Google continues to tend to its Money Tree. At the start of the fourth quarter, Alphabet had a cash position of $20.1 billion. By the end of the quarter, that figure was up to $26.5 billion. So using our fingers and toes, we can compute that Google’s parent added $6.4 billion in cash during the fourth quarter of the year. Still, it would appear that money seems to disappear in the cloud. For the first time ever, Alphabet released information related to its cloud unit; for the quarter that business took in $3.8 billion in revenue while reporting a loss of $1.2 billion.
Wall Street was smitten with Alphabet’s report. Shares of Alphabet, which rose $26.16 or 1.38% to $1,927.51 during the regular trading session, soared 7.66% in after-hours trading after the earnings report was released. During the later trading period, Alphabet was changing hands at $2075.16, up $147.65.
