By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 23rd, 2024
Alphabet Q2 results are in, revealing that the company has managed to beat Wall Street expectations and sending the stock up after hours.
Google parent company Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) released its Q2 earnings report after the bell on Thursday, presenting the first full quarter since the coronavirus pandemic left the impact in a whole. Executives already said before this “would be a difficult one.” The revenue of Alphabet in Q2 of 2020 amounted to $38.29 billion, more than Refinitiv analysts expected.
Earnings per share stood at $10.13, more than analysts expected. YouTube Ads Revenue stood at $3.81 billion. Google Properties Revenue was $25.1 billion while the quarterly decrease in revenues stood at 2% year-on-year.
Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer of Google and Alphabet stated:
“We’re working to help people, businesses and communities in these uncertain times. As people increasingly turn to online services, our platforms — from Cloud to Google Play to YouTube — are helping our partners provide important services and support their businesses.”
After Q2 earnings were reported Alphabet stock started falling but then went 0.5% up to $1,546.00 in the after-hours trading session.
Repurchasing of C Class Capital Stock
It is also important to add that on July 27, 2020, the Board of Directors of Alphabet authorized the company to repurchase up to an additional $28.0 billion of its Class C capital stock. The repurchases are expected to be executed from time to time, subject to general business and market conditions and other investment opportunities, through open market purchases or privately negotiated transactions, including through Rule 10b5-1 plans.
When the company’s Q1 earnings came out, Porat told analysts Alphabet saw a fall in revenue in March when the pandemic picked up in the U.S., however, shares spiked after hours on the report as executives painted a more optimistic view of future spending than investors had previously feared. CEO Sundar Pichai sounded optimistic noting surging user engagements, he was cautious about the financials, noting the unpredictable effects of the pandemic.
Last year, Google held 31.6% of total digital advertising spending with Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) and Amazon holding 22.7% and 7.8% respectively.
Google last week showed efforts to compete in e-commerce, which has failed to take on heavy hitters like Amazon in the past. Google said it would waive sales commissions on Google Shopping and allow retailers to use third-party services, presumably giving it a better chance at success.
Sundar Pichai Faces Antitrust Hearing
On Wednesday, Pichai faced a really peculiar line of inquisition during House Antitrust Subcommittee hearing related to Google’s 2007 acquisition of adtech platform DoubleClick, and how it went on to reverse on an original pledge to lawmakers and regulators that it would not absorb DoubleClick data with Google account data — automatically doing exactly that almost a ten years later.
By connecting internet users’ browsing data, as gathered via the DoubleClick cookie, to Google accounts it was able to join the dots of user identities, (Gmail) email data, search history, location data, etc. with its users’ wider internet browsing activity — enormously widening its possibility to profile and target people with behavioral ads. Agency for Google users to prevent this massive privacy intrusion, there was none.