Google Wows Wall Street

Shares of Google soared to a new all-time high late Thursday after the company’s third-quarter earnings and sales crushed Wall Street estimates.

Google’s pro-forma earnings of $1.51 a share trounced $1.36 estimates, and net revenues (revenues after traffic acquisition costs) doubled from the year-ago quarter to $1.05 billion, well ahead of $943 million estimates. Google ended the quarter with $7.6 billion in cash, a healthy war chest for potential acquisitions.

The results were even more surprising because the company had taken steps to lower expectations during its second-quarter conference call.

“Although this is typically a slower season for Internet properties, we had another exceptional quarter,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement. “Our focus on end users and on quality of information and advertising worldwide continues to work extremely well. We are very pleased with how well this is working at scale.”

Full article: internetnews.com