We heard from Meta after the close yesterday, which we discussed in my last note.
They grew revenues by 27%, compared to the same quarter last year. They grew net income by 114%. And they expanded operating margins from 25% to 38%.
Meta was scrutinized for its ongoing massive investment in AI infrastructure. They are in the third year of what will be a $100 billion three-year spend on servers, data centers and network infrastructure.
The stock was punished.
Today we heard from Google (Alphabet) and Microsoft.
Google grew revenues by 15% compared to the same quarter last year. They grew net income by 57%. And they expanded operating margins from 25% to 32%.
Microsoft grew revenues by 17% compared to the same quarter last year. They grew net income by 20%. And they expanded operating margins from 42% to 45%.
Like Meta, both Google and Microsoft are making massive investments in building AI infrastructure capacity. Both stocks went up after earnings (Google, about 10%).
From 2022 through this year, all of the AI barons are spending in the neighborhood of $100 billion in capex on AI infrastructure. And they will do more, to build the capacity needed to meet the insatiable customer demand for computing resources to run AI products and services.
As Microsoft put it, in the their call this afternoon, this is just the first wave, and they are building for the “second wave” of AI.
So, these are trillion-dollar plus companies, growing at an accelerating double-digit pace, rapidly adding new products and services, with smaller headcount, and at a higher and higher rate of profitability. And they’re not expensive (Meta – 23x forward PE, Google 22x, MSFT 31x).
It’s still the early days of the most productivity enhancing technology advancement of our lifetime: generative AI.