Apple, Amazon and Google post earnings that disappoint

Ford posted disappointing fourth quarter results, which the company blamed on its own performance rather than on any external factors.

"We left about $2 billion in profits on the table that were within our control," said CEO Jim Farley. "To say I'm frustrated as an understatement because the year could have been so much more for us at Ford."

Farley did blame some external issues, including cost and supply chain issues. But he said much of Ford's profitability problems are a result of its ongoing transformation, including its shift from traditional gas-powered vehicles to EVs.

"While we're making progress, it's hard work," he said. "Certain parts are moving faster than I expected and other parts are taking longer."

He admitted Ford has continuing quality problems, including having the most recalls over the last two years.

"Clearly that's not acceptable," he said.

Revenue rose 17% from a year ago to $44 billion, with automotive revenue topping forecasts by about 4%. But adjusted earnings per share of 51 cents, while nearly double from a year ago, was well short of the forecast of 62 cents forecast by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.

The earnings miss left shares of Ford tumbling 7% in after-hours trading.

The results left the company with full-year income, excluding special items, of $7.6 billion, up from $6.4 billion it posted on that basis a year earlier. But that was just short of its previous record of $7.7 billion, reached in 2015. Those special items, which include a large hit it took earlier this year due to the drop in the value of its investment in electric truck maker Rivian and its decision to pull the plug on an investment in a self-driving AI firm, along with other charges, resulted in the company reporting a net loss for the year of nearly $2.0 billion.

Amazon reported revenue of $149.2 billion for the final three months of last year, a 9% increase from the prior year and beating Wall Street’s expectations. 

But the company indicated sales for the current quarter could be lighter than analysts had expected. Amazon said it expects revenue for the quarter ending in March to be between $121 billion and $126 billion, compared to analysts' estimates of $125.1 billion.

Shares of Amazon fell nearly 4% in after-hours trading Thursday.

Even as its overall revenue growth for the holiday quarter defied some estimates, revenue growth for certain key segments appeared to slowdown.

The company reported its Amazon Web Services segment sales increased 20% year-over-year to $21.4 billion. This marks a slower growth rate than in the previous quarter. Executives told analysts Thursday evening that many of its cloud customers are pulling back their spending and looking to cut costs amid the economic uncertainty. "We're going to help our customers find a way to spend less money ... we're going to build relationships" that outlast the downturn, CEO Andy Jassy said.

Thursday’s earnings report comes amid a difficult period for the company. After seeing a boom in demand for e-commerce goods early in the pandemic, Amazon has since had to cope with consumers returning to in-person shopping habits. Recession fears and inflation have also pinched consumer and business spending.

Last month, Amazon confirmed plans to lay off more than 18,000 workers as part of a broader cost-cutting strategy.

"In the short term, we face an uncertain economy, but we remain quite optimistic about the long-term opportunities for Amazon," Jassy said in a statement with the results.

Jassy made the unusual decision (for an Amazon CEO) to join the company's analyst call Thursday in honor of his first full fiscal year as CEO and "given some of the unusual parts of the economy." Jassy took over as chief executive from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in July 2021.

Jassy said the company is "working really hard to streamline our costs while not giving up on investments" that can fuel growth and "change Amazon long term." In Amazon's distribution network, which has grown rapidly in recent years, he said, "there's a lot to figure out how to optimize and how to make more efficient." He added that the company also plans to slow rollout of its physical store expansion and slow hiring.

Google-parent Alphabet reported a steep decline in profit and nearly flat revenue growth for the final three months of last year, as the company confronted increased competition in the digital ad market and a pullback in advertiser spending due to economic uncertainty.

Alphabet posted $13.6 billion in profits for the final three months of 2022, a decline of about a third compared to the year prior and below what Wall Street analysts had expected.

Revenue from the quarter came in at just over $76 billion, nearly in line with analysts' expectations but a sharp slowdown in growth from the same period in the prior year, when sales grew 32%.

Shares of Alphabet dropped around 4% in after-hours trading Thursday immediately following the report.

The report comes after Google last month said it would lay off 12,000 employees in an effort to refocus on the company’s core business.

"We have significant work underway to improve all aspects of our cost structure, in support of our investments in our highest growth priorities to deliver long-term, profitable growth," CFO Ruth Porat said in a statement alongside the earnings report.

Sales from Google's core advertising business declined 3.5% year-over-year during the key December quarter, in another sign of a toughening digital ad market. But revenue from the company's cloud business — an increasingly important source of revenue — grew 32% from the prior year to $7.3 billion.

"The search giant underperformed our expectations across almost all business units, most importantly its core ad search segment," Investing.com Senior Analyst Jesse Cohen said in an investor note following the report.

On a call with analysts following the report, Alphabet executives emphasized the company's plan to "reengineer its cost structure" and to prioritize "efficiency" and growth in its core growth areas. In addition to the January layoffs, the company plans to reduce its real estate footprint in the first quarter and "meaningfully slowing pace of hiring in 2023," Porat said.

Google did not provide specific guidance for the first three months of 2023, although Porat offered some insight as to what the company is expecting.

In its advertising business, she said that the company is using artificial intelligence to improve its offerings, including return-on-investment and ad targeting, as well as improving monetization of YouTube Shorts videos. For Google Play, Porat said the company "remains optimistic about longer term prospects for mobile apps and gaming" but is cautious about "current trends."

The outlook for hardware and Google Cloud appears somewhat sunnier. Porat said the company continues to invest in those areas for future growth.

Facebook-parent Meta's stock climbed 23% in trading Thursday after the social media giant on Wednesday appeared to alleviate investors' concerns about its focus and investment plans.

Meta on Wednesday posted its third straight quarterly decline in revenue and a 55% drop in profit for the final three months of 2022, as it confronted broader economic uncertainty, heightened competition in the social media market and incurred significant charges from a recent round of layoffs.

But the company nonetheless outperformed Wall Street analysts’ expectations for sales. Moreover, it pledged to focus on “efficiency,” lowered its forecast for capital expenditures in the year ahead and announced plans to boost its share repurchase plan by $40 billion.

Another bit of good news: Facebook now has two billion daily active users, and Meta’s family of apps grew its daily active people by 5% year-over-year to 2.96 billion, a welcome sign for the company following concerns about stagnant user growth last year.

But the company warned that challenges to its digital advertising business posed by the tenuous economic environment have not yet abated. In the first three months of 2023, Meta expects revenue between $26 and $28.5 billion, the lower end of which would mark a slight year-over-year decline but the upper end of which would represent an increase from the year-ago quarter and would break Meta’s streak of consecutive quarterly revenue declines.

Read more here.

Thursday afternoon will round out what has so far been a sobering earnings season for the Big Tech giants.

After several years of raking in profits thanks to strong demand for tech gadgets and services during the pandemic, the industry’s fortunes began to turn last year. Tech giants have been grappling with high inflation and interest rates, as well as increased competition and declining demand in consumer and digital ad markets.

Alphabet, Amazon and Apple are set to report earnings after the bell Thursday and all eyes will be scrutinizing the results to see how those challenges affected the crucial December quarter.

Wall Street does not appear to have high hopes.

What to expect: Apple is projected to post its first quarterly revenue decline since 2019 — a drop of 2% compared to the same period in the prior year. Alphabet’s revenue will likely remain flat from last year and Amazon’s sales are expected to grow just shy of 6% year-over-year. All three companies’ profits are expected to fall from the year-ago quarter, with Amazon set to suffer the steepest drop with a decline of 40.6%.

Thursday’s reports are likely to be another sign that tech giants are no longer as immune to economic changes as in years’ past. “Apple proved more resilient than its Big Tech peers in the last quarter, but this earnings season could be tougher,” Joshua Warner, market analyst at investment firm StoneX, said in a statement earlier this week. Most of Amazon’s businesses, he said, “are also finding it harder to grow in these tougher economic conditions, and Amazon has already warned it will deliver the slowest revenue growth on record for any holiday shopping season.”

Many major tech firms, including Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon, have in recent months announced plans to lay off tens of thousands of workers. (Apple, so far, is the one major exception to this trend). Thursday’s reports should give Amazon and Alphabet shareholders a glimpse of how soon the tech giants will realize the benefits of those cost cuts — and if they’ll be enough to weather the uncertain period ahead.

Here's what Wall Street analysts are expecting from Amazon, Apple and Google-parent Alphabet's December-quarter earnings on Thursday, according to Refinitiv:

Amazon:

Apple:

Alphabet:

Snapchat-parent Snap on Tuesday reported stalled revenue growth and a large net loss for the final three months of 2022, causing its stock to fall as much as 15% on Wednesday.

The report marked the fourth straight quarter of net losses for Snap, which has suffered from increased competition in the social media market, disruptions to its ad business from Apple’s app privacy changes and weaker advertiser demand amid fears of a looming recession. High interest rates and inflation have also impacted many large tech firms.

Snap’s earnings could be a concerning bellwether for the other tech giants that rely on the health of the digital ad market, including Amazon and Alphabet. And the situation appears to be even worse in the current quarter. Snap said in an investor letter that it has already seen a roughly 7% revenue decline so far in the first quarter compared to the year prior. It estimates revenue for the first three months of the year will be down between 2% and 10% compared to the previous year.

Read more here.

In less than three months, four of the big five US tech companies have cut tens of thousands of employees combined. The notable exception to this trend: Apple. 

To date, the iPhone maker has not announced any substantial job cuts, thanks in part to slower headcount growth than some of its peers earlier in the pandemic and continued demand for its core products. But some analysts think Apple could soon announce some more modest cuts to adjust to the current level of demand, as inflation and economic uncertainty is leading consumers and businesses to be more frugal.

Apple’s business has thus far been weathering the downturn better than some of its peers, but the company is expected to post a rare year-over-year decline in revenue. Thursday’s earnings results will show whether Apple can keep defying gravity.