Stocks Rose after Upbeat Earnings

U.S. stocks ended higher on Thursday, as a jump in oil prices and upbeat earnings results lifted sentiment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 125.18 points, or 0.79%, to 16,069.64. The S&P 500 gained 10.41 points, or 0.55%, to 1,893.36. The Nasdaq Composite was up 38.51 points, or 0.86%, to 4,506.68.

Oil futures settled at their highest level in three weeks on Thursday. March West Texas Intermediate crude rose 92 cents, or 2.9%, to settle at $33.22 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. March Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose 79 cents, or 2.4%, to $33.89 a barrel.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) topped Wall Street estimates for the quarter.The company reported fiscal second-quarter earnings of 62 cents a share on revenue of $23.8 billion, or 78 cents a share on revenue of $25.69 billion adjusted.

E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc’s profit in the holiday quarter missed analysts’ estimates by a wide margin as operating expenses rose and growth slowed in its cloud services business. Net profit rose to $482 million, or $1.00 per share, in the quarter ended Dec. 31 from $214 million, or 45 cents per share, a year earlier.

Xerox Corp will split into two companies and give billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn three board seats on one of the companies, the Wall Street journal reported.