Google Delivers Big For Investors

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) closed Tuesday’s regular session off by $1.64, or about 0.2 percent, ahead of its fourth-quarter earnings. Analysts were looking for earnings of $10.52 per share on $12.36 billion in revenue. What they got was better, and shares shot up as much as 4.7 percent in after-hours trading.

Google reported a 36.26 percent year-over-year increase in revenue to $14.42 billion and a 6.88 percent year-over-year increase in net income to $2.89 billion, or $10.65 per share. The beat on both fronts was foreshadowed by a blog post from Google vice president, treasurer, and chief accountant Brent Callinicos, who warned that analyst expectations may be artificially high. Callinicos was concerned that analysts would not have taken into consideration the fact that Google was selling Motorola Home, the division of Motorola that makes TV set-top boxes.

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Heading into the release, Google had an earnings beat rate of 79 percent and an average 1.3 percent gain on earnings day.