Google shares have been up and down in after-hours trading, but largely have hovered around the closing price of $639.62 soon after Google released its earnings report for the third quarter of 2007. Google beat analyst expectations by a slim margin.
Google reported revenues of $4.23 billion an increase of 57% compared to the third quarter of 2006 and an increase of 9% compared to the second quarter of 2007. Earnings per share were $3.38, just 12 cents per share above estimates.
The slim margin doesn’t match the hype coming into the report. murdok writer David Utter mentioned earlier this week that some Wall Street figures projected Google would beat estimates by as much as 50 cents per share.
Google-owned sites generated $2.73 billion, or 65 percent of total revenues, a 68 percent increase over third quarter last year. Google network revenues, generated through AdSense amounted to $1.45 billion, or 34 percent of total revenues, a 40 percent increase over this time last year.
Google’s total cash is $13.1 billion.
“We are very pleased with the impressive growth we experienced across our business,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in a statement. “Our core search advertising business experienced continued momentum driven by growth in monetization and traffic, and we are creating a wider and deeper ads system through our focus on innovation, bringing more ad formats to our advertisers.
“Our efforts to offer more products and services in international markets as well as effectively grow our technology infrastructure and add to our deep talent base during the quarter helped to deliver growth by enabling Google to reach more users around the world.”
Though EPS were largely as expected, analysts expect Google shares to soar above $700 if and when Google announces its entry into the mobile phone market.
