The company said net income for the quarter was $1.2 billion, or $3.79 a share, compared with $1.03 billion, or $3.29 a share a year ago. Profit, excluding items like stock-based compensation, was $4.43 a share.Google's stocked dropped 6.54% in after hours trading.
Google’s revenue in the last three months of the year rose to $4.83 billion from $3.21 billion a year ago. Excluding commissions paid to advertising partners, a measure closely watched by Wall Street analysts, Google’s revenue jumped to $3.39 billion, from $2.23 billion a year earlier.
On average, Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected Google’s profit, not counting the cost of items like stock options, to be $4.45 a share, on revenue, excluding commissions paid to partners, of $3.45 billion.
Analysts were watching Google’s report for any signs that the economic slowdown is hurting the company’s advertising business. Yet some believe that Google, which is largely dependent on text ads it places alongside search results, is likely to be more immune to an advertising recession than rivals like Yahoo and Microsoft, who earn a greater share of their revenues from display advertisements.
Google disappoints - lowest growth since it went public
Posted on Friday, February 01 2008 @ 2:28 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck