Google parent Alphabet is slated to report its first-quarter 2022 results after the market close on Tuesday, April 26.
Alphabet is projected to report earnings of $25.77 per share, which would represent a year-over-year decline of 1.9%. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $56.26 billion, up 1.7% from the prior-year quarter.
Latest Results
Alphabet reported that for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2021, it earned $30.69 a share, on revenue of $75.33 billion, compared to a profit of $22.30 a share, on sales of $56.9 billion in the year-ago period. Alphabet smashed the estimates of Wall Street analysts, who had forecast the company to earn $27.24 a share, on $71.83 billion in revenue.
Alphabet said the majority of its revenue came from Google advertising, which included sales from search, YouTube ads, and Google network ads. Such advertising revenue totaled $61.2 billion, up from $46.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Alphabet 2022 outlook
In terms of outlook by segment, Google Services saw year-on-year revenue growth in Q4 and for the full year of 2021, which continued to be driven by broad-based advertiser strength and strong consumer online activity. The year-on-year growth rate also reflected a benefit from lapping COVID-related weakness in 2020, which obviously will not be a factor in 2022.
With respect to Play, the underlying consumer spend and engagement trends remained healthy in the fourth quarter. That is said, in 2022, Google Play’s contribution to revenue growth will reflect the fee changes implemented from the third quarter of 2021.
Turning to Google Cloud, 2021 represented another year of substantial growth. While Cloud operating loss and operating margin improved in 2021. Alphabet said they plan to continue to invest aggressively in Cloud given the sizable market opportunity. Google remains focused on the longer-term path to profitability and, over time, operating loss and operating margin should benefit from increased scale.
Here's what to watch in Alphabet's upcoming report:
Alphabet's top-line growth in 1Q may not decelerate as sharply as that of other digital-ad players, such as Meta, Snap or Pinterest, given its more diversified business and strength in search ads, which could benefit more from reopenings than social-media ads.
Momentum in Google Cloud deals may continue to fuel order-backlog growth and drive a near-40% expansion in cloud-segment revenue this year. YouTube Ads revenue growth may decelerate as it laps a difficult 1H21 comparison, though exposure to the fast-growing connected-TV segment may partly offset the base effect.
Operating-margin improvement may hinge on the cloud segment, which had a minus 16% margin in 2021, well below that of Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. Ad pricing remains a tailwind for Alphabet's ad business, with margin expanding about 800 bps to 48% in 2021.
The earnings report, which is expected to be released on April 26, 2022, might help the stock move higher if these key numbers are better than expectations. On the other hand, if they miss, the stock may move lower.
EPS Growth Could Trail Revenue Growth in 2022
After last year's impressive growth, it would be unreasonable to expect GOOGL stock to maintain its FY21 growth cadence. As a result, we believe that investors are focusing on the company's GAAP EPS growth for FY22. Notably, Google is projected to achieve only a 3.2% increase in its EPS. However, revenue is expected to increase by 17.8%, while its EBIT margin is estimated to remain stable. Thus, Google would be using FY22 as an opportunity to ramp investments, as CFO Ruth Porat stressed in a recent conference:
“So across the board, we're seeing opportunities, and we want to make sure we're setting ourselves up to continue to really extend that runway by investing where we see it makes sense. So you're going to see it really in OpEx and in CapEx.”
YouTube Ads Growth May Have Moderated to Mid-20% Range
Despite Google's fundamentally strong business model, it has faced significant valuation headwinds from its digital ad peer and the industry. The market's attention has turned to the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the online ad market. Given Google's #1 position among its peers, investors' concerns are justified. Furthermore, MKM Partners also highlighted the impact, as it added:
"We believe online ad companies are facing four incremental macro headwinds: direct impact of the Russia/Ukraine war; indirect impact and potential contagion from the war into Europe; soft brand ad spend, particularly around geopolitical content; and likely impact from soft consumer spend in Europe, driven by inflation and higher oil prices."
Moreover, the EMEA region has consistently been a significant revenue driver for Google. The company reported that EMEA accounted for 30.6% of its FQ4'21 revenue. Therefore, the market remains skittish over the region's impact, particularly in Europe.
Analyst Opinions:
According to Zacks consensus estimate, Alphabet is expected to post quarterly earnings of $25.49 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -3%. Revenues are expected to be $55.94 billion, up 22.7% from the year-ago quarter.
Bank of America increased their target price on Alphabet from $3,470 to $3,510 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report. Piper Sandler increased their target price on Alphabet from $3,150 to $3,475 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on February 2nd.
Tigress Financial increased their target price on Alphabet from $3,540 to $3,670 and gave the stock a “strong-buy” rating in a report on March 18th.
Finally, KeyCorp increased their target price on Alphabet from $3,090 to $3,400 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on February 2nd. Five equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, thirty-three have given a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $3,382.18.
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