What you need to know
- Google parent company Alphabet has shared its Q4 2019 earnings report.
- For the first time, it's been disclosed how much revenue YouTube and Google Cloud generate.
- Total revenue of $37.57 billion was lower than the predicted $38.38 billion.
On February 3 following the closing bell on Wall Street, Google parent company Alphabet released its official earnings report for Q4 2019. This report is substantial for a few different reasons, which we'll explain below.
First, and perhaps most noteworthy, this is the first report in which Google has disclosed exactly how much money it makes from YouTube and Google Cloud. In Q4 (October through December), Google generated $4.7 billion in revenue from YouTube and $2.6 billion from Cloud. For comparison's sake, Amazon Web Services was reported at $9.9 billion in revenue for Q4 while Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud division pulled in $11.9 billion.
YouTube pulled in $15.1 billion during 2019.
Taking a closer look at the YouTube numbers, its total revenue for 2019 comes in at $15.1 billion and accounts for around 10% of Google's entire company-wide revenue. When you compare that to the fact that Google purchased YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion, it's impressive how much the platform has grown financially.
Looking at Search, one of the biggest cash cows for Google, it saw $27.2 billion in revenue for Q4 and total revenue of $98.1 billion for all of 2019. In regards to Pixel sales, things aren't nearly as cheery. Pixel sales don't get their own category, but are bundled into "Google other" which generated $5.3 billion in revenue for Q4. That's an increase of 10% year-over-year, with Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat saying the increase was "primarily driven by growth in YouTube and Play, offset by declines in hardware." While we don't have exact numbers, seeing there was a decline with Google's already small footprint in the mobile space is not encouraging.
Overall, Google's Q4 revenue of $37.57 billion was lower than the predicted $38.38 billion. The company did outperform its $31.84 billion revenue from Q4 2018, but the GOOG stock still fell following the report.
The other significance of this report is that it's the first one to be shared with Sundar Pichai serving as CEO for both Google and Alphabet. On December 3 last year, Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced they were stepping away from their leadership roles at Alphabet.
