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From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:
Providing a sign that online advertising continues to shine in a tough economy, Google reported a second-quarter net profit today of $2.79 billion, or $8.42 a share, up 11%, on a 35% jump in sales to $12.21 billion. Non-GAAP profit per share, the one analysts track, came in at $10.12, a little above the Street’s $10.04.
Those revenues included six weeks of its recent acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Google revenues alone were $10.96 billion, up 21%. Either way, revenues after payments to website partners were $8.36 billion, a bit lighter than analysts’ forecast of $8.41 billion.
In trading immediately after the close, shares rose about 5%, then eased back to a steady 3% gain. Google’s shares closed up today about 2%, to $593.06.
Although Street estimates were iffy given the addition of Motorola Mobility to Google’s results for the first time, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney was expecting a $9.99 non-GAAP profit per share on $12.45 billion in gross revenue. Without Motorola, he was expecting $10.76 billion in gross revenues, $8.23 billion in net revenues after payments to website partners. You can listen to the archived analyst call on Google’s YouTube channel.
The upshot after the call: Google executives sounded a confident tone about the business, though insight about Motorola was almost non-existent. In particular, Google appears committed to making mobile advertising pay off, shrugging off concerns about low mobile ad prices.
Google partners don’t seem worried about that either. Jared Belsky, executive VP at digital ad agency 360i, said in an interview that he thinks the rapid rise in mobile computing should be a net positive for Google simply because people are searching more hours of the day now. “This is a strategy for the long term,” says Belsky, who notes that its clients’ mobile ad search spending is now 14% of the total–an increase of 300% from a year ago. “Increasingly they’ll be able to monetize it.” Even more important, he says clicks on mobile ads have risen 300% as well as marketers provide better landing pages and people get more comfortable clicking on the ads as a result.
And the call begins. …
Read the complete post at The New Persuaders.
Filed under: advertising, Android, display, Google, mobile, search, social, video, YouTube Tagged: | advertising, Android, display, Google, Google Search, Larry Page, mobile, Motorola Mobility, search, social, video, YouTube
