Like many big US companies, Alphabet’s revenues took a beating due to the rising value of the USA dollar, which severely cuts down the value of revenue earned in foreign currencies. Analysts had expected US$20.77 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s chief financial officer, put the losses down to the variation and early stages of the projects falling under this banner.
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Alphabet, in spite of spending $3.6 billion in one year on costly projects like self-driving cars which did not make much money, kept its advertising business on swing with strong results in the concluding three months of 2015.
Alphabet overtook Apple when a surge in after-hours trading saw it’s market capitalisation hit US$570 billion, eclipsing Apple’s current market cap of about $535 billion.
Alphabet’s top ranking as the world’s most valuable company is considered a significant moment, not just for the company, but also for the tech industry. Dawson explained, “The reality is that Apple is going through a period in its history where revenues are temporarily dipping, not going through some sort of terminal decline”. Apple Inc.’s iPhone, meanwhile, is suffering its first downturn since it debuted eight years ago.
In its first report that separates the advertising business from special projects like self-driving cars and package-delivering drones, the Google parent company’s fourth-quarter earnings revealed that the search engine part of the business still accounts for the majority of Alphabet’s value. Shares closed regular trading at $752, up about 1.2 percent, or $9.
From IBM to Microsoft to Apple and, now, to Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
Josh Olson, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co., said, “Alphabet’s core business looks very healthy”.
While last year’s revenue did go up from $327 million, the operating loss that came with it was considerably higher at about $3.57 billion up from $1.9 billion in 2014. “That’s going to build investors’ confidence about the other bets they’ve been making”.
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Google CEO Sundar Pichai said, “Above all, our Q4 results show the great momentum and opportunity we have in mobile search and across Google’s range of businesses”.
