Alphabet’s fourth-quarter earnings report revealed revenue fell short of expectations, with shares plummeting nearly 9% in after-hours trading. Despite the miss, the company’s earnings per share beat analyst estimates by two cents.
The company reported revenue of $96.47 billion, missing the expected $96.56 billion. Google’s advertising revenue grew 10.6%, while search revenue growth was 12.5%. However, YouTube ads revenue growth slowed to 13.8% compared to last year’s 15.5%.
Alphabet plans to invest $75 billion in capital expenditures in 2025 to expand its artificial intelligence strategy. This is above the expected $58.84 billion. The company also announced plans to increase investments in technical infrastructure, including servers and data centers.
Cloud revenue fell short of expectations, with Alphabet reporting $11.96 billion, compared to the expected $12.19 billion. Despite this, cloud revenue increased 30% from last year’s quarter. Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi attributed the disappointment to supply-demand issues for AI products, which are in high demand.
Alphabet’s Other Bets segment reported revenue of $400 million, missing expectations of $616.4 million. However, the company made progress on its Waymo self-driving car service, with robotaxi operations now covering over 500 square miles of public roads. Waymo plans to launch its commercial service in Austin and Atlanta in 2025.
Despite the mixed results, Alphabet’s fourth-quarter net income rose more than 28% to $26.54 billion.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/04/alphabet-q4-earnings-report-2024.html