Alphabet Reports Fourth Quarter Results and Beats Estimates

The parent company of Google, Alphabet Inc., reported its fourth quarter 2018 financial results on Monday and revealed a beat on earnings and revenue.

Earnings per share was reported to be $12.77 in comparison to the $10.82 that was expected by analysts according to Refinitiv consensus estimates.

Revenue at $39.28 billion was also higher than the $38.93 billion that was expected according to estimates.

Traffic acquisition costs were $7.44 billion compared to $7.62 billion according to StreetAccount.

The company’s cloud business and hardware sales division accounted for $6.49 billion during the quarter. Analysts waited for $6.43 billion.

Full-year operating margin for Alphabet’s core Google segment fell however over 2 percentage points from the previous year.

“Everything we do at Google is united by the mission of making information accessible and useful for everyone. Providing accurate and trusted information at the scale the Internet has reached is an extremely complex challenge and one that is constantly getting harder,” said CEO Sundar Pichai.

According to Pichai, the company’s cloud division is “one of the fastest growing businesses across Alphabet.”

“Last year we more than doubled both the number of Google Cloud Platform deals over 1 million as well as the number of multiyear contracts signed,” Pichai said. “We also ended the year with another milestone passing 5 million paying customers for our Cloud collaboration and productivity solution G Suite.”

Google will be replacing its head of Cloud, Diane Greene, with former Oracle executive Thomas Kurian.

“One of the things that was evident towards end of last year is now our ability to win very large customers, global 5000 companies with multiyear contracts. And so that’s definitely something we want to focus on,” Pichai remarked. “I think Diane and Thomas have been working closely under transition with a lot of continuity.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and have not been compensated for this article.