Big Tech earnings: Microsoft surges 16% in a day, Amazon hits $200B revenue, Meta slides on CapEx
Key Points
- Microsoft surged 16% in a single day on $90 billion in quarterly revenue, up 18% year-over-year, with Azure accelerating 43% as cloud infrastructure demand strengthens.
- Amazon crossed $200 billion in quarterly revenue while AWS grew 37% to $42.4 billion, signaling sustained hyperscaler spending on AI infrastructure and compute.
- Meta's stock fell despite beating revenue expectations because $31.1 billion in quarterly CapEx spending raised investor doubts about the return on its infrastructure buildout.
Summary
Big Tech Earnings: Microsoft's $50B Gain, Amazon Crosses $200B Revenue, Meta Stumbles on CapEx
Microsoft dominated earnings season with a 16% single-day stock surge — a $50 billion market cap gain, the largest one-day gain for any US company. The company reported $90 billion in fiscal fourth quarter revenue, up 18% year-over-year and beating consensus estimates of $87.4 billion. EPS came in at $4.74 versus expectations of $4.21. Azure revenue accelerated 43% year-over-year, signaling continued strength in cloud infrastructure demand.
Apple beat revenue expectations with $109.4 billion in quarterly sales and briefly pushed its market cap above $5 trillion, but shares have since collapsed 9.5% as investors digested the results.
Amazon crossed a symbolic threshold with revenue climbing 20% to $200.6 billion. AWS grew 37% to $42.4 billion, sending shares up 15% in after-hours trading. The AWS acceleration underscores continued hyperscaler spending on AI infrastructure and compute capacity.
Meta reported stronger-than-expected revenue of $60.8 billion, up 28% year-over-year, but the stock declined sharply after earnings per share fell to $6.18, below the $7.22 consensus. Investors focused on two headwinds: $31.1 billion in quarterly CapEx and $3.6 billion in onetime legal and severance costs. The CapEx spending is part of Meta's broader infrastructure push, though the efficacy of that spending on AI development remains unclear to investors.
Alphabet reported $119.8 billion in revenue and $9.11 in EPS, comfortably beating expectations. Google Cloud revenue surged 82% year-over-year to $24.8 billion. Even so, the market is fixating on a single underlying tension across all five earnings reports: as hyperscalers pour hundreds of billions into new compute capacity, investors want proof the spending translates to meaningful AI progress and commercial returns. Stock reactions have become binary — companies that demonstrate clear execution on AI infrastructure and cloud growth move higher; those that appear to be spending without clarity on ROI face immediate selloffs.
Every deal, every interview. 5 minutes.
TBPN Digest delivers summaries of the latest fundraises, interviews and tech news from TBPN, every weekday.