YouTube Q4 Ad Sales Jump To $8.6B

Ad sales, including a jump at YouTube and Google Search, fueled solid fourth-quarter earnings for parent Alphabet including beats on the top and bottom line. The stock popped more than 6% after hours.

YouTube advertising revenue surged 25% to $8.6 billion. Sales from search grew to $43 billion vs $31.9 billion in the year earlier quarter. (The number doesn’t include MVPD platform YouTube TV.)

Alphabet saw earnings per share of $30.69 vs $22.30 on total revenue rise of $75 billion, up from $57 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet forecast earnings of $27.68 a share and sales of $72.26 billion.

Google Cloud, a fast-growing and closely watched business, hit $5.5 billion sales from $3.8 billion.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the company’s “deep investment in AI technologies continues to drive extraordinary and helpful experiences for people and businesses, across our most important products. Q4 saw ongoing strong growth in our advertising business, which helped millions of businesses thrive and find new customers, a quarterly sales record for our Pixel phones despite supply constraints, and our Cloud business continuing to grow strongly.”

Alphabet and Google CFO Ruth Porat reiterated the “broad-based strength in advertiser spend and strong consumer online activity, as well as substantial ongoing revenue growth from Google Cloud” and said the company continue to invest in long-term opportunities.

YouTube TV’s last official sub count was in the fall of 2020 at 3 million. Industry estimates put it at 4M toward the end of 2021. It’s had some carriage issues, including with regional sports networks

Execs will host a call at 5 pm ET.

Alphabet stock is up over 40% from 12 months ago, although shares have dipped 5% so far in 2022. That’s a vote of confidence, and less than others in the tech sector, which has been dinged in volatile markets with interest rate increases looming.