(Reuters) – Alphabet posted quarterly revenue that beat expectations on Tuesday on the back of a rebound in advertising revenue and continued strong demand for its cloud computing services, and announced a $70 billion share buyback.
Shares of Google’s parent company rose about 4% in post-close trading.
Against the backdrop of the economic downturn, advertisers have returned to flagship platforms, such as YouTube and other Google products, rather than resorting to innovative models.
Alphabet, whose main turnover depends on advertising, has also undertaken a tight control of its costs, for fear of a recession, and decided in January to cut some 12,000 jobs. The technology giant has also made increased efforts in artificial intelligence (AI) with the aim of catching up with Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, and ChatGPT, an OpenAI product.
Alphabet reported revenue of $69.79 billion in the January-March period, beating consensus of $68.95 billion, according to Refinitiv data.
It raked in a net profit of $15.05 billion in the first quarter, up from $16.44 billion a year earlier.
Ad sales earned the group $54.55 billion, up from $54.66 billion in the same period last year. While this is the third year-on-year decline since Alphabet went public in 2004, it comes after a 3.6% drop in the last quarter of 2022.
(Reporting Akash Sriram in Bangalore and Greg Bensinger in San Francisco; Jean Terzian)
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