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Google and Facebook definitely are not being helped right now. Advertising is drying up.

by milesskorpen 6y ago

bhupy 6y ago
Alphabet just reported a 13% increase in revenue for Q1.
- pc86 6y ago
  The lion's share of the pandemic closures have been in Q2 so this seems either irrelevant or disingenuous.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    We'll see. Facebook might do poorly in Q2, but Alphabet does way more than advertising now: it does cloud infrastructure (GCP) and productivity (Google Apps for Business), both of which have experienced sharp gains in this pandemic.
    - pc86 6y ago
      We'll see if the lion's share of the pandemic closures happened in Q2? That's an objective fact. We started feeling it in March but the vast majority of action happened in April. April is in Q2.
      - bhupy 6y ago
        No, we'll see the degree to which Alphabet is exposed to the pandemic closures — which as you said, objectively happened. A key detail from the Alphabet earnings: there appeared to be different performance trajectories for the brand and direct response components of their advertising. Direct response continued to have substantial year-on-year growth throughout the entire quarter — can be explained by brands now directly reaching people at home under quarantine. Brand advertising growth accelerated in the first 2 months of the quarter, but began to experience a headwind in mid-March. Snap's earnings call appeared to include the same observation, from Evan Spiegel: "In the short-term, we are shifting sales resources and pulling forward some investments in direct response to better serve the advertisers who are trying to reach our audience during this time…". Additionally, Alphabet obviously also makes its money through Google Cloud Platform, whose compute usage will continue to pick up as more and more people consume online content at home. The net argument is that, even in Q2, Alphabet might come out looking stable because it is not as exposed to the downsides of COVID as, say, Twitter or Facebook. THAT is what I mean when I say "we'll see".
- bamboozled 6y ago
  Q2 will be very different.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    Perhaps, we'll see. The market is purely speculative, and reflects where investors believe things are going. At the moment, the stock prices of health care are up +5%, consumer staples +6.5%, and information technology +8.5%. Energy is down -50%, consumer discretionary -27%, and financials -22%. Due to this, the composition of the S&P500 has dramatically changed, most of its underlying capital is now in higher priced assets in the former list, rather than the lower priced assets in the latter list. Because the S&P500 is a capitalization-weighted index, the total market value reflects this. Honestly this is all just a giant advertisement for investing in index funds.
Symmetry 6y ago
They've got the cash reserves to weather an awful lot.

Google and Facebook definitely are not being helped right now. Advertising is drying up.

bhupy 6y ago

Alphabet just reported a 13% increase in revenue for Q1.

pc86 6y ago
The lion's share of the pandemic closures have been in Q2 so this seems either irrelevant or disingenuous.
- bhupy 6y ago
  We'll see. Facebook might do poorly in Q2, but Alphabet does way more than advertising now: it does cloud infrastructure (GCP) and productivity (Google Apps for Business), both of which have experienced sharp gains in this pandemic.
  - pc86 6y ago
    We'll see if the lion's share of the pandemic closures happened in Q2? That's an objective fact. We started feeling it in March but the vast majority of action happened in April. April is in Q2.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      No, we'll see the degree to which Alphabet is exposed to the pandemic closures — which as you said, objectively happened. A key detail from the Alphabet earnings: there appeared to be different performance trajectories for the brand and direct response components of their advertising. Direct response continued to have substantial year-on-year growth throughout the entire quarter — can be explained by brands now directly reaching people at home under quarantine. Brand advertising growth accelerated in the first 2 months of the quarter, but began to experience a headwind in mid-March. Snap's earnings call appeared to include the same observation, from Evan Spiegel: "In the short-term, we are shifting sales resources and pulling forward some investments in direct response to better serve the advertisers who are trying to reach our audience during this time…". Additionally, Alphabet obviously also makes its money through Google Cloud Platform, whose compute usage will continue to pick up as more and more people consume online content at home. The net argument is that, even in Q2, Alphabet might come out looking stable because it is not as exposed to the downsides of COVID as, say, Twitter or Facebook. THAT is what I mean when I say "we'll see".
bamboozled 6y ago
Q2 will be very different.
- bhupy 6y ago
  Perhaps, we'll see. The market is purely speculative, and reflects where investors believe things are going. At the moment, the stock prices of health care are up +5%, consumer staples +6.5%, and information technology +8.5%. Energy is down -50%, consumer discretionary -27%, and financials -22%. Due to this, the composition of the S&P500 has dramatically changed, most of its underlying capital is now in higher priced assets in the former list, rather than the lower priced assets in the latter list. Because the S&P500 is a capitalization-weighted index, the total market value reflects this. Honestly this is all just a giant advertisement for investing in index funds.

Symmetry 6y ago

They've got the cash reserves to weather an awful lot.