Google's earnings for its third fiscal quarter have been released early, with draft SEC filings showing that the company pulled in $14.1 billion in revenue, with a net income of $2.18 billion. That compares with $2.79 billion net on $12.21 billion in revenue last quarter, though year-over-year it's a bit of a different picture. In Q3 2011, it kept $2.73 billion out of the $9.72 billion in revenue it recorded. That means Google earned about 20 percent less profit this quarter compared to this time last year, despite $2.49 billion more in revenue.
GOOG stock dropped sharply on the news, which was released well before the company's scheduled 4:30PM ET earnings call, and at the time of this writing it is below $690, compared to its $750+ price this afternoon. Sales of GOOG has now been halted on the news. Why isn't Wall Street responding well to the earnings? The company didn't meet expectations.
Google says its financial printer released the draft earnings without authorization
The draft results also show newly-acquired Motorola Mobility's numbers: it had $2.58 billion in revenue for the quarter (broken down into $1.78 billion for mobile and $797 million for home), and it lost $527 million on a GAAP basis for the quarter. That operating loss is nearly double what Motorola Mobility reported last quarter, when it saw $1.25 billion in revenue. Job cuts at Motorola Mobility were evident on the earnings statement, which shows all of Google employing 53,546 full-time (including 17,428 from Motorola), compared to 54,604 back on June 30th of this year.
It's not clear why the SEC filing was released hours before the closing bell, when Google had planned to report its earnings. However, the top of the filing says "PENDING LARRY QUOTE," suggesting this wasn't report wasn't quite ready for prime time.
Update: In a statement released to The Wall Street Journal, Google says that printing-services company RR Donnelley submitted Google's draft earnings without authorization. We'll be listening in to Google's earnings call at 4:30PM ET for more information. Full statement below.
Earlier this morning RR Donnelley, the financial printer, informed us that they had filed our draft 8K earnings statement without authorization. We have ceased trading on NASDAQ while we work to finalize the document. Once it’s finalized we will release our earnings, resume trading on NASDAQ and hold our earnings call as normal at 1:30 PM PT.
Update 2: Google has released its final Q3 earnings results, and the numbers appear to match what the draft filing showed.
Update 3: Full audio from the earnings call embedded below.