Alphabet 2Q25: By the Numbers, Alphabet Earnings Call Highlights, Overall Alphabet Takeaways
Hello everyone. Welcome to a new week. Apple will report earnings on Thursday. We will begin our earnings review tomorrow while also covering other news items and events. For today's update, we will continue our 2Q25 tech earnings reviews by going over Alphabet's earnings. Alphabet continues to be more of an Apple partner than competitor although the line between the two is blurred at times.
Let's jump in.
Alphabet 2Q25: By the Numbers
Overall, Alphabet’s 2Q25 revenue growth story was very much intact. Mid-teens growth with a little bit of FX headwind is not shabby at all. There may be a little bit of disappointment that margins aren’t improving alongside that double-digit revenue growth. Such concerns may be sticking around too as Alphabet’s depreciation expense continues to rise (tied to ballooning capex). We talked about that trend earlier in the month in the July 9th update available here.
Alphabet 2Q25 key numbers:
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Alphabet 3Q24 Earnings, Three Takeaways from Alphabet’s 3Q24 Numbers, Three Takeaways from Alphabet’s 3Q24 Earnings Call
Hello everyone.
We are going to try something new with Big Tech 3Q24 earnings reviews. After going over a very big picture overview of what each company reported, we will then discuss three takeaways from the numbers (i.e. the earnings release) and then three takeaways from the earnings conference call. Those call takeaways will probably end up having a more qualitative feel to them. A goal found with this approach is to emphasize the most important items from earnings versus just going through a running collection of observations with varying degrees of importance. We will see how this new format goes. Today’s update will be focused on Alphabet’s earnings.
One quick update to yesterday’s discussion. The following was mentioned:
“It's certainly possible that Apple’s top shareholders don’t mind the current dividend payout ratio and aren’t clamoring for Apple to pay a higher payout as it means they would be paying more in tax (there’s no tax associated directly with share buyback).”
Thank you to member Ravi for reaching out via email to remind me that there is a new 1% excise tax facing share buyback. While my commentary was strictly about taxes facing shareholders (there is no direct tax impact on shareholders related to buyback), Apple is liable for the 1% excise tax. At 1%, the tax is not significant enough to sway strategy or capital return preference.
Let’s jump into today’s update.
Alphabet 3Q24 Earnings
Here’s Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai kicking off Alphabet’s 3Q24 earnings release:
“The momentum across the company is extraordinary. Our commitment to innovation, as well as our long-term focus and investment in AI, are paying off with consumers and partners benefiting from our AI tools.
In Search, our new AI features are expanding what people can search for and how they search for it. In Cloud, our AI solutions are helping drive deeper product adoption with existing customers, attract new customers and win larger deals. And YouTube’s total ads and subscription revenues surpassed $50 billion over the past four quarters for the first time.
We generated strong revenue growth in the quarter, and our ongoing efforts to improve efficiency helped deliver improved margins. I’m looking forward to driving more advances for consumers, customers and creators globally.”
Based on Pichai’s standards, that’s bullish commentary. One senses a little bit of “watch me now” tone in his comments as well. In some tech circles,
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