Google parent Alphabet beats revenue estimates bringing it closer to $2 trillion club
Google parent Alphabet beat analysts’ estimates for quarterly revenue last night, as businesses spent heavily on online ads to attract customers during the Christmas shopping period.
Revenue rose to $75.33bn (£55.69bn) in the fourth quarter from $56.90bn (£42.1bn) a year earlier, well above Wall Street estimates of $72.17bn (£53.35bn), according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
The results wrap up a year of outperformance for the tech giant, which saw its stock jump 65 per cent in 2021.
Google generates more revenue from internet ads than any other company.
Shares of Alphabet rose 4.5 per cent during after-hours trading to $2,875 last night.
Crucially, the results have inched the tech giant closer to joining peers Apple and Microsoft in the elite $2 trillion market valuation club as the search giant’s shares surged 10 per cent today after another blowout quarter.
The gains, if they hold, could be the biggest single-day gain for the stock since 2015, easing some of the concerns around Big Tech valuation that triggered a sector-wide selloff in the past few days.
“The technology sector started 2022 with some of the biggest question marks over it since the dotcom crash more than two decades ago,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.
“However, the largest and highest quality U.S. tech names continue to deliver the answers the market wants with big earnings beats.”
The stock rose as much as 10.8 per cent to $3,049.5 in trading before the opening bell. At least 20 brokerages raised their price targets on the stock, lifting the overall Wall Street median target to $3,450.