(AOF) – Alphabet, Google’s parent company, yesterday presented profits above expectations, but its advertising revenues disappointed. In the fourth quarter, the internet and cloud giant reported net income of $20.69 billion, or $1.64 per share, compared with net income of $13.62 billion, or 1 .05 dollars per share, a year earlier. The Bloomberg consensus was for just $1.59.
The group’s turnover increased by 13% to $86.83 billion. It also increased by 13% at constant exchange rates. Its advertising revenues increased 11% to $65.52 billion, but Wall Street was targeting $66.1 billion, according to LSEG data.
Loss in the cloud lower than expected
Excluding traffic acquisition costs, Alphabet’s revenue came in at $72.32 billion, beating analysts’ projections of $71 billion.
YouTube recorded a turnover increase of 15.5% to 9.2 billion dollars while the market was targeting 9.17 billion dollars.
The Cloud business saw revenue increase 25.6% to $9.19 billion. Growth accelerated compared to the previous quarter: 22.5%. It recorded an operating profit of $864 million this quarter compared to a loss of $186 million a year earlier. Wall Street expected a profit of only $427 million.
AOF – LEARN MORE
Sector sheet – Internet
An increasingly competitive online search for Google
Google has dominated online search for more than two decades. It earns more than half of its revenue from advertising on its search engine. The second player, Bing, owned by Microsoft, remains far behind, with less than 9% of the global market. However, Bing benefits from a huge advantage: Microsoft’s results do not depend closely on the performance of its search engine, but rather on its sales of software and services to businesses with its Azure branch. The group can therefore be more agile and take risks. Other serious competitors are gaining strength. Amazon’s search engine for finding products shows a jump in advertising revenue. Likewise, the TikTok application is increasingly used by young people to search for information.