Google misses revenue expectations, Alphabet stock sinks in early after-hours trading

Google parent company Alphabet Inc. came up short of Wall Street expectations despite strong revenue growth in its third-quarter results, which sent its stock falling in after-hours trading Wednesday.

The Mountain View, California-based company said its net income was $26.17 billion in the July-September period. That’s down from $34.98 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue grew 25% from the same period last year to $127.58 billion, but that was shy of analysts' expectations. Analysts, on average, were expecting revenue of $127.97 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.

The company earned $2.12 per share. Results were impacted by an $8.7 billion loss on equity investments in the quarter. It was not immediately clear if the reported earnings per share are comparable to the analyst estimates, which were around $3.01 per share.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said in a statement that the quarter was strong and that the company is “now on a half-trillion dollar revenue run rate. Our deep full stack approach is driving momentum across the business,” he said, pointing to the 25% revenue growth year-over-year.

Pichai also said the Gemini app, its artificial intelligence assistant, has reached one billion users, which makes it the fastest-growing product in Google’s history.

Alphabet’s shares fell about 9% to $295.20 within an hour after the market closed.