Google just posted fourth quarter earnings and it missed EPS and revenue by a bit, just like last quarter.
Here are the numbers:
- Revenue (minus traffic acquisition costs) was $14.48 billion versus $14.61 billion estimates (according to Yahoo Finance).
- Gross revenue was $18.1 billion, up 15% from last year.
- Adjusted EPS was $6.88 vs $7.08 expected.
- Google Sites revenues were $12.43 billion, up 18% from last year.
- Google Networks revenues were $3.72 billion, up 6% from a year ago.
- Paid clicks were up 14% from last year, and 11% from last quarter. That means traffic has continued to grow, as expected.
- Cost per click was down 3% from last year, and 3% from last quarter. That means advertisers are paying less for each ad. The decrease in CPC is worse than last Q3's which was down 2% from a year ago.
- The "Other" segment, which includes Google's enterprise business, booked $1.95 billion, up 19% from last year.
The stock is down about 2% on the miss. Overall, Google's business is still fine, but ad growth rates are slowing down a little bit every quarter, which is why investors have turned lukewarm on the stock.
Facebook had a strong earnings report yesterday, and is growing fast with mobile and video, so there could be some interesting comparisons to look at there.
We'll be tuning into Google's earnings call at 4:30 pm ET, and updating this post based on what we hear. Click here to refresh.
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