Slowdown of Amazon's growth engines and Alphabet

(Bloomberg) – The growth drivers of Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc., the world's largest Internet companies, stuck in the last quarter and, after weeks of nervousness on the stock market, [19659002] Amazon, the largest online retailer, unveiled a second consecutive quarter of sales not having reached the estimates, the first time in nearly four years that revenue was not obtained. provided twice in a row. On Thursday, the company also released a disappointing earnings and earnings forecast for the holiday season, which resulted in a 9.4% drop in shares in post-closing trades. Even the highly profitable cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, has not grown at the same pace as the previous three months.

Alphabet sales in the third quarter did not meet badysts' expectations and growth. revenues from Google's top sites, including search and YouTube, were 22% lower than the previous period.

Shares of Alphabet, the world's largest digital advertiser, lost 5% the year before. pre-market operations. Amazon fell 8% to 4:50 in New York.

In this period of low interest rates, Amazon and Google offer investors the opportunity to take advantage of the rapid growth of the online advertising and e-commerce markets. and cloud computing driven by a stable global economy. Amazon shares have been multiplied by about three over the last three years, while those of Alphabet have increased by more than 50%. the prospects of the economy. If the recent fall of the stock market is added, companies have little room for maneuver to conceal their results.

"Given the current market environment, the profit report must be perfect or the stock will be punished," said Vic Anthony, an badyst at Aegis Capital Corp.

The environment is more worrisome than a quarter or two of revenue figures lower than expected. After years of rapid growth, the percentage of Americans who connect to the Internet, use social media or own their own mobile device has reached a plateau in the past two years, according to a data badysis conducted in September by the Pew Research Center.

] In response to this, the US Internet giants are spending heavily to find new sources of growth.

Amazon's operating expenses increased by 22 percent to 52.9 billion US dollars during the quarter. The company invests in cloud data centers, voice-based computing devices and international growth in countries such as India.

Alphabet equipment expenditures reached 5.28 billion US dollars, an increase of 49% over the previous year. The company spends billions of dollars a year building data centers, while following Amazon's footsteps in the cloud and developing and commercializing new consumer devices such as its Pixel phones.

Original note: Amazon, the growth engine of Alphabet, Sputter, Spend Surges (1)

– With the collaboration of Spencer Soper and Ian King

Reporter in the original story: Alistair Barr in San Francisco, [email protected]

Editors responsible for the original note: Jillian Ward, [email protected], Andrew Pollack

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