(BFM Stock Exchange) – Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have published their results. Overall, the five large GAFAMs recalled how robust their economic models were. But the rest is more complicated with the very uncertain impact of customs duties.

The GAFAMs, which still represent five of Wall Street’s “Seven Magnificent” (Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft to which Tesla and Nvidia) were hated by Donald Trump’s announcements. Over the first 100 days of the mandate of the current American president, these titles lost between 5% and 15%.

These actions have suffered from the uncertainty caused by customs duties, while several of these groups are concerned first of all by these customs surcharges. According to Counterpoint research firm, 80% of Apple iPhones for the American market are assembled in China, the remaining 20% ​​from India.

Amazon was even at the heart of the start of a controversy, this week, when press information reported that the company was planning to display the impact of rights on the prices of some of the goods sold on its sites. The Trump administration went up to the niche, qualifying this “hostile” action. The company reacted by ensuring that this decision, for a time envisaged, had never been validated.

The GAFAMs have also been penalized by a more general movement of leakage of investors from American actions to other titles, including European titles.

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A recall bit

But the results season was an opportunity for GAFAMs to remind investors how robust their economic models are. “The results of the first quarter were rather well successful by the GAFAMs, who sailed well in the first quarter. These good results associated with the fact that the valuations had lowered the good ‘mix’ to restore the risk of investors”, underlines Alexandre Baradez, chief of market analysis at IG France.

“The majority of tech companies have announced results higher than forecasts for the first quarter of the year 2025, investors can push a sigh of relief,” said UBS.

Alphabet had already given a first good trend last week, its action taking 1.7% after delivering reassuring results. The advertising linked to online research, the heart of the reactor of its profitability, had exceeded expectations while dematerialized IT services (“cloud”) had held their promises.

This week, the other four GAFAMs have delivered their accounts. With the exception of Apple, which abandons 4% Friday

At Wall Street, all the groups have passed the test without too much hindrance. Amazon, who like Apple published its results Thursday evening after the closure, sold 1.1% while its results exceeded expectations. Bank of America described the quarter of Jeff Bezos as “solid”, with a profit of 18.4 billion dollars when analysts, only reinforced $ 18.4 billion? And growth from Amazon Web Services online with expectations.

Meta and Microsoft have easily packed Wall Street. The two companies published their accounts on Wednesday evening after the closing of the market. Meta delivered a thunderous growth of 16%, which demonstrated that online advertising remained toned in the first quarter, and a profit per share up 37% and more than 20% in consensus.

“We consider that Meta is relatively well positioned in an unfavorable macroeconomic context, with multiple use engines and a platform piloted by AI which improves advertising performance compared to its peers,” concluded Bank of America. The title took 4.2% Thursday.

Microsoft featured

And what about Microsoft, who jumped 7.6% on Thursday and earned another 3% this Friday. The specialist in professional IT even takes up Apple the crown of first world capitalization, with a margin of 150 billion dollars.

Microsoft released 15% growth in the third quarter of its 2024-2025 fiscal year, with a profit per share of $ 3.46, when analysts awaited $ 3.22. Above all, its Cloud service division, Azure, met all expectations, even the most optimistic. This division remains closely scrutinized by analysts because it is the one that must draw the fastest and faster the fruit of heavy investments (80 billion dollars in the group 2024-2025) of the group in artificial intelligence.

Ultimately, Azure posted growth of 33% and even 35% excluding exchange effects. “It was music for the ears of investors betting on the rise in the title, because Microsoft has exceeded market expectations with a new acceleration of the growth of Azure during this period of uncertainty,” said Dan Ives de Wedbush.

“We see Microsoft as the only leader in AI, both for applications and for infrastructure,” says Bank of America.

“The excellent quarterly results of Meta and Microsoft have rekindled confidence in American technological leadership and, by extension, prolonged rebound in American actions which started after the pricing shock of April 2”, judge Stephen Innes, of SPI AM.

Towards a difficult second quarter

The fact remains that if these results were therefore generally good, the horizon is much less clear and more uncertain for the current quarter with customs duties.

“There are really two landscapes, two stories, with a good first trimester but over the other and on the other and a second quarter more difficult to read on the other, which will be more complicated with the start of the impact of customs duties, especially on advertising budgets”, points Alexandre Baradez.

“For example, Meta’s financial director Susan Li said that visibility was bad in this quarter,” he added.

Amazon has disappointed markets with its prudent prospects for the current quarter. The e-commerce giant indicated to aim for an operating profit between 13 billion and $ 17.4 billion, when the consensus was 17.6 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Apple, he highlighted the lack of visibility he faces. Its director general, Tim Cook, said that in the state of things, customs duties would have an impact of $ 900 million on apple group costs in the current quarter. If he explained that the company now intended to produce the majority of the iPhone marketed in the United States in India, it has not been able to give analysts more indications for the rest of the year.

“I think that the uncertainties about what will happen beyond the closed quarter in June are at the origin of the suffering of the Apple action at Wall Street (…) Six of the twenty questions of analysts at the conference focused on the prospects beyond this horizon, and none found a final answer”, judged Gene Munster, manager at Deepwater Am, in a video posted on X. Added nervousness in investor projections, “he adds.