Amazon, Apple Up On Earnings; Intel Takes A Bath

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Market indices rallied off a morning’s lineup of economic data that in more unforgiving times (say, a month or two ago) might have met the buzzsaw; today, we see grow across the board: the Dow was +332 points on the day, +1.03%, while the Nasdaq grew +130 points, +1.08%. Further, the S&P 500 at +1.21% and the small-cap Russell 200 +1.34% round out a positive trading day.

Renowned investor Leon Cooperman recently described a market “bottom” as having occurred when trading is impervious to bad news. Well, bad news is what we got ahead of today’s open, where Q2 GDP posted a negative headline for the second-straight quarter while jobless claims’ 4-week moving average keeps climbing. It’s been a rough quarter but a “so far, so good” Q2 earnings season — at least ahead of this afternoon’s marquee reports:

Apple (AAPL - Free Reportnotched its third-straight earnings beat in its fiscal Q3 results, reaching $1.20 per share for a 6-cent beat (though still below the year-ago’s $1.30 per share). Revenues posted a slight beat to $82.96 billion from $81.99 billion in the Zacks consensus. Shares of the world’s largest gadget maker are up +3% in after-market trading.

iPhone sales are still the bread and butter of Apple, and these came in better than expected to 40.67 billion units sold in the past three months. Its Services revenue was a tad below expectations at $19.6 billion, while Mac sales dropped -10% on supply constraints and foreign exchange headwinds. But considering its China business only came in -1% in a very challenging quarter, we’d have to see this quarter from Apple as not only being better than expected, but as strong as reasonably expected.

Shares of Amazon (AMZN - Free Reportbloomed +10% in late trading, even though the company posted a -20 cent loss per share in Q2, as opposed to a 15-cent gain. Revenues came in better than expected, however: $121.23 billion versus $119.67 billion expected. The company took a $6 billion charge in the quarter to adjust for extra labor and capacity, which may explain the bottom-line big miss.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud-based profit engine outpaced expectations in the quarter: $19.74 billion surpassed the anticipated $19.54 billion, while Advertising revenue grew +21% year over year to $8.76 billion, above the expected $8.65 billion. Online Stores and Subscribers came in a little short of estimates, but overall results were, just like Apple, better than expected.

Intel (INTC - Free Report), however, is a different story: in an absolute nightmare quarter, the chip-making giant posted earnings of 29 cents per share, less than half the 69 cents expected and more than 4x lower than the $1.28 per share in the year-ago quarter. CEO Pat Gelsinger said the quarter was “below standard” and that they “can and must do better.” It’s the company’s first miss in more than eight years.

Guidance for Q3 was abysmal, as well: 30 cents per share is expected on the bottom line, less than half the 90 cents in the Zacks consensus, while revenues next quarter, which had previously been expected to reach $18.91 billion, are now guiding to a range of $15-16 billion. The company also posted its worst Data Center revenue, perhaps ever, -16%. Shares are down -10% in late-session trading.

In other news, the Chips Act passed Congress today, which will allot more than $50 billion to semiconductor companies to begin generating chips in the U.S. This is widely seen as not only good for supply-chain initiatives that rely on advanced technology, like automobile dashboards, but a win for national security. It’s also seen as a hedge against possible aggression in Taiwan by China.


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