Alphabet Shares Rise After Big Upward Revision To CapEx Outlook; Search Revenues Soar

Investors were anxious hoping for reassurance that Alphabet’s ability to compete and defend its search empire during the artificial intelligence boom (despite being bought for 10 days straight going into tonight’s earnings).

In a word, the answer was ‘yes’ – they can be reassured as the giant tech company beat on top- and bottom-lines…

• *ALPHABET 2Q REV. $96.43B, EST. $93.97B

• *ALPHABET 2Q EPS $2.31, EST. $2.18

That is a 14% YoY increase in revenues with all segments better than expected, including ‘Search’ and Cloud:

• Google Services revenue $82.54 billion, +12% y/y, estimate $80.44 billion

• Google advertising revenue $71.34 billion, +10% y/y, estimate $69.71 billion

• Google Search & Other Revenue $54.19 billion, +12% y/y, estimate $52.86 billion

• YouTube ads revenue $9.80 billion, +13% y/y, estimate $9.56 billion

• Google Network Revenue $7.35 billion, -1.2% y/y, estimate $7.25 billion

• Google Subscriptions, Platforms and Devices Revenue $11.20 billion, +20% y/y, estimate $10.79 billion

• Google Cloud revenue $13.62 billion, +32% y/y, estimate $13.14 billion

• Other Bets revenue $373 million, +2.2% y/y, estimate $429.1 million

Perhaps most reassuring for the AI bubble to keep blowing, Alphabet dramatically increased its CapEx outlook:

• *ALPHABET 2Q CAPEX $22.45B, EST. $18.24B

• *ALPHABET SEES FY CAPEX ABOUT $85B, SAW ABOUT $75B, EST. $73.31B

But, perhaps on the CapEx spend increase, GOOGL shares in initially traded lower ahead of the earnings call, but has rebounded higher…

Interestingly, NVDA and AVGO are both higher after hours on the CapEx spend increase.

Sundar Pichai, CEO, said: “We had a standout quarter, with robust growth across the company. We are leading at the frontier of AI and shipping at an incredible pace. AI is positively impacting every part of the business, driving strong momentum. Search delivered double-digit revenue growth, and our new features, like AI Overviews and AI Mode, are performing well. We continue to see strong performance in YouTube as well as subscriptions offerings. And Cloud had strong growth in revenues, backlog and profitability. Its annual revenue run-rate is now more than $50 billion. With this strong and growing demand for our Cloud products and services, we are increasing our investment in capital expenditures in 2025 to approximately $85 billion and are excited by the opportunity ahead.”

Finally, Operating margin was a slight disappointment at 32% (flat from a year ago but below the estimate of 33%).