TechCrash 2.0 update: Google
Now it’s Google — the absolute favorite of Wall Street — that’s getting hammered:
More than $11 billion (£5.5 billion) was wiped off the market value of Google late last night as the internet darling missed sales and profit targets after years of defying gravity.
The performance over the final three months of the year raised fears that the company, one of the most highly rated in the world, could be suffering from the economic slowdown.
Google reported a 17 per cent rise in profits for the fourth quarter to $1.2 billion or $3.29 a share alongside a 51 per cent increase in sales.
Analysts were expecting profits of $4.45 per share.
The performance, while far stronger than fierce rival Yahoo!, spooked investors after Google’s continuous outperformance since coming to Wall Street three years ago.
Shares in the company fell by nearly 7 per cent at one point in after hours trading, or $36.90 to $527.40.
The shares are now nearly 30 per cent below the $747.24 all-time high in early November.
It was just back in November that folks were expecting Google to rise to $900/share. It’s now at a little over half of that. ..bruce w..
Category: Economics, Information Technology, Main, Recession Watch
About the Author (Author Profile)
Webster is Principal and Founder at Bruce F. Webster & Associates, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University. He works with organizations to help them with troubled or failed information technology (IT) projects. He has also worked in several dozen legal cases as a consultant and as a testifying expert, both in the United States and Japan. He can be reached at bwebster@bfwa.com, or you can follow him on Twitter as @bfwebster.Subscribe
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And to think I had the opportunity to snag ten shares of that bad boy early and missed out because of a car that wouldn’t start.