Two of the largest technology groups in the world caused disappointments with their quarterly figures presented on Thursday after the stock market closed.
Both the electronics company Apple and the online retailer Amazon.com failed to meet expectations.
Their respective share prices fell by five percent at times in after-hours trading.
Both companies discussed difficulties in their supply chains.
Roland Lindner
Business correspondent in New York.
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The image of “Big Tech” in the current quarterly season is therefore very mixed. The software provider Microsoft and the Alphabet Holding around the Internet company Google have convinced, before Apple and Amazon Facebook has also disappointed. For Amazon, a company that was considered one of the big winners in the midst of the corona pandemic, it was now the second quarter in a row with weaker than expected numbers. And compared to some other tech companies such as Microsoft or Alphabet, Amazon has generally performed quite poorly on the stock market this year, since the beginning of January the price has risen by less than ten percent.
For the third quarter, Amazon reported sales growth of 15 percent to 110.8 billion dollars, analysts had expected an average of 111.6 billion dollars.
In the second quarter, growth had been 27 percent, and that was less than expected.
Amazon's net income has even declined due to higher costs, almost halving to $ 3.2 billion.
Earnings per share of $ 6.12 were well below the analysts' average of $ 8.92.
Amazon Web Services stays strong
The slowdown in growth is mainly due to the core business in online trading. Here sales rose by only three percent this time. On the other hand, the development of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division, was once again positive. Its sales soared 39 percent to $ 16.1 billion, the strongest growth in more than a year. This business is also more profitable than average, while some other activities are losing money. Its operating profit was higher than that of the entire group. The division in which Amazon reports its growing online advertising business also developed well. Here sales rose by 49 percent.
Amazon remains cautious with a view to the final quarter and is even predicting a further slowdown in sales growth to four to twelve percent.
Andy Jassy, who has been in office since July, also said he was expecting billions of dollars in additional costs due to current supply chain bottlenecks, labor shortages and higher personnel costs.
Apple showed sales growth of 29 percent to 83.4 billion dollars for the past three months, analysts had expected an average of 84.9 billion dollars.
Net income rose 62 percent to $ 20.6 billion, and earnings per share of 1.24 were exactly in line with forecasts.
Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said current supply chain difficulties, such as a semiconductor shortage and pandemic-induced production stoppages in Southeast Asia, have placed a financial burden of $ 6 billion. A few weeks ago, the Bloomberg news agency announced that Apple would significantly reduce its production targets for the latest generation of its iPhones due to the lack of chips. So far, the company has hoped to manufacture 90 million copies of the iPhone 13 in the last three months of the year, now it would be up to ten million fewer.
The iPhone is still by far the most important product for Apple.
In the most recent quarter, it had sales of $ 38.9 billion.
That was 47 percent more than a year ago, but analysts had hoped for $ 41.5 billion.
With its recently increasingly important service division, which includes offers such as the App Store or Apple Pay, Apple achieved a better than expected increase in sales of 26 percent to 18.3 billion dollars.
Sales in the division with the digital watch Apple Watch and the wireless AirPod headphones rose by twelve percent to 8.8 billion dollars.
In the case of iPad tablet computers there was an increase of 21 percent to 8.3 billion dollars, with Macintosh computers an increase of two percent to 9.2 billion dollars.