Tech Giants (Mostly) Shine With Earnings

In late December, Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL ) did something it rarely does: It
missed on its quarterly earnings . And the stock plunged 13% on the news. So was
this a sign that tech spending was slowing down? Or was it an issue specific to
Oracle, such as with its hardware business? Well, based on the batch of earnings
reports Thursday, it looks like tech still is showing strength. Here's a
run-down: Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ): The company saw a nice boost from its
infrastructure software business especially with servers as well as the Xbox
segment (the Christmas season was particularly strong). As business spending
picks up, Microsoft is benefiting from its broad suite of products. They include
offerings like Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Windows Server and Dynamics CRM. Yet
there were some troublesome results from the Windows franchise. In the quarter,
revenues fell by 6%. While the business still generates substantial cash flows,
the long-term prospects look bleak especially as it has lagged in areas like
tablets and smartphones. IBM (NYSE: IBM ): Even though IBM is 100 years old, it
still knows how to keep up the momentum. In the latest quarter, revenues
increased by 4% and profits came to $5.5 billion, or $4.62 per share. Key to
IBM's success is the software business, which was up 9%. The company has been
aggressive with its acquisitions over the years. And going into 2012, it would
not be surprising if it moves more into the cloud space. But IBM always is about
the long haul. To this end, the company believes it will achieve its 2015 goal
of achieving $20 per share in earnings. Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) : The company looks
poised for a strong 2012, with key drivers being ultrabooks, smartphone chips
and infrastructure systems (especially for datacenters). In fact, Intel is
likely to remain a big beneficiary of cloud computing, which requires lots of
processing power. For the prior year, Intel posted an impress 24% increase in
sales to $54 billion. Keep in mind that the company has invested heavily in
research & development, which has resulted an impressive offering of innovative
technologies. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG ): Among Big Tech, the company certainly had
the worst report a rare miss and the stock was off more than 8% in Friday
trading. While the consensus was for $8.41 billion in revenues and $10.49 per
share in earnings, the company instead posted $8.13 billion and $9.50 per share,
respectively. Kevin Kelleher has an excellent take on this . He points out that
a troubling development was Google's 8% drop in its cost-per-click rates.
Unfortunately, the company was vague about the rationale, saying there have been
some changes in ad formats and search algorithms. Yet investors are wondering:
Is Facebook making big-time inroads in Google's business? With the company
expected to go public soon , there is lots of motivation to increase
monetization which probably means taking business away from Google. Tom Taulli
runs the InvestorPlace blog IPOPlaybook , a site dedicated to the hottest news
and rumors about initial public offerings. He also is the author of "All About
Short Selling" and "All About Commodities." Follow him on Twitter at
@ttaulli . As of this writing, he did not own a position in any of the
aforementioned securities.