14 DAY TRIAL // Google has published its first quarter financial results. The company has had a good quarter with revenue and income above analyst expectations and seeing a solid bump from last year.
Google also announced that it's doing a stock split, technically it's a proposal but since the two Google cofounders along with former CEO Eric Schmidt control most of the voting shares, it's essentially a done deal.
The split may spur some volatility in the market and may increase trading, but it's mostly designed to give the three more control over the public company.
Google ended the quarter with $10.65 billion, €8.1 billion in revenue, a 24 percent increase over the same period of last year, $8.1 billion, €6.16 billion after deducting traffic acquisition costs - what Google pays to partners that run its ads or funnel searchers.
"Net income in the first quarter of 2012 was $2.89 billion [€2.19 billion], compared to $1.80 billion [€1.36 billion] in the first quarter of 2011. Non-GAAP net income in the first quarter of 2012 was $3.33 billion [€2.51 billion], compared to $2.64 billion [€2 billion] in the first quarter of 2011," Google said.
Net income is up 60 percent year-over-year and well above expectations, leading to Google share price going up after the announcement.
Most of the money came from Google's own sites, $7.31 billion [€5.56 billion], 69 percent of total revenue. Google's network revenue amounted to $2.91 billion [€2.21 billion], 27 percent of total revenue. 54 percent of the money came from outside of the US with the UK the largest international market representing 11 percent of revenue.
Cost-per-click decreased for the second quarter in a row, dropping 12 percent over the first quarter of 2011 and 6 percent over the previous quarter. This has been worrying analysts, it means that Google is making less money for the ads it serves. But it's making more money overall since it serves more ads than before.