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Google Blows Away Q1 Estimates; Plus MSFT, SBUX & More

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The big beats in calendar Q1 earnings season continue after the closing bell today, on a flat regular trading session on both the Dow and S&P 500. The Nasdaq dipped 0.34% off its record highs set Monday. Case-Shiller Home Prices for February this morning posted their biggest gains in five years, up 12%, with 19 of the 20 cities surveyed having grown year over year. Otherwise, it’s all about earnings, which continue in the after-market:

Google parent Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL - Free Report) blew the doors off expectations in its Q1 report, posting an eye-popping $26.29 per share in earnings, which trounced the $15.46 Zacks consensus and topped year-ago earnings by more than 2.5x. Revenues of $55.31 billion similarly left expectations of $42.34 billion in the dust. This is the fourth-straight earnings beat for the company, but the biggest earnings beat — 58.8% — in more than a year.

Ad revenue came in at $44.7 billion in the quarter, including $6 billion from YouTube alone — better than expected. Q1 Cloud numbers, however, were a tad shy of the $4.07 billion expected. Alphabet has also allotted an additional $50 billion in stock repurchases, helping boost the stock 4% in late trading. GOOGL shares have already gained 33% year to date, making it the best performer of FAANG stocks in 2021 thus far. These results don’t look to tarnish this one bit.

Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) also topped expectations after the close, with fiscal Q3 earnings of $1.95 per share beating the Zacks consensus by 19 cents. Sales of $41.71 billion improved from the $40.94 billion estimate, up 18% year over year. Productivity Business Processes earned $13.6 billion in the quarter. Intelligent cloud was up 23%, with Azure growing a solid 50% year over year. Xbox grew 34%, while LinkedIn gained 25%. Yet Microsoft shares declined 3% in late trading; clearly this strong quarter wasn’t impressive enough.

Starbucks (SBUX - Free Report) posted mixed results for its fiscal Q3 report, beating on earnings by a dime to 62 cents per share on $6.67 billion in revenues, which was lower than the expected $6.80 billion, +11% year over year. Global comps were +15% overall, slightly lower than estimates, with an impressive +91% in China bolstering the more lackluster U.S. comps. Next quarter guidance was upped slightly, but shares are down 2% in the after-market on the news.

Visa (V - Free Report) beat on its fiscal Q2 bottom line, as always — the credit card giant has a perfect record of positive earnings surprises: $1.38 per share topped the $1.26 expected, though down a penny from the year-earlier number. Revenues also posted a modest beat: $5.73 billion from $5.56 billion Zacks consensus, also down year over year. Payments volume grew 11% from a year ago. The company issued no full-year guidance in its earnings release.

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