Over the past few days we got earnings releases from many of our favorite Dow and S&P 500 stocks, including Visa, Inc. (V), Microsoft Corporation (MSFT), and Amazon.com (AMZN). Let's take a closer look.
On Tuesday, October 27th, Visa announced its Q4 2026 earnings, with top-line revenue of $12.1 billion, a 13% increase year-over-year. The company benefited from consumers continuing to spend and from strong international transaction activity.
Here’s what you need to know:
Cross-border volume jumped 14% year-over-year.
Total Processed Transactions increased 10% year-over-year, to $71.7 billion. Visa handled 74.2 billion transactions during the quarter
Quarterly service revenue was $5.25 billion, an increase of 14% year-over-year. This segment includes loyalty programs, advanced security measures like fraud prevention, and personalized offers.
For the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, the company achieved record annual revenue of $45.9 billion, up 15% year-over-year.
In more good news, Visa raised its quarterly dividend 16%, to $0.78 per share.
I think Visa makes a great investment, as the whole world is paying for things using credit cards. As we move more and more toward a cashless world, credit card companies will continue to see their revenue increase and that is good for shareholders.
Let’s take a look at Microsoft and Google.
On Wednesday, October 28th, Microsoft released fantastic Q1 2027 earnings, with top-line revenue of $92.28 billion, up 19% year-over-year, driven by accelerating growth in Azure and the cloud.
Question: Tyrone, what is the difference between Microsoft Cloud and Azure?
Answer: In simple terms, the Microsoft Cloud is an umbrella term for all cloud-based services and platforms provided by Microsoft, while Microsoft Azure is a specific cloud computing platform that sits inside that broader ecosystem.
It's quarterly cloud revenue was $63.9 billion, up 30% year-over-year. Its standalone Azure cloud business was up 48%year-over-year with $32.3 billion in revenue.
Microsoft 365, the company’s productivity software for individuals and businesses brought in $27.8 billion, up 17% year-over-year.
Moreover, Microsoft’s profits were $38.8 billion, up 31% year-over-year.
Although the days of software growth are mostly behind us, MSFT makes a great long-term investment.
Alphabet, Inc. (GOOG) also released their earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 28th. For Q3 2026, the company had top-line revenue of $127.6 billion, up 25% year-over-year. The real standout for Google, was the momentum in their Cloud segment.
Here are some of the important segment breakdowns:
Google Cloud revenue was up 103% year-over-year at $30.7 billion.
Search revenue rose 12% year-over-year to $53.4 billion, with query growth at its highest rate in five years
YouTube advertising grew 9% year-over-year, to $11.2 billion.
Google subscriptions, platforms & devices revenue was up 11% to $14.3 billion.
While all of these numbers are impressive from a revenue perspective, the stock dropped significantly post-earnings.
So, Tyrone, what is Wall Street worried about?
While AI does show growth, Google’s cap-ex spending is drawing scrutiny. Capital expenditures reached $51.4 billion for the quarter, and the company expects full-year 2026 cap-ex spending to be between $195 billion and $205 billion.
Like other companies spending billions of dollars on AI, Wall Street institutions still question whether these investments in AI will produce stronger results in the future. There is also concern about the slow down in advertising growth, as Chat GPT is cutting into some of that revenue.
Now onto Amazon, who released their Q3 2026 earnings report on Thursday, October 29th, with top-line revenue of $201.9 billion, up 12% year-over-year. This increase was mostly driven by exceptional growth in Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Here’s what you need to know about Amazon’s quarterly earnings:
The company’s cloud computing unit saw its Q3 revenue climb 39% year-over-year, to $46 billion. This is its fastest growth in nearly five years.
Amazon’s advertising business had good results, with ad revenue growing 10.9% year-over-year to $19.6 billion.
Amazon’s retail North American sales grew 6% year-over-year to $112.9 billion.
So far, corporate earnings in the Dow and S&P 500 are outstanding. Keep an eye on these cloud provider companies, as they are the ones who will have tremendous future revenue growth.
Tyrone Jackson
The Wealthy Investor