Alphabet becomes world’s most valuable company

Investors showed their feelings about Alphabet’s fourth-quarter performance by sending the company’s stock price up by nearly 5 percent, to $807 a share in after-hours trading Monday, putting it in line to become the world’s most valuable company Tuesday.

The outfit made a profit of $4.9 billion in the fourth quarter, an increase from $4.7 billion a year ago.

The news beat analyst expectations and sent the company’s shares skyrocketing.

Google’s parent company said earnings leaped after stock markets closed on Monday, numbers that were good enough to push its stock up enough to make the company worth more than Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL).

Shares of Google’s parent company Alphabet have surged – making it worth more than Apple – thanks to better than expected quarterly profit. The ancestral Web deal with the search engine and online advertising is been separated from new ventures such as self-propelled cars or drones.

This was an 18pc increase year-on year for Alphabet.

The company was under a lot of pressure to be more transparent over how much cash it was splashing on things like driverless cars, internet-enabled helium balloons and Google Glass.

Alphabet also reported that Google’s Gmail has surpassed a billion users, the seventh Google property to reach this awesome milestone.

Alphabet Inc today, 1 February 2016, announced financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2015.

The move unveiled past year gives the tech giant more ability to focus on its core business, while offering startup-like flexibility to long-shot, trailblazing projects.

The Google unit houses its internet and related businesses such as search, ads, maps, YouTube and Android as well as hardware products such as its low-priced Chromebook laptops. That compares to a loss of $1.9 billion a year earlier.

“The primary driver (of growth) was mobility”, said Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat, on a conference call to discuss the results.

“You can expect that results for the combined Other Bets may be uneven in the near term, so it’s likely to be more instructive to look at them on an annual or rolling 12-month basis to assess their trajectory”. The company, expended $869 million on capital overheads for the Other Bets in 2015, greater from $501 million in 2014.