Messaging and Calls Soar For Facebook

Facebook reported that total messaging on its services has increased more than 50% over the past month in Italy and other countries hit hardest by Covid-19. Moreover, in some places, voice and video calling have more than doubled on Messenger and WhatsApp, Facebook said. "The usage growth from Covid-19 is unprecedented across the industry, and we are experiencing new records in usage almost every day."

However, the company added:  "We don’t monetise many of the services where we’re seeing increased engagement, and we’ve seen a weakening in our ads business in countries taking aggressive actions to reduce the spread of Covid-19." Source: Facebook statement

Deutsche Telekom Forecasts Growth Ahead

Deutsche Telekom reported a 2.8% increase in revenues in 2019 on a like-for-like basis to 80.5 billion euros.  T-Mobile USA lifted revenues 5% in dollar terms. Anticipating further growth in the U.S., the group forecast an increase in revenues in 2020, followed by a "slight increase in 2021". source: Deutsche Telekom statement

Postpaid Mobile Lifts América Móvil

América Móvil reported a 3.2% year-on-year increase in service revenues, at constant exchange rates, for the fourth quarter of 2019 to 209 billion Mexican pesos (11.25 billion U.S. dollars). The growth figure excludes Argentina, which is subject to inflation-adjusted accounting. The operator said its mobile revenues rose 5.7%, lifted by a 15.6% increase in Brazil where it is gaining market share. Source: América Móvil statement

Orange Buoyed By Cloud and Security

Orange reported a 1.1% year-on-year rise in revenues for the fourth quarter of 2019 on a comparable basis to 11.1 billion euros. Across 2019, revenue rose 0.6% boosted by "very strong momentum in Africa and the Middle East", a "solid performance in Europe and the return of growth in enterprise."  Orange said these factors "more than compensated for a very slight decline in France of 0.3% and a decline in Spain of 1.5% in 2019 due to that market's shift towards low cost."

Orange also reported that IT and systems integration activities' share of enterprise revenues climbed two percentage points to reach 37.2% in 2019.  "This increase reflects the performance of cloud and cybersecurity services, where Orange has become a European leader thanks to the acquisitions of SecureData and SecureLink," the operator said.

At the end of 2019, Orange Bank had over 500,000 customers, including 390,000 account holders in France. It has also been launched in Spain. Meanwhile, the video-on-demand service OCS Go now has 3.1 million customers. source: Orange collateral

Vodafone Meets Demand for Unlimited Data

Vodafone reported a 6.8% year-on-year rise in group revenue for the quarter ending December 31 to 11.75 billion euros. However, on an organic basis, service revenue rose just 0.8%, as growth in Africa was offset by declines in Europe.

Vodafone said it is now offering "new speed-tiered unlimited mobile data plans"  in the seven markets where it has launched 5G. "We reached an unlimited consumer customer base of 3 million SIMs" at the end of the quarter, Vodafone reported, adding: "Reflecting the success of our unlimited plans, data volumes on our mobile networks continued to grow strongly in Europe in [the quarter], rising by 45%. Average smartphone usage for our overall customer base increased to 4.5 GB/month (+1.2 GB year-on-year)."

Vodafone also said its new agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deploy AWS Wavelength solutions at the edge of Vodafone's 5G networks, will deliver a 5-10 times reduction in latency. "The new services will help support artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, video analytics, autonomous vehicles, robotics and drone control, and will generate incremental revenues for the Group," it added. source: Vodafone statement

Alphabet Talks Up YouTube and Cloud

Alphabet, the owner of Google, reported a 19% year-on-year increase in revenues to 46.1 billion U.S. dollars for the fourth quarter on a constant currency basis. "At our scale, we are pleased with our rate of growth for 2019 and see ample opportunity going forward,' said Ruth Porat, CFO. "With respect to YouTube advertising, at a year-on-year growth rate of more than 30% in the fourth quarter, we're pleased with the ongoing strength and opportunity at YouTube. We see substantial continuing opportunity in direct response as well as with brand advertisers... the non-advertising services at YouTube, mainly from subscriptions, reached a 3 billion dollars revenue run rate in the fourth quarter."

Alphabet said that Waymo's (self-driving) cars have driven 20 million miles across more than 25 U.S. cities. "Waymo is now serving over 1,500 monthly active riders in Metro Phoenix and continues scaling fully driverless by matching early riders with driverless vehicles and charging for these rides. As Waymo looks to its evolution as a business, it's focusing on strategic partnerships. For example, it's working closely with OEMs and other businesses to build out ride hailing and delivery business lines."

Alphabet also reported that it added as many buildings to Google Maps using machine learning in 2019 as it had using all other techniques in the previous decade. "The Google Assistant now helps more than 500 million monthly users across 90 countries get things done across smart speakers and smart displays, phones, TVs, cars and more," Porat added. "I'm proud to announce that over 80 billion dollars has been earned by developers around the world from Google Play showing the popularity of our platform. There are now over 2 billion active monthly users of Google Play." Source: Alphabet investor documentation

Amazon Saw Slight Slowdown in Fourth Quarter

Amazon reported a 21% year-on-year increase in sales for the fourth quarter of 2019 to 87.4 billion U.S. dollars. For the full year, net sales increased 22% on a constant currency basis to 280.5 billion dollars. Growth at its cloud arm, AWS, slowed to 34% in the fourth quarter, compared with 37% for the whole of 2019.

“More people joined Prime this quarter than ever before, and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO. "The number of items delivered to U.S. customers with Prime’s free one-day and same-day delivery more than quadrupled this quarter compared to last year... Prime members watched double the hours of original movies and TV shows on Prime Video this quarter compared to last year.” source: Amazon statement

Tesla Says Revenue Growth Will Accelerate

Tesla reported a 2% year-on-year rise in revenues for the fourth quarter to 7.38 US dollars,  as deliveries of its Model 3 car leapt 46% to 92,620. Tesla said: "Revenue growth was offset by higher lease mix, Model 3 becoming a larger part of our mix, introduction of the Standard Range trims of Model 3, and adjustments to vehicle pricing. These changes have resulted in a reduction to the average selling price (ASP) relative to 2018. We do not expect ASP to change significantly in the near term, which means volume growth and revenue growth should correlate more closely this year."

"We are positioned to accelerate our revenue growth further through increasing build rates in Gigafactory Shanghai and our Model Y production line in Fremont. These production increases will allow for higher total vehicle deliveries and associated revenue."

Tesla said its customers vehicles have now driven over three billion miles in "Autopilot mode", adding more data to the neural net it is using to develop self-driving capabilities. "All Tesla vehicles with our FSD computer have been updated with new software that can better detect new details in their environments, allowing us to show various lane markings, traffic lights, stop signs, cones as well as other vehicles and road users. Understanding the environment around a Tesla is key to enabling our cars to react to traffic lights and stop signs and take intersections through city streets. We are currently validating this functionality before releasing to customers, and we look forward to its gradual deployment."

In the fourth quarter, Tesla launched premium vehicle connectivity in the US for 10 dollars (plus tax) per month, which customers can use to stream music or videos, browse the Internet or see live traffic through an embedded connection. Source: Tesla statement