Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) may have stolen the headlines last week with its bumper earnings results, but Meta (NASDAQ: FB) has quickly become the talk of financial markets after it posted its biggest one-day wipeout on record. Meanwhile, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) announces a stock split, and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) also handed down earnings reports.

Alphabet advertising soars, stock split ahead

Shares in Google parent company Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) popped 7.5% higher immediately in the wake of its fourth-quarter earnings report, with the tech giant beating revenue and profit expectations. It posted earnings per share of US$30.69, while revenue grew 32% to US$75.3 billion.

The key driver for the result was the company advertising revenue, which increased by 33% from a year ago to reach US$61.2 billion across the quarter. That growth is being driven by retail users, primarily, although the company also noted media and finance spending played a major role.

In similar scenes to Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), cloud revenue is proving to be a high-growth category for the company as well, with revenue up 45% to US$5.5 billion. Although the division is still running at a loss, Alphabet has narrowed losses as momentum picks up. Over the last year, Alphabet has seen the number of cloud deals valued in excess of US$1 billion soar 65%, with a large backlog of US$51 billion in play.

Meanwhile, the company Pixel smartphone has underpinned revenue from other sources, defying supply chain challenges to see a sales record for its flagship hardware item.

One area that fell short of consensus expectations was ad revenue from the company YouTube service, with daily active users plateauing amid industry competition from the likes of TikTok. Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC) also came in above forecasts, reflecting higher payments to other websites to acquire web traffic.

Finally, Alphabet has taken a page out of the books of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), announcing a 20-for-1 stock split that will take effect in July. A stock split increases the accessibility for retail investors to buy whole shares in stocks with high prices.

Meta tumbles as Facebook user growth slows

Arguably one of the biggest shocks this earnings season, Meta (NASDAQ: FB) tumbled more than 26% and wiped out US$250 billion in market value after delivering a lacklustre earnings report complete with a troubling outlook for the social media giant. It was the worst single-day performance from the company in its history. With the exception of average revenue per user, the company missed forecasts across almost every metric, with growth seemingly falling short of market expectations.

The company saw its daily active users (DAUs) decline in the fourth-quarter of 2021 to 1.93 billion, which is the first time it has seen a backwards step for this metric. After delivering US$33.7 billion in revenue for the quarter, which includes US$32.8 billion from the Facebook Family of Apps (FoA) and US$877 million from its Reality Labs hardware, the company guidance has shocked investors.

Meta now expects to see between US$27 billion and US$29 billion in the first quarter of the new year, representing growth of just 3% to 11% versus the prior corresponding period in early 2021.

Among the headwinds for Facebook, Meta is dealing with the fallout of privacy changes to Apple iOS. It has also pointed towards economic factors like supply chain disruption and inflation as having an impact on the advertising expenditure of its clients, while consumer engagement is gravitating towards lower revenue-generating products like Reels, as opposed to its news Feed and Stories.

Amazon windfall amid Rivian IPO, cloud growth and Prime price hike 

On the back of a near US$12 billion gain from its stake in recently-listed electric vehicle developer Rivian (NASDAQ: RIVN), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has reported earnings per share of US$27.75, lifting its shares as much as 17% higher at the start of the after-hours trading session.

Total revenue across the company surged 9% in the holiday quarter to US$137.4 billion, while management has guided for between US$112 billion and US$117 billion in the first quarter of the new year. Elsewhere, the company is seeing the impact of inflation and higher wages and staff incentives flow through to its expenses. 

In a highlight for the company, despite a number of outages hitting its cloud operations, Amazon Web Services growth picked up in the fourth-quarter of 2021, soaring 40%. Remote working and corporates gravitating towards remote storage databases sparked the growth, with revenue reaching US$17.8 billion and US$5.3 billion in operating income. Given the high-margin nature of the AWS division, it represents more than one-third of total operating income, despite accounting for just 13% of overall revenue.

As the company deals with increased supply chain costs and growing expenses in building its media content library, Amazon has also announced plans to raise the price of its Prime membership subscription, the first time it has done such since 2018. US subscribers will soon pay US$139 per year instead of US$119, while monthly subscriptions will also increase from US$12.99 to US$14.99.

That a wrap for mega-tech this US earnings season, so keep an eye out on ASX earnings this month.