Google Earnings Fiasco Plagues Internet ETFs
Following Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) third-quarter earnings pre-announcement and the surprisingly slack results included therein, at least two ETFs with large allocations to the Internet search giant are trading lower.
The First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund (NYSE:FDN) is off 1.6 percent in midday trading on volume that is already approximately 20 percent higher than usual. Shares of Google are presently halted following a request by the company.
Shares of Google, the largest provider of Internet search services, have traded in a range of almost $84 today. The stock was trading around $755 at the time of the early earnings release, found in an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, before plunging as low as $676.
The company showed a profit of $9.03 per share, well below the $10.65 per share analysts expected. California-based Google was scheduled to report those results today after the close of U.S. markets. Paid clicks on advertisements Google carries rose 33 percent year-over-year and six percent from the second quarter.
Revenue was $11.33 billion, well below the $11.86 billion analysts expected. In a sign that Google's most important revenue driver, the paid clicks on advertisements, is slowing, the company said that metric tumbled by 15 percent in the third-quarter from the year-earlier period. The First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund, which has $504.6 million in assets under management, allocates nearly 11 percent of its weight to Google. To be precise, the ETF's weight to Google is 10.66 percent, which is well above the 7.38 percent allocated to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), FDN's second-largest holding.
The smaller PowerShares NASDAQ Internet Portfolio (NASDAQ:PNQI) is also suffering in the wake of the Google earnings miss. That ETF is off almost two percent on volume that is already about 50 percent higher than usual.
Google's earnings miss is weighing on shares of Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), often referred to as the "Google of China." That stock is down 2.2 percent. Google and Baidu are PNQI's two largest holdings, combining for almost 16.4 percent of the ETF's weight. PNQI has $51.9 million in assets under manage.
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