Google’s official parent company Alphabet announced its latest financial results for the first quarter of 2024 which ended on March 31. However, the big news in these numbers was that it will do something it has never done before.
Alphabet’s press release (in PDF format) revealed that it will start to issue cash dividends to its stockholders beginning on June 17, for anyone who owns stock in the company or before June 10. The amount will be 20 cents per share and Alphabet says it will continue to pay out dividends on a quarterly basis.
In terms of its Q1 2024 numbers, Alphabet had $80.54 billion in revenue during the time period, up from $69.79 billion from a year ago, It recorded a net income amount of $23.662 billion for the quarter, up from $15.051 billion from the same time period a year ago.
CNBC says those numbers beat the previous expectations of financial analysts. Alphabet’s stock price was up by 15 percent in after hours trading as of this writing.
Google’s search business remains its biggest division with $46.156 billion for the quarter, up from $40.359 billion from a year ago. Google’s subscriptions, platforms, and devices division had a total of $8.739 billion in revenue for the quarter. That’s up from $7.413 billion from a year ago.
The press release quotes Google CEO Sundar Pichai saying:
Our results in the first quarter reflect strong performance from Search, YouTube and Cloud. We are well under way with our Gemini era and there’s great momentum across the company. Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, and our global product footprint, position us well for the next wave of AI innovation.
Last week, Google announced a major reorganization of its company. Among other things, it merged its AI division with most of its Research division into one team. It also combined its hardware and Android/Chrome teams into one Platforms and Devices division.