Today’s Big Tech earnings in a mere 700 words

@alex / @kirstenkorosec / 2:00 pm PDT • April 28, 2021

Image Credits: Denise Taylor / Getty Images

Today was yet another day of earnings from tech’s biggest names. To keep you up to speed without burying you in an endless crush of numbers we’ve pulled out the key data from each of the major reports.

In each you will also find a link to their earnings reports. What does all of the data from the week’s earnings downloads mean for startups? We’ll have a full roundup on that front tomorrow morning, so stay tuned.

Here’s what you need to know:

Facebook crushed financial expectations, missed slightly on users. Shares of Facebook are up around 5% after it reported its recent financial results. Facebook had a somewhat two-part report. The first piece of its results was a huge financial beat; the second was that it missed ever-so-slightly on active usage. Investors are weighing the former more heavily than the latter. In numerical terms, Facebook had been expected to report $23.67 billion in revenue. Instead, it posted $26.17 billion. And its earnings per share beat expectations by $0.93 per share, or just under 40%. Facebook is a controversial company with known issues. But turning in better than expected financial results is not one of them.
Shopify smashed expectations, again. Its shares spiked, again. The post-IPO Shopify story of the Canadian e-commerce infra player kicking the heck out of expectations continued today. Investors had expected Shopify to post $865.48 million in total Q1 2021 revenue. Shopify managed $988.6 million instead. And it beat profit expectations by a multiple. What drove the Shopify results? The company’s so-called “Merchant Solutions” business, which grew by 137%, faster than the company’s aggregate 110% growth rate in the quarter. Merchant Solutions at the company encompasses its payments, shipping, and capital services, among other elements of its business.
Apple shares rose after the company reported strong growth across its product categories. Apple, like Facebook, demolished investor expectations for its most recent quarter. In the three-month period ending March 27, 2021, Apple produced revenues of $89.6 billion and earnings per diluted share of $1.40 were miles ahead of an expected $77.35 billion in revenue and $0.99 in diluted EPS. What drove the huge win? Growth in every single product category that the company reports, compared to the year-ago period. iPhone sales totaled $47.94 billion, compared to a year-ago result of $28.96 billion. And the company’s key services business line grew from $13.35 billion to $16.90 billion over the same temporal interval. For the nerds in the room, Apple’s net income as a percentage of gross profit in the quarter was just over 62%. Wow.
Spotify shares fell sharply after it reported slower-than-anticipated user growth. In financial terms, Spotify had a pretty good quarter. It met revenue expectations (around €2.15 billion), and lost less money per share than was anticipated. However, the music streaming company’s user base only reached 356 million in the first quarter of the year, the low end of Spotify’s 354 million to 364 million guidance, and under the market’s expectation of just over 360 million. Its shares were off around 12% today. Why did Facebook shares rise after its usage miss, while Spotify’s fell? Facebook crushed financial expectations. Spotify merely met them. And Facebook’s user base miss appears smaller than what Spotify detailed.
GrubHub grew its revenues and losses ahead of its acquisition. GrubHub, which is in the final stages of being digested by JustEat Takeaway, brought in more money in the first quarter than in the same period a year ago, but also lost more money too. Here’s the breakdown: Revenue grew 52% year-over-year to $550.6 million thanks to all that pandemic-driven demand for delivery. GrubHub also reported a negative Adjusted EBITDA of $9.3 million. GrubHub blamed its adjusted EBITDA results on several factors, including temporary fee caps (which it opposes), increased delivery driver costs caused by short-term driver supply imbalances from surging demand, extreme winter weather in numerous parts of the country and, to a lesser degree, the issuance of stimulus payments that caused some drivers to temporarily reduce hours in March. Active diners rose 38% year-over-year to 33.0 million, another positive sign for the company. But alas, its net loss grew to $75 million, or a loss of $0.81 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $33.4 million or a loss of $0.36 per diluted share in the same year-ago period.