Google’s new parent company Alphabet has overtaken Apple as the world’s most valuable company by market value, despite its “moonshots” losing it $3.5bn over 12 months.
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In the United Kingdom, revenue rose 16 percent to $1.92 billion in the fourth quarter.
Alphabet shares jumped more than five percent to $790.50 on earnings figures that beat expectations. The market capitalization of the previous exchanges champions Apple was overhauled at least outside the official trading hours.
Alphabet’s value stood at $530bn (£367bn) at the close of normal trading on Monday – with Apple’s market capitalisation at nearly $535bn but its value was 1% lower after-hours.
Google accounted for all but a sliver of Alphabet’s revenue, bringing in $74.5 billion for the year compared to $448 million for “Other Bets”, a group that includes Calico, Google Capital, Google Fiber, Google Ventures, Google X, Nest, and Verily.
It was the first earnings report from the California tech giant to shed light on revenue and operating income from its so-called Other Bets, which include self-driving cars and smart home thermostats.
Google’s advertising business hauled in revenue of $19 billion (£13.2bn) in the fourth quarter, up 17 percent from a year earlier.
The outfit made a profit of $4.9 billion in the fourth quarter, an increase from $4.7 billion a year ago.
Interestingly, 99% of Alphabet’s revenues came from Google and other “core” businesses, the details of which can be found here.
The better performance of Google’s core businesses also underpinned Alphabet’s rise to the top.
Apple of late has struggled with slowing demand for its iPhone and without a new blockbuster product for long. “So we’ll continue to make long-term investments”.
“It looks like Google continues to execute on mobile [advertising]”, said Neil Doshi managing director of research at Mizuho Securities.
Industry tracker eMarketer expected Google remain the dominant player in worldwide search advertising, raking in $45.58 billion in revenue this year to claim a share just shy of 57 percent of the overall spend.
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Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said on the call that its Gmail service crossed one billion monthly active users last quarter, joining Search, Android, Maps, Chrome, YouTube and Google Play in topping that mark.
