Big tech earnings were a snack. What’s next? 🍟

Trying to fill our secret snack cupboards is getting harder as inflation bites (although we’re all aboard L&P gummies). But employees at Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL, GOOG) are also about to find it harder to get their snack fix. Despite having 12,000 fewer mouths to feed, in an effort to cut costs, Google is slimming down the snacks, including the dried mango and fun-sized M&Ms. 🥭

Big Tech companies moved early to slash costs ahead of a potential economic downturn. But to the surprise of many investors the cupboards haven't gone bare just yet. Last week Alphabet and Microsoft (MSFT) announced snack-sized revenue growth of 3% and of 7% respectively year-on-year for the first quarter. Meanwhile Meta (META) said Chinese retailers helped their revenue in the first quarter of 2023 grow a tasty 3%, reversing declines in revenue endured in 2022. That hit the sweet spot for investors, who sent the company’s share price spiking almost 20%. 🍬

The better-than-expected tech earnings has been a bitter pill for those betting against the companies’ share prices, however. According to the Financial Times, hedge funds have lost US$18 billion this year betting that share prices of Big Tech would continue their downward slide. 💸

So what’s next for Big Tech and FAANG stocks? While downsizing snacks and costs, and upsizing investment in AI has been a theme across the behemoth tech companies, another big theme was ‘uncertainty’. Alphabet noted on their earnings call that ‘the outlook remains uncertain’ as they face a double whammy of slowing ad revenue and gnawing competition from TikTok on their YouTube business. While Meta called out ‘a volatile macro environment’ for the year ahead. 🥠

One of the saltiest outlooks came from Netflix (NFLX), however, which lowered expectations for earnings for the quarter ahead, and declined to offer guidance on subscriber numbers. Let’s hope their snack cupboard is filled with more than just recession lentils. 🍿