After-hours trading in shares of the search advertising company declined slightly from the previous close, down $1.02 to $425.80.
Today, thousands of people will settle down in front of their screens and wait anxiously for a speech that could affect the fortunes of many. They will hang on every word, desperate to divine some greater meaning within the words they hear, looking for some hint about what is to come in the future.
And there will be a lot of people watching President Bush’s ‘State of the Union’ address later today as well. We’re talking about the forthcoming Google 4th quarter earnings webcast, of course. The webcast takes place at 4:30 pm ET, when the market closes today.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thomson First Call’s analyst poll expects earnings of $1.76 per share, excluding employee stock options. Revenue expectations minus advertising commissions paid to AdSense publishers should be $1.28 billion for the quarter.
Google’s stock has suffered some downturns in January, as news broke about the Department of Justice suing the company to force it to comply with a subpoena for information about searches performed through its search engine.
Google has cited user privacy and trade secret protection as reasons for fighting the subpoena, and the two parties will meet in US District Court on February 27th.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
