- Facebook stunned investors with the strongest quarterly results in company history.
- Tesla failed to impress investors with record Q1 results as fatal crash stole headlines.
- Microsoft recorded the biggest revenue growth since 2018 but stocks fell.
Facebook was the big winner of earnings season last week after its March quarter revenue of US$26.1 billion smashed estimates by more than US$3 billion.
With a net income of $US9.5 billion, the figure was almost double the US$4.9 billion forecast by analysts.
Investors jumped on the news, piling into Facebook stock with the share price soaring by 7.3% to US$329.51/share in one session.
Technology companies historically tend to mirror the Steve Jobs approach of under promising and over delivering with Tesla, Microsoft and Amazon all providing strong results in the last week.
Tesla?s record vehicle deliveries of 184,800 over the quarter and US$10.39bn worth of revenue (estimate $US10.4bn) did little to sway investors who were still concerned with its autopilot software following a highly publicised car crash.
Software and hardware icon Microsoft provided shareholders with the biggest quarterly revenue growth since 2018, up 19% at US$41.71bn.
This exceeded analyst estimates of US$41.03bn, as a surge in PC sales and work-from-home orders provided an earnings tailwind for the Seattle giant.
However, investors sold out of Microsoft shares after the release of March quarter results and while traditional rival Apple also beat analyst estimates at US$89.6bn (forecast US$77.4), it appears most of the positive news had already been baked into the price.
The markets it seems are well and truly used to outperformance and despite the world?s largest retailer, Amazon recording a 44% surge in sales year-on-year to US$108.5bn, the share price dipped slightly after they were released.
Outperformance in the technology space is clearly not a guarantee of delivering share price spikes as in previous years.