Finimize - 😤 What's a tech giant got to do?

Hi Reader, here's what you need to know for April 27th in 3:13 minutes.

♻️ You don’t need to choose between doing good and making money. Join the Impact in Tech Foundation’s Elisa Giudici for Impact Investor’s Guide to Web3 on Thursday, and discover the opportunities that could bring your carbon footprint down and your bank balance up. Grab your free ticket

Today's big stories

Microsoft's quarterly results beat expectations, but Alphabet stumbled
There’s another potential crisis hiding in the markets, but there are ways to safeguard your portfolio – Read Now
Twitter agreed to be bought by Elon Musk

Close Call

What’s Going On Here?

Microsoft and Google-parent Alphabet reported diverging quarterly updates late on Tuesday, but they both have one thing in common: they’re never far from regulation…

What Does This Mean?

Microsoft kicked things off with a clean sweep of expectation-beating results: revenue from its cloud computing business was 26% higher than the same time last year, its productivity business – think Office 365 and LinkedIn – 17% higher, and its PC business 11% higher. No such luck for Alphabet, whose overall revenue missed expectations. That, even though its advertising revenue – from platforms like Google and YouTube – was up 22% on the same time last year, and its cloud revenue up 44%. Its profit disappointed too, given how much it spent driving visitors to its sites and keeping them there. And while Alphabet tried to appease investors with a $70 billion buyback of its own shares, it didn’t work: the company’s stock initially fell 5%.

Why Should I Care?

The bigger picture: Sneaky tactics.
Microsoft and Alphabet are still numbers two and three behind Amazon in the cloud space, but Microsoft is gaining ground: it’s increased its market share by nearly 10% over the past five years, putting it at around 21% to Amazon’s 33%. Not without some allegedly underhanded tactics, mind you: there’s talk that Microsoft’s been luring customers away from rivals by charging more to run its Office applications on their cloud services. And with regulators always sniffing around the tech giants these days, analysts think this could be next on their agenda.

Zooming out: Why choose?
Boeing won’t settle for just one cloud giant, not when it can have all three: the plane manufacturer announced earlier this month that it’s hiring Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon to help revamp its tech and give its designers and developers better software to work with. It’s hoping that’ll improve quality control, as well as eliminate some of the production issues that drive up the costs of developing new aircraft.

You might also like: The cloud industry is on the rise. Here’s how to hitch a ride.

Copy to share story: https://www.finimize.com/wp/news/close-call-3/

🙋 Ask a question

Analyst Take

How To Guard Against The Crisis Hidden In The Markets

Reda, Analyst

What’s Going On Here?

There are so many crises in the markets right now that you’d probably rather not hear about another one.

But the reality is that emerging markets (EMs) haven’t been so at risk since the 90s, and they’re more tied up with the global economy – and ultimately your portfolio – than you might think.

After all, they’re a major driver of global economic growth, which means even one bankruptcy could end up having global repercussions.

So that’s today’s Insight: why EMs could be set for a crisis, and how to protect your portfolio in case it happens.

Read or listen to the Insight here

Americans have a problem with crypto

For all the headlines when a big bank offers crypto, it turns out that Americans aren’t too fussed.

Attest just asked a bunch of real customers what they want from their bank, and the ability to invest in stocks and crypto came bottom of the list.

When Attest asked them what would encourage them to invest in crypto, the top response was: “If I had extra money every month to invest”.

Attest thinks there might be a solution: banks could offer cash incentives to new customers, which should make any crypto services more accessible and attract more banking customers too.

There are more bright ideas where that came from: read Attest’s latest research.

Read The Research