By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Upbeat reaction to the earnings
results from Facebook Inc. and Yelp Inc. led gains across the tech
sector on Thursday morning, while Intel shares slipped after the
chip giant named a long-time insider as its new CEO.
The Nasdaq Composite (RIXF) rose 1% to 3,332 in morning trades,
while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) rose 0.8% and the
Morgan Stanley High-Tech Index (MSH) rose 0.7%.
Facebook (FB) shares rose 3.5%, to $28.38 a day after the
social-networking giant reported strong first-quarter revenue
gains, with mobile ad revenue accounting for 30% of the company's
total ad sales of $1.25 billion.
"Facebook's Q1 earnings demonstrated that the company can
consistently deliver advertising growth meaningfully above industry
growth rates and can continue to drive growth in user engagement,
rebutting the two current bear theses on the stock," wrote Victor
Anthony of Topeka Capital in a note to clients on Thursday.
Yelp (YELP) surged more than 23%, to $31.24 a share, after the
online consumer-review and recommendation company posted
better-than-expected sales gains and narrowed its first-quarter
loss from a year ago. Yelp's results also pointed toward strong
performance in its mobile buisness and advances in local-ad
sales.
Seagate Technology (STX) shares rose 7%, to $39.52, after the
hard-disk drive maker reported upbeat quarterly results late
Wednesday, led by higher sales of products used for Internet
storage.
Intel (INTC) , however, slipped about 0.3% to $23.93 after the
chip giant promoted chief operating officer Brian Kraznich to the
post of CEO. Kraznich will take over at Intel's CEO on May 16, and
replace Paul Otellini, who had previously said he was retiring.
Two rivals of Intel -- AMD (AMD) and Qualcomm (QCOM) -- were
both up 1% in early trades.
LinkedIn Corp. (LNKD), which reports quarterly results after the
close of trading, was up 1.5% at $197.73 a share. The company is
expected to post strong gains in both revenue and earnings for the
period.
Other gains came from Apple Inc. (AAPL), which was up 1.5% to
$445.90 a share, Google Inc. (GOOG) and Applied Materials
(AMAT)
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