This is a huge week for earnings season, with tons of well-known companies reporting earnings. With no shortage of companies to check on, here's a narrow list of three top stocks that will probably include some particularly interesting numbers in their updates: online search giant Alphabet (GOOG 9.96%) (GOOGL 10.22%), e-commerce juggernaut Amazon (AMZN 3.43%), and iPhone-maker Apple (AAPL -0.35%).
Investors will look to see if the three rapidly growing companies can keep up their momentum in a tumultuous economic environment, including supply chain woes, rising interest rates, and elevated geopolitical challenges.
Here's a preview of some key things to watch when these growth stocks report earnings.
Alphabet
Reporting its first-quarter results after the markets close today, Alphabet has a high bar to live up to. The company saw strong revenue growth in Q4, with its top line growing 34% year over year to $75.3 billion. Fourth-quarter revenue increased 32% year over year -- a staggering growth rate for a company Alphabet's size. The Google parent said in its fourth-quarter earnings release that results were driven by "broad-based strength in advertiser spend and strong consumer online activity, as well as substantial ongoing revenue growth from Google Cloud."
Going into the company's first-quarter earnings report, investors are largely expecting a meaningful deceleration in Alphabet's revenue growth as geopolitical tensions risk thwarting some marketer confidence and negatively impacting ad budgets. Specifically, analysts expect the company to grow its revenue 23% year over year to about $68 billion.
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Apple
Tech giant Apple reports its fiscal second-quarter results after market close on Thursday. Investors expect continued supply chain challenges to weigh on the quarter. Management warned that supply shortages would still have a material impact on fiscal Q2 albeit less than the negative impact in fiscal Q1.
On average, analysts are modeling for fiscal second-quarter revenue of $94 billion. This translates to an expectation for year-over-year growth of just 5% -- a growth rate that is down dramatically from the company's 35% growth in fiscal 2021. Of course, the company's strong growth last year is part of the problem going into the company's fiscal second-quarter earnings report this week; Apple has an extremely tough year-ago comparison.
Amazon
Also reporting on Thursday is e-commerce and cloud computing specialist Amazon. Investors expect slow growth compared to the elevated levels of growth the company saw during 2020 and 2021 as many consumers around the world limited their visits to physical stores to help curb the spread of COVID-19.
Amazon had guided for first-quarter revenue to increase between 3% and 8% year over year to between $112 billion and $117 billion. Analysts, on average, expect the company's revenue to come in toward the high end of this range. The consensus forecast is at $116.3 billion.
Of course, investors will be looking to the earnings call to see if management indicates that e-commerce growth could pick back up soon to more normalized levels.
