Google’s new CFO makes earnings call debut, says company can ‘push a little further’ on cost cuts

For nine years, the CFO role at Google and parent company Alphabet was held by Ruth Porat, who took a giant pay package in 2015 to leave Wall Street for Silicon Valley.

On Tuesday, Porat’s successor, Anat Ashkenazi, made her earnings call debut, and said one of her top priorities will be to drive more “cost efficiencies” across the company, an effort started by her predecessor and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

“There’s really good work that was done, started by Ruth, Sundar and the rest of the lead team to re-engineer the cost base,” Ashkenazi, who previously spent 23 years at drugmaker Eli Lilly, said on the call. “But I think any organization can always push a little further and I’ll be looking at additional opportunities.”

Ashkenazi joined Alphabet in July, almost a year after the company announced that Porat would move into a new role as president and chief investment officer. Her appearance on Tuesday came after Alphabet reported third-quarter earnings that beat on top and bottom lines, driven by strong revenue growth from the company’s search and cloud units.

Alphabet shares, up 21% for the year, rose another 5.8% in extended trading after the report.

The company is fighting to maintain its dominance in search advertising as artificial intelligence upstarts like OpenAI and Perplexity grow in popularity. There’s also TikTok, which recently allowed brands to target ads based on search queries, and Amazon and Meta, which are developing conversational AI tools.

To adjust to the changing competitive landscape and an altered economy, Google has made cuts and initiated internal shakeups. Ashkenazi said one of her priorities is to look across the organization for “further efficiencies” so the company can invest in new areas and maintain its competitive edge and margins.

Alphabet reported $13 billion in capital expenditures in the third quarter, and Ashkenazi said she expects the same level of spending in the fourth. The majority went to technical infrastructure, including servers and data center equipment that power cloud and AI products, Ashkenazi said on the call.

Cloud is a top area that “requires investment,” she added, pointing to the need to scale AI products.

Ashkenazi warned the company will be making higher capital expenditure in 2025, echoing Pichai who, referring to search and coud, said “there is an aggressive roadmap ahead for 2025.” Askenazi said the investments are based on demand from customers so it “will translate to revenue in the fairly short term.”

Meanwhile, she and the leadership team will continue cutting costs across the company to “try and offset some of these” investments.

During the Q&A portion of the call, Evercore ISI’s Mark Mahaney asked, “As you’re coming in looking at this fresh, is it clear to you there are a lot of newfound cost efficiencies or ongoing cost efficiencies?”

Ashkenazi responded by saying that in the latest period, earnings were boosted by “headcount management, facilities management, other process efficiencies,” and that there’s “more to come.”

The new CFO said one way Google can find additional efficiencies is by using AI “within our own processes and how we get work done.”

Source: www.cnbc.com