Ford reports fourth-quarter loss; Google parent Alphabet sees inrease in revenue

Google’s parent company, lost almost $1.1 billion from its “other bets” division in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to earnings results on Thursday.

Google parent Alphabet topped analyst estimates with ongoing strength in mobile search and video advertising, but missed on earnings, sending shares down after hours.

Excluding items, the company earned US$9.36 per share, below the average estimate of US$9.64 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. For comparison, Alphabet reported $22.4 billion in revenue and $5 billion in net income last quarter. Alphabet’s losses – yes, the revenue is paltry in comparison to the losses -stood at somewhere around $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter this year, as compared to $1.2 Billion in the fourth quarter of last year.

Fourth-quarter revenue, after payments for online traffic from distribution partners, was $21.22 billion, the company said in a statement Thursday. “This performance was led by mobile search and YouTube”. “And as we head into 2017, I expect Cloud to be one of our largest areas of investment and headcount growth”, said CEO Sundar Pichai on last quarter’s earnings call. Analysts had estimated Q3 net revenue of $20.58 billion and TAC of $4.2 billion.

At the moment 50 analysts are watching Alphabet Inc. Ad revenues were $22.4 billion, representing 17 percent growth.

The head of Project Wing, the drone delivery effort from Alphabet’s X “moonshot” division, also stepped down.

Wynn Resorts, Limited (NASDAQ:WYNN) shares rose almost 7% to $102.01 in after-hours trading, after the casino resort company released its fourth-quarter results.

Google’s strategy, Pichai said, is to support voice search across different contexts, ranging from phones – where, we’d note, Google’s Android OS still dominates the global market – to homes, TVs, and cars. Though aggregate cost-per-click fell, continuing a long (and industry-wide) trend of deterioration, with another 9% year-over-year decline, that dip continues to be more than offset by a sheer increase of volume.

Alphabet, the technology giant formerly known as Google, still makes majority of its revenue from ads, but it’s starting to build big gains elsewhere.

But Google, like Amazon and Microsoft, has been banking on cloud services to drive its future revenue growth.

Alphabet said it lost $1.1bn on “other bets” – firms like Nest, Verily, and Waymo – that haven’t yet become self-sustaining businesses.