In its first quarterly report to Wall Street since its initial public offering, online search power Google announced that both revenue and profit increased by more than 100% in Q3 2004 over the same quarter last year.
Net income for the third quarter at Google reached $52 million, up from $20.4 million a year ago. Revenue increased to $805.9 million from $393.9 a year ago.
The Mountain View, CA-based company said that Google-owned sites generated $411.7 million, or about 51% of total quarterly revenue, representing an increase of 99% over revenue from the same segment in third-quarter 2003.
Meanwhile revenue received from Google partner sites through the AdSense affiliation program amounted to $384.3 million during the quarter, or about 48% of total company revenue for the period. That constitutes an increase of 120% over the amount Google accrued through the AdSense program during Q3 2003.
“Google is an unconventional company in many ways, and we made it clear that we expect to deliver the best results, the strongest operational performance and the most consistent execution focused strictly on the long term,” CEO Eric Schmidt told analysts in a conference call explaining the quarterly results. “But let me be first to say we are very pleased with the short run.”
Even though Google’s first quarterly release put the company’s earnings per share at 45 cents—below the 54-cent EPS figure arrived at by Thomson First Call—the company’s share price rose $3.39 in extended NASDAQ trading after the financial announcement. The reason: Since Google had refused to provide financial guidance to analysts, they wound up producing widely divergent EPS estimates. CEO Schmidt restated that Google would not be any more forthcoming about releasing guidance on which to base financial expectations before quarterly results were in.
