Both Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) delivered positive earnings surprises after the market closed on Wall Street on Tuesday afternoon. In post-market trading the companies both made strong gains, with Yahoo stock shooting up by 8% immediately after releasing its numbers and Intel gaining close to 3% after close. Shares in the tech industry were up across the board after the announcements.
The earnings are the first first quarter results to come from major Silicon Valley firms, and they show that the tech industry was on form in the first three months of 2014. The momentum bust of the opening months of the year may be turned around by the actual numbers coming out of the valley for the first quarter. If Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) numbers are representative, it could be a good couple of weeks for those investing in tech.
Intel and Yahoo beat expectations
Most of the loss in the value of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) over the last two years has come from the faster than expected decline in PC sales. Quarter after quarter saw consumers forgo PC purchases in favor of mobile devices. This afternoon’s earnings report showed that the PC business was improving, and the company’s core may not be as soft as had been speculated.
In a press release accompanying the earnings release Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) CEO Brian Krzanich said “In the first quarter we saw solid growth in the data center, signs of improvement in the PC business, and we shipped five million tablet processors, making strong progress on our goal of 40 million tablets for 2014.”
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) was served well by earnings from equity, which represents the company’s stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. That firm is headed for an initial public offering in the coming months, and Yahoo is sure to reap dividends off of that transaction.
Apart from the return from Aibaba, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) investors were surprised by positive signs from Yahoo’s search and advertising business. The positives in those segments were likely a big driver of the optimism taking hold of tech investors after the market closed. If Yahoo advertising is going well, it’s likely that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) will come through for investors.
Tech shares jump on earnings optimism
In after-market trading the optimism from the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) earnings reports appeared to have a significant effect on tech stocks around the market.
Shares in Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Twitter Inc (NASDAQ:TWTR),and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) were up by more than 0.5% in post-market trading directly after the release of the earnings reports. Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) shares were also up in the post market, as were the stocks of LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Baidu Inc (NASDAQ:BIDU).
