Google Announces Stock Buyback as Earnings Rise - The New York Times

A strong quarter for the company formerly known as Google

"Excluding the cost of stock options and related tax benefits, Google’s profit was $7.35 a share, compared with $6.25 a year ago. Analysts had expected $7.20 a share according to Bloomberg.
Those numbers represent the closing act for a company that we can now call “old Google.” The company this month reorganized into the holding company Alphabet. Starting next year it will separate the financial results of Google’s traditional search and advertising businesses from the dizzying number of appendages — A to Z — that includes, among other things, a pharmaceutical company, two venture capital arms and a project to build self-driving cars. (The exact value of the stock buyback was $5,099,019,513.59 which mirrors the square root of 26, as in 26 letters of the alphabet.)
The company’s shares were up nearly 11 percent in early after-hours trading Thursday."

Google Announces Stock Buyback as Earnings Rise - The New York Times