Alphabet's Q4 earnings beat Wall Street expectations as revenue jumps 23%

• Alphabet has announced its Q4 earnings, revealing a beat on Wall Street expectations.
• The company brought in $46.43 billion in revenue for the quarter, minus traffic acquisition costs.
• This is the first time Google has broken out Cloud into its own reporting segment.

Alphabet announced its fourth-quarter earnings, beating Wall Street's profit and revenue expectations while giving its first look at just how well its cloud business is doing.

The company brought in $46.43 billion in revenue for the quarter, minus traffic acquisition costs, up from $37.57 billion a year ago. Overall, Alphabet's revenue grew 23% year-on-year.

This was also the first time Google has broken out Cloud into its own reporting segment, revealing that the business made $3.83 billion in revenue and had an operating loss of $1.24 billion in Q4.

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For the year, Cloud raked in $13.06 billion in revenue and reported an operating loss of $5.6 billion.

The numbers also revealed a bounceback for Google's advertising business, which saw a a pandemic slump in Q2. Analysts had predicted that an increase in ad buys and tailwinds to YouTube would buoy Alphabet this quarter, and they weren't wrong. YouTube brought in $6.89 billion of revenue, representing a 46% leap year-on-year.

Meanwhile, Alphabet's "other bets," which include Verily, Waymo and other Alphabet businesses, reported a profit of $196 million against an operating loss of $1.14 billion.

Alphabet shares rose 7% in hours after trading.

Here's what Google reported, compared to what analysts expected.

• Revenue: $46.43 billion, minus traffic acquisition costs (Expected $44.14 billion)
• Earnings per share (GAAP): $22.30 per share, adjusted (Expected $15.57)
• Google Cloud revenue: $3.83 billion (Expected $3.80 billion)
• YouTube ads revenue: $6.9 billion (Expected $6.22 billion)

"Our strong fourth quarter performance, with revenues of $56.9 billion, was driven by Search and YouTube, as consumer and business activity recovered from earlier in the year," said Google CFO Ruth Porat in a statement.

"Google Cloud revenues were $13.1 billion for 2020, with significant ongoing momentum, and we remain focused on delivering value across the growth opportunities we see."

This story is developing…