Alphabet, parent company of Google, looks set to take the crown from Apple and become the world’s most valuable company.

The tech company announced better than expected results on Monday and gave investors their first proper look under the hood at the engine that drives its business. Operating income from its core businesses rose 23% in 2015. Investors liked what they saw and shares spiked 8% in after-hours trading.

Alphabet closed the trading day valued at $518bn, behind Apple’s $538bn. But if it holds on to that gain once trading begins again Tuesday, it would be worth close to $560bn – the company first broke the half-trillion marker in October.

Wall Street has fretted for years about how much the core Google business was being used to fund founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s ambitions to grow new businesses in robots, self-driving cars and spaceships.

For the first time the company’s core business was broken out from its big-swing “moonshot” projects, allowing investors to see inside the tech giant with a little more clarity, and they like it a lot.

Google segment revenues for 2015 were $74.5bn and it made a profit of $23.4bn. For 2014 Google segment revenues were $65.67bn and profits were just over $19bn. In contrast the “other bets” had revenues of $448m for the 12 months ending 31 December 2015 and lost $3.5bn. In 2014 the moonshots brought in $327m and lost $1.9bn.



Google’s ad revenue – its primary source of income – for the last quarter was $19.08bn, up 17% year-over-year, in the company’s first earnings report as Alphabet.



Market analyst Scott Kessler of S&P Capital IQ said: “It’s nice to see that expenses are being more carefully overseen.” But Kessler still has the stock as a “hold.”

“The company is in the crosshairs of regulators around the world,” Kessler said, pointing to ongoing copyright litigation with Oracle and the company’s investigation by the European Commission over antitrust concerns and rows over tax breaks.

Kessler said the earnings might have resulted in “enthusiasm, even euphoria,” but there were miles to go for Alphabet yet. “There are a lot of legal and regulatory issues that may come to a head this year,” he said.

It is the first time that Alphabet has provided specific numbers for its core business (Google’s search engine, YouTube, Android, Google Play and other units that form the heart of its business) and for the rest of the companies businesses (Google X, its research arm, Calico, its biotech company, Google Fiber, high speed internet, Nest, smart home devices and other bets on future technologies).



Ruth Porat, the company’s chief financial officer, said Alphabet was keeping a close eye on spending. “We remain on a journey, and it is still early days,” she told analysts on a conference call.

Outside of Google, Alphabet’s subsidiaries will each have their own chief executive, reporting to Page. The structure is reportedly modelled after billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which owns a complex portfolio of businesses including clothes manufacturer Fruit of the Loom, insurer Geico and this week bought Precision Castparts, maker of aerospace and other industrial parts.



“Our very strong revenue growth in Q4 reflects the vibrancy of our business, driven by mobile search as well as YouTube and programmatic advertising, all areas in which we’ve been investing for many years. We’re excited about the opportunities we have across Google and Other Bets to use technology to improve the lives of billions of people,” Porat said.

