Quarterly report: Alphabet disappointed with weak numbers on Youtube

The Google parent company announced a record share buyback program. Also: Microsoft is increasing profits and Robinhood is laying off nine percent of its employees.

Good Morning! While you slept, work continued elsewhere in the digital scene.

The top topics:

The growth at the Google-Mother Alphabet has slowed down. In the first three months of 2022, revenue rose by 23 percent to $68.01 billion, but growth was still 34 percent in the same period last year. Profits shrank from $17.9 billion in the prior-year quarter to $16.4 billion. Analysts had expected better numbers. The weaker-than-expected earnings are mainly due to slowing YouTube growth. According to Streetaccount, YouTube advertising revenue should increase by 25 percent, but the number was only 14 percent.

The group’s shares fell by more than six percent in after-hours trading. Alphabet announced the largest share buyback program in the company’s history. The company wants to buy back securities for $70 billion. Last year, Alphabet bought back shares worth 50 billion. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt, Wall Street Journal und CNBC]

On Gründerszene you read today: Foodora is one of the most successful delivery services of the first generation. Ex-Foodora employees have collected a total of 1.2 billion euros for their startups. We show you the list of the most successful ventures. [Mehr bei Gründerzene+]

And here are the other headlines of the night:

The turnover of Microsoft is up 18 percent to more than $49 billion in the three months ended March. Net income climbed eight percent to $16.7 billion. Azure cloud services and the business version of Office showed solid year-over-year revenue growth. Annual revenue growth for the Azure services was 46 percent. [Mehr bei CNBC, Bloomberg und Wall Street Journal]

Robinhood is laying off about nine percent of its workforce. CEO Vlad Tenev said the rapid growth of the workforce in recent years has created “some duplicate roles and job functions and more levels and complexity than optimal”. Despite the cuts, Robinhood plans to expand its international presence. The craze for meme stocks and cryptocurrencies has fueled a spike in trading activity on Robinhood over the past year, but revenue growth has slowed in recent months, from 309 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2021 to 14 percent in the fourth quarter of this year. Robinhood’s stock price has fallen 45 percent since early 2022. [Mehr bei The Information]

Elon Musk got to Twitter pay $1 billion if its financing for the acquisition fails. If Twitter receives a higher offer or shareholders reject the deal under the merger agreement, Twitter will have to pay Musk that amount. The amount of the so-called “breakup fee” is within the usual agreements for such a deal. Tesla shares fell more than 12 percent on Tuesday. Twitter shares also fell four percent. [Mehr bei CNBC und The Information]

Investments: The Robotaxi competitors Pony and Weride have participated in the Series A financing round of the Chinese car service Ontime involved in the amount of 153 million US dollars. The state-backed Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC), Ontime’s parent company, led the round. Ontime was launched by GAC in 2019 as one of the newcomers to compete with the established Didi. [Mehr bei Techcrunch]

The largest shareholder of Lucid Group has agreed to purchase 100,000 of its electric vehicles over the next ten years. The government of Saudi Arabia, which is linked to the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, which owns 61 percent of Lucid, has initially committed to purchasing 50,000 electric vehicles from Lucid. There is also the option to purchase an additional 50,000 vehicles. Lucid shares shot up five percent in after-hours trading on the news. [Mehr bei Techcrunch]

Our reading tip on Gründerszene: Out rents out small self-sufficient wooden huts in the Berlin area. Now the tiny house startup has landed new investors and received more than two million euros. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

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Happy Wednesday!

Your Gründerszene editors