On Thursday, 1 February 2024, three out of the so-called Magnificent Seven – Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) – published their relevant financial reports. All three companies topped Wall Street predictions.
Three out of seven a win – Amazon, Apple and Meta topping forecasts
Amazon’s Q4 revenue, which totalled $170bn, beat the expected $166.2bn by almost $4bn. Experts attributed the financial success of this company to the synergy between its diverse segments. The reported totals boosted investor confidence, and Amazon closed its Friday, 2 February 2024, trading up 7.87%.
Apple followed suit with its Q1 earnings and defied analyst forecasts. Its year-on-year quarterly revenue of $119.6bn went up by 2%. According to Yahoo Finance, this outpaced Zacks Consensus Estimates by 1.66%. The company further reported a 16% jump in year-over-year earnings per diluted share, trumping estimates by 4.31%. Apple, however, missed the mark with categories and devices net sales.
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Emulating the trend, Meta’s Q4 earnings came in at $40.11bn, a 25% year-on-year jump, to outdo the predicted $39.01. It also reported gains of $5.33 per share as opposed to the $4.91 estimates. The metaverse creator also announced a $50bn stock buyback programme and dividends of 50 cents per share.
Friday, 2 February 2024 saw Meta stock skyrocketing by more than 20%. This rally boosted the company’s market cap by approximately $200bn, which is now valued at more than $1.2tn. In his press statement, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:
We had a good quarter as our community and business continue to grow. We’ve made a lot of progress on our vision for advancing AI and the metaverse.
As reported by LeapRate on Thursday, 1 February 2024, big tech investors are closely watching and gauging if big tech AI spending justifies returns.
