Google Parent Alphabet Shares Slip After Company Reports Earnings

Shares of Google parent Alphabet were on the downturn after the company reported an earnings miss.

For the third quarter 2019, the company reported earnings of $10.12 a share while $12.42 had been expected according to Refinitiv consensus estimates.

Shares fell as much as 4% on the report in after-hours trading.

For the quarter, Alphabet reported revenue of $40.5 billion while $40.32 billion had been expected according to Refinitiv consensus estimates.

Traffic acquisition costs were $7.49 billion compared to $7.48 billion according to FactSet.

The company also reported paid clicks on Google properties from Q3 2018 to Q3 2019 were 18%. Cost-per-click on Google properties from Q3 2018 to Q3 2019 were -2%.

“We’ve evolved from a company that helps people find answers to a company that helps you get things done,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on a call with analysts.

He also said on the call, “Q3 was another great quarter at Google with strong revenue growth driven by mobile search YouTube and Cloud. We celebrated Google 21st birthday this quarter. While our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful hasn’t changed.”

Pichai additioanlly said on the earnings call, “Since the beginning, we’ve always invested in tackling deep computer science problems that can have a significant impact on society. The chance to be part of these fundamental engineering challenges is why so many people want to work at Google. In just the last week, we’ve announced two significant advances. First powered by our long-term investment in AI, we dramatically improved our understanding of the questions people ask Google search. It’s the biggest leap forward for search in the past five years. It’s all possible because of a new type of neural network-based technique for natural language processing called BERT, which recognizes subtle patents in language and provides more relevant results.”

“Second, we recently announced a major Quantum Computing milestone. It was extraordinarily proud to visit our team in Santa Barbara. To demonstrate supremacy, Google’s 53-cubic quantum machine Sycamore successfully performed a test competition and just 200 seconds that would have taken the most powerful supercomputers much longer time to accomplish. Its the Hello World moment we’ve been waiting for and represents a distinct milestone in our effort to harness the principles of quantum mechanics to solve computational problems.”

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