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Big Tech & AI October 26, 2023
Michelai Graham
Michelai Graham

Big Tech Earnings Roundup: Alphabet Wins Q3 Revenue Race With $76B

In today’s roundup, Boardroom breaks down the financial outlooks for Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Snap based on their latest earnings reports.

Artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure were the top business sectors that affected revenue for Big Tech companies this week.

Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Snap all posted positive revenue growth and were trading in the green after recent earnings reports. Some businesses took a hit as stocks took a downward turn due to an ad spending slowdown related to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Overall, growth and competition across the AI and cloud computing industries affected revenue the most this quarter.

Let’s take a look at some Big Tech earnings highlights from Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Snap.

Amazon and Apple earnings are on deck next — stay tuned.

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Big Tech Earnings: Q3 2023

Alphabet

Google’s parent company won some and lost some after posting its third-quarter earnings report on Tuesday. Alphabet’s revenue increased to $76.7 billion, up 7% year-over-year. While Alphabet’s sales and profit beat analysts’ projections, the company’s stock fell as much as 7% in after-hours trading upon reporting lower-than-expected revenue from its cloud division.

The company’s Google Cloud division produced $8.41 billion compared to the expected $8.64 billion. Google Cloud has steep competition with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, but the biz unit has been a key area that investors want to continue pouring dollars into.

Key takeaways from Alphabet’s recent earnings report:

  • Despite missing projections, revenue for Alphabet’s Google Cloud biz grew 22% year-over-year.
  • Alphabet generated $7.95 billion in YouTube advertising revenue, and overall ad revenue was $59.65 billion.
  • During Q3, Alphabet continued cutting jobs after laying off 45 workers in its news division and several across its self-driving car business, Waymo. These cuts come as part of the company’s larger decrease of 12,000 jobs, first announced in January.
  • YouTube Shorts now boasts 70 billion daily views, up 20 billion from the start of the year.
  • CEO Sundar Pichai said he’s pleased with Alphabet’s Q3 financial results after success integrating AI across search, YouTube, Cloud, and Pixel hardware devices.
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Meta

Facebook parent company Meta announced big releases in Q3, including the launch of the Quest 3, new Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, and a consumer-facing AI studio. Meta generated $34.15 billion in revenue, a 23% increase year-over-year. The tech giant’s stock rose more than 4% before dropping more than 3% after Meta CFO Susan Li said ad spending on its platforms had scaled back amid the conflict in the Middle East. Still, Meta met or beat expectations across multiple key areas of its business.

Key takeaways from Meta’s recent earnings report:

  • Meta’s 23% increase in revenue marks the company’s fastest rate of growth since 2021.
  • Daily active users across Meta’s family of apps topped 3.14 billion, an increase of 7% year-over-year. Facebook alone attracted 2.09 billion daily active users on average, up 5% compared to this time last year.
  • Monthly active users across the company’s family of apps hit 3.6 billion, an increase of 7% year-over-year.
  • Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased that the company’s newest platform, Threads, is nearing 100 million monthly active users.
  • Meta’s headcount decreased 24% year-over-year to 66,185 employees.
  • Meta expects its Q4 revenue to land between $36.5 and 40 billion, which would be approximately a 2% revenue growth year-over-year.

Microsoft

Microsoft beat estimates and boosted its profit in its most recent quarter, which is the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, after lowering its operational expenses and doubling down on AI. The tech giant’s shares rose as much as 6% after hours on Tuesday, and its biggest revenue win came from its cloud business. Microsoft generated $56.5 billion in revenue, an increase of 13% year-over-year.

The company’s biggest move of the quarter was undoubtedly its $69 billion purchase of gaming giant Activision Blizzard, but it will likely take a couple of quarters to see just how the mega-deal evolves Microsoft’s business.

Key takeaways from Microsoft’s recent earnings report:

  • Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud division produced $24.26 billion in revenue, up 19%, with most of the boost in revenue coming from Azure platform.
  • Revenue from Azure alone rose by 29% this quarter, and the Azure OpenAI Service added more users with 18,000 total customers now.
  • Revenue for Microsoft’s Productivity and Business Processes unit, which includes Microsoft 365 productivity app subscriptions, LinkedIn, and Dynamics enterprise software, increased by 13% to $18.59 billion.
  • Revenue for the Big Tech company’s Personal Computing business, which includes
  • The company estimates that revenue will land in the range of $60.4 billion to $61.4 billion for its next quarter.

Snap

Snapchat‘s parent company returned to positive growth in the third quarter, boosting its stock by as much as 20% on Tuesday. Snap’s revenue rose 5% year-over-year to $1.19 billion, an accomplishment CEO Evan Spiegel said in a statement came from major cost-cutting efforts. Despite posting some positive numbers, Snap’s shares declined after the platform’s CEO also shared that some advertisers halted spending after sharing concerns about the effect the war in the Middle East will have on advertising, a business sector on which Snap is hyperfocused right now.

Key takeaways from Snap’s recent earnings report:

  • Snap’s $3.99-per-month subscription service, Snapchat+, surpassed five million subscribers, which is up one million from the previous quarter.
  • Snap laid off 170 employees and cut its augmented reality enterprise business in September as part of a larger layoff plan first announced last summer. The company will still develop AR-focused tech in other areas of its business.
  • Snap’s COO Jerry Hunter announced his retirement after seven years in the role.
  • The company launched a common stock repurchase program of up to $500 million and will use its existing cash and cash equivalents to fund the buybacks. As of Sept. 30, Snap had $3.6 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities.
  • Snap’s net losses were up 2% to $368 million year-over-year.

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Michelai Graham

Michelai Graham is Boardroom's resident tech and crypto reporter. Before joining 35V, she was a freelance reporter with bylines in AfroTech, HubSpot, The Plug, and Lifewire, to name a few. At Boardroom, Michelai covers Web3, NFTs, crypto, tech, and gaming. Off the clock, you can find her producing her crime podcast, The Point of No Return.