Those watching the US market this week will have noticed the significant ramp-up in earnings releases, but that's nothing to what Tech's 'Super Thursday' has in store.
Unveiling quarterly numbers after the New York close today will be three of the biggest sector players on the planet - Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) - with Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) having already reported blow-out numbers ahead of the bell.
Tech has been the best performing sector on the key benchmark the S&P 500 this year, an index which has itself climbed 14% in the year so far.
The richest man in the world...
Lets start with Amazon, which arguably has received the most column inches, not least due to Founder Jeff Bezos becoming briefly the richest man in the world this year thanks to his stake in the e-commerce king.
Jasper Lawler at London Capital Group, reckons Amazon shares currently look a little "frothy" after a whopping 31% return in the year-to-date. That said, gains are in keeping with five year returns of over 325%, he notes.
"Amazon’s expanding grocery shopping ambitions with the purchase of Whole Foods is a true test of shareholders favouring market dominance over profits.
"Investors would probably have preferred a focus on more profitable areas of the business like its cloud division Amazon Web Services and/or popular devices like Amazon Echo and Fire TV."
Lawler expects earnings per share (EPS) to be US$1.883 for the quarter, with revenues expected to come in at US$41.443bn.
Microsoft more like a growth stock
Meanwhile, Microsoft revenue is expected to reach US$23.52bn for the quarter.
"Thanks to its participation in fast-growing areas of tech like the cloud, shares of Microsoft have been behaving more like a growth stock; up 27% this year and 184% over 5 years," notes Lawler.
Last but most definitely not least, Google parent Alphabet saw profits fall by 28% in the last quarter, but significantly that included a record-breaking antitrust fine from the EU.
And even with the fine, the earnings figure still narrowly topped analysts’ estimates.
Stripping out the fine, profits would actually have increased by 28%. Revenue rose by 28% to $21 billion, notes David Madden, market analyst at CMC Markets.
For this quarter, scribes are expecting earnings per shares (EPS) of US$8.33 and revenue of US$27.19bn, representing annual growth of negative 8% and 21.1% respectively.
"Traffic acquisition cost is expected to come in at $5.26 billion, and that would be an increase of 25.9% on a yearly basis," adds Madden.
The group's dominance in internet search supported by the widespread adoption of the Android operating system has pushed shares of Alphabet to above US$1,000 this year.