Wall Street had high expectations for Google and the Internet giant was able to beat them – but just barely. According to a recent CNBC report, the company’s shares took a big jump in trading on Thursday as Google (News - Alert) reported an adjusted profit that soared past what analysts expected, despite a rise in expenses.
According to results, Google earned $7.64 a share, excluding one-time items in the third-quarter, against the $5.89 per share last year. Net revenue – not counting traffic-acquisition costs – for the most recent period jumped to $5.5 billion from $4.385 billion a year ago.
The company did have traffic-acquisition costs, which included money the websites pay to advertisers, which then gets spent to draw traffic. Google’s cost of traffic-acquisition for the quarter came in at $1.81 billion.
Equity analysts focused on Google expected the company to turn in profits of $6.69 a share on sales of %5.27 billion. Even still, Google stock jumped nearly 5 percent in the late trading, finishing slightly lower at $540.93.
"Looks like a great number. We were high on the Street and they beat our number pretty handily," said UBS analyst Brian Pitz, in the CMBC report. "There are some currency benefits on the cost-per-click side. They hedged part of that, so that doesn't include any currency. Those are just raw numbers, so you're going to see some benefits to pricing from currency."
Google’s expenditures, including what it pays for data centers, servers and networking equipment, to keep pushing growth in online Web services, increased to $757 million from 4186 million in the previous year.
The company supported 23,331 full-time employees as of Sept. 30, up from 21,805 on June 30. Google has also more than quadrupled spending on data centers and other technology compared to what it did a year ago.
In truth, investors are worried that Google – in seeking new sources of growth – is actually spending recklessly on initiatives such as the Android (News - Alert) mobile phone software, numerous acquisitions, renewable energy projects and other items that may have uncertain returns. With so much opportunity in certain areas, Google has placed focus; they also have to take the risk.
According to Google, the sale of its display ads is on a pace to reach $2.5 billion annually. The company’s mobile advertising business is on pace to bring in $1 billion in annual revenue – which will continue to keep Google in a strong position to take some chances.
"Our core business grew very well, and our newer businesses—particularly display and mobile—continued to show significant momentum," said CEO Eric Schmidt (News - Alert) in a statement. "Going forward, we remain committed to aggressive investment in both our people and our products as we pursue an innovation agenda."Is the outlook certainly positive for Google? A quick look at the fruits of its labor thus far and it would be hard to assume anything else.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Tammy Wolf