By Deborah M. Todd and Narottam Medhora
(Reuters) - Google's parent Alphabet Inc missed Wall Street targets for first-quarter profit and revenue on Thursday, driving shares of the Web search company down more than 4 percent in late trading on Thursday.
Alphabet, the world's No.2 publicly traded company by market capitalisation, said consolidated revenue rose to $20.26 billion from $17.26 billion. That was slightly below the $20.37 billion analyst consensus, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Earnings per share of $7.50, excluding one-time items, missed the analyst target of $7.97.
Rosenblatt Securities analyst Martin Pyykkonen said the effect of foreign currency was worse for Alphabet than expected.
"If there had been a little better foreign currency translation, it would have been better than the Street consensus," he said.
On a conference call after the earnings announcement, Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said, "As a result of the ongoing strength of the U.S. dollar, we realized a negative currency impact on our revenues year-over-year of $762 million, or $593 million after the benefit of our hedging program. Holding currency constant to prior periods, our total revenue grew 23%" year-over-year and declined 4% sequentially reflecting holiday seasonality."
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Cost-per-click, or the average price of online ads, fell 9 percent in the quarter ended March 31, although Pyykkonen said some analysts had been expecting a decline of 10 percent.
Google's advertising revenue increased 16.2 percent to $18.02 billion, while the number of ads, or paid clicks, rose 29 percent, the company said.
Losses increased at the company's Other Bets business, which includes its broadband business Google Fiber, home automation products Nest, self-driving cars and X - the company's research facility that works on "moon shot" ventures.
The loss widened to $802 million, up from $633 million a year earlier. Revenue rose to $166 million from $80 million.
Alphabet's net income rose to $4.21 billion, or $6.02 per Class A and B share and Class C capital stock, from $3.52 billion, or $5.10 per share.
The company's shares fell to $744.21 in after hours trade from a close of $780.
(This story corrects for dropped word 'billion' in second paragraph)
(Reporting by Narottam Medhora in Bengaluru and Deborah Todd in San Francisco; Editing by Peter Henderson, Savio D'Souza and Bernard Orr)