Google Misses Expectations On Earnings, Revenue, Paid Clicks, But ...

Google's fourth-quarter results disappointed some investors with earnings, revenue and paid clicks all missing expectations. The stock fell about 2 percent after the close of trading on Thursday, but then recovered nicely, making some after-hours gains.

Google "saw continued strength in core advertising business," CEO Patrick Pichette told shareholders in the earnings call, "but we also faced a few real challenges as well."

Google shares opened Thursday at $511, bottomed out just after the market closed at around $492, but were hovering just below the $520 mark a couple hours later.

[Related: Google Stock Slips On Q3 Misses, Execs Talk Cloud Progress]

The fourth quarter saw $18.10 billion in revenue, up 15 percent year-over-year. Revenue for 2014 was $66 billion, which was 19 percent higher than the previous year.

The first challenge Pichette cited was the strengthening U.S. dollar, creating a foreign exchange shortfall. Had exchange rates been the same as in the fourth quarter of the previous year, revenue would have been more than $600 million higher, the CFO said.

A number of unusual OpEx charges added up to slightly over $300 million in the quarter, prompting Pichette to "give some sense of what caused those adjustments." He rattled off compensation charges due to reclassifications, real-estate write downs, and an anomalous effective tax rate. He also discussed inventory problems with the Nexus 6 smartphone that eroded revenues.

Chief Business Officer Omid Kordestani ran through individual product lines and businesses of the Mountain View, Calif.-based tech giant.

"Google for Work had a great quarter. We started working with PwC to help them, and the companies they advise use Google For Work to move their business to the cloud," Kordestani said of the company's rebranded enterprise cloud effort.

The partnership with global business consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers, entered into in October, aims to help businesses transition their IT operations to the cloud.

"Cloud Platform continues to make good progress," Kordestani added.

The CBO referenced the Google Cloud Platform Live event the company hosted in November for the second year in a row, where it announced new products, including Google Container Engine, a partnership with Docker.

Asked about Google Wallet, Kordestani said, "Really our focus is building products that turn consumers' shopping intents into actions quickly and easily, enabling businesses to connect and retain these customers."

"On payments, the goal is to remove all the friction that one encounters now in the shopping experience," he added.

Pichette wouldn't comment when asked about Google's wireless ambitions, which have been a topic of great speculation since the company said it would start serving the wireless communications market.

Pichette closed by speaking in broad strokes about the company's view of partnerships, specifically responding to a question about the strategic importance of search partnerships with other software vendors.

"On the issue of partnerships, Google has a lot of partnerships. It's an anchor of our strategy, because it actually gives us distribution -- distribution is good, and so we always look for partnerships in many spaces. Partnerships look to be win-wins, and in that sense we always look for those combinations," he said.

PUBLISHED JAN. 29, 2015