Google Inc. (GOOG) Earnings Report Impresses

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was facing some interesting skepticism from analysts leading up to Tuesday’s quarterly earnings report, after  its previous report in October came out several hours early and showed some disturbingly bad numbers, which sent the stock plummeting during the trading day. However, based on after-market activity around the stock, it seems that the skepticism was unfounded.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) CEO Larry Page said in a statement, “We ended 2012 with a strong quarter. Revenues were up 36% year-on-year, and 8% quarter-on-quarter. And we hit $50 billion in revenues for the first time last year – not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half. In today’s multi-screen world we face tremendous opportunities as a technology company focused on user benefit. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be at Google.”

Let us take a quick couple minutes translating this encouraging statement, which is being reflected in after-market trading. Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) ended the trading day down slightly on the day to $702.47, but the stock shot up 4.7 percent in the hour after the market close to $735.35 a share.

Getting into the numbers, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) boasted quarterly total revenue of $14.42 billion, which was a 36-percent increase over the previous time period in 2011. That turned into a earnings-per-share count of $8.62 per share (beating Wall Street estimates by 14 cents), up from $8.22 a year earlier. Google revenues (which considers advertising) listed a $12.91 billion, or 89 percent of the total, and a 22-percent increase over the same quarter in 2011. The company reported cash reserves of more than $48 billion. Google-owned sites produced about $8.64 billion of revenue, which was up 18 percent from the previous year. And in a couple other noteworthy statistics, the numbers of paid clicks increased 24 percent over the previous year and about 9 percent over the third quarter of 2012, and cost-per-click fell 6 percent over 2011 and rose 2 percent over the third quarter of 2012.

What do you think of the numbers? Are you on board with Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)? Where do you think the company goes from here? We would like to get your feedback as all the numbers come out. Let us know what numbers you consider on an earnings report, and what numbers stand out to you.

DISCLOSURE: I own no positions in any stock mentioned.

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