Google becomes a dividend stock after Q1 earnings

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) says it performed better than Street expectations in its first financial quarter. Shares of the tech titan are in the green in after-hours.

Google stock rallies on solid ad revenue

Investors are rewarding the multinational partially on solid growth in ad revenue.  

Google generated $61.65 billion in revenue from advertising in Q1 – up significantly versus $54.54 billion in the same quarter last year. Ruth Porat – its chief financial officer said in a press release today:

Wall Street currently has a consensus “overweight” rating on $GOOGL.

Google Cloud did well in fiscal Q1

Alphabet saw better-than-expected annualised growth in YouTube as well.

Also a positive was Google Cloud that brought in $9.57 billion in the recently concluded quarter. Experts, in comparison, were at $9.35 billion. According to CEO Sundar Pichai:

Google stock is currently up more than 35% versus its year-to-date low.

Google Q1 earnings snapshot

• Earned $23.66 billion versus the year-ago $15.05 billion
• Per-share earnings also climbed from$1.17 to $1.89
• Revenue jumped 15% year-on-year to $80.54 billion
• Consensus was $1.51 a share on $78.59 billion in revenue
• Traffic acquisition costs of $12.95 billion were higher than expected

Google announced its first-ever quarterly dividend of 20 cents a share on Thursday. Its board also authorised another $70 billion in share repurchase, as per the earnings report. CEO Pichai also said on Thursday: