Google: What Economic Crisis?
by John Paczkowski
Posted on October 16, 2008 at 1:35 PM PT
Investors concerned about Google’s performance in the current economic slump set their Mylanta aside this afternoon after the company reported third-quarter earnings that beat expectations. Excluding one-time items, Google (GOOG) earned $4.92 a share in the third quarter on revenues of $4.04 billion. Analysts had expected earnings of $4.75 a share on revenue of $4.053 billion.
“We had a good third quarter with strong traffic and revenue growth across all of our major geographies thanks to the underlying strength of our core search and ads business. The measurability and ROI of search-based advertising remain key assets for Google,” CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement. “While we are realistic about the poor state of the global economy, we will continue to manage Google for the long term, driving improvements to search and ads, while also investing in future growth areas such as enterprise, mobile, and display.”
Google shares rose some 8 percent in extended trading following the news.
Comments
It looks like GOOG cut cap ex by $246 million quarter to quarter. Which works out to a net bumping of the quarter’s EPS by $.77 cents (318 million shares). That would make the non-GAAP EPS $4.15—a huge miss compared to the analysts’ estimates of $4.76
Posted by T M at October 16th, 2008 at 1:59 pmIt sure helps that they choose not to waste money on traditional mass media advertising. How many other company’s balance sheets would see an upside if they only said NO to throwing cash down the legacy money pit.
Posted by David H Deans at October 18th, 2008 at 10:56 am