The board approved $5.1 billion to reacquire shares, the first time in 11 years the company-formerly-known-as-Google has bought back.
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Microsoft, Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet are all sharply higher Friday.
The three companies’ results show that a key part of the US economy continues to function well even as the global economy slows, said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of investment advisory firm Sarhan Capital in New York. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index advanced 1.1 per cent to 2075.15.
The gains put the S&P 500 higher for the year, making up much of the ground it lost in a swoon in August and September.
Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury rose to 2.08 percent from 2.02 percent Thursday, while the 30-year advanced to 2.90 percent from 2.86 percent.
Before the start of the third-quarter reporting season, corporate earnings had been expected to fall by 4.1 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.
And after a hat trick of earnings beats in the tech sector after the closing bell Thursday (Amazon.com, Microsoft and Alphabet all posted strong earnings results that sent their shares up close to 10% each), S&P 500 futures are pointing up 17 points, or 0.8% in pre-market trading.
Outside of Thursday’s tech-centric earnings report wave, and to fuel this idea that tech is eating the NASDAQ, Facebook (FB) stock also hit an all-time high this morning at 2 a share. AMZN led the gains with a 10 percent advance thanks to an unexpected quarterly profit and strong revenue.
ASIAN SCORECARD: Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 2.1 per cent, while South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.9 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.3 per cent and the Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China rose 1.3 per cent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 1.7 per cent.
US-listed Chinese companies Alibaba surged 6.5 per cent and internet search company Baidu rose 2.7 per cent, benefitting from both the positive sentiment towards tech stocks and a move by the People’s Bank of China to cut benchmark interest rates.
The trio of stocks were up more than 7 percent Friday morning, on a day when the markets rallied between 1 and 2 percent. It has the highest market capitalization of $27.4 billion.
Among other companies posting earnings today, Procter & Gamble jumped 2.9 per cent as cost cuts helped to offset the company’s sluggish sales.
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This provider of information technology security solutions has a market capitalization of $1.46 billion.
