Google and Meta's earnings reports exceeded expectations but still faced selling pressure. Are investors overreacting?

According to the Zhongtong Finance APP, after the stock market closed on Tuesday, Google's (GOOGL.US) earnings exceeded Wall Street's expectations. Meta (META.US) followed suit on Wednesday, also surpassing expectations. However, despite the better-than-expected revenue and profit announcements from these two globally valuable tech companies, the Nasdaq index fell by about 3% in two days.

In Google's earnings report, Wall Street expressed concerns about the data from Google Cloud, which is making significant investments in an effort to catch up with Amazon (AMZN.US) and Microsoft (MSFT.US), especially in managing a large number of AI workloads. According to data from LSEG (formerly known as Refinitiv), the cloud computing group reported quarterly revenue of $8.41 billion, lower than analysts' expectations of $8.64 billion.

Google's CFO, Ruth Porat, told analysts that these numbers reflected the "impact of customer optimization efforts," which usually refers to customers cutting expenses.

In addition, concerns about Meta, the parent company of Facebook, were sparked by comments from CFO Susan Li during the fourth-quarter earnings conference call. Li stated that due to the escalating conflicts in the Middle East and the uncertainty of how it would affect advertising spending, Meta provided a wider range of revenue guidance than usual.

Li said during the conference call, "We observed softness in advertising at the start of the fourth quarter, which was related to the beginning of the conflicts and was reflected in our fourth-quarter revenue outlook." "It is difficult for us to directly attribute the soft demand to any specific geopolitical event."

Over the past two days, Google's stock price has fallen by about 12%, while Meta's stock price has fallen by about 7%. As of the earnings report release after the market close, Amazon's stock price has fallen by over 6% during this period.

After a tough year in 2022, so far, 2023 has been a year of rebound for large-cap tech stocks. Meta is the second-best performing stock in the S&P 500 index, second only to AI chip manufacturer NVIDIA (NVDA.US), with a rise of about 140% year-to-date, while the Nasdaq index has risen by 21%. Google has risen by 39% and Amazon has risen by 42%.

All three internet companies have taken significant cost-cutting measures, starting from the end of last year or the beginning of 2023, by cutting record-breaking jobs and canceling some experimental projects. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in February that this year would be the "year of efficiency" for his company, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted in January that the company is "hiring employees for the different economic reality we face today."

It is understood that Meta has highlighted these concerns about the potential business impact of the Middle East conflicts to its shareholders.

In response, analysts at Guggenheim wrote in a report later on Wednesday, "Management's conservative stance has dampened enthusiasm for strong performance and guidance." However, they still recommend buying the stock.In addition, Mark Avallone, President of Potomac Wealth Advisors, said on Thursday that these latest earnings reports reflect investors' uneasiness. He stated that Google's core advertising business and YouTube have performed well in terms of revenue, while the sell-off related to the cloud business indicates that "people are looking for problems that may or may not exist."

Avallone said, "Your earnings report is really not that bad. We found one or two things we don't like about them, and then we're downplaying the best companies in America, which seems a bit of an overreaction."

Overall, while investors are pleased with the focus on spending, concerns are intensifying due to broader economic uncertainty and challenges posed by high interest rates.

So far, the US economy has shown resilience. The US Department of Commerce announced on Thursday that the seasonally adjusted annualized growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the first quarter ending in September was 4.9%, higher than the unadjusted 2.1% in the second quarter.