por admin » Jue Oct 24, 2019 8:32 am
Stocks rise after strong Microsoft and Tesla earnings
PUBLISHED 6 HOURS AGO UPDATED 1 MIN AGO
Fred Imbert
@foimbert
CNBC.COM
Stocks opened higher on Thursday as strong earnings from Microsoft and Tesla lifted investor sentiment.
Microsoft reported earnings per share of $1.38 on revenue of $33.06 billion for the previous quarter. Analysts polled by Refinitiv expected a profit of $1.25 per share on revenue of $32.23 billion. Microsoft's strong quarterly performance was driven in part by Azure, its cloud business, which saw revenues grow by 59% on a year-over-year basis. The stock rose about 1% in the premarket.
"MSFT delivered strength across the board with no blemishes and importantly gave stronger than expected December quarter guidance which speaks to an inflection point in deal flow as more enterprises pick Redmond for the cloud," Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note.
Tesla shares spiked more than 18% after the electric car maker posted a surprise quarterly profit. The company also told investors its new Shanghai factor is "ready for production."
A trader wears a hat reading Dow 23,000 on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on October 17, 2017 in New York City.
Getty Images
A trader wears a hat reading Dow 23,000 on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on October 17, 2017 in New York City.
NBCUniversal-parent Comcast, Dow Inc. and PayPal also traded higher on earnings that beat analyst expectations. Twitter, however, plunged about 20% after posting disappointing earnings.
More than 31% of S&P 500 companies have reported quarterly earnings thus far, with nearly 80% of them posting results that beat analyst estimates, according to FactSet.
Amazon, Intel and Visa are among the companies scheduled to report after the bell as investors slog through the busiest day of the earnings season.
"Thus far earnings have been generally supportive of further progress and a number of potential minefields in the industrial sector have been navigated successfully," Michael Shaoul, chairman and CEO of Marketfield Asset Management, wrote in a note. "At the same time there is some evidence that the very popular software sector has lost its leadership position."
In economic news, durable goods orders fell 1.1% in September, notching their largest drop in four months. The drop in orders comes as the world struggles with a global manufacturing slowdown. The Institute for Supply Management said earlier this month that manufacturing activity in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade.
—CNBC's Silvia Amaro contributed to this report.