Google shares are dropping in after hours trading after the company announced its second quarter earnings report, missing estimates by 3 cents per share.
On the surface, all looks well (and they are well, really) as Google pulled in revenues of $3.87 billion, a six percent increase over the first quarter of 2007. The company’s earnings represent a 58% increase over the second quarter of 2006.
But projections had the search advertising giant earning $3.59 per share profit, but reported just $3.56 per share profit on net revenue of $2.68 billion.
At the closing bell, GOOG shares were trading at $548.59, but after hours, after report, trading has stocks trading at around $514, a decline of around six percent. Google enthusiasts may note this as a good time to buy.
Despite the miss, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is, as one might expect, spinning the earnings report positively.
“Our performance once again demonstrates the strength of our core search and ads business. The growth in our global traffic combined with our ongoing improvements in monetization resulted in solid revenue growth, even in a seasonally slow quarter,” said Schmidt in a statement.
“We continue to expand our commitment to deliver compelling hosted applications to businesses of all sizes, most recently agreeing to acquire Postini and its robust set of tools for web communication for the Google Apps suite of products. At the same time, we remain focused on addressing the tremendous opportunities we see worldwide, adding the talent and building the infrastructure that will allow us to continue to provide rich user experiences to Google users around the world.”
Still sitting on a mountain of $12.5 billion in cash, Google-owned sites generated revenues of $2.49 billion, or 64% of total revenues, a 74% increase over the same period last year, and a nine percent increase over 1Q 2007.
Partner sites through AdSense brought in $1.35 billion, or 35% of total earnings. Paid clicks were the same as the first quarter, but represented an increase of over 47% from 2Q 2006.
