Alphabet posts 27 percent quarterly profit increase

By Barry Eitel

SAN FRANCISCO (AA) – Alphabet announced its the third quarter earnings Thursday and revealed Google is still extremely profitable almost two decades after it’s founding.

Google’s parent company earned $22.45 billion in revenue during the quarter that ended Sept. 30 – a 20 percent increase compared to the same period of 2015.

“We had a great third quarter, with 20 percent revenue growth year on year, and 23 percent on a constant currency basis,” Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. “Mobile search and video are powering our core advertising business and we’re excited about the progress of newer businesses in Google and Other Bets.”

Alphabet’s profits grew at an even higher rate – the Silicon Valley giant made $5 billion in income, a 27 percent increase from the same period last year.

The report was only slightly better than analyst expectations, and shares of Alphabet closed Thursday slightly below the previous day. During a call with investors following the close of markets, shares ricocheted in after-hour trading, but landed near Tuesday’s close of $817.35 per share.

Google’s booming ad business brought in the vast amount of revenue for the company. Alphabet’s collection of experiments and moonshots, categorized as “Other Bets” in the earnings report, lost a significant amount of money. Bringing in $197 million revenue, the Other Best category lost $865 million in total.

The Other Bets include several projects that earn continued praise for Alphabet, though, like life science firm Verily, Internet network project Google Fiber, smart-home product manufacturer Nest and investment group Google Ventures. It also includes the secretive Google X labs, which is in charge of Alphabet’s self-driving car program.