The Tech Earnings Special ⭐️

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The U.S. is keeping its naval blockade on Iran in place until nuclear talks happen. Not after. Not during. First.

Trump, never one to undersell a metaphor, told Axios: "They are choking like a stuffed pig."

He claims Iran's oil storage and pipelines are close to bursting because they can't export a drop. Some analysts think that's a stretch. Either way, the pressure is real.

Here's where it gets spicy.

U.S. Central Command has reportedly drawn up plans for a "short and powerful" wave of strikes on Iranian infrastructure. Trump hasn't pulled that trigger yet. He sees the blockade as the better weapon for now.

Iran isn't staying quiet. A senior Iranian security source warned the blockade will be met with "practical and unprecedented action." Patience is running out.

There's also a political angle. Trump's approval ratings are already under pressure… and expensive oil doesn't exactly win votes ahead of midterms.

The military option is on the table. Diplomacy is stalled. And the Gulf is getting tense.

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$AMZN ( ▲ 1.29% ) dipped 3.18% after hours despite beating on pretty much everything that matters.

Here's the scorecard:

AWS is still the golden goose. A 28% jump and a clean beat on estimates.

The one number that raised eyebrows?

Free cash flow cratered to $1.2B for the trailing twelve months. The culprit: a $59.3B increase in property and equipment spending, mostly AI infrastructure.

Basically, Amazon is spending like it's building a second internet. Andy Jassy called it "some of the biggest inflections of our lifetime." No pressure.

The guidance midpoint trails slightly on operating income vs. what the Street wanted. That's probably why the stock shrugged.

$MSFT ( ▼ 1.12% ) shares slid 2.23% after hours despite the company posting a quarter that was better than expected on basically every metric that matters.

Here's the scorecard:

That Azure number is the one to watch. 40% growth on a business that size isn't easy.

The Intelligent Cloud division alone pulled in $34.7B. For context, that's more than most companies make in a year. Full stop.

Microsoft 365 Commercial cloud grew 19%. LinkedIn up 12%. Dynamics 365 up 22%. The whole portfolio is moving in one direction.

CEO Satya Nadella said the AI business just crossed a $37B annual run rate, up 123% year-over-year. That's not a side project anymore. That's a core revenue engine.

CFO Amy Hood called it results that "exceeded expectations across revenue, operating income, and EPS." Hard to argue.

So why the after-hours dip? Markets are weird. Sometimes investors sell the news. Sometimes guidance whispers matter more than results. We'll know more when the call wraps.

Remaining performance obligations hit $627B — basically a giant backlog of future revenue already locked in. Analyst Michael Del Monte put it simply: "the cloud growth model remains intact."

Intact is an understatement.

Alphabet $GOOG ( ▼ 0.06% ) dropped its Q1 earnings after hours. The market liked what it saw. The stock is up 6.53% after hours.

Revenue hit $109.9B, up 22% year-over-year, smashing analyst expectations of $107B. That's 11 straight quarters of double-digit growth. Not bad for a company people keep trying to write off.

The headline numbers:

The real story? Cloud is on fire.

Google Cloud pulled in $20B in revenue — up 63%. Operating income there tripled to $6.6B.

The backlog nearly doubled quarter-on-quarter to over $460 billion.

Everyone's been asking whether AI Overviews would cannibalize Google Search revenue. The answer, for now, is a firm no.

Search revenue grew 19% to $60.4B. Queries are at an all-time high. Turns out people still Google things, even when ChatGPT exists.

Alphabet is writing massive cheques to build AI infrastructure. Capex more than doubled year-over-year to $35.67B in Q1 alone — with full-year spend potentially hitting $185B.

The bill is real. Free cash flow dropped 47% to $10.1B.

But here's the thing: operating margins are expanding while R&D costs rise. That's the sign of a company that's actually monetising AI, not just throwing money at it.

Other stuff worth noting:

CEO Sundar Pichai called it a "terrific start" to the year. Given the numbers, he's earned the bragging rights.

$META ( ▼ 0.33% ) beat on revenue. Beat on earnings. Grew ads like it was nothing.

And the market still threw a tantrum. Down 6.58% after hours.

Here's what actually happened.

The numbers were genuinely impressive.

Revenue hit $56.3B — up 33% year-over-year and ahead of the $55.5B Wall Street was expecting.

Ad revenue? Up 33% to $55B. Family of Apps revenue? Up 34% to $55.9B. Both beat.

On the bottom line, Meta earned $10.44 per share — up 62% year-over-year and nearly $4 ahead of estimates.

Two things. Neither of them is the core business.

1. CapEx got a big upgrade.

Meta now expects to spend $125B to $145B in capital expenditures this year — up from the previous $115B–$135B range.

Higher component prices. More data center build-out. The AI arms race isn't cheap.

2. Reality Labs is still bleeding.

The VR division lost another $4.03B this quarter. It's basically a very expensive hobby at this point.

Meta guided for $58B–$61B in Q2 revenue, with a midpoint of $59.5B — right in line with expectations.

Not a disaster. Not a blowout. Just fine.

Full-year expenses remain unchanged at $162B–$169B, so at least that held steady.

One more thing worth noting.

Daily active users dipped quarter-over-quarter. But the culprit was internet disruptions in Iran and WhatsApp restrictions in Russia. Not user fatigue.

Context matters.

Analysts general consensus is: "META is worth a buy at these prices just based on its ad business — even if we don't see any AI returns in the short term."

In other words: the engine is fine. The market is just scared of the fuel bill.