(NY Times) - SAN FRANCISCO — Google is getting back on its game.
The first three months of the year might have been a challenge for Google from a public relations point of view, with politicians and state attorneys general, European regulators and ordinary users troubled by the search giant’s new privacy policy. But its financial numbers were another matter, largely rebounding from a weak fourth quarter.
Along with its quarterly results, released after the markets closed on Thursday, Google announced what would effectively be a two-for-one stock split. The split will create a new class of nonvoting shares and allow the company to reward its employees with stock without diluting existing shareholders. It is the first time Google, which went public in 2004, has split its shares.
The stock, which rose more than $15 during regular trading to $651, rose only slightly in after-hours trading.
Google’s co-founder, Larry Page, who took over as chief executive last April, said it was simply “a very strong quarter.”
Net income rose 60 percent, to $2.89 billion, or $8.88 a share, compared with $1.8 billion, or $5.59 a share, in the same quarter a year earlier. The company said revenue rose 24 percent, to $10.65 billion. During a conference call with analysts, Google executives were peppered with several questions about the amount advertisers pay for clicks on Google ads, a metric called cost-per-click. It dropped 12 percent from the quarter a year ago and 6 percent from the fourth quarter. But the number of paid clicks was up 39 percent from the comparable quarter a year ago and up 7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011.
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