‘Super Thursday’ – the busiest tech earnings day of the year – was a resounding success for many of Silicon Valley’s biggest names.
Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Intel Corp (NASDAQ:INTC) all topped expectations with their quarterly updates.
Even Twitter Inc (NASDAQ:TWTR) managed to impress investors, hinting that it might turn a profit as early as next year despite awkwardly admitting that it had been overstating the number of users it has for the past three years.
Google owner Alphabet saw its shares head north of US$1,000 in after-hours trading after a sharp rise in smartphone ad volumes helped to boost revenues by 24% year-on-year to US$27.8bn in the quarter ended September 30.
As for Microsoft’s it’s flying cloud business continues to offset weaker, albeit stabilising, demand for its Windows and PC products.
E-commerce behemoth Amazon also impressed as it marched on its quest for world domination.
Revenues jumped to US$43.7bn with the newly-acquired Whole Foods contributing just over US$1bn towards that.
Profits only rose by US$4mln but that’s because the company reinvests the bulk of its earnings back into the business.
Chipmaker Intel also saw its shares get a boost in after-hours trading in New York after it reported a 34% jump in third-quarter profits despite increased competition in its core markets.
Nearly all of the growth came from the unit that makes chips for servers internet companies and communications provider, while Intel also used the announcement to increase its full-year earnings guidance.
Perhaps the only disappointment was Expedia Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE) which plunged after its quarterly numbers came in below Wall Street expectations.
HomeAway (Expedia’s answer to Airbnb) aside, the firm’s core hotels and flight booking business was hampered by the recent natural disasters in the US and Mexico.