Stocks Rise After Amazon, Apple Results; Indexes on Track for Weekly, Monthly Gains

Apple Stock Climbs to New Highs as CEO Cook Calls for Best Holiday Season Ever

6 minutes ago

Apple is on a record-setting streak.

Shares of Apple (AAPL) opened at a record high on Friday after the iPhone maker posted earnings that exceeded analysts’ estimates and CEO Tim Cook gave an upbeat outlook for the holiday season.

Apple reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings per share of $1.85 on revenue that rose 8% year-over-year to $102.47 billion. Both figures came in ahead of analysts’ estimates compiled by Visible Alpha, as Apple’s services revenue climbed to a record high of $28.75 billion.

Growth in Apple’s iPhone sales also helped drive the better-than-expected results, after the company launched its iPhone 17 lineup in September. Sales of iPhones rose 6% to $49.03 billion in the fourth quarter, contributing the bulk of Apple’s product revenue.

The figure also represented a September quarter revenue record for the iPhone, with CEO Tim Cook suggesting that could mean a record holiday season ahead.

“We expect December-quarter revenue to be the best ever for the company and the best ever for iPhone,” Cook said on the company’s earnings call Thursday, anticipating 10% to 12% revenue growth. Analysts were looking for 6%.

Apple shares were up about 8% for 2025 through Thursday’s close. This week’s gains have boosted Apple’s market capitalization above $4 trillion, making it the world’s second-most-valuable company behind only AI chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA).

–Kara Greenberg

Amazon Stock Pops as Earnings Top Estimates, Driven by AWS Growth

1 hr 1 min ago

Amazon (AMZN) shares were soaring in early trading Friday after the e-commerce and cloud giant posted third-quarter results that blew past analysts’ estimates, driven by growth in its cloud business.

The shares were up over 13% above $252 in early trading, putting them on track to open at their first all-time high since early February.

The online retail and cloud computing provider reported earnings per share of $1.95, up from $1.43 the same time a year ago, and well above the analyst consensus compiled by Visible Alpha. Revenue rose 13% year-over-year to $180.2 billion, also beating expectations as sales in the company’s Amazon Web Services segment jumped 20% to $33 billion.

“We continue to see strong momentum and growth across Amazon as AI drives meaningful improvements in every corner of our business,” said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, adding that the company has particularly benefited from “strong demand in AI and core infrastructure, and we’ve been focused on accelerating capacity.”

Looking ahead, Amazon said it expects fourth-quarter revenue to come in between $206 billion and $213 billion, compared to the analyst estimate of $208.66 billion.

The company also lifted its projected capital expenditures for the full year to $125 billion from about $118 billion previously, with CFO Brian Olsavsky telling investors during Thursday’s earnings call he expects it to rise in 2026.

Earlier this week, Amazon announced what could be its largest layoffs in the company’s history, with plans to reduce its headcount by about 14,000 jobs, through layoffs and changes to hiring plans as it and other tech companies look to trim costs elsewhere as they boost investments in AI infrastructure.

Through Thursday’s close, the shares were up less than 2% for 2025, as concerns about tariffs and disappointing cloud growth earlier in the year weighed on sentiment

–Aaron McDade

Stock Futures Mostly Rise After Amazon, Apple Results

2 hr 45 min ago

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down less than 0.1%.

S&P 500 futures were up 0.6%.

Nasdaq 100 futures advanced 1.2%.