Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ: GOOG) stock rose over 3.7% on October 30^th, 2020 (as of 11:37 am GMT-4 ; Source: Google finance) after the company posted better than expected results for the third quarter of FY 20 driven by strong growth in advertising revenue across the board. It follows similarly strong earnings reports by ad-driven online companies Pinterest and Snap earlier this month. For the third quarter ending September 30, the company brought in total advertising revenue of $37.10 billion, compared to $33.80 billion a year ago. YouTube ad growth was particularly strong, which represents an increase of32% from a year ago. Fears of a search advertising crunch did not materialize, as the company’s “Search and Other” advertising category posted 6% growth from a year ago. The Google Cloud revenue grew 45% to $3.44 billion vs. $3.32 billion estimated according to StreetAccount. There has been 32% rise in revenue from YouTube ads to $5.04 billion vs. $4.39 billion estimated, according to StreetAccount. The Traffic acquisition costs (TAC) for the quarter is $8.17 billion vs. $7.66 billion according to StreetAccount. Overall, the company has reported net income of $11.2 billion. The company generated the operating cash flow of $17 billion with free cash flow of $11.6 billion in the quarter and $34 billion in the trailing 12-months. The company ended the third quarter with $133 billion in cash and marketable securities.

GOOG in the third quarter of FY 20 has reported the adjusted earnings per share of $16.40, beating the analysts’ estimates for the adjusted earnings per share of $11.29, according to Refinitiv estimates. The company had reported the adjusted revenue growth of 14 percent to $46.17 billion in the third quarter of FY 20, beating the analysts’ estimates for revenue of $42.90 billion. The company’s total cost of revenues was $21.1 billion, up 20% year-on-year, mainly due to other cost of revenues, which was $13 billion and up 29% year-over-year. This includes the costs associated with the data centers and other operations including depreciation and then content acquisition costs, mainly due to costs for YouTube’s advertising supported content, followed by costs for subscription service content.

Meanwhile, the company has recently committed $1 billion in investments that include licensing content from national, regional and local news publishers for Google News Showcase, which is a new product that features the editorial curation of award-winning newsrooms. The company has signed partnerships with nearly 200 publications around the world with more to come.