Shares of Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc. both suffered their largest weekly declines since the beginning days of the pandemic this week, as Big Tech companies continued to draw closer scrutiny from Wall Street.
Apple’s stock AAPL,
Shares of Apple fell during all five sessions this week.
Shares in Google parent Alphabet GOOG,
While Apple’s stock has fared better than that of Alphabet and other Big Tech peers, the company faces potential pandemic-related challenges owing to new COVID-19 setbacks at manufacturer Foxconn’s major facility. In addition, the realities of the current economic climate may be catching up to Apple, as Bloomberg News reported Thursday that the company had paused hiring in several areas unrelated to research and development.
See more: Apple reportedly pauses hiring for many roles, joining Amazon in belt-tightening
Though there didn’t seem to be any major news developments pegged to Alphabet specifically in the past week, investors are putting more pressure on big internet companies, according to Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik. He recently conducted a Big Tech “autopsy” of results from Alphabet, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN,
Read: Amazon closes below $1 trillion valuation for the first time since 2020
All three names suffered negative stock reactions in the wake of their latest earnings reports, which indicated challenges in the ad market due to economic pressures. At Alphabet specifically, “Search was more or less in-line with the buy-side bogey and the Cloud beat, but disappointing YouTube results combined with margin contraction drove a ~10% fall after-hours,” Shmulik wrote.
Alphabet’s stock has declined 40% so far in 2022, while Apple’s is off 22% over the same span. The S&P 500 SPX,
Source: finance.yahoo.com