Topic: Growth Stocks

Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline – Friday, January 20, 2012

Article Excerpt

PLEASE NOTE: In next week’s Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline, we’ll reveal our #1 U.S. pick for 2012. GOOGLE INC., $586.00, Nasdaq symbol GOOG, fell 8% on Friday after the Internet-search specialist reported lower-than-expected quarterly earnings. In the three months ended December 31, 2011, Google’s revenue rose 25.4%, to $10.6 billion from $8.4 billion. If you exclude commissions that Google pays to its marketing partners, revenue would have increased by 28% to $8.1 billion. That fell short of the consensus revenue estimate of $8.4 billion. Google charges advertisers every time a user clicks on one of their ads. In the latest quarter, paid clicks rose 34%. However, the average cost advertisers pay per click fell 8%. Earnings in the quarter rose 9.7%, to $3.1 billion from $2.85 billion a year earlier. Earnings per share rose 8.6%, to $9.50 from $8.75, on more shares outstanding. These figures exclude unusual items, mainly stock options paid to employees. On this basis, the latest earnings missed the consensus…