Last week and this week mark the peak of earnings season. With literally dozens of key stocks reporting their corporate earnings each day, 24/7 Wall St. wanted to see how analysts rated key companies after their reports. What investors need to consider here is not just the solid earnings reports, but that the Nasdaq closed above 5,000 again and is close to its all-time high from March of 2000.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) all deserve a special review due to much their stocks rose on earnings.

Jeff Bezos and Amazon were all about Amazon Web Services (AWS), and that was good for a 14% gain to $445.10. Google was again about search, despite all the sideshow operations, which was good for a gain of 2.9% to $573.66. Microsoft remains a turnaround story with a migration to mobile and cloud, which was good for a 10.4% gain to $47.87.

So, how much have analysts chased up the stocks since these companies reported? The answer is of course mixed, with some upgrades, some downgrades and many reiterated ratings with price target changes.

24/7 Wall St. has included a review of each corporate earnings report, and we have then followed with corporate officer commentary and with analyst calls.

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Amazon

Amazon.com reported its first-quarter earnings for 2015, and its expectations seemed to be very high per the earnings preview. The online seller of anything posted -$0.12 in earnings per share (EPS) on $22.72 billion in revenue. The Thomson Reuters consensus estimates were -$0.13 per share and revenue of $22.43 billion, versus $0.23 EPS and $19.74 billion in revenue a year ago. Again, this quarter was all about AWS, and that is where the bulk of the commentary is centered.

Amazon also had currency headwinds, with the amount being a $1.3 billion unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter. Amazon said that net sales increased 22% compared to first quarter 2014 outside of the currency issues.

Despite the net loss, Amazon said that operating income rose by 74% to $255 million in the first quarter. This compares to operating income of $146 million in first quarter 2014.

Amazon’s second-quarter 2015 guidance was as follows:

Net sales are expected to be between $20.6 billion and $22.8 billion, or to grow between 7% and 18% compared with second quarter 2014.

Operating income (loss) is expected to be between $(500) million and $50 million, compared to $(15) million in second quarter 2014.

Guidance includes approximately $600 million for stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets.

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As Amazon was all about its web services, here is what the quotes said about AWS:

• AWS announced Amazon Machine Learning, a fully managed service that makes it easy for any developer to use historical data to build predictive models that can be used for a broad array of purposes, including detecting problematic transactions, preventing customer churn, and improving customer support.
• AWS announced AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps, a new category on the AWS Marketplace that makes it easy for customers to search for and buy applications for their Amazon WorkSpaces cloud-based desktops. Customers can choose from a broad selection of more than 100 applications in eleven categories, and pay by the month for the applications they use.
• AWS announced the general availability of AWS Lambda, a compute service that runs developers’ code in response to events and automatically manages the required compute resources, making it easy to build and manage applications that respond quickly to new information. AWS also launched several new features to make it easy for mobile developers to use Lambda for mobile, tablet, and Internet of Things applications.
• AWS announced the general availability of the Amazon EC2 Container Service, a high-performance container management service that makes it easy to run distributed applications using Docker containers on AWS.
• AWS introduced the latest generation of Amazon EC2 Dense-storage (D2) instances, and larger, faster Amazon Elastic Block Storage (Amazon EBS) volumes. To support very large transactional databases and big data analytics, the new Amazon EC2 D2 instances offer up to 48 TB of storage and up to 3,500 MB per second of disk read throughput, while the new Amazon EBS volumes store up to 16 TB and process up to 20,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS).

Amazon Chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos said:

Amazon Web Services is a $5 billion business and still growing fast — in fact it’s accelerating. Born a decade ago, AWS is a good example of how we approach ideas and risk-taking at Amazon. We strive to focus relentlessly on the customer, innovate rapidly, and drive operational excellence. We manage by two seemingly contradictory traits: impatience to deliver faster and a willingness to think long term. We are so grateful to our AWS customers and remain dedicated to inventing on their behalf.

Amazon.com had many analysts chime in with much higher price targets after the report.

Canaccord Genuity raised Amazon’s price target to $380 from $330. The analyst said:

With solid growth momentum and the most optimistic margin guidance in recent memory, we believe the debate in the stock may shift more towards valuation, wherein investors may need to value the company based on normalized margins to justify meaningful upside for the stock in the short term.

Credit Suisse reiterated its Outperform rating and the price target was raised up to $480.00 from $412. The firm said:

As anticipated, Amazon provided incremental disclosure for its AWS business which was previously included in Other revenue. Given greater clarity, we increase our long-term FCF and price target.”

Oppenheimer has an Outperform rating and said that its $415 price target was under review. It said:

While AMZN reported better 1Q15 results, and weaker 2Q guidance, the company followed through on its pledge to provide more detail on AWS, disclosing revenue, EBITDA and EBIT, back to 2013. As result, the company also provided similar metrics for US and Intl eCommerce segments. While our model and estimates are under review as this will result in an entirely new way to model AMZN financial results, we think AWS’s historical results prove the merits of the initial large capital allocation that so many investors objected to.

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Wells Fargo said that Amazon was “Maybe Not A True ‘Harvest Period’ But Solid Nonetheless.” The company’s valuation range went from $387 to $408 up to $421 to $450.

Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated Buy and raised its target price to $460 from $385.

Citigroup reiterated its Buy rating and raised its target price to $460 from $430.

Deutsche Bank reiterated its Buy rating and raised its target to $500 from $410.

Goldman Sachs reiterated its Buy rating and raised its target to $510 from $450.

JPMorgan raised its rating to Overweight from Neutral and raised its target to $535 from $375.

RBC Capital Markets reiterated its Buy rating and raised its target to $500 from $400.

Google

Google reported its first-quarter earnings for 2015. Our earnings preview showed that Google’s stock was at a critical juncture going into earnings, and that options traders were not calling for a big move. Earnings came in at $6.57 per share, while revenues grew 12% gross to $17.258 billion. Google’s ex-TAC revenue was $13.913 billion, versus $12.188 billion a year ago. Google was expected to report $6.60 in EPS and $17.52 billion in revenue. This compares to $6.27 EPS a year ago, and it would have been a revenue gain of more than 13%.

With the earnings report, we highlighted the following points about Google’s quarter:

• Total ad revenue was $15.508 billion, up 11% from a year ago but down 5% sequentially.
• Google’s own websites had revenue of $11.932 billion, up 14% from a year ago but down 4% sequentially.
• Network member websites had revenue of $3.576 billion, up 1% from a year ago but down 8% sequentially.
• Google’s “other” revenue was $1.75 billion, up 23% from a year ago and down 2% sequentially.
• Aggregate paid clicks were up 13% from a year ago but down 1% sequentially.
• Paid clicks on Google websites were up 25% from a year ago but down 3% sequentially.
• Paid clicks on Google Network Members’ websites were down 12% from a year ago, but they were up 4% sequentially.
• The aggregate cost-per-click was down 7% from a year ago and down 5% sequentially.
• Cost-per-click on Google websites was down 13% from a year ago and down 3% from a year ago.
• Operating expenses (other than cost of revenues) were 37% or $6.455 billion, versus $5.344 billion or 35% a year ago.
• Total headcount was 55,419, up from 46,710 a year ago.

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Google is perhaps the least known for big public quotes around earnings and guidance. Patrick Pichette, the chief financial officer, said:

Google’s first quarter revenue was $17.3 billion, up 12% year on year. Excluding the net impact of foreign currency headwinds, revenue grew a healthy 17% year on year. We continue to see great momentum in our mobile advertising business and opportunities with brand advertisers.

Analyst calls on Google were as follows:

Credit Suisse reiterated its Outperform rating with a $690 price target, raised from $683.

Oppenheimer has a Perform rating. It said:

Modestly lowering target to $550 from $565, after Google reported weaker than expected first quarter revenues in the US, along with an FX drag.

Wells Fargo called Google a solid quarter with commentary calming cost per click fears. The firm tweaked estimates:

FY2015E revenue/non-GAAP EPS lower to $74.5B/$28.00 from $74.8B/$28.07; and FY2016E revenue/non-GAAP EPS to $86.8B/$32.86 from $86.5B/$33.03. Mobile trends were said to be likely better than feared. Wells Fargo’s $600.00 to $625.00 valuation range reflects a PE multiple of approximately 18.6 times its 2016 EPS estimate of $32.86.

Deutsche Bank reiterated its Buy rating and raised its target price to $670 from $625.

JPMorgan reiterated its Overweight rating and raised its target to $650 from $600.

RBC Capital Markets reiterated its Outperform rating and raised its target to $640 from $630.

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Microsoft

Microsoft is not a calendar year, so this was its third-quarter fiscal 2015 results. The software giant reported earnings per share (EPS) of $0.62 on revenues of $21.73 billion. In the same period last year, the company reported EPS of $0.68 on revenues of $20.4 billion. The consensus estimates called for EPS of $0.51 on revenues of $21.06 billion. During the quarter, Microsoft returned $7.5 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends.

Commercial cloud revenue rose 106% (up 111% in constant currency) and Windows volume licensing revenue declined 2% (up 1% in constant currency). The company now claims more than 12.4 million subscribers to its Office 365 Consumer subscription base, up 35% sequentially.

The company’s formal management quotes were not very robust. CEO Satya Nadella said:

Customers continue to choose Microsoft to transform their business and as a result we saw incredible growth across our cloud services this quarter. Next week at Build we’re excited to share more about how we’re empowering every individual and organization on the planet to achieve more with the next generation of our platforms.

Amy Hood, the chief financial officer, said:

We executed with strong operational and financial discipline again this quarter, and are seeing positive impact from our investments in key growth areas. We remain focused on maximizing shareholder value and again increased our overall return of capital to shareholders.

Analyst calls on Microsoft were as follows:

Bank of America Merrill Lynch maintained its Buy rating and sent its price objective up to $47.

Credit Suisse reiterated its Outperform rating, but the firm lowered its 2016 estimates. The report said:

Office 365 and Azure continued to show strong performance-with Office 365 reaching 12.4 million consumer subscribers (up 35% sequentially) and Commercial Cloud revenue growing 106% year over year. We are adjusting our FY2015 revenue to $93.560 billion from $94.412 billion and leave our EPS unchanged.

Oppenheimer has an Outperform rating and a $50 price target. The firm indicated that Microsoft is continuing the positive momentum from previous quarters and that was driven by:

1. Ongoing momentum for Cloud services
2. Continued strong internal execution
3. Hardware making a difference (Surface and Lumia)

Internal realignment and cost management efforts drove improved operating margins.

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Wells Fargo’s valuation range of $46.00 to $50.00 and Outperform rating is based on a 10 to 11 times enterprise value-to-cash flow from operations multiple on its fiscal 2016 estimate. The firm said:

We believe that a cash flow multiple in line with the company’s CF growth rate is warranted, as the company navigates in this post PC, mobile first, cloud first era. Key risks for Microsoft include a slower-than-expected PC refresh cycle; ongoing declines in demand as consumers choose mobile computing devices, competition in all of their markets, including their Windows operating system, and piracy issues outside of the U.S., all of which could negatively impact growth. … Microsoft has many growth opportunities in its various product areas. The commercial business is growing nicely, however this is offset by a challenging PC market. We like the company’s current focus on mobility and cloud, and think that there is room for multiple expansion as the company gets through its transition.

Goldman Sachs reiterated its Sell rating and $40 price target.

Nomura reiterated its Buy rating and raised its target to $50.

RBC Capital Markets reiterated its Buy rating and raised its target to $50 from 47.

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