LIVE STOCK MARKET UPDATES: Bank of America, Goldman and Johnson & Johnson earnings

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., April 14, 2023. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

The S&P 500 eked out a slim gain on Tuesday after strength in some big technology stocks countered disappointing quarterly reports from Johnson & Johnson and Goldman Sachs as first-quarter earnings season kicked into gear.

The Dow and Nasdaq ended with fractional declines on the day.

J&J shares fell 2.8% after the healthcare conglomerate cautioned investors over the lingering impact of inflation-driven costs this year. Goldman shares dropped 1.7% after the Wall Street firm's profit fell 19% as dealmaking and bond trading slumped.

The early quarterly results from S&P 500 companies come as investors have been bracing for a gloomy reporting season, fearing the economy may be on the cusp of a downturn.

Smartphone with Netflix logo is placed on a keyboard in this illustration taken April 19, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

Netflix Inc is winding down its DVD rental business, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday, ending the service it started around 25 years ago.

The streaming service said the DVD business had been shrinking and it will not be able to continue to offer quality service.

The company will ship the last discs on Sep. 29.Netflix, which was founded in 1997, started the DVD rental service a year later and would send them with a red envelope which the subscribers could use to return the discs to the company.

A Southwest Airlines jetliner lands at Chicago Midway International Airport in Chicago, Ill., Dec. 27, 2022. (Reuters/Kamil Krzaczynski)

Southwest Airlines says planes are taking off again after departures were held up because of what the airline calls an intermittent technical problem.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday that Southwest requested that the agency pause the airline's flights.

The ground stop was brief, but it was causing nearly half of all Southwest flights to be delayed. Southwest says a firewall supplied by a vendor went down early Tuesday, and connection to some operational data was lost.

The airline is going on Twitter to apologize to travelers whose flights are being delayed.

A smartphone with a displayed Intel logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Chipmaker Intel Corp said on Tuesday it has discontinued production of its bitcoin mining chip series, just a year after its introduction.

A rout in the cryptocurrency market hurt some chip companies including Nvidia Corp, whose high-end graphics chips became popular for crypto mining.

Intel expects to stop taking orders for the series, called Blockscale, by October 20 this year and end shipping by April 20 next year, according to a document on the company's website.

"As we prioritize our investments in IDM 2.0, we have end-of-lifed the Intel Blockscale 1000 Series ASIC while we continue to support our Blockscale customers," a company spokesperson said. IDM 2.0 refers to Intel's strategy to outsource its chip making to outside customers, while it continues to ramp up its own production of smaller and faster chips.

The Google logo is pictured atop an office building in Irvine, California, U.S. August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

Alphabet's Google LLC on Tuesday convinced a U.S. appeals court to cancel three anti-malware patents at the heart of a Texas jury's $20 million infringement verdict against the company.

A jury decided in 2017 that Google infringed the patents and awarded the plaintiffs $20 million plus ongoing royalties, which their attorney said at the time were expected to total about $7 million per year for the next nine years.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said, today, that Alfonso Cioffi and Allen Rozman's patents were invalid because they contained inventions that were not included in an earlier version of the patent.

The case is Cioffi v. Google LLC, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 18-1049.

Ericsson is seen outside the company's office in Kanata, Ontario, Canada, April 17, 2023. (Reuters/Lars Hagberg)

Sweden's Ericsson on Tuesday reported first-quarter core earnings that beat expectations as stronger sales of 5G equipment in countries such as India offset lower sales in high-margin countries.

The company's quarterly adjusted operating earnings, excluding restructuring, fell to 4 billion Swedish crowns ($386.77 million) from 4.8 billion crowns a year earlier, beating analysts' mean forecast of 3.28 billion, according to Refinitiv data.

Ericsson, which announced plans to layoff 8,500 employees in February, has seen overall margins erode as growth now mainly comes from fiercely price competitive markets such as India rather than high-margin markets like the U.S.

Its reported gross margin for the quarter fell to 38.6% from 42.3%.However, net sales rose 14% to 62.6 billion crowns, beating estimates of 60.43 billion.

The logo of Airbus is pictured at the entrance of the Airbus facility in Bouguenais, near Nantes, Fr

Airbus has started notifying airlines about delivery delays in 2024 for its best-selling A320neo family of jets, with several hundred of the single-aisle planes set to be postponed by as much as three months, industry sources said on Tuesday.

Airbus confirmed unspecified delays for 2024 in a statement to Reuters but said they did not reflect any worsening of supply chain problems since it revised production plans earlier this year. It reaffirmed production targets for 2024 and beyond.

For airlines, the latest wave of notices marks the first concrete indication of supply constraints beyond this year.

The delays particularly affect the larger and in-demand A321neo variant, which now represents over half of Airbus deliveries, the sources said.

The delays do not so far include alterations to the schedule for 2023, which has already been trimmed back to target 720 deliveries, unchanged from an initial target for last year.

Analysts say the jury is still out on whether Airbus will hit that target after a weak first quarter. Wide-body plane deliveries are seen under the most pressure.

Lockheed Martin's logo is seen during Japan Aerospace 2016 air show in Tokyo, Japan, Oct.12, 2016. (Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon)

U.S. weapons maker Lockheed Martin Corp's first-quarter results surpassed Wall Street targets on Tuesday despite parts and labor shortages, as simmering geopolitical tensions fueled demand from both U.S. and international customers.

Rising tensions in Europe, the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific region have translated to more orders for Lockheed's F-35 fighter aircraft, missiles and other defense equipments, driving quarterly net sales of $15.13 billion above estimates of $15.03 billion.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed reported GAAP earnings per share of $6.61, which included non-operational gains of $0.18 per share, and adjusted earnings of $6.43 per share for the first quarter ended March 26. Analysts were expecting profits of $6.06 per share.

Lockheed's order backlog also fell to $145.1 billion as of quarter-end from $150 billion at the end of 2022.

The missiles maker reaffirmed its full-year outlook, projecting net sales in the range of about $65 billion to $66 billion and profits between $26.60 per share and $26.90 per share.

Goldman Sachs logo seen on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, Nov. 17, 2021. (Reuters/Andrew Kelly)

Goldman Sachs Group Inc's first-quarter profit fell 19% as sluggish dealmaking eroded the Wall Street giant's fees from investment banking, while losses from the sale of some loans from its consumer unit, Marcus, weighed on the results.

Goldman booked a $470 million loss on the sale as the bank rejigs its strategy after a foray into consumer banking, which Chief Executive David Solomon had championed for years, flopped.

It is also exploring strategic options for its consumer platform business, which has lost about $3 billion in three years, executives told investors in February.

Goldman reshuffled its businesses last year, leaning into its traditional mainstays of trading and investment banking, beefing up its asset management arm and stepping back from its consumer aspirations.

Goldman's net revenue in the quarter fell 5% to $12.22 billion.

A Bank of America logo is pictured in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., January 30, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Bank of America Corp's profit beat analysts' estimates in the first quarter as it collected hefty interest payments from customers, while the lender's traders extended their winning run.

BofA reported a profit of 94 cents in the three months ended March 31, compared with analysts' estimates of 82 cents per share, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

Deposits at the company fell 2% to $1.05 trillion in the first quarter, compared with the fourth quarter, as customers who were unsatisfied with the deposit rates offered by lenders moved their cash into money market funds to chase greater yields.

Traders in fixed income, currencies and commodities stayed in high demand, bringing in $3.5 billion in revenue for BofA, up 27% from a year earlier.

Revenue at the company's consumer banking unit rose 21% to $10.7 billion in the first quarter.

Bank of America's net interest income, which reflects how much money the bank makes from charging interest to customers, rose 25% to $14.4 billion in the quarter.

Johnson & Johnson company offices are shown in Irvine, Calif., Oct. 14, 2020. (Reuters/Mike Blake)

Johnson & Johnson beat first-quarter profit estimates and raised its 2023 profit forecast on Tuesday, as cancer drugs such as Erleada and Crohn's disease treatment Stelara boost sales at its large pharmaceuticals unit.

The company reported sales of $2.44 billion for Stelara for the first quarter. Two analysts polled by Refinitiv had expected sales of $2.41 billion.

Darzalex sales of $2.26 billion met expectations, while Erleada sales of $542 million beat estimates of $500 million.

Meanwhile, J&J swung to a loss of 3 cents per share for the first quarter due to a one-time charge related to the second bankruptcy filing for its talc liabilities.

The company has said it would take a charge of $6.9 billion related to the bankruptcy.

On an adjusted basis, the drugmaker posted first-quarter earnings of $2.68 per share, beating estimates of $2.50.

J&J expects to earn between $10.60 and $10.70 per share on an adjusted basis this year, compared with its prior forecast of between $10.45 and $10.65.

HSBC logo is seen on a branch bank in the financial district in New York, Aug. 7, 2019. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid)

Top shareholder of HSBC renewed its call for breaking up of the Asia-focused bank on Tuesday, saying the lender has failed to address key business model challenges which has resulted in deterioration in its operating performance.

Ping An Asset Management Company (Ping An AMC) said in a statement HSBC has "drained" its Asia unit of dividends and growth capital to support its relatively low-return non-Asia businesses.

Over the past two years, Ping An AMC said it had shared numerous structural suggestions with HSBC management ranging from listing the HSBC Asia business in Hong Kong to consolidating Asia businesses.

Commuters cross an intersection in the central business district during the morning rush hour in Beijing, April 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

China's economic growth accelerated in the latest quarter as consumer flocked back to shops and restaurants following the abrupt end of anti-virus controls.

The 4.5% growth in gross domestic product from January to March compared to the same period in 2022 was the fastest in the past year, and outpaced the 2.9% growth in the previous quarter, according to government data released Tuesday.

But authorities cautioned that China will likely face import and export pressures in the coming months amid an uncertain international economic environment, and also warned of inadequate domestic market demand in the world’s No. 2 economy.