Jan. 26 (UPI) -- A few major American companies released quarterly and year-end earnings results on Thursday, which mostly beat analysts' expectations.
Microsoft
The software giant announced second quarter results on Thursday that easily beat expectations -- thanks largely to a new cloud product that doubled revenue.
The key cloud product, Azure, grew by 93 percent from last year, the company said.
Related
"Our customers are seeing greater value and opportunity as we partner with them through their digital transformation," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said. "Accelerating advancements in AI across our platforms and services will provide further opportunity to drive growth in the Microsoft Cloud."
Earnings were helped by Microsoft's completed acquisition of professional networking site LinkedIn.
Q2 revenue was listed at $26 billion (83 cents per share) with a net income of $6.5 billion. Shares of Microsoft stock have increased by 23 percent in the last 12 months.
Ford
The American automaker boasted fourth quarter earnings that met expectations on Thursday, with $38.7 billion in revenue and $800 million net income.
Ford announced full-year revenue of $151 billion and net income of $4.6 billion. Much of that performance was fueled by sales of its F-Series pickups, which Ford said became the best-selling truck in America for the 40th straight year.
"This underscores the substantial progress we are making in expanding our business to be an auto and a mobility company," Ford CEO Mark Fields said.
In its earnings report, Ford revealed that it took a $200 million hit for abandoning a planned factory in Mexico -- which was scrapped after criticism from President Donald Trump.
"We don't have any plans to build any new plants, but clearly we want to continue to grow our business," Fields told Bloomberg.
Alphabet
The parent company of Google announced fourth quarter earnings per share that fell short of expectations -- $9.36. Analysts predicted a per-share earning of roughly $9.64. The company did surpass revenue expectations by nearly $1 billion.
Nonetheless, the company said the Q4 figures are cause for optimism.
"This [quarter's] performance was led by mobile search and YouTube. We're seeing great momentum in Google's newer investment areas and ongoing strong progress in Other Bets," Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said in a statement.
Google did not give details for holiday season sales of the new Pixel phone and Google Home personal assistant. Analyst Neil Doshi estimated the company sold about 1 million Pixel phones in Q4, CNBC reported.
