Earnings Season week of April 28 in review

eSellerCafe is not trying to be a financial website and report on every earnings report. But we like to provide a bit of a snapshot of how relevant tech and eCommerce businesses are doing.

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In financial terms, we are in the middle of Earnings Season. The quarterly accumulation when many companies announce their last quarter financial results.

We did pick up a few interesting ones like eBay and Twitter for a more detailed story. Both companies provided additional information beyond the numbers that might be interesting to online retailers.

The last few days a few other tech and eCommerce related companies released their first quarter earnings. So here is a summary of what they reported.

PAYPAL HAD A STRONG QUARTER FUELED BY MOBILE

The digital payment front runner beat Wall Street expectations for both revenue and earnings. The company stated that Venmo, their mobile peer to peer payments app, doubled their processing volume in the first quarter.

One interesting note was that Venmo is expanding their tests with merchants. To date, there has been no monetization on Venmo money exchanges, but including merchants would provide that.

AMAZON CLIMBING TO $1000 PER SHARE

Amazon is not there yet, but last quarter they increased sales by 23% over the same period last year. The company beat Wall Street expectations with its quarterly report.
As traditional retailers are closing stores, Amazon is picking up market share. Not that surprising…

But the real star continues to be Amazon Web Services which increased sales by 42% last quarter.

All is right in the Amazon world, and innovative ideas in artificial intelligence for shopping are keeping the company ahead of all competitors.

GOOGLE KEEPS PLOWING AHEAD DESPITE SOME AD BACKLASH

Google, or better Alphabet, managed to withstand the backlash over advertisers showing up on controversial videos on YouTube.

The company crushed Wall Street estimates by reporting advertising revenues of $21.4 billion over last year same quarter of just over $18 billion. Net income was equally up over the same period last year.

Even Alphabet’s “Other Bets” category which includes such properties as self-driving cars, home automation products, and Google Fiber internet service showed a large uptick in revenue.

Bottom line, Alphabet management is happy, investors are happy!

UPS ALSO BEATS EARNINGS ESTIMATES

UPS reported better than expected results as well. Many analysts were concerned about the increasing shift from commercial to home delivery and a rise in fuel costs.

But the company recently announced Saturday delivery for residential customers and stated that all segments showed continuing growth and profit.

It also proves that UPS is finding plenty of other eCommerce business as Amazon has shifted to USPS and its delivery services.

MICROSOFT AND INTEL MISS EXPECTATIONS

Both companies missed their mark for the first quarter of 2017. Hardware revenue seems to be the main issue plaguing both companies.

That’s it for this week in financial information. Some more companies report next week, and unless there is a major announcement, we will wrap it again in one single summary post.

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