Alphabet Continues Double-Digit Earnings Trend

Google’s parent company Alphabet posted a quarterly revenue growth of 13 percent on Tuesday, as part of their Q4 2023 earnings report. This marks the second time in a row the company has reached double-digits in year-on-year growth since Q2 2022. 

Alphabet saw increases in advertising revenue, reporting $65.5 billion, up from $59 billion a year ago. Still, share prices went down after the company missed analyst projections for its ad business, dropping by as much as 6 percent after market close. As far as cloud revenue goes, the segment continued its growth trajectory, showing a 26 percent increase from the same time last year. This development is expected to continue in 2024, with Alphabet announcing its newest large language model Gemini in December and planning to license Gemini via Google Cloud.

Alphabet also reported that 182,502 employees currently work there, marking a four percent decrease year-over-year following layoffs earlier in 2023. These layoffs also were responsible for a short-term hit to the company's bottom line, with about $2.1 billion paid out in severance and other related compensation in 2023.