Tech giants shine despite COVID-19 but Apple, Amazon earnings still to come; Twitter stumbles

The biggest tech companies in the world are shining during an otherwise harrowing earnings season, as cloud businesses get a boost from the spike in working from home and revenue stays resilient.

Facebook shares shot up 9% in premarket trading after the company posted $17.7 billion in revenue for the first three months of the year, beating Wall Street estimates, my CNN Business colleague Kaya Yurieff reports.

The company said it experienced a plunge in demand for ads in March but saw “signs of stability” during the first three weeks of April. Usage and engagement with its products has been high, though the company said it expects it will decline once stay-at-home orders lift.

Microsoft also beat Wall Street’s forecasts, sending shares up 2% in premarket trading. The company benefitted from strong demand for cloud services, and said its remote working Teams app now has 75 million daily active users.

“We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months,” CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.

Twitter, however, stumbled.

Twitter posted a loss in the first quarter as the social media company’s higher expenses outweighed revenue growth. The firm said Thursday that average daily users grew 24% year over year, the highest ever growth rate in the company’s history. Twitter has added 14 million daily users since the previous quarter. The company said growth was driven by seasonal strength, product improvements and interest in coronavirus.

Last year, Twitter started disclosing its daily user base, or the number of users who log in at least once a day and see ads on the platform. The daily metric has replaced its monthly user count, which Twitter said it will no longer disclose. Other companies, such as Facebook, give both daily and monthly counts.

For the three months ended in March, Twitter posted a loss of $8.4 million, or 1 cent per share, on revenue of $807.6 million. A year ago, the company earned $190.8 million, or 25 cents per share, on a big tax benefit. Revenue totaled $786.9 million.

On average analysts surveyed by FactSet forecast quarterly earnings per share of 10 cents on revenue of $783 million.

The company previously withdrew full-year financial guidance and said Thursday it’s not providing second-quarter estimates either. Shares jumped 4.9% in premarket trading.

Next up: Amazon and Apple report results after US markets close on Thursday. Investors will look to see how much Amazon has reaped the benefits of increased online shopping and cloud usage. The company’s shares are up more than 28% this year.

Apple, meanwhile, is something of a wild card. Sales of iPhones are expected to have taken a big hit. The company issued a revenue warning in February, noting that its supply chain and sales of devices had been affected by the coronavirus outbreak in China.

Investor insight: Attention will focus on Apple’s forecast for the rest of the year — particularly any update on the tech company’s plans to roll out its first 5G phones.