Alphabet Sees Strong Second Quarter Earnings, But Not Good Enough For Investors

Alphabet

Google’s parent company Alphabet, Inc. (NASDAQ:$GOOGL) released its second-quarter reports today. Despite beating analyst expectations, Alphabet’s stock went down following the report. This may be largely because some investors were expecting more from the major tech company after boosting up its stock by more than 30% so far this year. Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie (ASX:$MQG), noted, “I think people were hoping for a bigger beat on the top line, and we didn’t get that.” In after-hours trading on July 24, Alphabet’s stock fell by about 3%.

Overall, Alphabet saw a $26.01 billion in revenue compared to an average analyst expectation of $25.64 billion. The company also saw $5.01 in earnings per share (EPS) compared to average analyst expectations of $4.46. Revenue for Other Bets, which includes Alphabet’s other companies such as Waymo, Nest, and Verily, was $248 million for the company’s second quarter. The companies saw a loss of $772 million.

Cost-per-click fell by 26% when compared to Alphabet’s 2016 second quarter, while paid clicks gained 61%. Meanwhile, Google’s other revenues — including business sectors like computer hardware and cloud software — was $3.09 billion for this quarter, an improvement from the $2.17 billion Alphabet saw in 2016’s second quarter. Net revenue growth has slowed down, something Alphabet has attributed to higher traffic acquisition costs.

While Alphabet’s stock and second quarter report remain quite strong, the company was recently fined $2.7 billion by the EU. Still, analysts have remained positive on Alphabet’s future.

Besides its earnings report, Alphabet announced earlier today that Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, will be the 13th member to Alphabet’s board.

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About the author: Grace is currently studying at UBC to achieve her BA in Computer Science. She is due to graduate in 2020. As a content creator, Grace has written financial analysis, stock market news, and informational investing articles. She also worked as an editor with her university publication 'UBC Undergraduate Journal of Art History'.