Web giant Google’s latest financial report was accidentally reported early and without a quote from CEO Larry Page yesterday.
Google’s financial printer RR Donnelley has taken reponsibility for the fact that its quarterly financial statement was issued early, and with the words "Pending Larry quote" in the second paragraph.
report before receiving authorisation to do so, with the press release’s second paragraph reading “Pending Larry quote”. Google had intended to release its results after the market close on Thursday.
“I am sorry for the scramble earlier today,” said Google CEO Larry Page on a conference call with analysts. “As our printers have said, they hit send on the release just a bit early.”
The results in question missed analysts’ expectations for net income. Google’s net income for the third quarter was $2.18 billion, or $9.03 per share, falling short of the $10.65 analysts had predicted.
The web giant’s share price fell 8% following the premature announcement.
Revenues from Google’s Motorola Mobility division, the mobile phone maker that it bought for $12.5 billion in May, declined 20% quarter-on-quarter to $2.58 billion. Google’s senior vice president and chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said company expects results from its Motorola Mobility division to be “quite variable for quite a while yet”.
“We are just at the beginning of the Motorola Google story,” he said. “Remember that we inherited an entire product pipeline where hardware business cycles are typically in a 12 months to 18 months.”
Paid clicks, which are advertisements on Google’s websites that earn the company money when they are clicked on, rose 33% year-on-year. However, the amount it charged to advertisers for putting adverts on its websites, decreased 15% year-on-year and 3% quarter-on-quarter.
“We had a strong quarter. Revenue was up 45 percent year-on-year, and, at just fourteen years old, we cleared our first $14 billion revenue quarter,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “I am also really excited about the progress we’re making creating a beautifully simple, intuitive Google experience across all devices,” he said.
