Alphabet revenue soars as Sundar Pichai hails the ‘Gemini era’
Google’s parent company saw its share price jump more than 10% higher after it reported a big increase in revenue, rising 15% to $80.54 billion for its first quarter of 2024.
It said that net income for the quarter was $23.66 billion.
The financials impressed the market and were better than Wall Street expected.
Shareholders were meanwhile rewarded with the news of the company’s first ever dividend, which will be 20 cents per share, and it said it will launch a program to buy back $70 billion worth of the company’s shares.
Key business highlights included higher revenues from search and website advertising, as well as improved ad sales on Youtube which were up 21% to $8.1 billion compared to $6.7 billion in the same period in 2023.
Online storage and services, aka ‘the cloud’ business meanwhile saw revenue improve to $9.6 billion versus last year’s total of $7.5 billion.
AI, of course, featured prominently in the Google owner’s communications with chief executive Sundar Pichai hailing the ‘Gemini era’. This comes as the group continues efforts to put its ChatGPT-challenger ‘Gemini’ in the spotlight.
“Our results in the first quarter reflect strong performance from Search, YouTube and Cloud,” Pichai said in a statement.
“We are well under way with our Gemini era and there’s great momentum across the company.
“Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, and our global product footprint, position us well for the next wave of AI innovation.”
-- Markets Defused aims to present an easy to understand and straightforward telling of significant stock market news
