It’s that time again — Google’s fiscal second quarter earnings have just crossed the wires and they’re definitely not what most people expected. For Q2 2013, the company reported consolidated revenue of $14.1 billion (that’s up 19 percent from the year-ago quarter), net income of $3.23 billion, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $9.56.
In the days leading up the release, analysts expected the web giant to post some strong numbers — the consensus estimates according to Yahoo Finance pegged the company as posting non-GAAP earnings of $10.78 per share and $14.42 billion in revenue, both figures that Google couldn’t quite live up to this time around. If there’s anything close to a silver lining there, it’s that analysts were hoping to see Google’s revenue jump at least 20 percent year-over-year, and the company only missed that by about 1 percent.
Google’s stock hit an all time high earlier this Monday before settling down a bit, and at time of writing the stock’s price is down over 5 percent in after-hours trading.
Of course, not all is as bad as it seems, no matter what some jumpy analysts think. Google’s total ad revenue was up 15% this quarter, which is rather nice considering it’s how Google makes most of its money. Speaking of ads, some folks are probably eyeing up Google’s paid clicks and cost-per-click figures, especially in light of reports from both The Search Agency and Adobe (via VentureBeat) that pointed to a likely upswing in both rather the divergence we usually see. As it happens, those reports didn’t quite tell the whole picture — Google’s paid clicks were up 23 percent from the year ago quarter, while average cost-per-click was down about 6 percent from the year ago quarter. Meanwhile, Google’s traffic acquisition costs surged to $3.01 billion from the $2.6 billion it reported Q2 last year.
And then there’s Google’s once-quiet mobile hardware division. After keeping mostly to themselves after being acquired by Google last year, Motorola Mobility opened up earlier this month to tease the forthcoming Moto X, a seemingly mid-range smartphone that’s expected to make waves thanks to a low price tag and some novel customization options. I suspect Google’s brass will be doing plenty of Motorola cheerleading a little later on today (it’s become something of a tradition now), but the company reported that its mobile hardware subsidiary accounted for only $998 million of Google’s overall revenue — that shakes out to about 7 percent. That’s awfully low even for Motorola, but you can’t really blame them since they haven’t pushed out much in the way of new devices lately… though it does explain why Motorola reported a GAAP operating loss of $342 million.
As usual, Google will hold a conference call to discuss the company’s quarterly performance at 4:30 PM Eastern/1:30 PM Pacific. You’ll definitely want to stick around to see what happens — even though CEO Larry Page called Q2 a “great quarter”, he’s going to face some serious questions from curious analysts.
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