Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Apple, Google, and Microsoft Report Record-breaking Quarterly Profits


Wed 28 Jul 2021 | 04:04 AM
Taarek Refaat

Google, Apple and Microsoft reported record quarterly sales and profits Tuesday as big tech companies continue to benefit from the pandemic.

Apple posted a profit of USD 21.7 billion for the three months ending in June, its best third financial quarter in 45 years, buoyed by strong iPhone 12 sales and services sector.

Alphabet, Google's parent, reported a second-quarter profit of USD 61.8 billion, an increase of 62%, year-on-year, and profit of more than USD 18.5 billion, more than double its profit for the same period last year. The company's advertising revenue also increased 69%.

Microsoft beat expectations, posting revenue of more than USD 46 billion for the quarter, a 21% increase over the same quarter last year.

Tesla reported a record profit on Monday in one of its busiest weeks ever for quarterly earnings results in the United States. Big tech profits continue with Facebook on Wednesday and Amazon on Thursday.

In aggregate, the market capitalization of Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook is more than a third of the entire S&P 500 index of America's 500 largest publicly traded companies, whose stock prices have soared during the pandemic.

Big tech companies have been the biggest winners from the pandemic, said Thomas Philippon, an economist and professor of finance at New York University, as global shutdowns push more businesses and consumers to use their services.

“They were really on the rise and were in the best part of a decade, and the epidemic was unique,” Philippon said. "For them, it was a perfect positive storm."