By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 23rd, 2024
While still being on the radar of U.S. lawmakers, the U.S. big 4 tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Alphabet, all posted impressive performance reports.
The earnings of the big 4 tech companies in the United States including Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) soared but in an inverse proportion when compared to the state of the nation’s economy.
Each of the top firms has released its Q2 performance report and has drawn attention from analysts as the firm’s performance beats expectation. Except for Alphabet which had a 2% drop in revenue, each of the firms had an increase, a position which many are now attributing to the alleged monopoly under which these firms operate.
The COVID-19 pandemic which is still taking its toll since it caused a world-wide lockdown in Q1 2020 gave the big 4 a leverage as demand in their products and services surged considerably.
Although other companies particularly the biopharmaceutical firms working on discovering a cure for the coronavirus disease also had a great Q1 run, the exceptional performance of the big 4 “..shows the industry is capitalizing on the crisis as locked-down consumers use tech gadgets and the internet for entertainment, social connection, shopping, learning, and work,” a Bloomberg report reveals.
Big 4 Firms During Coronavirus Pandemic
It is no news that each of these companies takes a position that their firms got massively impacted during the coronavirus induced pandemic, Facebook said in a statement:
“Our business has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and, like all companies, we are facing a period of unprecedented uncertainty in our business outlook. We expect our business performance will be impacted by issues beyond our control, including the duration and efficacy of shelter-in-place orders, the effectiveness of economic stimuli around the world, and the fluctuations of currencies relative to the U.S. dollar.”
While this is true, Facebook and its big tech peers had recorded a more profitable outlook than others. Amazon, for instance, reportedly cashed in about $11,000 per second in March raising the company’s valuation while also almost doubling its total sales in May.
With the sales of hardware devices hitting the rocks, Apple’s service businesses spanning Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade, Apple Music, and more cumulatively hit an all-time record high of $13.3 billion in April 2020 as compared to $11.5 billion the same period last year.
This impressive run by Apple in Q2 somehow trickled down to Q3 as the firm rakes in about $59.69 billion in revenue.
Sundar Pichai led Alphabet to come off as the top tech firm with a slight squeeze in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Alphabet’s reported “Sudden and Significant” slow down in Google ad revenue in the lockdown marred previous quarter seems uncorrected in this current quarter.
Nonetheless, the search engine giant helped curtail the spread of fake news pertaining to COVID-19 by censoring fake posts as well as by providing accurate feedbacks to search for inquiries.
Four Big Tech Revenue in Retrospect
Amazon reported its Q2 2020 earnings with double-digit revenue growth $88.9 billion Year on Year, beating street expectations and representing the company’s biggest profits in its 26-year history.
The company also saw surges in other metrics, contributing to its current stock growth of 5%. Alphabet’s reported revenue fell by 2% to $38.29 billion but exceeds the projections made by Refinitiv’s analysts. Apple Q3 earnings blew past Wall Street’s expectations, reporting a revenue of $59.69 billion causing a corresponding spike in the company’s stock which rose by 6.44% to $409.55 in the after-hours session.
Facebook, the youngest of the four firms, saw an 11% increase in its revenue which hit approximately $18.7 billion dollars as compared to $16.9 in Q2 2019.
These firms have shown leadership, but it all came at a price which Reps are attributing to monopoly following the appearance of the company’s CEOs at the hearing conducted by the House’s Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee