Meta Platforms (FB), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX), and Google (GOOGL), also known collectively as MMAANG, impact almost every person on the planet -- but regulators could change the narrative.
These companies are undoubtedly some of the most groundbreaking and powerful businesses in the world, and their influence has essentially changed life as we know it.
We now rely on these massive companies for almost everything including information, work, food, entertainment, social interactions, communications, and more.
It’s easy to recognize why, as mega-cap tech has developed countless products and services that make life easier in almost every way. Whether it's search engines, smartphones, streaming video, or shopping online, convenience is king in the modern age.
But have these companies become too powerful? Regulators seem to think so, with Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Alphabet making headlines last year for possible antitrust violations.
Mega-cap companies have designed and created a new form of conglomerate, with the total market capitalization for MMAANG coming in at over $9 trillion as of this writing.
While it’s true that these businesses have created millions of jobs and provided life-changing gains for investors, they could be forced to overhaul their businesses entirely if the government gets its way. Regulators might go about breaking up MMAANG and changing the narrative surrounding big tech dominance by splitting up existing companies, putting safeguards against the growing influence of big tech tycoons, blocking future acquisitions, and stopping buybacks.
Apple's New Safety Guide
While Apple's new safety guide aims to curb "technology-enabled abuse, stalking, or harassment," some users are pointing out that it might not be enough in the face of rising AirTag concerns. The tech giant posted its Personal Safety User Guide to guide users concerned over data sharing or external access to personal information. Not a drastic change from past safety guides, the new version shows users how to stop unknown sign-in attempts and "review and take action" if a breach is suspected.
A major new inclusion is a "Stay safe with AirTag and other Find My accessories" section that comes at a time when many have spoken out about how the new AirTags could be hijacked by bad actors and used to facilitate stalking
While the Apple tracking product was designed to help find frequently lost items, many reported it being planted in coats and purses to stalk women as well as cars that would later end up stolen.
The new safety guide has not been going over great on social media, where many questioned whether the obvious suggestion of "going to law enforcement" is enough of a response to a growing problem.
Separately, Apple reportedly is working on a service that will allow small businesses to take payments directly on their iPhones without any additional hardware. The news came from Bloomberg, which cited knowledgeable sources. They said Apple may make the new capability available with a software update in the coming months.
Facebook Has a Giant AI Supercomputer
Speaking of new tech, Meta has no intention of letting Microsoft, Samsung or Nvidia take the lead in the race to mold and shape the metaverse, a virtual reality construct intended to supplant the internet as we know it today.
The social media giant has just unveiled a machine, which confirms its ambitions for this world of which it has made its future sources of growth and which represents its best marketing campaign yet to make people forget its scandals.
The company has built Research SuperCluster, or RSC, a supercomputer that is already up and running but is still being built. It will allow Meta to use data from its various platforms, especially the Facebook social network, to train AI engines, particularly in the field of language processing or 'picture.
RSC will be, claims Meta on a blog post, the fastest artificial intelligence supercomputer in the world when it’s fully built out in mid-2022, ahead of the Japanese supercomputer Fugaku, which has been at the top of the supercomputer rankings of the independent site top500.org since 2020.
Nike Is Hiring for the Metaverse
To keep up with Facebook's metaverse, sneaker and athletic apparel maker Nike (NKE) is building its metaverse team and hiring for key roles as the latest buzzword in the tech world stirs up talent wars.
Over the past week, Nike has posted five jobs to help the company embed new hires for the metaverse or related functions in what it described as its Technology Innovation Office.
The company is looking to appoint a metaverse director to lead the development of Nike's "rapid end-to-end proof of concepts, prototypes, and production of Metaverse software and device solutions," the company said in its job posting.
Nike is looking for familiarity with a broad range of metaverse technologies, from web3 to spatial web, as it makes a push into alternate-reality tech.
Here's a breakdown list of more technology and FAANG/MAMAA stocks to watch right now based on their performance over the past week:
Tech giant Facebook, now called Meta Platforms (FB), is ditching its embattled crypto project that was supposed to be the company's big foray into global payments and e-commerce. The move comes at a time when Founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is transitioning the company away from its much-criticized social network and related family of apps and into what he calls an "embodied Internet" or the metaverse. Facebook was working on a project to let people use its dollar-backed stablecoin, Diem, to make transactions, after it tempered its original cryptocurrency ambitions over regulatory backlash.
But now the company is selling off its technology assets that were part of its proposed virtual currency unit Diem Association to San Diego-based bank Silvergate for $200 million, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Silvergate had agreed last year to partner with Diem in launching a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin. Diem, which is an independent association of more than two dozen members that backed this project, declined to comment.
TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) as a Buy with a rating score of B+.
Apple
Apple (AAPL) shares jumped higher this past week as record holiday sales built off a surge in demand for its signature 5G iPhone, offset concerns for global supply chain disruptions and chip shortages. Apple earned more than $34.6 billion for the three months ending in December as revenues rose 11.2% from last year to a record $123.95 billion, comfortably topping analysts' estimates. The tally was even more impressive given that the group had warned the supply chain disruptions and chip shortages would take more than $6 billion from the holiday quarter sales tally.
Apple said iPhone revenues rose 9.2% from last year to $71.63 billion, well ahead of the $67 billion Street forecast, while the company's gross margin improved by 160 basis points from the September quarter to 42.8%. While a strong earnings report has sent Apple shares up by more than 5% in after-hours trading, one of its products is faring significantly less well: iPad sales are down 14% to $7.25 billion.
TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Apple as a Buy with a rating score of A.
Netflix
Netflix (NFLX) shares jumped higher Monday after analysts at Citigroup boosted their rating on the stock and details emerged of a $20 million purchase by CEO Reed Hastings. In a note providing updates on Netflix and Spotify (SPOT), Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet lifted his Netflix rating to buy, from neutral, citing the streaming group's ability to raise prices in compensation for slowing subscriber growth, but slashed his price target by $145, to $450 per share, following the stock's worst monthly decline in more than a decade.
Co-CEO Hastings, meanwhile, grabbed 50,000 Netflix shares, worth around $20 million, in the immediate aftermath of its post-earnings slump on Jan. 21, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Netflix, in fact, lost $50 billion in market value during that Friday trading session after it told investors that first-quarter subscriber growth would slow to 2.5 million, compared to a market forecast of 5.9 million, citing what it called "Covid overhang" in key overseas markets.
TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Netflix as a Buy with a rating score of B.
Spotify
If you were thinking of contacting Spotify to complain about their Joe Rogan decision, you may want to reconsider. Instead of responding to the complaints, the music streaming platform has reportedly replaced live people with an automated response system.
At the start of the week, well-known rock-and-roll musician Neil Young took Spotify to task over its $100 million contract with podcaster, comedian, and former Ultimate Fighting commentator Joe Rogan — while the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast attracts huge audiences, it has also been the forum he used to discourage young people from taking vaccines and promote the unproven ivermectin drug as a treatment for COVID-19.
Rogan addressed the situation Sunday night in a 10-minute Instagram video, defending his statements: "I think there's a lot of people that have a distorted perception of what I do, maybe based on sound bites or based on headlines of articles that are disparaging." Spotify also released a statement on Sunday night via a public letter from CEO and founder Daniel Ek, first reported by Yahoo Finance. "We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users. In that role, it is important to me that we don't take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them," Ek wrote.
TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Spotify as a Buy with a rating score of B-.
Amazon
Amazon (AMZN) this past week revealed plans to expand its cashier-less Amazon Go stores to the suburbs, with the first one set to open in Mill Creek, Wash. Amazon also plans to open a second Go store in the Los Angeles area, the company said. Like other Amazon Go stores, the location will use technology that allows customers to make purchases without ever interacting with a cashier. Using the Amazon app, you scan to enter, then pick your items, which are automatically charged through the app.
The technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in a virtual cart. When you’re done shopping, you can just leave the store. You get the receipt later on your Amazon account.
TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Amazon as a Buy with a rating score of B-.
Google's (GOOGL) Cloud has launched a new enterprise that will focus on blockchain applications in an effort for the internet behemoth to expand its services to other industries. The new group will focus on the health care and retail sectors, according to Thomas Kurian, Google’s cloud CEO, according to CNBC. For many years Google has focused on advertising and emerging as a more dominant player for cloud storage could be a positive move.
It will hire people who have blockchain experience, Richard Widmann, head of strategy for digital assets at Google’s cloud unit, told CNBC in an article. These employees will be part of the company's plan to increase decentralization.
TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Alphabet as a Buy with a rating score of A.
Microsoft
Steady success over a long period stops becoming a news story. That's what has happened to Microsoft (MSFT) since Satya Nadella took over as chief executive in early 2014. Before Nadella took the top job from Steve Ballmer, the company careened from disaster to disaster. There was the ahead-of-its-time Windows 8, buying Nokia's (NOKIA) phone division for $7 billion and then giving up on phones, and allowing Google's Android to become an operating-system challenger to Windows. Now, Microsoft has been so steady that people hardly notice that the company's market cap has grown to $2 trillion-plus.
Microsoft told investors on a conference call late this past Tuesday that current quarter revenues for Azure, its benchmark cloud offering, would rise "significantly" from last year's levels, thanks in part to new enterprise contracts, Microsoft 365 momentum and the hybrid cloud management service called Arc. The better-than-expected outlook offset concerns linked to slowing Azure growth rates -- albeit the unit still paced a 26% increase in Intelligent Cloud division revenues -- that marred an otherwise solid set of second-quarter earnings figures, including record revenues of $51.7 billion and a Street-beating bottom line of $2.48 per share.
The Street Quant Ratings rates Microsoft as a Buy with a rating score of A+.
Intel
Intel (INTC) shares slumped to a two-year low this past week after the chipmaker cautioned that supply chain disruptions would keep a lid on near-term profits growth, clouding the impact of its record fourth-quarter revenue haul. Intel said March quarter earnings would come in around 80 cents per share, around 6 cents shy of the Refinitiv forecast, after posting record revenues of $19.53 billion and an adjusted bottom line of $1.09 per share over the three months ending in December, both of which handily topped Street consensus forecasts.
Intel said client computing group sales fell 7% to $10.1 billion, but that was partly offset by a 20% jump in data center revenues, which hit $7.3 billion. Cloud revenues, which sit in the data center business, were also lower on the year, but the rate of decline was much less severe than in previous quarters.
The Street Quant Ratings rates Intel as a Hold with a rating score of C-.
Blackberry
BlackBerry (BB) shares moved lower Monday after the tech group sold rights to the legacy patents that powered its eponymous mobile phone handset that once rivaled Apple's iPhone. The deal, worth around $600 million, marks the close of a decade-long slide in relevance for the Blackberry, which at one time held a commanding 43% share of the global handset market and was used as a verb -- as well as a noun -- by celebrities, business leaders and politicians alike.
The global expansions of Apple's iPhone, however, as well as touch-screen rivals from Samsung (SSNLF) and others, decimated the public perception of BlackBerry, prompting the group to switch focus away from handset production under CEO John Chen. Canada-based BlackBerry, which now focuses on cybersecurity software, closed out its service of the Blackberry handset earlier this year.
The Street Quant Ratings rates Blackberry as a Sell with a rating score of D.
