Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Earnings Roundup: Meta, Microsoft & Qualcomm
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
- 0:09Speaker 2: This is a breaking news update from Bloomberg.
- 0:12Speaker 1: Instant reaction and analysis from our three thousand journalists and
- 0:16Speaker 1: analysts around the world.
- 0:19Speaker 3: Big Tech earnings, Microsoft rallying three and a half percent
- 0:22Speaker 3: in the aftermarket.
- 0:23Speaker 2: You've got Meta under pressure.
- 0:24Speaker 3: Ed Ludlow is host of Bloomberg Tech on Bloomberg Television
- 0:28Speaker 3: eleven am, Wall Street Time Monday through Friday.
- 0:30Speaker 2: Ed, pick where you want to start.
- 0:33Speaker 4: True Start on Microsoft. I feel like it's probably the
- 0:36Speaker 4: most tangible, right, So everything is in the cloud growth
- 0:40Speaker 4: better than expectations. And you know, the math was really
- 0:44Speaker 4: simple going into this. They've just closed the book on
- 0:47Speaker 4: their fiscal financial year, and the question still remains when
- 0:52Speaker 4: we get to the call, what does Microsoft tell us
- 0:54Speaker 4: about the capital expenditure growth into next year? Because the
- 0:58Speaker 4: street sees CAPEX growing beyond fifty percent. Top line growth
- 1:02Speaker 4: on Azure is forty three percent, give or take XTAC.
- 1:05Speaker 4: All the street really wants to see is that pace
- 1:08Speaker 4: of growth being near to CAPEX growth. Right, It's a
- 1:11Speaker 4: really simple equation. But going back to alphabet, which is
- 1:15Speaker 4: highly analogous, there's so much commentary here from Microsoft about
- 1:19Speaker 4: traction with copilot, like more data points that are just easy,
- 1:24Speaker 4: tangible to understand about how Microsoft's AI efforts are going, right,
- 1:29Speaker 4: And then it's that's the stock reflecting that and after ours.
- 1:32Speaker 1: Is the thirty million paid seats a big deal for
- 1:36Speaker 1: three sixty five copilot for Microsoft?
- 1:38Speaker 4: Yes, because it's versus twenty million at the end of March.
- 1:41Speaker 4: Exactly what I'm pointing to the other one is, I
- 1:44Speaker 4: think you guys mentioned this, but like Nadella was talking
- 1:47Speaker 4: about Azure generating more than one hundred billion dollars in
- 1:50Speaker 4: annualized revenue. You know, remember Amazon went to that figure
- 1:53Speaker 4: very early, you know, in its in its kind of
- 1:56Speaker 4: like growth of AWS. Then what Amazon did they report
- 1:59Speaker 4: to but it was to say this is the AI
- 2:01Speaker 4: specific annualized revenues. So Microsoft's just saying more, you know,
- 2:06Speaker 4: giving newer data points which take us beyond the simple
- 2:09Speaker 4: are the top line numbers growing beyond the capex growth.
- 2:12Speaker 3: Which you kind of want to get right when a
- 2:14Speaker 3: company is spending and building and doing all of this.
- 2:16Speaker 3: That the more information, the more transparency, that's helpful big time.
- 2:21Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 2:21Speaker 4: I mean again, from the press release alone, Microsoft's not
- 2:24Speaker 4: saying anything about fiscal year twenty seven capex. Yeah, so
- 2:28Speaker 4: that there's this period of time where everyone's like, okay, reading,
- 2:31Speaker 4: digesting the statement and the release, and then on the
- 2:34Speaker 4: call everything could change. That is the jeopardy of big
- 2:37Speaker 4: tech earnings. And that's what's fun.
- 2:39Speaker 1: Well, let's do a little bit with meta platforms and
- 2:42Speaker 1: then we'll get back to some of these other names.
- 2:44Speaker 1: Here's a Meta shares a Meta down about six point
- 2:47Speaker 1: three percent. Let's go ahead and say six percent. Some
- 2:50Speaker 1: numbers here. Third quarter revenue sixty one to sixty four billion,
- 2:53Speaker 1: the estimus for sixty three point one seven billion. Second
- 2:56Speaker 1: quarter revenue came in above estimate. Second quarter EPs came
- 2:59Speaker 1: in ever so shy of estimates. What is the thing
- 3:02Speaker 1: that is moving the stock with Meta today?
- 3:05Speaker 4: It's so hard? I mean, revenues up twenty eight percent
- 3:08Speaker 4: ahead of expectations, right, ad impressions have improved, Pricing has improved.
- 3:13Speaker 4: Meta's core business. It's bread and butter is still advertising.
- 3:16Speaker 4: The story was how has AI made that better? More monetizable?
- 3:21Speaker 1: So revenue should be higher than estimates?
- 3:23Speaker 5: Right, it is?
- 3:25Speaker 4: It is ahead of vespers.
- 3:26Speaker 2: I think it's twenty right.
- 3:27Speaker 1: Sorry for the third the outlook, I'm sorry.
- 3:29Speaker 4: Yeah, for the outlook, right, Yeah, the one thing that
- 3:32Speaker 4: my brain is going to is that the operating margins
- 3:36Speaker 4: didn't just come in significantly below a consensus by about
- 3:40Speaker 4: four percentage points, but costs are up fifty five percent,
- 3:45Speaker 4: So the operating margin has fallen from forty three to
- 3:47Speaker 4: thirty one. Costs are higher, and free cash flow has
- 3:52Speaker 4: basically disappeared. Just im reading the statements.
- 3:55Speaker 1: And is that because they're investing so much in talent?
- 3:59Speaker 1: Is it because the tokens cost so much? Like this,
- 4:02Speaker 1: these companies are spending a ton of money. We looked
- 4:05Speaker 1: at last week what Alphabet said about going you know,
- 4:08Speaker 1: cash flow negative. Meta Platforms is feeling it. Meta is
- 4:12Speaker 1: feeling it when it comes to its earnings because it's
- 4:14Speaker 1: spending more money.
- 4:16Speaker 4: Maybe they're disclosing that there was a one time legal
- 4:20Speaker 4: charge of two point four billion dollars and then severance
- 4:23Speaker 4: costs super interesting one point two billion dollar charges. We
- 4:27Speaker 4: knew about the story right about the waves of Meta layoffs,
- 4:31Speaker 4: so that could excluding those, the underlying operating performance was
- 4:35Speaker 4: kind of much nearest expectations. Maybe they're a big factor,
- 4:38Speaker 4: but also goes the idea that the free cash flow
- 4:40Speaker 4: is basically gone which is such a common story across
- 4:43Speaker 4: the mag seven.
- 4:44Speaker 3: Right right, And I want to just throw one other
- 4:46Speaker 3: headline across the Bloomberg Meta saying some youth related trials
- 4:49Speaker 3: may result in material loss like we have done here
- 4:53Speaker 3: are Olivia Carvel, and I believe others on the team
- 4:57Speaker 3: have done a lot about social media and the impact
- 5:00Speaker 3: on youth, and we know Meta has certainly been one
- 5:02Speaker 3: of the targets, so just interesting to get some of
- 5:05Speaker 3: that clarity again. Just a quick headline Meta boosting the
- 5:10Speaker 3: low end of its annual capital spending outlook. And I'm
- 5:12Speaker 3: looking at the live blog too, and I think at
- 5:15Speaker 3: this is something that you were.
- 5:16Speaker 2: Going to and this is our Lindawan, our tech editor.
- 5:20Speaker 3: One thing traders might be reacting to second quarter operating
- 5:22Speaker 3: margin thirty one percent versus forty three percent a year earlier.
- 5:25Speaker 3: The companies expecting that total expenses of one hundred and
- 5:28Speaker 3: sixty five billion one hundred and sixty nine billion, raising
- 5:30Speaker 3: the low end from one hundred and sixty two billion previously.
- 5:34Speaker 3: I want to bring into the conversation to our man
- 5:37Speaker 3: deep seeing Bloomberg Intelligence Global ahead of Technology Research making
- 5:40Speaker 3: his way from TV into our radio studio we're talking
- 5:44Speaker 3: about Meta, what investors don't like it.
- 5:48Speaker 5: I mean, look, there wasn't much of an upside when
- 5:51Speaker 5: it comes to the top line both this quarter and
- 5:54Speaker 5: the guide, and when it comes to Capex, even though
- 5:58Speaker 5: they didn't raise capex. The one line that caught my
- 6:00Speaker 5: attention was that first line from Mark Zuckerberg that he
- 6:05Speaker 5: expects things to improve across enterprises. And that's new because
- 6:12Speaker 5: all of Meta's generated revenue is generated from the consumer side.
- 6:16Speaker 5: So the fact that he has that in the first
- 6:19Speaker 5: line shows that they are leaning towards.
- 6:22Speaker 2: Enterprise usage, the cloud builder, cloud.
- 6:25Speaker 5: Built API usage by enterprises, and that's what they are
- 6:29Speaker 5: betting on when it comes to this kind.
- 6:31Speaker 1: I mean silly question, but does Meta actually have an
- 6:34Speaker 1: LM that can be licensed by some of these enterprises
- 6:38Speaker 1: in a way that would be different than an enterprise
- 6:41Speaker 1: using a platform from Microsoft or from open Ai or
- 6:45Speaker 1: from Anthropic.
- 6:46Speaker 5: So it's getting more competitive when it comes to royal
- 6:50Speaker 5: LM usage. And the reason I say that is because
- 6:53Speaker 5: of Kimmy K three and all these open source models
- 6:56Speaker 5: that have really taken off and are being used for
- 7:02Speaker 5: use cases besides the frontier where Anthropic is being used.
- 7:06Speaker 5: So I think if Meta has to compete with open source,
- 7:11Speaker 5: it's going to be interesting how they position themselves, whether
- 7:15Speaker 5: it's in terms of lower token pricing, or they have
- 7:19Speaker 5: another strategy because they're building a business from scratch and
- 7:24Speaker 5: it's not easy. They're late to that cloud game. They
- 7:27Speaker 5: are late to that API game. So how they go
- 7:30Speaker 5: about it. Who those anchor customers are going to be
- 7:33Speaker 5: that's a million dollar question. Who are they going to
- 7:35Speaker 5: partner with in terms of that enterprise usage. Is it
- 7:38Speaker 5: going to be Microsoft or Anthropic? We don't know that,
- 7:42Speaker 5: well Ed, Come on back in here. What do you
- 7:43Speaker 5: think you're going through all of these releases right now?
- 7:46Speaker 5: You point out that Mark Zuckerberg what mandep was referring
- 7:49Speaker 5: to Mark Zuckerberg writing quote, AI is accelerating our core
- 7:52Speaker 5: business today, powering our next generation of products, and opening
- 7:55Speaker 5: the door to entirely new enterprise opportunities.
- 7:58Speaker 1: What are those opportunities?
- 8:00Speaker 2: Yeah?
- 8:00Speaker 4: So Bloomberg's reported that Meta has explored a literal cloud
- 8:04Speaker 4: computing business. Charlie called Meta a hyperscaler. It operates data
- 8:10Speaker 4: centers at Hyperscale for its own business, for its internal workloads.
- 8:15Speaker 4: That's very different to renting out compute capacity to third parties,
- 8:20Speaker 4: but Bloomberg's reported metas looking at that more recently. Kurt
- 8:24Speaker 4: Wagner got on the phone with Mark Zuckerberg, right and
- 8:26Speaker 4: he said, yeah, you know, that is something an idea
- 8:29Speaker 4: of something we might do. That quote around enterprise opportunities
- 8:34Speaker 4: is pretty much the sort of clearest example we've had,
- 8:36Speaker 4: and I think going into this, i'd wager that for
- 8:39Speaker 4: the call, that is something that analysts will focus questions on.
- 8:43Speaker 4: It's not about it's not about ROI on the AI investment.
- 8:47Speaker 4: It's about ROI on the infrastructure they're building. How can
- 8:51Speaker 4: you basically make new revenue streams and more money on
- 8:53Speaker 4: all the infrastructure you've built? And so interesting. I think
- 8:56Speaker 4: Mandib's very smart to get to that so quick. And interesting,
- 9:00Speaker 4: by the way, because how many quarters on the show
- 9:03Speaker 4: do we say, well, here's the quote from the CEO
- 9:05Speaker 4: at the top of the reason, and we kind of
- 9:06Speaker 4: move on, and how much work is this one doing?
- 9:09Speaker 4: I find that fascinating.
- 9:11Speaker 3: I want to ask both of you because here we
- 9:13Speaker 3: have Meta under pressure. You've got Microsoft, though rallying in
- 9:16Speaker 3: the aftermarket, not up as much as it was earlier,
- 9:19Speaker 3: but still up about one point four percent.
- 9:22Speaker 2: Mindev let me bring you back in here.
- 9:24Speaker 3: What does a better tell on the AI spend the
- 9:27Speaker 3: AI narrative, like, is it Microsoft in terms of the
- 9:32Speaker 3: enthusiasm and the expected momentum to continue?
- 9:35Speaker 5: I mean, just look at the margin degradation for Meta
- 9:38Speaker 5: here they went from forty three percent to thirty one
- 9:41Speaker 5: percent operating margin.
- 9:43Speaker 2: Massive drop.
- 9:44Speaker 5: It is a massive and that's where a Microsoft with
- 9:47Speaker 5: its cloud business is able to cushion, you know, some
- 9:51Speaker 5: of the headwinds it is facing from all these l
- 9:53Speaker 5: lamps and still do very well in terms of the
- 9:57Speaker 5: holding up the margin side of the equation.
- 10:00Speaker 1: Far from capex, where's that money going? Why are margins
- 10:02Speaker 1: under pressure?
- 10:03Speaker 5: I mean in the case so with all these companies, now,
- 10:07Speaker 5: once you raise your capex, you have to show the
- 10:10Speaker 5: capex in the depreciation line, so your cost.
- 10:13Speaker 2: Of revenue will keep going up.
- 10:15Speaker 5: So in the case of Meta, it's not as if
- 10:18Speaker 5: they're hiring a lot more people. They did hire a
- 10:20Speaker 5: lot of people and paid millions of dollars, But I
- 10:23Speaker 5: don't think that.
- 10:24Speaker 1: You don't think that's what it is.
- 10:25Speaker 5: No, it's that cost of revenue line going up because
- 10:29Speaker 5: now those depreciation expenses wouldkick.
- 10:31Speaker 2: In, so it's just capex.
- 10:32Speaker 5: You think it will be capeck.
- 10:35Speaker 1: But can't they make up for that with the investments
- 10:38Speaker 1: that they've made in making advertising more targeted and getting
- 10:41Speaker 1: us to click or at least getting marketers in front
- 10:45Speaker 1: of eyeballs and even more efficient.
- 10:46Speaker 5: What the ad pricing growth was it was around fourteen percent,
- 10:50Speaker 5: and you.
- 10:51Speaker 1: Know that's pretty solid.
- 10:52Speaker 5: That's been the case for the last few quarters. So
- 10:55Speaker 5: the problem now they have is all those levers, which
- 10:59Speaker 5: once there to protect the margins, are not good enough
- 11:02Speaker 5: when your capex is growing up like this and you
- 11:05Speaker 5: know your cost of revenue will keep growing. So that's
- 11:08Speaker 5: that's a hard part in managing margins here for Meta.
- 11:12Speaker 3: So Microsoft's like, sorry, Mata, but we're having a pretty
- 11:14Speaker 3: good day. Microsoft share is still up in the aftermarket. So,
- 11:18Speaker 3: Ed Ludlow, you've been going through and reading more from
- 11:21Speaker 3: the company.
- 11:21Speaker 2: What's jumping out at you?
- 11:23Speaker 4: Well, going into this, I think we knew that it
- 11:25Speaker 4: was the case. Maybe man Deep can clear it up.
- 11:27Speaker 4: I think there is some kind of accounting or disclosure
- 11:30Speaker 4: change for Microsoft where the CAPEX number and they're accounting
- 11:34Speaker 4: for leases specifically makes the CAPEX number look smaller. But
- 11:38Speaker 4: again like We're in this period now where the call
- 11:42Speaker 4: comes very important because we know what the Azure growth
- 11:44Speaker 4: number is for the quarter gone and the period this
- 11:48Speaker 4: closed the door on the financial year twenty six, financial
- 11:52Speaker 4: year twenty seven starts. And you know, the very simple
- 11:55Speaker 4: math is, in an environment where everyone thinks CAPEX goes up,
- 11:58Speaker 4: what is the percentage growth in CAPEX that is foreseen
- 12:02Speaker 4: relative to the growth in Azure. And that's why they're
- 12:05Speaker 4: putting so much emphasis on all these other metrics, the
- 12:07Speaker 4: like maybe non financial nature to get some evidence that
- 12:11Speaker 4: their AI investments are getting traction.
- 12:15Speaker 2: What I don't know.
- 12:18Speaker 1: I mean, I think, go go ahead.
- 12:19Speaker 5: I mean, the one thing I had in mind before
- 12:22Speaker 5: coming into earnings is if a company doesn't raise their
- 12:25Speaker 5: capex in an environment where memory prices are up twenty
- 12:28Speaker 5: thirty percent, to me, they are cutting back somewhere else.
- 12:32Speaker 5: And that would be my interpretation for META is because
- 12:35Speaker 5: they didn't raise capex, they certainly are offsetting it with
- 12:39Speaker 5: something else. We just don't know what.
- 12:41Speaker 1: So where are they doing that?
- 12:43Speaker 5: I mean, they don't want to raise capex because the
- 12:46Speaker 5: stock would have been down even more. Yeah, they raised
- 12:48Speaker 5: the capex, so they didn't have a choice. I mean
- 12:50Speaker 5: they're being forced to be disciplined here in terms of
- 12:54Speaker 5: CAPEX because the market doesn't have a tolerance for higher
- 12:57Speaker 5: metas capex for this year and possibly for twenty twenty seven.
- 13:02Speaker 1: Some context to the word discipline now, Carol, discipline for
- 13:05Speaker 1: Meta platforms means one hundredion to one hundred and forty
- 13:08Speaker 1: five billion dollars in CAPEX this year.
- 13:11Speaker 3: Well Ed, come on back in here though, for Meta
- 13:13Speaker 3: moving into cloud though this business and maybe we'll get
- 13:16Speaker 3: more on the call about their intentions and their plans.
- 13:19Speaker 2: I mean, is it still the right move for Meta?
- 13:24Speaker 4: I mean, I feel like, just going off past action
- 13:27Speaker 4: and precedent that we're going to get to the call.
- 13:29Speaker 4: And you know, like the way I think about it is,
- 13:30Speaker 4: if you're listening or watching BusinessWeek right now, you're asking
- 13:33Speaker 4: yourself what's still to come. We've gone through the numbers,
- 13:36Speaker 4: we've gone through the headlines. Everyone with Meta knows about
- 13:39Speaker 4: Mark Zuckerberg, Susan Lee. The CFO is very important and
- 13:43Speaker 4: often does the heavy lifting of communicating the financial strategy.
- 13:47Speaker 4: And I'll just see a world in which we get
- 13:49Speaker 4: to the call and she's like, yeah, here's our commentary
- 13:53Speaker 4: on CAPEX I've Mandya's point is so important because it's
- 13:56Speaker 4: not new, and I mean that with massive respect. The
- 14:00Speaker 4: capex doesn't just go up because you need to spend
- 14:03Speaker 4: more to build more to meet demand. Capex can also
- 14:05Speaker 4: go up because the cost of building those things is higher.
- 14:09Speaker 4: You know, you have labor and construction inflation, materials inflation.
- 14:12Speaker 4: Memory is a massive macro factor. You know. IBM basically
- 14:17Speaker 4: tried to blame ten days ago the lack of spending
- 14:21Speaker 4: on their technology mainframes, in particular because their customers faced
- 14:27Speaker 4: higher capex largely relating to higher memory prices. So you know,
- 14:31Speaker 4: all of these factors are common to all of these
- 14:34Speaker 4: capital expenditure deployers who want to build AI infrastructure.
- 14:38Speaker 3: All right, So we're tracking Meta and Microsoft here in
- 14:42Speaker 3: the after hours. Microsoft up about two percent, a little
- 14:46Speaker 3: bit more.
- 14:46Speaker 2: So just following earnings.
- 14:48Speaker 3: If I go on over to Meta, it is still
- 14:50Speaker 3: down about five point six percent. Let's just also throw
- 14:53Speaker 3: into the mix. We've got Qualcom. That one also came
- 14:56Speaker 3: out with its results, and the stock right now in
- 14:59Speaker 3: the aftermark as they bring it up on my Bloomberg
- 15:01Speaker 3: it is down about three point five percent.
- 15:02Speaker 2: And then we have Armholding.
- 15:03Speaker 1: We have arm Holding says, well, I want to go
- 15:05Speaker 1: to Qualcom real quick to Ed because Ed is interviewing
- 15:07Speaker 1: Christiano Amman tomorrow on Bloomberg Tech. Be sure to tune
- 15:11Speaker 1: in for that. The CEO of Qualcom ed the company
- 15:14Speaker 1: give a week forecast for the current quarter. It's cited
- 15:16Speaker 1: component shortages and rising costs. That's not a new story,
- 15:20Speaker 1: but by any means, I mean, you've known this about.
- 15:22Speaker 4: So it's not new. I would say. In the smartphone market,
- 15:25Speaker 4: it seems worse for Qualcomm than we thought. You know,
- 15:27Speaker 4: they are the main processor makeup for smartphones. They are
- 15:32Speaker 4: getting hit on all sides because of m market demand,
- 15:35Speaker 4: being hit by memory for example. They've tried to diversify
- 15:39Speaker 4: the business away from that reliance on smartphone, but within
- 15:42Speaker 4: smartphone they're also kind of it seems like losing business
- 15:44Speaker 4: from Apple faster than was modeled for. And then like
- 15:49Speaker 4: they are super super entrenched or exposed to Android in China, right,
- 15:56Speaker 4: and so like in aggregate all of the forecasts for
- 15:59Speaker 4: that that handset market, they aren't. They want Rosie to
- 16:03Speaker 4: begin with the thing that I will ask Christiano is
- 16:05Speaker 4: for him to give me his latest assessment of the
- 16:08Speaker 4: smartphone market. For this year and whether it is better
- 16:12Speaker 4: or worse than he had told me last quarter. So simple,
- 16:15Speaker 4: but it is possible that the things deteriorate, you know,
- 16:18Speaker 4: quarters a quarter, and reading in King's report on the
- 16:21Speaker 4: earnings that that seems to be the case.
- 16:23Speaker 3: Hey, So Quaal come down about four point three percent
- 16:26Speaker 3: here in the aftermarket, ARM holdings just down by eight
- 16:28Speaker 3: tents of a person. ARM delivering a sales forecast of
- 16:31Speaker 3: about one point thirty eight billion in the fiscal second quarter,
- 16:35Speaker 3: and we did see the stock under some pressure here,
- 16:38Speaker 3: Mandy've come on back in anything in terms of ARM
- 16:40Speaker 3: or Qualcom, that's that's a note for you.
- 16:43Speaker 5: I mean just exposures. I think Armed, because of the
- 16:47Speaker 5: data center exposure, continues to do better, even though ARM
- 16:51Speaker 5: does have smartphone exposure. But because their data center exposure
- 16:55Speaker 5: has been much higher in the past few quarters, they
- 16:59Speaker 5: seem to be beating numbers, whereas in the case of Qualcomm,
- 17:04Speaker 5: I mean they are talking about a twenty twenty nine
- 17:06Speaker 5: guide and how the business would be more diversified by then.
- 17:11Speaker 5: But in the near term this business is declining. The
- 17:15Speaker 5: handset business is still under pressure. Yeah, because of the
- 17:18Speaker 5: consumer smartphone and the memory pricing.
- 17:20Speaker 3: Impact all right through on ARM noting royalties from those
- 17:24Speaker 3: products data centers specifically more than doubling from a year earlier,
- 17:27Speaker 3: and the appetite our new chip lineup is greater than anticipated.
- 17:30Speaker 3: This is coming from the company's CEO Armholdings