Google Fails to ‘Wow’ as AI Bills Mount

It’s good to be Google these days. But it isn’t easy, and it will keep getting harder.

Second-quarter results from parent company Alphabet on Tuesday afternoon showed strength in advertising and cloud revenue along with a record high in operating profit as the Silicon Valley titan, once known for lavish employee perks, continues to clamp down on most costs, save for those designed to build out generative artificial intelligence capabilities .

But the results also offered “no excitement,” in the words of Jefferies analyst Brent Thill . Overall revenue exceeded Wall Street’s consensus projection by just 0.6%—the lowest beat percentage in at least five years, according to FactSet. YouTube advertising revenue also came in lower than analysts expected. Alphabet’s previous report, three months ago , offered bigger positive surprises in both revenue and earnings growth, with the announcement of the company’s first-ever dividend thrown in for good measure. Alphabet’s stock had jumped nearly 17% since that report; the shares gave up about 4% in premarket trading on Wednesday.

Tuesday’s results also set the stage for what might be a more challenging second half of the year. For one, comparisons will be tougher as the second half of last year had Google nearly recovered from an earlier advertising slump. Google also didn’t fully ramp up its spending on AI infrastructure until well into the second half of 2023; capital expenditures in the first half of 2023 were barely half of the $25.2 billion the company has spent in the first half of this year.

That spending won’t be taking a breather any time soon, even as Google has pared back other costs and even brought its head count down by more than 1,300 positions in the most recent quarter. Alphabet said Tuesday that capex will be at or above $12 billion a quarter for the second half of the year, likely leading to a total outlay of more than $49 billion for the year—84% higher than what the company has averaged annually over the past five years.

“Look, obviously we are at the early stage of what I view as a very transformative area,” Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said during Tuesday’s earnings call when asked by an analyst about the company’s AI investments. He added that “the risk of underinvesting is dramatically greater than the risk of over investing for us here,” not mentioning the record amounts of capex that tech rivals Microsoft , Amazon.com and Meta Platforms are pouring into the same thing.

Google has the resources: Alphabet’s net cash pile of nearly $98 billion is substantially bigger than those of even its deep-pocketed peers. But putting that money to work is getting to be a challenge. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Google’s talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz have fallen apart. The purported $23 billion deal would have been Google’s largest ever and most certainly would have drawn the type of close regulatory scrutiny that has lately been keeping tech mergers in limbo for 18 months or more. Such an uncertain payoff reportedly was a concern among Wiz and its investors; Google’s acquisition of Fitbit in 2021 for less than one-tenth that price took nearly 15 months to close.

Google is also going back to the drawing board on a long-running plan to phase out the use of internet tracking technology known as “cookies,” despised by privacy advocates but depended upon by advertisers. Google was building up an alternative technology called “privacy sandbox,” but that plan drew a lot of opposition from advertisers and regulators worried that it would further cement the company’s internet advertising dominance. Google said Monday it would instead offer users a prompt to allow them to opt out of cookie tracking.

That move is unlikely to dent Google’s powerful search ad business. But that and the failed Wiz talks show the growing constraints the company is operating under as regulators look even more closely at big tech’s position, and judges and juries start weighing in. A verdict in the federal government’s antitrust case against Google is expected before the end of the year and could result in a ruling that would seek a breakup of the $250-billion-a-year advertising juggernaut.

Google’s latest results were good, but good isn’t always enough.

Chip makers are fighting to assure investors that the artificial-intelligence boom is racing forward. Wall Street might not believe it until Nvidia’s NVDA -0.98%decrease; down pointing triangle Jensen Huang says so.

When Huang steps up to the mic for his company’s earnings call Wednesday, he will have the world’s attention. What he says about Nvidia’s present will preview the future of AI, dictate the path forward for a tech-crazed stock market and influence an American economy increasingly tethered to hopes that the boom won’t go bust.

The $5 trillion chip maker has provided the key building blocks for AI since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 set off a race for dominance among OpenAI, Anthropic and established Silicon Valley giants. Now, as Nvidia backstops sprawling data-center projects and an exotic money pipeline to boost chip demand, the company’s influence is arguably bigger than ever.

But there are signs of trouble ahead. Political pushback to AI is growing. A bond selloff propelled borrowing costs to their highest levels in years. The hyperscalers that include some of Nvidia’s key customers—once cash-printing machines—are relying more on debt. OpenAI recently told investors its revenue rose by a tepid 18% in the second quarter while its losses deepened.

Nvidia is increasingly stepping in to shore up potential weak points across the market. Earlier this month, the company teamed up with six of Wall Street’s biggest firms on a $500 billion AI-financing plan, pledging to backstop lending to customers that can’t afford its chips otherwise. The chip maker last week also took a stake in Cloverleaf Infrastructure, which arranges power for data centers, and struck a $6 billion deal with startup Poolside aimed at developing a powerful open-weight AI model.

After watching shares in other chip makers and the so-called Magnificent Seven tech companies swing wildly in recent months, Wall Street is hoping Nvidia can beat expectations—again. The countdown is on.

“It’s kind of becoming more and more like the World Cup final than the Super Bowl at this point,” said Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management. “It’s just gotten to be that big.”

The company has smashed analysts’ earnings estimates for each of the 14 quarters since the AI boom kicked into high gear. Nvidia posted 210% annual growth in net income in its last three-month period, according to FactSet, making Wall Street’s 126% projection look pedestrian.

Expectations for a blowout second quarter have risen rapidly over the course of this year. All Nvidia will have to do to beat this target: outrun 95% annual earnings growth to more than $51.5 billion. Analysts project the chip maker will report record sales of $92 billion for the period, up from a forecast of $78 billion at the start of this year.

In July, big-tech earnings sparked volatility. Concerns about runaway capital spending spread across the sector after Alphabet’s and Tesla’s results, driving a $890 billion wipeout that contributed to the unwind of hedge fund Situational Awareness. Microsoft posted the largest one-day gain in market capitalization by any company, ever, after a quarter proving that it could still show investors the money. SpaceX rocketed higher after a record-breaking initial public offering, only to see $1 trillion in value evaporate.

Surging memory prices and borrowing costs have fueled fears that those and other companies will be unable to keep plowing more money into supplies including Nvidia chips. Shaia Hosseinzadeh, founder of OnyxPoint Global Management, has recently bought dips in AI-infrastructure stocks when Wall Street has strained to absorb massive debt issued by Silicon Valley.

“The macro data is really quite robust,” he said. “Of course, there’s a level at which everything breaks.”

Investors have kept pumping money into the AI trade despite concerns around chip consumers—and to the benefit of chip producers. That is why Nvidia’s outlook for semiconductor demand could send ripples through counterparts such as Micron Technology and Sandisk, developers of the data centers in which their chips reside, and a supply chain of power producers, contractors and other specialists that underpin the globe-spanning AI build-out.

“We joke internally that we’re all Nvidia analysts now,” said David Lefkowitz, head of U.S. equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.

The irony is that investors have tended to sell Nvidia stock immediately after blockbuster earnings, with shares falling each trading session after its four past quarterly reports. Some are betting that will be the case this time around, too.

The options market is pricing in a 5.3% swing, higher or lower, in Nvidia shares during the session following earnings, according to Option Research & Technology Services. That is higher than the 4.8% average move in Nvidia’s stock over the last 12 months after the company reports quarterly results.

In recent days, some of the most actively traded Nvidia options have been put contracts tied to the stock falling from its Friday value of $214.75 to $205 and $210 apiece, according to Cboe Global Markets data. Put options give the right to sell a stock by a set price and typically represent a bearish wager.

Many analysts remain optimistic. Frank Lee, global head of tech hardware and semiconductor research at HSBC Global Investment Research, recently raised his price target for Nvidia shares to $360 from $325, citing, among other things, Nvidia’s strategic partnerships with suppliers and its role as a top contributor to open-source AI.

Google Fails to ‘Wow’ as AI Bills Mount

Advertising business faces tough growth comparisons, while AI spending continues to surge

Nvidia’s earnings will test Wall Street’s confidence in the AI boom.