Alphabet records 26 percent rise in revenues for Q1 2018

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, revealed yet another excellent financial report, this time for the first quarter of 2018. For that time period, it recorded revenues of $31.146 billion, up 26 percent from the $24.750 billion in revenue it recorded from the same quarter in 2017. Alphabet also had a net income amount of $9.401 billion for the first quarter of 2018, up from $5.426 billion from a year ago.

The majority of the revenues comes from Alphabet’s Google division. It brought it $30.996 billion for the first quarter of 2018 and an operating income of $8.368 billion. All of Alphabet’s other businesses, which include Google Fiber, its Waymo self-driving car team, and others, brought in just $150 million in revenue during the quarter. They are listed under the “Other Bets” section of Alphabet’s financial results and those revenues are up from $132 million that was recorded at the same time a year ago. Operating income came in for “Other Bets” at a loss of $571 million for the quarter, which is better than the $703 million that was lost from that same section a year ago.

Alphabet made some changes this quarter in recording its financial numbers. One of them involved moving its Nest brand of smart home devices from its own stand alone business to Google’s hardware division. As a result, sales of Nest devices are no longer included in the revenue numbers for the “Other Bets” section of Alphabet’s financial report. Another change now shows Network Members properties growth in ad impressions, instead of ad banner clicks. Alphabet is also now recording any unrealized gains and losses from its various outside investments in its numbers.

Alphabet broke down the financial numbers from the biggest company under its umbrella, Google. For the first quarter of 2018, Google generated a total of $26.642 billion in revenues in ads from its websites and from its Network Members websites, which is much higher than the $21.411 billion that division generated a year ago. Revenues from Google’s other businesses, which include its various hardware products like its Pixel phones, Google Home, Nest and others, along with money from the Google Play Store, totaled $4.354 billion for the quarter, which is up compared to the $3.207 billion from that segment a year ago.

Alphabet’s overall employee head count also went up during the first quarter of 2018. The company now has a total of 85,050 employees, up from 73,992 from a year ago.