Sunday, December 22, 2024

Will Google Cloud’s Robust Performance Aid Alphabet’s Q3 Earnings?

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Alphabet’s GOOGL third-quarter 2024 results, scheduled to be released on Oct. 29, are likely to have benefited from its expanded cloud service offerings.

Alphabet’s cloud services arm — Google Cloud — has become the key catalyst driving its top-line growth.

Alphabet’s cloud offerings include Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace, which have been gaining momentum in the booming cloud computing market. Google’s growing investments in infrastructure, security, data management, analytics and generative AI (Gen AI) have been major growth drivers.

The Google Cloud segment, which derives revenues from fees collected for Google Cloud Platform services and Google Workspace collaboration tools, has been a major top-line growth driver for Alphabet.

In the second quarter of 2024, Google Cloud revenues soared 28.8% year over year to $10.35 billion, accounting for 12.2% of the quarter’s total revenues.

Alphabet Inc. Revenue (TTM)

Alphabet Inc. Revenue (TTM)

Alphabet Inc. Revenue (TTM)

Alphabet Inc. revenue-ttm | Alphabet Inc. Quote

 

For the third quarter of 2024, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for Google Cloud revenues is pegged at $10.91 billion, suggesting growth of 29.8% from the year-ago quarter’s reported figure.

Find the latest EPS estimates and surprises on Zacks Earnings Calendar.

Click here to know how Alphabet’s overall third-quarter 2024 results are likely to be.

Key Factors to Consider for GOOGL’s Q3 Earnings

GOOGL’s efforts in integrating data lakes, data warehouses, data governance and advanced machine learning into a single platform are expected to have bolstered its prospects in the cloud market in the to-be-reported quarter.
 
Its strong cloud services portfolio, and expanding network of data centers, availability zones and regions are likely to have contributed well to Google Cloud revenues.

Robust real-time data, analytics and AI, along with its open and scalable cloud infrastructure, are expected to have helped win customers in the to-be-reported quarter.

Its deepening focus on Gen AI is anticipated to have been a major positive. Solid momentum in Gemini is expected to have benefited Google Cloud’s third-quarter performance.

Alphabet’s launch of an enterprise-focused AI code completion and assistance tool, Gemini Code Assist, is likely to have driven its momentum across various enterprises.

The growing momentum with the Vertex AI platform is likely to have contributed well.

Google’s introduction of various open-source tools to support Gen AI projects and infrastructure has been a plus. The new tools include MaxDiffusion — a collection of reference implementations of various diffusion models, JetStream — a new engine to run generative AI models, MaxText — a collection of text-generating AI models targeting tensor processing units, and NVIDIA’s NVDA GPUs in the cloud.

The solid adoption of Gen AI-powered Workspace tools is likely to have driven strong top-line growth. The strong capabilities of Google Cloud to identify cyber threats and automate security workflows and responses on the back of generative AI are likely to get reflected in the upcoming results.

Rich Partner Base to Boost Alphabet’s Q3 Results

Alphabet’s rich partner base, which includes Workday WDAY and Cintas CTAS, has been a key catalyst. 

In the third quarter, Workday extended its partnership with Google Cloud. Workday is leveraging the latter’s Gemini models and Vertex AI to aid in quick AI-powered code generation, troubleshooting and information retrieval. 

Cintas partnered with Google Cloud to develop a Gen AI-powered knowledge center to accelerate its digital transformation. Cintas is using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI in order to build its generative AI-backed search engines to empower employees.

Currently, Alphabet has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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