The corporate alphabet has significantly expanded its business over the past quarter, but missed the earnings expectations of Wall Street. Turnover rose by one-fifth to $ 40.5 billion, according to official figures. Earnings were $ 7.1 billion in the third quarter - analysts had expected $ 8.8 billion.
The stock of the Google parent company was in the after-hours trading at times by about one percent. Analysts had expected over $ 12 earnings per share, in fact, a good $ 10 came out.
Still, it was with a turnover of nearly 34 billion dollars (plus 17 percent), especially the advertising business of Google
The other alphabet areas such as the robot car company Waymo or the delivery drones project Wing still devour a lot of money with small sales. So their collected proceeds increased from 146 to 155 million dollars. The operating loss meanwhile increased from $ 727 to 941 million.
Media reports: Alphabet apparently wants to buy fitness company Fitbit
The continued strong growth in advertising revenues is likely to have interested both the Washington antitrust authorities and the prosecutors of 50 US states that recently launched competition investigations against the Internet company. Among other things, they check whether the market leader gained an unfair advantage against smaller rivals.
Shortly before the figures, a report on acquisition plans of Alphabet caused a stir. The Google mother wanted to buy the fitness band pioneer Fitbit reported, inter alia, the US television channel CNBC. At first there was no information about the price. The Fitbit share closed at around 30 percent.
