Tech companies have been slashing their spending over the last few months — this earnings season included.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq (^IXIC) is up more than 30% this year so far, and some of the biggest companies in it, from Amazon (AMZN) to Meta (META), have seen their shares climb somewhere between substantial and astronomical amounts, despite interest rates hitting a 22-year-high.
The single biggest factor in tech's rise has involved cost-cutting. While that includes the much-talked-about layoffs we've seen across the sector, just as important have been cuts to capital expenditures, or capex.
Capital expenditures are investments in the long term (as opposed to operating expenses). Think office buildings, copyrights, and technical infrastructure. In short, capex is what a company spends locking in its assets for the future.
And this quarter, investors saw tech companies’ capex cuts, many of which have been in progress for months to a year, on full display.
Take Meta (META), for instance. For the three months leading up to June 30, 2022, the Facebook parent spent $7.75 billion on capex. This year, that number for the same period stood at $6.35 billion, according to SEC filings.
Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) was also part of the mix: "Google’s spending was ~$1B light of expectations and up just 1% y/y, though this was largely related to real estate and deferred datacenter deployments," Raymond James’ Simon Leopold recently wrote in a note.
Additionally, chipmaker TSMC (TSM) cut its 2023 capex by as much as $4 billion. The company’s capex range for this year is $32 billion-$36 billion, down from $36.3 billion last year.
Even techy EV maker Rivian (RIVN) dropped its capex outlook.
"We are reducing our capital expenditure guidance for 2023 to $1.7 billion due to a shift in capital expenditure timing," Rivian CFO Claire McDonough told analysts on the company's earnings call. "We continue to believe the average capital expenditures per year, between this year and next year, will be in the low $2 billion area."
To be sure, this isn’t a totally uniform trend in tech. For example, this past quarter, Microsoft’s (MSFT) capex exceeded expectations.
It’s also possible that the AI boom will send capex numbers up yet again.
On July 17, Piper Jaffray’s Harsh Kumar wrote that "capex forecasts indicate a gen AI bubble forming" and that "capex forecasts are typically based on future workloads and today’s forecasts incorporate a significant number of start-ups that are not likely to make it (this has historically been true)."
However, by their nature, capex cuts mean a company is spending less on its long-term capabilities — its future. In tech, where innovation is paramount, will this affect companies' ability to innovate in the coming years?
"I don’t really believe near-term capex cuts is a trend that has significant ramifications," Jason Tauber, managing director at Neuberger Berman told Yahoo Finance. "Broadly speaking, this has been, to echo Mark Zuckerberg, the 'year of efficiency,' a belt-tightening in response to the hangover from over-hiring and over-spending during the COVID tech bubble. Tech companies saw their valuations come down substantially in 2022, and there is stepped-up pressure from investors for companies to show GAAP EPS and free cash flow."
Meta and Alphabet are up about 152% and 65% year to date, respectively. And for its deluge of problems last year, Rivian is up about 18% this year.
So in the near term, Wall Street is loving these capex cuts. And if Tauber is right, investors don't seem to need to worry about the future they might create either.
A rare win-win, perhaps.
Allie Garfinkle is a Senior Tech Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @agarfinks and on LinkedIn.
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