For the fourth quarter other bets in areas like self-driving cars, internet balloons and more was $448m, resulting in an operating loss of $3.5bn.
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Alphabet, the recently-created parent company of Google and other ex-Google subsidiaries, has just surpassed the market cap of Apple in after hours trading, making it the most valuable company in the world. Google’s aggregate paid clicks rose by 31% as compared to same quarter previous year, whereas paid clicks on its website saw an increase of 40%.
The amount that advertisers pay Google for each click has been on the decline for years.
Analysts on average are expecting Alphabet’s profit to rise to $8.10 per share from $6.88 and revenue to rise 14.7 percent to $20.76 billion (roughly Rs. 1,40,615 crores), according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. If not for employee stock expenses and certain other items, Google said it would have earned $8.67 per share.
Google’s finance chief Ruth Porat hailed the “vibrancy of the business” during the announcement, with video sharing site YouTube, as well as the widely used Google search engine, named as the core of the company’s growth. The announcement sent its share price up as much as 9% in after-hours trading.
It means Alphabet’s is now worth around $558 billion compared to Apple which has a value of $534 billion.
Google’s digital-ad business is so profitable that Alphabet can lose more than $1 billion on risky ventures – and shrug. Other than Nest and Google Fiber, the “other bets” segment is basically made up of Alphabet’s moonshots.
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For just the first time, Alphabet has a strong catalyst to stock besides from its standard beat and raise, remarked an analyst from Wall Street. While Capital Expenditures for the rest of the company was $869 million, with operating loss of “Other Bets” being around $3.6 billion. This came in immediately after Google released it’s financial report for Q4 2015. Revenue from Google’s core businesses gained 18% to $21.18 billion. Google apps and devices compete for market share against Apple iPhones.
