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‘Safe port in the storm:’ Why Apple didn’t get hammered after earnings, while Amazon, Google and Facebook did

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Apple’s earnings received a drastically different reaction from investors than its Big Tech peers Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

Shares of Apple were up about 3.5% Friday morning, the day after Apple reported earnings that showed 8% annual sales growth, and despite misses on estimates for iPhone and services revenue.

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“Apple looks like a “relatively safe port In the storm,” Credit Suisse analyst Shannon Cross wrote in a note on Friday.

But investors fled from other Big Tech stocks this week. Microsoft and Alphabet had their worst days of the year on Wednesday. Meta had its second-worst day on Thursday, plunging 24% to prices it hasn’t traded at since 2016. And Amazon was down about 10% Frida morning after reporting earnings Thursday.

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The reasons varied. Meta struggled with shrinking free cash flow as it continued its metaverse spending spree. Alphabet said ad sales were slowing as YouTube reported its first-ever revenue decline. And Microsoft was pressured by weak guidance and cloud revenue that missed expectations. Amazon missed revenue estimates and signaled a weak holiday quarter and narrowing profits.

But Apple now looks a lot more stable than its peers, especially as fears of a recession start weighing on ad sales and potential holiday spending. It’s largely because Apple relies on hardware and services that people are still buying.

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Mac revenue was up 25% year-over-year, for example. And while iPhone revenue missed estimates, it still rose 9.67% year-over-year. Services also popped 4.98% year-over-year, despite missing analyst estimates.

And Apple managed this while the larger phone and PC industry saw big declines. Worldwide smartphone shipments declined 9% during the third quarter, while Apple’s shipments increased by 8%, despite its higher-priced devices, according to an estimate from research firm Canalys this week.

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“Demand for premium devices remains intact,” wrote Cowen’s Krish Sankar in a note on Friday.

In short, Apple’s business remains strong, and demand for its products remains high around the world, even in emerging markets, bucking downward trends for global smartphone sales from other brands.

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“Following Apple’s F4Q22 results, it remains our top pick and, we believe, will likely remain a relative safe haven for many as the macroenvironment remains highly uncertain and choppy,” Cross, of Credit Suisse, said. Cross added that Apple’s results showed the company continues to grow in every region it sells in, despite recent price increases and weakening consumer sentiment.

Apple’s quasi-guidance also was largely in-line with expectations, versus companies like Amazon that suggested a weaker holiday quarter.

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Apple CFO Luca Maestri said total year-over-year revenue would grow in December, but slower than the 8.1% growth during the September quarter.

But the stat still showed many analysts that Apple would continue its sales growth streak that’s been in effect since the start of the pandemic. Keep in mind, next quarter’s growth will have to be off of a massive $124 billion base of sales from last year’s December quarter.

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However, the way that Apple now gives guidance through data points leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and some analysts believe that the current quarter could be worse than the market is pricing in. At least one even thinks Apple’s data point suggests a down quarter.

“Apple is essentially saying revenues are going to be down next quarter,” said Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Friday, pointing out that Apple’s December quarter has an extra week this year.

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Sacconaghi said some of Apple’s big tech peers also seemed to have issues controlling costs, whereas Apple remains fairly lean and profitable.

While Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts that the company was seeing the effects of inflation on its costs, particularly in logistics, it also has managed the chip supply shortage well and said on Thursday that it had no silicon shortages during the quarter.

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Apple isn’t immune to the advertising slowdown hitting Meta and Alphabet, though Cook said Thursday that ads are a very small part of Apple’s services business.

Add it all up, and it’s possible to see why some analysts consider Apple to be “recession-resistant.”

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“Overall, our viewpoint remains consistent that Apple remains recession resilient given its products, services and wearables businesses,” wrote Piper Sandler’s Harsh Kumar.



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Apple launches its Pay Later service

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Apple CEO Tim Cook visits the Fifth Avenue Apple Store on September 16, 2022 in New York City.
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Kevin Mazur | Getty Images

Apple on Tuesday introduced Apple Pay Later, which will allow users to split purchases into four payments spread over the course of six weeks.
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Affirm dropped 4% on the news.

Apple Pay Later users will be able to manage, track and repay their loans in their Apple Wallet, the company said in a release Tuesday. Individuals can apply for Apple Pay Later loans between $50 and $1,000 and use them for in-app and online purchases made through merchants that accept Apple Pay. Payments have no interest and no fees.

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Users can apply for a loan within the Apple Wallet app without it impacting their credit score, Apple said. Once they select the amount they would like to withdraw, a soft credit pull will be conducted to make sure they are in “a good financial position” to take on a loan, according to the release.

Apple will invite select people to access a prelease version of Apple Pay Later Tuesday, and the company said it plans to expand access to all eligible users in the coming months.

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Approved users will see a “Pay Later” option while using Apple Pay to check out online and in apps on iPhones and iPads. They will also be able to apply for a loan right at checkout. Apple said purchases using the software will be authenticated using Face ID, Touch ID or a passcode.

The company said users can see the amount due for their existing loans, as well as the total amount due in the next 30 days, in Apple Wallet. Users will be asked to link a debit card as their loan repayment method. Credit cards won’t be accepted.

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This story is developing. Please check back for updates.



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Microsoft introduces an A.I. chatbot for cybersecurity experts

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Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., speaks during the Windows 10 Devices event in New York on Oct. 6, 2015. Microsoft Corp. introduced its first-ever laptop, three Lumia phones and a Surface Pro 4 tablet, the first indication of the company’s revamped hardware strategy three months after saying it would scale back plans to make its own smartphones.
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Microsoft on Tuesday announced a chatbot designed to help cybersecurity professionals understand critical issues and find ways to fix them.
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The company has been busy bolstering its software with artificial intelligence models from startup OpenAI after OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot captured the public imagination following its November debut.

The resulting generative AI software can at times be “usefully wrong,” as Microsoft put it earlier this month when talking up new features in Word and other productivity apps. But Microsoft is proceeding nevertheless, as it seeks to keep growing a cybersecurity business that fetched more than $20 billion in 2022 revenue.

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The Microsoft Security Copilot draws on GPT-4, the latest large language model from OpenAI — in which Microsoft has invested billions — and a security-specific model Microsoft built using daily activity data it gathers. The system also knows a given customer’s security environment, but that data won’t be used to train models.

The chatbot can compose PowerPoint slides summarizing security incidents, describe exposure to an active vulnerability or specify the accounts involved in an exploit in response to a text prompt that a person types in.

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A user can hit a button to confirm an answer if it’s right or select an “off-target” button to signal a mistake. That sort of input will help the service learn, Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president of security, compliance, identity, management and privacy at Microsoft, told CNBC in an interview.

Engineers inside Microsoft have been using the Security Copilot to do their jobs. “It can process 1,000 alerts and give you the two incidents that matter in seconds,” Jakkal said. The tool also reverse-engineered a piece of malicious code for an analyst who didn’t know how to do that, she said.

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That type of assistance can make a difference for companies that run into trouble hiring experts and end up hiring employees who are inexperienced in some areas. “There’s a learning curve, and it takes time,” Jakkal said. “And now Security Copilot with the skills built in can augment you. So it is going to help you do more with less.”

Microsoft isn’t talking about how much Security Copilot will cost when it becomes more widely available.

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Jakkal said the hope is that many workers inside a given company will use it, rather than just a handful of executives. That means over time Microsoft wants to make the tool capable of holding discussions in a wider variety of domains.

The service will work with Microsoft security products such as Sentinel for tracking threats. Microsoft will determine if it should add support for third-party tools such as Splunk based on input from early users in the next few months, Jakkal said.

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If Microsoft were to require customers to use Sentinel or other Microsoft products if they want to turn on the Security Copilot, that could very well influence the purchasing decisions, said Frank Dickson, group vice president for security and trust at technology industry researcher IDC.

“For me, I was like, ‘Wow, this may be the single biggest announcement in security this calendar year,’” he said.

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There’s nothing stopping Microsoft’s security rivals, such as Palo Alto Networks, from releasing chatbots of their own, but getting out first means Microsoft will have a head start, Dickson said.

Security Copilot will be available to a small set of Microsoft clients in a private preview before wider release at a later date.

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WATCH: Microsoft threatens to restrict data from rival AI search tools

Microsoft threatens to restrict data from rival AI search tools



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Disney reportedly cuts metaverse division under Iger’s restructuring

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Bob Iger, CEO, Disney, during CNBC interview, Feb. 9, 2023.
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Randy Shropshire | CNBC

Disney is cutting its metaverse division as part of the layoffs set to begin this week, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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Disney, like most companies in 2021, hopped on the metaverse hype train after Facebook changed its name to Meta and outlined bold claims to create a new digital world. Former CEO Bob Chapek established a unit focused on the company’s metaverse strategy led by Mike White, who was previously in charge of Disney’s consumer experiences and platforms. Chapek told employees in a memo at the time that White’s task was “connecting the physical and digital worlds” for Disney entertainment.

All 50 of the employees under White were let go, according to the report, but White remains at the company. His new role remains unclear.

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Disney never explicitly outlined what it planned to do with the metaverse, but Chapek said in a 2021 earnings call that Disney was creating “unparalleled opportunities” for consumers to engage with its products and platforms.

“Suffice it to say our efforts to date are merely a prologue to a time when we’ll be able to connect the physical and digital worlds even more closely, allowing for storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney metaverse,” he said during the call.

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Chapek was succeeded by Bob Iger, who returned to Disney’s helm late last year. 

The latest layoffs were initially announced in February and will impact about 7,000 employees, according to a memo sent by Iger. The job cuts will be cross-company, hitting Disney’s media and distribution division, parks and resorts, and ESPN.

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Since returning as CEO, Iger has reorganized the company and acknowledged that he’d consider selling Hulu. The layoffs are part of a broader effort to reduce corporate spending and boost free cash flow. Disney said last month it plans to cut $5.5 billion in costs, including $3 billion in content spend.

Disney will host its annual shareholder meeting April 3.

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Read more from The Wall Street Journal.

— CNBC’s Alex Sherman contributed to this report.

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