Google chief to cash in £274m as profits soar 73pc
GOOGLE’S chief executive is in line for a £274m payday after it revealed another sales bonanza.
Sundar Pichai’s stock award has soared in value after the tech giant’s share price rocketed by more than 90pc in just four years.
In that time the shares have risen from about $520 to $1,080.
It means Pichai will receive 353,939 shares worth about $382m (£274m) in total tomorrow. The award will be one of the biggest corporate payouts in recent history.
It came as Google’s parent Alphabet smashed expectations last night with revenue soaring 26pc to £22bn for the three months ending March 31 – or £244m per day. Profits jumped 73pc to £6.5bn as the firm benefited from soaring sales of advertisements on Google.
Finance chief Ruth Porat said the firm had exciting opportunities ahead as revenues from advertising rose 23pc to £19bn. Its revenues from other areas, such as its Nest set of home thermostats, security cameras and smoke alarms, rose 34pc to £3bn.
Over the whole of 2018, the firm is forecast to rake in £95.8bn.
The results eased concerns that Alphabet was diversifying too far from its core search engine. They also suggested that rising global privacy concerns were not hurting profits.
Pichai, 45, was put on the shares plan in 2014, one year before he was promoted to chief executive. At that time, the company became a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc as part of a major reorganisation.
Pichai is regarded as the forgotten man of Silicon Valley because of his low-profile.
He previously spearheaded development of the firm’s Chrome internet browser and the Android smartphone operating system, and is now in charge of Google’s most important customer businesses, including advertising and artificial intelligence.
But the father-of-two’s award still looks modest next to some other Silicon Valley legends.
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg cashed in £2bn of shares when his firm went public in 2012, while Tesla chief executive Elon Musk raked in £1.2bn in 2016 from a separate sell-off.
Google – through its advertising sales – accounts for about 98pc of Alphabet’s revenues, giving Pichai enormous power.
The Indian-born boss joined the tech giant in 2004 and rapidly rose through the ranks to become one of co-founder Larry Page’s top lieutenants. He took over from Page as head of the search-engine business in 2015, putting him in charge of a vast portfolio that includes video website You Tube, Android, Google Cloud and development of hardware such as the Pixel smartphones and the Google Home smart speaker.
Along with fellow online advertising behemoth Facebook, Alphabet’s share price has been hit in recent weeks as the Cambridge Analytica data scandal unfolded.
The companies rely on data about users to target advertising, but have come under fire for not explaining clearly what they have collected, sparking outcry on both sides of the Atlantic.
In the case of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook allegedly allowed data on millions of its users to be obtained by the firm – which is accused of then using it to target political advertising.
It has led some advertisers to drop Facebook in protest. That has spooked investors in Google, because of its heavy reliance on ad income.