly challenging global macroeconomic environment,” D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte said in a research note Tuesday.
Rivals that have already cut could face more if profit continues to fall along with revenue growth. Alphabet, for instance, is cutting 12,000 employees, but an activist investor has already said that is not enough considering how much the company grew during the pandemic, and the difficulties it now faces in the online-ad sector.
Analysts have said Meta’s “darkest days” are still ahead, as it navigates a round of more than 11,000 layoffs, competition from TikTok and its early stumbles in the metaverse. While cutting, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has promised to keep spending on metaverse development, even as the efforts slash the Facebook parent company’s previously healthy bottom line.
“In 2023, we expect Meta to remain engulfed in arduous battles inside the Octagon,” Monness Crespi Hardt analyst Brian White said in a research note on Thursday. “In the long run, we believe Meta will benefit from the secular digital ad trend and innovate in the metaverse; however, regulatory scrutiny persists, internal headwinds remain, and we believe the darkest days of this downturn are ahead of us.”
Online retailer Amazon AMZN, -0.66%
was the first Big Tech company to publicly declare cost-cutting was in order a year ago, and still coughed up $834 billion in market value in 2022. It kicked off 2023 with plans to lay off more than 18,000 workers as struggles continued throughout last year, when inflation siphoned away more consumer dollars toward essentials.
Amazon’s own AWS cloud-infrastructure unit has helped to drive sales in years past, as businesses built out their tech infrastructures. But remarks and the outlook from Microsoft executives — the third-biggest market-cap loser of 2022, and a big barometer for tech spending overall — weren’t exactly encouraging for cloud growth: Executives there last week warned of “moderating consumption growth” for its own cloud business.
“Sentiment was already bearish on AWS, with investors looking for slowing revenue over the next three quarters, largely confirmed after Microsoft earnings and conversations with industry checks,” Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein said in a note on Wednesday. “Positively, we believe e-commerce revenue has stabilized, and margins should improve from organic scale and announced head-count reductions.”
One sector to watch is semiconductors, where a chip shortage has turned into a glut: Chip-equipment maker Lam Research Corp. LRCX, +0.04% announced layoffs in the past week as Silicon Valley semiconductor giant Intel Corp. INTC, +0.27% displayed “astonishingly bad” results while laying off workers. When Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, -1.64%
reports this week, it could determine whether there is any silver lining in the semiconductor storm.
Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said in a Sunday note that a common theme of this week’s Big Tech earnings will be that “tech layoffs will accelerate with more pain ahead to curb expenses,” though he added that “Apple will likely cut some costs around the edges, but we do not expect mass layoffs from Cupertino this week.”
Big Tech earnings were a salve to other problems in the market for the past decade-plus, but with layoffs already under way and doubts about the path forward, don’t expect salvation from their results this week.
This week in earnings
For the week ahead, 107 S&P 500 SPX, -0.19%
companies, including six members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.18%,
will report results, according to FactSet. While more Dow components reported last week, this will be the busiest week for S&P 500 holiday earnings of the season, FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters confirmed to MarketWatch.
On Tuesday, package-deliverer United Parcel Service Inc. UPS, -0.26%
reports, amid questions about holiday-season demand. So does streaming service Spotify Technology, SPOT, -0.02%
following its own layoffs and suggestions of possible price hikes, as well as McDonald’s Corp. MCD, -0.30%,
amid concerns that rising prices are keeping people from dining out. Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM, -0.99%,
Caterpillar Inc. CAT, -0.12%,
Snap Inc. SNAP, +0.64%
and Pfizer Inc. PFE, +0.72%
also report Tuesday.
For the Big Tech companies, Thursday is also the big day: Apple, Amazon and Alphabet will report that afternoon, after Meta reports the prior day.
The calls to put on your calendar
WWE upheaval: World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. WWE, +0.91%
reports earnings on Thursday, as Vince McMahon — who returned to the professional-wrestling organization this month following allegations of sexual misconduct — seeks a buyer or some other so-called “strategic alternative” for the company.
The Wall Street Journal this month reported that McMahon would pay a multimillion-dollar settlement to a former referee who accused him of raping her. Among the changes since McMahon returned was the departure of his daughter, who had been promoted to co-CEO after he stepped down from the role last year.
There isn’t much clarity on whether Vince McMahon will be on Thursday’s earnings call, which was moved from the morning to the afternoon due to a scheduling conflict. But it should offer drama no matter who attends.
The numbers to watch
GM and Ford auto sales: Auto makers General Motors Co. GM, -2.00%
and Ford Motor Co. F, -0.94%
will issue results on Tuesday and Thursday respectively, amid signs of waning demand and rising interest rates that have made car loans more expensive. Despite falling new-vehicle sales in the third quarter, GM managed to keep its own sales higher, the AP noted.
Mary Barry, GM’s chief executive, called out the popularity of vehicles like the Escalade, the Chevrolet Bolt EV and some pickups and SUVs during the auto maker’s third-quarter earnings call in October. During that quarter, GM said it completed and shipped nearly 75% of the unfinished vehicles held in its inventory in June. She said supply-chains were opening up again, but added that “short-term disruptions will continue to happen.”
The auto makers report as they try to put a chip shortage and other production constraints behind them. But some forecasts call for 2022 auto sales, or sales volumes, to be the weakest in roughly a decade. Electric vehicle maker Tesla’s recent price cuts could also cut into GM’s and Ford’s own EV sales.
Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. META will restore former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts after the social-media platform banned him in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
The reinstatement of those accounts is set to happen “in the coming weeks,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement late Wednesday.
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk took the witness stand briefly late Friday in a federal trial in San Francisco over alleged investor losses caused by his “funding secured” tweet and other tweets back in 2018.
In his roughly half-hour being questioned by a defense lawyer, Musk lauded Twitter Inc. as the most “democratic” way to communicate with Tesla investors and took a swipe at short sellers.
His testimony is expected to resume on Monday at 11:30 a.m. Eastern. Meanwhile, Tesla shares TSLA, +4.91%
were flat in the extended session Friday after ending the regular trading day up 4.9%.
A defense attorney began with plumbing Musk’s Twitter habits, and that Musk sometimes bristled at the implications his tweets may carry more meaning than what he assigns them.
“Just because I tweet something, it does not mean people believe it, or act accordingly,” Musk said, giving as example another one of its infamous tweet, in which he said Tesla stock was too high — and the stock then went higher.
The case revolves around key tweets from August 2018, including one where Musk told his millions of Twitter followers he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420” and then added “funding secured.”
Investor Glen Littleton, the lead plaintiff in the case, alleges he lost money due to the false tweets and is seeking damages.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen already has ruled that Musk’s tweets about taking Tesla private were not true and that Musk acted with recklessness.
It is still up to jurors to decide, however, if the tweets were material to investors and if the falsehoods caused investor losses.
During his testimony, Musk said short sellers are essentially pulling for Tesla’s demise.
“Short sellers are basically a bunch of sharks on Wall Street,” Musk said. “(They) wanted Tesla to die, very badly” because they stood to make money for an eventual bankruptcy.
Musk testified right after a lengthy testimony from a plaintiff expert.
The CEO and Tesla each were fined $20 million in September 2018 to settle civil charges around the “funding secured” tweets and Musk was stripped of his chairman role at Tesla.
Musk and Tesla agreed to settle the charges against them without admitting to nor denying the SEC’s allegations.
Tesla Inc.’s price cuts in the U.S. and Europe heightened worries on Wall Street about the electric-car maker’s margins and worsening demand at a moment when both aspects of the business seem at risk.
Tesla overnight slashed prices of several of its models, including its cheaper Model Y compact SUV and Model 3 sedan, in the U.S. and in several European countries by about 6% to 20%.
The price cuts, which also mean some Tesla EVs qualify for tax credits, may represent a gamble that until very recently Tesla thought itself insulated from.
“Ultimately, management is following through with its strategy to sacrifice industry-leading gross margins to prop up volume demand as the health of the global consumer remains uncertain,” TPH analyst Matthew Portillo said.
“Today’s move on pricing likely sets the table for management to be able to set more realistic guidance expectations on Jan. 25,” when Tesla is expected to report quarterly earnings, Portillo said.
“We see a negative catalyst path for the stock to underperform in the near and intermediate term,” Jewsikow wrote in a note.
Jewsikow went on to forecast a “sizable gross margin miss” in the fourth quarter, mostly thanks to the price reductions and incentives. Fiscal 2023 estimates “need a reset,” the analyst said.
Tesla is slated to report fourth-quarter earnings after market close on Jan. 25. FactSet consensus calls for adjusted earnings of $1.16 a share on revenue of $25 billion. The numbers are likely to be tweaked as it gets closer to the reporting day.
Analyst Dan Ives with Wedbush said he was optimistic the price action could prompt more people to get their Tesla.
Tesla now enjoys the global scale it did not have a few years ago, with more factories, and has margin flexibility to make such moves, Ives said. And there’s the added benefit that some of its vehicles are now eligible for the tax credits.
“We believe all together these price cuts could spur demand/deliveries by 12%-15% globally in 2023 and shows Tesla and Musk are going on the ‘offensive’ to spur demand in a softening backdrop,” Ives said.
“Margins will get hit on this, but we like this strategic poker move by Musk and Tesla,” the analyst said, keeping the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock and a $175 price target, which compares with an average $244 price target as gathered by FactSet from 45 analysts.
Citi analyst Itay Michaeli took more of a middle road. The price cuts confirm Wall Street worries on demand outside of China and Tesla’s strategy of prioritizing volume over price, he said.
The EV maker’s decision, though, are also part of a broader EV-industry view “that any demand pressures in 2023 would likely be met with price actions as opposed to production cuts,” Michaeli said.
Ultimately, gaining EV market share “will prove more important than maximizing EV margins in 2023,” Michaeli said.
Looking at the worst-performing sectors, you might wonder why the consumer discretionary and communication services sectors have fared worse than information-technology, the core tech sector. One reason is that S&P Dow Jones Indices can surprise investors with its sector choices. The consumer discretionary sector includes Tesla Inc. TSLA, +0.70%
and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -1.17%,
which has fallen nearly 50% this year. The communications sector includes Meta Platforms Inc. META, -1.21%,
along with Match Group Inc. MTCH, +0.50%,
which is down 69% for 2022, and Netflix Inc. NFLX, -0.44%,
which is down 52% this year.
There have been many reasons easy to cite for Big Tech’s decline, such as a questionable change in strategy for Facebook’s holding company, Meta, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put so much of the company’s resources into developing a new world that most people don’t wish to enter, at least yet. Meta’s shares were down 64% for 2022 through Dec. 29.
You might also blame the Twitter-related antics and sales of Tesla shares by CEO Elon Musk for the 65% decline in the electric-vehicle maker’s stock this year. But Tesla had a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 120.3 at the end of 2021, while the S&P 500 SPX, -0.72%
traded for 21.4 times its weighted forward earnings estimate, according to FactSet. Those P/E ratios have now declined to 21.7 and 16.4, respectively. So Tesla no longer appears to be a very expensive stock, especially for a company that increased its vehicle deliveries by 42% in the third quarter from a year earlier.
Click on the tickers for more information about the companies.
Click here for Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information available for free on the MarketWatch quote page.
Another way of measuring the biggest stock-market losers of 2022
It is one thing to have a large decline based on the share price, but that doesn’t tell the entire story. How much of a decline have investors seen in the holdings of their shares during the year? The S&P 500’s total market capitalization declined to $31.66 trillion as of Dec. 28 (the most recent figure available) from $40.36 trillion at the end of 2021, according to FactSet.
Shareholders of these companies have suffered the largest declines in market cap during 2022.
FYI: WaniKani, our system for learning kanji and Japanese vocabulary in record time, is currently 33% off. Try it out for free.
The year might be drawing to a close, but it’s a perfect time to do something new with your Japanese study! Take a look below at the latest list of Japanese learning resources, lovingly selected by our team, to help supercharge your Japanese study.
Activate Your Japanese!
Activate Your Japanese! is a 24-episode drama about a Vietnamese girl named Xuan who came to Japan to work in a hotel. It comes from Japan’s national broadcasting network, known as NHK, which is known for producing quality video content about all sorts of topics. You can think of them as the BBC or CNN of Japan. In the drama, she encounters a sentient keychain, new friends, and lots of new Japanese. And as with any drama, there are elements of humor and romance that really make it entertaining.
Each video is divided into parts: The main skit, Today’s Strategy, Onomatopoeia, and Welcome to My Japan. The main skit follows Xuan and her time adjusting to Japanese life, all while providing useful communication strategies. Next, the Today’s Strategy section focuses on a useful communication strategy or phrase that Xuan utilized in the main skit. Plenty of examples are provided, making this part of each video particularly useful for learners. Then comes the Onomatopoeia bit, which introduces a common Japanese onomatopoeia. Again, several examples are provided to help reinforce how the word is used in real life. And finally, the Welcome to My Japan bit finishes off each video with a presentation of someone’s life after coming to Japan. Many of these individuals immigrated to Japan for work and have lived in the country for several years. Their work, interests, and hobbies are highlighted in this section.
Every video in this series comes with translated captions and even a transcript, making it ideal for learners at level who want to practice reading or listening skills. But even if learning Japanese is not your main goal, the series can still be enjoyed purely as a drama for one’s own entertainment. According to the site, this series will be available until 2027, so there’s plenty of time to go through each of the 15-minute episodes.
Beyond Activate Your Japanese!, the NHK has a number of other resources for Japanese learners, like the Essential Japanese section, which provides survival phrases, and Easy Japanese: Conversation Lessons, which contains lots of learning content related to conversation practice. There’s something for everyone, so check it out!
あかね的日本語教室
あかね的日本語教室, otherwise known as Akane’s Japanese Class, is a popular YouTube channel produced by a Japanese teacher named Akane. This channel is targeted towards intermediate and advanced learners. However, Akane mentions that this channel is also accessible to beginners who want a bit of a challenge. The difficulty comes from all the videos being entirely in Japanese. The subtitles at the bottom of the screen are in Japanese, and include furigana over more difficult kanji. There are also closed captioning subtitles that can be turned off and on, with an impressive number of languages covered — 15!
The videos on this channel are very educational while also entertaining. The topics surround learning Japanese, travel around Japan, everyday life in Japan, and more. An example of Akane’s videos that Japanese learners may find most useful are “[Business Japanese] Basics of telephone correspondence” and several interviews with non-native speakers living in Japan and studying the language. Each video lasts about 10-15 minutes in length, and they go by quickly. Because Akane speaks slowly, it’s easy to follow the dialogue. If you’re looking for even more content by Akane, you can also check out the podcast and Instagram page she also has.
Japanese Immersion with Asami
Japanese Immersion with Asami is a YouTube channel that, as the name suggests, focuses on teaching via comprehensible input; that is, Japanese made as easy to understand as possible, even for beginners, without relying on English explanations or translations. Asami has been a Japanese teacher since 2015, and with her trusty partner Hyougen, mostly reads stories in her videos, with helpful explanations and commentary; all in Japanese.
The videos are a great way to get your feet wet engaging with Japanese media more, without feeling like you’re alone in the endeavor. In fact, the casual, supportive atmosphere of her videos might be their best feature; it really does feel like a private lesson. And with several series in a variety of genres and titles, such as Kiki’s Delivery Service and short stories, you’re sure to find a narrative that piques your interest.
日本語表現インフォ
One of the most difficult parts of learning another language can be expressions. As language conveys culture, each individual language has different expressions relevant to its own culture, and translating between them is no easy task. Thankfully for Japanese learners, there’s the helpful website 日本語表現インフォ, or “Japanese Expression Info” to make things a little easier.
The site is very straightforward, with various expressions grouped into different categories, like expressions conveying emotions, sensations, or people, for example. From there they’re often broken down even further, like expressions relevant to conveying different degrees of sadness.
While the website states the intent was to be a resource for people aiming to write in Japanese, it’s helpful for Japanese learners as well. Not only will using these sorts of expressions add a sense of naturalness to your own writing, but they might help you while reading Japanese. 日本語表現インフォ is a great resource for learning both Japanese language and culture.
Sail
Sail is a unique approach to Japanese language exchange apps. Available on iOS and Android, Japanese learners first register for an account, filling out some of their interests and a basic self-introduction. But rather than connect with teachers or other language learners, Sail connects you to native Japanese speakers in the form of retirees and senior citizens. Like all similar apps, you’re able to look at the profiles of various exchange partners, and find someone who might be a good fit in terms of interests and availability. Conversations are set to last 25 minutes, offering a contained experience: long enough that you’re able to actually chat, but not so long that you might run out of steam.
It’s a unique concept, and one that works well. Older people make good conversation partners, and are often very cordial and have a lot of free time. They’re excited to get the chance to connect to learners, and share something of their language and culture, and this eagerness is contagious. What’s even better is that Sail allows for unlimited conversations for a simple fee of $14.90 a month, with discounts at longer terms. This makes Sail one of the best bangs for your buck for Japanese learners hoping to converse.
Do you miss the good ol’ days of reading picture books as a kid? Would you like to know more about Japanese children’s books and the colorful images and themes they have inside? With the YouTube channel パパパパパピィ, you can read along, in a bedtime story fashion, to many different Japanese children’s books.
Each story is read front to back by the host of the channel, who keeps you engaged with different voices and sounds, depending on the character or noise. You’ll be able to follow along with the script, as the pages are shown while being narrated. Picture books are a great resource for beginner learners, as they don’t have as many kanji. The readings are very short, witheach video being under ten minutes long. Whether you’re looking to find more resources for your kids, or you’re wanting to bring back the nostalgia of reading children’s books, give this channel a go and watch how you’re instantly transported to the land of cheery Japanese stories!
Megumi’s Daily Japanese Adventures
If you’re wanting to get more listening practice in, the podcast Megumi’s Daily Japanese Adventures could be the right fit for you. This podcast was created for Japanese learners and could be used somewhat similarly to JLPT listening practice. In this podcast, the host, Megumi, talks about various experiences she’s had related to travel, Japanese culture, and more. The way Megumi describes these adventures is story-like, with background music to accompany her anecdotes and detailed accounts. She speaks slowly and clearly, which is good for those who are just beginning to listen to content that’s entirely in Japanese. The targeted audience for this podcast is around the intermediate level.
For listeners who would like to follow along with the dialogue, there are also transcripts on Megumi’s website. At the end of these transcripts, there are English translations for some of the more advanced vocabulary. The episodes are around 5 minutes in length, so they’re quick listens if you want to give them a go.
Human Japanese
Made by the same people who brought us Satori Reader, the Human Japanese apps are basically digital textbooks for Japanese, or as they call it, your “personal sensei in a box.” There is an app for beginners and then an intermediate-level version. The beginner version boasts over 500 pages of content and around 800 example sentences, with breakdowns of each word and particle to boot! When teaching kana and kanji, there are stroke order animations, and plenty of example words as well.
The lessons in this app are truly worded and organized like a textbook. You will find lessons related to food, school, geography, health, work, and the weather. Major grammar points are included as well, including lessons on verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjugations, counting, particles, and more. At the end of each lesson, you can find review quizzes. By default, you cannot move on to the next chapter until you have passed a chapter review quiz, but you can change this in the settings.
The overall design of the app is sleek and nice, but can feel a little dated to some seeing as it was originally created over a decade ago. Some pages are a little intimidating because of their word count, which some may find annoying. And there are no romaji to help you out; the app assumes you will learn hiragana and katakana. So if this kind of electronic textbook is just what you’re looking for, then Human Japanese may be for you. For readers looking to give it a try, they offer a lite version free of charge.
YomuJP
For the Japanese graded reader junkies out there looking for more material, you might want to check out YomuJP. This website is dedicated to providing Japanese learners with easy, level-appropriate reading content in a simple layout.
There are tons of writings in their database. Each article contains pictures, and even audio recordings of a native speaker reading the material. This means you can use this site for listening practice as well. The stories are separated by reading difficulty. There are six categories, from N6 to N1, with N6 being the easiest (introductory level Japanese) and N1 being the hardest (advanced Japanese). According to the site, this scale is based on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) with N6 being an even easier level than the JLPT’s lowest level of N5. You can browse articles by difficulty level or by tag.
The site also regularly posts to their Twitter page, often highlighting articles. New articles seem to be consistently released as well. If you are interested in practicing your reading (or listening) skills, or if you are thinking of studying for the JLPT, then consider YomuJP as one handy-dandy tool in your toolbox.
Thanks so much for following along with us to the end of the year, and the end of the article! We hope it’s been a helpful journey. From all of us at Tofugu, hope you have a relaxing 正月, and spring is right around the corner.
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David Honeycutt, Ian J. Battaglia, and Rachel Grant
Elon Musk has been trying this week to defend Tesla’s abysmal stock performance in 2022. The electric vehicle giant has seen its stock plummet by 61% this year, making it the 11th-worst performing stock in the S&P 500 in 2022.
“As bank savings account interest rates, which are guaranteed, start to approach stock market returns, which are *not* guaranteed, people will increasingly move their money out of stocks into cash, thus causing stocks to drop,” Musk tweeted.
You might expect that Tesla’s stock drop has wiped out more investor wealth than any other stock in the world this year. But you would be wrong.
If we look at declines in market capitalization — the value of companies’ common-shares outstanding — Tesla TSLA, -1.76%
has been the fourth worst-performing stock in the benchmark S&P 500 this year, as of 1 p.m. ET on Dec. 21:
On a percentage basis, all these stocks have performed worse than the full S&P 500, which has fallen 19%, excluding dividends.
Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +1.74%
has erased more shareholder wealth than any other publicly traded company in 2022. In total, investors in Amazon have lost $804.6 billion this year. The stock is down 48% in 2022.
Apple Inc. AAPL, -0.28%
and Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.23%
have also suffered larger market-cap declines than Tesla, by virtue of their sheer size.
The companies have different fiscal and annual period ends, but if we look at data for the past three reported quarters and compare to the same period a year earlier, here’s how the four stack up:
Company
Ticker
Change in sales for three quarters from year-earlier period
Change in EPS for three quarters from year-earlier period
Amazon showed a net loss of $3 billion for the first three quarters of 2022 as the company neared the end of its extraordinary multiyear effort to build out its warehouse and fulfillment infrastructure. For the first three quarters of 2021, the company booked $19 billion in profits. When announcing Amazon’s third-quarter results CEO Andy Jassy said the company was working methodically toward “a stronger cost structure for the business moving forward.”
The incredible growth of Amazon’s cloud business has stalled and disappointed the expectations the company had nurtured on Wall Street. The Amazon Web Services business is facing increasing competition from the likes of Microsoft and its customers are pulling back. Meanwhile, retail sales have also come in weak going into the Christmas and holiday season.
Amazon’s stock has declined 22% since it closed at $110.96 on Oct. 27, right before it disappointed investors not only with its third-quarter results, but with its outlook: It expects to break even during the holiday quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet had previously expected a profit of more than $5 billion.
Tesla stands in contrast to Amazon, as you can see on the table above. Its sales grew by 58% during the first three quarters of 2022 from the year-earlier period and its earnings per share rose nearly threefold.
This has been a year of significant declines for shares of giant tech-oriented companies, especially those that had traded at lofty price-to-earnings valuations — that group includes Amazon and Tesla. In fact, these companies have given up all their pandemic era gains int he stock market.
But with Tesla’s results so outstanding through the first three quarters of 2022, it raises the question: How much of the drop in the electric car makers share price was tied to Musk’s actions as CEO of Twitter, which he acquired on Oct. 27 after a monthslong saga? And how much of a relief rally, if any, might there be for Tesla if Musk, as expected, steps down as Twitter CEO?
How about some bottom-feeding?
Here’s the same list of 10 stocks in the S&P 500 that have seen the largest declines in market cap this year, with a summary of analysts’ ratings, consensus price targets and declines in their forward price-to-earnings ratios:
Twitter on Sunday announced it will ban accounts that post links or usernames for certain “prohibited” third-party social media platforms.
“We will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter,” Elon Musk’s company said in a tweet thread posted as much of the world was watching the World Cup final. “Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.”
In a blog post, Twitter said cross-promoted posts will still be allowed, but that “Accounts that are used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform may be suspended.” It did not specify how it will decide what an account’s main purpose is, but provided examples of banned content, such as: “follow me @username on Instagram,” “username@mastodon.social,” and “check out my profile on Facebook – facebook.com/username.”
The new policy triggered an immediate flurry of criticism by many Twitter users.
The move comes after a number of prominent tech journalists were suspended, then reinstated, last week for reporting on Twitter’s ban on an account that tracked Elon Musk’s private jet.
While Musk, who competed his $44 billion takeover of the company in October, has called himself a free-speech absolutist, many of his policies as Twitter’s owner and CEO have been to silence his critics.
Tesla Inc. stock edged higher Thursday, but Wedbush analyst Dan Ives minced no words to decry what he called an ongoing Twitter Inc. “funding nightmare,” accusing Chief Executive Elon Musk to treat the electric-vehicle maker as an ATM machine.
“The nightmare of Musk owning Twitter has been an episode out of the Twilight Zone that never ends and keeps getting worse,” said Ives, a noted Tesla bull, in a note Thursday.
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk just sold nearly $3.6 billion more of the company’s stock, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission released late Wednesday.
Musk sold just under 22 million shares worth $3.58 billion in aggregate from Dec. 12 to Dec. 14, the latest filing shows. Tesla shares TSLA fell in all three of those trading sessions, dropping 12.4% in total over the three-day stretch to finish Wednesday at $156.80.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said Tuesday that he will look into the loss of Twitter janitors’ jobs, which appears to be in violation of San Francisco law.
Members of the SEIU Local 87 went on strike Monday as their contract was set to expire Dec. 9. The contractor that employed them is set to be replaced by another contractor that Twitter would not disclose to the union, according to Olga Miranda, president of the union local. Twitter then moved up the janitors’ last day on the job to Monday, she said.
According to San Francisco law, when a company changes contractors for security or janitorial services, the contractor is supposed to rehire workers for at least 90 days after the transition.
When contacted by MarketWatch on Tuesday, Chiu said: “Elon Musk has a long history of flouting labor laws. While I’m not surprised this happened, I feel for those workers as well as all Twitter employees and contractors who have been laid off. We will be looking into this further.”
Miranda said 48 janitors in total are affected, 30 of whom were waiting to go back to work because many Twitter employees had been working from home and not as many janitors were needed.
San Francisco-based Twitter, whose communications team was reportedly almost entirely laid off at the beginning of November after Musk bought the company, has not returned a request for comment. Musk has cut about half of the company’s pre-acquisition workforce of 7,500 since he took over.
Also Tuesday, Ted Goldberg, a senior editor at KQED, San Francisco’s public radio station, tweeted that the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection is launching an investigation into news reported by Forbes that Twitter has set up bedrooms for employees at its headquarters.
“We need to make sure the building is being used as intended,” a representative of the department told KQED News.
