Alphabet moves one step closer to $1 trillion company

SAN FRANCISCO - Google's parent company Alphabet Monday announced a remarkable second quarter earnings of $32.7 billion that beat market expectations in Wall Street, which pushed its shares to an all time-high with a growth of 5 percent in the after-hours trading.

Alphabet's market cap has increased to about $875 billion, which brought the tech giant one step closer to a $1 trillion company.

Among its Q2 revenues that rose 26 percent over the same period of 2017, Google's advertising business took up most of its earnings, netting $28 billion in the second quarter, up 23.9 percent year-over-year.

"We delivered another quarter of very strong performance, with revenues of $32.7 billion, up 26 percent versus the second quarter of 2017 and 23 percent on a constant currency basis," Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet and Google, said of the financial results of the quarter ended on June 30, 2018.

Alphabet's profits from its cloud business and hardware sales, plus other revenues, increased 36.5 percent year-on-year to hit $4.4 billion.

Including a massive $5.1 billion fine slapped on the firm by the EU that it has vowed to appeal, Alphabet's earnings per share stood at $4.54.

Alphabet's capital expenditures jumped to $5.5 billion, almost two times more than the figure of $2.8 billion last year.

Google has added about 4,000 workers from the first quarter, and the size of its workforce rose to about 89,060 persons, up 17 percent from last year, when the figure was 75,606.