Google, the world's largest digital advertising platform by market share, announced a decrease in total advertising revenue. The company explained this with "very high indicators" in the last quarter, adding that the decline in advertising sales on YouTube was due to the fact that companies providing financial services such as insurance, mortgages and cryptocurrencies reduced their advertising costs. This led to the fact that advertising sales on YouTube decreased to $7.07 billion compared to $7.2 billion received in the same period last year.
The company said that total revenue for the third quarter was $69.09 billion dollars compared to last year's $65.12 billion dollars, while analysts expected the figure to be $70.58 billion.
Alphabet's net income fell to $13.91 billion, or $1.06 per share, from $18.94 billion, or $1.40 per share, a year earlier, and missed the forecast of earnings of $1.25 per share.
The weak report led to a drop in Alphabet shares by more than 6.5%.
Moreover, Alphabet's weak results raise concerns among other companies in the sector, especially the advertising-dependent Meta. Shares of Facebook's parent company, which reports results on Wednesday, are losing about 3.5% in pre-market trading today.
As for another giant of the technology sector, Microsoft has also felt the effects of the economic downturn. The Windows manufacturer has faced a drop in demand for its computer software as a surge in inflation forces businesses and consumers to cut costs. Nevertheless, the demand for a diverse portfolio of products, including Outlook and Teams, has not changed.
The company's net income fell to $17.56 billion, or $2.35 per share, for the quarter ended September 30, from $20.51 billion, or $2.71 per share, received a year earlier.
It should be noted that 129 companies from the S&P 500 have already submitted reports. According to Refinitiv, 74% of them exceeded consensus forecasts. Analysts expect that the cumulative S&P 500 profit growth will now be 3.3% year-on-year, compared with 4.5% recorded at the beginning of the month.
