Shares of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, fell 9.5% this Wednesday after disappointing with its results in the cloud business. Both sales and profit from this activity were below analysts’ estimates.
In the first nine months Alphabet earned 53,108 million dollars -50,130 million euros-, 15% more than last year. Revenue climbs to 221,084 million dollars, about 209,000 million euros, 7% more. The negative note, on which the market has focused, is that the cloud business achieved an operating profit of 266 million dollars, about 251 million euros, far from the 434 million that were expected.
The cloud focuses so many eyes because it must be the replacement for other historical business areas such as searches. Also because in the cloud, important for the development of AI, Amazon and Microsoft lead the way.
Alphabet also pointed out that charges related to the layoffs carried out this year, the optimization of its offices and the depreciation of its facilities weigh on its accounts, with an impact close to 2.8 billion euros.
In the case of Microsoft, which has also presented results, things have gone better, with a rebound of close to 4% after the market closed. The company earned 22,291 million dollars in the last quarter – about 21,045 million euros -, 27% more, and achieved its best sales increase in six quarters, driven by the demand for cloud computing due to the investment pull of the artificial intelligence.
The company reported a turnover of 56,517 million dollars -53,400 million euros- in the quarter, 13% more than the same period of the previous year. Sales of its Azure cloud services increased by 29%, without detailing the specific figure, and it becomes one of the growth drivers. Azure includes products from OpenAI, parent of ChatGPT.
