- Big Tech companies report earnings this week in a very different climate from last quarter.
- Tariffs and uncertainty are setting the mood for Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon.
- Tech CEOs, many of whom supported Trump, must convince investors they can sustain their growth.
Big Tech CEOs had seemed ready for good vibes with Donald Trump. Instead, they're heading into their latest earnings season with a difficult task: addressing a Trump-led vibe shift that's been anything but kind to them.
This week, several tech firms, including Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, report their latest earnings against a backdrop of uncertainty that sent their stocks plummeting and added pressure on them to deliver results on big bets like AI.
Investors and CEOs started the year with very different expectations. They had hoped for a Trump bump from deregulation, the return of dealmaking, and an overall pro-growth agenda.
"We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad," Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, said in an earnings call in January.
Despite a market sell-off in January stemming from the release of a new AI model from China's DeepSeek, there appeared to be optimism among the Big Tech CEOs who had donated to Trump's presidential campaign, lined up behind him at his inauguration, and shared huge investment commitments collectively worth over $1 trillion to the US.
Instead, they got tariffs and uncertainty.
Big Tech stocks have taken a beating
The pain for Big Tech has been most evident in the aftermath of Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff proposals this month, which raised fears about the long-term value of tech firms with supply chains and large customer bases in regions heavily targeted by tariffs, like China.
Apple, for instance, has seen its share price fall by almost 14% this year as its reliance on a massive supply chain empire in China has been called into question. Amazon is down by nearly 15%. Microsoft is down by more than 6%, and Meta is down by more than 8%.
The S&P 500 — the four Big Tech companies reporting earnings this week constitute roughly a fifth of its benchmark index — is down by over 6% since Trump's inauguration. Trillions of dollars have gone up in smoke.
Hamish Low, an analyst at research firm Enders Analysis, told Business Insider that the "macro uncertainty" triggered in Trump's administration would weigh on tech companies.
He said it would cause investors to be more serious about the "questions that were already growing" around Big Tech's major bets and their potential for returns, Low said.
AI has been a huge talking point for tech CEOs, but none have yet been able to clearly indicate when returns might come on their massive capital expenditures.
"Impressive capabilities at the frontier of research aren't translating into either people's experiences of AI products, or the kinds of returns that match the investments going in," Low told BI.
What may help offset some of the pain for these companies is that analysts have been lowering their expectations.
In a poll of analysts, research firm FactSet found that the profits of the so-called Magnificent Seven tech firms are expected to rise 16% this year, down from around a 37% increase in 2024, according to figures first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
In which case, CEOs might be able to breathe a sigh of relief as reality readjusts around them. But if the fallout from tech earnings already shared this season is any indication, they may not want to think twice about getting too relaxed.
Speaking as Tesla reported disappointing earnings last week, Elon Musk, who emerged as a key figure in the early days of Trump's administration as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, made clear he will, from next month, be "allocating far more of my time to Tesla."
Musk added that the "tariff decision is entirely up to the president of the United States."
Tesla, which has a significant manufacturing presence in China, has seen its share price drop by almost 25% since the start of the year, even with a bounce after Musk said he'd step back from DOGE.
Google, which reported earnings last week, also showed signs that Trump's policies had given it a headache. Addressing an investor question on tariffs, Google's chief business officer Philipp Schindler said, "We're obviously not immune to the macro environment." Google's share price is down nearly 15% since the start of the year.
Clearly, tech CEOs are far from the position they thought they'd be in when they lined up behind Trump in January. Investors will want to know how they plan to navigate the current uncertainty — and any future Trump vibe shift.
