Internet giant Google messes up release of financial results, lower than expected earnings cause 9% stock tumble

Ever have just one of those days? Everything goes wrong and it seems impossible to do anything about? Yesterday (October 18 ) must have felt like that for internet giant Google. The company's third quarter results were due to be released at the end of day's trading in the US, but somebody, somewhere got something badly wrong and the results came out early. Not only that, the financial results were worse than expected, which caused Google shares to plummet.

After losing 9 percent of their value, trade in Google shares was suspended. Trade was restarted again later and the stock rallied slightly, ending the day 8 percent down. The share price nose dive wiped around USD 20 million off shareholder's wealth. A third party company was responsible for releasing the latest financial data from Google and an investigation into exactly what happened is promised. Earnings for the three months ending September were USD 2.18 billion, compared to USD 2. 73 billion for the same quarter last year. Commentators apportion much of the blame to mobile phone producer Motorola, which Google bought in May this year. The phone maker was struggling and is still losing a lot of money. Google has reduced staff numbers and closed offices and factories, but the restructuring itself cost USD 349 million in the Q3. Without Motorola, Google claims Q3 revenues would have been 5 percent higher, some USD 557 million. Liam Lever, liam@romania-insider.com