(For a Reuters live blog on U.S., UK and European stock

markets, click or type LIVE/ in a news window.)

*

Snap jumps after Q1 rev, user growth beat

*

Intel ( INTC ) down after dour Q2 forecast

*

Futures up: Dow 0.14%, S&P 0.78%, Nasdaq 1.05%

(Updated at 7:12 a.m. ET/1112 GMT)

By Shristi Achar A and Shashwat Chauhan

April 26 (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures advanced

on Friday as megacap growth shares rebounded on the back of

robust quarterly results from Alphabet and Microsoft ( MSFT ), while

investors awaited a key inflation print that could help shape

U.S. monetary policy.

Alphabet jumped 12.1% in premarket trading after

the Google-parent announced its first-ever dividend, a $70

billion stock buyback and beat estimates for first-quarter

results.

The share surge could lead to the search giant's market

value topping $2 trillion, if premarket gains hold.

Lifting sentiment further, Microsoft ( MSFT ) gained 4.4% on

beating Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue and

profit, driven by gains from AI adoption across its cloud

services.

"After Meta's miss, this was exactly what the markets

needed," Johan Javeus, senior economist at SEB, said in a note.

"Many investors who had been impatiently waiting for AI

investments to also bring in higher revenues probably drew a

sigh of relief when Alphabet's CFO Ruth Porat said that 'we saw

an increasing contribution from our AI solutions'."

Other growth stocks also rose on the results, with

Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and Nvidia ( NVDA ) up 3.2% and 1.6%,

respectively. Meta Platforms ( META ) added 1.4%, after its near

11% drop in the previous session, which was its steepest fall in

18 months.

On the flip side, Exxon Mobil ( XOM ) lost 0.7% after the

largest U.S. oil company missed analysts' estimates with a 28%

year-on-year drop in first-quarter profit.

The upbeat earnings across several sectors this week have

propped up Wall Street's main stock indexes for weekly gains,

with the benchmark S&P 500 looking to snap three weeks of

losses while the Nasdaq is set to end four straight

weeks of declines.

Focus now shifts to the Personal Consumption Expenditures

(PCE) index reading for March, the Federal Reserve's preferred

inflation gauge, due at 8:30 a.m. ET, to further ascertain the

state of inflation and the timing of interest rate cuts.

The index is estimated to show a 2.6% rise in March on a

year-on-year basis, as per economists polled by Reuters,

compared with a 2.5% rise in February.

Money markets are pricing in just about 35 basis points

(bps) of rate cuts from the central bank this year, down from

nearly 150 bps seen at the beginning of the year, as per LSEG

data.

At 7:12 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 52 points, or

0.14%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 39.75 points, or 0.78%,

and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 184 points, or 1.05%.

Among other stocks, Snap surged 24.6% premarket

after the social media firm beat first-quarter estimates for

quarterly revenue and user growth. Shares of Pinterest ( PINS )

also rose 4.8%.

Intel ( INTC ) dropped 8.2% on forecasting second-quarter

revenue and profit below estimates as it faces weak demand for

its traditional data center and PC chips and trails in the

surging market for AI components.