The quarterly results of the American technology giants varied, ranging from results that exceed expectations for "Microsoft", and others that do not match them, for "Alphabet".
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| Alphabet Inc |
Alphabet Inc., the parent company of the American technology and Internet services company "Google", announced on Tuesday evening the results of the first quarter of this year, as profits and revenues came in less than expected.
The company's shares fell by 4 percent in the trading after the official trading time the day before yesterday. Alphabet reported that first-quarter profits amounted to $16.44 billion, or $24.62 per share, compared to $17.93 billion, or $26.29 per share, during the same period last year. Analysts' average forecast was $25.94 per share.
On the other hand, the company's revenues increased by 23 percent annually to 68.01 billion dollars, compared to 55.31 billion dollars during the first quarter of last year, while the average forecast by analysts for the revenues of the first quarter of this year was 68.07 billion dollars. During the first quarter of last year, the company recorded a revenue growth rate of 34 percent, and during the last quarter of last year, a rate of 32 percent.
And Google's revenue from advertising increased during the first quarter of last year to 54.66 billion dollars, compared to 44.68 billion dollars during the same period last year, thanks to the increase in YouTube advertising revenues and the Google search engine. Google's cloud computing revenue increased from $4.05 billion to $5.82 billion during the same period.
Against the modest results of Alphabet, the US software giant Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it achieved significant profits during the third quarter thanks to the increase in its revenues from the cloud computing services sector.
The company said third-quarter earnings increased from the same period last year, in line with Wall Street expectations. The company's total net profit in the third quarter amounted to $16.73 billion, or $2.22 per share, compared to $15.46 billion, or $2.03 per share, during the third quarter of last year. The company's revenue rose 18.3 percent in the quarter to $49.36 billion from $41.71 billion in the same quarter last year.
Away from the technology sector, the American group "General Motors" for the production of cars announced on Tuesday that its profits fell during the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in the previous year, but it came better than analysts' expectations.
The group stated that its net profit during that quarter amounted to $2.94 billion, or $1.35 per share, compared to $3.02 billion, or $2.03 per share, during the same period last year. The company's revenue during that quarter rose 10.8 percent annually to $35.98 billion, from $32.47 billion during the same period a year earlier.
In contrast, the German carmaker Mercedes-Benz continues to make good profits thanks to its high selling prices, thus largely offsetting the adverse conditions of the chip shortage crisis and the war in Ukraine.
And the group registered in the stock index «Dax» announced on Wednesday in Stuttgart that the group's sales of ongoing business in the first quarter of this year rose by 6 percent to 34.9 billion euros.
According to the data, EBIT thanks to good price positioning for new and used cars and cost reductions increased by 19 percent to 5.3 billion euros, only looking at the operations that Mercedes continued after the division of the freight division "Daimler Truck" from the group.
The final dividend for shareholders amounted to 3.5 billion euros, which is almost a fifth less than the previous year. In order to partially withdraw from the business in Russia, the group had to spend 709 million euros, in addition to 281 million euros owed to the settlement of the diesel scandal. In contrast, the group generated a sales profit of 918 million euros from the sale of subsidiaries in Canada. However, Mercedes is still making a slight increase in profits from the running business.