Lower income than expected
Alphabet Google (GOOGL, GOOG) reported that revenue growth in the Google Cloud YouTube division lagged analysts' forecasts, despite strong performance in the featured advertising business. Following the report, Alphabet Inc.'s stock price has dropped slightly.
Google's parent company Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG) released its Q3 2021 financial report Tuesday after the close of trading.
While key metrics: earnings per share and revenue showed numbers above market analysts' forecasts, revenue for Google Cloud and YouTube fell short of estimates.
Alphabet stock, which has nearly doubled this year's total market growth of +59.45%, was down slightly (-0.9%) in Tuesday's postmarket.
Unlike Facebook (FB) and Snap (SNAP), Alphabet's earnings were less affected by changes in iOS software privacy rules on Apple devices (AAPL).
Alphabet's Q3 2021 report
Earnings per share (EPS) rose 71% from a year ago to $27.99, above the analyst forecast of $23.48. Total earnings rose to $18.9 billion.
Total revenues rose 41% to $65.12 billion, also above estimates of $63.34 billion.
Sales of its flagship advertising business (Google Search and others) exceeded expectations at $37.93 bln, up 44%.
YouTube's advertising revenue rose 43% to $7.2 billion, but it didn't fall short of expectations of $7.4 billion. Google Cloud revenue rose 45% to $49.9 billion, but it didn't reach Wall Street's $5,07 forecast. Revenue from the other betting division, including the Waymo drone car company, rose slightly from $178 million to $182 million, but the division continued to cause losses. Losses increased from $1.29 billion to $1.1 billion a year ago.
Alphabet bought back $12.6 billion worth of GOOGL stock during Q3.
The company said its workforce grew to 150,028, up 18,000 from a year earlier.
Ruth Porat, the company's chief financial officer, said: "Google Play's contribution to revenue growth will remain more subdued."
The company did not provide projections. Commenting on the financial results, Philipp Schindler, Google's chief commercial officer, said: "We're still seeing a lot of unevenness," referring to the company's revenue depending on the pandemic recovery in different countries. "It's clear that uncertainty is the new normal."
