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Alphabet records $110 billion in revenue for 2017, Google's annual hardware sales doubled
- Google’s parent company Alphabet revealed it had total revenues of $110.8 billion for the 2017 fiscal year, up from $90 billion in 2016.
- Alphabet recorded a $3 billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2017, due to a one-time charge to reflect changes in the U.S. tax laws.
- Google’s CEO claims the company’s hardware shipments doubled in 2017 compared to 2016.
Google’s parent company Alphabet has revealed its financial report for both the fourth quarter of 2017 and the entire fiscal year. For the quarter of 2017 that ended on December 31, 2017, it actually recorded a loss of $3 billion, but that was due to a one-time foreign assets charge due to the recently passed U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. If that is excluded, Alphabet would have had net income of $6.8 billion, up from $5.3 billion compared to a year ago. Revenues for the quarter came in at $32.3 billion, up 24 percent compared to the $26 billion from the same period a year ago.
For the entire 2017 fiscal year, Alphabet recorded revenues of $110.8 billion, up from $90 billion in 2016. Net income was $12.6 billion for the 2017 fiscal year, compared to $19.4 billion in revenues in 2016, once again reflecting the one time charge due to the tax law change.
The majority of the revenues once again comes from Alphabet’s Google division. It brought it $31.9 billion for the fourth quarter of 2017 and an operating income of $8.7 billion. All of Alphabet’s “Other Bets” brought in $409 million in revenue during the quarter, up compared to $262 million from a year ago. They include projects such as Google Fiber, its Waymo self-driving car team, Nest, and others. However, the “Other Bets” businesses still lost $916 million during the fourth quarter of 2017, which is only slightly better than the $1 billion that it lost a year ago.
Alphabet also broke down Google’s own revenues for the quarter, revealing that it generated a total of $27.227 billion in revenues in ads from its websites and from its Network Members websites. Revenues from Google’s other businesses, which include its various hardware products like its Pixel phones, Google Home speakers and others, along with money from the Google Play Store, totaled $4.687 billion for the quarter. That’s a pretty big increase compared to the $3.403 billion from that segment a year ago.
Once again, Google didn’t offer up any details on specific hardware sales numbers, but during a conference call with financial analysts, CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company’s hardware shipments had doubled in 2017 compared to 2016. He also claimed that the company had sold “tens of millions” of Google Home speakers, Chromecast dongles, and Chromebooks. Alphabet’s employee head count also went up during the fourth quarter. The company now has a total of 80,110 employees, up from 78,100 employees in the third quarter of 2017, and also up from 72,053 workers from a year ago.