By Jessica Menton - U.S. stocks closed higher Tuesday, with the Nasdaq Composite Index completing its biggest rebound in nearly five years, as investors weighed stronger-than-expected earnings from The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ).
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 89.32 points, or 0.55 percent, to close at 16,262.56. The S&P 500 Index added 12.37 points, or 0.68 percent, to end at 1,842.98. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 11.47 points, or 0.28 percent, to finish at 4,034.16.
After U.S. markets closed, Intel Corporation NASDAQ:INTC topped Wall Street expectations and reported fiscal first-quarter earnings of 38 cents a share, 1 cent above estimates, while revenue was slightly below forecasts. Sales for the quarter rose 1.5 percent to $12.76 billion, compared to Street projections for the chip-maker to issue $12.81 billion in revenue, according to analysts polled by Reuters.
"In the first quarter we saw solid growth in the data center, signs of improvement in the PC business, and we shipped 5 million tablet processors, making strong progress on our goal of 40 million tablets for 2014," said Intel Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich in the company’s first-quarter earnings statement.
Intel’s profit for the previous quarter slid 4.8 percent to $1.95 billion, compared with earnings of $2.05 billion, or 40 cents a share, during the same period a year earlier.
"Additionally, we demonstrated our further commitment to grow in the enterprise with a strategic technology and business collaboration with Cloudera, we introduced our second-generation LTE platform with CAT6 and other advanced features, and we shipped our first Quark products for the Internet of Things," Krzanich added.
Meanwhile, Intel projected current quarter revenue of $13 billion, plus or minus $500 million. Wall Street had expected the company to forecast revenue of $12.96 billion for the second quarter. For fiscal 2014, the chip-maker expects revenue to be flat, unchanged from prior expectations.
Intel stock rose 1.57 percent to $27.19 in extended-hours trading.
Also after the bell, shares of Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ:YHOO) gained as much as 10 percent following the company’s better-than-expected earnings announcement for the quarter ended March 31. The tech giant posted fiscal first-quarter earnings, excluding items, of 38 cents a share, 1 cent above Wall Street projections, as revenue rose to $1.09 billion for the quarter, beating analysts’ expectations for $1.08 billion in sales.
"I am really pleased by our first quarter performance, marking our best Q1 revenue ex-TAC [traffic acquisition costs] since 2010. Buoyed by our 9th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in Search revenue ex-TAC and our first quarter of Q1 year-over-year growth in display revenue ex-TAC since 2011, Q1 was an early and important sign of growth in our core business," said Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer in the earnings announcement. "And, with mobile pivotal to our future growth, we're delighted to now see more than 430 million monthly mobile users accessing Yahoo's new products."
In addition, Yahoo said Alibaba Group Holding Limited saw a 66 percent jump in sales to nearly $3.1 billion for the fourth quarter, as earnings rose to $1.4 billion. Yahoo owns nearly 24 percent of Alibaba, and analysts expect the Chinese e-commerce company’s market value to exceeed $100 billion for its highly anticipated initial public offering.
Yahoo forecast second-quarter sales of $1.06 billion to $1.1 billion, in line with analysts’ average estimate of $1.08 billion, according to Bloomberg. Shares of the Internet company jumped 6.84 percent to $36.55 in after-hours trading.
Ahead on Wednesday’s earnings calendar, tech titan Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is to post results after U.S. markets close, along with International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM).