1Q20 Tech Reports Give Breathing Space to Investors

Quarterly reports keep on coming. This week Spotify, Facebook, Tesla and Microsoft published their results for 1Q20 and despite the fact that stay-at-home orders forced the suspension of some operations and companies quarantined their employees to prevent the spread of COVID-19, for now, everything looks good for the tech giants.

The first was Spotify, which paid music subscribers surged to 130 million in 1Q20 while monthly active users increased 31 percent from a year earlier, in line with the company’s forecast. However, its revenue rose 22 percent to €1.85 billion (US$2.01 billion) but missed the average analyst estimate of €1.86 billion (US$2.02 billion).

Facebook's total revenue reached US$17.7 billion in 1Q20 despite the reduced demand for advertising caused by COVID-19. After the report was released, the company's shares soared more than 10 percent. Tesla also exceeded analyst expectations and posted its third consecutive quarter of earnings. The company also had a record of deliveries for the January-March period.

Microsoft reported revenues of US$35 million, 15 percent more than the same period in 2019. Its results were mainly driven by its cloud service, which presented an increase of 27 percent compared to the same period in 2019.

More news below: 

• Zoom went over Amazon, Google and Microsoft and chose Oracle to provide its cloud infrastructure service. The companies did not elaborate on the deal but reported that about 7 million GB of Zoom data per day flows through Oracle servers.

• After saying that its users had increased from 10 million in December 2019 to 300 million in April, Zoom backed off and said that it was actually referring to its daily active users. This caused its shares to drop to 8.7 percent on Thursday.

• Apple hits the brakes on iPhone production for about a month and halts manufacturing in Asia. Still, Apple has not changed its plans to launch four new iPhone models in late 2020, all featuring 5G technology.