Alphabet revenues are up 22% but the stock is still dropping

NelsonG · February 4, 2019

Despite delivering a Q4 earnings revenue beat, Google parent company Alphabet’s stock is seeing a bit of a drop.

The massive search company reported revenue of $39.3 billion, up 22 percent year-over-year with an EPS of $12.77. Alphabet stock dropped more than 2 percent in after-hours trading.

The company’s beat of analyst estimates would have been a miss if not for a $1.3 billion unrealized gain “related to a non-marketable debt security.” Alphabet didn’t detail this further, but it kind of skews the earning beat based on what analysts actually had reason to expect.

Advertising revenues were up 20 percent YoY in Q4 to $32.6 billion. “Other” revenues (Cloud, hardware) were reported at $6.49 billion, up 31 percent year-over-year. “Other Bets,” which includes ventures like Waymo, Fiber and Verily, saw losses climb sharply to $1.3 billion with revenue sitting at $154 million, short of Wall Street estimates.

A number that analysts were increasingly looking closely at, traffic acquisition costs, climbed to $7.4 billion in Q4 up 15 percent year-over-year and up 13 percent from last quarter.