Alphabet, Microsoft Spur Hope Big Tech Can Handle Slow Economy
Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc. posted double-digit quarterly revenue growth on Tuesday and expressed optimism about the coming months, reassuring investors who had been fretting that the technology industry was poised for a dour second half.
Shares of all three companies rallied in late trading, spurring S&P 500 futures and giving a boost to tech peers. The earnings reports from the trio of industry giants set the tone for a week that will include results from heavy hitters like Meta Platforms Inc., Qualcomm Inc., Apple Inc., Amazon. com Inc. and Intel Corp.
Microsoft gave an encouraging sales forecast for the current fiscal year, soothing fears that the strong US dollar and a weakening economy would ravage sales. Chip manufacturer Texas Instruments also offered a bullish forecast, indicating that sales and profit this quarter would likely exceed Wall Street estimates. And Alphabet, the parent company of search giant Google, managed to post advertising revenue that surpassed analysts' expectations.
An online advertising slowdown had been a particular concern of investors, who dragged down shares of Snap Inc. and Twitter Inc. following their earnings reports last week.
“I would construe this report as a sigh of relief,” Dan Morgan, a senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co., said of Alphabet's results. “You're looking at an environment where the overall ad spend rates are definitely slowing down, yet Google still was able to deliver above and beyond.”
The three reports reflected underlying resilience, if not outright strength, in four of the industry's main pillars: digital advertising, cloud computing, information-technology spending and chips. Still, it wasn't all good news. The
Read more on tech.hindustantimes.com
