Alphabet shares manage small gains in wake of upbeat earnings
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Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares edged their way into positive territory Wednesday in the wake of the Google parent reporting better-than-expected first-quarter results and announced a massive new stock buyback plan.
Alphabet (GOOG) stock price climbed by 1.5% after the company said late Tuesday that it has earned $1.17 a share, on revenue of $69.8B for the quarter that ended in March. Those results topped analysts' estimates for a profit of $1.07 a share on $68.8B in revenue.
The company also said it would add another $70B to its stock repurchase plan.
Highlights for the quarter included better-than-expected advertising sales, with revenue for Google search and other advertising rising almost 2% from a year ago, to $40.36B. YouTube ad revenue slipped by 2.6% from the first quarter of 2022, to $6.69B, but still managed to exceed analysts' estimates.
Monness Crespi Hardt analyst Brian White said the results suggest that Alphabet (GOOG) "is well positioned to capitalize on the long-term digital ad trend," as well as gain from growth in its cloud business and "innovate" with artificial intelligence offerings.
That would be make sense, as Chief Executive Sundar Pichai used his time on a conference call Tuesday to say Alphabet (GOOG) "made good progress" in the quarter with its efforts to develop AI language models and improve its AI services all the way around in order to "be more helpful to our users" while also "empowering developers, creators and partners with our tools."
Eric Sheridan, of Goldman Sachs, noted the "optimism" that Pichai and Alphabet showed for their platform and product initiatives "to be increasingly driven by AI in the coming years,"' and that investors should expect to see "a recurring backdrop of deploying AI more broadly across the companyâs product portfolio" as it holds upcoming events such as its Google I/O conference. 
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