Alphabet’s 2Q earnings soar despite losses on risky bets

Over the same period its acquisition costs as expressed by the payments it makes to third parties has continued to rise. The Google parent company is increasing its revenue from the non-advertising parts of the company, and it’s stemming operating losses on its moonshot projects under the more fiscally stringent Ruth Porat, a respected Wall Street veteran who became the company’s C.F.O. past year.

But the company is losing far more money from those efforts. “We now have key leadership in place and centralized teams”, Pichai said. “We’re thoughtfully pursuing big bets and building exciting new technologies, in Google and our Other Bets, that position us well for long term growth”, said Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet. She stressed on the call that the company continues to be focused on being “disciplined” and “managing expenses”. She also added that she will continue to inspect the Other Bets business. When Facebook reported results on Wednesday the social media giant posted ad revenues of $6.24 of which 84% came from mobile advertising.

Alphabet stock has had a sluggish year, sliding 1.6% in 2016, partly because the company has struggled to meet expectations. It also was meant to provide more financial transparency and accountability. The first cars are expected to hit public streets later this year and will more than double Alphabet’s current fleet of self-driving test vehicles.

On Wednesday, Facebook said its profit for the second quarter close to tripled that of past year to more than $2.1 billion, beating easily estimates on Wall Street.

Parent company Alphabet invests heavily in so-called moonshot projects, which include long-term expensive bets on things like self-driving cars, superfast internet, life sciences and app-controlled home tech. According to figures published by Alphabet, revenue has grown by 21.3 per cent to land at USD 21.5 billion, while earnings spiked from USD 3.93 billion to USD 4.88 billion. Shares ended the regular trading day up 0.5%.

The other most important numbers are cost per click, how much Google can charge for its ads, and paid clicks – how many times people click those ads.

And with Google at its core, Alphabet seems to be in good position to grow its main business and pursue its crazier ideas.