Microsoft, Google disappoint; shares pay the price

AP Photo | Mark Lennihan

Tech giants Google and Microsoft tumbled in after-hours trading after both companies missed Wall Street forecasts for the second quarter.

Weakness in both stocks weighed on the broader indices after-hours. The Powershares QQQ ETF is off nearly 1 percent and S&P futures are weakening.

Google reported second-quarter adjusted earnings of $9.56 a share versus Wall Street estimates of $10.78 a share. Revenue of $14.11 billion missed forecasts for $14.41 billion.

Average cost-per-click, which measures how much an advertiser pays when users click on ads, fell 6 percent from the year-ago quarter, after falling 4 percent in the first quarter.

Paid clicks, which measures how often users click on Google ads, rose about 23 percent over the second quarter of last year, but were up only 4 percent sequentially.

In the year-earlier quarter, Google earned $10.12 a share on revenue of $9.61 billion.

While Google's advertising business continues to grow with revenue for its core business increasing 20 percent to, its operating expenses rose to $4.92 billion in the quarter from $3.89 billion a year earlier. Traffic acquisition costs totaled $3.01 billion, or 25 percent of advertising revenues.

Meanwhile, Microsoft missed forecasts as the downturn in the PC business hit sales and it took a $900 million charge for its inventory of unsold Surface tablets.

Microsoft report fiscal fourth-quarter earnings excluding items of 66 cents a share for the fiscal fourth quarter on $19.9 billion revenue.

Analysts had expected the company to report earnings excluding items of 75 cents a share on $20.73 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

While PCs remained challenged, Microsoft's business division recorded a 14 percent rise in sales and its server and tool revenue climbed 9 percent in the quarter.

Microsoft also revised its operating expense guidance downward to $31.3 billion to $31.9 billion for its current fiscal year.