Qualcomm Inc. blew out quarterly profit expectations in its most recent report Wednesday, helping to send its stock higher in the aftermarket. The company reported fiscal first-quarter net income of $2.8 billion, or $2.46 a share, up from $2.2 billion, or $1.98 a share, in the year-earlier period. On an adjusted basis, Qualcomm QCOM, +1.73% earned $2.75 a share, while analysts were modeling $2.37 a share. Revenue rose to $9.94 billion from $9.46 billion a year prior, whereas the FactSet consensus was for $9 ...

It’s an unintended consequence of the boom in home offices.Federal investigators say they have broken up a vast network of compromised home office routers that had been used by hackers in China to help attack critical infrastructure in the U.S.Officials with the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that they had completed a court-authorized sweep of hundreds of home- and small-office routers around the country that had been infected with a malicious program called the “KV botnet.” Computer-security ...

Walt Disney Co.’s DIS, -0.90% federal lawsuit against Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and others, alleged they retaliated against the company for publicly criticizing a controversial parents-rights education law backed by DeSantis, was dismissed by a judge on Wednesday. Judge Allen Winsor ruled Disney lacked legal standing to sue DeSantis. He added that Disney’s charges “fail on the merits” against members of the board of a special improvement district in which the company operates its parks and res ...

Apple Inc. will be looking to break an inglorious streak Thursday afternoon. The iPhone maker has seen revenue decline for each of its past four reported quarters, and there are questions heading into its earnings report about whether that stretch will extend to a fifth quarter. The consensus view calls for Apple AAPL, -1.48% to have eked out positive growth in the all-important holiday period, with the average forecast calling for $118 billion in sales in aggregate, up 0.7% from the $117.2 billion that App ...

During Starbucks Corp.’s earnings call on Tuesday, executives said that the impact from a more cautious consumer in China, the deepening conflict in the Middle East and related consumer boycotts would be fleeting. Afterward, Wall Street was trying to figure out whether to believe them. During that call, Starbucks SBUX, +0.10% used the word “transitory” at least four times to describe those difficulties, and the coffee chain grew more cautious on its sales outlook for the year. But some analysts weren’t so s ...

A rebound in advertising, the threat of regulation and the specter of AI are the overriding narrative themes when Meta Platforms Inc. reports its fourth-quarter results on Thursday. Analysts are okay with that. “Firing on All Cylinders,” Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said in a note Sunday, jacking his price target on Meta META, -1.31% shares to $455 from $425. “Our recent digital ad checks have been the most positive we’ve seen in severalyears.” In raising his price target to $435 from $390, Seaport Rese ...

Big Tech was in the crosshairs yet again Wednesday as a handful of executives fielded blistering questions in a Senate hearing about the impact of their products on children.Facing the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chief executives of Meta Platforms Inc. META, -1.31%, TikTok, Discord, Snap Inc. SNAP, -1.61% and X — Mark Zuckerberg, Shou Zi Chew, Jason Citron, Evan Spiegel and Linda Yaccarino — testified.“Discord has been used to groom, abduct and abuse children. Meta’s Instagram helped connect and promote ...

When thinking about an industry group in the stock market, you can look ahead at sales and profit estimates, or you can look back to see which companies have been faring best by common measures.In October, estimated sales figures for 60 chip makers and manufacturers of related equipment showed that analysts expected Nvidia Corp. NVDA, -2.35% to have the fastest pace of sales growth through calendar 2025.Nvidia took the industry lead last year through its dominance of the market for graphics processing units ...

Forget Microsoft Corp.’s expectation for Azure revenue growth this quarter that is similar to what was seen last quarter. There may have been a far more bullish hint in the company’s latest commentary about what to expect from the cloud business.Bernstein analyst Mark Moerdler told investors to look at Microsoft’s MSFT, -0.05% capital-expenditure forecast, which calls for such spending “to increase materially on a sequential basis” on the heels of investments in cloud and artificial-intelligence infrastruct ...

Google parent Alphabet’s Inc.’s fourth-quarter results could spell good news for Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. who are on deck this week, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.Meta META, -0.24% and Amazon AMZN, -1.40% both report fourth-quarter results after market close Thursday. “We see positive readthroughs for AMZN/META following Google’s results,” wrote Ives. “We are encouraged by performance across Google Search and YouTube, which we think indicates a healthy digital advertising backdrop, in ...