REUTERS/Spencer Selvidge
- Apple, Amazon, and Facebook shares slumped on Friday as investors expressed their dissatisfaction with the trio’s earnings on Thursday.
- Apple closed 5.6% lower, Amazon slumped 5.5%, and Facebook dropped 6.3%, wiping almost $250 billion off their combined market capitalizations.
- Alphabet stock closed 3.8% higher after Google’s parent company posted earnings that blew away analysts’ forecasts.
- Scroll down for a brief look at each of the four companies’ earnings.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Apple, Amazon, and Facebook shares tumbled on Friday after the technology giants reported earnings on Thursday that disappointed investors.
Apple closed 5.6% lower, Amazon dropped 5.5%, and Facebook slumped 6.3%. The stock-price declines erased almost $250 billion from their combined market capitalizations — more than the entire market cap of Disney ($219 billion), Netflix ($210 billion), or Coca-Cola ($207 billion).
Google-parent Alphabet’s shares bucked the “big tech” trend, closing 3.8% higher after the group posted revenues and profits that crushed Wall Street’s expectations. The stock-price increase added more than $40 billion to the group’s market cap.
Here’s a quick look at the four tech titans’ earnings:
Apple grew its net sales by 1% year-on-year to $64.7 billion in its fourth quarter to September 26. The increase reflected a 29% rise in Mac sales and a 46% jump in iPad sales, as millions of people turned to Apple products to work and study from home during the pandemic.
However, iPhone sales slumped 21% to $26.4 billion, and net sales shrunk 28% in Greater China. The result was a 7% drop in net income to below $13 billion. Apple also declined to offer financial guidance for the current quarter, disappointing investors hoping to gain a sense of management's expectations for the new iPhone 12.
Amazon posted a 37% rise in third-quarter net sales to $96.1 billion, as net product sales climbed 33% and net service sales surged 43%. Revenue jumped 29% to $11.6 billion in its cloud-computing division, AWS, generating $3.5 billion in operating income — more than half of Amazon's total operating income of $6.2 billion.
The e-commerce giant guided towards net sales growth of 28% to 38% this quarter. However, it also forecast operating income of $1 billion to $4.5 billion, indicating its profits could rise 15% or plummet 74% year-on-year.
Facebook reported a 22% increase in revenues to $21.5 billion last quarter, almost entirely driven by a 22% rise in advertising sales. The upshot was a 12% jump in operating income to $8 billion. The social-media giant also grew its daily and monthly active users by 12% year-on-year to 1.8 billion and 2.7 billion respectively.
However, Facebook also warned of "significant" uncertainty next year, as the accelerated shift to online shopping and digital-advertising boom during the pandemic might not last, and platform changes and new regulations could spell trouble for its business.
Alphabet's third-quarter earnings blew past analysts' expectations. Revenues climbed 14% to $46.2 billion as Google search, Google and YouTube advertising, and Google Cloud all posted robust sales growth. The result was a 22% surge in operating income to $11.2 billion.