2022年经济学人 科技泡沫正在破裂（2）（在线收听）

The industry has suffered from an abrupt reversal of fortunes, explains Mark Mahaney of Evercore ISI, an investment bank.

投资银行Evercore isi的Mark Mahaney解释说，这个行业遭遇了命运的突然逆转。

In recent years more than one factor gave tech a boost: the coronavirus pandemic pushed life and work online; government stimulus programmes further increased demand; and super-loose monetary policy made tech’s long-term growth more attractive to investors.

近年来，有多个因素推动了科技的发展:冠状病毒大流行推动了生活和工作的网络化;政府的刺激计划进一步增加了需求;超宽松的货币政策也让科技公司的长期增长对投资者更具吸引力。

Now people are turning away from screens and leaving home again; the war in Ukraine is creating paralysing uncertainty; and economies around the world are suffering from inflation and soon, perhaps, recession.

现在人们不再使用屏幕，再次离开家；乌克兰战争正在制造令人丧失思考的不确定性；世界各地的经济都在受到通货膨胀的困扰，并且，可能很快就会陷入衰退。

Then there are rising interest rates.

然后是不断上升的利率。

Besides possibly triggering a downturn, they reduce the present value of tech companies’ profits, most of which lie far in the future.

除了可能引发经济低迷之外，它们还会降低科技公司的利润现值，而这些利润大多还需要很长时间才能兑现。

If inflation does not come down, central banks will pile on more rate rises, putting further pressure on risky tech stocks.

如果通胀不下降，各国央行将加大加息力度，给高风险科技股带来进一步压力。

How bad will things get?

情况会变得多糟糕？

Although stockmarkets have stabilised a bit in recent days, no one is ready to call the bottom.

尽管股市在最近几天已经稳定了一些，但没有人准备抄底。

Just as markets have overshot in the past few years, they can undershoot.

就像过去几年市场涨得过高一样，它们也可能跌得过低。

There is more of a consensus over what could happen when the dust has settled.

对于尘埃落定后会发生什么，人们达成了更多的共识。

According to Daniel Ives of Wedbush, another investment bank, the tech industry is at a “fork in the road”.

另一家投资银行韦德布什的丹尼尔·艾夫斯表示，科技行业正处在“十字路口”。

As interest rates go up, he argues, investors will turn their back on more speculative growth stocks and focus on the quality names in tech.

他认为，随着利率上升，投资者将抛弃更具投机性的成长型股票，转而关注科技股中的优质股。

No prizes for guessing which ones.

哪些是优质股无需多猜。

Although the combined market value of America’s tech titans - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft - has dropped by nearly 25% since November and their latest results were less stellar than in earlier quarters, they remain safe bets.

尽管美国科技巨头Alphabet、亚马逊、苹果、Meta和微软的总市值自去年11月以来已经下跌了近25%，而且它们的最新业绩也不如前几个季度那么出色，但它们仍然是稳妥的赌注。

Together they booked $359bn in quarterly sales and $69bn in net profits.

这些公司总共录得3590亿美元的季度销售额和690亿美元的净利润。

Their core businesses are still growing - in particular cloud computing.

他们的核心业务仍在增长——尤其是云计算。

Collectively, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft, the world’s three biggest cloud providers, took in $43bn of sales for such services in the first three months of 2022, up by 33% from a year earlier.

全球三大云服务提供商Alphabet、亚马逊和微软在2022年第一季度共实现了430亿美元的云服务销售额，同比增长33%。

More unexpectedly, older tech and hardware stocks seem in decent nick, Mr Ives notes.

艾夫斯指出，更令人没想到的是，老牌科技和硬件股似乎状况不错。

Intel, a veteran chipmaker, is down by a relatively modest 13% since November.

老牌芯片制造商英特尔自去年11月以来股价下跌了13%，是一个相对温和的数字。

IBM, a software icon, is up by 12%.

软件巨头IBM股价上涨了12%。

Makers of business software with steady sales and high margins, such as Adobe, Oracle and Salesforce, may rebound fast.

销售稳定、利润率高的商业软件制造商，如Adobe、甲骨文和Salesforce，可能会快速回弹。

Hard though it may seem given Coinbase’s crash on May 11th, so may payments and crypto platforms, which have joined the financial mainstream.

考虑到5月11日Coinbase的崩盘，这似乎看起来很困难，但已经加入金融主流的支付和加密平台也是如此。

Cyber-security firms, such as CrowdStrike or Palo Alto Networks, could see their fortunes return thanks to fears of Russian and Chinese cyber-attacks.

由于担心俄罗斯和中国的网络攻击，CrowdStrike或Palo Alto Networks等网络安全公司可能会重新迎来机遇。

Geopolitical rifts may even lift Palantir, a secretive analytics firm that works with security services, whose share price plunged by 20% on May 9th after it disclosed slowing sales growth.

地缘政治分裂甚至可能提振Palantir，这是一家与安全服务部门合作的秘密分析公司，在5月9日公布销售增长放缓后其股价暴跌20%。

Persistently unprofitable gig-economy firms look shakier.

长期不盈利的零工经济公司看起来更加摇摇欲坠。

Uber, the ride-hailing and delivery champion which reported on May 4th that trips and users rose by nearly a fifth year on year in the first quarter, still lost nearly $6bn.

网约车和配送行业的领头羊优步在5月4日报告称，第一季度的出行次数和用户数量同比增长近五分之一，但仍亏损近60亿美元。

The heavy repricing of video-streamers, with multibillion-dollar content expenses and reversing (Netflix) or even steady (Disney) subscriber growth, may be permanent.

视频流媒体的大幅重新定价可能是永久性的，因为流媒体的内容成本高达数十亿美元，并且订阅数的增长正在逆转(网飞)，甚至稳定(迪士尼)。

The same may be true for second-tier firms in areas such as social media (Snap) or e-commerce (Shopify), which are dominated by Meta and Amazon, respectively.

社交媒体(Snap)或电子商务(Shopify)等领域的二线公司的情况可能也是如此，这两个领域分别由Meta和亚马逊主导。

It would be wrong to compare the current tech slump to the bursting of the dotcom bubble two decades ago.

将当前的科技行业低迷与20年前的互联网泡沫破裂相提并论是不对的。

Back then companies had neither healthy balance-sheets nor promising business models.

当时的那些公司既没有健康的资产负债表，也没有前景美好的商业模式。

Nowadays many of them have both.

而如今这些公司中的许多家都两者兼有。

The stomach-churning market gyrations are unpleasant to a generation of tech founders, workers and investors who have lived a long bull run.

对于经历了长时间牛市的一代科技公司创始人、员工和投资者来说，令人反胃的市场波动是令人不快的。

But they are unlikely to stop digital technology eating the world.

但这些波动不太可能阻止数字技术吞噬世界。