市場調查報告書
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全球網路規模網路營運商市場分析(2023 年第四季):Webscale Network Operators - 4Q23 Market Review: Network/IT Capex up 4% in 2023 even as Total Capex Dips, Good Outlook for 2024-25 driven by GenAI Land Grab, Big Jump in Sector Profitability amidst Layoffs |
本報告分析了2011年以來全球網路規模網路營運商(WNO)市場的成長表現和發展趨勢。 最近12個月(2023年第一季至2023年第四季),網路規模營運商收入為2.37兆美元(年增6.2%),研發費用為2930億美元(年增9.4%) ),資本投資1920億美元(年減5.1%)。 截至2023年12月,現金及短期投資餘額6,790億美元(年增9.8%),債務總額5,620億美元(年增1.9%)。 截至 2023 年底,WebScaler 擁有約 4,093,000 名員工,低於 2022 年底的 4,194,000 名員工。
2022 年網路規模細分市場銷售疲軟,但 2023 年情況恰恰相反。2023年,全球經濟成長改善,數位廣告市場復甦,TikTok開始面臨反彈,雲端服務更加流行,華為設備業務持續下滑。根據 Webscale Tracker 的衡量,所有因素都傾向於推動營收成長。
2023年每季的年成長率(YoY)均增加,促使2023年銷售額達到22,370億美元,比2022年成長6.2%。
Webscale 部門的每名員工收入將從2022 年的539,000 美元增加到2023 年的584,000 美元,每位員工的自由現金流將從2022 年的73,000 美元增加到2023 年的73,000 美元。 109,000 美元。每位員工的自由現金流成長幅度更大,從 2022 年的 73,000 美元增加到 2023 年的 109,000 美元。這些變化既是由於銷售額的增加和利潤成長的加快,也是由於過去兩年員工人數成長的停滯。截至2023年底,WebScale擁有4093,000名員工,較2021年底略有增加,但較2022年的4,194,000人總數大幅減少。隨著主要網路擴展商尋求在其營運中實施生成式人工智慧以降低勞動力成本,整個行業可能會進一步裁員。同樣的事情已經發生在電信公司身上。
2023 年資本支出總額略為下降,下降 5.1%,至 1,920 億美元。這並不意味著市場情緒消極。季度資本支出可能會根據供應鏈和其他問題而大幅波動,而網路規模市場尤其波動,因為它是由少數大型參與者推動的。此外,在2023年的資本投資金額中,高科技領域實際上正在成長,比前一年成長4%。
2023年網路規模研發費用將達到銷售額的12.3%,高於2022年的12.0%。這是因為公司在研發上花費了大量資金,以進入機器人、醫療保健和金融服務等新市場。大部分研發支出都用於支撐資料中心營運的實體基礎設施:開發更智慧的軟體以及新晶片和其他硬體的專有技術。
過去十年,美國佔全球網路規模資本支出的 50-60%。這一比例近兩年有所上升,到2023年將達到60%以上。在可預見的未來,預計美國仍將是迄今為止最大的單一國家市場。資料中心資本支出預計將遵循這種模式,因為大多數主要的生成式人工智慧創新者都位於美國,並嚴重依賴美國的網路基礎設施。然而,隨著網路擴展器擴展到其他地區,美國的佔有率可能會在幾年內恢復到 50% 以下。中國雲端提供商支出的增加將是經濟放緩的驅動因素之一。
十年前,網路規模領域還不存在。大型科技公司剛開始建立自己的資料中心,以優化成本結構、營運效率和上市時間。然而,與整個網路基礎設施市場相比,網路規模的資本投資很小。但現在情況並非如此。2022 年網路規模資本支出將首次超過 2,000 億美元。從那時起,網路規模的資本支出每年已降至 2,000 億美元以下,但這只是短暫的。
儘管 2023 年資本支出略有下降,但前景依然強勁,因為即使在市場完全開發和定義之前,各大公司也在尋求 GenAI 機會。
我們對 2023 年 12 月的預測預計 2023 年網路規模資本支出將達到 2,020 億美元,略高於實際情況。2024年和2025年的官方目標分別為2,030億美元和2,180億美元。
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This report reviews the growth and development of the webscale network operator (WNO) market since 2011. In the most recent 12 months (1Q23-4Q23), webscalers represented $2.37 trillion (T) in revenues (+6.2% YoY), $293 billion (B) in R&D spending (+9.4% YoY), and $192B in capex (-5.1% YoY). They had $679B of cash and short-term investments (+9.8% YoY) on the books as of December 2023, and $562B in total debt (+1.9% YoY). Webscalers employed approximately 4.093 million (M) people at the end of 2023, down from the YE2022 total of 4.194M.
Revenues for the webscale sector floundered in 2022, but the opposite happened in 2023. In 2023, global economic growth improved, the digital ad market recovered, TikTok began to face some backlash, cloud services penetration marched on, and Huawei's device business remained in the doldrums. All factors tended to benefit the revenue growth measured by our webscale tracker.
Each quarter of 2023 saw an increase in the YoY growth rate, resulting in annual 2023 revenues of $2.237 trillion, up 6.2% from 2022. Improvements were widespread. China's leading cloud services providers (Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent) all went from revenue declines in 2022 to increases in 2023; Amazon's revenues grew 11.8% in CY23 increase (2022: 9.8%) and Microsoft's rose 11.5% (2022: 10.4%). Most significant, perhaps, was Meta's big jump, growing revenues by just under 16% in 2023 after 2022, when revenues fell for the first time in history. Alphabet remained stable with revenue growth again in the 8-10% YoY range. Apple disappointed with a -0.5% YoY change as it still struggles to find growth now that 5G networks are widely deployed. Oracle performed very well for its size, growing 12.1% due to a mix of acquisition activity and success with its Oracle cloud infrastructure platform.
Revenues per employee in the webscale sector ended 2023 at $584K, from $539K in 2022; free cash flow per employee jumped even more noticeably, from $73K in 2022 to $109K in 2023. These swings are due both to rising revenues and even more quickly rising profits, and the sector's headcount growth taking a pause in the last two years. Webscale headcount ended 2023 at 4.093M, slightly up from the YE2021 figure but handily down from the 2022 total of 4.194M. Meta saw by far the biggest dip in its workforce, down 22% in 2023 to 67,300. This recent wave of layoffs was due in part to overhiring during COVID. There is a good chance that we will see additional layoffs across the sector though as big webscalers attempt to impement Generative AI in their own operations in search of labor cost savings. The same thing is already happening in the telco sector.
The main reason we cover webscalers is because we care about their technology spend. Webscalers spend heavily on data centers and related cloud infrastructure in support of both their services and operations. So, while it's important to know about revenue & profitability trends in webscale, the vendors selling into the market (our main clients) care about technology spend. That means capex and R&D. And not just capex in general, but more specifically the technology component of capex, i.e. "Network/IT/software" broadly defined.
Total capex did fall a bit in 2023, down 5.1% to $192B. This doesn't imply a negative market sentiment. Capex spend by quarter can vary significantly due to supply chain and other issues, and the webscale market is especially volatile since it's driven by just a few big players; the top 4 capture 77% of global capex, after all. Moreover, the tech portion of capex actually grew in 2023, up 4% YoY. The disparity is due to an easing of spend on transportation, logistics, fulfillment and non-tech infra categories at Amazon, Alphabet, Alibaba and others.
R&D spend within webscale amounted to 12.3% of revenues in 2023, even higher than the 12.0% recorded in 2022. The R&D intensity ratio has been creeping up in webscale for some time, as companies spend heavily to enter into new markets such as robotics, healthcare, financial services, and more. A good chunk of this R&D cash also targets the development of proprietary tech for the physical infrastructure of data centers underlying their operations: new chips and other hardware, not just smarter software.
Looking beyond the 2023 numbers, what is most important is that last year the webscale market found a new lifeforce, a new reason for being.
For the prior several years, adoption of cloud services was a primary motivator for incremental investments; they drove data center spread and design evolution at Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle. Short-form video content and gaming were also important drivers. This could be seen in the big related investments made by Alphabet and Meta, and Microsoft's biggest acquisition ever (of Activision, for $69B). Then in early 2023 - alongside these other trends - GenerativeAI's potential suddenly reached mass market awareness. In reality, GenAI was cooking for many years prior to this, but January 2023 was a turning point with the release of ChatGPT: it reached 100 million users by the end of the month. Other platforms were rushed to market, and any big tech company (webscaler or not) without investments in GenAI quickly scurried around to cobble something together, or invest in a third party. Amazon, for instance, invested heavily in Anthropic, as did Alphabet. Chinese webscalers each launched their own native offerings.
There is surely some unrealistic hype being floated about the potential of GenAI to solve all the world's problems - cure diseases, find solutions to global conflict, invent new forms of transportation, etc. This happens every time markets get excited about a new technology. There is always a 'tech leader' willing to make obnoxiously grandiose statements, and always a receptive audience to echo some of the nonsense. That said, GenAI has real potential to develop new markets over the next few years, and it is a legitimate reason to accelerate data center investments. The exact shape and size and location of such investments are not yet clear, and that uncertainty can slow down investment. But GenAI is not going away. We suspect the quest to monetize GenAI will drive a land grab for more capable data centers and supporting supercomputer clusters for several years to come.
This report series traditionally breaks out revenues by region for each webscaler. Towards the end of 2023, we added our first regional breakout of capex, focused on the US. Our analysis finds that the US has amounted to between 50-60% of global webscale capex for most of the last decade. This percentage increased in the last two years, ending 2023 at just over 60%. The US will continue to be the largest single country market, by far, for the foreseeable future. Most of the key GenAI innovators are based in the US and rely heavily on US Internet infrastructure, and data center capex will follow this pattern. However, the US ratio may return below 50% within a couple of years as webscalers expand their footprints in other regions. Spending pickups by China-based cloud providers will be one driver of this moderation.
A decade ago, the webscale sector did not exist. Big tech companies were just beginning to build their own data centers to optimize their cost structure, operational efficiency, and time to market. But webscale capex was a rounding error in the overall market for network infrastructure. That's not the case anymore. Webscale capex surpassed $200B for the first time in 2022. Annualized webscale capex has since fallen below $200B, but that is a short-term blip.
Telco capex is still higher, and will remain so for the next few years. But, webscale capex is far more concentrated, as it is dominated by a few big spenders, and it is focused on a smaller range of product types and vendors. Some aspects of webscale capex are more leading edge; innovations in the data center often impact other types of networks (e.g. high-speed optics for telco backbone networks). As such, the market will continue to be important for lots of vendors - and not just chip suppliers like NVIDIA, Intel and AMD.
While capex dipped a bit in 2023, the outlook is strong as key players pursue GenAI opportunities even before that market is well developed or defined. Here is a summary of the spending outlook for key webscalers:
Our Dec 2023 forecast called for $202B in 2023 webscale capex; that proved a bit too high. The official targets for 2024 and 2025 are $203B and $218B, respectively. We see no reason to modify these targets, but note that there is now significant uncertainty. They could be too low, but, some of the optimistic projections issued by webscalers will change as they face resource constraints or pursue more asset light strategies, or be crowded out by companies not currently classed as webscalers e.g. OpenAI. One certainty is that this is an exciting time to be selling into data center infra markets.
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