Cloud Stocks: Google’s Offerings Help Drive Partner Revenue Growth
It appears to be a record-setting season for tech stocks as big tech delivers stellar quarterly results. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) was no different when it announced its second-quarter results that crushed all market expectations and reduced losses significantly.
Alphabet’s Financials
Net revenues grew 62% over the year to $61.89 billion, ahead of the market’s forecast of $51.7 billion. Net income rose a spectacular 169.1% over the year to $27.26 per share, again surpassing the market’s forecast of $19.14 for the quarter.
By segment, revenues from Google Services that includes Search, Advertising, Android, Chrome, Hardware, Google Maps, Google Play, and YouTube grew from $34.99 billion a year ago to $57.07 billion. Google Cloud revenues grew 53.91% to $4.63 billion, in line with analyst predictions and slightly slower than the pace of growth for the segment a year ago. Revenues from other bets grew to $192 million.
For operating income by segment, Google Services operating income grew from $9.5 billion last year to $22.3 billion in the quarter. Google Cloud and its Other Bets are loss-making divisions. Cloud ended the quarter with a loss of $591 million and Other Bets reported a loss of $1.4 billion.
Among other key metrics, overall Search revenues grew from $21.3 billion to $35.8 billion. YouTube revenues grew 84% from $3.81 billion to $7 billion. YouTube Shorts surpassed 15 billion global daily views, growing 131% over the year.
Google did not provide an outlook for the current quarter. The market is looking for an EPS of $20.04 on revenues of $47.98 billion for the coming quarter and EPS of $90.15 on revenues of $195.55 billion for the current fiscal year.
Google’s Growth Focus
This has been a stellar quarter for Google and its partners. According to Google, its publisher partners earned more than they ever have from its network. Even YouTube creators and partners recorded incomes higher than in any quarter in their history. Google is also sending more traffic to third-party websites than any prior year in addition to generating billions of direct connections like phone calls, directions, ordering food, and making reservations for services. Developers are benefitting from Google Play as well. Google reported that through the end of Q2, over $120 billion was earned cumulatively by developers around the world from Google Play.
Google continues to upgrade search capabilities and leverage AI technologies within its products. Recently it introduced Multitask Unified Models, MUM, a search advancement that reportedly makes search 1,000 times more powerful than its earlier current systems. MUM has the ability to learn and transfer knowledge across 75 languages, allowing it to learn from sources in one language and translating that information to the user in another. It also announced a new AI system called Lambda that enhances the level of natural conversation capabilities. Lambda is currently in early-stage, but Google believes that it will help make information and computing more accessible.
Within Android, Google recently previewed Android 12 that will include additional ways to personalize devices and significantly improve speed and power efficiency. It has built new privacy protections directly into the OS.
Google is currently witnessing and catering to three key technology trends. First, the increase in cyber and ransomware attacks has led to the need for very secure computing systems. Google Cloud is helping address those concerns by continuously adding security solutions across its portfolio of products. Its services are being used by customers like BT, Adobe, and the State of Wisconsin to help protect users through its fraud detection product. Second, its expertise in real-time data and analytics continues to help them grow within the Data Cloud segment. BigQuery is not just a data warehouse but a platform for customer innovation, and it is helping drive Google’s growth with customers like HCA Healthcare, who leverage BigQuery to analyze data to improve clinical care. Third, Google Workspace continues to show strong growth, especially as organizations transform to hybrid work environments.
Google’s stock is trading at $2,715.55 with a market capitalization of $1.8 trillion. It hit a 52-week high of $2,800.22 last week. The stock had fallen to a 52-week low of $1,406.55 in September last year.
Disclosure: All investors should make their own assessments based on their own research, informed interpretations and risk appetite. This article expresses my own opinions based on my own ...
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