Google Misses 'Whisper' Forecasts
Updated from Thursday, April 15
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- On the surface, Google's (SYMBOL) first-quarter earnings report was an investors dream, as both profit and revenue handily beat expectations.
Still, shares of Google tumbled after the market closed Thursday, as it failed to meet some "whisper" predictions, or the unpublished numbers that circulate among investors.
During the quarter Google earned $1.96, or $6.06 a share, a 38% surge from the prior-year period.
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Excluding items, Google actually earned $6.76 a share, beating analysts forecasts of $6.60 a share, but only in-line with investors "whisper" outlooks. And in-line, apparently, just isn't good enough.
Google's revenue spiked 23% to $6.77 billion, while Google-owned sites generated $4.44 billion, or 66% of total revenues. Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of its AdSense partners, increased about 15% over the first quarter of 2009; revenues from outside of the U.S. totaled $3.58 billion, representing 53% of total revenues in the first quarter of 2010, compared to 53% in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 52% in the first quarter of 2009.
Most of this good news, however, was already priced into the stock. Google shares lost $29.10 in after-hours trading Thursday, after closing at $595.30, up 1.1%.
-- Reported by Andrea Tse and Jeanine Poggi in New York
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