Two firms publishing their quarterly earnings today have been badly flounced in the past by the competition; both have managed to come back fighting! Netflix shares have managed to recover their post-Disney blues, and Microsoft is riding the cloud to places that Apple & Google can only dream of.

QUALITY COUNTS

Netflix Quarterly Earnings – Wednesday July 17th BMO

When Disney announced its intention to enter the world of streaming, Netflix found itself in trouble. With Disney owning ESPN, Pixar, Marvel, ABC and more, it seemed that the streaming giant would soon be shoved aside. Shares began to plummet last July and only began to recover at the beginning of this year. It has raised subscription fees by nearly 20%, is formulating a host of new and cheaper subscription plans, and investing heavily in new quality content. This last has created a self-feeding frenzy of stars flocking to work with the company, on one hand, and new subscribers who don’t mind paying for quality and spending more time watching it.

And the numbers are speaking for themselves: Expected revenues this quarter are expected to exceed last year’s same period by a whopping 26%, and earnings per share are expected to increase 6% from the previous quarter.

THE OS THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD

Microsoft  Quarterly Earnings – Wednesday July 17th AMC

Last month, Microsoft founder Bill Gates admits his company made a crucial mistake in losing the mobile stage to Apple and – even more painful – Google. Not long ago, that would not have been considered a tragedy, but as PCs make way for other toys, luckily, the daddy of all operating systems has found its hand in other pots. Xbox continues to gain popularity, its Surface line of laptops is becoming a standard, and – more than anything else, it’s opening up of the Windows environment has helped it stage a coup in the cloud. Office commercial products alongside its cloud services are growing at 12% YoY, and the star element – Azure, 27%.

This quarter, although earnings per share are expected tofall 1.65%, revenues are expected to increase by a healthy 8.8%.