Google CEO Larry Page offered a brief apology on Thursday after Google shares fell 9 percent when the company accidentally released its third-quarter earnings report several hours early.
“I'm sorry for the scramble earlier today,” he
said during an earnings call.
The search giant had planned to release its third-quarter results after
Wall Street’s closing bell on Thursday. Instead, they appeared on the
Securities and Exchange Commission website shortly after 12:30 p.m. ET. The press release said, “PENDING LARRY QUOTE,” which presumably refers to Google CEO Larry Page.
The Wall Street Journal got a screenshot of the release:
Google’s third-quarter earnings fell short of analysts’ expectations as earnings fell 20 percent from a year earlier, reports
The Wall Street Journal.
As a result, its shares dropped as much as 11 percent, to $676, but
regained ground to 9 percent before Nasdaq halted trading.
Hours later, the official report hit Google's
investors website, with the missing quote from Page:
“We had a strong quarter. Revenue was up 45 percent year-on-year, and,
at just fourteen years old, we cleared our first $14 billion revenue
quarter. I am also really excited about the progress we’re making
creating a beautifully simple, intuitive Google experience across all
devices.”
Trading resumed once the official report was released.
Google is blaming the gaffe on its financial printer R.R. Donnelly, saying it filed the draft earnings statement early, without authorization, according to
Reuters.
It released the following statement on Thursday afternoon:
"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."
Page echoed this statement in his earnings call on Thursday.
Mashable called the PR gaffe an “extremely rare event” for Google.
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