Google posts $31.1B in total revenue, beats top- and bottom-line expectations

Google parent Alphabet Inc. has announced financial results for the first quarter of 2018.  The company reported $31.1 billion in quarterly revenue, which was down sequentially but up year over year. Revenues beat Wall Street consensus estimates by about $870 million, and earnings also beat analyst expectations. Revenue growth year over year was 26 percent vs. 24 percent in Q1 2017. The following chart shows the breakdown in revenues, with $26.6 billion attributed to advertising and $4.35 billion tied to “other revenues,” including hardware and Google Home. Other bets’ operating losses narrowed from $703 million to $571 million.

Traffic acquisition costs were 24 percent of ad revenues, or $6.3 billion. Aggregate paid clicks were up 59 percent year over year and 8 percent sequentially. CPCs were down 19 percent and 7 percent, respectively. The growth in paid clicks is probably partly attributable to mobile ads in search results. A year ago, parent Alphabet announced it had roughly 74,000 employees. The company now says it has about 85,000. It has $103 billion in cash and short-term investments on hand. There are a number of changes in this reporting period. Breaking out YouTube revenues is not among them. Google is no longer reporting click volumes and trends for Google Network properties. It now will report impressions and cost-per-impression. (Google properties continue to be reported in clicks and CPCs.) Accordingly, impressions on Network properties were flat year over year. Costs-per-impression grew 18 percent annually but were down 10 percent sequentially. Alphabet earnings are up in after-hours trading.

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