In a day where none on the four major stock market indices spent a moment in the red, even though they all closed off session highs, we’ve got to say it’s been a good day. We’re still down more than -2% from a week ago, inferring some bargain-hunting here, but we’ll take it. The Dow grew +204 points, +0.62%, while the S&P 500 gained +0.73%. The small-cap Russell 2000 added +0.82%, and the Nasdaq — ahead of some key players in the tech sector reporting earnings today — won the day: +121 points, +0.93%.
Microsoft MSFT posted fiscal Q1 earnings results moments after the closing bell today, notching big beats on both top and bottom lines: earnings of $2.99 per share was nicely beyond the $2.65 analysts had been expecting (and a big improvement from the $2.35 per share posted a year ago), on revenues of $56.52 billion in the quarter, strongly ahead of the $54.40 billion in the Zacks consensus and +13% year over year.
Azure cloud revenues grew +29% in the quarter, and while that is off the gaudy +50% quarters we were seeing a couple years ago, it’s a solid beat over the +26% anticipated. We’ll look for details on its A.I. feature Copilot 365 on the conference call, where the company brass will also discuss forward guidance. Shares are up +4% in after-market trading at this hour, +38% year to date.
Google parent Alphabet GOOGL, on the other hand, while also outperforming on both top and bottom lines for its Q3 report, is seeing shares sell off more than -4% on the news, likely on a miss in cloud-based revenues for the quarter. Earnings of $1.55 per share beat the Zacks consensus by a full dime, while revenues, ex-traffic acquisition costs (TAC), reached $64.05 billion, bettering estimates by nearly a billion dollars (the company posted $76.69 billion including TAC). Cloud came in at $8.41 billion, below the $8.64 billion expected. The stock is still up +50% year to date.
Texas Instruments TXN was mixed in its Q3 report this afternoon, beating on the bottom line — $1.85 per share versus $1.81 expected — but missing on the top: $4.53 billion in the quarter compared with $4.57 billion analysts were expecting, and down -14% year over year. Guidance for next quarter was also lowered a bit, both on earnings and sales, and shares are down -4.5% in late trading following the release.
Visa V, a company that come rain or shine does not miss earnings estimates, beat again this afternoon for fiscal Q4: $2.33 per share versus $2.23 expected and $1.93 per share reported in the year-ago quarter. Revenues also came in ahead of expectations: $8.61 billion versus $8.55 billion projected. Payment volumes grew +9% year over year, partially due to “recovery of cross-border travel.” Shares initially jumped on the news in late trading, but currently are +1% from Tuesday’s close.
Zacks Rank #2 (Buy)-rated Snap SNAP beat expectations on both top and bottom lines after the closing bell, swinging to a positive +2 cents per share from an expected -$0.04, with revenues of $1.19 billion outpacing the $1.11 analysts had been looking for. The company cited the gains as the impact of improvements to its ad platform. Daily Active Users were in-line with estimates, and a $500 million share repurchase plan is in place.
Tomorrow, we’ll look for New Home Sales results for September, which are expected to come down month over month. There will also be another day of heavy Q3 earnings results before and after the bell, including from Boeing BA, Meta Platforms META and IBM IBM.
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