SHARES IN GOOGLE have fallen sharply after the internet giant mistakenly filed its latest financial results too early, showing worse-than-expected earnings.
Google had been due to announced its third quarter financial results after the closing bell rang at the New York Stock Exchange at 4pm (New York time) today. However a draft of the announcement was instead published at around 12.30pm.
The announcement included the words ‘PENDING LARRY QUOTE’ at the top of the announcement, where Google CEO Larry Page would have given a quote about the results.
The shares fell due to the bad results, rather than the premature filing; company results are usually released when markets are closed precisely so they do not have an immediate knock-on effect on the share price of the company.
Google is blaming financial printing company RR Donnelley for the mistake in releasing the incomplete statement Business Insider reports. Google shares ceased trading on the NASDAQ shortly after the mistake was realised in order to prevent a further drop in the share price.
The premature results showed that Google’s revenue was almost half a billion lower than expected, coming in at $11.33 billion rather than the expected $11.83 billion (around €9.05 billion).
Google’s core adjusted operating profit was $3.95 billion, slightly down on the expected $4.1 billion.
Google has $45.7 billion cash on hand and employs 53,546 people around the world as of the end of September.
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