Under The Dual Pressure Of Epidemic Situation And Antitrust Investigation, The Financial Report Of American Technology Giant Exceeds Expectations

Under the double pressure of the second outbreak of new crown pneumonia in the United States and the government's anti-monopoly investigation, the US technology giant still delivered a good report card in the new quarter.

On July 31, apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google released their latest quarterly financial reports. Except for the other three, the revenue of Google all showed a downward trend. The four major anti-monopoly industries are under different levels of anti-monopoly censorship.

On July 30, the antitrust sub committee of the judicial committee of the US House of Representatives held a hearing to question the market monopoly behaviors of the four giants mentioned above. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO sandar pichay and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attended the five-and-a-half-hour hearing to respond to all the charges that have been filed.

At the hearing, members of Parliament mainly pointed to Facebook's acquisition of instagram and what's up, Amazon's crackdown on third-party sellers on its platform, whether Apple treats all developers of its app store equally, and whether Google uses its search engine to put competitors at a disadvantage.

Liu Qiuying, founder of Sheng'an group, believes that the continuation of the epidemic in the United States has, to some extent, completely changed people's way of life, and at the same time will promote the development of some industries, such as cloud computing, data center, streaming media, etc. Through the home isolation measures, many companies have announced that they will work remotely until the end of the year, and even some posts will be permanently telecommuting. "External factors have accelerated the growth of cloud computing and data centers in Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The streaming media industry also takes advantage of the epidemic situation to achieve a breakthrough. Amazon and apple are also increasing investment in this direction. In the future, there will be more fierce competition in the technology sector. "

Performance against the wind

The hearing is another addition to the US government's antitrust review. Although the outside doubt has always existed, but the market performance is still beautiful. According to the financial report data, Apple's revenue in the third quarter of 2020 (March 29 to June 27) was 59.685 billion US dollars, 11% higher than 53.809 billion US dollars in the same period of last year, and the net profit was 11.253 billion US dollars, 12% higher than 10.44 billion US dollars in the same period of last year. This is generally higher than expected.

In terms of revenue items, affected by the closure of offline stores during the epidemic period, iPhone's revenue was 25.4 billion US dollars, a slight increase of 2% year-on-year. At the same time, driven by the demand for home office and learning, the revenue of MAC, iPad, wearable devices and services increased significantly by 22%, 32%, 18% and 15% respectively.

But just before that, Apple's app store strategy was still under scrutiny by U.S. and European regulators. Apple's App Store contributed $519 billion in sales in 2019. But it has also been criticized by some developers for its high cost, strict rules, and the unequal advantages of Apple's own applications on its platform.

Microsoft is also among the complaints. Microsoft has previously called on U.S. and European regulators to strengthen anti-monopoly review on apple, and almost all software developers are dissatisfied with the "toll tax" charged by Apple's app store as high as 30%. In response, Apple's official response is that 30% commission is the industry standard practice, and 85% of apps don't need to pay the company because they can try it free or make money through advertising and other channels.

Like apple, Facebook is also under pressure. Facebook, the antitrust regulator, said on January 10 that it was buying 18% of its UK industrial assets. This move will allow Facebook to continue to expand its presence in India.

In addition, Facebook is also suffering from a boycott of advertising on the platform. It is reported that more than 100 well-known enterprises in the world, led by Unilever, Verizon of the United States and Coca Cola, have announced that they will suspend paid advertising on Facebook from July, in order to strongly condemn Facebook for ignoring inflammatory remarks and false information on the platform.

Under the fluctuation, Facebook's revenue in the new quarter exceeded expectations. According to the financial report, in the second quarter of 2020, the company's revenue reached 18.7 billion US dollars, an increase of 11% year-on-year, and the net profit reached 5.2 billion US dollars, up 98% year-on-year. However, affected by the advertising boycott, advertising revenue in the next quarter is still unknown.

Xiang Yong, founder of fanmart, a cross-border e-commerce platform, said in an interview with 21st century economic reporter that the main reason for the increase in Facebook in the first half of this year is that e-commerce and games are growing this year, and the turnover of the platform has increased by 30% - 40% compared with last year. "It depends on the ROI of the main customers. That is to say, advertising must be able to make money or have download, transaction conversion, pure brand type of customers put in less

For Amazon, it's also a good harvest season. According to the company's financial report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2020, Amazon's net profit in the second quarter was $5.243 billion, up 100% from $2.625 billion in the same period of last year; net sales volume was $88.912 billion, up 40% from $63.404 billion in the same period of last year. Both sales and earnings per share exceeded the expectations of Wall Street analysts.

Antitrust shadow

While the first three lead expectations, Google is not feeling well in the new season. For the second quarter of 2020 as of June 30, Google's total revenue was $38.297 billion, down 22% from a year earlier. Net profit was $6.959 billion, down 30% year on year.

Since the outbreak of new crown pneumonia, Google's free tools, browser, video and conference software have become the main way for users to work and play during isolation at home. However, due to the epidemic, Google's advertising customers have also cut staff and cut expenses, especially traditional big customers such as banks, travel agencies, airlines and hotels.

Tiger securities related analysts told 21st century economic report that search revenue, Google's core profit point, actually fell by 10%, but YouTube advertising, Google cloud and other revenue of Google all increased steadily. Gu Geyun has quarterly revenue of $3 billion and annual revenue of $12 billion. The trend of diversification is emerging, but whether the recovery depends on the future development of search business.

Google is troubled not only by the decline in traditional advertising revenue, but also by the government's investigation of monopoly. Google has previously promised not to use Fitbit's health data to help its targeted advertising business in an attempt to circumvent EU antitrust scrutiny of its planned $2.1 billion bid for Fitbit. The chairman of the anti-monopoly Committee accused Google of taking more profits from its anti-monopoly website to block its business in the US.

In addition, Google abused its market position and used the monitoring of network traffic to identify competitive threats and crack down on competitors. In June 2019, Amazon was formally included in the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission, an antitrust investigation body. On December 5 of the same year, the agency expanded the scope of Amazon's review from retail business to cloud computing business. The U.S. judicial committee found earlier this year that Amazon used some seller data to create its own products. Former employees of the company used private seller data to develop Amazon's own brand products that compete with third-party sellers.

It is reported that the monopoly investigation report will be released as early as late August. Perhaps, this report can also provide a sample and standard for the regulation of the global Internet technology industry.