As if Apple quarterly earnings weren't enough on their own to stir your Silicon Valley soul, this week also brings a veritable bounty from the number-crunchers at Google parent Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba.
Strap on your seatbelts because the action starts today, as Facebook takes center stage to announce its Q4 results after the market's close.
Here's a snapshot of things you should know about the tech giants' busy earnings week:
Facebook on Wednesday
The social-media giant is expected to earn $1.94 per share on $12.56 billion in revenues, up +37.6 percent and +42.6 percentfrom the year-earlier period, respectively. Analysts will keep a sharp eye out on the company's all-important and ever-growing tally of daily active users. In fact, those numbers will rival the bottom-line results in significance to Wall Street.
So what's expected in terms of daily audience growth? Analysts are looking for an uptick to 1.414 billion daily active users, up from 1.227 billion in the year-earlier quarter and 1.368 billion in the preceding quarter. Another thing to keep in mind is what CEO Mark Zuckerberg might say about the impact of recent changes to Facebook's high-profile newsfeed. That move, widely derided by the publishing community which will certainly take a serious revenue hit once their content is replaced in the feed by posts from the user's family and friends.
Facebook stock is up more than 7 percent since the start of the new year and closing in on a 50-percent price pop over the past 12 months.
Alphabet on Thursday evening
Alphabet, parent of Google, should announce that its search ad revenues improved in Q4 while ad volumes increased, says Forbes. This should offset pressure on cost-per-click, the report explains. In addition, analysts expect Google to continue selling more ad inventory through its programs like the TrueView video ads that power YouTube. Growth should continue, says the report, as advertisers fine-tune the ways they leverage that platform to market the goods and services they sell.
And, as the Motley Fool points out, Alphabet's hardware business will likely see killer growth in the company's fourth quarter. "Ahead of the holidays, and right at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the company released eight new hardware products, including new smartphones, new smart speakers, a laptop-tablet hybrid called the Pixelbook, smart earbuds, and a lightweight smart camera." That should all help the search giant goose its bottom-line picture.
Apple on Thursday afternoon
Apple reports Q4 results after the market's close on Thursday. The company is expected to earn $3.81 per share on $86 billion in revenues, up +13.4 percent and +9.8 percent from the year-earlier period, respectively. Apple makes plenty of products, but the most important product in its portfolio is the iPhone, whose unit sales are expected to have reached 79.8 million in the quarter, up from 78.29 million in the year-earlier quarter and 28.85 million in the preceding quarter. The stock has lost ground in recent days, but it is up +40.5 percen over the past year, handily outperforming the broader tech sector.
Alibaba on Thursday morning
As impressive as Amazon's stock market performance over the past year has been, says a report at Nasdaq.com, Alibaba has done even better, with the stock up +101 percent over the past year. Part of that success can be attributed to the stellar performance Alibaba turned in for hot holiday sales moment known as Singles Day in November. The company reportedly posted a 39-percent jump in sales to a record $25.3 billion in gross merchandise volume. SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Youssef Squali wrote at the time that "strong Chinese consumer buying, four-times growth in global brands, strength in cross-border trade, rise of New Retail (selling strategy), and ubiquity of mobile drove this outsized performance."
Other analysts, however, have noted that a possible drag on earnings for the fourth quarter could be Ailbaba's consolidation of its logistics business, according to the Wall Street Journal, as well as its efforts to stave off competition in the digital entertainment space.
Revenue for the fourth-quarter is expected to jump to $12.13 billion, more than 57-percent above the year-ago period of $7.67 billion, according to the consensus earnings estimate from third-party Wall Street analysts. Earnings per share are projected to reach $1.65, ahead of the $1.30 a share BABA reported in the year-ago period. Those results also beat Wall Street's expectations.
Amazon on Thursday afternoon
As the Nasdaq story put it, Amazon "has long 'trained' the market on not to look for earnings performance in its quarterly results and that will likely be case this time around. The key factor will be overall revenues and performance of the company's cloud business � Amazon Web Services (AWS). With respect to revenues, the current Zacks Consensus expectation is $59.98 billion, which represents +37.1-percent growth from the year-earlier level, while earnings of $1.85 per share would represent a +20.1-percent year-over-year gain."
MarketWatch reported that Amazon's earnings picture this week will be a reflection of just how strong the holiday season was for the e-commerce giant. Amazon grabbed half of all holiday online sales last year, according to GBH Insights. That coupled with Prime membership is expected to drive revenue growth.
"We see Amazon's Prime member growth and engagement, Echo device sales, and consumer web traffic/interest driving solid top-line trends and GMV per customer growth," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note.
Morgan Stanley is expecting the company to face a number of challenges as it continues to invest in delivery, fulfillment, digital content and other areas, said MarketWatch in its report. "Larger-than-expected investments in bricks-and mortar outlets, such as the Amazon Go store, book stores, and TV shows are highlighted as risks."
