Google's parent company Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) rose as much as 13% in after-hours trading on Thursday, after an outstanding quarter that beat expectations for revenue and profits, and investors with the announcement of a $0.20 per share cash dividend program. increased the excitement.
The board also authorized up to an additional $70 billion in stock repurchases.
“Our results in the first quarter reflected strong performance in search, YouTube and cloud, as well as our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, and global product expansion,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement. This puts us well-positioned for the next wave of AI.” innovation. “
Here are some of Alphabet's most important metrics compared to what Wall Street was expecting for the company's fiscal fourth quarter, according to Bloomberg data:
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Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs: $67.59 billion vs. $66.07 billion expected ($58.07 billion in Q1 2023)
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Adjusted earnings per share: $1.89 vs. $1.53 expected ($1.17 in Q1 2023)
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Cloud revenue: $9.58 billion vs. $9.37 billion ($7.45 billion in Q1 2023)
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Advertising revenue: $61.66 billion vs. $60.18 billion expected ($54.55 billion in Q1 2023)
In the field of artificial intelligence, Google has been widely seen as catching up to Microsoft (MSFT), which was among the first in the tech industry to enjoy the cultural excitement around consumer AI chatbots. Microsoft invested in OpenAI, the company behind the popular ChatGPT.
But executives emphasized on Thursday's earnings call that the company is positioned to lead the transition to an AI-centric technology world and is focused on investments that will accelerate the development of new models.
Pichai said the company has a clear path to monetizing its AI breakthroughs through advertising, cloud and subscriptions.
Google is also working to gain more share in the cloud market, where it currently sits in third place behind rivals Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft. The search giant's cloud revenue increased nearly 30% compared to the same period last year.
Alphabet's report comes a day after advertising rival and tech giant Meta (META) cut its second-quarter outlook, saying expenses are rising this year and AI investments are on the verge of generating big returns. pointed out that it takes time.
Hamza Shaban is a reporter for Yahoo Finance, covering markets and economics. Follow Hamza on Twitter @hshaban.
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