Alphabet Inc - Class A (GOOGL) — Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Alphabet's Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. With us today are Sundar Pichai, Philipp Schindler and Ruth Porat. Now I'll quickly cover the safe harbor. Some of the statements that we make today regarding our business, operations and financial performance may be considered forward-looking. Such statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially. Please refer to our Forms 10-K and 10-Q, including the risk factors discussed in our upcoming Form 10-K filing for the year ended December 31, 2023. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release, which is distributed and available to the public through our Investor Relations website located at abc.xyz/investor. Our comments will be on year-over-year comparisons unless we state otherwise. And now I'll turn the call over to Sundar.

Hello, everyone. Our results reflect strong momentum and product innovation continuing into 2024. Today, I'm going to talk about four main topics. One, our investments in AI, including how it's helping Search; two, subscriptions, which reached $15 billion in annual revenue, up 5 times since 2019. Subscriptions are growing strongly powered by YouTube Premium and Music, YouTube TV and Google One. Three, Cloud, which crossed $9 billion in revenues this quarter and saw accelerated growth driven by our GenAI and product leadership; and four, our investments and focus to meet the growth opportunities ahead. First, AI and Search. As you know, we have long led the way in using AI to improve many of our products from Search to Ads to most of our consumer and enterprise products, helping billions of people already. Last year brought new excitement around GenAI, and I'm proud of how we responded responsibly with deep advances in foundation models and a number of great launches. We closed the year by launching the Gemini era, a new industry-leading series of models that will fuel the next generation of advances. Gemini is the first realization of the vision we had when we formed Google DeepMind, bringing together our two world-class research teams. It's engineered to understand and combine text, images, audio, video and code in a natively multimodal way, and it can run on everything from mobile devices to data centers. Gemini gives us a great foundation. It's already demonstrating state-of-the-art capabilities, and it's only going to get better. Gemini Ultra is coming soon. The team is already working on the next versions and bringing it to our products. That starts with Search. We are already experimenting with Gemini in Search, where it's making our Search Generative Experience, or SGE, faster for users. We have seen a 40% reduction in latency in English in the U.S. I'm happy with what we are seeing in the earliest days of SGE. It's available through Search Labs in seven languages. By applying generative AI to Search, we are able to serve a wider range of information needs and answer new types of questions, including those that benefit from multiple perspectives. People find it particularly useful for more complex questions like comparisons or longer queries. It's also helpful in areas where people are looking for deeper understanding, such as education or even gift ideas. We are improving satisfaction, including answers for more conversational and intricate queries. As I mentioned earlier, we are surfacing more links with SGE and linking to a wider range of sources on the results page, and we'll continue to prioritize approaches that add value for our users and send valuable traffic to publishers. Beyond SGE, we are continuing to use AI to make searching more accessible and intuitive. Circle to Search lets you search what you see on Android phones with a simple gesture without switching apps. It's available starting this week on Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro and the new Samsung Galaxy S24 Series. And Lens now offers generative AI overviews. You can add text to a visual search to ask questions about anything you see and get AI-powered insights in the moment. In addition to Search, we are also seeing a lot of interest in our AI-powered solutions for advertisers, including our new conversational experience that uses Gemini to accelerate the creation of Search campaigns. Then there is Bard, our conversational AI tool that complements Search. It's now powered by Gemini Pro and is much more capable at things like understanding, summarizing, reasoning, coding and planning. It's now in over 40 languages and over 230 countries around the world. Looking ahead, we'll be rolling out an even more advanced version for subscribers powered by Gemini Ultra. That's a good segue to subscriptions. As I said earlier, it's now a $15 billion business annually. YouTube is the key driver of our subscription revenues. Available in over 100 countries and regions, YouTube Music and Premium have real momentum. They're engaging passionate users and driving great returns for the music industry and creators. YouTube TV is also doing well. We've had great consumer feedback on the viewing experience. People love the navigation, multiview and unlimited DVR. NFL Sunday Ticket has found its perfect home on YouTube, and Philipp will talk about that more. Let me also talk about our subscription service, Google One. It's doing incredibly well with strong user growth. It provides expanded storage, unlocks exclusive features in Google products and allows us to build a strong relationship with our most engaged users. Google One is growing very well, and we are just about to cross 100 million subscribers. From here, we are going to bring in more AI features and look forward to more strong growth to come. Next, Google Cloud. Throughout 2023, we introduced thousands of product advances, including broad GenAI capabilities across our AI infrastructure, our Vertex AI platform and our new Duet AI agents. In Q4, our product and GenAI leadership enabled us to win and expand relationships with many leading brands, including Hugging Face, McDonald's, Motorola Mobility and Verizon. Google Cloud offers our AI Hypercomputer, a groundbreaking supercomputing architecture that combines our powerful TPUs and GPUs, AI software and multi-slice and multi-host technology to provide performance and cost advantages for training and serving models. Customers like Anthropic, Character.AI, Essential AI and Mistral AI are building and serving models on it. For developers building GenAI applications, we offer Vertex AI, a comprehensive enterprise AI platform. It helps customers like Deutsche Telekom and Moody's discover, customize, augment and deploy over 130 GenAI models, including PaLM, MedPaLM, Sec-PaLM and Gemini, as well as popular open source and partner models. Vertex AI has seen strong adoption with the API request increasing nearly 6 times from H1 to H2 last year. Using Vertex AI, Samsung recently announced its Galaxy S24 Series smartphone with Gemini and Imagen 2, our advanced text-to-image model. Shutterstock has added Imagen 2 to their AI image generator, enabling users to turn simple text prompts into unique visuals. And Victoria's Secret & Co. will look to personalize and improve the customer experience with Gemini, Vertex AI, Search and Conversations. Customers are increasingly choosing Duet AI, our packaged AI agents for Google Workspace and Google Cloud Platform, to boost productivity and improve their operations. Since its launch, thousands of companies and over 1 million trusted testers have used Duet AI. It will incorporate Gemini soon. In Workspace, Duet AI is helping employees benefit from improved productivity and creativity at thousands of paying customers around the world, including Singapore Post, Uber and Woolworths. In Google Cloud Platform, Duet AI assists software developers and cybersecurity analysts. Duet AI for Developers is the only GenAI offering to support the complete development and operations life cycle, fine-tuned with the customer's own core purpose and policies. It's helping Wayfair, GE Appliances and Commerzbank write better software, faster with AI code completion, code generation and chat support. With Duet AI and Security Operations, we are helping cybersecurity teams at Fiserv, Spotify and Pfizer. Our robust growth has been driven by strong direct and indirect channels. With ISVs, we have nearly tripled the number of co-sell deals from 2022 to 2023. In our ecosystem, there are nearly 90,000 Google Cloud GenAI-enabled consultants. And Accenture has teamed up with Google Cloud to create a joint generative AI center of excellence. Next, let me turn to our focus and discipline as we pursue the opportunities ahead. Search, YouTube and Cloud are supported by our state-of-the-art compute infrastructure. This infrastructure is also key to realizing our big AI ambitions. It's a major differentiator for us. We continue to invest responsibly in our data centers and compute to support this new wave of growth in AI-powered services for us and for our customers. Through this, we are being disciplined in how we run the company. You've heard me talk about our efforts to durably reengineer our cost base and to improve our velocity and efficiency. That work continues. Teams are working to focus on key priorities and execute fast, removing layers and simplifying their organizational structures. As just one example, our devices team has brought together different teams from across Nest, Fitbit and other teams into a new functional structure. This will help us pull resources and drive progress across our Pixel portfolio. Across different teams, we have wound down some non-priority projects, which will help us invest and operate well in our growth areas. We are also improving our machine utilization, building on our years of experience in driving cost efficiencies in our computing infrastructure and operations. And through our supplier efficiency efforts and automation of certain processes, we have made major improvements in areas like procurement, achieving significant savings. That's a snapshot of the quarter. Before I close, a couple of other highlights. Pixel 8, our AI-first phone, was awarded Phone of the Year by numerous outlets. It now uses Gemini Nano with features like Magic Compose for Google Messages and more to come. In our Other Bets portfolio of companies, Waymo, which is deeply focused on safety, reached over 1 million fully autonomous ride-hailing trips. And Isomorphic Labs entered into strategic partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novartis to apply AI to treat diseases, which has great potential. 2023 was a year of profound innovation and product momentum. Thank you to our many partners. We succeed when our partners do, and we are grateful for the work we do together. From our partners across the Android ecosystem who are on display at CES to our deep relationships with retailers, small businesses and advertising partners, to the next generation of AI start-ups and developers, and many more. I also want to thank all of our employees for their hard work throughout 2023 and the start of the new year. I'm excited for what's ahead in 2024.

Thanks, Sundar, and hi, everyone. Google Services revenues of $76 billion were up 12% year-on-year. In Google advertising, Search and other revenues grew 13% year-on-year, led again by solid growth in the retail vertical. We had particular strength in retail in APAC, a trend that began in the second quarter of 2023 and continued through the end of the year. YouTube ads revenue were up 16% year-on-year driven by growth in both direct response and brand. Network revenues declined 2% year-on-year. In subscriptions, platforms and devices, which was previously named Google Other, year-on-year revenues increased 23% driven by strong growth in subscriptions. Now for some color on the quarter and where we see continued upside for long-term advertising growth. Over the last few calls, I have consistently highlighted how we're putting Google AI to work for our customers to deliver profitability and help them achieve their goals in a do-more-with-less environment. From a product perspective, in Q4, Performance Max remained a bright spot. We're also excited about demand gen momentum. This is our big bet to help social advertisers find and convert consumers via immersive, relevant visual creatives across YouTube, including YouTube Shorts, Gmail and Discover. In a single campaign, you get access to over 3 billion users as they stream, scroll, connect and decide what to buy. Tens of thousands of advertisers are testing and on average seeing 6% more conversions per dollar versus image-only ads and discovery campaigns. As we look ahead, we're also starting to put generative AI in the hands of more and more businesses to help them build better campaigns and even better performing ads. Automatically created assets help advertisers show more relevant search ads by creating tailored headlines and descriptions based on each ad's context. Adoption was up with strong feedback in Q4. In addition to now being available in eight languages, more advanced GenAI-powered capabilities are coming to ACA. And then last week's big news was that Gemini will power new conversational experience in Google Ads. This is open and beta to U.S. and U.K. advertisers. Early tests show advertisers are building higher-quality search campaigns with less effort, especially SMBs who are 42% more likely to publish a campaign with good or excellent ad strength. We can't wait to see how this continues to drive performance and level the playing field for advertisers of all sizes. As we shared last quarter, Ads will continue to play an important role in the new search experience, and we'll continue to experiment with new formats native to SGE. SGE is creating new opportunities for us to improve commercial journeys for people by showing relevant ads alongside search results. We've also found that people are finding ads either above or below the AI-powered overview helpful as they provide useful options for people to take action and connect with businesses. Looking at our strong Search performance for the fourth quarter. Retail was a highlight. We continue to see a stronger start to the season up to and including Cyber Five. In Q3, we indicated that we were seeing early trends of consumers being very price-conscious, and we saw this play out in Q4. With promotional demand at an all-time high, deal seekers using Google had access to double the deals in the U.S. versus last season as well as a better shopping experience. Launches included a one-stop-shop deals destination, new filters like Get it Fast and AI-generated gifting recommendations in SGE. These new features drove incremental query growth during key shopping moments like Cyber Five. Our proven AI-powered ad solutions were also a win for retailers looking to accelerate omni growth and capture holiday demand. Quick examples include a large U.S. big-box retailer who drove a 60%-plus increase in omni Return on Ad Spend and a 22%-plus increase in store traffic using Performance Max during Cyber Five; and a well-known global fashion brand, who drove a 15%-plus higher omnichannel conversion rate versus regular shopping traffic by showcasing its store pickup offering across top markets through pickup later on shopping ads. Moving on to YouTube. We're obviously pleased with YouTube's advertising revenue growth in Q4 and also significant growth in our subscription revenue. I'll reiterate what I have said before: YouTube's success starts with creator success. We give millions of creators more ways to create content and connect with fans and more ways to make money and build their own businesses than any other platform. More creators means more content, which leads to more viewers. And via ads and subscriptions, these viewers fund our creators and drive the eyeballs and engagement our advertisers want. To keep this momentum going, we're focused on delivering value across four pillars: creation, viewers, monetization and responsibility. First, creation, which increasingly takes place on mobile devices. We've invested in a full suite of tools, including our new YouTube Create app for Shorts, to help people make everything from 15-second Shorts to 15-minute videos to 15-hour live streams with a production studio in the palm of their hands. GenAI is supercharging these capabilities. Anyone with a phone can swap in a new backdrop, remove background extras, translate their video into dozens of languages, all without a big studio budget. We're excited about our first products in this area from Dream Screen for AI-generated backgrounds to Aloud for AI-powered dubbing. There is more to come. Number two, viewers. We continue to grow watch time across YouTube with strong growth in Shorts and connected TV. Shorts remains a top priority. We have 2 billion-plus logged-in users every month, and we are averaging 70 billion in daily views. Connected TVs, or what we refer to as the living room, is where viewership is growing the fastest. We're investing to make this experience even better with interactive features tailored to TVs, plus the content people love: our creators, NFL Sunday Ticket and the range of live sports and studio content via YouTube TV and Primetime Channels. Put this all together and YouTube is the must-have app on every connected TV. Monetization is pillar #3 and realized through a combination of ad-supported and subscription offerings. Advertising generates the bulk of our revenue, and we continue to invest heavily here. We've rolled out Connected TV-first formats like 30-second non-skippable ads and pause experiences as well as an industry-first send-to-phone experience that lets people use a second screen to engage with ads. For Shorts, we've developed new formats that are less interruptive to viewers. It's early. We're learning but excited by the opportunities for ads this can unlock. Shorts monetization continues to progress nicely. Our AI-powered video formats from video reach and video view campaigns to demand generation and video action continue to make advertiser dollars go further and drive results across the funnel. We're also introducing new and existing advertisers to YouTube via sports content. Over 90 upfront and scatter advertisers, including Unilever, are partnering with YouTube in our first year across NFL Sunday Ticket in-game advertising opportunities. Our subscription offerings are also growing at a healthy clip. YouTube Music and Premium performed well. Premium users are delivering more value to our partners and YouTube than even ad-supported users do. On average, each additional Premium sign-up boosts earnings for creators, music and media partners and YouTube itself. And we've made Premium even more attractive with new features, bundles and other enhancements. We're also pleased with our first season of NFL Sunday Ticket. It gave creators new opportunities to create content and feed user engagement across traditional user content and professional sports content. Feedback on the user experience, including multiview, has been great. We're excited to continue to innovate here. Responsibility is our fourth pillar, and it underlines everything we do across YouTube. We continue to focus relentlessly on this. As always, deepening our relationships with key partners to bring them the best of Google is a key priority for us, and we continue to do this across industries in Q4. We just talked about the NFL. Sundar mentioned Samsung, among others earlier. Another highlight was our expanded partnership with Porsche to enhance customers' digital experiences with a deeper in-vehicle integration of Google built-in services, including Google Maps and Play. Whether it's continued collaboration with our partners and key ecosystems, we're putting Google AI to work for more customers. I'm excited about the opportunities for continued impact in 2024. I'll wrap with a huge note of gratitude to our customers and partners. Our success is only possible because of their success and then to our Googlers for their outstanding work and focus this year. Ruth, over to you.

Thank you, Philipp. We are very pleased with our full year results with 2023 Alphabet revenues of $307 billion, up 9% versus 2022, which added $25 billion to revenues for the year. We ended with a strong fourth quarter with consolidated revenues of $86.3 billion, up 13% versus last year in both reported and constant currency. Search remained the largest contributor to revenue growth. My comments will be on year-over-year comparisons for the fourth quarter, unless I state otherwise. Total cost of revenues was $37.6 billion, up 6%. Other cost of revenues was $23.6 billion, up 5%, with the increase driven primarily by content acquisition costs associated with YouTube subscription offerings. The growth rate also reflects the offsetting benefit of lapping $1.2 billion in inventory-related charges that we called out in the fourth quarter last year as well as a reduction in depreciation expense due to changes in estimated useful lives we made starting in the first quarter of 2023. In terms of total expenses, the year-on-year comparisons reflect an additional $1.2 billion in exit charges that we took in the fourth quarter of 2023 in connection with actions to optimize our global office space. As you can see in our earnings release, these charges were allocated across the expense lines in other cost of revenues and Operating Expenses based on associated head count. Operating expenses were $25 billion, up 11%, primarily reflecting an increase in R&D expenses, which were driven by the real estate charges, followed by compensation. Operating income was $23.7 billion, up 30%, and our operating margin was 27%. Net income was $20.7 billion, and EPS was $1.64. We delivered free cash flow of $7.9 billion, which was affected by the timing of the $10.5 billion tax payment we made on October 16 that we called out previously related to the deferral of certain tax payments to the fourth quarter. For the full year 2023, free cash flow was $69 billion. We repurchased a total of $62 billion of our Class A and Class C shares in 2023 and ended the year with $111 billion in cash and marketable securities. Turning to segment results. Within Google Services, revenues were $76.3 billion, up 12%. Google Search and other advertising revenues of $48 billion in the quarter were up 13%, led again by growth in retail. YouTube advertising revenues of $9.2 billion were up 16% driven by both direct response and brand advertising. Network advertising revenues of $8.3 billion were down 2%. Subscriptions, platforms and devices revenues, which we previously referred to as other revenues, were $10.8 billion, up 23%, primarily reflecting growth in YouTube subscription revenues. TAC was $14 billion, up 8%. Google Services' operating income was $26.7 billion, up 32%, and the operating margin was 35%. Turning to the Google Cloud segment. Revenues were $9.2 billion for the quarter, up 26%. We're very pleased with the momentum of GCP with an increasing contribution from AI. Google Workspace also delivered strong revenue growth primarily driven by increases in average revenue per seat. Google Cloud delivered operating income of $864 million and an operating margin of 9%. As to our Other Bets, for the full year 2023, revenues were $1.5 billion and the operating loss was $4.1 billion. Results in the fourth quarter benefited from a milestone payment in one of the Other Bets. Turning to our outlook for the business. With respect to Google Services, first, within advertising. We were pleased with the sequential revenue growth of Search and YouTube advertising throughout 2023, which reflects the extraordinary work across our teams to drive improved experiences for users and attractive ROI for advertisers. As we enter 2024 with advertising revenues of more than $100 billion higher than 2019, we remain focused on sustaining healthy growth on this larger base. Second, within subscriptions, platforms and devices, our total revenues from subscription products reached $15 billion for the full year 2023 driven primarily by substantial growth in subscribers for our YouTube subscription offerings. The substantial increase in our subscription revenues over the past few years demonstrates the ability of our teams to deliver high value-add offerings and provides a strong base on which to build, including through YouTube and newer services like Google One. Play had solid growth again in the fourth quarter driven primarily by an increase in the number of buyers. In devices, we continue to make sizable investments with increased emphasis on our Pixel family, particularly with AI-powered innovation while driving further efficiencies across the portfolio. Turning to Google Cloud. We are pleased with operating performance in the year. Full year revenues of $33 billion were up 26% versus prior year, ending with strong Q4 performance. The Cloud team is intensely focused on bringing the benefits of Gemini, our industry-leading AI technology, to enterprises and governments globally, and we are gratified with the level of engagement. The strong demand we are seeing for our vertically integrated AI portfolio is creating new opportunities for Google Cloud across every product area. In terms of profitability, the improvement in 2023 reflects sustained focus across the team with the intent to maintain healthy profitability while we continue to invest to support long-term growth. Turning to margins and expenses. As we have repeatedly stressed, we remain committed to our framework to durably reengineer our cost base as we invest to support our growth priorities. Key contributors to moderating our expense growth include: first, product and process prioritization to ensure we have the right resources behind our most important opportunities and to reallocate resources where we can; second, organizational efficiency and structure. We're focused on removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity. Both product prioritization and the organization design efforts result in a slower pace of hiring, as you can see with our head count down year-on-year, reflecting the reductions we announced in the first quarter of 2023 and a much slower pace of hiring. We will continue to invest in top technical and engineering talent. Finally, we continue to execute the other work streams to slow expense growth, including improving efficiency in our technical infrastructure, streamlining operations across Alphabet through the use of AI, increasing efficiency of our spend with suppliers and vendors through our central procurement organization and optimizing our real estate portfolio. With respect to CapEx, our reported CapEx in the fourth quarter was $11 billion, driven overwhelmingly by investment in our technical infrastructure with the largest component for servers followed by data centers. The step-up in CapEx in Q4 reflects our outlook for the extraordinary applications of AI to deliver for users, advertisers, developers, cloud enterprise customers and governments globally and the long-term growth opportunities that offers. In 2024, we expect investment in CapEx will be notably larger than in 2023. With regard to Other Bets, we've been working to sharpen our investment focus while capturing the upside given compelling technology breakthroughs across the portfolio. For example, last week, Alphabet's X announced that it would be moving to spin out more projects as independent companies through external capital, giving X the opportunity to bring more focus to the breakthrough technologies it is working on to address some of the world's most pressing challenges. Thank you. Sundar, Philipp and I will now take your questions.

I have two for Philipp. Philipp, the first one is about sort of a lot of the new generative AI advertising tools. You obviously have a lot of irons in the fire here. You've been talking about some of the early momentum with tens of thousands of advertisers. The question is, can you sort of walk us through some of the hurdles and gating factors that we should be thinking through that dictate the pace at which these tools can really be rolled out broadly just so we and advertisers can kind of get an understanding for when they could have a bigger impact on the whole business? And then secondly, how do you think about the long-term sales force intensity of the advertising business as you roll more AI-based tools like Performance Max impacting the overall ad allocation?

Thank you. I've touched on this in previous quarters. AI has been integral to our advertising products for a long time, and recent advancements are enabling us to provide more value for advertisers in various areas including bidding, targeting, and creative, as well as enhancing our core experiences for advertisers and publishers. For instance, in core search ads, value-based bidding stands out on the bidding side, broad match is significant on the targeting front, and responsive search ads are making a difference in creative with automatically generated ad assets. We are pleased with the progress in these areas. I previously mentioned the importance of AI essentials in preparing everyone to fully utilize these tools. We've also seen great progress with Performance Max in Q4. Overall, we are on track with our expectations. Regarding sales force intensity, we've made some reallocations, or portfolio adjustments. We have two main teams: the Large Customer Solutions team, which focuses on transformational growth for our largest clients, and the Global Customer Solutions team, which serves every customer from our biggest accounts to millions of smaller businesses. The GCS team is actively driving growth by providing tailored support for each client and has been our fastest-growing channel, achieving strong growth in Q4. We’ve redirected resources towards the GCS side, but it's important to clarify that our restructuring isn’t due to AI eliminating roles. Instead, we recognize significant opportunities with our AI-powered solutions to deliver impressive ROI at scale, which is why these adjustments are being made. I see sales force intensity concentrating more on the mentioned channels going forward.

One for Ruth and one for Philipp. Ruth, you're now into year 2 of durably reengineering your cost structure. Can you just help us assess your progress so far? And are there any guideposts that we should be thinking about going forward? And then Philipp, can you talk more about NFL Sunday Ticket and just what your key learnings were in year 1? How are you thinking about the returns on the investment on both from an advertising perspective and then also subscribers to both Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV?

Thank you for the question. We are very pleased with the progress we are making and are committed to reengineering our cost base as we invest in our growth priorities. I've highlighted some of these in my opening remarks, but it's essential to prioritize products and processes to ensure we allocate the right resources to the most significant opportunities, which allows us to reallocate resources when possible. This quarter, we've focused on improving organizational efficiency and structure by removing layers to simplify execution and increase speed. This focus on product prioritization and organizational design has led to a slower hiring pace, as reflected in our year-on-year headcount numbers and our fourth-quarter results. We also expect a significantly lower hiring rate in the first quarter. Currently, we estimate that severance-related costs will be around $700 million in the first quarter as we continue these efforts. Nonetheless, we will keep investing in top engineering talent. This is crucial, along with the severance-related expenses, as we continue our work. Additionally, we have various initiatives aimed at enhancing efficiency in our technical infrastructure—a substantial ongoing effort; streamlining operations across Alphabet using AI; collaborating with our suppliers and vendors; and optimizing our real estate portfolio. When we talk about reengineering in a sustainable way, it involves building on the ongoing work that we have initiated.

So on the NFL Sunday Ticket side, look, as I said earlier, NFL Sunday Ticket supports our long-term strategy and really helps solidify YouTube's position as a must-have app on everyone's TV set. You asked about some of the learnings. Maybe I'll start with the viewing experience. We've received great feedback so far. People like the navigation, multiview, the chat, the lack of latency, really, really positive feedback on this one. You asked about the ads and the subs. Maybe I'll start with the subscribers. We're pleased with the NFL Sunday Ticket sign-ups in our first season both as part of the YouTube TV bundle and as a stand-alone offering on YouTube Primetime Channels. Remember, you can access them via both. Nothing more to share on the sub side today on this one. On the ad side, as you know, advertisers can buy from an NFL lineup as part of our YouTube Select portfolio. And this actually allows advertisers to reach football fans across YouTube's pretty unique breadth of NFL content, independently of whether you're viewing live NFL games or on YouTube TV or Primetime Channels or watching NFL highlights, post-game commentary on YouTube channels. And we saw solid demand across the ad market around our YouTube Sunday Ticket offering here. We're excited about the partnership ahead or the partnerships ahead. This is our first season. And I mentioned over 90 upfront and scatter advertisers partnered with YouTube in our first year across NFL Sunday Ticket in-game opportunities, which we really appreciate.

Two, if I could. Sundar, a bigger-picture question, coming back to your comments earlier in the call on Search Generative Experience. When you think about the evolution of product over the next couple of years, how do you envision more traditional search and things like the Google Assistant continuing to evolve in a world of Search Generative Experience and Bard? And what that might mean for elements of commercial and noncommercial search and how use cases might change in the years ahead? And then Ruth, I just want to make sure we understood some of the messaging from the release and the public comments around one-timers in the quarter itself. It seems as if they were not allocated to the segments but are more elements of Other Bets and Alphabet-level activities. I just want to confirm whether elements of those one-timers were captured in the P&L statement and whether there were also any elements of legal one-timers that would be called out this quarter as well.

Thanks, Eric. That’s a great question. It’s an exciting time for us as we integrate SGE into our product, and the initial feedback has been positive. We continue to refine it, and it works exceptionally well for certain types of queries. We're expanding the range of queries where it performs well and significantly improves how we answer a particular category of queries for the first time. This gives us a clear direction moving forward. Many people underestimate the complexity of Search and the variety of queries we encounter daily that are new to us. The challenge is to provide a high-quality experience across all the queries we process in Search. Over time, we believe that Assistant will complement this effort. We plan to leverage generative AI, especially with our advanced models in Bard, which will enable us to act more like an agent in the future, going beyond just providing answers and following up with users more effectively. So, that's the opportunity we see ahead. There's a lot of execution required, but we have a good understanding of the way forward, and the feedback from our efforts thus far has been extremely positive.

And then in terms of your other question, so on the real estate charge of $1.2 billion in exit charges related to real estate, that is in Alphabet-level activities. But the other comment I was making in opening comments is when you go through the various line items, R&D, et cetera, you see it spread there. And we have a table and Investor Relations can walk anybody through the technicals on that just to understand how it then gets arrayed across the various lines in the P&L.

I have two for Philipp, I think. Given the importance of connected TV engagement in YouTube, can you talk about the opportunity outside the U.S. for connected TV? And what the company is doing at large to drive more adoption of YouTube or connected TVs given the Google operating system? And can you talk about outside the U.S.?

Yes. Thank you so much for your question. On the connected TV side, I mentioned it actually continues to perform really well. I said before, YouTube is the leader in U.S. streaming watch time and it's not just one audience group diving deep it’s really all audiences. On the international side, it's something we are closely looking at. There's nothing specific I have to add at this moment in time on this one. On the Shorts monetization side, look, we built Shorts to respond to the huge demand from both creators and viewers for short-form video. And we're very pleased with the growth we've seen. I mentioned 2 billion-plus logged-in users every month, 70 billion in daily views. Specifically to the monetization question, Shorts monetization continues to progress nicely. In fact, actually, since we introduced revenue sharing for Shorts, the total creator earnings generated from Shorts have increased every month, and we expect this to continue. And similar, obviously, to our long-form videos, we're really committed here to a long-term partnership. And you heard me say this before, right, when creators succeed, we succeed.

So Philipp, this is not a new question, but it's also been about two years since Performance Max was launched. But it seems like there's been this long lineage of product development and rollout of things like smart bidding in your history, which I believe at the time was designed to help smaller advertisers more easily run search advertising. And today, you're helping me to generate creative as well as manage my spend and maximize ROI across multiple Google Services. So how are you feeling about enabling SMBs who otherwise could not advertise with you before? And what kind of Total Addressable Market expansion tailwind does that create for your revenue growth over the longer term?

Look, as you know, SMBs are a huge focus for us. We mentioned this several times before. They're part of our GCS channel, not only there's more in this. But they've been under a ton of change over the last few years. And our focus has always been here on investing in solutions that really help level the playing field, and you mentioned several of those. So actually, SMBs can compete with bigger brands and more sophisticated advertisers. And so the feedback we're always getting is they need easy solutions that could drive value quickly, and several of the AI-powered solutions that you're mentioning are actually making the workflow and the whole on-ramp and the bidded targeting creative and so on, you mentioned that is so much easier for SMBs. So we're very satisfied with what we're seeing here. We will continue to invest. And I feel AI is really a helpful, very interesting future path to make life not only easier but also much more productive and better ROIs over time, more level playing field for SMBs.

Maybe one for Sundar and one for Ruth. Just on Search growth, I think there are some concerns on use of competitive AI tools as an alternative to Search. Just wondering if you're seeing any changes in query volumes, positive or negative, since you've seen the year evolve and more Search Generative Experiences. And what can really make Google stand out versus other AI tools? And then Ruth, CapEx was $11 billion, a step-up, obviously. Any one-time items in there? Or is that how we should think about the new run rate into '24.

Thanks, Justin. To start, we consider the effects on Search in a broader context. People have numerous information options, and user expectations are always changing. We've been at this for quite some time, and what truly matters is our strong and continuous record of innovation. Generative AI is certainly a new tool for us, but Search involves much more: the range, the depth, the diversity across different areas, and the stability to follow through by accessing rich and diverse sources of online content and presenting it in a compelling manner. Over the past year, we have been testing the Search Generative Experience against various alternatives, and we can see the progress we’re making and how much users appreciate the enhanced experience. I’m feeling very positive about our advancements. Our roadmap for 2024 looks solid in terms of Search and the foundational AI progress, including the model. I'm quite enthusiastic about what lies ahead in 2024.

And with respect to CapEx, the CapEx of $11 billion in the fourth quarter, as I indicated, was overwhelmingly investment in our technical infrastructure. To your question, there was no one-time item in there. It really reflects is our outlook for everything Sundar and Philipp and I have been talking about, the extraordinary applications of AI within Google DeepMind, Google Services, Google Cloud, it's across the board for users, for advertisers, developers, cloud enterprise customers, governments. And it's really the long-term opportunity that offers. So last quarter, we did note that CapEx would continue to grow in 2024. We do expect 2024 full year CapEx to be notably larger than 2023. As a note, I think you all know this, but timing of cash payments can affect the quarterly CapEx number. But the main point is we're continuing to invest.

So I guess a question for, I don't know if it's Sundar or Philipp. But if we go back to the DOJ trial that happened in the fall, there was a document that was disclosed from Google that said something along the lines of why being on ad quality team to deliver 20% RPM growth in Search is a fragile strategy. So dating back to 2019, your business has, I think, more than doubled since then. So I guess, as we sit here today in early 2024, how do you feel about Google's ability to drive Search RPM going forward? And I guess in the context of what Ruth said tonight about the large revenue base, just how do you feel about the monetization?

I have great confidence in the quality of our work, whether it's in search quality or ads quality, as well as our improvements in these areas. Our two main pillars are a strong focus on ads quality to ensure we deliver a real return on investment to advertisers while enhancing user experience, all supported by rigorous technical and market strategies. The core attributes remain unchanged. I believe AI presents us with opportunities on both the organic and monetization fronts, and we are just beginning to explore this potential. With a long-term perspective, I am optimistic about our ability to meet information needs more profoundly, and I am excited about what lies ahead.

One question on YouTube AI and one on cloud. On cloud first, there's just this volatility, this material deceleration last quarter and the nice reacceleration this quarter. Is that explained by where we are in the optimization cycle, and it may be generative AI workloads starting to trickle in now and cause that growth curve to bend back up? Any commentary just on the sort of the volatility, the deceleration and the reacceleration that we've seen? And then Philipp, I wanted to ask on the creative side, and particularly on YouTube and ads and the creative, using AI to improve the creative and really to offer SMBs who have been with Google forever but offer them now performance-based video ad campaigns created by AI. Is that kind of a new growth area? How far along are you in terms of offering this out into the market? And do you think that this opens up a new area of spend that wasn't there before?

Thanks, Mark. On cloud, let me take that. First of all, a combination of factors. I think definitely excitement around the AI solutions on top of our foundational pillar, be it data and analytics, infrastructure, security, etc. But AI is definitely something which is driving interest and early adoption. And as you saw that greater than 70% of GenAI unicorns are using Google Cloud. And so I think it's an area where our strengths will continue to play out as we go through '24, especially when I look at innovation ahead from us on the AI front. And second, I think there are regional variations, but the cost optimizations in many parts are something we have mostly worked through. And I think that was a contributing factor as well.

On your YouTube question, let me start with a general perspective. YouTube's mission has empowered millions of creators worldwide to express themselves, connect with audiences, and build successful businesses. AI has played a crucial role in this development. You may already know about our recent YouTube announcement, where we introduced various new creativity features, including Dream Screen and many other innovative tools. We can certainly leverage this more actively in the advertising space. AI continues to enhance our video ad solutions and measurement capabilities, making it an integral part of video-rich campaigns. Multi-format ads are supported, and there's generative creator music that simplifies the process for creators to create the perfect soundtrack. As I mentioned earlier, AI will open up new avenues for creativity. Considering the progression of models, particularly multimodal ones and their generative capabilities, it's clear how this will affect creators positively and streamline their workflow, much like we see emerging in some of our core products, such as ACA on the Search side.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you again on our first quarter 2024 call. Thank you and have a good evening.