Google ad revenue rebounds lifting Q2 profit above expectations

Alphabet’s second-quarter profit exceeded Wall Street expectations on Tuesday and the Google parent announced that its long-time CFO Ruth Porat would assume a new role while the company sought a new finance chief.

Alphabet’s results were helped by steady demand for its cloud services and a rebound in advertising. The shares jumped more than 6% in after-market trading. Shares of rival Microsoft were down slightly after it also reported results on Tuesday.

Porat, hired in 2015, is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent female executives and oversaw tremendous growth at Alphabet. She will become chief investment officer and president starting Sept. 1.

Porat was hired from Morgan Stanley, where she was finance chief. In her new role, she will oversee the company’s so-called Other Bets portfolio, the unit for more risky hardware and services ventures, as well as help manage the company’s global investments.

Advertisers, who make up a big share of Alphabet’s revenue, have pulled back on spending precious dollars on untested platforms, helping the Google parent as well as Facebook owner Meta Platforms.

Revenue at Google Cloud, which is among the biggest cloud service providers, rose 28% to $8.1 billion, besting expectations of $7.75 billion, and maintaining roughly the same rate of growth as the first quarter. Ad sales for Google’s YouTube video service unit rose 4.4% to $7.67 billion.

Alphabet reported net profit of $1.44 per share for the April-June period, compared with estimates of $1.34 per share.

Revenue for the quarter stood at $74.6 billion, compared with estimates of $72.82 billion, according to Refinitiv data.