After the US stock market on Thursday, April 25, Alphabet, the parent company of search engine giant Google, released its latest quarterly earnings report.

Accelerated Q1 revenue, advertising, and cloud revenue, spurred by the first-ever dividend in history and $70 billion share buybacks, Google once soared 15% to a new high after the market.

Expanding into AI, Google's Q1 performance is strong

Financial reports show that Google's parent company was in the first quarterTotal revenue of US$80.54 billionThe year-on-year increase was 15%, the fastest growth rate since the beginning of 2022, and higher than market expectations of US$79.04 billion.

First quarterNet profit jumped 57% year over year to US$23.66 billion, higher than the forecast of $18.95 billion.

Adjusted earnings per share of $1.89, far exceeding expectations of $1.53, surged 61.5% year-on-year from $1.17 in the same period last year.

Looking at it by business,Google's total advertising revenue was $61.66 billion, up 13% year over yearHigher than analysts' average expectations of US$60.3 billion, compared to US$54.55 billion in the same period last year.

Google search and other ad revenueThe year-on-year increase was more than 14% to US$46.156 billion.YouTubeAd revenue increased 21% from $6.7 billion in the same period last year to $8.1 billion, higher than the forecast of $7.72 billion.

Google cloudRevenue increased 28.4% year over year to $9.57 billion, higher than analysts' expectations of $9.37 billion.

Google Services' quarterly revenue increased 13.6% year over year to US$70.4 billion, outperforming market expectations of US$69 billion. Operating profit increased 28% year over year to nearly US$27.9 billion, significantly higher than market expectations of US$24.3 billion.

Google said it is currently integrating teams focused on building artificial intelligence (AI) models in Google Research and Google DeepMind to further accelerate progress in the field of artificial intelligence.

It is expected that starting from the second quarter of 2024, the artificial intelligence model development team in the Google Services Division, which was previously part of Google Research, will include Alphabet-level activities as part of Google DeepMind.

First dividend payment in history

As Gemini, the big language model, has advanced rapidly, capital expenditure has also increased.

Alphabet said capital expenditure for the quarter was $12 billion, mainly related to servers and data centers.

CFO Ruth Porat (Ruth Porat) said on a conference call that spending levels will be similar over the next few quarters, which reflects thatThe company's confidence in its investment in artificial intelligence.

CEO Sundar Pichai (Sundar Pichai) also said that the first quarter results reflect strong performance from search, YouTube, and cloud.

“Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, as well as our global product footprint, position us well in the next wave of AI innovation.”

The company also approved the launch of a cash dividend programIt was announced that a dividend of $0.20 per share will be paid to registered shareholders as of June 10, 2024 on June 17, 2024. Alphabet indicated that it plans to pay quarterly cash dividends in the future.

Furthermore, taking into account economic costs and current market conditions, Alphabet's board of directors approved aA share repurchase program of up to $70 billion for Class A and Class C shares.