Google, Microsoft and Amazon all spiked AH after delivering stellar earnings reports.
Amazon now worth $300 billion, Alphabet $500 billion after earnings explosions
By Jeremy C. Owens
Published: Oct 22, 2015 7:22 p.m. ET
marketwatch.com
A big day for tech earnings set up a day of records on Wall Street for three of the biggest tech companies in the world.
Alphabet Inc. GOOG, +1.43% GOOGL, +1.39% Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +1.76% and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +1.46% spiked after their respective earnings reports Thursday afternoon, and all are headed for some fancy round numbers. Alphabet, which demolished expectations in the final quarter before changing its name from Google, easily topped record highs with a 9% gain in after-hours trading. That gain would make Alphabet one of only two companies on Wall Street worth more than $500 billion -- the other being Apple Inc. AAPL, +1.53%
Amazon shocked observers with profits for a second consecutive quarter, and jumped more than 10% in late trading. With shares likely to top $600 for the first time, Amazon’s market cap appears ready to surpass $300 billion, which would make Amazon more valuable than Facebook Inc. FB, +2.64% The after-hours gains will also be huge for founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, who stands to gain enough to become the third richest man in the U.S., passing the Koch brothers.
One of the men still ahead of Bezos on the list of richest Americans is Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, but Bezos may not have closed the gap with Gates much. Microsoft stock topped $50 after releasing earnings, the first time it has passed that mark since not long after Gates stepped down as CEO in January 2000. The company’s market cap appears likely to top $400 billion if those gains hold, the highest the company has seen since the dot-com bubble popped.
With Amazon passing Facebook, the three companies’ market caps will be behind only Apple — worth $658 billion at market close — in the tech sector. The top five companies, including Facebook, will be worth more than $2 trillion combined if the gains hold. |
