Big Tech is only getting bigger

Last week, we saw the latest quarterly results for the (unfortunately named) FAAMG Big Tech companies.

For the uninitiated, that acronym is collectively worth $8T+:

• FB, Facebook ($923.6B)
• AAPL, Apple ($2.2T)
• AMZN, Amazon ($1.7T)
• MSFT, Microsoft ($1.9T)
• GOOGL, Alphabet ($1.6T)

The pandemic boosted Big Tech sales

The phrase “record growth” was a constant theme for Q1 2021 revenue: Apple sales were +54% YoY to $90B while Amazon jumped 44% YoY to $108.5B.

While growth was slower for the other behemoths, their Q1 sales numbers are still huge: Alphabet ($55B), Microsoft ($42B), Facebook, ($26B).

For perspective, here’s how much these companies made per minute in the first 3 months of the year:

• Amazon: $837k
• Apple: $691k
• Alphabet: $427k
• Microsoft: $322k
• Facebook: $202k

And it’s not just sales

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, here are some other notable Q1 stats:

• iPhone sales alone hit $47B, with the average retail price hitting $847
• Microsoft Teams has 145m daily users, more than 7x the figure from 1.5 years ago
• Amazon’s US employee count hit 950k, ~2x the same period last year
• YouTube revenue was +49% YoY (and its projected $29-$30B run rate for 2021 puts it on par with Netflix)
• Facebook apps (i.e., FB, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp) were used by 3.4B+ people at least once in the past month

Perhaps the most jarring number?

FAAMG now makes up ~25% of the total value of the S&P 500 — 2x the share from 5 years ago. Unfortunately for us, it looks like that ghastly acronym isn’t going anywhere.