Google parent Alphabet said Tuesday that its board of directors authorized to repurchase up to $70 billion in stocks, sending its shares up by 4% in after-hours trading before they pared gains to trade up 1.6%.
Alphabet posted a 3% increase in first-quarter revenues to $69.79 billion compared to the $68 billion in the year-ago period, the company’s earnings report showed. This beat analysts’ $68.9 billion estimate, according to Refinitiv.
Advertising sales revenue for the quarter was at $54.6 billion, a marginal drop from the $54.7 billion for the same period a year ago. The result, however, still beat analyst estimates of $53.7 billion. The decline was the third for the company since it went public in 2004 and the second consecutive dip after reporting a 3.6% ad sales drop in the fourth quarter.
Excluding items, the company reported earnings per share of $1.17, above the $1.07 per share average estimate. YouTube’s advertisement revenue of $6.69 billion stayed in line with analyst expectations but fell compared to the $6.9 billion in the year-ago period.
The results beating the top and bottom lines ended a string of four consecutive quarters in which the tech firm missed consensus estimates.
“We are pleased with our business performance in the first quarter, with Search performing well and momentum in Cloud,” Sundar Pichai, Alphabet, and Google CEO, said in a statement. “We introduced important product updates anchored in deep computer science and AI.”
