Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) reported its first quarter earnings of 2020 Tuesday, giving investors some assurances that the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic may not be as bad as they feared. That sparked a sharp rise in the stock after hours, rising to a peak of nearly 10%.
The company reported earnings of $9.87 per share and revenue $41.16 billion on Tuesday -- a miss on earnings and a beat on revenue, based on expectations from analysts. Investors seemed relieved with revenue growth of 13% from the previous year, sending the stock up about 3% as the release crossed.
But the stock really started to soar during Q&A portion of the company’s conference call where CEO Sundar Pichai and CFO Ruth Porat gave some more color on the quarter and the first two weeks of Q2.
While the outlook wasn’t all rosy, as executives promised a "difficult" quarter ahead, here’s the good news they shared.
Porat admitted there was a “abrupt” dropoff in ad revenues in March, but suggested things were not getting worse in April.
"Based on our estimates from the end of March through last week for Search, we haven’t seen further deterioration in the percentage of year-on-year revenue declines."
YouTube advertising revenues were $4.04 billion, up 33% year on year. Execs said that strong YouTube revenue growth persisted until mid-March, which was when the coronavirus officially became a global pandemic.
Shares jumped $103.78, or 8.4%, to $1,336.30
Tech Insider
