Goodbye April, hello May! 👋
Due to the various public holidays, you’re receiving a condensed edition of Deep Dive with highlights from the busiest week in the corporate earnings calendar.
TECH TITANS
From Silicon Valley to South Korea, the tech industry’s biggest players opened their books and the numbers were generally spectacular.
Consumer electronics: Samsung has reclaimed its title as the leading maker of smartphones. Analysts say the Korean conglomerate shipped 76.5 million handsets in the January-March period, giving it a 22% share of the market. Samsung also announced a jump in first-quarter operating profit and is optimistic about sales of its memory chips, but executives warned that supply issues for other components could dent the mobile division’s bottom line in 2021.
Apple is certainly keeping an eye on the global microchip crunch since a lack of semiconductors will hurt its product range and, in turn, profits. For the moment, consumers really can’t get enough of iPhones, iPads and Macs. Even the pricey iPhone 12 model hasn’t hurt customer appetite. As a result, Apple saw a “blowout quarter” with revenue increasing a whopping 54% from Q1 2020. What’s more, Apple’s China business continues to thrive.
Online advertising: Enhanced screen time equals greater opportunities for online ad clicks, as Alphabet and Facebook discovered. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is making billions and billions of dollars through its search engine and YouTube. Elsewhere, higher ad prices helped lift Facebook’s revenues significantly. However, the social media platform is expecting headwinds from Apple’s recent iOS privacy updates.
Cloud computing: Besides hardware and e-commerce, cloud computing is going from strength to strength. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud clocked booming demand for cloud services as offices solidified their virtual arrangements. Top provider AWS reported sales of US$13.5 billion during the quarter, up 32% from a year ago.
IN VOGUE
Apparently Crocs are no longer a fashion faux pas. The clogs became a footwear staple during 2020’s stay-at-home orders - and it seems the shoes have staying power.
The company’s first quarter results smashed expectations, sending shares soaring on Tuesday. In fact, CROX stock is now up 360% over the past year.
CEO Andrew Rees says demand for the Crocs brand is “stronger than ever” across the world, with each region recording double-digit percentage growth. Rees is confident about healthy revenues in the April-June season as well.
Despite being a polarising footwear option, Crocs clogs and sandals have been gaining in popularity thanks to collaborations and limited-edition drops with celebrities like Justin Bieber, Post Malone and Priyanka Chopra. Victoria Beckham, though, is definitely not a fan!
Thanks for reading! Remember you can follow Deep Dive on Instagram for additional content and daily updates. Click the button below.