ICONIQ Growth has been actively investing in cloud companies since our inception and as part of that, we closely track the major public cloud platforms and what they are experiencing as it relates to their adoption and growth. We are excited to share an overview of our findings from Q1 2020.
3. 3
Company
Revenue
• AWS revenue of $10.2B, an increase of 32.8%
Y/Y, up from $7.7B in Q1 FY19
• Seventh consecutive quarter of decelerating,
but impressive Y/Y revenue growth,
surpassing Oracle in scale
• Azure revenue increase of 61.0% FX‐
neutral Y/Y (revenue undisclosed)
• Commercial Cloud revenue of $13.9B in Q3
FY20, an increase of 40% FX‐neutral Y/Y
• Intelligent Cloud revenue of $12.3B in Q3
FY20, an increase of 29% Y/Y
• $11.1B revenue run rate for Google Cloud
in Q1 FY20
• Quarterly Google Cloud revenue up 52.2%
Y/Y to $2.8B in Q1 FY20 (GCP Growth
significantly higher). Q/Q growth was up
6.2% from $2.6Bn in Q4 FY19
Profitability
• Slight increase in operating margin in Q1 FY20
to 30.1%, up from 26.1% in Q4 FY19, and
from 28.9% in Q1 FY19
• While representing just 13.5% of revenues,
AWS drove 77% of AMZN operating income
• Q3 FY20 Commercial Cloud gross margin of
67%, up from 63% in Q3 FY19, driven
primarily by improved Azure margin
• Intelligent Cloud operating margin at 37.1%
in Q3 FY20, down from 38.2% in Q2 FY20
• Q1 FY20 consolidated operating income of
$8.0B for Google, up 20.7% Y/Y (unknown
portion allocated to GCP)
• Consolidated operating margin of 19.3% in
Q1 FY20, compared to 20.1% in Q4 FY19
Capital
Expenditures
• Q1 FY20 PP&E acquired under finance
leases(1) down 17.5% Y/Y
• Trailing twelve months (TTM) finance lease
expenditures of $13.2B, up 29.3% Y/Y from
$11B in Q1 FY19, but down 3.6% Q/Q
• Announced opening of 2 AWS regions in
Europe and Africa, with plans to open 3 more
• CapEx of $3.9Bn in Q3 FY20, up 15% Y/Y
(includes assets acquired under finance
leases), but down 13% Q/Q
• $3.8B in total paid in cash for PP&E during
Q3 FY20, up 9% Q/Q and 46.8% Y/Y
• More data center regions than any other
cloud provider
• Q1 FY20 CapEx of $6.0B, up 29.5% Y/Y from
$4.6B in Q1 FY19 but down from $6.1 in Q4
FY19
• Expect modest decrease in total level of
CapEx in 2020 relative to 2019
Impact of COVID
• COVID‐19 positively impacted AMZN on the
top line, as groceries, online shopping, and
AWS all grew meaningfully
• AWS is assisting small businesses,
governments, educators, and healthcare
organizations in responding to COVID‐19
• While AWS growth continues to increase
steadily, post‐COIVD impact will vary by
industry
• Overall, COVID‐19 impacted Microsoft
business minimally, with the Intelligent
Cloud Segment actually beating revenue
forecast by 4.2% ($12.3Bn vs. $11.8Bn)
• As more customers shift to work from
home, cloud usage increased across many
segments including Teams and Azure
• Overall, Azure is performing well and
seeing tailwinds in reaction to accelerated
digital transformation, though Microsoft
remains committed to staying
operationally disciplined with strategic
investments
• As COVID‐19 has shifted many new
businesses online, Google Cloud has seen
accelerated traction across sectors from
health care to retailers to supply chain
• Google remains thoughtful about the near‐
term but focused on the long‐term, and
will reduce hiring plans for FY2020. Most
investment will focus on vectors of growth
such as Search, Cloud, and ML
• GCP growth and customer adoption
remains strong through COVID‐19.
• Closing times of larger deals are being
impacted negatively
Source: ICONIQ Growth diligence, AMZN, MSFT and
GOOG public filings
(1) Under new accounting guidance, leases and capex
spending previously referred to as “capital leases” are
now referred to as “finance leases”
Overview of Select Core Competitors
Cloud Provider Landscape
Summary Overview – Key Participants
4. 4
Cloud Commentary
Amazon – Q1 2020 Earnings Call & Press Release
Theme Commentary
Financials
• Management pleased with AWS growth and believe business is durable given their breadth of deployment across a
wide customer base and several industry verticals
• Backlog of future customer contracts continues to grow and their ability to provide services have not been impeded
by COVID‐19 yet
Product
• GA of Amazon Detective, a security service allowing customers to better monitor AWS workloads by ingesting log data
and utilizing machine learning and graph theory to create interactive visualizations to identify root causes
• GA of Amazon Keyspaces, a fully managed cloud database for Cassandra Workloads
• Announced Amazon AppFlow, a managed service providing a secure way to automate bidirectional data flows
between AWS and SaaS applications, without writing custom integration code
• GA of Amazon Augmented Artificial Intelligence (A2I), a managed service for injecting human review into machine
learning models and predictions
Customers
• AWS being leveraged by customers like WHO, LAX Unified School District, Cerner and England’s National Health
Service to lessen the impact that COVID is having on families, communities and businesses
• Powered NFL’s first virtual draft, which reached 55M viewer and required 100 live feeds
• AWS now spans 76 availability zones within 24 geographic regions, with announced plans for nine more availability
zones and three more AWS regions to serve customers in Indonesia, Japan and Spain
• Committed $20M to AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative, a method for supporting customers working to bring
diagnostic solutions to COVID
• Partnering with Salesforce to launch special program for up to 300 customers like HCA Healthcare and Providence
Health & Services to help them quickly stand‐up call center capacity and manage volatility in business operations
Summary
Outlook
• Management highlights their ability to continuously expand the useful life of their servers and other datacenter
equipment, noting this is a benefit for their AWS business and potentially suggesting less of a need for substantial
CapEx in the near term
Source: ICONIQ Growth diligence, AMZN public filings
5. 5
Theme Commentary
Financials
• Azure revenue increased 61% Y/Y FX‐neutral (revenue figures not disclosed), down from a 64% Y/Y last quarter and 75% Y/Y
in Q3 FY2019
• Commercial Cloud and Azure revenue growth propelled by COVID‐19, as enterprises transition to WFH and deploy Office
365 instances, virtual desktops and applications on Windows Virtual Desktop and Azure infrastructure
• Despite supply chain constraints, there was continued investment in CapEx of $3.9B (including assets acquired under
finance leases), up 15% Y/Y. Capex investments have proven valuable as usage has increased, and continued aggressive
infrastructure investment is expected
Product
• Azure Sphere delivers quick and cost‐effective device security for IoT and Azure Security Center is expanding its container
security features to protect Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• GA release of Azure App Configuration, a managed service that helps developers centralize their application configuration
and feature settings simply and securely
• FastTrack for Azure helps with the rapid and effective design and deployment of cloud solutions
• Azure Data Factory (ADF) adds Managed Identity and Service Principal to Data Flows Synapse staging. Fully supported
distributions of Apache analytics projects such as Spark, Hadoop, and Kafka are now available for HDInsight
• Demand for Azure Active Directory has increased to 300 million active users as companies need secure remote identity and
access management
Customers
• Notable customers with significant Azure deployments include Mastercard, Autodesk, AARP, Coca‐Cola, ASOS, Genesys,
Blackrock, ABInBev, Mars and the NBA
• Microsoft healthcare bot service is helping over 27M people access healthcare information. Organizations from the CDC to
Adaptive Biotechnologies to ImmunityBio are using Microsoft for multiple COVID‐response measures from self‐
assessments to decoding immune responses
• For telecom, New Azure Edge Zones extends Azure to the network edge, connecting directly with carrier’s 5G networks to
enable immersive, real‐time experiences that require ultra‐low latency
Summary
Outlook
• Expect some growth moderation across specific Azure deployments in industries most susceptible to COVID‐19 shutdown
• On balance, expect to continue to see a surge in demand for cloud and Azure services, and as a result believe Q4 FY2020
CapEx will be “healthy” in order to get in front of demand
• Management noted “As COVID‐19 impacts every aspect of our work and life, we have seen two years’ worth of digital
transformation in two months”, further highlighting the shift towards cloud services
Source: ICONIQ Growth diligence, MSFT public filings
Cloud Commentary
Microsoft – Q3 FY2020 Earnings Call & Press Release
6. 6
Theme Commentary
Financials
• Google Cloud continues to grow meaningfully at 52% Y/Y to $2.8Bn vs. 53% Y/Y growth in Q4 2019
• GCP growth rate meaningfully higher than consolidated Google cloud Y/Y revenue growth, which was weighed down
by G Suite Y/Y growth
• Google Cloud’s financial profile was impacted much less than other lines of business, most notably their advertising
segment
Product
• GA of Google Anthos, an open application platform to accelerate application development in multi‐cloud or hybrid
environments
• GCP growth and customer adoption led by infrastructure offerings and broad data and analytics product suite
• More broadly, Google product suite seeing increased adoption during WFH environment. Most notably, Google Meet
is adding 3M new users easy day and witnessed 30x usage increase since January 2020. 100M daily meeting
participants utilizing their service
Customers
• Google Cloud has formed deep partnerships with leader healthcare providers, such as HCA Healthcare and Cambridge
Health Alliance to better understand data related to COVID‐19 such as ICU bed availability, ventilators supplies, and
test results as well as management of their 140K+ patients
• Google is helping governments deliver critical health and social services, supporting NY’s new online unemployment
application system, and assisting companies like Loblaw's and Wayfair scale to support exponential traffic increases
• Notable customers building on GCP include Vodafone, Unity Technologies, Lloyd’s Bank, Netflix, Twitter, Accenture,
AT&T and Shopify
Summary
Outlook
• Expect modest decrease in the level of CapEx in 2020 relative to 2019. However, management notes the biggest
contributing factor is their decrease in appetite for office facility investment and build‐outs. No further detail on how
this will specifically effect datacenter construction
• Moving forward, continued resources and focus will be placed on Google Cloud as it remains a major growth lever
long‐term. Management notes most sizeable head count increases are sales and technical roles in Google Cloud
division
• Management did not provide quantitative forward guidance on Google Cloud revenue or profitability
Cloud Commentary
Google – Q1 2020 Earnings Call & Press Release
Source: ICONIQ Growth diligence, GOOG public filings