저자: The Motley Fool · 외국인
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AI와 반도체 대형주들이 몇 주 사이 약 5조 달러의 시가총액을 잃었고, 실적 발표 이후 투자자 심리가 급격히 악화됐다는 내용의 영상이다. 영상은 메타, 알파벳, 코어위브, 네비우스, 애플 등 4개 기업의 상황을 차례로 짚는다. 메타는 AI 기반 뉴스 기능과 광고 사업의 수익성을 근거로 밸류에이션이 매력적이라고 평가된다. 다만 설비투자 확대로 잉여현금흐름이 마이너스이고, 비용 증가율이 매출 증가율을 웃돈다는 점이 부담 요인으로 제시된다. 알파벳은 구글 클라우드 매출이 두 배 넘게 성장했지만, 잉여현금흐름 적자와 검색 성장 둔화, 스페이스X 지분 재평가 영향으로 주가가 크게 떨어졌다고 설명된다. 코어위브는 작은 규모에도 높은 기업가치를 받고 있는데, 이는 연간 반복 매출에 대한 기대치와 대규모 계약에 따른 선급금 때문으로 분석된다. 네비우스는 자금조달 부담과 부채 규모가 우려 요인으로 언급되며, 가트너의 네오클라우드 전망도 함께 소개된다. 애플은 AI를 직접 유료화하지 않는 보수적 접근을 취하고 있으며, 앱스토어 수수료 수익과 기록적인 분기 실적을 강점으로 꼽힌다. 반면 메모리 비용 상승 경고는 부담 요인이다. 영상은 장기 투자자에게 변동성이 기회일 수 있다는 시각을 제시한다. 다만 개별 종목에 대한 판단은 발표자의 견해이며 투자 권유가 아님을 전제로 이해해야 한다.
다듬은 글
If you own stocks in AI and tech companies like Neil and I, the last few weeks have probably been rough on your portfolio. The largest companies in the AI and semiconductor sectors have lost about $5 trillion in market value in the past few weeks. And this is becoming increasingly noticeable as a wave of well-known companies have reported earnings, and investors have n't necessarily liked what they heard.
But in today's video, Neil and I will discuss some of these companies, the mechanics of what goes on behind the scenes of the stock, and how to actually separate the headlines from the hype. Neil, it's good to see you today. I'm glad to see you too. You were, you were away for a while, and look what the market did while you were, while you were away.
So the next time you're thinking about a business trip or vacation, think about our briefcases. Yes, I, I, I can't go anywhere anytime soon . Look what happens to the market when I'm gone. Yeah, you said $5 trillion , and I'm like, "Yeah, my portfolio is part of that $5 trillion, unfortunately." But I understand your pain.
Yes, it was very interesting because we saw companies exceeding expectations, talking about very positive forecasts for the future. And so it's hard to balance what makes sense and what doesn't. On the one hand, you have memory prices and demand for GPUs skyrocketing. But on the other hand, you have stocks of companies that produce memory and chips falling.
So something is not right here. But I guess it presents opportunities for long-term investors. Of course , there are companies that needed a rollback. I think I looked at a bunch of semiconductor companies, and I think over 40 semiconductor stocks are down 40% or more from their 52-week highs. The list of these names, of course, varies from very small companies to large ones; but if you look at the names, at the ratings, you can start to understand why some of them have fallen by 70%, 50%, 60% or so, because they, they, they should never have grown that much.
I mean, the beginning of the year, the first 6 months, were all about semiconductors and AI clouds. Then the market peaked. Why did it peak? Well, overvaluation, maybe the companies aren't doing very well , maybe the headlines, but in my opinion , more importantly, the company just needs to live up to its valuation.
We saw the AMD report, um, they just ripped the market apart. At one point, AMD was worth a trillion dollars. I think they're not that far from that today. But just because it's a good company doesn't mean its stock should go up. It seems they have increased by 150-160% since the beginning of the year.
It deserves its valuation, even if it is one of the best companies on the market. I think that's really remarkable when we look at this collapse that we 've seen in the markets over the last few weeks. And as you noted, many of these companies are reporting record profits and revenues, the growth is there, the demand is there, you know, their order books are stretched out for several years ahead.
I think in some cases we are dealing with businesses that have been valued incredibly highly , and perhaps despite their strong financial foundation, they simply cannot justify that valuation. And I think to some extent that's exactly what we're seeing in the markets right now. And I think that can be difficult for long-term investors, especially if these names are in our portfolios.
If you expect to hold these assets for 5 , 10 or more years, this is actually only a minor fluctuation in the scale of your investment. But, of course, there were companies that provided reports that, looking at which, you could say, "Yes, there are some points of concern here." However, in many cases there are many large players driving the market—and it is worth remembering that only a small handful of large companies drive market movements— so if sentiment reactions occur, these declines will also have an adverse effect on the market.
I think in many cases we're just seeing some of these estimates come back to a little bit more reasonable levels , not even reasonable, just a little bit more acceptable. Yes, I agree, and so I'll go straight to my first choice. My first choice was, I would say, more than just acceptable before. And now, in my opinion, we're back to a very undervalued position , and that's Meta.
Meta, well, I think it's still a little bit higher than it was a few months ago, somewhere around 500, 550, but it's trading at, I think, a multiple of 20 to projected earnings, sometimes a little bit less. So now we're back to those levels, and Meta just had a terrific quarter. The advertising business is becoming, I think by next quarter they should surpass Google in revenue, which is just amazing.
But Meta is a business where the core activity is extremely profitable. The advertising business is very profitable. They see an increase in ad impressions. They are still finding more users for their family of apps, which, I mean, is well over 3 billion now. So this is a very good business. It is growing rapidly.
AI clearly makes the core business much better and, of course, more profitable. But now it's becoming clear that with AI we're producing news, and news has become a very big success for them. At an early stage. Of course, this is not yet available worldwide. This is available in the US, it seems, in Canada.
They recently launched in Japan. And maybe they will launch in other places soon. But the reception of the news was extremely positive for them. Does it cost them a lot of money? Yes, this is probably one of the main reasons why free cash flow is currently negative and expected to be so for the next few quarters due to data center construction, GPU purchases, etc.
But I still think the market is misunderstanding Meta's business because , unlike Microsoft, Amazon, or Alphabet's Google, they don't have a cloud business where you can say, " Look, we're spending X and earning Y on cloud services." But they can say, “Look, we’re investing a lot and look at our core business.
Our core business is getting better and better at targeting, getting better and better. Our recommendation systems are also getting better, and we are currently investing in new products, like news , which we will monetize over time. But they also said that news monetization on Meta will start much earlier than usual because they see the opportunities but also understand that they have to start making money somehow.
That's why Meta's stock rose 7% after the close of trading during the earnings report , and then fell again, which I take as a gift from the market, because I sincerely believe that this is a very profitable business, and free cash flow will become positive, probably in a year, since the main investments have already been made.
Not everything will be completed, but the major investments have already taken place, and now you will see how the core business will start to make up for lost time and generate a lot of cash for the foreseeable future. So I know I've been repeating myself a lot talking about Meta the last few weeks , but it's one of those businesses, like Google next year (maybe we'll talk about Google in this video, who knows), but it's a very good business that I think is trading at a very, very attractive price.
Yes, I think like many big tech companies, Meta is currently in the build-out and spend-out phase . And it's interesting, in terms of news, up until the release of Muse—and it's still unknown whether that's going to be a long-term driver for the business or not—most of the benefits that Meta got from AI were, you know, internal, right?
They couldn't effectively monetize it into a sellable product. This has largely been a boost to the development of the core advertising business, and that's great, but as we can see, revenue has increased, but expenses are also increasing rapidly. You know, this quarter, revenue was up almost 30% year-over-year, but expenses were up almost 70%.
And that's why you see operating profit falling. Of course, you see pressure on cash flow. And you know, Meta optimists would say that this is a key factor in their ability to thrive in the long term . I think that may be true, but it is this discrepancy that is causing some investors to worry and ask: is this a short-term trend, or perhaps the growth in spending will slow over time?
And I think that remains to be seen . One last thing before I forget: Reality Labs' losses will soon be reduced, as the company claims, and I consider that a big win for us. Yes. Well, I mean, you kind of set the stage for the first action I'm going to talk about today. I have to talk about Alphabet, Google's parent company, right?
This is probably one of the most obvious examples of what we are seeing during the kind of meltdown of recent weeks, especially after the reporting. You know, everyone knows this company, we know that Alphabet, Google , still does business mostly on advertising, right? You have search, you have YouTube, you have a broad advertising network that accounts for the vast majority of revenue.
And of course, there's Google Cloud, the third major cloud provider alongside Amazon's AWS and Microsoft Azure, and Alphabet is building and effectively monetizing its own family of AI models, right? Gemini. And this became a key factor in the operation of both their consumer chatbot and the AI layer built directly into Google search itself.
So, just to give you a few numbers: Google Cloud revenue has more than doubled, the business has grown by over 100% year-over-year , to an estimated $30 billion. Total revenue increased by 25% compared to last year. That is, Alphabet's investments in AI bring real commercial results in the core business.
Revenue came in slightly below analysts' forecasts. This is a barely noticeable lag. Earnings per share were $2.12, which actually fell short of analysts' forecast of $3.02. And net income even fell slightly, and this was mainly due to the revaluation of Alphabet's investment assets, including its stake in SpaceX.
So it is important to pay attention to this. If you're an Alphabet shareholder, you're probably wondering what happened there. That was a key part of the reason. Another thing that the market really didn't like, and I'll say this as a long-term Alphabet shareholder— I didn't like it either. Free cash flow was minus $9 billion .
And it was much worse than what analysts had expected. So in some ways it was a challenging quarter , even though the core business is obviously still growing. We saw, of course, that immediately after Alphabet's report, stocks fell by double digits, wiping out hundreds of billions of dollars in market value.
Alphabet suffered its worst one-day drop since going public in 2004. And it actually broke their previous record, set in March 2020 . So, you know, there are a few things going on there . Um, the search engine's growth has slowed down a bit, and one of the reasons for that is their AI regime. So, again, you know, the search results that you see if you go to Google, and you see these primary AI results, you're seeing a slight decline in consumer usage this quarter.
Um, obviously we're seeing, you know, the rise of AI competition in search. This is also worth noting. This doesn't mean that Alphabet's overall presence in search has diminished, but it's still something to keep an eye on. Um , and then, as I mentioned, the repricing of their investment in SpaceX also impacted the financial results for the quarter.
You know , one of the things I took away from this is, again, as a long-term shareholder of Alphabet, I am in no way reducing my stake in this business. I think we've seen for a few years now that stocks of mega-cap tech companies, and not just them but others in this space, are being rewarded almost unconditionally for AI-related costs .
And Alphabet is, to some extent, considered one of those names that is viewed as a reliable asset with minimal doubt . I still see it that way in the long run. But I really think we're seeing investors wanting to see, you know, what they say, proof in practice. They want to actually see these growth numbers being confirmed because we're seeing a huge increase in capital spending by big tech companies, what they're investing in AI, so we're seeing pressure on cash flow again, pressure on profitability.
I don't think we're living in a time where, you know, AI is going to destroy Google search. I think Alphabet's investment in AI is significant. I think they drive the underlying growth of the business. Again, revenue growth is strong, with the cloud business more than doubling. But I really think we are seeing a normalization of growth expectations.
There's a growing understanding that at least for the next few quarters, the amount of money that companies like Alphabet are spending to support their role, their position in AI, will impact their bottom line; this will affect their cash flow. Maybe this isn't something the market is excited about .
I really believe this is the key to their growth in the long term. I think this is the key to Alphabet's growth in the long term. Um, but certainly, you know, the market didn't necessarily like what it saw, at least from this latest report. I'm not changing my position on Alphabet, but, you know, it was certainly a challenging quarter for the business in some ways.
Me, I mean, I like Alphabet too. Um, I think we have a business now where maybe in a year we'll see Google Cloud become bigger than search, which is pretty crazy to say, but Google Cloud revenue has more than doubled year-over-year, and margins have increased a little bit. Searches have decreased, just like you said.
The AI mode, I mean , the AI mode is becoming more and more popular, but they don't monetize it M-m. as good as traditional search, but they said it would increase pretty soon . They also said that search growth this quarter was the highest in 5 years. So, it's clear that Google search is still alive and well.
Monetization simply isn't keeping up, but it seems like this is the first time in history that search's share of total revenue is less than 50% of the business. Now people say, "Oh, that's extremely pessimistic." But no, it makes sense when Google Cloud is doubling and now has $30 billion in revenue and continues to grow.
The order portfolio is over half a trillion dollars. This is a TPU business, which is also growing quite rapidly. So, like last year, I think Google stock is just overreacting, while the business itself, in my opinion, is getting much better as it becomes much more diversified. So , in the future it will not just be a search business.
Yes, I think that's right. And, you know, obviously, as long-term investors, you can never get a clear picture of the business in one quarter. Of course, it's been, you know, a tough few weeks in the market for Alphabet and other stocks. But as you point out, it may still be a business that is achieving very important efficiencies through AI.
I mean, the AI mode may show mixed results, but Alphabet's investment in Gemini is still really driving this core advertising business forward. This is largely contributing to the growth we are seeing in cloud technologies. I still think that overall, you know, these are big wins for business in the long run.
But I just think we're in that period where the " spend, spend, spend" phase is finally having an impact on some of these key metrics, right? On cash flow, margin and profitability. And I think the deal that many of the leaders of these companies, including Alphabet, have made is that we are willing to take some short-term pain in order to remain competitive in the long term.
Yes, and I mean, if you look at their business, it makes sense for them to spend if the return on invested capital remains significantly higher than its cost. I think it would be unwise of them not to invest. Moving on to the next company that is a similar player in the cloud AI space is CoreWeave. No, a much smaller company that is currently worth, I think, less than $40 billion .
This is a company that on paper can be said to be extremely overvalued, it doesn't make any sense. Why is this thing worth almost $40 billion without even generating a billion dollars per quarter? But if you look at what is expected of the company, you can begin to understand why it is worth what it is today.
This is a company whose expected annual recurring revenue (ARR) as of last quarter was $3 billion. That number will likely rise when they report their quarterly figures next week, apparently on November 12th before the market opens. This is a company run by a team that already built a fairly large company many years ago.
This is Yandex, which was called " Google of Russia". Now they don't like to use the word "neo-cloud" because they don't want to be lumped in with other neo- clouds. They consider themselves cloud AI players . But this is a company that is managed very well , raising funds in completely different ways, which does not cause much harm to the business or shareholders, but helps them grow faster than expected.
There are also a lot of prepayments on large contracts, so that helps with capital expenditures, as they are growing and will grow quite a bit if they want to add gigawatts every year. They expect to add a gigawatt of capacity based on Nvidia's Vera Rubin next year. I know some people are already going to say, "Oh, if they're going to launch 1 gigawatt of Vera Rubin next year, that means they're going to generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue." But it doesn't work that way.
A gigawatt of GPU power doesn't fall from the sky or connect to a data center on its own . They said they would start in the first or second quarter, but in reality the bulk of it will fall in the second half of the year. So if you want to calculate this, it might be worth focusing on the starting annual revenue (ARR) in the 27th year, which could lead to revenue in the 28th.
And then yes , in my opinion, we can see a business capable of generating about $40 billion in revenue. also constantly grew and grew. Nebius told us that they could sell off all capacity for the entire 27th year, but they are not doing so because if you have spare resources, you can simply sell them on demand and benefit from the high prices.
Of course, your margins are getting higher and higher , and you can finance the next phase of development. But here too, I think Nebius fell 50% from its 52-week highs because of the fear of, "Okay, they need to raise a lot of money." Capital markets are closing. Nobody wants to borrow that much, so they need to find ways to raise funds.
Most recently, it seems they received about $3.5 billion from Citi, but raising money is getting a little more difficult now. And you still have to spend a lot, because you need to build all these data centers . You need to buy all these GPUs, and when you don't have a business like Meta, I mean social media or search engines, how are you going to find the funds for these expenses?
Giants like them will always find a way to make money. Moreover, they also have a lot of cash on hand. But smaller players, they need their core business to be very successful so they can reinvest in their own business. I consider Nebius to be the best in its class. I'm biased because I own their stock, but when you look at the results, the commentary, and the execution, it's one of those companies in this space that you think, "Yeah, they seem to know how to run this kind of business, " which, again, they've already demonstrated in their past experience with Yandex.
So I just have to mention it again in the video, because next week they report for the quarter. We will get much more information about the quarter, even though it is already behind us. So, what's more important is what happens at the end of the year and early 2027, as they see it, but judging from their recent comments at GTC in Berlin, it seems like demand is really not an issue for them.
So I'll have to put Nebius back on this list. Yes, it will be interesting to watch them when the financial results come out in a little over a week. I think one of the biggest concerns we've seen, at least with Nebius' stock crash, comes from the crash of their main competitor in the Neo Cloud space—CoreWeave, right?
We talked in a previous video about how investors panicked when CoreWeave's unsecured bonds started trading at yields of around 15%, which could indicate tension in the debt markets for AI infrastructure. Um, you know, Nebius has over $80 billion in debt against much less cash. Um, and of course, we've seen, as we talked about Meta and Alphabet today, as examples, mixed reports from companies that are arguably the most financially secure on the planet.
And there was also a recent report from Gartner that said that 80% of independent neo-cloud providers will cease operations or cease to operate as independent companies by 2030 due to unbearable cost pressures and a lack of differentiated business models. So there are a lot of conflicting signals in the market right now .
You know, Nebius is working towards a goal of $9 billion in annual revenue. Of course, in the second quarter they saw revenue growth, I think, of over 450% year-over-year, if memory serves. Small base, that's why. Small base, small base, for sure. Um, and they're trying to meet, you know, about $40 billion or more in customer commitments, but they need an endless stream of cash for GPUs, for data center real estate.
And so I think these questions from investors about Nebius and some other neo-cloud companies are quite justified. I'm not saying these companies can't win, but it's a very risky, high-reward paradigm. I mean, I think you're the last speaker in the video, your next one is the most—I'll tone it down a little bit.
this is the most boring AI, I mean, I don't even think it's actually real. Yeah, it's not even. And when you look at their capex this cycle, even with the high memory prices, you think: this But I'll, I'll let you continue with uh Well , let's set the stage for a very interesting action, Apple, right?
Okay, I have to talk about one of the other tech stars that just reported earnings. And I'll be the first to admit it, and anyone who follows Apple or owns its stock knows this. That is, this is not a company that receives direct income from its own AI services. The AI boom is actually driving additional revenue growth from hardware and services.
So, of course, Apple doesn't charge for AI features, but it uses AI to speed up updates to its devices. For example, there is high demand for the iPhone 18 lineup and AI-enabled Macs, such as the Mac Mini or Mac Studio. This helped Apple, you know, show record results for the fiscal year. They also earn significant App Store commissions when users subscribe to external generative AI apps, like ChatGPT or other models, through iOS.
Therefore, a quick tip for all viewers: never pay for a subscription via phone if you can do it on a PC. Because it's always more expensive to do it over the phone than over the computer. Yes, here's a tip for you. So, they collect these App Store fees when a user subscribes to a third-party generative AI app.
Uh, there are estimates that the revenue in this area reaches a little over a billion dollars per year. And, of course, they serve as the primary distribution channel for over 2.5 billion active devices. Therefore, they can collaborate with or refer users to third-party AI models like Gemini, while earning high-margin revenue from the services.
And this is important because while the majority of Apple's revenue and profits come from its hardware business, and the iPhone remains Apple's best-selling product of all time, their services business is growing the fastest. And it demonstrates the incremental benefits of these, you know, indirect effects of AI development.
This is worth noting, as it may not be as obvious if you just follow Apple. Of course, they reported revenue for the full fiscal year 2026 and the fourth quarter . Revenue for the fourth quarter was about $115 billion. This is 12 % more than last year. This exceeded analysts' forecasts. This was John Turnus' first earnings report since he recently succeeded Tim Cook.
Earnings per share exceeded expectations. Uh, iPhone revenue reached about $58 billion in the final quarter of their fiscal year. This is 17% more than last year. They exceeded predictions . Services reached a historic record of about $32 billion. Mac revenue grew 24%. So, really, a very, very solid quarter, as was the entire fiscal year for Apple.
So, one of the things that investors didn't like , and we saw some reaction shortly after Apple's earnings report , is that they expect record sales in the holiday quarter, but they warned about rising costs for memory chips and computing costs to implement the updated Siri AI. And that will likely reduce profits from those same record sales during this time of year, which is especially important for business growth.
Management also said it expects weaker results in the iPad, wearables and Greater China segments, which is of course a key market for Apple. And that's interesting because, unlike many other big tech companies, Apple isn't spending too aggressively on artificial intelligence. They are not developing their own artificial intelligence models.
They don't invest heavily in chips or data centers like we see in other companies. Much of the growth we're seeing , as I've already noted, is quite gradual . This is a business that still gets most of its growth from the classic iPhone. Apple has tried several times throughout its history to reinvent the wheel, to recreate the magic of the iPhone.
But we still see that it's these core flagship hardware products that keep consumers coming back again and again. In many ways, I think it's probably one of the most predictable, boring, if you will, Nile, businesses among the "big seven." So that's interesting. I don't think Apple necessarily has to win in AI to remain a successful business.
They don't even try to do that. They don't pay the same attention to it that we see from other big tech players. They don't burn money on AI-related expenses . On the other hand, and I think some of the indifference we've seen in stocks in recent months may be coming from investors asking themselves, "Hey, is this relatively cautious approach by Apple to AI disciplined, or is it risky?" At a time when much of the hype around technology companies is driven by the development of AI.
I tend to think that Apple's approach works well for the type of business they do. This is a very specific type , because the economics of Apple are very different from, say, the economics of Alphabet. You know, Alphabet is spending a lot of money on AI infrastructure, and they're being punished when part of their core business is showing the first real signs that AI is maybe slowing down that growth a little bit.
Apple spends very little on AI infrastructure, but they are punished when the costs of implementing their own AI put pressure on profits. So, I think the market is volatile, as we have already seen. These two businesses that I talked about today, in my opinion, are doing very well. I think they are both winners in the long run.
They are simply winners in very different ways. I agree. And I believe the reason Apple trades at a high earnings multiple is because it generates so much cash and is currently a so- called "safe haven" for investors. Plus, who knows, if there's a big market downturn, they can use that cash to buy up a couple of AI companies and they're back in the game, I guess, without much effort.
So, ladies and gentlemen, that's all we have for you in today's video. Markets will be quite volatile during this reporting season. We are also at the end of the investment year, so there may be some tax loss optimization happening, like every other year, but good companies remain good. And perhaps if a broader pullback occurs, it could be a big opportunity for long-term investors.
We'll be back every day on this channel, of course, so make sure you subscribe. If you enjoyed this video, let us know in the comments section below, and we'll see you in the next one. See you later.
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