I am rethinking the economics of technological change, especially in the context of cloud computing and its spectacular rise, as, essentially, a new and distinct segment of digital business. As I am teaching microeconomics, this semester, I am connecting mostly to that level of technological change. I want to dive a bit more into the business level of cloud computing, and thus I pass in review the annual reports of heavyweights in the IT industry: Alphabet, Microsoft and IBM.
First of all, a didactic reminder is due. When I want to study the business, which is publicly listed in a stock market, I am approaching that business from its investor-relations side, and more specifically the investor-relations site. Each company listed in the stock market runs such a site, dedicated to show, with some reluctance to full transparency, mind you, the way the business works. Thus, in my review, I call by, respectively: https://abc.xyz/investor/ for Alphabet (you know, the mothership of Google), https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor as regards Microsoft, and https://www.ibm.com/investor as for them Ibemians.
I start with the Mother of All Clouds, i.e. with Google and its mother company, namely Alphabet. Keep in mind: the GDP of Poland, my home country, is roughly $590 billions, and the gross margin which Alphabet generated in 2019 was $89 857 million, thus 15% of the Polish GDP. That’s the size of business we are talking about and I am talking about that business precisely for that reason. There is a school in economic sciences, called new institutionalism. Roughly speaking, those guys study the question why big corporate structures exist at all. The answer is that corporations are a social contrivance which allows internalizing a market inside an organization. You can understand the general drift of that scientific school if you study a foundational paper by O.D. Hart (Hart 1988[1]). Long story short, when a corporate structure grows as big as Alphabet, I can assume its internal structure is somehow representative for the digital industry as a whole. You could say: but them Google people, they don’t make hardware. No, they don’t, and yet they massively invest in hardware, mostly in servers. Their activity translates into a lot of IT hardware.
Anyway, I assume that the business structure of Alphabet is informative about the general structure and the drift of the digital business globally. In the two tables below, I show the structure of their revenues. For the non-economic people: revenue is the value of sales, or, in analytical terms, Price multiplied by Quantity.
Semi-annual revenue of Alphabet Inc.
The next step is to understand specifically the meaning of categories defined as ‘Segments’, and the general business drift. The latter is strongly rooted in what the Google tribe cherishes as ‘Moonshots’, and which means technological change seen as revolution rather than evolution. Their business develops by technological leaps, smoothed by exogenous economic conditions. Those exogenous conditions translate into the Alphabet’s business mostly as advertising. In the subsection titled ‘How we make money’, you can read it explicitly. By the way, under the mysterious categories of ‘Google other’ and ‘Other Bets revenues’, Alphabet understands, respectively:
>> Google other: Google Play, including sales of apps and in-app purchases, as well as digital content sold in the Google Play store; hardware, including Google Nest home products, Pixelbooks, Pixel phones and other devices; YouTube non-advertising, including YouTube Premium and YouTube TV subscriptions and other services;
>> Other Bet revenues are, in the Google corporate jargon, young and risky businesses, slightly off the main Googly track; right now, they cover the sales of Access internet, TV services, Verily licensing, and R&D services.
Against that background, Google Cloud, which most of us are not really familiar with, as it is a business-to-business functionality, shows interesting growth. Still, it is to keep in mind that Google is cloud: ‘Google was a company built in the cloud. We continue to invest in infrastructure, security, data management, analytics and AI’ (page 7 of the 10K annual report for 2019). You Tube ads, which show a breath-taking ascent in the company’s revenue, base their efficiency and attractiveness on artificial intelligence operating in a huge cloud of data regarding the viewers’ activity on You Tube.
Now, I want to have a look at Alphabet from other financial angles. Their balance sheet, i.e. their capital account, comes next in line. In two tables below, I present that balance sheet one side at a time, and I start with the active side, i.e. with assets. I use the principle that if I know what kind of assets a company invests money in, I can guess a lot about the way their business works. When I look at Alphabet’s assets, the biggest single category is that of ‘Marketable securities’, closely followed by ‘Property and Equipment’. They are like a big factory with a big portfolio of financial securities, and the portfolio is noticeably bigger than the factory. This is a pattern which I recently observe in a lot of tech companies. They hold huge reserves of liquid financial assets, probably in order to max out on their flexibility. You never know when exactly you will face both the opportunity and the necessity to invest in the next technological moonshot. Accounts receivable and goodwill come in the second place, as regards the value in distinct groups of assets. A bit of explanation is due as for that latter category. Goodwill might suggest someone had good intentions. Weeell, sort of. When you are a big company and you buy a smaller company, and you obviously overpay for the control over that company, over the market price of that stock, the surplus you have overpaid you call ‘Goodwill’. It means that this really expensive purchase is, in the same time, very promising, and there is likely to be plenty of future profits. When? In the future, stands to reason.
Now, I call by the passive side of Alphabet’s balance sheet, i.e. by their liabilities and equity, which is shown schematically in the next table below. The biggest single category here, i.e. the biggest distinct stream of financial capital fuelling this specific corporate machine is made of ‘Retained Earnings’, and stock equity comes in the second place. Those two categories taken together made 73% of the Alphabet’s total capital base, by the end of 2019. Still, by the end of 2018, that share was of 77%. Whilst Alphabet retains a lot of its net profit, something like 50%, there is a subtle shift in their financing. They seem to be moving from an equity-based model of financing towards more liability-based one. It happens by baby steps, yet it happens. Some accrued compensations and benefits (i.e. money which Alphabet should pay to their employees, yet they don’t, because…), some accrued revenue share… all those little movements indicate a change in their way of accumulating and using capital.
The next two tables below give a bird’s eye view of Alphabet in terms of trends in their financials. They have a steady profitability (i.e. capacity to make money out of current business), their capacity to bring return on equity and assets steadily grows, and they shift gently from equity-based finance towards more complex a capital base, with more long-term liabilities. My general conclusion is that Alphabet is up to something, like really. They claim they constantly do revolution, but my gut feeling is that they are poising themselves for a really big revolution, business-wise, coming shortly. Those reserves of liquid financial assets, that accumulation of liabilities… All that stuff is typical in businesses coiling for a big leap. There is another thing, closely correlated with this one. In their annual report, Alphabet claims that they mostly make money on advertising. In a narrow, operational sense, it might be true. Yet, when I have a look at their cash-flow, it looks different. What they have cash from, first and most of all, are maturities and sales of financial securities, and this one comes as way a dominant, single source of cash, hands down. They make money on financial operations in the stock market, in somehow plainer a human lingo. Then, in the second place, come two operational inflows of cash: amortization of fixed assets, and tax benefits resulting from the payment of stock-based compensations. Alphabet makes real money on financial operations and tax benefits. They might be a cloud in their operations, but in their cash-flows they are a good, old-fashioned financial scheme.
Now, I compare with Microsoft (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/sec-filings.aspx). In a recent update, titled ‘#howcouldtheyhavedoneittome’, I discussed the emerging position of cloud computing in the overall business of Microsoft. Now, I focus on their general financials, with a special focus on their balance sheet and their cash-flow. I show a detailed view of both in the two tables that follow. Capital-wise, Microsoft follows slightly different a pattern as compared to Alphabet, although some common denominators appear. On the active side, i.e. as regards the ways of employing capital, Microsoft seems to be even more oriented on liquid financial than Alphabet. Cash, its equivalents, and short-term investments are, by far, the biggest single category of assets in Microsoft. The capital they have in property and equipment is far lower, and, interestingly, almost equal to goodwill. In other words, when Microsoft acquires productive assets, it seems to be like 50/50 their own ones, on the one hand, and those located in acquired companies, on the other hand. As for the sources of capital, Microsoft is clearly more debt-based, especially long-term debt, than Alphabet, whilst retaining comparatively lower a proportion of their net income. It looks as if Alphabet was only discovering, by now, the charms of a capital structure which Microsoft seems to have discovered quite a while ago. As for cash-flows, both giants are very similar. In Microsoft, as in Alphabet, the main single source of cash is the monetization of financial securities, through maturity or by sales, with operational tax write-offs coming in the second place. Both giants seem to be financially bored, so to say. Operations run their way, people are interested in the company’s stock, from time to time a smaller company gets swallowed, and it goes repeatedly, year by year. Boring. Time for a revolution.
Edit: as I was ruminating my thoughts after having written this update, I recorded a quick video (https://youtu.be/ra2ztH3k0M0 ) on the economics of technological change, where I connect my observations about Alphabet and Microsoft with a classic, namely with the theory of innovation by Joseph Schumpeter.
[1] Hart, O. D. (1988). Incomplete Contracts and the Theory of the Firm. Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, 4(1), 119-139.
[1] Hart, O. D. (1988). Incomplete Contracts and the Theory of the Firm. Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, 4(1), 119-139.
