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Sunday, October 21, 2012

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares remain under pressure for the second day


Google Inc(NASDAQ:GOOG) shares fell for the second straight day on Friday, as disappointment still lingered over its third quarter results.

On Thursday after a draft copy of its quarterly results were erroneously filed ahead of schedule, shares in the Internet search giant fell more than 10 percent, and trading had to be halted for some time.

The stock was volatile a bit and after Chief Executive Larry Page addressed an analyst’s conference call, it was generally felt that the market had overreacted to the episode.

But on Friday the shares slid once again going down to a low of 672 before finally closing down nearly 2 percent at 681.79.

Google's non-GAAP earnings came in at $9.03 a share compared to $9.72 a year earlier and much below street estimates of $10.65 a share.

Non-GAAP operating margin plunged to 27 percent, from 37 percent in the year ago quarter.

Revenues were $11.33 billion, below analyst estimates of $11.9 billion.

While generally Google is believed to have a strong grip over its advertising base, still there are concerns about the health of the advertising market online as well as ability of companies to follow consumers to mobile devices and away from desktops.

Colin Gillis of BGC Partners wrote that Google's cost-per-click dropped for the fourth quarter in a row and he attributed it to the traffic shift to mobile, where click conversion is less effective compared to desktop search. He maintained his Hold rating on the stock.

Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein cut his rating on the stock to Perform from Outperform, with a new target of $765, down from $800.

Almost all the analysts seem to blame Motorola Mobility for the mess that Google is in.

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