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US stocks mostly firmer as tech giants take centre stage

Published: 00:22 25 Apr 2015 AEST

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Technology giants old and new dominate proceedings stateside today, as the US benchmarks open mixed.

The S&P 500 was up a couple of points at 2,115 after half an hour's trading, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite was 30 points higher at 5,086 but the Dow Jones industrial average was off 32 at 18,027.

Online shopping giant racked up US$22.72bn of sales in the first quarter, but still managed to make a loss of 12 cents per share, in line with expectations.

Turnover was US$320mln ahead of market expectations.

Another tech giant that has come under fire for its tax policies, Google, reported adjusted first quarter earnings per share (EPS) of US$6.57, versus analysts' forecasts of US$6.63. 

The advertising giant's revenue of US$13.9bn was up 14% year-on-year but was a shade below market expectations.

The king of desktop PC software, Microsoft, surprised to the upside with its fiscal third quarter underlying EPS of 61 cents, which was eight cents above the consensus forecast.

In mergers & acquisitions news, the blockbuster US$45.2bn takeover of Time Warner Cable by Comcast has been called off because of concerns the merger would be vetoed on competition grounds.

"We would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but we structured this deal so that if the government didn’t agree, we could walk away,” said Comcast's chief executive officer Brian Roberts.

Before Comcast muscled in on the deal, Time Warner Cable was planning to merge with smaller rival Charter Communications. As part of the horse trading between the three companies, Charter was to get 3.9mln Comcast cable-TV subscribers, but that agreement has also been cancelled.

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