Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak said Alphabet's new segment disclosure reveals that global search revenue was about 6% larger he than expected in 2019, while YouTube's $15B of 2019 revenue was about 30% smaller than he expected, though it is growing about 300 basis points faster year-over-year than he estimated. Google Cloud "is what we thought it was," with $9B of annual revenue and 50% year-over-year growth. The new segment disclosure gives better insight into the company's main growth drivers, but his thesis remains that Alphabet's ability to innovate and drive engagement across its nine products with 1B plus users are key to driving long-term value. Nowak keeps an Overweight rating on Alphabet with a $1,560 price target on the shares.

Meta Platforms (META), the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Threads and other brands, is scheduled to report first quarter 2024 results after market close on Wednesday, April 24 with a conference call scheduled for 5 pm ET. Here's what to... To see the rest of the story go to thefly.com. See Story Here

The promise of AI has already driven a massive market rally. The irony is that Apple (AAPL), the company with more context about our lives than any other, has been left behind, Alex Eule writes in this week's edition of Barron's. Unlike Big Tech rivals Meta (META) and Alphabet (GOOGL), or the start-up OpenAI, it has yet to create its own large-language model. The switch to AI, to be sure, is more complex than making a larger-screen phone. But Apple's dominance hasn't changed. And that puts it at the center of any shift - real or artificial, the author says. Reference Link