Google’s parent company Alphabet has reported its first quarterly earnings since the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world.
Despite a slowdown in ad-revenue growth (10 per cent YoY growth from 2019, compared with 16 per cent for the full 2019 year), the results still beat many analyst’s predictions.
Revenue reached $US41.2 billion, which was up 13 per cent compared with last year, or 15 per cent on a constant current basis.
$US33.8 billion of this total quarterly revenue came from advertising, which the company said was buoyed by strong performances in January and February.
Warning of a “tale of two quarters”, company CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed the economic shutdown that occurred in March did lead to a sudden drop in search advertising.
“As of today, we anticipate the second quarter will be a difficult one for our advertising business,” said CFO Ruth Porat.
However, Porat said there had been “some signs users are returning to more normal behaviour” in search already this month.
And while Google’s advertising arm was hit by the pandemic, the results suggest some of Google’s other business are well-placed the navigate the upcoming challenges.
For only the second time, Google shared YouTube’s financial results.
The video-sharing platform brought in $US4.04 in revenue, marking 33 per cent growth.
This was assisted by strong demand for direct response forms of advertising in late March.
Google’s cloud business also saw a 52 per cent growth rate from the previous quarter. Pichai predicted Cloud to continue to grow in the coming months.
“Companies all the way to CEO are thinking about the shift to digital in a deeper way,” he said.
