Google 3Q earnings leak early, stock dives

Google reported its quarterly earnings much earlier than expected Thursday, and the results missed analysts' expectations significantly.

An employee rides her bike past a logo next to a Google building.After the earnings announcement, the company's shares (GOOG) fell sharply, and its market cap shed about $19 billion. (Click here to get the latest quotes for Google.) The company offered no explanation as to why it released earnings early. Trading was halted shortly after the announcement at the company's request pending news.

Following the earnings release surprise, the company issued a statement blaming its financial printer for the early release.

"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," the company said.

The company posted third-quarter earnings excluding items of $9.03 per share, down from $9.72 a share in the year-earlier period.

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Net income was $3.01 billion, down from $3.18 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue increased 51 percent to $11.33 billion from $7.51 billion a year ago.

In the release, the company said its average cost-per-click declined 15 percent compared to the third quarter a year ago.

"There's a feeling that September wasn't a great month generally for our clients or for markets - not just advertising. That has some knock-on to our industry and this might be a little of that," Martin Sorrell, CEO of advertising company WPP, told CNBC in response to the disappointing Google earnings.

Analysts had expected the company to report earnings excluding items of $10.65 a share on $11.86 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

On Thursday, the company unvieled a $249 laptop that is built by Samsung Electronics and uses Google's Chrome operating system, The Wall Street Journal Reported..

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The computer will be sold online at Amazon.com (AMZN) as well as other websites and 50 Best Buy (BBY) retail stores.

The company was scheduled to report after the closing bell on Thursday and surprised investors with its early release. Google's early release included the phrase "Pending Larry Quote" suggesting that a remark from CEO Larry Page would be added later. Below is an except from the company's SEC filing for third-quarter results:

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Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-earnings-revenue-miss-wall-165217240.html

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