Soaring Google stock hits new high

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc.’s earnings are growing so rapidly that not even the stock market bulls can keep up.

Blown away by the online search engine leader’s first-quarter profit, securities analysts raised their already high expectations for Google and investors scrambled Friday to buy a piece of a company that’s drawing comparisons to some of high-technology’s greatest growth stocks of the past.

The fervor lifted Google’s stock to a new high on an otherwise dismal day on Wall Street.

Google’s shares traded as high as $224 on the Nasdaq Stock Market before retreating later in the day. By the time Nasdaq closed, Google’s shares stood at $215.81, a gain of $11.59, or 5.7 percent.

Investors are rewarding the Mountain View-based company for the moneymaking prowess of its Internet search engine, which generates revenue by distributing text-based ads on Google’s home page and thousands of other Web sites.

Google gets paid whenever someone clicks on the commercial links — something that’s happening with increasing frequency, prodding advertisers to pay a higher price to have their messages displayed.

That dynamic is boosting Google’s profits way beyond the most optimistic scenarios that were envisioned when the company first sold its shares for $85 in an initial public offering completed eight months ago.

In the first quarter, the company earned $369.1 million, or $1.29 per share, on revenue of $1.26 billion. The earnings, nearly a six-fold improvement from the same time last year, were 40 percent above the mean analyst estimate of 92 cents.