Evercore: Average U.S. Citizen Not Into Regulating Big-Tech
15 JULY 2022 - Evercore analyst Amit Daryanani has a message for Capitol Hill: U.S. citizens aren’t into the whole regulating big tech thing. That’s the finding of a series of surveys by the Chamber of Progress. Worth noting, as Daryanani does - that is an organization funded by big tech.
Apple 3.0 ran part of Daryanani’s note. According to that, “The surveys were conducted across 27 states and each survey asked 500 people in the state a variety of questions about big tech regulations.” Their findings:
Only 4% of respondents listed regulating tech companies as a priority, by far the least selected of the 8 options (second lowest was cutting prescription prices at 15%).
Less than 25% have deep concerns about how technology companies operate while the other 75%+ either have no concerns, or have some concerns, but believe the positives outweigh the negatives.
53% of respondents feel that big tech anti-trust regulation would have a negative impact on their life.
The results were bipartisan with no significant delta in how red vs. blue states responded.
Summing up the findings, Daryanani says:
Anti-trust action will remain a risk for Apple, but these results seem to confirm that average voters rank anti-trust regulation as a low priority. In our view, this reduces the risk of material legislation passing congress as representatives are more likely to focus on issues that are of higher priority to their voters.
That is practically Capra-esque. Then again, Apple 3.0’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt says the Chamber of Progress has “been using [its] survey results to put pressure on Congress to back off.”
Daryanani has an Outperform rating on Apple shares. His price target on the shares is $180.
