Takeaways from Apple, Facebook and Google's latest earnings
Here's a quick summary of the highs (and lows) of the financials from the three companies:
Apple's 13-year revenue growth streak came to an end earlier this year, and the trend continued in the company's fiscal third quarter of 2016. Many of Apple's key business metrics are in decline, including revenue, which dipped almost 15 percent year over year to $42.4 billion. Sales of Apple's flagship products and geographic growth also shrunk, according to the company's financial results.
Sales of iPads and services (mostly iTunes and App Store) were the only growth areas for Apple. Its services business grew by 19 percent year over year to $5.9 billion, and though iPad shipments were down by 9 percent, related tablets revenue jumped 7 percent to almost $4.9 billion. iPhone sales declined by 15 percent year over year to 40.4 million, and revenue from Apple's smartphone business dropped 23 percent year over year to $24 billion. Apple banked $7.8 billion in net income on $42.4 billion in revenue during the quarter. The company also said it sold its billionth iPhone in July.
Facebook audience growth soars
Facebook saw growth in every important metric during the second quarter of 2016. Its ad revenue jumped 63 percent year over year to $6.24 billion, and the company said 1.71 billion people now use the service at least once a month, a use number that's up 15 percent year over year. Facebook's daily active users rose 17 percent year over year to 1.13 billion, and 1.03 billion of those people use mobile devices to access Facebook every day, according to the company.
During the earnings call, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated the company's long-term vision for "a world that is video first, with video at the heart of all our apps and services." Zuckerberg said the company doesn't plan to run pre-roll ads before videos and will instead opt to run interstitial ads between video segments. Facebook provided no details or timeline for when ads might make their way to live video. The company banked $2.05 billion in net income on $6.44 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2016.
Google's parent company Alphabet was the last of the three tech giants to report earnings this week, and its results were among the most impressive and unexpected. Strong demand for ads on Google's search engine and other products drove a 21 percent year-over-year increase in revenue. Clicks on Google ads increased 29 percent, and advertisers' cost-per-click dropped 7 percent from the prior year, according to the company.
Google's non-advertising business, which includes enterprise cloud services, the Google Play store and hardware, grew by 33 percent year over year, to $2.17 billion. During the earnings call, Google execs attributed much of that growth to its cloud business. Google's experimental projects, "moonshots" or "other bets," resulted in an $859 million loss on $185 million in revenue. The company banked $4.88 billion in net income on $21.5 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2016.