Google earnings beat, but revenue falls short of analysts’ expectations

“Google reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, while revenue fell slightly short and its advertising rates fell less than in previous quarters,” CNBC reports.

“Google’s net income was $2.89 billion, or $8.62 per share during the final three months of last year. That compared to net income of $2.71 billion, or $8.22 per share, at the same time last year,” CNBC reports. “Excluding items but including Motorola Home, the company earned $10.59 per share, up from $9.50 a share in the year-earlier period. Revenue including Motorola Home increased 50 percent to $12.16 billion from $8.13 billion a year ago.”

CNBC reports, “Analysts had expected the company to report earnings ex-items of $10.42 a share on $12.34 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters… This quarter, Google said it is treating its Motorola Home unit as ‘discontinued operations’ and separating the group’s results from the rest of its businesses in its earnings release. This switch has sparked some confusion among Wall Street analysts, many of whom are still including Motorola Home in their estimates for Google’s earnings.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Analysts are confused. And water is wet.

19 Comments

    1. Another couple of sure bets: Tomorrow GOOG will rise ten or 15 points. On Thursday, after Apple reports with excellent earnings, revenues, etc, AAPL will tank 30 to 40 points after ANALysts say that it underperformed.

      You just can’t win.

  1. Much though I despise Google because of Android, I still use their search engine as my default and I watch copious amounts of YouTube videos mainly because it’s available on my Apple TV and was for a long time an OS integrated app on my iPhone & iPad. So I’ve gotten used to using YouTube as my research tool for products I want to buy or to learn new tricks for the Apple platform. For that reason I wish Google well because Apple does not have any analogues to the free service that Google provides.

    And occasionally I use Google Translate. There was a very useful OS X app called Translator Free but that was withdrawn because it fell foul of Apple’s ridiculous App Store sandboxing rules. FU Apple, in a way.

  2. As the answer to a question during the conference call indicated, Google is earning very little in China, the fastest growing Internet market in the world, and one in which Apple is poised for continuing growth. Analyts need to look beyond the shores of the U.S. to appreciate the future potential of Apple.

    1. The analysts have set themselves up as experts at predicting how Apple will perform. They charge money for doing that, so it’s reasonable to criticise them if they are inaccurate, just as it’s reasonable to criticise weather forecasters when they get it wrong.

      I don’t regard myself as a weather forecaster nor a stock analyst, but I get pretty pissed off if those ‘experts’ get it hopelessly wrong.

  3. Cnbc bandie the non-GAAP number which basically excludes management’s pillage of the company. Google earned$8.62 but cnbc will crow the $10+ number, as if investors benefit from the money Sergei et al pocket.

  4. Whoa–HUGE misses on both the top ($11.34B vs. $12.34B) and bottom ($8.62 vs. $10.47 per share) lines! And the vital cost-per-click metric has now declined for 5 straight quarters. Earnings are up a mere 4.9% year over year–barely better than the rate of inflation. The bad news continues for Google…

    1. Those are among many poor current and future trends; a couple others are googles lack of meaningful gains in china, and the utter failure of android to produce any meaningful revenue (2/3 of mobile profit comes from iOS; it’s going to be over a decade before they break even on Motorola). And yet GOOG is up 5% in after hours trading. They outspent apple 10 to one on lobbying, I’m sure they’ve paid off some sleazy hedge fund managers as well. When are these creepy bastards going to be called out for what they are, douches.

  5. So, Google is up over $30 in after-hours trading, even though it’s very likely that Google stuffed some losses in Moto Home that it’s cutting loose, and still had lackluster results.

    Anyhow, didn’t anyone see that Apple’s Verizon sales were up, meaning Droid sales were weak? If that had been reversed, Apple would have been hammered.

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