Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is down 1% at $824.11 a share on Friday morning after reporting fourth-quarter earnings after Thursday’s close.
Here’s a look at the key numbers:
- Revenue rose 22% to $26.06 billion ($25.2 billion expected) Adjusted earnings of $9.36 per share ($9.67 expected) Paid clicks jumped 43% year over year Cost-per-click on Google properties fell -16% year over yearOther Bets revenues climbed 74.7% to $262 million
Google’s mobile search and video ads boosted revenue in the fourth quarter, but increased spending on hardware and other new businesses, as well as a larger-than-expected tax rate, weighed on the bottom line.
In addition to the hard numbers, investors had their eyes on Alphabet’s “Other Bets” – the separate companies focused on ambitious new projects from self-driving cars to biotech.
Alphabet ended several projects and lost many top executives and leaders during the back half of 2016. The moves were designed to help cut costs from Other Bets, which have yet to generate any meaningful revenue for Alphabet.
During the earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai touched a lot on Google's main new areas of investment like hardware, cloud services, and YouTube. However, Pichai wouldn't give any hard numbers for subscribers to paid YouTube services like YouTube Red or YouTube Music, saying only it was "early days" for those products.
