It’s three times the fun with tech titan earnings on Thursday.
Amazon, Microsoft and Google are all scheduled to unveil their quarterly financial results, creating a calendar traffic jam that has long left investors and analysts scrambling to keep up. The data from each company will be used to prognosticate on issues as varied as each behemoth’s growth trajectory (or lack thereof) to how each is eating the other’s lunch (or having their lunch eaten).
Of the three, perhaps the most scrutiny will fall on Google, which is issuing its last earnings report as Google. The company’s structure has changed to one that is more like a holding company, with a new parent entity called Alphabet. Google will begin reporting as Alphabet next year.
Microsoft will be posting results that include one of the first glimpses into how its new Windows 10 operating system is doing. And investors will be watching Amazon for the performance of its cloud computing business, as well as its profit margins and spending.
The results will follow a happy moment for eBay, which on Wednesday reported its first quarterly performance since spinning off the electronic payments unit PayPal. EBay’s profit was stronger than analysts’ forecasts and the company bolstered its financial outlook, suggesting that life after a corporate change can be positive.