4 ms·

>Alphabet didn't miss anything; the analysts mispredicted performance. Taken to the extreme, no company ever underperforms and every unrealized expectation is

by fnovd 10y ago

>Alphabet didn't miss anything; the analysts mispredicted performance. Taken to the extreme, no company ever underperforms and every unrealized expectation is the fault of the analysts.

btian 10y ago
False. Most companies provide guidance. They under perform if they do worse than guidance. Alphabet on the other hand does not provide guidance. And frankly it's quite silly to call 20+% growth a miss.
- gigatexal 10y ago
  And yet in after-market trading the stock is down some 3%. I do think though it'd be cheaper for Google to find a way to diversify away from ads now that it's likely having more competition from the likes of Facebook and Snapchat but I'm no MBA nor an analyst so what do I know.
  - gigatexal 10y ago
    if you're going to down vote, please respond with why
    - dangrossman 10y ago
      3% is a normal daily up and down for GOOG. In the past 15 minutes, it's regained 1/3rd of that loss in after-hours trading. The share price is still basically sitting at its all-time high. Your comment is potentially misleading, confusingly worded, and it's unclear what point you were trying to make. Some combination of those things should explain any downvotes.
      - gigatexal 10y ago
        Some data to back up the closing price (all but useless given the after-hours price and the apparent open for tomorrow being pretty much what it was today before earnings): I took the last 20 days of adjusted closing prices for GOOG from finance.yahoo.com, and a -2.18% change is 2.76 std-deviations away from the average fluctuation. Not significant but still a lot. Thanks for response.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- btian 10y ago
  What do you think it's doing with Google Cloud, Waymo, etc.?
- curiouscats 10y ago
  Undue attention is paid to short term blips. And it is indeed silly to get excited about exceeding analysts guess or falling short by a couple pennies a share. About the 22% growth, that isn't being called a miss. They actually exceeded guesses on revenue. Net profit, while up, is what is being called a miss. Which net profit you want to use changes the increase but GAAP earnings were up 7%.
- nerfhammer 10y ago
  It's a miss if the market had already priced in expectations that it would be better than that; indicating that the market price is wrong and a correction could be expected imminently. To the extent that we can assume equity prices mean anything, of course.
afthonos 10y ago
Orthogonal to my peeve. :-) After earnings, there are two questions: 1. How did X do? 2. How did analysts think X would do? Perfect analysts would predict Xs earnings every time, and the stock would be unaffected by announcements. But analysts aren't perfect. That's ok! What's not ok is that the headlines are invariably "X misses expectations". No, the expectations were wrong. I'm not saying a company can't do well or badly. Only that its job is not to match analyst expectations, and "X misses expectations" promotes that fiction.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  If you're used to reading the financial news, the headline is fine, since you know what they're talking about.
  - afthonos 10y ago
    I'm not so sure. "Analysts Miss X Results" immediately makes you wonder "why", which is a fair question. "X Misses Expectations" instead makes you think X had a bad quarter. I think forcing people to make the conversion in their head every time is bad headlining. Of course, there's something to be said for it being a "term of art". This may just be my layman's interpretation.
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      Every field has its own jargon and shorthand notations. This particular headline is phrased in the usual way for such things.
      - afthonos 10y ago
        True and fair, yet see pc86's comment and my reply to it for exactly the kind of confusion that can arise. :-)
- pc86 10y ago
  Analysts aren't saying "I think GOOG will grow by X% because reasons," they're saying that based on all factors, if GOOG is run well and executes well, it will grow by X%. Growing by less, even when "less" is 20% and many billions of dollars, means that the analysts believe there is some inefficiency and GOOG, which is why a stock can drop after a company posts a 20% gain in revenue.

by fnovd 10y ago

>Alphabet didn't miss anything; the analysts mispredicted performance. Taken to the extreme, no company ever underperforms and every unrealized expectation is the fault of the analysts.

btian 10y ago

False. Most companies provide guidance. They under perform if they do worse than guidance. Alphabet on the other hand does not provide guidance. And frankly it's quite silly to call 20+% growth a miss.

gigatexal 10y ago
And yet in after-market trading the stock is down some 3%. I do think though it'd be cheaper for Google to find a way to diversify away from ads now that it's likely having more competition from the likes of Facebook and Snapchat but I'm no MBA nor an analyst so what do I know.
- gigatexal 10y ago
  if you're going to down vote, please respond with why
  - dangrossman 10y ago
    3% is a normal daily up and down for GOOG. In the past 15 minutes, it's regained 1/3rd of that loss in after-hours trading. The share price is still basically sitting at its all-time high. Your comment is potentially misleading, confusingly worded, and it's unclear what point you were trying to make. Some combination of those things should explain any downvotes.
    - gigatexal 10y ago
      Some data to back up the closing price (all but useless given the after-hours price and the apparent open for tomorrow being pretty much what it was today before earnings): I took the last 20 days of adjusted closing prices for GOOG from finance.yahoo.com, and a -2.18% change is 2.76 std-deviations away from the average fluctuation. Not significant but still a lot. Thanks for response.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
btian 10y ago
What do you think it's doing with Google Cloud, Waymo, etc.?
curiouscats 10y ago
Undue attention is paid to short term blips. And it is indeed silly to get excited about exceeding analysts guess or falling short by a couple pennies a share. About the 22% growth, that isn't being called a miss. They actually exceeded guesses on revenue. Net profit, while up, is what is being called a miss. Which net profit you want to use changes the increase but GAAP earnings were up 7%.
nerfhammer 10y ago
It's a miss if the market had already priced in expectations that it would be better than that; indicating that the market price is wrong and a correction could be expected imminently. To the extent that we can assume equity prices mean anything, of course.

afthonos 10y ago

Orthogonal to my peeve. :-) After earnings, there are two questions: 1. How did X do? 2. How did analysts think X would do? Perfect analysts would predict Xs earnings every time, and the stock would be unaffected by announcements. But analysts aren't perfect. That's ok! What's not ok is that the headlines are invariably "X misses expectations". No, the expectations were wrong. I'm not saying a company can't do well or badly. Only that its job is not to match analyst expectations, and "X misses expectations" promotes that fiction.

WalterBright 10y ago
If you're used to reading the financial news, the headline is fine, since you know what they're talking about.
- afthonos 10y ago
  I'm not so sure. "Analysts Miss X Results" immediately makes you wonder "why", which is a fair question. "X Misses Expectations" instead makes you think X had a bad quarter. I think forcing people to make the conversion in their head every time is bad headlining. Of course, there's something to be said for it being a "term of art". This may just be my layman's interpretation.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    Every field has its own jargon and shorthand notations. This particular headline is phrased in the usual way for such things.
    - afthonos 10y ago
      True and fair, yet see pc86's comment and my reply to it for exactly the kind of confusion that can arise. :-)
pc86 10y ago
Analysts aren't saying "I think GOOG will grow by X% because reasons," they're saying that based on all factors, if GOOG is run well and executes well, it will grow by X%. Growing by less, even when "less" is 20% and many billions of dollars, means that the analysts believe there is some inefficiency and GOOG, which is why a stock can drop after a company posts a 20% gain in revenue.