Consider that the company now known as Alphabet has missed Wall Street’s earnings targets in eight of its past 12 reports, according to FactSet.
Advertisement
Those factors might have turned most other companies’ profits into losses.
There is a reason that Google’s quarterly reports are typically greeted with some trepidation by investors: It has never been good at playing Wall Street’s earnings game.
The giant-screen exhibitor, whose last fiscal year ended on December 31, 2015, also revealed in an SEC filing that Greg Foster, senior vp Imax Corp. and CEO of Imax Entertainment, made $4.45 million in total compensation for fiscal 2015, up from the $3.48 million he earned in the previous year.
On Wednesday, Google was reprimanded by the European Commission after a year-long investigation claimed it had found evidence of anti-competitive behaviour by Google over the promotion of their own apps within the Android mobile operating system which it operates, something Google denies. It did so again on Thursday, posting adjusted per-share earnings that fell about 6% short of analysts’ consensus targets…
Together, Page and Pichai have been guiding Google through a sometimes rocky transition as people search for information less frequently on their personal computers and rely instead on smartphones and tablets.
The aggregate cost-per-click (CPC) declined 9% year-over-year. It extends the trend that started four-and-half years ago.
Google’s revenues were $20.09 billion. Many of Alphabet’s “moonshots”, like virtual reality, driverless cars and its Nest connected home business, don’t meaningfully impact revenue.
Last quarter, Alphabet briefly replaced Apple as the world’s most valuable listed company after the company’s first set of results under its new structure beat expectations.
Advertisement
Other Bets revenues surged to $166 million, although the segment’s operating losses widened from $633 million in last year’s first quarter to $802 million in this year’s first quarter.
