Web search leader Google Inc on Thursday returned to form by beating Wall Street expectations with a 79 percent jump in revenue tied to taking market share gains from rivals such as Yahoo Inc.
Google, recovering from a series of recent stumbles, saw its shares jump 8 percent after it reported net income of $592 million, or $1.95 per diluted share, up 60 percent from the year-earlier quarter's $372 million, or $1.29 per share.
Spectacular gains in the stock occurred after its initial public offering in 2004, based on a track record of outpacing Wall Street forecasts. But weak growth in Britain late last year led to its first disappointing quarter and shares fell.
Revenue rose to $2.25 billion - slightly above Wall Street forecasts, which ranged from $2.05 billion to $2.24 billion, according to Reuters Estimates. Revenue included $723 million in traffic acquisition costs, the cut affiliated Web sites take for running Google advertising on their own sites.
"We know that we gained (market) share on an absolute basis," Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a telephone interview. "It looks like we gained share faster than all others," he said of industry research figures for the US search market.
"Net revenue is very solid," said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst at Hoefer & Arnett. "It's also proof Google continues to gain market share on Yahoo on paid search."
Excluding one-time items, the Mountain View, California-based company reported a profit of $2.29 a share.
The first-quarter net profit includes charges of $115 million for stock-based compensation, and to cover legal fees of $30 million to settle a lawsuit that concerned the abuse of Google's pay-per-click advertising system by outside parties. These were partly offset by tax benefits of $39 million.
Excluding one-time items and stock-based compensation, Wall Street analysts were looking for a consensus profit of $1.98 per share. Including these items, net profit, on average, was expected to be $1.73 a share, according to Reuters Estimates.
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