So you think you’ve got a decent earnings report. You hit your predictions, you planned conservatively and you paid your stockholders. You saw a bit of a climb on the market and then you get sick. You just saw Google’s numbers. Whoa boy.
Google posted some excellent third quarter numbers in their report yesterday and the market kindly obliged them on those numbers, pushing their stock up during the overnight and today, up 12.10% and hitting $346.43 at one point before settling in at $339.90. In less than a year, Google’s stock has more than double in price.
Google’s revenues doubled to $1.6 billion from $806 million, smoking expectations and third quarter profits increased phenomenally. Analysts had predicted a healthy $1.36 a share and Google said nope, not good enough, and went to a profit of $1.51 a share instead.
All this is very interesting because just a few short weeks ago, Google unloaded over 14 million shares of stock. Most experts felt this move was to help drive the price down and it dropped slightly for a while, actually dropping below $300 briefly. The stock report blew that out of the water.
After the strong reports from Yahoo and the increases in their stock, many wondered if Google would fair quite as well but the answer, in hindsight, should’ve been obvious. Google is still a golden child and they continue to grow. One must consider though, at some point, enthusiasm will wane somewhat and at current pricing, people hanging on could be hard hit.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
