Weekly Tech Stock News: Apple, Shopify, and Square Earnings – The Motley Fool

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In one of the busiest weeks of earnings season, last week included reports from a handful of major tech companies. Three worth a closer look are Shopify (NYSE:SHOP), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), and Square (NYSE:SQ). Two of these companies saw their stocks jump while shares of the other company fell sharply.

Here’s a look at the key takeaways from their earnings releases.

Apple News subscription service on a MacBook Air, iPad, and iPhone

Apple News+ subscription service aims to further bolster Apple’s fast-growing services segment. Image source: Apple.

Apple

Tech giant Apple impressed investors with better-than-expected revenue, earnings per share, and guidance. As expected, the company reported year-over-year declines in both metrics as slower iPhone sales continued to weigh on results. But those declines weren’t as bad as anticipated.

Apple reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $58 billion, down 5% year over year. Earnings per share fell 10% over the same timeframe to $2.46. On average, analysts were expecting revenue and earnings per share of $57.4 billion and $2.36.

“Our March quarter results show the continued strength of our installed base of over 1.4 billion active devices, as we set an all-time record for Services, and the strong momentum of our Wearables, Home and Accessories category, which set a new March quarter record,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook about the quarter in the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings release. 

The stock jumped about 7% after the results were released.

Shopify

E-commerce platform Shopify also impressed with higher-than-expected top- and bottom-line results. Its business notably continues to grow at a mind-boggling rate. Revenue surged 50% year over year to $320.5 million and non-GAAP earnings per share jumped from $0.04 in the year-ago quarter to $0.09. 

The quarter’s growth was fueled by a 40% year-over-year increase in subscription solutions revenue and a 58% increase in merchant solutions revenue.

Following the company’s first-quarter earnings report, shares jumped about 8%.

Square

Interestingly, financial technology company Square also grew at an uncanny rate in its first quarter. Yet the stock fell about 8% following its first-quarter results.

Square’s first-quarter revenue, adjusted to exclude transaction-based costs, bitcoin costs, and the effect of deferred revenue adjustment related to purchase accounting, grew 59% year over year. Unadjusted revenue rose 43% over the same timeframe. In addition, non-GAAP earnings per share increased from $0.06 in the year-ago quarter to $0.11.

Though adjusted revenue and non-GAAP earnings per share were better than expected, investors were likely disappointed in the company’s guidance. Management’s outlook for its second-quarter adjusted revenue was slightly below what analysts were modeling for. In addition, though management raised its outlook for full-year revenue, it left its expectations for adjusted earnings before taxes, interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization the same, implying plans for bigger spending.

For the full week, Apple and Shopify shares rose 3.7% and 18.8%, respectively, and Square stock fell 4.2%.