Get Ready for Major Tech Earnings Starting April 29

Get the popcorn out, because the biggest tech companies will be reporting earnings after the market closes on Wednesday and Thursday.

Mega-cap hyperscalers Alphabet GOOG, Amazon AMZN, Meta Platforms META, and Microsoft MSFT will all release their quarterly earnings reports on Wednesday, April 29, after the market close. Rounding out the earnings season for five of the Magnificent 7, Apple APPL will report on Thursday, April 30.

This fresh earnings data follows a poor quarter for tech stocks, which declined as artificial intelligence shook up the software industry. However, in recent weeks, tech stocks, including software names, have started to pick up. So far, the early read on AI infrastructure spending from Intel INTC, Micron Technology MU, and Taiwan Semiconductor TSM shows a continued boom. That said, questions remain around the outlook for the biggest software businesses.

Here are the main themes Morningstar analysts will be watching with each company.

Alphabet

Alphabet has gained 27.7% over the past month, 12.0% in the year to date, and 118.65% over the past year.

• Going into Alphabet’s report, we think the firm’s stock is fairly valued.
• Google Cloud will be the star of the show. We expect breakneck growth in Google Cloud Platforms, powered by increased AI spending, enterprise adoption of Gemini, and growing TPU sales to large labs such as Anthropic.
• We will keep a keen eye on margins, as increased capital intensity from prior quarters will begin hitting the firm’s income statement via depreciation. We are also interested in what the firm’s updated 2026 capital expenditure forecast will look like. Given robust AI demand, we could see a modest uptick.
• We expect search to remain resilient as AI continues to unlock new net monetizable queries while giving Alphabet more context, enabling better targeting.

Malik Ahmed Khan, CFA

Alphabet

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Amazon

Amazon is up 30.99% over the past month, 13.13% in the year to date, and 39.12% over the past year.

• We’re looking for updates on Amazon’s $200 billion capital expenditure outlook for 2026.
• We’re keeping an eye on Amazon Web Services’ growth, backlog, and capacity additions. AWS is the story, and AI is driving it. Amazon doesn’t provide a wealth of data, so any data points are helpful for our predictions, such as capacity adds, utilization, or projects being on, ahead of, or behind schedule.
• We expect some depreciation in AWS margins, which is notable, as its profitability drives Amazon’s overall profitability. Margin improvements based on efficiency gains have been a major theme for Amazon for the last year, and we expect more to come.
• CEO Andrew Jassy commented on the chip business in a shareholder letter, so we’ll look for more discussion around that.
• Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) expenses have been ramping up and weighing on margins, as they did for first-quarter guidance.
• We also expect updates on the just-announced deal to acquire Globalstar, Amazon’s grocery business (which the company entered into more meaningfully during the third quarter of 2025), expansion efforts for next-day delivery to rural areas, news about Alexa being made available on non-Amazon devices, and the recent reduction of 14,000 corporate employees.

Dan Romanoff, CPA

Amazon

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Apple

Apple is up 7.56% over the past month, down 1.47% in the year to date, and up 27.84% over the past year.

• We like the choice of John Ternus to succeed Tim Cook as CEO. We expect Ternus to focus on device innovation in the age of AI. Broadly, we believe he’ll highlight strategy continuity, with a continued focus on services growth, semiconductor integration and margin expansion.
• The iPhone is Apple’s biggest driver. We expect another quarter of strong, double-digit year-over-year growth following a blowout December quarter. We credit this to strong uptake for the iPhone 17 family and a pent-up refresh cycle following covid-era purchases.
• Growth in China is a big trend to watch. Growth was tremendous in the December quarter after a couple of years of declines. Apple’s ability to resume growth in China would be highly positive for investors.
• Facing tariffs and rising memory prices, Apple’s gross margin remains extremely impressive. Management guided to record gross margin in the March quarter, despite skyrocketing memory prices. We credit the firm’s supply chain management and relatively low mix of memory in the iPhone bill of materials for keeping margins high despite cost inflation.
• We think shares are fairly valued, underpinned by our expectations for high single-digit growth over the next five years led by iPhone and services growth, along with steady margin expansion driven by higher vertical integration and a higher services mix.

William Kerwin, CFA

Apple

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Meta Platforms

Meta has risen 29.08% over the past month, 2.89% in the year to date, and 23.83% over the past year.

• We think Meta stock is undervalued and see upside for investors. We see the firm as competitively well-positioned, especially as it continues to scale its AI investments to support its advertising business.
• We expect yet another impressive quarter for advertising, with growth near 30%. According to industry researchers, 2026 may be the first year when Meta’s ad sales exceed those of Alphabet’s on a net basis.
• We are also keeping a keen eye on commentary on how Muse Spark usage has tracked so far, as well as any timeline on further Muse-class models. Regarding AI, we expect discussion on the firm’s custom silicon plans and their role in Meta’s overall compute fleet.
• We look forward to more data points on the firm’s AI strategy and investments. We think investors should look for a clear articulation of how AI benefits the broader advertising business, whether through ad targeting, content recommendations and/or providing tools for creatives.

Malik Ahmed Khan, CFA

Meta Platforms

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Microsoft

Microsoft is up 19.07% over the past month, down 11.97% in the year to date, and up 9.49% over the past year.

• Software stocks, including Microsoft, have lagged the broader market since July 2025, so we think shares are attractive.
• We believe Azure has been generally strong but capacity-constrained. Management has been talking about the capacity issues fading away, but the timing keeps getting pushed out. Business has been booming because of AI. Last quarter, Azure was ahead of guidance, but the March-quarter guidance was slightly shy. The big controversy was the company’s plan to dedicate some portion of Azure usage to internal demand.
• We’ll look for any commentary about remaining performance obligations after the surge from the OpenAI deal.
• We expect AI monetization to be an important consideration. The firm is making a big bet with capital expenditure, so any green shoots here are helpful. Last quarter, Microsoft said it had 15 million paying Copilot customers, which seemed disappointing. The new Claude Copilot may be able to drive adoption higher.
• We expect margins to be fine, but depending on capital expenditure, depreciation could start ramping up more meaningfully.
• We’re also looking for commentary on traditional workloads within AI. We believe it was somewhat light recently, and Microsoft’s steps to address this seemed to go well for the September and December quarters.

Dan Romanoff, CPA

Microsoft

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