Wednesday’s after-hours session was filled with plenty of buzz, most of it due to social media firm Facebook (NasdaqGM: FB). Mark Zuckerberg’s company reported an adjusted second-quarter profit of $488 million, or 19 cents per share, on revenue of $1.81 billion. Analysts were expecting EPS of 14 cents on revenue of $1.62 billion.
That sent the stock soaring almost 17%, but Facebook was not the only Internet company that surged Wednesday evening. Baidu (NasdaqGM: BIDU), often referred to as the Google (NasdaqGM: GOOG) of China, jumped 13.5% after the company said it ended the second quarter with $5.6 billion in cash and that third-quarter revenue would surge as much as 43%.
Those earnings reports could prove to be very good news for the PowerShares NASDAQ Internet Portfolio (NasdaqGS: PNQI), an ETF that allocates a combined 12.4% of its weight to Facebook and Baidu. The stocks are PNQI’s third- and sixth-largest holdings, respectively. [Internet ETFs: Is The Dot-Com Bubble Back]
PNQI probably does not need the help, but investors will surely take it. The ETF is up 22% year-to-date, outpacing the Nasdaq Composite in the process as well as top-10 holding eBay (NasdaqGM: EBAY). [Soaring e-Commerce Sales Could Boost These ETFs]
However, Baidu and Facebook are not the only the stocks with the potential to contribute to significant upside for PNQI on Thursday. Online travel reviews firm TripAdvisor (NasdaqGM: TRIP) reported second-quarter GAAP EPS of 46 cents, five cents better than analysts expected. That sent the shares up 14.5% after-hours. TripAdvisor is PNQI’s tenth-largest holding.