FAMGA, Word Clouds, & Internet Balloons
Earnings call transcripts are a prime source of qualitative data that you won’t be able to find at your nearest Bloomberg terminal. They can often reveal key insights to help investors match the story and the numbers. Derived from the latest available earnings call transcripts, this byt3 explores what FAMGA (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon) is mentioning most and some context around each tech giant. Below is a word cloud for each company showing the frequency of words by the key executives in the latest earnings call with analysts:
Facebook: In light of the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, it could be noted from this transcript that Facebook is getting back to its core supplier, “people.” You may have seen some of Facebook’s recent ad campaigns that carry a subtly apologetic tone (but not really when they get away with losing only 15 minutes of profit) and gets back to its roots as a social network.
Apple: It comes as no surprise that Apple’s darling and cash cow product, the iPhone, makes up the majority of mentions during its Q2 earnings call. Constituting 62% of Apple’s revenue, we can only hope to expect teleporting capabilities by the iPhone 20 release to stay relevant.
Microsoft: While there was no clear forerunner, the cloud computing platform “Azure” takes a top mention along with “data” and “services.” Jumping to 13% market share of cloud computing platforms from 10% a year earlier, it still is probably not enough to make Amazon lose sleep. Thank god for law-abiding Microsoft Office subscribers.
Google: Until Alphabet comes up with a better logo, I chose to stick with the iconic “G” for the company. No surprises here in that Google and YouTube are the top two product mentions. What isn’t seen here are some of the bigger bets Alphabet is quietly taking such as its Waymo-guided fleet of Jaguar I-Pace vehicles joined by a number of other projects spinning out of its X Research division. These projects range from the drone delivery company Project Wing to the balloon-borne internet service provider Project Loon. Until that science-nonfiction comes about, we’ll continue to let Google get to know us better than we know ourselves, one search query at a time.
Amazon: Lastly, the king of sting continues to chug along by focusing on “customers,” converting them to “Prime,” and thus equating to $51B of “revenue” in Q1. The tried-and-true model of Amazon’s customer obsession, merciless execution, and lateral dominance continues to disrupt what we know and ever knew a tech giant could be.
