By Paresh Dave
Feb 2 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc, Google's parent company, reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday as its core advertising business performed better than expected and promising "Other Bets" side projects such as self-driving car unit Waymo showed signs of progress.
The search giant's Class C shares, which jumped 4% in after-hours trading immediately following the release of the results, were up about 1% at $2,734.56 in extended trading.
Here are the key numbers:
* Revenue (excluding traffic acquisition costs) rose to $52.46 billion, above estimates of $52.28 billion
* Profit of $22.30 a share beat estimates of $21.35 a share
* Fourth-quarter net income of $20.64 billion compared with $18.93 billion a year earlier.
Google Cloud annualized revenue run rate rose to $21.2 billion from $13.1 billion a year earlier
"Search was exceptionally strong, with broad based strength in travel, retail, and financial services," said Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat on the earnings call.
Chief Executive Sundar Pichai credited increased online shopping, travel, and banking for stronger search ads revenue, while YouTube also had improved ad results despite ongoing moderation efforts across its platform.
Advertisers increased spending amid signs of the economy bouncing back from pandemic lows, although some analysts expected spending growth to slow amid geopolitical uncertainties.
YouTube is expected to continue to gain steam this year, said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives.
"If you look ahead to 2023, they're going to continue to grow YouTube ad revenues at 20% year-over-year with a trajectory to hit almost 30 billion on an annualized basis," Ives said.
"Other Bets," which consist mostly of long-term projects such as self-driving car unit Waymo, posted a loss of $1.69 billion, compared with a loss of $1.44 billion a year earlier.
Pichai highlighted deals with automakers on self-driving cars, while Porat said the unit could be profitable "in a few years."
Google Cloud, the company's cloud computing business, brought in $5.12 billion in quarterly revenue, up 32% from last year. The unit lags leaders Amazon.com Inc's Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp's Azure, but Google has made gains.
On a call with analysts, Porat said the company would slow its pace of hiring this year after adding more than 12,000 people in the last quarter to bring worldwide headcount to 186,779 as of Dec. 31. Alphabet's costs and expenses jumped 17% last quarter, driven primarily by research and development as well as sales personnel.
(Reporting by Paresh Dave in Oakland, Calif.; editing by Bernard Orr)
