NEW YORK, April 30 (Xinhua) -- In response to Alphabet's gloomy first-quarter numbers, Wall Street saw a steep sell-off of the stock on Tuesday.
Shares of Google's parent company plunged 7.5 percent to close at 1,198.96 U.S. dollars apiece after decreasing as much as 8.7 percent at its low. The stock finished the session with its biggest percentage decline in more than six years.
Alphabet was among the worst performers in the S&P 500 index, which climbed 0.1 percent on Tuesday.
The S&P 500 communication services sector slid 2.56 percent, largely dragged down by the poor performance of Alphabet shares.
Tuesday's steep sell-off caused the company to erase about 67 billion dollars in market cap, according to figures from financial data research platform YCharts.
The U.S. tech giant on late Monday posted a year-on-year increase of 17 percent of revenue to 36.3 billion dollars for the first quarter ending on March 31, compared to the same period last year, missing the market expectation of 37.33 billion dollars.
The weaker revenue was mainly driven by decelerating ad sales growth at Google, according to the company.
Some brokerages downgraded their ratings of the stock after the downbeat earnings results.
Stifel downgraded Google's parent company to "hold" from "buy" and maintained a price target of 1,287 dollars.
In a note to investors, Stifel analyst Scott Devitt said the "unexpected degree of revenue deceleration" may make hurt Alphabet's valuation growth over the next year.
Despite Tuesday's nosedive, the stock has still gained more than 14 percent this year.
Alphabet is among the some 150 S&P 500 companies that are scheduled to release quarterly earnings this week.
More than half of the S&P 500 companies have reported so far and 77 percent of them have topped analyst expectations, according to Refinitiv.
