Alphabet CEO Pichai touts AI, but says business is 'more challenging'

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News

As Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares fell as much as 6% in after-hours trading Thursday following fourth-quarter results that missed analysts' targets, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said that the online giant is not slowing down with its plans to push further into artificial intelligence technology.

"How we unlock the incredible opportunities AI enables how we focus our investments," Pichai said on a conference call Thursday afternoon. "AI is the most-profound technology we are working on today."

Pichai went on to say that Alphabet (GOOG) is in a "great position as AI reaches an inflection point" and that the company "has been preparing for this moment since early last year."

Yet, despite Pichai's attention to the opportunities in AI, Alphabet (GOOG) investors remained more interested in what the company said about its very recent past as opposed to what might lie ahead in the future.

After the close of trading Thursday, Alphabet (GOOG) reported a fourth-quarter profit of $1.05 a share, on revenue of $76.05B, for the period ending December 31, compared to earnings of $1.53 a share on $75.3B in sales in the fourth quarter of 2021. Wall Street analysts had forecast Alphabet (GOOG) to earn $1.20 a share on $76.5B in revenue.

The most-notable highlight of Alphabet's (GOOG) results was its revenue from advertising, which totaled $59B, or 3.5% less than that $61.2B in ad sales the company reported a year ago.

Pichai said that "beyond our ad business," Alphabet (GOOG) saw strong momentum in areas such as Google Cloud. However, Pichai admitted that Alphabet (GOOG) wasn't immune to some of the issues that have hampered others in the online space.

"It's clear that after a significant period of [business] acceleration in the pandemic, the macro [economic] environment is [now] more challenging," Pichai said.

The company also said it expects to take charges of between $1.9B and $2.3B, with the majority of that in first quarter of 2023 due to its recents announcement that it will cut 12,000 jobs and slow down its hiring plans this year.

Comments

[SuperPac]

When things turn sour (no more ZIRP / ultra loose money), tout ''AI'' and ''TAM''. none of these words have to mean much, they are marketing buzzwords to deflect attention.

Google is an internet indexing / search company selling advertising on the back of it for revenue. Everything else is mumbo-jumbo. ZIRP / ultra loose money from 2009-21 was a huge tailwind. That is now gone. Reality strikes. They must downsize their headcount much more. GOOGL is not a govt jobs program.

[superartus]

Pichai is a safe leader. He won't take risks, he'll do the status quo. You need a risk taking leader for google. Someone who can shoot for new ideas and take on rewarding risks. Amazon's ceo is a safe leader too but nothing like the risk taking Bezos.

[Valuestocks007]

@superartus Interesting comment I had not thought of it in these terms.. Do you consider Nadella a safe CEO for MSFT?

[SuperPac]

@Valuestocks007

I agree with @superartus

Pichai is not just a non-risk taker so far as new ventures are concerned, he is a CEO of the ZIRP / ultra cheap money era. Where being a CEO was easier. He must leave now.

Other bad tech CEOs are Schulman (PYPL) and Benioff (CRM). Very bad people.

Nadella is a good leader for bad times too. Very different. Venturesome. I have more faith in MSFT amongst the Big Tech names.

[Valuestocks007]

@SuperPac I like both CEOS' .. own both.. GOOG and MSFT. I don't own PYPL or CRM.

[billrla]

I must have missed it when virtual reality revolutionized everything. With artificial intelligence, I'm going to pay closer attention.

[User 50124969]

"How we unlock the incredible opportunities AI enables how we focus our investments," Pichai said on a conference call Thursday afternoon. "AI is the most-profound technology we are working on today."

As an investor in Nvidia I am very happy to hear that. Nvidia is thė AI-company!

[Winnertakesall]

This nonsense about AI is just to by time with the hope rates come down. All these tech CEOs are just trying to collect a paycheck as long as possible before the whole thing comes crashing down.

[NorthernTek]

@Winnertakesall bs - AI is changing the world. Nothing is crashing down here as we are living through the biggest transformation in technology in history. I am guessing you are a value buyer and focused on your dividend plays — lets see how that works for you in the next 5 years

[Orangejulius]

@NorthernTek FYI, plenty of people said that in early 2021 when a lot of value investors were ringing the bell and saying the market was getting ahead of itself. Turns out they were right.

AI is the biggest buzzword in tech right now, and everyone wants to claim their new AI is going to revolutionize everything. We have dozens of disappointments for every successful demo like ChatGPT.

That said, AI theory was something I worked on in college. We've made incredible strides in terms of hardware power since that time, but have yet to reach something resembling singularity or a true self-aware AI. I suspect that day will come about around the same moment, and our world will indeed be very different from that point forward. Maybe quite soon. Back in 2006, my classmates believed that time would fall between 2025 and 2035 given the expected processing improvements and Moore's Law still being relevant.

I have no idea what the AI community consensus is now that I've been outside it for going on 2 decades. For now, we're content referring to glorified script-bots generating content as "AI." It's more appropriate to refer to it as computer aided design.

[Legitimate]

@NorthernTek one AI thing makes the news and you guys think AI was started last night lol….it will change the world over the next decades. I doubt any of it materializes in the next few years. AI needs to be sentient, not programmed with leftist marxist junk like ChatGPT is. The truth can be offensive, that’s just the reality. I don’t want an AI that has to dance around issues because it was programmed not to offend

[1winner]

Using AI on the ER trying to distract us by how awful they are doing

[Jpokergman]

AI can only be developed and launched once.

Bet the geniuses at big tech don’t understand that.

[hectorx09]

@Jpokergman What do you mean?

[NorthernTek]

@Jpokergman sorry , that does not compute!

[narishma]

@Jpokergman, I think you meant General AI, that needs to be invented only once. Beauty was talking about just AI, so every time you apply it to a new problem you "invent" it anew.

[Golfsohard]

If Sundar can't deliver the AI goods by the end of the year, guy needs to be shown the door- headcount growth and cost structure way too high

[Dukebailey]

Two weeks ago, the share price of Googl was $93. The only material news since then is that Googl missed earnings and had a relatively poor 4th quarter, and the forward outlook isn’t materially better. Now shares are trading hands at $103.

🤔

[Gains on Gains]

The worst case scenarios are getting less terrible as employment hasn’t collapsed and fed taking foot off the gas

[Pitnick]

@Dukebailey Also there was another rate hike.

[Mountain_man]

@Dukebailey and perhaps the 12K job cuts?