We are back in earnings season, which means that it’s report card time for your favorite public tech shops. Earnings have a way of cutting through the bullshit. It’s refreshing.
So, what happened this week? Well, a few headlines are the place to start:
The Good
Twitter had a few:
- Twitter Shares Spike 4.85% In The Wake Of Ballmer’s Stake
- Does Wall Street Like What It’s Hearing From Twitter (Again)?
TechCrunch Corporate Overlord From The Swamp didn’t faceplant:
eBay showed surprising vigor following its split with PayPal:
Alphabet went up:
As did Amazon:
Microsoft followed suit:
Scale matters here. A 10-point jump for, say, Alphabet, is far more valuable in dollar terms than a 20 point jump for Twitter. Still, Amazon and Google and Microsoft are not merely among the most valuable technology companies, but all companies, period. And they had a big week.
The context to their rise isn’t merely a single decent quarter. Amazon showed once again that its AWS business is a world-changing enterprise. Microsoft kept its cloud transformation in clear sights, while whacking investor estimates. And Alphabet, the artist formerly known as Google, proved that it can still grow ahead of street sentiment this far into its life.
Throw in the bucket of cash that each controls, and you have a triple shot in the arm for the current tech boom.
The Bad
Yahoo did a Yahoo:
Tesla had a rough week after a former best friend said that it didn’t want to hang out anymore:
The Ugly
And then there was Pandora. Which, well, read this:
Pandora Shares Down 20% In After-Hours Trading After Company Posts Q3 Loss
The company actually fell further today in regular trading than it did in the immediate aftermath of its earnings. Pandora lost more than a third of its value in a single 24-hour period.
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So, a host of positive reports, a few middling dings, and one collapse. All told, it’s been a strong week for tech companies. Oh, and the NASDAQ flipped back over the 5,000 mark today. In case you were curious about how long the game will be afoot, at least we can say that there are few tracks left in the jukebox before last call.
More next week when Apple, Twitter, and Alibaba cry 8-K and let slip the dogs of non-GAAP operating income.