GOOGLE PREVIEW: Here's What Everyone Wants To See In Today's Earnings
We'll be covering it live, so tune in!
It's been a busy quarter for Google. It announced that it's working on drones, investing in an Amazon competitor, Google Express, and it just released a new smartphone, TV gadget, and tablet. It has also continued to face regulatory heat in Europe.
In its last earnings, Google announced the departure of its long-time sales boss Nikesh Arora. Early employee Omid Kordestani stepped into the role temporarily, but maybe we'll hear about a more permanent candidate tomorrow.
In terms of numbers, here's what analysts are expecting:
- Revenue: $13.22 billion
- EPS: $6.33
Here's the other stuff everyone will be looking at...
CPC and Paid Click Growth
Cost per click refers to what advertisers pay for each click on a search ad and growth in paid clicks measures how many users clicked on ads to generate revenue. Last quarter, paid clicks increased about 25% year-over-year while CPC was down 6% year-over-year. That was a modest increase of the first quarter of the year, when CPC was down 9% year-over-year.
Analysts want to see the CPC decline stabilize. If CPC keeps declining, paid click growth would have to be more dramatic to make up for it, and analysts fear that there could be limits to the speed of its growth. Although Google has said that it eventually expects mobile ads to be more lucrative than desktop ads, they're not there yet.
Analysts also expect to hear about the strength of Google's product listing ads - PLAs - which are visual ads that give quick product information.
Analysts at Jefferies want to see a 5% decline in CPC year-over-year and a 22% increase in paid clicks year-over-year to maintain Google's healthy ad business. Here's a look at the change in Google's CPC and paid click growth over the last few years, from Jefferies:
YouTube
Google doesn't break out specific ad revenues for YouTube, but analysts expect to hear about strong growth on the call. This year, Google started a new, premium sales initiative called "Google Preferred," which pairs advertisers with top YouTube content. Google announced that Preferred sold out this week.
Google Play
Analysts also want to see growth driven by the Google Play store. Google also doesn't break out specific Google Play revenue, but it falls in the "other revenues" category. An analyst at BGC Partners says that the "other revenue" category should be above 10% of the total (last quarter it was exactly 10%). He was also look for core growth ("sites revenue") to maintain 20% growth year-over-year.
And that's about it... As we said, we'll be all over it, so tune in!