The country’s biggest tech companies might be battling criticism in Washington, but Super Thursday’s results clearly show that the public still loves them.
Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft’s earnings went beyond what investors expected, as shares of these companies received a major boost and helped inject new momentum in the industry.
Final hour of the week: Big tech is the big story today, driving the Nasdaq to new highs! pic.twitter.com/UyzrvKXue7
— CNBC’s Closing Bell (@CNBCClosingBell) October 27, 2017
It comes as no surprise that Amazon was the biggest winner of the day, with shares leaping almost 8 percent to trade at more than $1,000 in after-hours trading on Thursday. The company’s total revenue was pegged at $43.8 billion and its pioneering cloud system, Amazon Web Services (AWS), pushed past a $4 billion quarterly revenue.
Alphabet was not far behind as its shares jumped 3 percent in aftermarket trading. The company broke through the $1,000 mark after parent company Google revealed a 24 percent increase in sales to $27.8 billion. Alphabet received a major boost from Google ads, especially in the Asian region.
Microsoft also broke records with its $82.18 shares, which rose 3.6 percent. The company also went beyond the earnings estimates pegged by investors, giving it almost $630 billion in market capitalization. Aside from profiting from its Office products, Microsoft also got a shot in the arm from its cloud service, Azure, which grew 90 percent in revenue from 2016.
Five big tech companies added about $185 billion … in one day. https://t.co/xBTlYUswei pic.twitter.com/nRYHQhpMTA
— Bloomberg (@business) October 27, 2017
The earnings from these tech companies have been dubbed “Super Thursday” by analysts from Wall Street due to how massive these companies are and because tech stocks have been a major influence in the stock market this year.
Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos said his company’s earnings increase was partly due to the rising demand for its smart home products, which are powered by AI assistant, Alexa. To underline his point, Bezos said the past month alone saw the launch of five Alexa-enabled devices, the AI’s integration with BMW and Sonos speakers and Alexa being introduced in India.
There’s also no denying that cloud computing also contributed to the impressive growth experienced by big tech. Azure has almost doubled its business this year, securing customers like Costco and generating an estimated $2 billion for Microsoft.
[ #DigitalEra] Revenue Streams of the Big 5 Tech Companies#infographic#Apple #Alphabet #Amazon #Facebook #Microsoft#Cloud #SMM # pic.twitter.com/cPBB8QhZlR
— Eric Petiot ✨ (@PetiotEric) October 29, 2017
Amazon Web Services and the Google Cloud Platform have also landed some key accounts this year. The former has already closed deals with Hulu and General Electric while the latter will be doing business with Kohl’s and PayPal.
Research firm Canalys has estimated the cloud computing market was worth $14.4 billion in the third quarter of 2017, rising 43 percent from the previous year. Canalys also concluded that as the cloud market is still in the developing stage, it will continue to grow faster than the majority of the traditional information technology sector.
[Featured image via Pixabay]