Elon news aside, it's been a massive week in the world of big tech.
Metaworse
Alphabet and Microsoft kicked things off with reports of slowing growth — then came Meta’s turn. The company reported a 4% fall in revenue with average ad pricing falling 18% and Mark Zuckerberg doubling down on his metaverse moonshot, just as investors were hoping, and publicly calling for, the exact opposite. Even solid progress on Meta's TikTok competitor, Reels, and solid engagement on the company's core set of apps, wasn't enough for investors to look past the metaverse expenses — with another ~$85bn wiped off the company’s market cap. yesterday.
Another is the key word here, as Facebook’s share price has cratered since the rebrand to Meta. Since its peak market cap of $1.07 trillion in Sep '21, the company has lost nearly $800bn in value.
Misery loves company
After Meta, Amazon reported an equally surprising set of numbers yesterday. The e-commerce giant, which is often regarded as a good bellwether for the wider economy, expects consumers to significantly curb spending in the months ahead, forecasting Q4 sales that were ~$10bn lower than analysts were expecting, sending shares down 14% at the time of writing.
The only tech behemoth to emerge relatively unscathed from this week is Apple which, despite reporting slower than expected iPhone 14 sales, otherwise held up very well comparatively — as they have all year. All told, since the start of 2022 those 5 big tech companies have shed some $3.6 trillion in value — roughly equivalent to the annual GDP of Brazil and Canada combined.
