Fast Money Blog- 4/28/23

This week on Wall Street was all about earnings!

On Tuesday, April 25th, both Microsoft and Visa released their earnings.

Microsoft (MSFT) reported Q3 2023 earnings with revenue of $52.9 billion, an increase of 7% year-over-year.

While revenue in the More Personal Computing segment, which centers on its Windows software was $13.3 billion a decrease of 9% year-over-year, it was more than made up by their other segments.

Clearly their Microsoft Cloud segment was the top performer with revenue of $22.1 billion, up 16% year-over-year. This segment includes server products and cloud services such as Azure. Not many people know that 80% of all television shows are now run in the cloud off of high end servers owned by Microsoft.

This segment also includes Azure AI, a portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI) services designed for developers and data scientists—to do more with less.  Microsoft is leading the way in AI, having spent six years researching and integrating powerful, innovative AI technologies into their products and services.

The Productivity and Business Processes segment, which includes Dynamics, LinkedIn and the Office suite of products, brought in $17.5 billion, an increase of 11% year-over-year.

The company also reported quarterly profit of $18.3 billion.

For the first time in 52 weeks Wall Street reacted favorably to Microsoft’s earnings.  This sent the stock soaring over $19 in 24 hours.  I absolutely recommend MSFT as a strong-hold.

For Q2 2023 Visa, Inc. (V) posted top line revenue of $8 billion, representing an increase of 11% year-over-year driven by growth in payments volume, cross-border volume and processed transactions.

Across the board Visa had outstanding numbers:

Payments volume increased 10% over the prior year.

Total cross-border volume increased 24% in the quarter year-over-year.

The company also processed $2.9 trillion in transactions on its payment network last quarter, up 10% from a year earlier.

Visa is an outstanding long-term hold and like Microsoft, I see this stock advancing over the next 52 weeks.

On Thursday, April 27th, we got earnings releases from Amazon and Mastercard.

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) delivered Q1 2023 earnings with wins in both revenue and profits.  Although the company has seen a continued slowdown in its cloud computing unit, AWS, top-line revenue for the quarter came in at $127.4 billion, an increase of 9.4% year-over-year.

Amazon also saw ad revenue climb 23% year-over-year to $9.5 billion.  Strong revenue and a cut in spending gave the company its strongest quarterly profit since 2021.  Amazon recorded a profit of $3.2 billion, compared to a loss of $3.8 billion in the same period a year ago.

I consider Amazon to be a great date and a great trade at its current level.

Mastercard Incorporated (MA) posted Q1 2023 earnings with revenue of $5.7 billion, up 11% year-over-year.

For Q1, the company saw GDV (gross dollar volume- a metric that represents the total dollar value of all transactions processed) up 15% year-over-year to $2.1 trillion, and cross-border payments volume grew 35%.

As of March 31st, 2023, Mastercard had issued 3.2 billion Mastercard and Mastercard branded cards, which includes gift and debit cards.

During Q4 2022 Mastercard paid out dividends worth $545 million.

This was an outstanding quarter for MA and I see the stock price going even higher in the next 52 weeks.

Next week we will get earnings from more companies, including Apple, Inc. (AAPL), Block, Inc. (SQ) and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD).

Stay open! Stay positive!

Tyrone Jackson, The Wealthy Investor

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