There s Google action aplenty as it reports first-quarter earnings after the markets close today: It s facing European antitrust action; it just unveiled its own wireless phone service; it s getting a new CFO from Wall Street.
But above all Google is a search company that makes money from ads. As always, investors and analysts will be watching those numbers, especially after the company saw slow growth in ad revenue when it reported fourth-quarter earnings earlier this year, causing the company to miss expectations. (Google s big competitor in advertising sales, Facebook, yesterday reported a rise in revenue that was slightly lower than expected.)
Also key will be Google s spending during the first quarter. In the previous noisy quarter, departing CFO Patrick Pichette cited real estate expansion as a big expense. Why the expansion? Google continues to hire more workers, bringing 5,000 on board in the past couple of quarters.
And speaking of spending, a common concern about Google is what it spends on projects that may not pay off in the near term — such as the Project Fi wireless service it unveiled yesterday. An analyst told our Matt O Brien that Google s angle seems more aimed at driving change than dollars.
Recently, other tech companies have blamed the strong dollar for weighing on their results. Evercore analyst Ken Sena thinks it could significantly eat into Google s sales growth this time around, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect Google to post earnings of $6.61 per share on revenue of $14 billion, compared with per-share earnings of $6.27 on $12.2 billion in sales in the year-ago quarter. Google shares are up about 1 percent.
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