Investing.com - Shares of Alphabet, the corporate parent of search giant Google, were falling after hours Monday after the company reported first quarter earnings that beat analysts' expectations but revenue that fell short of forecasts.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) shares fell nearly 7% after hitting new closing and 52-week highs in regular trading on a day when the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ Composite finished at record highs.
Alphabet reported earnings per share of $11.90 on revenue of $36.34 billion. Analysts polled by Investing.com had forecast earnings of $10.53 on revenue of $37.3 billion.
The earnings were down 10.7% from a year ago because of a $1.7 billion fine levied by the European Commission, charging agreements that Google had with AdSense for search partners infringed on European competition law. Without the fine, Alphabet said it would have earned 11.50 a share.
A year ago, Alphabet earned $13.33 on revenue of $31.15 billion. The company had reported earnings of $12.77 on revenue of $39.28 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Total revenue grew 17% year-over-year to $36.33 billion, but investors slammed the shares because the gain in the first quarter of 2018 was 26%. In addition, the operating margin fell to 18% from 25% a year earlier. Most of the decline was due to the EU fine. Without the fine, the margin would have been 23%, still lower than a year ago.
Google advertising revenue grew 15.3% to $30.72 billion. Traffic acquisition costs -- or payments to vendors using the Google system -- rose slightly to $3.48 biilion.
Capital expenditures were lower than expected at $4.64 billion. Alphabet has been spending heavily in recent years adding data centers and the like, and analysts had expected capital spending of $6.06 billion.
With the regular close, Alphabet shares were up 24% on the year and were close to a market capitalization of $900 billion. If the after-hours price of $1,207.10 holds on Tuesday, the year-to-date gain would drop to 15.5% with the market cap closer to $840 billion.