Google parent company Alphabet beat analyst expectations for its Q4 earnings report as its stock was up nearly 9 percent in after-hours trading.
Alphabet posted earnings of $8.67 per share on revenue of $21.3 billion, which is up 18 percent year-over-year. Wall Street expected earnings of $8.09 per share on revenue of $20.8 billion.
“Our very strong revenue growth in Q4 reflects the vibrancy of our business, driven by mobile search as well as YouTube and programmatic advertising, all areas in which we’ve been investing for many years,” Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said in a statement. “We’re excited about the opportunities we have across Google and Other Bets to use technology to improve the lives of billions of people.”
With the impressive quarterly earnings report, Alphabet passed Apple on Monday to become the world’s most valuable company with a market capitalization of around $560 billion. Apple has a market cap of about $540 billion.
CNBC noted that the last time Alphabet (then Google) had a higher valuation than Apple was in 2010.
This was also the first earnings report that broke out Alphabet’s segmented financial reporting since it announced the new holding company. While the Google business (search, ads, maps, apps, cloud, Play, YouTube, Android, virtual reality, etc.) posted $23.4 billion in operating income for 2015, Alphabet’s category called “Other Bets” — which includes more risky projects like Google X, Calico, Life Sciences, and self-driving car development — posted a $3.6 billion operating loss on revenue of $448 million, up from $1.9 billion from 2014.
Alphabet added more than 8,000 employees in the past year and now employs 61,814 workers.
