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iluvbabyb
Contributor at Shrewd'm since 2022 · 71 posts
THE SHREWD'M OBSERVER
VOL. 927349167 THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2026 PRICE: TWO PENCE

2Q SUMMARY 2026

Whilst Alphabet's moat has been getting shrewder, its server investments are hitting staggering new heights. To see a truly shrewd breakdown of the gigantic balancing act, top Shrewd’m analyst and Shrewdness-19-star iluvbabyb delivers, with her typical beautiful prose:

Always impressed listening to Alphabet's call. My summary of 2Q results ;-)

Alphabet-GOOGL reported second quarter revenues increased 24% to $119.8 billion, reflecting strong performance across the business and the company’s 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth. Google Services revenues increased 15% to $94.5 billion, led by 17% growth in Google Search & other, 15% in Google subscriptions, platforms and devices and 13% growth in YouTube ads. Over 1.7 billion unique viewers watched YouTube World Cup-related videos during the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Google Cloud saw growth accelerate significantly with revenues increasing 82% to $24.8 billion thanks to strong demand for AI Solutions and AI Infrastructure with backlog growing to $514 billion across a diversified customer base.

Alphabet’s operating income jumped 34% to $40.8 billion as the operating margin expanded 2% to 34%. Net income and EPS each nearly quadrupled during the quarter to $28.2 billion and $9.11, respectively. These results included $98 billion in other income, primarily the result of unrealized gains on equity securities, including significant positions in Anthropic and SpaceX.

Alphabet is seeing wide adoption of Gemini Enterprise with nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 using it. Gemini models now process 22 billion API tokens per minute (up 37% from the previous quarter) and the Gemini App has 950 million monthly active users. Alphabet is seeing strong demand for its security solutions, and the new Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber delivers highly cost-efficient solutions.

During the first half of the year, operating cash flow increased 33% to $84.9 billion with free cash flow dropping 82% to $4.3 billion as capital expenditures more than doubled to $80.6 billion as the company invests heavily in servers and datacenters to meet strong compute demand. Alphabet increased its outlook for capital expenditures for the full year to a range of $195 billion to $205 billion, up from previous guidance of $180 billion to $190 billion. Alphabet expects to earn attractive returns on this invested capital while maintaining a resilient and healthy balance sheet, even as it finances these enormous investments with debt and equity offerings to supplement strong operating cash flows. As of quarter end, Alphabet's strong balance sheet boasted $374 billion in cash and securities, $98.2 billion in long-term debt and $640.5 billion in shareholders' equity (starting to catch up with Berkshire's equity).

Management repeatedly emphasized that AI is a meaningful revenue driver across Search, Google Cloud, YouTube, advertising, and enterprise software. Alphabet highlighted strong adoption of Gemini models, AI Mode in Search, and AI-powered advertising tools as evidence that AI monetization is accelerating. AI Mode has surpassed 1 billion monthly active users, while AI Overviews and AI Mode are generating incremental search queries instead of replacing traditional search activity as more conversational AI searches create additional opportunities for highly targeted advertising. AI Max has already been adopted by 500,000 advertisers to take advantage of this traffic. Alphabet’s full stack approach to AI is delivering real, measurable value for consumers, customers and the company’s partners globally.

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Published in The Shrewd'm Weekly · 26th July, 2026



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