Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq:Goog) shares soared in after hours trading Thursday, climbing 3 percent to $1,003 after posting advertising sales and operating margins higher than expected in its third-quarter earnings report.
Q3 revenue rose 24 percent to $27.8 billion, exceeding analyst estimates of $27.2 billion. Its profit of $6.7 billion or $9.57 a share also topped analyst predictions.It is the 15th successive quarter in which Alphabet hit double-digit, year-over-year increases. This quarter’s profit margin is the highest since it hit 27 percent in Q1 of 2013.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a call with analysts that the company’s efforts to pull in advertisers globally was paying off. In Asia sales rose 29 pecent to $4.2 billion.
Sales from Google’s other businesses, including its Pixel smartphones, home speakers and cloud services, climbed 40 percent year over year to $3.4 billion in the quarter.
The company said it is expanding its salesforce to compete with Amazon Web Services and aiming at Apple’s smartphone business. In September, the company agreed to hire 2,000 HTC Corp. engineers for $1.1 billion to boost its Android smartphone operating system.
The company fiber broadband service and Nest smart thermostat divisions narrowed losses from $861 billion a year ago to $812 billion.
Commentators on its Q3 numbers mention that some uncertainty about Google’s European troubles remain. It paid a Q2 fine of $2.7 billion to the European Commission for unfair search results and it may face a European antitrust fine later this year.
