Just next Thursday! The four tech giants will release their financial reports on the same day. The skyrocketing AI faces a "moment of truth."

In the past few weeks, the strongest trend in the US stock market has been AI. The S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq index rebounded by about 11% and 18% from their lows, with funds flowing back into technology, data centers, and related infrastructure. The real test will come next Thursday. After the market closes on Wednesday, April 29th (US time), Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US), Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US), Meta (META.US), and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) will all release their earnings on the same trading day; in Beijing time, this will be early morning on Thursday, April 30th. Alphabet Inc. Class C's call will be at 1:30 pm Pacific time, while Microsoft Corporation, Meta, and Amazon.com, Inc. will follow at 2:30 pm. All four companies will be reporting their results almost simultaneously. The recent market rally is not just spinning wheels. Several companies are continuing to increase their investments. Alphabet Inc. Class C's capital spending guidance for this year is between $175 billion to $185 billion; Meta's range is $115 billion to $135 billion; Microsoft Corporation's capital spending reached $37.5 billion in the previous quarter, with about two-thirds of it going towards short-term assets such as graphic processors and central processors; and Amazon.com, Inc. has raised its capital spending target for 2026 to around $200 billion in a shareholder letter. The flow of money into these companies is a significant reason why the market is willing to invest. Alphabet Inc. Class C is facing pressure mainly on the cost side. The company has already indicated that depreciation will accelerate in the first quarter of this year and will continue to rise throughout the year. It is expected that investments will continue to rise, but what the market is more concerned about is whether the revenue from cloud services and AI can quickly absorb these expenses. If the financial report shows that Alphabet Inc. Class C will continue to invest, there may not be much surprise in the stock price; but if the cloud business and profit margins remain stable, it will be viewed differently. Microsoft Corporation faces a different challenge. With capital spending already at $37.5 billion, the management still claims that demand exceeds supply. This strong statement has raised market expectations. As long as Azure continues to grow and demand from enterprises increases, Microsoft Corporation will be able to justify its high investments by gaining market share; however, if the growth rate cannot support such high spending, the market focus will shift from orders to return on investment. Meta's case is more straightforward. It has a strong cash flow from advertising and is investing aggressively in infrastructure. The company has explicitly stated that its capital spending for 2026 will increase to $115 billion to $135 billion, while still expecting higher annual operating profit than in 2025. After such statements, the market will quickly assess whether the profitability of the advertising business can continue to cover the expansion pace of AI investments. Amazon.com, Inc. has a different pace. Its issue is not just about spending a lot of money but about looking ahead to see when that money will pay off. Andy Jassy clearly stated in a shareholder letter that most of the capital spending for its cloud business in 2026 will gradually be realized from 2027 to 2028, and the company has already obtained commitments from a significant number of customers. On the other hand, AWS added 3.9 gigawatts of electric power capacity in 2025, with the total capacity expected to double by the end of 2027, but the company acknowledges that there are capacity constraints and unmet demands. In this upcoming financial report, the market will pay particular attention to how management discusses customer commitments, capacity ramp-ups, and the pace of realization. This is where the focus will be next Thursday. While the market was previously focused on who dared to continue spending, now the scale of investments has become too significant for just storytelling. When the financial reports come out, the questions will become more concrete: whether revenue will continue to accelerate, whether orders will be clearer, and whether profit margins and cash flows will start to be under pressure. The companies that can provide answers to these questions will have a stronger position. Those whose investments remain based on long-term visions will experience more significant fluctuations. For investors, the impact will first be on these four major companies themselves. After the financial reports are released, what determines the stock price may not just be how much revenue and earnings per share are higher, but it will be more about the full-year capital spending guidance, the growth rate of cloud services, AI-related revenue disclosures, and whether profit margins show more significant pressure. Looking further ahead, the semiconductor, server, network equipment, and data center equipment sectors will continue to follow the investments of these major companies directly. Recently, software and chips have shown differentiation, indicating that the market is starting to focus more on areas closer to orders and infrastructure. If the financial reports from the four companies continue to confirm strong demand and investment intensity, this differentiation will become even more apparent. Therefore, next Thursday will be more of a filtering point than a full switch. There is no evidence yet that the AI trend is ending; the hype and funding are still present. What is more likely to happen is that the internal pricing mechanisms will continue to diverge. Companies with faster realization, clearer orders, and stable profitability will see a premium from the market; while those with significant investments and substantial room for imagination but unclear return paths will experience more significant stock price fluctuations. On the day of the financial reports, it will be important to pay attention to specific things: whether the full-year capital spending guidance will be adjusted upwards again, whether the growth rate of cloud services will continue to rise, whether there will be clearer disclosures of AI-related revenue, and whether there will be more obvious pressures on profit margins and cash flows. As long as demand remains strong and cost pressures are not out of control, this trading trend is not yet over; but if the market needs to reassess, it will start with the most expensive, crowded, and dependent on long-term realization sectors. This article was reprinted from "Wall Street News"; Author: xiaopi; GMTEight Editor: Xu Wenqiang.