Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak initiated coverage of Quotient Technology with an Underweight rating and $8 price target. He sees three reasons Quotient's media business is likely to slow to a teens percentage growth rate - the structural challenges facing its current grocery retail partners; challenges for incremental advertiser growth given that the company already works with 100% of Fortune 500 consumer packaged goods companies; and challenges with having to compete against Google's (GOOGL) AdSense network. Nowak also sees the Coupons side of the business seeing its growth slow to a 3% compound annual growth rate for 2019-2024, he tells investors.

Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) have been the dominant names in cloud computing since the pandemic, with the three technology leaders accounting for "65% of the $53B in global cloud-service spending" in the first quarter of 2022, wrote the Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley. "Though well established, the cloud units of Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet's Google have been expanding like startups, with sales growing by more than 30% year over year," as smaller cloud services losing ground, added the WSJ story. Reference Link

The European Union on Tuesday, adopted the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, regulations proposed by the Commission in December 2020. Executive Vice-President for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager, said: "The European Parliament has adopted a global first: Strong, ambitious regulation of online platforms. The Digital Services Act enables the protection of users' rights online. The Digital Markets Act creates fair, open online markets. As an example, illegal hate speech can also be dealt with online. And products bought online must be safe. Big platforms will have to refrain from promoting their own interests, share their data with other businesses, enable more app stores. Because with size comes responsibility - as a big platform, there are things you must do and things you cannot do." Companies that may be impacted by this include Meta Platforms (META), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT). Reference Link

Barclays analyst Ross Sandler lowered the firm's price target on Alphabet Class A to $3,000 from $3,200 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. Investors are "rightfully wary" about the trajectory of digital advertising growth in 2022, especially into Q2 earnings, Sandler tells investors in a research note. The analyst believes a "perfect storm" is here given the step-down in spend and conversions across the whole internet ecosystem in Q2, an "ascending trajectory" from new challengers like TikTok and Apple, and the "obvious tough comps which are well documented." He thinks this "cocktail of events is likely to generate the lowest growth rates for the sector in years." However, stock valuations already reflect some of this, contends Sandler.