Strong earnings from tech heavyweights like Microsoft, Alphabet (Google) and Amazon, plus economic easing in China, sent U.S. stocks soaring this morning.
The S&P 500 has gone positive for the year as it moved up 18 points to 2,071. The Dow Jones Moving average has crossed over its 200-day moving average by rising 118 points to 17,000 and the Nasdaq is now over 5,000 with a gain of 87 points to 5,007.
Amazon is shooting up another 6 percent to $600.02 following its positive earnings from Thursday afternoon. The profit-shy online retailing juggernaut surprised analysts with third-quarter income of 17 cents a share, or $79 million, a welcome improvement over last year’s loss of 95 cents a share, or $437 million. Operating cash flow increased 72 percent to $9.8 billion and the company said that the Fire tablet was the number one best-selling product on Amazon.com since the launch.
Skechers is getting flattened this morning after reporting its earnings following the market close on Thursday. The stock has plunged 30 percent to $32.02 when Skechers was unable to please investors with its double-digit gains in revenues and profits. Revenues rose 27 percent to $856.2 million, but analysts expected $876 million. Earnings-per-share were estimated to be 55 cents, but Skechers only brought home 43 cents a share. While today’s drop seems excessive, the stock was up over 170 percent for the past year so anything less than perfection was sure to prompt some profit-taking.
VF Corp is also taking some hits for missing its earnings estimates this morning. The stock slid over 7 percent to $67.90 after reporting third-quarter earnings of $1.07, 5 cents worse than consensus estimates of $1.12. VF Corp. also lowered guidance for fiscal year 2015 earnings per share from $3.22 to $3.18. The company blamed the lowered guidance on the strong dollar. On the plus side, revenue increased 8 percent on double-digit growth in the outdoor and action sports group as well as strength in jeanswear. Gross margins also improved over last year.
Procter & Gamble moved higher by 3 percent to $77.35 even though the company disappointed on sales for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2016. Sales tumbled 12 percent to $16.5 billion from last year’s $18.7 billion and missing analyst’s estimates of $17 billion. The company blamed foreign exchange headwinds and the costs to exit unprofitable businesses.
