Research archive for GOOG

Yesterday Google announced that it will invest $450 million into security firm ADT. Remember that Google owns the smart home device business Nest. This collaboration will try to kick start that business which has been a disappointment so far.

On Thursday last week Alphabet (Google) released second quarter results. Revenues came in at $38.3bn, which was 2% lower than the second quarter of 2019 but 3% higher than expectations. Earnings per share smashed expectations by 28%, coming in at $10.13 a share.

A few days back I spoke about big techs investments into India and the tough regulations that favour local businesses. Well that hasn't stopped Google wanting to further tap the 500 million internet users in that country.

I am very excited about the prospects for Google Cloud. We have seen how well it has done for Amazon and Microsoft. The cloud business is still in its early stages and I believe there is room for a third big player. That is why I was excited when I saw the following headline Google, Deutsche Bank Agree to 10-Year Cloud Partnership.

Google announced on Tuesday that they are buying North, a Canadian company that makes smart glasses. Of course, Google has mountains of money and likes to buy talent and good ideas.

If you have been scouting for investment opportunities in online education, you may already have exposure to it if you are a Vestact client. During lockdown Google has doubled its Google Classroom users to 100 million.

Internet giant Google reported its first quarter results after the closing bell in New York last night. Keep in mind that this was for the period from 1 January to 31 March 2020. There were some good times (pre-Covid) and bad times (during Covid) in those three months.

In the race for cloud domination, the big players have specific niches they like to service. For example AWS (Amazon) naturally has expertise in online retail. AWS has great programs which can track customer behaviours. So if you want to host an online retail site, go with AWS.

On Monday evening Alphabet a.k.a. Google posted their Q4 numbers. Revenue came in at $46.1 billion, up 17%, and Net Income came in at $10.7 billion, up 22%. In terms of analyst expectations, it was a top-line beat but a bottom-line miss. The stock dropped 2.5% on the results.

You may have noticed that we do not devote much time to profiling the CEOs of the companies that we hold in Vestact portfolios. It's not that company management are unimportant. A good strategy is developed and implemented by a talented team, and sound decision making is crucial for modern multi-national corporations. Conversely, a rotten manager can do a lot of damage.

We are in the middle of US earnings season now, and last night Google was out with its results. The holding company is actually called Alphabet, but its share codes are GOOG and GOOGL, so I just call them Google. The company has a market value of $894 billion and was founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Its headquarters are in Mountain View, California. Sundar Pichai has been the CEO since Oct 2015.

Apparently Google made $4.7bn from the News Industry in 2018. As you know, Google sells advertising space on the internet. As you may also know, most people read their news online these days. Advertising in Newspapers a few decades ago was thriving, but today, Google owns a huge chunk of that market. Although this is only a corner of the market where Google operates, it is big and influential.

According to CNBC, the US Department of Justice is reportedly preparing an antitrust investigation against Google. Google controls more than 70% of the global search engine market, and it allegedly used its market dominance in order to generate north of $136 billion in revenues last year for its mother company Alphabet.

So many trips are booked using Google. That is why Booking.com pay Google millions to be top of the search results. Booking has become big enough that users now go straight to their website. This is of course good for Booking and bad for Google. That is why Google has created a landing page exclusively for booking trips. And guess what, it is called Trips.

Google reported numbers on Monday which disappointed the market. Revenues came in at $36.34bn vs consensus of $37.3bn. This showed a growth rate of 19%. Excluding the once-off EU fine, net income was $8.3bn which equates to $11.9 a share. The below image shows where Google makes their money.