(Reuters) – Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced on Thursday the first dividend in its history and a $70 billion share buyback program, while reassuring on its advertising revenue, causing its stock to rise by more than 13 % after the close of Wall Street.
The Californian group, which is spending billions of dollars in data centers to catch up with its competitors in the field of generative artificial intelligence (AI), will pay its shareholders a dividend of 20 cents per share.
Alphabet published quarterly revenues above Wall Street expectations, driven by growing demand for its generative AI services in the “cloud” (cloud computing) and rising advertising revenue.
Overall turnover for the first three months of the year reached 80.54 billion dollars (75.05 billion euros), while the average estimate stood at 78.59 billion, according to the data LSEG.
Advertising revenues increased by 13% over the quarter to $61.7 billion, while the consensus forecast was $60.2 billion.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, Alphabet saw its stock crumble after announcing disappointing advertising revenues in the eyes of the market, against a backdrop of growing competition with Amazon, Facebook and newcomers like Tiktok.
The group’s cloud computing services increased by 28% in the first quarter thanks to the boom in generative AI tools coupled with the cloud.
(Akash Sriram in Bangalore and Greg Bensigner in San Francisco; Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the French version)
©2024 Thomson Reuters, all rights reserved. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. “Reuters” and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies.