Published , by Captain Business
Published , by Captain Business
The stock market's biggest week of earnings releases continues on with Alphabet, parent company of Google and a bunch of other companies, reporting earnings results for the first quarter of 2021. Things are going really well over in Mountain View, California, as the company reported a massive revenue and earnings beat. Adding fuel to the fire, a $50 billion share repurchase program has been announced. Google's stock hit over $2400/share in afterhours trading, which is an all-time high for the search engine behemoth.
Alphabet (GOOGL) reported earnings per share of $26.29 and revenues of $55.31 billion during Q1 2021. Both of these figures handily beat Wall Street analyst estimates as well as even loftier whisper number projections.
“Over the last year, people have turned to Google Search and many online services to stay informed, connected and entertained. We’ve continued our focus on delivering trusted services to help people around the world. Our Cloud services are helping businesses, big and small, accelerate their digital transformations," said Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
“Total revenues of $55.3 billion in the first quarter reflect elevated consumer activity online and broad based growth in advertiser revenue. We’re very pleased with the ongoing momentum in Google Cloud, with revenues of $4.0 billion in the quarter reflecting strength and opportunity in both GCP and Workspace,” Google CFO Ruth Porat added in the Alphabet Q1 2021 earnings results press release.
Revenues grew 34% year over year to a monstrous $55.31 billion. Other highlights from the quarter include YouTube revenue topping $6 billion as well as Google Cloud generating over $4 billion in sales. The Google Cloud division did not turn a profit during the quarter, losing $974 million, but that is a material improvement from the year ago loss of $1.73 billion in Q1 2020. Google Search revenue still accounts for the majority of the company's sales, but there are some solid new segments of revenue growth that some investors are paying close attention to.
Alphabet is now sitting with over $135 billion of cash and equivalents on their balance sheet, so today's announcement of a share buyback is being viewed as positive by shareholders. Shares are currently digesting that big move up to $2400/share in afterhours trading, and the conference call is about to start.
There are a whole lot more earnings results to come with Apple and Facebook reporting tomorrow afternoon. We even created a handy dandy guide if you would like to find out more about video game and tech companies reporting Q1 2021 results in the next few weeks.
For now, it appears that there will be some happy Google shareholders out there tonight as anyone who bought the stock and held it over the past 18 years is up on their investment.