Revenues rose 23 percent to $ 57 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Google parent company Alphabet pushed more than 50 billion dollars (41.38 billion euros) in revenue from more active advertising customers during the corona crisis. From October to December, sales climbed by 23 percent currency-adjusted to almost 57 billion dollars, as the world's largest search engine provider announced on Tuesday after the US market closed. That was significantly more than analysts expected. The share rose after hours by five percent.
The group as a whole increased its operating profit by more than six billion dollars to just under 15.7 billion dollars. CEO Sundai Pichai said Google benefited from the accelerated transition to digital offerings and the cloud in the Christmas quarter. Pichai does not expect success to come to an end and spoke of “significant opportunities” for partnerships as companies become increasingly digital.
Ads and YouTube
The majority of the revenue comes from advertising, with the video platform YouTube standing out in particular. In the face of closed shops and exit restrictions around the world, many retailers relocated their advertising entirely to the Internet. The who
Beer revenues on YouTube rose 46 percent year over year to approximately $ 6.9 billion.
However, ads in the Internet search environment are still the central source of money for Google and Alphabet: The division's sales grew by around 17 percent to $ 31.9 billion.
Cloud business
For the first time, Alphabet also gave more concrete insight into the financial details of the cloud business, which expanded its operating loss slightly to $ 1.24 billion in the fourth quarter. The reason for this are high upfront investments, including in infrastructure, said CFO Ruth Porat in a conference call with analysts.
Meanwhile, sales in the cloud sector rose by almost 47 percent to $ 3.83 billion. The group competes in the business with Amazon and Microsoft.
Robots and drones
The other divisions under the Alphabet umbrella such as the robot car company Waymo and the delivery drone developer Wing, meanwhile, accumulated a loss of around 1.14 billion dollars on sales of 196 million dollars in the past quarter. The proceeds were mainly generated by the network access business Google Fiber and the health company Verily, said Porat.
The CFO had repeatedly promised investors more cost discipline in future projects. Just a few days ago, Alphabet shut down Google's sister company Loon, which wanted to set up a business with Internet access via balloons with antennas. In the same quarter of the previous year, the “other bets” on future business areas lost a good two billion dollars with sales of 172 million dollars. Alphabet can cope with that: At the end of the year, the company was sitting on reserves of $ 137 billion.
