Brace yourself. This coming week, the world’s largest tech companies all report their September-quarter financial results. And I mean all of them— Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Apple, Amazon.com, and Intel, with special guest appearances from SAP, Shopify, Spotify, Seagate, ServiceNow, and Corning. Every one of these companies reports results in a three-day span, from Tuesday to Thursday. At least 25% of the S&P 500’s market value will be reporting during the stretch.
It will be the last full read on the sector’s fundamental performance before the end of the year, and the wave of reports could determine the next swing in stock prices. The tech sector continues to face fierce headwinds from the strong dollar, softening consumer spending, rising interest rates, stubbornly high inflation, and a potential recession. The market is yearning for some hint that the worst is over, but don’t hold your breath.
Paul Meeks, portfolio manager with Independent Solutions Wealth Management, has a long list of tech stocks he’d like to buy, but he’s not yet ready. He’s sitting on a pile of cash, waiting for lower lows. Meeks thinks earnings season could be grisly and is particularly worried about chip stocks, which he’s historically loved but is now shunning. Meeks sees downward revisions ahead and worries that conditions in the March and June quarters could be even worse than the last two quarters of 2022.
This past week, though, there were some glimmers of hope. Netflix shares (ticker: NFLX) spiked 13% on Wednesday after the streaming-video pioneer posted better-than-expected subscriber growth and sounded generally bullish about the coming launch of its ad-supported membership tier. One day later, IBM shares (IBM) gained 4.7% after posting revenue that was $500 million above Wall Street estimates, thanks to strong demand in all three of its primary business segments—mainframes, software, and consulting.
Neither report seemed to improve the market’s dour mood, though. And that was before Snap’s disappointing report late Thursday.
Here are five key questions investors will be asking in the days ahead:
Will the recession slow cloud computing? Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Alphabet own the three largest players in the public cloud—Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud. In the June quarter, all three showed strong growth but modest deceleration from the March quarter. The public clouds use consumption-based business models, like utilities—the more computing resources you use, the more you pay. As the economy softens, it’s not unreasonable to expect that customers with weakening business won’t need quite as much computing power as they have in the past. Consensus Wall Street estimates forecast that growth for all three cloud giants will slow further this quarter: Misses from any—or worse, all three—would not be well received.
How bad is the online advertising outlook? In recessions, ad spending erodes—and with two-thirds of ad dollars now spent on digital channels, there are considerable risks ahead for ad-supported tech businesses, in particular Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, and Meta Platforms, parent of Facebook and Instagram. Alphabet shares are down 30% this year, while Meta is off 60%—the disparity in part reflects the view that search ads should prove more resilient than display and direct-response ads. Meanwhile, there’s increasing competition. TikTok gets most of the attention, but both Amazon and Apple are building substantial ad businesses, while Netflix and Walt Disney are adding ad-supported subscription streaming tiers. Even Uber Technologies and Lyft are building ad businesses.
When will PC demand rebound? Personal computer demand is crashing. Gartner reports that PC shipments fell 19.5% in the third quarter, the sharpest decline ever and the fourth straight quarterly drop. That is bad for PC companies like Dell Technologies (DELL) and HP Inc. (HPQ), but the weakness has also triggered earnings warnings from PC-centric chip makers like Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, and Micron Technology. We’ll get fresh insights on the PC market’s future this week from Microsoft, Intel, and Apple.
Will the holiday shopping season be a bust? Adobe projects online holiday spending will grow just 2.5%, the smallest increase ever. Amazon shares are down 31% this year, pressured by weakness in the company’s flagship online retailing arm, which has reported year-over-year declines in each of the past two quarters. Wall Street estimates call for a rebound to 9% growth in the September quarter, with 8% growth in the holiday quarter. But that might be optimistic—analysts think the company’s recent two-day sales event was a dud. Shopify’s (SHOP) results should provide additional color on the state of online shopping—and the outlook for the holidays.
Are enterprise IT budgets about to shrink? IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said this past week that conditions remain strong in the U.S. and Asia, but he sees customers in Western Europe growing more cautious. A sharp falloff in PC sales at Dell, which has only modest exposure to the consumer market, points to budget tightening. Krishna says that technology tends to boost productivity—offsetting inflationary pressures on labor and the supply chain. Microsoft and SAP (SAP) will both provide clues on where IT spending goes from here.