Wall Street’s pandemic winners are getting a reality check

Tech companies may grow more slowly in a post-pandemic economy, but they remain strong.

Overall, the performance of the tech sector is still extraordinary. The shares of Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Facebook are up between 50 per cent and more than 70 per cent over the past year. Apple now has a market value of more than $US2 trillion.

Despite the recent decline, the same is true for companies whose products and services were suddenly in great demand for video conferencing (like Zoom), home exercising (Peloton) and takeout meal delivery (Grubhub and DoorDash). Zoom shares have tripled in the past year, while Peloton is up fivefold.

The pullback in recent weeks is “not the death of tech at all,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group, which advises institutional investors. “It’s just that with the economy as a whole set to grow rapidly, other sectors will have greater profit growth relative to tech.”

A central question for the tech companies — and their investment outlook — is how much the coronavirus year has permanently changed work and consumption patterns.

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Once pandemic fears are gone, will people largely return to working in offices but have more flexibility, perhaps working from home a day or two a week? Or will there be a more fundamental shift in the geography of employment, with workers in coastal cities like San Francisco and New York dispersing to “Zoom towns” for lower housing costs and less traffic?

Will the online shopping and entertainment habits forged in confinement continue to accelerate the trends toward e-commerce and video streaming?

No one knows for sure, but the view of Bay Area technologists and investors, not surprisingly, leans toward a long-term COVID bump for tech companies.

Rich Wong, a general partner at Accel, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, sees “a truly credible case” that the growth of “these digital transformations have actually increased by a major step and, with that, the size of the opportunity in technology and venture investing.”

Stock market gyrations can shelve plans by startups to sell shares to the public. But gaming site Roblox, which is popular among children and tweens and has thrived in the stay-at-home economy, made its stock market debut Wednesday. After its first day of trading, Roblox was valued at $US45 billion, up from $US4 billion just over a year ago.

At the end of last week, Coursera, the digital learning network, filed the documents necessary to go public in the coming weeks. The company and its venture backers are convinced that adult education and skills training will increasingly be online and that investors will agree. In its filing, Coursera reported that its revenue jumped 59 per cent last year, to $US294 million.

So far, there is little evidence of a retreat from online life in general.

SimilarWeb, an online data provider, compared traffic at the top 100 websites in the United States during last March and April, when web use spiked at the start of the pandemic, with the first two months of this year. Total traffic was up more than 12 per cent this year. No “peak web” yet.

Readerman, portfolio manager for Endurance Capital Partners, has been a technology company analyst and investor for 30 years. He is mainly a longer-term investor in companies he views as tech innovators with strong managements.

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One of his holdings is Nvidia, a semiconductor company whose specialised chips are well suited for artificial intelligence programs. Nvidia shares took a pounding Monday. After the close of the market that day, from his home office in the Bay Area, Readerman said he was buying in the downturn.

“The market is giving us an opportunity to increase our conviction,” he said, chuckling.

Nvidia shares are up about 8 per cent from the Monday close.

The New York Times