No need to pull up your browser to search “strong quarter” — Google’s (GOOGL+1.23%) parent Alphabet has the answer. The company’s first-quarter report beat Wall Street’s consensus expectations on Thursday after the bell.
Fueled by growth in its cloud services and AI initiatives, Alphabet posted a net income of $34.5 billion on $90.2 billion in revenue — a 12% year-over-year increase that beat Wall Street’s estimate of $89.2 billion. The company also reported earnings per share of $2.81; analysts were expecting that number to be $2.01. Net income increased 46%.
Alphabet also announced a $70 billion stock buyback program and said it will increase its quarterly cash dividend by 5% to $0.21. It’s the first of the trillion-dollar Big Tech companies to report quarterly results this earnings season.
The stock popped more than 3% in after-hours trading.
CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement that he was “pleased” with the quarterly results, “which reflect healthy growth and momentum across the business” as well as Google’s “unique full stack approach to AI.”
Google Cloud remained one of the fastest-growing segments in Alphabet’s portfolio; its revenue increased 28% to $12.3 billion.
Pichai said, “This quarter was super exciting as we rolled out Gemini 2.5, our most intelligent AI model, which is achieving breakthroughs in performance and is an extraordinary foundation for our future innovation. Search saw continued strong growth, boosted by the engagement we’re seeing with features like AI Overviews, which now has 1.5 billion users per month. Driven by YouTube and Google One, we surpassed 270 million paid subscriptions. And Cloud grew rapidly with significant demand for our solutions.”
In other areas, Google’s ad revenue was $66.8 billion (versus an expected $66.4 billion), while its YouTube advertising revenue was lower than expected: $8.93 billion versus $8.97 billion.
The company’s stock had fallen about 16% so far this year before Thursday’s call, so investors were curious to see how Google would fare in the key areas of AI and cloud computing — and amid a host of legal concerns related to antitrust cases and swirling tariff questions.
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