US tech giants rake in £73bn of sales in just three months

THREE US tech giants have raked in revenues of more than £70bn in just three months.

Last night, Amazon, Microsoft and Google’s owner Alphabet reported sales of £73bn between July and September – or nearly £800m a day.

The stunning figures came just hours after Twitter insisted it was on the verge of posting its first profit after racking up another quarter of losses.

Shares soared in after-hours trading last night as investors welcomed the growing dominance of the tech sector.

Amazon shares were up more than 8pc to push past the $1,000 mark as it reported sales up 34pc to £33bn, with profit up 1.5pc to £194m. The firm got a roughly £988m boost from sales at Whole Foods, the upmarket grocery chain it bought this year.

Alphabet, worth more than £500bn, smashed expectations with revenues up 24pc to £21bn driven by Google advertising and from its ‘other bets’ such as self- driving cars and smart home devices. Revenues from Google advertising climbed more than 20pc to £18bn. Overall profit climbed 25pc to £5bn.

Microsoft, worth more than £450bn, saw shares hit an all-time high as it announced revenues of around £19bn, up 12pc, and profits of £5bn, up 16pc.

The firm beat its own sales targets for its commercial cloud business, where it competes against rival Amazon, and said it was also helped by server products and search advertising revenue.

Meanwhile Twitter shares soared nearly 20pc as bosses said it should make a profit in the final three months of the year after it cut costs and sold more data.

The firm has around 330m users around the world, including politicians and celebrities, but has not made a profit since it was set up 11 years ago.

It reported losses of £16m for the third quarter – far smaller than the £78m shortfall in the same period last year – and revenues of £488m.

Twitter added 4m users to reach 330m active monthly users in the three months to September 30.