There's bad news to come in Google's earnings call later today. But the news was supposed to come a few hours later, and with a presumably sunny quote from CEO Larry Page.
That's not how it went down, however. Somebody at the search giant filed its earnings with the SEC early, and the press release is clearly a version not meant for public distribution—it's marked "PENDING LARRY QUOTE" at the top.
The earnings themselves are pretty terrible. The company earned $2.74 billion during the third quarter, as opposed to $3.06 billion during the same quarter last year. That's $9.03 in earnings per share, well below analysts' expectations of $10.65 per share.
Google stock dropped almost $70 on the accidentally released news, hitting $687.30 per share before the company halted trading.
The search giant blamed the news leak on the financial printing company it works with, RR Donnelley. RR Donnelley stock dropped about five percent before climbing back, probably due to investors assuming the company would lose a big customer, get sued, or both. Facebook stock is also down nearly four percent today on news of the poor Google results (the Google drop indicates online ad revenue is down, and that doesn't bode well for Facebook either).
Google has said that once the earnings release is "finalized" the company will release its earnings, resume trading, and hold its earnings call as scheduled at 1:30 PM Pacific Time.
The screw-up took place while the company was trying to focus press attention on a different event: in San Francisco, Google was showing off its new $249 Chromebook.
The Google slide appears to be part of a wider slump today in the technology sector. Bloomberg reports that tech stocks on the S&P 500 dropped 1.4 percent overall; in addition to the Facebook fall, Apple slid 1.8 percent and IBM dropped 2.6 percent.
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