Big Tech, with Apple closes a quarter of 70 billion profits
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“Better than expected.” In these words of Apple CEO Tim Cook there is the last quarter of Apple, and perhaps of all, or almost all, American high technology.
Apple has completed the quarterly season of American Big Tech as it had begun: feeling the blows of economic fragility, but beating budget forecasts. Profits and revenues of the tech giants, from Netflix streaming to Amazon’s e-commerce and cloud, from Alphabet and Meta’s digital advertising to Microsoft’s artificial intelligence and cloud to Apple’s iPhones, have all been affected by the uncertainties. and on the sector, however, at the same time they are giving proof of being able to withstand the strongest pressures for now. Together the big techs, including Tesla’s electric cars, have still accumulated profits between January and March of almost 70 billion dollars.
The caution about the future
The horizons remain cautious, and once again Apple has the upper hand: the turnover of the large leading group, in what is its second fiscal quarter, has in any case fallen compared to last year, by 3% to 97.28 billion, a rare second consecutive quarterly period of declining business. And profits also fell 3 percent to $24.16 billion from $25.01 billion.
Apple led by iPhones
When it comes to Apple, however, what dominated the attention was, in addition to a performance in general higher than the hypotheses, the trend of what remains its flagship product and business engine, despite the diversification efforts: the iPhones have recorded sales of 51.33 billion, up 2% and well above the 48.84 billion expected. A result all the more remarkable given that the smartphone market contracted overall by 15 per cent during the quarter. met the advances with $20.91 billion. Mac computers, on the other hand, suffered a contraction of 31% and those of iPad tablets by 13%. However, the solidity of the business and the overall performance has allowed Cook to say that he has no plans to layoffs, unlike many other tech companies. “We’re not talking about mass layoffs right now,” he said.
The accounts of the others
Apple has not been an isolated case of resilience. Other tech protagonists have shown evidence of at least resilience, which for investors justifies the increases reported by shares on the stock market since the beginning of the year, more or less, after a difficult 2022. Whether these recoveries will find future confirmations or prepare new tensions and declines remains the open question. As mentioned, the reasons for nervousness, between shadows of recession and corporate savings maneuvers, have not vanished, and sometimes even leak out from the accounts.
Amazon
What is certain is that between January and March Amazon benefited from a steady demand for online shopping and advertising and from a continuous growth of cloud computing activities. Sales of $127.4 billion, up 9%, fared better than expectations by $124.55 billion. Net income came in at $3.17 billion, reversing the $3.84 billion loss recorded a year earlier. In turn, at 31 cents a share, it beat expectations by 21 cents. AWS, the crucial cloud division, for its part reported a 16% increase in revenues to 21.35 billion, above the 21.22 billion expected, even if the step was less than the previous 20%. Amazon Web Services also remained the cornerstone of profitability, with operating income of $5.1 billion. Even if there is caution about the future: CFO Brian Olsavsky has raised an alarm at least for the immediate future, Amazon customers are adopting savings strategies, especially when it comes to the cloud.
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