Salesforce earnings, vehicle sales, China trade

Here are the most important things to know about Tuesday before you hit the door.

Cloud company Salesforce reports third quarter earnings after the bell on Tuesday. UBS is expecting the Marc Benioff led company to report earnings of 66 cents per share, up from the 61 cents per share earned in the same quarter last year.

“We see Q3 results as a bigger potential catalyst with billings, revenue…and profits set to outperform, even with revenue guidance already moving higher for FY20,” said UBS analyst Jennifer Lowe in a note to clients.

Salesforce already raised its full year 2020 revenue guidance to a range between $16.99 billion and $17 billion from the prior range of $16.75 billion to $16.9 billion and initiated full year 2021 guidance of a range between $20.8 billion and $20.9 billion. UBS said more than 20% organic revenue growth is sustainable for Salesforce.

Shares of Salesforce are up about 2% in the last three months.

We’ll get November’s auto and light truck sales numbers on Tuesday from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Economists are expecting 17 million total light vehicles sold in November, up from October’s 16.5 million, according to FactSet. A year ago, November sales totaled 17.4 million vehicles.

Shares of Ford are up 2% in the past month and shares of General Motors are down more than 5% in the same period.

Stocks dipped slightly on Monday when The Global Times said China will release an “unreliable entity list” soon, according to sources. China’s so-called list aimed at punishing businesses deemed harmful to Chinese interests, reportedly includes U.S. entities. Investors will be watching to see if “soon” means as early as Tuesday.

In October, two Chinese government sources said whether the list is released will depend trade progress between the U.S. and China. There is no clear indication of when the U.S. and China will be able to sign an agreement and last week saw fresh tension between the two countries after Trump signed legislation supporting protesters in Hong Kong.

Major events (all times ET):

Monthly vehicle sales

10 a.m. QFR