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Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk attend the inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025. Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the U.S.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson | Getty Images

As tech’s megacap companies enter first-quarter earnings season this week, get ready to hear one word on repeat: uncertainty.

President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again approach to tariffs has created market chaos this month — including five days of massive moves for the Nasdaq — as investors try to gauge the future impact on revenue and earnings for American companies that rely on imports.

Beyond the increase in costs are the follow-on effects, such as the likely drop-off in ad spending that comes with tighter budgets and the potential slowdown in consumer spending that could result from higher prices and rising unemployment.

Trump’s tariffs face almost universal disapproval in the corporate world, which became clear as trillions of dollars in value evaporated in a matter of days, and some of the president’s most vocal supporters, including Elon Musk, voiced opposition.

Beyond being bad for business, the tariff picture changes by the day, making it almost impossible for companies to plan for the future when considering where to manufacture, whether to continue hiring and how aggressively to market products.

On April 9, following four days of market turmoil, Trump dropped tariffs to 10% for most trade partners (while increasing the levy on China to 145%) for 90 days to allow negotiations with those countries. Since then, the Trump administration has signaled that phones, computers and chips would be exempted from the new tariffs, but the president then added to the confusion by casting doubt on the duration of the exemptions, which were viewed as a boon most notably for Apple.

When Tesla kicks off tech earnings on Tuesday, followed by Alphabet on Thursday, executive teams will likely face forward-looking questions that may be difficult to answer.

Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple are all slated to report results next week. Chipmaker Nvidia reports in late May.

As of Thursday’s close, the Nasdaq was down 16% for the year and 6% in April. The first quarter was the worst for the index in almost three years.

Here are some of the key issues facing each tech megacap, in order of when they report:

Tesla

A Tesla car showroom stands doused in blue paint following vandalism by activists of the group New Generation on March 31, 2025 in Berlin, Germany. 

Omer Messinger | Getty Images

Tesla’s Tuesday report lands against a murky backdrop for the electric vehicle maker.

The stock is down 40% for the year so far after closing out its worst quarter since 2022 in March. The big story has been Musk’s many distractions outside of Tesla, most notably his work slashing the federal government as part of the Trump administration.

Tariffs are also a problem, as the company relies on suppliers in Mexico and China for items like automotive glass, printed circuit boards and battery cells, among other parts essential for the production of its cars. Tesla has sought an exemption from the U.S. Trade Representative for equipment imported from China that it uses in its factories.

On the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in January, Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja cautioned shareholders that the Trump administration’s tariffs would have an “impact on our business and profitability.”

For the first quarter, analysts are projecting revenue growth of less than 1% from a year earlier, followed by a slight year-over-year slippage in the second quarter. Investors will want to see if Musk can provide any clarity on how costly tariffs could be going forward. Musk has made his thoughts on the matter fairly clear, calling Trump’s top trade advisor and tariff proponent Peter Navarro a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

Tesla’s business was already under pressure before tariffs and uncertainty roiled markets. In early April, the company reported 337,000 vehicle deliveries in the first quarter, a 13% decline from the previous year. To win over customers in the face of a Musk-induced backlash, and to get customers to buy inventory cars when a new Model Y is on the way, the company had to offer an array of incentives and discounts in the first quarter.

Piper Sandler analysts last week revised their Tesla price target lower, saying after the first-quarter whiff on deliveries that “gross margin is probably trending near multi-year lows.”

Alphabet

Alphabet Inc. and Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during the inauguration of a Google Artificial Intelligence (AI) hub in Paris on February 15, 2024. 

Alain Jocard | AFP | Getty Images

Google parent Alphabet faces an online ad market that’s on edge due to concerns about how Trump’s tariffs will affect the economy and business spending.

A note last week from Piper Sandler pointed to fears of an 18% impact to growth forecasts for the 2025 global ad market. Chinese discount e-commerce apps Temu and Shein, which have been big advertisers in the U.S. in recent years, are of notable concern, and Temu has already pulled way back on spending.

Retail represents at least 21% of Google ad revenue, according to estimates by Oppenheimer & Co., which said that Meta has even more exposure to ad pullbacks.

Investors are equally concerned about the cloud business, as Alphabet is a massive spender on imported data center infrastructure, and is going even bigger to keep up with the AI boom. The company has said it plans to spend $75 billion this year, mostly going toward servers and data centers to power AI and its cloud business.

It’s unclear whether Google will adjust that figure, but such a move may be necessary. Mizuho analysts wrote on April 8 that roughly 25% of Google channel partner customers have reduced spending on the company’s cloud, and “we expect that mix to increase to 50% from elevated customer hesitation” after the tariff announcement.

Though Alphabet doesn’t make a large chunk of its revenue from consumer hardware, it does produce its Pixel and Fitbit products abroad and runs its services on the most popular phone carriers. Pixel products are manufactured in India, after the company began diversifying its supply chain away from China.

Meta

(L-R) UFC CEO Dana White and Mark Zuckerberg attend the UFC 300 event at T-Mobile Arena on April 13, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Jeff Bottari | UFC | Getty Images

Meta has a small hardware business, focused largely on selling virtual reality devices. That’s not the biggest concern for investors.

Rather, like with Google, it’s the potential impact of the tariffs on the economy and the willingness of businesses to spend on digital ads. In Meta’s case, that means ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta acknowledged the negative impact of a U.S.-China trade dispute in its latest annual report, noting that an action “that reduces or eliminates our China-based advertising revenue” would “adversely affect” financial results. Meta’s China revenue was $18.35 billion in 2024, representing a little over 11% of total sales.

Analysts say Temu and Shien represent the bulk of Meta’s China sales. Bank of America analysts wrote in a recent note that Meta could face “3% revenue exposure to Temu and Shein in the US” due to the tariffs. While the “tariff situation still remains fluid,” the firm said companies will reduce online ad spending due to a weakening economy. The analysts reduced their estimate for 2025 revenue by 4.4% to $179.8 billion.

Oppenheimer analysts wrote in a recent note that the China trade war will hurt Meta more than Google, because it’s “more exposed to discretionary spending” and China. The firm warned that companies are more likely to cut ad spending on social media than search, based on a March survey of advertisers from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Where costs could be a concern for Meta is in the data center, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year that the company would spend $60 billion to $65 billion in capex in 2025, calling it a “defining year for AI.” The bulk of that infrastructure has to be imported from Asia, and analysts will have plenty of questions for the company about how much more it will have to spend to continue its AI advancements.

Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella waves during an event celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Microsoft on April 4, 2025 in Redmond, Washington. The company also gave an update on Copilot, its AI tool. 

Stephen Brashear | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Microsoft makes PCs and video game consoles, but it derives most of its revenue from selling software. The company buys lots of hardware to operate cloud services for its clients, transactions that are subject to significantly higher costs due to tariffs.

In early January, Microsoft announced it was aiming to spend more than $80 billion this fiscal year on data centers capable of handling artificial intelligence workloads.

Where investors may be most concerned for Microsoft is in the company’s expansive customer base and whether Trump’s trade policies will lead clients to cut spending on products.

“There’s not a direct tariff impact, and so what we talk about is indirect,” said Brent Bracelin, an analyst at Piper Sandler. He recommends buying Microsoft shares.

Recent surveys indicate that software sales cycles are lengthening and interest in buying new software is waning, Bracelin said. Other analysts have said Microsoft, along with Salesforce, are among the software vendors that are best able to handle higher tariffs.

“We see MSFT and CRM as two of the names best positioned to weather this macro storm as they are already back at/near 2022 trough levels and can adjust spending/capex levels for this ‘new reality’ if needed to preserve” earnings and cash, Evercore ISI analysts wrote in a note earlier this month.

Amazon

Attendees walk through an exposition hall at AWS re:Invent, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, in Las Vegas on Dec. 3, 2024.

Noah Berger | Getty Images

Amazon’s position as an e-commerce juggernaut gives it hefty exposure to potential tariff headwinds, and not just because of consumer spending.

More than 60% of Amazon’s sales are from items sold by third-party merchants, and many of those sellers source their products from China. The remaining 40% comes from vendors Amazon purchases from directly.

Within days of Trump’s new tariffs, Amazon canceled some of those merchandise orders from vendors in China, while Amazon sellers have said they’re considering raising the price of their products.

Investors will be listening for any commentary around the impact of tariffs on its online stores business, especially as Amazon’s summer Prime Day discount event nears. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC last week the company will work to keep prices low on its website, but that sellers may need to “pass the cost” of tariffs on to consumers.

“Amazon is probably the best-positioned company in retail and e-commerce to take advantage of the chaotic situation from tariffs and shifting global supply chains,” Barclays analysts, who have a buy rating on Amazon, wrote in a recent report. “The pandemic was a precursor of this, during which Amazon was able to gain share and move quicker than peers despite its massive size.”

The company’s advertising unit could be “pressured more if trade wars get worse,” analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald, who also recommend buying the stock, wrote in a note on April 15. Most of Amazon’s ad revenue comes from sponsored product ads that appear in search results on its website. Businesses could pull back on their ad spend as they look to conserve costs or reduce traffic to products sourced from China.

And like the other hyperscalers, Amazon has all of the potential added costs associated with tariffs on advanced chips and other data center equipment, depending on what products end up getting exempted. Amazon Web Services is the market leader in cloud infrastructure, ahead of Microsoft and Google.

Apple

People shop at an Apple store in Grand Central Station in New York on April 4, 2025.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Apple has outsized exposure to Trump’s tariffs, as the company generates about three-quarters of its revenue from selling devices that are mostly manufactured in Asia. While Apple got an apparent reprieve when the Trump administration suspended tariffs on computers from China earlier this month, the company still faces significant uncertainty with the possibility of another Trump shift.

Apple has tried to hedge its China risk in recent years, bolstering manufacturing capacity in countries including Vietnam and India. Officials in India said that Apple loaded planes full of iPhones made in the country and sent them to the U.S. in response to tariffs.

Wall Street has been dumping shares of the iPhone maker, sending the stock down 8% in March and another 11% so far this month, a recognition of how damaging long-term tariffs would likely be on Apple’s business.

CEO Tim Cook, along with many of his tech counterparts, has tried cozying up to President Trump, donating to his inauguration in January and attending the event in Washington, D.C. But investors have yet to hear how Cook and the rest of the management team plan to deal with the increased costs, how the company is managing inventory and how it will all add up to affect margins.

Nvidia

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers the keynote address during the Nvidia GTC 2025 at SAP Center on March 18, 2025 in San Jose, California. 

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) are key to the AI infrastructure buildouts across the tech industry. While semiconductors have a tariff exemption, many of the AI servers that have driven the recent boom have been shipped to the U.S. as mostly finished computers, putting them at risk of tariffs.

Since an AI server can cost upwards of $50,000, even small tariffs could have a big impact on costs. And the almost tenfold increase in Nvidia’s stock price over the past two calendar years has baked into it an assumption that sales and profit margins will keep inflating.

Investors will want to hear from CEO Jensen Huang about his relationship with Trump, given the potential importance of that dynamic.

Nvidia said last week that it would produce its “AI supercomputers” in Texas, days after Huang met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Nvidia also said it would buy and package chip production services from companies in Arizona. The company said it would “produce” a half-trillion dollars in AI infrastructure over the next four years.

The White House praised the move, and said in a press release that Nvidia was leading an “American-made chips boom.” Nvidia’s plans for U.S. production will rely on the company getting exceptions for many of the parts it will need to build the computers.

Nvidia’s concern with the government isn’t just about tariffs. The company said last week that it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion tied to exporting H20 graphics processing units to China and other destinations.

During President Joe Biden’s administration, the U.S. restricted AI chip exports and then updated the rules to prevent the sale of more advanced AI processors. The H20 is an AI chip for China that was designed to comply with U.S. export restrictions. It generated an estimated $12 billion to $15 billion in revenue in 2024.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny, Jennifer Elias, Jonathan Vanian, Jordan Novet, Annie Palmer and Kif Leswing contributed to this report.

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Meta could take a $7 billion hit this year because of Trump’s tough China tariffs

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Meta could take a  billion hit this year because of Trump's tough China tariffs

This photo illustration created on Jan. 7, 2025, in Washington, D.C., shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo.

Drew Angerer | AFP | Getty Images


Meta’s core online advertising business could take a $7 billion hit this year due to President Donald Trump’s tough China tariffs impacting retailers in the country.

That’s according to a MoffettNathanson research note published Tuesday that analyzes the potential impact of China-linked retailers like Temu and Shien slashing their Facebook and Instagram advertising budgets amid the U.S. and China trade dispute.

The MoffettNathanson analysts pointed to Meta’s latest annual report in which the company revealed that its China revenue was $18.35 billion in 2024, equating to a little over 11% of total its total sales. Like other analysts, MoffettNathanson believe Temu and Shien comprise the bulk of Meta’s China business, and if those online retailers cut back on their ad campaigns this year, the social networking giant’s 2025 ad sales could be impacted by $7 billion.

Meta did not immediately respond for a request for comment.

There are already signs of a pullback, the analysts wrote, citing a CNBC report about Temu reducing its U.S. advertising spending and seeing a big drop in its Apple App Store rankings following Trump’s China tariffs.

“China’s importance to Meta’s business cannot be overstated,” the analysts wrote in the note. “While Meta does not provide a country-level breakdown of revenue within Europe, we logically can presume that China is Meta’s second-largest revenue source after the United States — a remarkable position for a country where Meta has no users or active platforms.”

Meta could be in even more trouble if the broader markets heads into a recession this year, as some analysts and corporate financial chiefs have predicted. A “truly prolonged economic downturn” combined with the U.S. and China trade dispute “could wipe $23 billion in 2025 advertising revenues off Meta’s books and crush our 2025 earnings by -25%,” the analysts said.

“As noted earlier, we believe Meta is particularly exposed to a pullback in ad spend from Chinese advertisers,” the analysts said. “In a scenario where a recession is triggered or exacerbated by escalating trade tensions, Meta would face a dual headwind: cyclical advertising weakness and a targeted decline in Chinese ad spend.”

The MoffettNathanson analysts still maintain a Buy rating on Meta, said they have but decreased their target price by $185 to $525.

Meta shares have dropped about 19% to $499.36 since Trump was officially sworn in as U.S. president for the second time.

The company reports its first-quarter earnings next Wednesday.

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Tesla short sellers have made $11.5 billion from this year’s selloff

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Tesla short sellers have made .5 billion from this year's selloff

It’s been a brutal year for Tesla shareholders so far, and a hugely profitable one for short sellers, who bet on a decline in the company’s stock price.

Tesla shorts have generated $11.5 billion in mark-to-market profits in 2025, according to data from S3 Partners. The data reflected Monday’s closing price of $227.50, at which point Tesla shares were down 44% for the year.

The stock rallied about 4% on Tuesday, along with gains in the broader market, heading into Tesla’s first-quarter earnings report after the close of trading. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The electric vehicle maker is expected to report a slight decline in year-over-year revenue weeks after announcing a 13% drop in vehicle deliveries for the quarter. With CEO Elon Musk playing a central role in President Donald Trump’s administration, responsible for dramatically cutting the size and capacity of the federal government, Tesla has faced widespread protests in the U.S. and Europe, where Musk has actively supported Germany’s far-right AfD party.

Tesla shares plummeted 36% in the first quarter, their worst performance for any period since 2022, and have continued to drop in April, largely on concerns that President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on top trade partners will increase the cost of parts and materials crucial for EV production, including manufacturing equipment, automotive glass, printed circuit boards and battery cells.

The company is also struggling to keep pace with lower-cost competitors in China, and is a laggard in the robotaxi market, which is currently dominated in the U.S. by Alphabet’s Waymo. Tesla has promised to launch its first driverless ride-hailing offering in Austin, Texas, in June.

Tesla has been the biggest stock decliner among tech megacaps this year, followed by Nvidia, which was down about 28% as of Monday’s close. The chipmaker has been the second-best profit generator for short sellers, generating returns of $9.4 billion, according to S3.

Nvidia is currently the most-shorted stock in terms of value, with $24.6 billion worth sold short, S3 said. Apple is second at $22.2 billion, and Tesla is third at $17.6 billion.

Musk has a long and antagonistic history with short sellers, who have made plenty of money at times during Tesla’s 15 years on the stock market, but have also been burned badly for extended stretches.

In 2020, Tesla publicly mocked short sellers, promoting red satin shorts for sale.

“Limited edition shorts now available at Tesla.com/shortshorts” Musk wrote in a social media post in July of that year, as the stock was in the midst of a steep rally.

Two years earlier, hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital posted a tweet that he received the pairs of short shorts that Musk had promised him.

“I want to thank @elonmusk for the shorts. He is a man of his word!” Einhorn wrote. Einhorn had previously disclosed that his firm’s bet against Tesla “was our second biggest loser” in the most recent quarter.

In February 2022, after reports surfaced that the Department of Justice was investigating two investors who had shorted Tesla’s stock, Musk told CNBC that he was “greatly encouraged” by the action and said “hedge funds have used short selling and complex derivatives to take advantage of small investors.”

PlainSite founder Aaron Greenspan, a former Tesla short seller and outspoken critic of Musk, sued the Tesla CEO alleging he engaged in stock price manipulation for years through a variety of schemes.

The case was removed to federal court last year. In 2023, Musk’s social network X banned Greenspan and PlainSite, which publishes legal and other public and company records, from the platform.

— CNBC’s Tom Rotunno contributed to this report.

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Instagram launches Edits app for video, rivaling TikTok

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Instagram launches Edits app for video, rivaling TikTok

Instagram Edits app.

Courtesy: Instagram

Instagram on Tuesday launched its standalone Edits video creation app that offers features similar to those already available from TikTok parent Bytedance.

The new app allows creators to organize project ideas, shoot and edit video, and access insights about content. Edits includes background replacement, automatic captioning and artificial intelligence tools that can turn images into video.

“There’s a lot going on in the world right now and no matter what happens, we think it’s our job to create the most compelling creative tools for those of you who make videos for not just Instagram but for platforms out there,” said Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, in a Reel posted in January announcing the app.

Edits appears to be Meta‘s answer to CapCut, TikTok’s sister app that is also owned by China-based parent company ByteDance, which allows users to create and edit video on their phone or computer.

Instagram Edits app.

Courtesy: Instagram

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With TikTok’s future uncertain, Instagram’s move to launch Edits could be seen as a step to gain ground in the next era of short video creation in the creator economy.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump for a second time extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face an effective ban. The deadline is now mid-June.

Instagram Edits app.

Courtesy: Instagram

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