After earnings miss, Alphabet stock falls despite strong revenue growth

Alphabet, Google’s holding company, reported strong year-over-year revenue growth in the first quarter, but missed analyst expectations.

The company reported $36.34 billion in revenue, most of it from Google’s many-pronged advertising business. Analysts had expected $37.32 billion.

The company’s stock fell about 3% on the news in after-hours trading.

Google’s search business shelled out $6.86 billion in traffic acquisition costs, slightly less than the $7.26 billion analysts expected it to pay.

Alphabets “other bets” category, which includes the self-driving car company Waymo and the digital health company Verily, generated a small $170 million of profit. It’s “other revenues” operations, which includes Google’s hardware business (phones, speakers, laptops, etc.) and its cloud services business, delivered $5.45 billion in revenue, a 25% uptick from last year.

Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft have all hit trillion-dollar valuations, and many expect Google to hit that mark as well. Eventually, not today.