The joys of quarterly earnings!
The joys of quarterly earnings!
Working hard, or bear-ly working? Cath Virginia
It’s earnings season, and investors got an unpleasant surprise from Google: an increase on its spending estimate, to as much as $205 billion — from the last quarter’s projection of up to $190 billion. Even the lower end of Google’s new projected range — $195 billion — is much more than the company had previously forecast as its top end spending. Now, look, I recognize that there’s an impulse to say things like “What’s $15 billion between friends?” but from an investor’s perspective, Google has essentially said that it can’t accurately forecast its costs, which is a scary thing. Plus, Google is spending more money than it’s making. And Google is also facing competitive pressures from Chinese AI tools, as well as pricing pressure to keep the cost of its models low.
You don’t have to be a finance genius to figure out that spending more than you make isn’t an ideal business practice. What’s more, increased spending in an environment where you have to either keep your prices static or drop them doesn’t bode well. You’re spending more and getting the same amount back, or — worse — spending more for less revenue.
“A reminder of funding strain in the AI build-out.”
These pressures aren’t just on Google. They’re on the entire AI ecosystem. Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft will all report their earnings this week, and there are plenty of people who think they will also announce they
