Alphabet tops $100 billion quarterly revenue for first time, cloud grows 34%

Alphabet reported third-quarter earnings that beat analyst expectations. Shares rose 5% in after-hours trading.

Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:

• Revenue: $102.35 billion vs. $99.89 billion estimated
• Earnings per share: $3.10 adj. vs $2.33 estimated

Wall Street was also watching several other numbers in the report:

• YouTube advertising revenue: $10.26 billion vs. $10.01 billion, according to StreetAccount
• Google Cloud revenue:  $15.15 billion vs. $14.74 billion, according to StreetAccount
• Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $14.87 billion vs. $14.82 billion, according to StreetAccount

Alphabet reported solid momentum in its cloud business, thanks to strong demand for artificial intelligence. The company also announced an increase in expected capital expenditures for the fiscal year 2025.

“With the growth across our business and demand from Cloud customers, we now expect 2025 capital expenditures to be in a range of $91 billion to $93 billion,” the company said in its earnings report Wednesday.

Earlier this year, the company increased its capital expenditure expectation from $75 billion to $85 billion. Most of that goes toward technical infrastructure such as data centers.

The latest earnings show the company is seeing rising demand for its AI services, which largely sit in its cloud unit. It also shows the company is continuing to spend more to try and build out more infrastructure to accomodate the backlog of customer requests.

“We continue to drive strong growth in new businesses. Google Cloud accelerated, ending the quarter with $155 billion in backlog,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in the earnings release.

The company reported cloud revenue of $15.15 billion, a 35% increase from the same period last year.

Alphabet, which reported 32% cloud revenue growth last quarter, is keeping pace with its megacap competitors. Microsoft posted 40% revenue growth in its Azure cloud business as it reported earnings on Wednesday.

Google’s search business generated $56.56 billion in revenue — up 15% from the prior year.

Alphabet’s net income increased to $34.97 billion, or $2.87 per share, compared to $26.3 billion, or $2.12 per share, in the year-ago quarter. In September, Google was slapped with a $3.45 billion antitrust fine from European Union regulators for anti-competitive practices in its lucrative advertising technology business. That fine impacted the reported net income.

YouTube advertising revenue came in at $10.26 billion, higher than Wall Street expected. Alphabet reported overall advertising revenue of $74.18 billion — up from $65.85 billion last year.

Other Bets, which includes the company’s life sciences unit Verily and self-driving car unit Waymo, reported revenue of $344 million during the quarter. That’s lower than the $388 million from the same quarter last year. 

Alphabet reported a loss of $1.42 billion on other bets, compared to a loss of $1.12 billion the year before.

The Google parent’s stock is up 45% so far this year.