Heading into earnings season, it was a concern for investors as to how easily
the big guns in the tech sector would surpass Wall Street estimates. Apple
(NASDAQ: AAPL ) delivered the goods on Tuesday, and late Thursday, so did Google
(NASDAQ: GOOG ). The search giant said after the closing bell that it posted
fourth-quarter earnings of $8.75 a share on revenue of $6.37 billion both
figures that blew past analysts expectations by a wide margin. But Google also
delivered something else news that it would shake up its management structure,
moving co-founder Larry Page into the CEO role, while current Chief Executive
Eric Schmidt is to become executive chairman, focusing externally on deals,
partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach
and something called technology thought leadership. Investors are now left in a
bit of a quandary: heres the quarter they were looking for, and then some, but
future quarters are to likely have less day-to-day input from one of the guys
responsible for the success . Googles after-hours share price seemed to reflect
that tug-of-war the stock was up just 2% in after-hours trading to $639 after
falling slightly in the regular session. Similar to Apples strong report on
Tuesday, however, it may be another case of a companys incredible success being
immune to anybodys meddling for the foreseeable near-term future. After all,
heres a company as large as Google is still able to post nearly a 30% rise in
revenue, while its all-important paid clicks, the number of times people click
on search results sponsored by advertisers, grew 18% from last year, beating
expectations of 15%. Whats more, international revenue alone jumped 52% from a
year earlier. Investors are now left with a sort of interesting dual competition
between two of the top 5 American companies for the first half of 2011, at least
which high-performing company, Google or Apple, with its CEO, Steve Jobs, on
the bench for six months, does a better job of still delivering stellar
financial results? As far as that concerns the 2011 fate of the Nasdaq, which
has now dropped 2.2% in two days, both companies will need to keep the growth
engine revving.
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