Unlock the publisher's digest free
Roula Khalaf, editor -in -chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Alphabet actions increased after having declared two -digit increases in the first quarter income and profits, driven by another good performance in its research activity and the boom in demand for artificial intelligence for cloud computing.
Income increased 12% to 90.2 billion dollars, while net profit jumped 46% to 34.5 billion dollars compared to the same period a year earlier, the parent company of the parent company Google reported Thursday. The two beat expectations and helped calm the fears about its ability to resist a trade war and the American recession.
Google's basic research and basic advertising activity increased by almost 10% to $ 50.7 billion during the quarter, exceeding estimates between 8% and 9%.
The figures have comforted investors who closely monitored any softness in research – which represents 56% of group income – due to the popularity of IA Chatbots such as the Openai Chatppt, Claude d'Anthropic and Grok by Elon Musk.
They were also on alert for evidence that the responses of the own Google Gemini chatbot and the summaries of the cannibalize this main company by reducing the number of user clicks on advertisements.
“Research has experienced strong strong growth, stimulated by the commitments we see with features such as IA previews,” said Director General Sundar Pichai, referring to the responses generated by AI, he now shows at the top of many pages of results. “We are looking great here, continuing to deploy functionality in new countries, more users and more requests.”
The director of business, Philipp Schindler, said: “We see the monetization roughly at the same rate” for the IA previews in relation to traditional research links, while refusing to specify exact click click rates.
Jefferies analyst, Brent Thill, said the results were “better than fear, with healthy announcements and clouds”. He had previously warned that “macroeconomics and prices (would) launch a mist during the second and third quarter” and advertising “faces opposite winds” while Chinese sellers reduce expenses.
Alphabet Actions have increased by more than 4% in trade after the market. The company said it would buy $ 70 billion in shares, the same amount as last year.
A punctual gain of $ 8 billion linked to the shares of a private company which it did not appoint increased the increase in net income.
Google is the second major technological company to publish profits following the world trade war by American president Donald Trump. Alphabet actions fell by around 17% this year. Like most of its rivals, society has been affected by concerns concerning price Disturbing supply chains and softening consumption expenditure, promoting fears of an American recession.
“We are obviously not immune to the macro environment,” said Schindler.
This month, the White House increased its functions on small packages, which were previously exempt if they were assessed at less than $ 800. This caused Chinese commerce groups Temu and Shein slash Their expenses on digital advertising platforms such as Google and Meta.
Schindler said that the change in policy “will lead to a slight wind from our announcements in 2025, mainly retailers in Asia”.
Earlier this week, Tesla warned that the prices would have a “Disproportionate” impact On its battery activity which is based on components of China. The managing director Elon Musk is committed to continuing to pressure Trump in favor of free trade principles.
But the overall alphabet revenues beat Wall Street consensus expectations of $ 89.2 billion, according to Capital IQ.
It is Cloud Computing The division declared a 28% increase in revenue to $ 12.3 billion, showing continuous appetite for its data center and network services from AI boom. However, this slowed down 30.1% in the previous quarter, which Alphabet blamed the demand that exceeds supply while it takes place to put new online data centers.
Record alphabet expenses on crisps, networking equipment and other AI infrastructure continued to increase, by raising investors concerns about Big Tech Expenditure plans of $ 300 billion This year.
Capital expenditure in the first quarter increased to $ 17.2 billion, compared to $ 12 billion last year and a little more of the estimate of $ 17.1 billion. He has planned that expenses will reach $ 75 billion this year, compared to $ 53 billion in 2024.
The company is still faced with challenges after losing a succession of antitrust cases presented by American regulators against its research companies, digital advertising and Play App Store. He could be forced to sell Its Chrome browser, ends an exclusive partnership on search engines with Apple and shares more data with competitors.