What is the collapse of Meta and the take -off of Amazon, cryptocurrency trillions and the Chinese struggle against coronavirus

Techno -giants survived the dramatic week of reports: what the investor needs to know about this

The season of reports in the American market was surprisingly dramatic. This week, its culmination was the record in the history of the stock market, the collapse of the META shares, which has lost $ 251 billion capitalization on Wednesday. But the next day, Amazon almost reached the same historical growth record, having rise in price by almost $ 150 billion. But this is only news headlines-and what does the reports of the five largest bigtes actually have, which until recently accounted for almost a quarter of the S&P 500 index?

On Thursday, we launched a new newsletter for private investors - its authors Vyacheslav Dongicated and Alexander Chunov found and read notes of the largest investment banks and tell how they evaluate the results of technohigans and what they advise making META shareholders after its record collapse.

Meta

Facebook, which recently replaced the name on META, became the only one of the reported Bigtehs that did not live up to the expectations of analysts in financial indicators - and even how. At the post -market after publishing reports on Wednesday, the company's shares fell by 24%, and at the auction on Thursday, the fall worsened to 27% in terms of the results of the day.

The company's revenue in the fourth quarter increased by 20%, to $ 33.7 billion, slightly overtaking analysts ($ 33.4 billion), but the profit per share (EPS) was lower than the expectations - $ 3.67 versus 3.84. An unpleasant surprise was the forecast for the revenue for the current quarter in the region of the $ 27–29 billion instead of the expected $ 30.3 billion. But most of all the market disappointed the audience: the number of daily active users of the Facebook social network for the first time in its history decreased - from 1.93 billion to 1.929 billion, and the number of monthly active users in 2.91 billion was lower than forecasts.

META CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a call with investors identified two factors that put pressure on the company's financial indicators: growing competition from other applications, primarily Tiktok, and the need to invest more in short Reels, which bring less revenue than the tape, but are the best opportunity to attract young users. In addition, the newApple Privacy Policy , which reduced the accuracy of targeted advertising and complicated the assessment of its effectiveness, will adversely and continue to affect in 2022.

A similar fall occurred after the Facebook report for the second quarter of 2018. Then the company shares fell in price by 19%, reminds

Goldman Sachs. Since July 25, 2018, when a report was published, according to December 31, the cost of the company's papers fell by 40% (S&P 500 for the same period decreased by 12%). Now Investbank has left a recommendation for META to buy, explaining this with a more attractive assessment and the established role of the company in the global digital advertising market, but reduced a 12-month target at a price of $ 445 to $ 355.

Bofa called the short -term forecast of META growth disappointing and also reduced the target - from $ 410 to $ 333. At the same time, the investmentBank noted the attractiveness of the current value of the company - at a price of $ 249 per promotion assessment of the main business META (excluding the cache, Messenger/WhatsApp and Facebook Reality Labs) is 10 expected profits for 2023 (average assessment for companies from the S&P 500 - 20 profit).

Read more about META’s business and why the company is betting on the metavselnaya, we talked here .

Microsoft

In the second fiscal quarter, which ended on December 31, Microsoft revenue increased by 20% compared to the same period last year. Revenue ($ 51.73 billion) and profit ($ 2.48 per share) exceeded analysts. The main growth driver was the Microsoft Cloud segment, which includes Azure's cloud platform and Commercial Office 365, Dynamics 365 business applications, as well as Linkedin Commercial. This direction brought the company $ 22 billion - 32% more than a year earlier.

Microsoft predicts that in the current quarter its revenue will grow by 16-18%, to $ 48.5–49.3 billion. This assessment does not take into account the acquisition of the Nuance software developer, although the transaction should be closed before the end of March.

Goldman Sachs is sure that the revenue from cloud services will continue to grow at a rapid pace and amount to $ 230 billion in the fiscal 2027th (compared with $ 60 billion in the fiscal 2021th ). The company can increase its share in the growing market: Microsoft Azure is increasingly included in the list of strategic suppliers of cloud services among large corporate clients, investment bank notes. In addition, the company is an obvious beneficiary of the growing digitalization of business.

Apple

Apple revenue in the first tax quarter of 2022 (ended on December 25, 2021) increased by 11% and amounted to $ 123.9 billion, surpassing the forecast ( $ 118.7 billion ). Profit per share also turned out to be higher than the expectations - $ 2.1 versus $ 1.89.

Sales of devices have grown in all categories except the iPad (-14%), which has suffered the most from problems with supply chains. IPhone sales increased by 9% due to high demand for the iPhone 13 line. The Mac sales driver of 24.8% has become a new M1 chip. The revenue from services - 23.8%showed almost the same growth.

According to Goldman Sachs, Apple's net losses from interruptions in the last quarter increased compared to the previous one (then they amounted to ~ $ 6 billion), but did not exceed $ 10 billion. The financial director of the Apple Luka Maerstri on a call with investors vagurated that problems with supplies will decrease in the current quarter and the company It expects that the revenue will continue to “confidently” grow (the company did not bring accurate forecasts). At the same time, he warned of risks associated with less favorable exchange rates and a shift in the launch of new products.

BOFA predicts that Apple revenue from iPhone and iPad in this quarter will fall by the year, sales of the Mac and accessories will continue to grow with double -digit pace. But the main driver will be the growth of revenue from services. Investbank increased the forecast for the price of Apple shares from $ 210 to $ 215. We talked more about Apple's business here .

Other analysts increased their forecasts for Apple. Taking into account the strong results for the first quarter and good expectations from the second, Goldman Sachs increased the target price from $ 142 to $ 161 per share (27x FCF for the year, starting in the second fiscal quarter of 2023). The analyst Morgan Stanley Katie Huberti noted the confident growth of Mac sales and revenue from services and raised her target from $ 200 to $ 210.

Alphabet

Google’s maternal company in the fourth quarter also exceeded analysts expectations. Alphabet revenue increased by 32% in annual terms to $ 75.3 billion with a consensus of $ 72 billion. Advertising, which accounts for 81.3% of all Alphabet revenue, brought the company $ 61.2 billion, which is 32.5% higher than in the fourth quarter of last year. During the pandemic, consumers plunged into the search for clothing and hobbies, and retail, financial and entertainment companies increased marketing budgets, said Google Business Director Philip Schindler.

YouTube turned out to be the only area, the revenue of which did not live up to market expectations - $ 8.63 billion against $ 8.87. Alphabet revenue from cloud products increased by 45%, to $ 5.5 billion, but the net loss of the segment of $ 890 million was higher than expectations, as management continues to give priority to investment in long -term development, Goldman Sachs notes.

Simultaneously with the publication of reporting, the company unexpectedly announced a split of shares in a ratio of 20 to 1. As they write in BOFA, this indicates a more positive attitude of management to shareholders (Split reduces the shares nominal, making them more accessible to investors - now one share of Alphabet costs about $ 2800). The split should be approved at a meeting of shareholders, which means that it will take place no earlier than July.

BOFA expects Alphabet revenue to the search growth in 2022 from the search (35.7% in the fourth quarter versus 44% in the third) and an increase in operating expenses. Nevertheless, the bank raised Target for Alphabet shares from $ 3470 to $ 3510 (33x EPS 2023). Goldman Sachs also confirmed a positive forecast for the company in the long run and raised a target from $ 3350 to $ 3400 per share. The bank still regards Alphabet as a leader in a business based on AI/ML. In addition, Google Cloud should contribute to the growth of consolidated revenue for 5 years and begin to make noticeable changes to the margin of consolidated operating profit in 2023–2026.

Amazon

The latter of the reported Bigtehs, Amazon, who published the results on Thursday, was even better.

On the one hand, the company's revenue in the fourth quarter grew by only 9%, to $ 137.4 billion. This is slightly lower than the market expectations ($ 137.6 billion). CNBC notes that since 2017 this is the first quarter, according to which the company has not shown two -digit growth. Amazon forecast for revenue in the current quarter in the region of $ 112–117 billion was also lower than average expectations ($ 120 billion).

Amazon shares after an initial fall by 8% at the post -Market eventually increased by more than 14%. The companies managed to pleasantly surprise investors with profit: it increased almost twice, to $ 14.3 billion - significantly higher than the expectations (adjusted profit per share $ 5.8 against the expected $ 3.57). A significant increase in profits provided investments in the manufacturer of Rivian electric cars, which conducted an IPO in November. Amazon income before deduction of taxes amounted to $ 11.8 billion.

The revenue from the most profitable direction of the company, Amazon Web Services, increased by 40%, to $ 17.8 billion, exceeding the expert estimates. Amazon also first revealed the revenue from the advertising business, which grew by 32%, to $ 9.7 billion - this puts the company in third place in the US advertising market after Google and Facebook. “Amazon has turned into a real platform, since more than 50% of its income now comes from areas not related to retail trade,” said Deren Baker, chief executive director of the research company Edge by Ascential.

Another step that inspired investors was the first increase in Prime subscription (from $ 119 to $ 139) from 2018, necessary to compensate for expanding advantages for subscribers, as well as an increase in employees' wages and transportation costs.

EDUCATION

Anti -crisis measures. How to manage risks?

Already in March, in School launches a new course “Risk Management: How to Manage a Crisis Company”, developed jointly with a teacher of a business school of New York University Stephen Mellas .

We created this intensive for those who want to understand the basics of risk management, learn to quickly and correctly respond to the already established crisis situation and effectively get out of it. The knowledge gained will help you to better analyze your industry and understand in which direction to move in order to build a working risk management platform.

The program is suitable for individual entrepreneurs starting their own business, as well as managers and managers who take an active part in the company's business processes.

Classes will be held on March 2, 4 and 10. You can get acquainted with a detailed curriculum and registerhere .

Signals

Trillion taxes with cryptocurrencies

This week, the battle for the regulation of cryptocurrencies in Russia has acquired more specific outlines - the price of the issue has become known. At least, according to estimates by Bloomberg referred to , the Russian crypto is estimated at $ 214 billion, or 16.4 trillion rubles. The Bell got acquainted with the analytical note in which this count was made. It follows from it that the volume of taxes that the state can collect from the Russian cryptor can reach 1 trillion rubles. And even some participants in the process consider these grades modest. In the new issue of technological buildings, which will be released on Saturday, we will tell you what we still have known about the Russian market of cryptocurrencies from public and non -public ratings of officials and experts (you can subscribe to the technology building here ).

INVESTMENTS

Correction victims

Many investors who came to the exchange in the last two years survived their first correction. On Monday last week, the S&P 500 index for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic decreased by more than 10% of its maximums recorded on January 3. The NASDAQ-100 index with a larger degree of fast-growing companies went into the correction zone on January 20. The main question for retail investors - is this a harbinger of a more serious fall? Opinions, as usual, disperse - the main arguments of the “pros and cons of Bell. Investments” Vyacheslav Dvornikov told here .

Stories

Why China is zero tolerance to Covid

At the start of the Olympics and two years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in China, the most severe coronavirus restrictions in the world are still operating. The New Year holidays that began this week and the Olympiad opening on Friday began to only tighten them. The Zero Covid strategy worked in 2020 against Alfa, but it is unlikely to be effective against very contagious Omcrone, experts say. But the Chinese authorities will not refuse her - here we tell you why.

"Russian norms!"

HOFF co -founder - about the "German" brand, competition with IKEA and tastes of Russians

Mikhail Kuchman is a co -founder of the HOFF hypermarket network. On this field, HOFF competes with the indisputable leader from Scandinavia - IKEA. In an interview with "Russian norms!" The entrepreneur told how he exchanged his career in Samsung and M. Video for his own business, why the Russian company is a German name, why dozens of millions of dollars are needed to enter the market and what is the specifics of the online trade in furniture. See the entire interview on the channel “Russian Norms!”, And a short version can be read on our site.