Google parent Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) will report its fiscal first quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday as Wall Street braces for the first round of announcements since President Trump placed a series of tariffs on global trade partners.
Analysts don’t expect tariffs to impact Q1 revenue or earnings per share, but investors will be on the lookout for any forward guidance indicating what kind of hit the company might take in the second half of the year.
“We have seen some transaction velocity in e-commerce drop off of late, and given the macro noise, would expect digital ads to weaken in 2Q,” Barclays analyst Ross Sandler wrote in an April 8 investor note.
Alphabet shares are off more than 19% year to date and roughly 3% over the past 12 months.
Read more about Google’s stock moves and today’s market action.
At close: April 23 at 4:00:01 PM EDT
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Tariffs aren’t the only concern, though. Wells Fargo Securities equity analyst Ken Gawrelski noted in an investor note that for the first time, agencies are reevaluating their ad search strategies as more users begin to use generative AI agents and social media platforms to find information online.
In Q1, analysts expect Google to post earnings per share of $2.01 on revenue of $89.1 billion, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates. Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs, the money Google pays companies to use its search engine and other platforms, is expected to come in at $75.4 billion. The company reported EPS of $1.89 on revenue of $80.5 billion during the same period last year.
Google’s advertising revenue is anticipated to top out at $66.4 billion, with YouTube ads hitting $8.9 billion. The search giant saw ad revenue of $61.1 billion in Q1 last year.
Investors will also be closely watching Google’s Google Cloud Platform (GCP) revenue growth. Like rivals Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT), Google is spending billions of dollars on its AI data center buildout. The company is set to spend a whopping $75 billion on AI infrastructure and data center capacity throughout 2025.
During Google’s Q4 earnings call, Google SVP and CFO for Alphabet and Google Anat Ashkenazi explained that the company’s AI services are facing resource constraints.
Building out more data center capacity will address that issue, but until the company has enough servers up and running to meet demand, it’ll be leaving money on the table from potential customers.
Mizuho analyst James Lee also pointed out that Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting moves across the US government could hurt GPC sales. In a note, Lee wrote that a GCP channel partner said 25% of their customers with exposure to DOGE and tariffs decreased spending versus their 2025 budgets.
