The current earnings season shows continued momentum in the tech industry with positive implications on the ITAD sector. The pattern that emerged in prior quarters continued through April, with four major technology companies reporting results that reinforce the case for rising ITAD volumes. Intel, Microsoft, Alphabet and IBM all reported stronger-than-expected first-quarter results in April, driven in large part by AI- and cloud-related infrastructure demand.
All in all, the four earnings reports point to a common direction: hyperscale and enterprise operators are committing to another leg of heavy capital spending on compute, storage and networking, a trend that will translate into higher IT asset disposition volumes as current fleets cycle out.
Intel’s results marked a turning point after several restructuring-heavy years. The chipmaker reported first-quarter revenue of $13.6 billion, up 7% year over year and ahead of its own guidance, with non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.29 versus a breakeven forecast. The data center and AI group was the standout, growing 22% to $5.1 billion on the back of stronger demand for server CPUs tied to AI inference and cloud workloads. Intel also guided for second-quarter revenue of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion, above prior expectations, reinforcing the view that server-side demand has moved past the trough.
Microsoft delivered another quarter of broad-based growth that reflected the depth of AI-related investment. For its fiscal third quarter, covering the first three months of 2026, the company reported revenue of $82.9 billion, up 18% year over year (15% in constant currency), with GAAP earnings per share of $4.27, up 23%. Microsoft Cloud revenue reached $54.5 billion, a 29% increase, and Azure and other cloud services grew 40%, above the company’s 37–38% guidance range. On the earnings call, CFO Amy Hood said Microsoft expects to spend roughly $190 billion on capital expenditures in calendar 2026, with about two-thirds of that directed to short-lived assets such as GPUs and CPUs and approximately $25 billion of the increase attributable to higher component pricing. Those figures indicate that a large portion of Microsoft’s capex is going into computer hardware with relatively short useful lives.
Alphabet’s April report pointed in the same direction. The company posted first-quarter revenue of $109.9 billion, up 22% from a year earlier and ahead of analyst estimates around $107 billion, with net income of $62.6 billion, or 5.11 dollars per share, roughly double the prior year’s EPS.
Google Cloud revenue rose 63% to $20 billion, and the segment’s operating margin climbed to 32.9%, up from 17.8% a year earlier. Capital expenditures more than doubled year over year to $35.7 billion in the quarter, and Alphabet raised its full-year 2026 capex forecast to a range of $180–190 billion. Company commentary linked that trajectory to higher AI computing demand and additional investment associated with recent acquisitions, with management projecting elevated infrastructure needs through at least 2027.
IBM rounded out the picture on the enterprise side. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $15.9 billion, up 9% year over year, with software revenue up 11%, consulting up 4% and infrastructure up 15%. Segment detail showed infrastructure revenue of $3.3 billion, with “hybrid infrastructure” up 28% and IBM Z mainframe revenue up 51% on the current product cycle. Software growth was led by Red Hat and data platforms, both tied closely to hybrid cloud and AI workloads. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.91 beat a consensus of $1.81, and gross margins improved by around 100 basis points.
For the ITAD industry, the common thread across these four reports is the scale and composition of capex, not a single product or geography. Intel’s data center rebound, Microsoft’s and Alphabet’s triple-digit-billion capex plans, and IBM’s mainframe and hybrid-infrastructure cycle all point to another period of intense deployment of servers, accelerators, storage arrays and networking gear into cloud and enterprise environments. Microsoft’s disclosure that roughly two-thirds of its capex is going into short-lived compute assets, combined with elevated prices for memory and advanced chips at both Microsoft and Alphabet, points to hardware moving through compressed lifecycles.
Those factors have direct implications for IT asset disposition. Shorter useful lives for AI- and cloud-oriented hardware, on top of larger installed bases, translate into higher volumes of decommissioned equipment over the medium term, both in hyperscale data centers and in enterprises that mirror their architectures. Elevated component prices make recovered memory and other parts more valuable, pushing toward more systematic harvesting and reuse over purely scrap-based recovery, a trend already reflected in the guidance and commentary from large lifecycle providers. IBM’s and Microsoft’s enterprise businesses show that hybrid cloud and on-prem infrastructure are being modernized rather than retired, which will continue to generate steady streams of servers, storage and networking assets requiring compliant disposition.
The first quarter of 2026 offered a clear snapshot of AI infrastructure on the way in. It also outlined, in early form, the scale and character of the ITAD work that will follow as this cycle of hardware is refreshed and retired.
