Sean Gallup/Getty Images
- Apple and Amazon warned that the ongoing supply chain issues could hamper the holiday season.
- Apple predicts it will be short of demand "by larger than $6 billion" in the quarter ahead.
- Amazon said it expects to "incur several billion dollars of additional costs" in the fourth quarter.
Two of the world's most valuable companies are warning of a challenging holiday season amid supply chain woes and staffing issues.
Both Apple and Amazon reported disappointing earnings on Thursday, with Apple revenue falling short of Wall Street's expectations and Amazon missing on both earnings and revenue. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy cited the supply chain crisis as a significant obstacle during the most recent quarter and warned of continued snags heading into the holidays.
During a conference call with investors on Thursday, Cook said that supply chain issues cost the company $6 billion in sales in its fiscal fourth quarter ended September 25 as the company faced "larger than expected supply constraints" and pandemic-related disruptions at is Southeast Asia factories, Reuters' Stephen Nellis reported.
The ongoing chip shortage worldwide is also continuing to impact "most of our products," Cook told Reuters.
While Apple anticipates "very solid" demand growth year over year, "we are also predicting that we're going to be short of demand by larger than $6 billion" heading into the holiday season, he told Reuters.
Customer demand for iPhones remains high, as evidenced by increasing wait times for new phones, analysis from UBS found. UBS data published Tuesday shows that wait times for all four new devices are "notably elevated" in the US, China, Japan, and some European markets. Wait times are longest for the higher-end iPhones, the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max. Consumers are currently waiting 29 days versus about 24 days during the same period last year, UBS found.
At Amazon, labor and logistics costs caused net income to shrink by roughly half in the third quarter even as sales increased to $110.8 billion from $96.1 billion during the third quarter 2020.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned in the company's quarterly earnings statement that these challenges will continue in the fourth quarter.
"We expect to incur several billion dollars of additional costs in our consumer business as we manage through labor supply shortages, increased wage costs, global supply-chain issues, and increased freight and shipping costs," Jassy said.
Both companies' weaker-than-expected earnings and bleak outlook for the holiday season caused US stock futures to fall ahead of the opening bell on Friday, Markets Insider's Shalini Nagarajan reported.
"Both had most to lose from supply chain woes of the past few months, and neither's results gave much for investors to cheer as a result," Mark Crouch, an analyst at investment platform eToro, told Markets Insider.