Silicon Valley’s Big Three reported disappointing financial results on Thursday, fueling fears of a tech sector slowdown.
Recession fears have hit global business and consumer spending, leading companies including Apple, Alphabet and Amazon to signal a struggling recovery from 2021 highs.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported subdued quarterly revenue as economic uncertainty led to lower digital ad spending.
Revenue from Google’s advertising business, which includes search and YouTube, fell to £48bn from £52bn. Shares of the company fell more than 5% in after-hours trading.
last month, Alphabet announces it will lay off 12,000 employees globally.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai broke the “bad news” about the layoffs — about 6% of the workforce — in an email to employees.
Likewise, Apple missed sales and profit targets last quarter due to production issues and lower demand for the company’s flagship iPhone.
Sales at the company fell 5% to £95bn, with declines across all product categories except the iPad and services, which posted modest growth.
Apple also missed its first Wall Street profit forecast since 2016, coming in at £1.54 per share, beating analysts’ expectations of £1.59 per share.
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But the company has a silver lining: CEO Tim Cook says production is now “back to where we want it to be” China’s zero-COVID policy eased.
Meanwhile, e-commerce giant Amazon reported positive quarterly results for the holiday season but sounded a warning about the pace of growth in its key cloud computing unit.
company, 18,000 job cuts in early Januarybeating Wall Street expectations, reporting sales of 121 billion pounds, up 9% from a year earlier.
It also forecast sales for the current quarter to match analysts’ estimates.
But more worryingly, Amazon’s long-running profit engine is starting to show signs of a sharp slowdown.
Sales growth for Amazon Web Services slowed to 20% over the past three months, the slowest growth rate since the company began reporting figures for the unit.
After skyrocketing popularity during the pandemic and hiring some 800,000 extra workers, current CEO Andy Jassy is trying to slash expenses and cut non-essential business units after Amazon’s stock price fell nearly 50% last year And slow down hiring.
The drop wiped around £678bn off the company’s market value.