What happened
Shares of Alphabet (GOOG 1.26%) (GOOGL 1.37%) soared on Wednesday, following the Google parent company's impressive third-quarter earnings report. The vote-carrying A shares (GOOGL) rose as much as 6.8% before retreating to a 6.1% gain as of 12:30 p.m. EDT. Alphabet's voteless C shares (GOOG) followed close behind with gains of 6.7% and 6.1%, respectively.
So what
Top-line sales rose 41% year over year to $65.1 billion. Earnings jumped 71% higher over the same period, landing at $27.99 per diluted share. Your average analyst would have settled for earnings near $23.47 per share on revenue of roughly $63.5 billion. Search ads, YouTube ads, and cloud services all delivered year-over-year revenue growth above 40%.
Remote workers have been a boon for Alphabet's financial results. Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
In the earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai pondered the long-term growth potential of changes to the global business environment. The remote work policies that started as an emergency solution to last year's coronavirus challenges is evolving into a "hybrid work" model. Here, Google-branded services should reap sustained benefits in several fields, starting with cloud security and cloud-based productivity services.
Alphabet's two stock classes are reaching fresh all-time highs today, posting 52-week gains in the neighborhood of 75%. Meanwhile, Alphabet spent $12.6 billion on stock buybacks during the quarter, which makes sense only if the company sees great value in its own shares. This fantastic report offered plenty of support for Alphabet's soaring stock prices.
