SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google’s digital-ad business is so profitable that its new parent company, Alphabet, can lose more than $1 billion on risky ventures — and shrug.
On Monday, Alphabet Inc. released its first quarterly earnings report since Google reorganized itself under the new company. Net income exceeded analyst estimates for the quarter, sending Alphabet shares up nearly 7 percent in after-hours trading.
The earnings release spelled out the cost of running mostly experimental businesses that aim to do everything from eliminating the human driver to curing cancer. Those operations posted an operating loss of $1.2 billion on revenue of $151 million in the fourth quarter.
Google, meanwhile, produced an operating profit of $6.8 billion on revenue of $21.2 billion.