Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) said today, via a blog post on its investor relations page, that Wall Street’s analyst’s estimates for the company’s Q4 results are too high.
This isn’t the first time Wall Street has made an error with the tech giant. In October last year, Google’s earnings were accidentally released four hours earlier due to a glitch. At the time, Google’s share price fell eight percent on the news – down to $687 from its high of $750.
In an effort to prevent a similar error when Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Q4 results are released next Tuesday, the company released the blog post entitled “And now for a little accounting…” in order to explain why the estimates were wrong.
The post explains that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is selling off its Motorola set-top-box unit, its “home business,” and won’t be including the numbers from that group in its report.
The blog post, posted by chief accountant Brent Callinicos, explains that the Street hadn’t figured it out: “As of this writing, a majority of Wall Street analysts who cover Google have not reflected the Home business as discontinued operations in their estimates.
“As the sale of the Home business meets the above U.S. GAAP criterion, we are required to present the Home results as discontinued operations in our consolidated statements of income.
“That means our net income for this quarter as well as for Q212 and Q312 will be split between our ongoing operations and the Home business. Note that assets and liabilities of the Home business will not be separated out from our other reported financial and operating measures, such as our consolidated cash flow and balance sheet as the Home business is not material to those measures.”
What this means for Google’s Q4 revenues is that it will be around $1bn less than the expected $12.4bn. He also said, the consensus EPS of $10.58 is roughly 40 cents too high.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s shares were down by 1.32 percent today, bringing their stock value to $701.93 at the time of writing.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM)’s Doug Anmuth put out new results last night that doesn’t include the set-top-box-group. Here’s what Anmuth’s numbers look like, along with a few tweaks he made regarding the rest of Google’s operations:
