Wall Street has generally had a pretty good response to earnings season thus far. Even though stock market indexes have wrestled with pressure from high interest rates, corporate financial performance has generally been resilient in many cases.

However, just because businesses perform well doesn't always mean that their share prices will go up after quarterly financial reports. Indeed, both Alphabet (GOOGL 1.20%) (GOOG 1.25%) and Visa (V 0.62%) suffered modest declines on Wednesday morning despite reporting solid results in their most recent quarters. Here are the details you'll want to see.

Alphabet sinks despite strong profits

Shares of Alphabet were down 6% early Wednesday. The move lower came despite what appeared to be strong performance across much of the Google parent's business segments.

Overall, Alphabet's numbers were impressive. Revenue climbed 11% year over year to $76.7 billion. Net income of $19.7 billion grew at an even faster 42% pace compared to year-ago levels. Earnings of $1.55 per share beat the consensus forecast among those following the stock by more than a dime.

However, a closer look showed two disparate elements of Alphabet's success. On one hand, the company's core advertising business, which comes largely from its Google search engine and its YouTube streaming video platform, rebounded from recent weakness and had better results than many had anticipated. Yet perhaps more importantly, the 22% growth in sales from Alphabet's cloud services segment was weaker than most had expected.

Some investors perceive that Alphabet has had to play catch-up with Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud computing arena. In past quarters, Alphabet's cloud segment performance gave shareholders hope that the company could indeed get itself on the same playing field as its two cloud stock rivals. With this quarter, though, some doubts crept back in, and Alphabet will have to redouble its efforts to get itself back on track.

Visa still sees strong travel spending

Meanwhile, shares of Visa were down almost 2% early Wednesday. The credit card and digital payments giant reported fiscal fourth-quarter financial results for the period ended Sept. 30, and the numbers showed the continued strength of consumers around the world despite macroeconomic pressures.

Visa reported quarterly revenue of $8.6 billion, up 11% year over year. The company pointed to rises in payment volume, particularly in cross-border payments, as well as a higher processed transaction count. That helped push net income up by 19% to $4.7 billion, which worked out to adjusted earnings of $2.33 per share.

Visa also continued to make shareholder-friendly capital moves. It boosted its quarterly dividend by 16% to $0.52 per share, and it also authorized a new stock buyback program worth up to $25 billion. Given Visa's current share price, the dividend is still a relative pittance, but the card giant has been consistent in steadily boosting its quarterly payout over time.

Yet CEO Ryan McInerney did raise the specter of ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty as a potential factor affecting Visa's performance in the coming fiscal year. The company projected high-single-digit- to low-double-digit-percentage growth in revenue for fiscal 2024, with earnings likely climbing in the low teens on an adjusted basis. That's healthy, but it's not quite as strong on the bottom line as investors have seen lately. That might explain the modest drop in the stock price, showing that shareholders really are focusing on profit growth in the current environment.