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Markets Rally: Apple, Intel Beat; Amazon Posts Negative Earnings

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Markets rallied back Thursday to make some of the big losses they’ve racked up over the past week of trading. The Dow grew +615 points or +1.85% on the day, while the S&P 500 performed even better: +2.47%. The Nasdaq added 382 points, +3.06% in regular trading, while the small-cap Russell 2000 headed up +1.77%. The Dow and S&P have lost -1.5% over the past five trading days; the Nasdaq is -2% over that time, the Russell more than -3%.

Even with negative Q1 GDP reported this morning — for the first time since the second quarter of the Covid pandemic — market participants managed to see some “green shoots” in Q1 earnings from companies among a wide swath of sectors. Jobless claims also stayed at generational lows, speaking to the innate strength in the economy even with a negative quarterly GDP print.

Apple (AAPL - Free Report) put together a stellar fiscal Q2, especially considering the challenges faced by much of its top competition: earnings of $1.52 per share surpassed the $1.43 expected and the $1.40 per share reported a year ago. Revenues of $97.28 billion also easily outpaced estimates of $94.54 billion. Gross Margins came in at 43.7%, whereas expectations were for closer to 43%.

In a quarter deeply gouged by difficulties in China and productivity issues stemming from them, iPhone sales still came in ahead of the estimated 47.88 billion, to 50.57 billion. It’s worth taking another look at this incredible figure: in a global market rife with headwinds, Apple still sol more than 50 billion high-end products in the past three months. Services were relatively in-line and iPad missed by -2%, but iPhone’s success continues to lead the Tech sector and pretty much every other measure one cares to use.

Shares are up +2% on the news, following a +4.5% gain during Thursday’s regular session. Apple is still -10% year to date, but the company also raised its dividend 5% and issued a share buyback program. An aces quarter for Apple, all the way around.

Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) initially dumped more than -10% on its Q1 report, putting up surprise negative earnings — -$7.56 per share versus +$8.73 expected; that’s some surprise! — on revenues that also came in light of the Zacks consensus: $116.44 billion versus $117.02 billion expected. Revenue guidance was ratcheted down to a high end below current expectations.

The company cited a familiar list of quarterly headwinds: labor, logistics and supply chain costs, as well as a one-time -$7.6 billion write-down on its Rivian (RIVN - Free Report) holdings. Even though Amazon raised its price for Prime subscriptions, that segment brought in less than anticipated, $8.4 billion. AWS grew +37% year over year — higher than expected. But E-commerce slightly underperformed, in North America and elsewhere.

Intel (INTC - Free Report) shares initially dipped on its latest beat on both top and bottom lines in its Q1 earnings report: 87 cents per share surged beyond expectations by 7 cents, on quarterly sales that narrowly surpassed the Zacks consensus to $1.835 billion. Both the PC market and Client Computing were a tad lower than expectations, but Intel has a tremendous earnings beat track record: it has posted no earnings misses since Q3 2014.

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