With Google’s parent company Alphabet’s stock now trading at an all-time high, the co-founders of the California-based tech giant, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have both seen a sharp increase in their net-worth in recent times. According to Forbes, the Class A shares of Alphabet have gone up by about 8% over the past couple of weeks, which has resulted in the company’s market cap rising by as much as $49 billion. The steep rise in the company’s stock price means that Page’s net-worth now stands at an estimated $44.8 billion, having risen $2.7 billion just in the past two weeks. Brin’s not been doing too badly either, with his estimated net-worth sitting around the $43.7 billion mark; an increase of $2.7 billion over the same period.
While Google’s shares were offered at just $85 apiece when the company launched its IPO back in 2004, Alphabet’s Class A stock is now trading at over $950, having closed at $950.28 on the NASDAQ last Friday. The stock had actually reached an all-time high of $956.72 the previous day, but failed to sustain its momentum by the end of the week. With Wall Street’s love affair with tech stocks growing by the day, companies like Apple, Microsoft and Samsung have also seen their valuations rise significantly in recent times. Most big tech companies, of course, have been making record profits of late, and reporting higher-then-expected numbers that have made analysts and investors sit up and take notice.
In the case of Alphabet, the company raked in a whopping $24.75 billion in revenue during the first quarter of this year, with its EPS (earnings per share) touching a record high of $7.73. Analysts had expected the company bring in about $24.19 billion in revenue, with a slightly lower EPS of $7.40. The revenue includes about $3 billion the company said it made from things other than ads, like its growing cloud business. While about 99% of Alphabet’s revenues still came from Google, the company’s “Other Bets” also registered significant growth during the quarter, with revenues increasing from $165 million in Q1 2016 to $244 million in Q1 2017. However, losses from the company’s non-Google operations still rose sharply, hitting $855 million. That represents a 10% YoY increase from Q1 2016, when the company lost $774 million from “moonshots” like self-driving cars (Waymo) and smart thermostats (Nest Labs).