Alphabet determines first dividend by exceeding earnings forecasts

Alphabet, Google's parent company, rose as much as 13% in after-hours trading on Thursday after reporting better-than-expected quarterly earnings and profits and excited investors by announcing a cash dividend of $0.20 per share.

The board of directors also approved a share repurchase program capped at $70 billion.

“Our first quarter results reflect strong performance in search, YouTube and cloud services,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement. “Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, as well as global product deployment, puts us in an advantageous position for the next wave of AI innovation.”

The following are the most important indicators of the alphabet:

Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs: $67.59 billion compared to an estimated $66.07 billion ($58.07 billion for the first quarter of 2023)

Adjusted EPS: $1.89 versus forecast $1.53 ($1.17 for the first quarter of 2023)

Cloud revenue: $9.58 billion versus $9.37 billion forecast ($7.45 billion for the first quarter of 2023)

Ad revenue: $61.66 billion compared to an estimated $60.18 billion ($54.55 billion in the first quarter of 2023)

In the field of artificial intelligence, there is a strong view that Google is catching up with Microsoft (Microsoft). Microsoft was one of the first companies in tech to benefit from a cultural boom in consumer-grade AI chatbots. Microsoft invested in OpenAI, which developed the popular ChatGPT.

Google is also struggling to expand its market share in the cloud field, and is currently in 3rd place after rivals Amazon and Microsoft. Cloud revenue has increased by nearly 30% compared to the same period last year.

The Alphabet report was announced the day after tech giant Meta, a rival in the advertising industry, announced its pessimistic second-quarter forecast.