Earnings Season Peaks with Fed Meeting and Middle East Tensions in Focus

The busiest week of earnings season is here. But that's not all investors have on their plate. There's a Fed meeting, and a still-uneasy situation in the Middle East. Let's get right into it. All estimates for revenue and earnings per share are sourced from LSEG.

1. Earnings

Optical cable maker Corning kicks off our week Tuesday morning. Will we hear about another long-term supply agreement with a hyperscaler customer? It was the day before Corning's fourth-quarter report in January that CNBC broke the news of Corning's deal with Meta. CEO Wendell Weeks has said they're working on other agreements, and this could be the time to announce another. Regardless, the main focus is on the performance of its optical communications segment and the demand for all things fiber inside data centers. Other notable topics: Corning's visibility looking out multiple years, manufacturing expansion plans, and Weeks' thoughts on the timeline for optics to replace more copper inside AI server racks. Revenue: $4.26 billion Earnings per share: 69 cents

Starbucks is up Tuesday night. The hope is CEO Brian Niccol's turnaround continues to show momentum as measured by same-store sales growth. In the fourth quarter, comparable store sales rose 4% companywide and 4% in North America, which has been the focus of his efforts thus far. This time around, the Street is looking for a 4% increase across the company and 4.5% in North America, according to FactSet. But with Niccol's two-year anniversary looming in September, investors are increasingly wondering whether operating margins can back into the mid-to-high teens. The market will want to see progress come Tuesday and get more color on the path from here. Consensus for the March quarter is operating margins of 8.3%, according to FactSet. Revenue: $9.16 billion Earnings per share: 43 cents

Wednesday night is the main event: Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta Platforms are all set to release results. In aggregate, these reports amount to more than $11 trillion in market cap. However, that's not the only reason to expect them to determine the action come Thursday. Between these four names, we are also going to be updated on some $600 billion in capital expenditures for the year, the lion's share of which is going toward data centers. That means we'll also get an update on a massive amount of spending that will translate into revenue for names like Broadcom, Nvidia, Arm Holdings, Eaton and countless others that benefit from AI infrastructure investments. That's trillions and trillions more of market cap that will move off these four Big Tech reports.

For Microsoft, cloud unit Azure is going to be under heavy scrutiny following slowing growth last quarter. In January, the company failed to ease concerns about its heavy reliance on ChatGPT parent OpenAI, representing about 45% of its commercial backlog. Questions were also raised about its decision to allocate compute capacity toward internal workloads, limiting Azure's growth rate. We've seen a bunch of headlines recently about Microsoft scooping up data center leases, which is a good sign it's getting more aggressive to add capacity. Finally, we want to hear from CEO Satya Nadella on the team's plan to inject life into Copilot, its much-maligned AI assistant tool. Microsoft's recent layoffs are likely to come up too. Revenue: $81.36 billion Earnings per share: $4.06

With Amazon committed to spend up to $200 billion in capex this year, investors want to see a growth rate in Amazon Web Services that justifies it. We'll also want to hear how Amazon's recent investments in OpenAI and Anthropic can add to AWS's growth this year and beyond. Same goes for Friday's compute deal with Meta. Is it possible Amazon needs to raise its capex guide to meet all this demand? On the e-commerce side, we're interested to see how the buildout of same-day shipping has impacted buying behavior, and to what extent higher energy prices are impacting margins. CEO Andy Jassy may also field some questions on its deal to buy Globalstar to bolster its satellite internet ambitions. Revenue: $177.30 billion Earnings per share: $1.64

Alphabet's report comes on the heels of its Cloud Next event last week, where the team provided positive updates on AI and cloud demand and unveiled new custom chips. As analysts at UBS put it, "This year's Cloud Next announcements should serve as another marker to drive investor confidence around the persistent [return on invested capital] questions around Google's GenAI CapEx." We also want to see continued strength in its cash-cow Search business, along with any commentary on how the use of AI chatbots is impacting engagement with traditional search engines. On the YouTube front, the Street is looking for ad revenue growth to accelerate to 11.9% from 8.7% last quarter, according to FactSet. Revenue: $75.92 billion Earnings per share: $2.62

Without a cloud business of its own, Meta's engagement metrics will be crucial. The main way Meta has benefited from (and justified) all its AI spending is better ad targeting and more time on its social-media apps. Speaking of spend, management's updated outlook here will be a key factor determining how investors view the release — the total expense guidance provided in January was $162 billion to $169 billion, with capex in the range of $115 billion to $135 billion. But, as we've seen, it's not so much the level of spend that determines what happens to the stock; it is whether investors believe that it will ultimately benefit the bottom line. Meta's latest round of layoffs show CEO Mark Zuckerberg is trying to balance investments and profits. Revenue: $55.47 billion Earnings per share: $6.74

Thursday morning will be our first time hearing from Cardinal Health since we took a stake in early March. The market has trained its gaze elsewhere in the intervening weeks, leaving Cardinal and plenty of other healthcare stocks to drift lower. Perhaps a quality set of results will remind investors that Cardinal's strategic shift into more lucrative areas like specialty pharmaceutical distribution and owning the business side of medical practices — known as management services organizations (MSOs) — has created a formidable runway for growth. This isn't the same drug and medical-supplies distributor of old. Revenue: $61.67 billion Earnings per share: $2.79

Another healthcare release Thursday morning: Eli Lilly's report should be dominated by conversation on its GLP-1s, especially its recently launched obesity pill Foundayo (previously called orforglipron). Prescription data showed Foundayo well below where rival Novo Nordisk's Wegovy pill was in its second week on the market in January. That sent Lilly shares down 3.7% Friday, but we're not panicking. The opportunity is still massive. Lilly's R&D pipeline figures to be another focus, in particular the next-generation GLP-1 known as retatrutide and its recent acquisition targets. Revenue: $17.65 billion Earnings per share: $6.63

The final tech giant of the week reports Thursday night: Apple. It will be Tim Cook's penultimate earnings call as CEO, and undoubtedly, analysts will ask questions about the transition to John Ternus and the implications for Apple's strategy on hardware and AI. Will Ternus join Cook and Apple's finance chief on the call? (Cook, as chief operating officer, had been on Apple's earnings calls for years before he took over for co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011). Away from the C-suite, memory costs will be a dominant focus. Does Apple have enough DRAM supply? Will it need to raise prices on forthcoming devices to avoid margin hits? Other notable topics: the growth of its highly profitable services business, performance in China, and early reception to the new Macbook Neo. Revenue: $109.66 billion Earnings per share: $1.95

Linde brings it home on Friday morning. One of the key focuses will be the state of the global helium market, and how Linde is capitalizing on supply disruptions in the Middle East through higher realized prices, share gains or, ideally, some combination of the two. On the other hand, though, whether Linde is seeing any war-related declines in broader economic activity matters too. When the global economy is doing better, the industrial gas supplier typically sees an uplift in volumes — and that helps revenue grow faster than it can on price increases alone. We'll also listen for anything Linde has to say about its small, but fast-growing space business ahead of the expected SpaceX initial public offering. Revenue: $8.58 billion Earnings per share: $4.26

2. Fed meeting & inflation

The Federal Reserve wraps up its April policy meeting on Wednesday afternoon. It's widely expected to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged in the range of 3.5% to 3.75%, as inflation remains above its desired level and the labor market remains resilient. What's notable about this meeting: it will be Chair Jerome Powell's final meeting in charge of the central bank. With the Justice Department dropping its criminal probe into Powell on Friday, President Donald Trump's nominee Kevin Warsh has a clearer path to Senate approval. Powell's term is up in mid-May. Last week, we explored the predicament Warsh will find himself in once he's officially in charge: How do you cut rates like Trump wants without damaging the Fed's independent reputation? A lot of that hinges on whether the Iran war reaches a stable conclusion and oil prices and supply chains start to normalize.

The day after the Fed meeting, the market will get its latest look at inflation by way of the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index for March. That's the Fed's preferred measure of price pressures in the economy, not the better-known consumer price index (CPI). The upcoming PCE data certainly matters because it will capture the war-related oil surge. But it's difficult to say how much weight the market will put on the numbers, considering that what happens in the Middle East in the coming days and weeks matters enormously for the trajectory of inflation. Also on Thursday, we'll get the first look at first-quarter U.S. gross domestic product.

3. Iran war ceasefire

That brings us to the third and final thing to watch: the Iran war. As we saw last week, developments around the war still mattered to the market — even though stocks still ended the week at record highs. U.S. officials planned to travel to Pakistan this weekend for another round of peace talks with Iran, but Trump canceled the trip. While Trump last week extended the ceasefire, traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz remains curtailed, limiting oil exports and putting upward pressure on crude prices. Investors must continue to monitor headlines around this situation.