"SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Google Inc. on Thursday posted big profit and sales gains for the fourth quarter as it continued to see an increase in the number of users clicking on its Internet search advertisements, potentially sending a positive signal for the online ad industry as a whole.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google /quotes/comstock/15*!goog/quotes/nls/goog (GOOG 554.90, -28.08, -4.82%) said net income rose to $1.97 billion, or $6.13 a share in the period ended in December, compared to $382 million, or $1.21 a share in the same period a year earlier. Net revenue rose to $4.95 billion, Google said.
Excluding special items, Google said earnings for the quarter were $6.79 a share.
Wall Street analysts were expecting Mountain View, Calif.-based Google to post earnings excluding items of $6.48 a share, and $4.92 billion in net revenue, according to Thomson Reuters data.
"Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement.
Google shares fell nearly 5% to $554.51 in after-hours trading, following the earnings announcement.
Wall Street were bullish about Google's quarter in the weeks leading up to its earnings report, with many citing what was a relatively strong online shopping turnout over the holidays.
While Google didn't sell holiday gifts directly, it helped point shoppers to items through its paid search advertising.
Google said its paid clicks, or the number of times that users clicked on advertisements and generated revenue, rose 13% compared to the same period last year. Google had posted 14% year-over-year growth in paid clicks for its quarter ended in September.
The average price paid by advertisers per click meanwhile rose 5%, Google said.
Google, which has sought to rein in a relatively lavish corporate culture amid the downturn and clamp down on costs, also appears to have picked up its hiring pace in the quarter.
Google said it had 19,835 employees as of the end of December, an increase of nearly 200 compared to the 19,665 it had reported having as of the end of September.
Google's employee count had been as high as 20,222 in Dec. 2008. John Letzing is a MarketWatch reporter based in San Francisco." |