Google's 1Q Profit Soars to Nearly Six-Fold Improvement

Associated Press
Thursday, April 21, 2005; 4:37 PM

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.(AP) -- Google Inc.'s first-quarter profit increased by nearly six-foldas the online search engine leader's rapid growth continued to soarbeyond analysts' bullish expectations.

The Mountain View-based company said Thursday thatit earned $369.2 million, or $1.29 per share, for the three monthsended in March. That compared with net income of $64 million, or 24cents per share, at the same time last year.

Revenuetotaled $1.26 billion, nearly doubling from $651.6 million at the sametime last year. After subtracting commissions that Google paid to otherWeb sites in its advertising network, the company's revenue was $794.5million.

If not for a charge to account for stock optionsthat Google awarded its workers before it went public last August, thecompany's earnings would have ranged between $1.39 to $1.46 per share.

By any measure, the results easily topped the 92 cents per share forecast by analysts in a Thomson Financial survey.

Google's earnings have beat analyst estimates in allthree quarters since the company completed its much-anticipated initialpublic offering of stock.

Bolstered by the company's stellar financialperformance, Google's stock has more than doubled from the IPO price of$85 per share.

The company announced its latest quarterly resultsafter the stock market closed Thursday. Google's shares gained $6.12,or 3.1 percent, to close at $204.22 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, thensurged another $10.83, or 5.3 percent, in extended trading.

As usual, Google made virtually all of its moneyfrom the text-based ads that are related to online search requests. Thecompany gets paid each time one of the links are clicked upon onGoogle's home page or hundreds of other sites that display the ads.

"We continue to execute well and wehave been able to take full advantage of the growth in onlineadvertising" said Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive officer.