Why Big Tech Needs to Work Harder to Woo Wall Street
The industry has spent five years enjoying large valuations, but the market is evolving.
In a single two-and-a-half-hour stretch on Jan. 25, Microsoft Corp. stock erased $156 billion of its shareholders’ money, then rebounded, recovering all of its losses and adding $74 billion. In one sense this was just another lurch in the markets’ wild ride in 2022, as investors adjust to recovering economies and the prospect of rising interest rates. But it also points to a new environment in which the most valuable U.S. tech companies are going to have to work harder to justify their trillion-dollar or near-trillion-dollar valuations.
The Big Tech companies are still doing well. The day after Microsoft’s earnings, Apple reported a quarterly performance that wildly exceeded expectations. On Feb. 1, Alphabet also beat analysts’ projections. Share prices for both companies spiked—but remain below their peaks. The way Microsoft’s white-knuckle afternoon played out is particularly illustrative of the shifting environment: At 4 p.m. New York time, it released quarterly financial results. They exceeded analysts’ expectations, except for one crucial number: Growth slowed slightly at its lucrative Azure cloud computing business. Investors panicked, sending shares down as much as 6.8% in aftermarket trading.