Microsoft’s quarter depresses Wall Street. At approximately 1.30 pm Italian time, futures on the Dow Jones fell by around 200 points (-0.56%), futures on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq lost respectively 0.80% and 1.31%.
In the pre-market, the prices of the American software giant show a worsening, leaving 2.6% on the ground.
The sentiment is weighed down by the quarterly released by the giant, published yesterday after the end of the trading day.
MSFT stock initially toasted to better-than-expected earnings releases. Shortly thereafter came the about-face, which still continues, due to the not very comforting outlook issued by Big Tech USA: an outlook that confirms the slowdown in the PC market and also in cloud services.
Microsoft announced it ended its fiscal second quarter — the fourth quarter of 2022 ended Dec. 31 — with net income down to $16.43 billion, compared with $18.77 billion in the same period a year earlier.
A $1.2 billion charge weighed on Big Tech US’s quarterly report, which includes $800 million of liquidation costs that the group had to incur for the 10,000 announced workforce cuts.
Adjusted earnings per share came in at $2.32 per share, better than the $2.29 expected by analysts polled by Refinitiv.
Microsoft’s total revenue climbed 2% year over year, posting the lowest growth since 2016 at $52.75 billion, just shy of the $52.94 billion estimated by analysts.
The outlook for Microsoft’s third fiscal quarter, first quarter of 2023, is not very convincing: the giant has announced that it expects revenues between $50.5 billion and $51.5 billion, which it expects to grow by up to 3%, however lower than to the $52.43 billion analyst consensus estimate.
Maximum attention to the quarterly reports of Corporate America: today it will be the turn of names of the caliber of Tesla, Boeing, IBM and AT&T.
So far, more than 70% of companies trading on the S&P 500 have released earnings reports for the fourth quarter of 2022, with 65% beating expectations, according to analysis by Refinitiv.
The downtrend in futures follows a third consecutive session of gains for the Dow Jones.
All three major stock indexes are up at least 1% since the start of the week.
Yesterday, the Dow Jones ended the session up 104.40 points (+0.31%) at 33,733.96; the S&P 500 fell 0.07% to 4,016.95, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.27% to 11,334.27.
In the fixed income market, 10-year Treasury rates fell to 3.432%, while two-year yields were flat at 4.156%.