Google earnings report: Tech giant misses Wall Street forecasts again, while investors cheer Amazon's numbers

The poor results for Google end a year to forget for the company

Google chief executive Larry Page (AP)

Google, the world’s largest search engine company and a technology bellwether, added to the somewhat gloomy week on Wall Street by falling short on revenue and profit expectations for the fifth quarter in succession.

The company had been expected to report net income of $7.12 per share, but ended up 20 cents short of that goal with $6.88 per share on revenue of $18bn, an increase of 15 per cent on the same period in 2013 but still over $100m short on the amount analysts had expected.

Google is unusual in that it does not give trading updates between earning reports, leaving analysts to guess more than most would like to. Even so, missing targets for the fifth quarter in succession is worrying. Investors in the company had a poor year, despite its constant newsflow on product innovation, as the stock has fallen over 16 per cent in the last twelve months while the Nasdaq Composite has risen almost 8 per cent.

Meanwhile, online retailing giant followed the path set by Apple and Facebook by producing a dazzling set of Fourth Quarter numbers that crushed forecasts. Amazon reported a profit of $214m, its largest ever profit in a single quarter. That translated into earnings per share of $0.45, more than double the amount analysts had been looking for.

Amazon’s results came despite a slight drop in year-on-year sales, from $29.7bn to $29.3bn. The company has traditionally focused on investment in distribution, sales growth and innovation at the expense of short-term profit, so investors are likely to react very positively to the growth in the bottom line.

Both companies reported numbers after the market closed, but that did not stop trading. Not surprisingly, Google was unloved following it numbers, 2.3 per cent lower, while Amazon was bid 2.6 per cent higher.