Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Netflix Inc, Google

The first-quarter results season in the US featured a lot of sparkling results from technology stocks, but who were the winners?

All of them, except maybe Twitter.

The tech giants, including the FAANG stocks (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google – which spoilt the whole FAANG thing by changing its name to Alphabet), seem unstoppable, with the pandemic in the main only cementing their dominance.

In the past, companies perceived as all-conquering, such as IBM and Microsoft were eventually eclipsed but it took a long time for that to happen. Barring some sort of regulatory crackdown or maybe an unforeseen technological innovation the tech giants look set to go from strength to strength for some time yet.

Facebook: even Nick Clegg can’t ruin it

Facebook, Inc () was once runner-up to the almost forgotten MySpace, of course, so overthrows can happen.

It has a market capitalisation of US$936bn based on a share price of US$329.51, and its trading range over the last 52 weeks has been US$199 – US$332, give or take a few cents.

First-quarter revenue of US$26.2bn and net income of US$9.5bn – equivalent to US$3.30 a share – were both well ahead of analysts’ estimates.

Even with former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in a senior management position (well, it’s better than David ), the company is undeniably doing fantastically well, and on a price/earnings ratio of 28.23 (based on trailing 12-month earnings) is not even that stupidly expensive on fundamental grounds.

The company bought back US$3.9bn of stock in the first quarter, which should give a handy tweak to earnings per share in the future.

The major cloud on the horizon, apart maybe from the fact that early adopter types stopped using its platform years ago, is a looming dust-up with Apple, Inc (), which has introduced a new privacy update to its operating system that could undermine the very basis on which Facebook earns its corn, i.e. harvesting data about its users and flogging that to advertisers.

“We continue to expect increased ad targeting headwinds in 2021 from regulatory and platform changes, notably the recently launched iOS 14.5 {Apple operating system] update, which we expect to begin having an impact in the second quarter,” said Facebook’s chief financial officer, Dave Wehner.

Apple: a control freak at core

Talking of Apple, its P/E ratio is not exactly stratospheric at 30.00. It bought back US$19bn of shares in the first quarter and has spent US$77bn on share repurchases over the last year – enough to buy all but six companies in the FTSE 100.

Its quarterly earnings clocked in at US$23.6bn (US$1.40 a share), more than double the year before. Earnings per share of US$1.40 trounced The Street’s consensus forecast of US$0.99.

A series of fines have been shrugged off. Just this week Russia imposed a US$12mln fine on Apple for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the smartphone market and the EU has provisionally ruled Apple breached anti-monopoly rules by abusing its control over the dissemination of music streaming apps after a complaint by streaming service Spotify.

Chicken feed.

Apple is the ultimate control freak company. Its model relies on controlling every aspect of what happens inside the Apple walled garden (and charges accordingly). It’s going to get these sorts of fines time and time again. It can afford them but they are piling up. As well as cheesing off Spotify, it has irked Epic Games, the company behind the phenomenally successful Fortnite game.

The dispute has been described as Silicon Valley’s highest-profile court case in a decade and could set a precedent that would clip Apple’s wings a bit.

Amazon.com: one store to rule them all and in the darkness bind them

Amazon.com, Inc () must be making…