Credit: Google
Google Cloud Australia has seen its revenue double in the last 12 months to hit almost $40 million.
However, the cloud provider’s profit hit a meagre $1.02 million with $35.3 million in cost of services wiping off most of the marginal gain.
The company, which sells Google Cloud’s hosting services through its technology centre, posted a profit before tax of $1.6 million, a number calculated after deducting a finance expense of $2.5 million and a $632,899 tax bill.
Although its profit for the year ended 31 December 2019 represented a fraction of its overall revenue, the figure marked a 121 per cent rise on the previous year’s profit of $460,118.
This in turn was only a 4.5 per cent increase from the previous year's result of $440,508, marking a sharp uplift in the company’s profitability since it first launched in Australia in 2016.
Other major costs to hit the business last year included a property, plant equipment depreciation that almost tripled from approximately $10 million to almost $30 million in 2019.
Google Cloud Australia also saw its staffing costs increase to $755,294 paid to staff, a $238,000 rise from 2018.
Google Cloud’s sister company, Google Australia meanwhile recently saw its own profits for 2019 plummet after its income tax bill shot up by 276 per cent.
This entity includes Google's cloud services revenue, but it is not broken down on its balance sheet.
The technology behemoth posted $33 million in net profit after tax for the year ended 31 December 2019, a steep drop from its $129 million bottom line the year before.
The fall came as Google Australia clocked a total income tax expense of $99 million, almost three quarters of its pre-tax profit for the year.
