Google’s stock surged by a whopping 15 percent Friday, all thanks to a promising quarterly earnings report delivered Thursday by new CFO Ruth Porat.
Porat has only been on the job since just after Memorial Day, meaning that the bright financial results she revealed had been set in motion before her arrival, but her comments also signaled a new long-term focus on cost discipline that pleased Wall Street.
“People are understandably optimistic about the future,” said Scott Kessler, an analyst at S&P Capital IQ, who still remains skeptical about the company’s direction, in part because of the risks associated with being in the cross hairs of the European Union.
Google said its advertising on YouTube helped get the results that led the company to beat profit and revenue expectations, though Porat did not provide as much of a detailed breakdown of those results as investors wanted.
“While it all sounded positive, the selective nature of the data-points and limited number of absolute figures the company has provided diminishes what is probably still a very good story,” wrote analyst Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group.
Above: Google’s new chief financial officer, Ruth Porat, delivered her first quarterly earnings report Thursday, and it beat Wall Street expectations and helped drive a stock market spike on Friday.
