Insider Selling: Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Director Sells $202,512.00 in Stock

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Director John Hennessy sold 600 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, January 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $337.52, for a total transaction of $202,512.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director owned 21,224 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,163,524.48. This trade represents a 2.75% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link.

Alphabet Price Performance

GOOGL opened at $330.00 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $3.98 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.54, a PEG ratio of 1.82 and a beta of 1.08. Alphabet Inc. has a 1 year low of $140.53 and a 1 year high of $340.49. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.06, a current ratio of 1.75 and a quick ratio of 1.75. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $311.33 and its 200 day simple moving average is $254.85.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, October 29th. The information services provider reported $2.87 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.29 by $0.58. Alphabet had a return on equity of 35.00% and a net margin of 32.23%.The business had revenue of $102.35 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $99.90 billion. As a group, analysts predict that Alphabet Inc. will post 8.9 earnings per share for the current year.

Alphabet Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, December 15th. Stockholders of record on Monday, December 8th were given a $0.21 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, December 8th. This represents a $0.84 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.3%. Alphabet’s dividend payout ratio is currently 8.28%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research analysts recently issued reports on GOOGL shares. President Capital lifted their price target on shares of Alphabet from $258.00 to $323.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, November 6th. Citic Securities boosted their target price on Alphabet from $230.00 to $310.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Monday, November 3rd. Stifel Nicolaus set a $333.00 target price on shares of Alphabet in a report on Thursday, October 30th. CICC Research upped their target price on shares of Alphabet from $240.00 to $303.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, October 31st. Finally, New Street Research raised their price target on shares of Alphabet from $275.00 to $295.00 in a research report on Friday, October 24th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, forty-five have assigned a Buy rating and four have given a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Alphabet presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $326.31.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Alphabet

Several institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in GOOGL. Norges Bank bought a new position in shares of Alphabet in the second quarter worth about $21,944,208,000. Berkshire Hathaway Inc bought a new stake in shares of Alphabet during the 3rd quarter valued at $4,338,397,000. Laurel Wealth Advisors LLC lifted its stake in shares of Alphabet by 17,667.7% during the 2nd quarter. Laurel Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 15,245,075 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $2,686,640,000 after buying an additional 15,159,273 shares in the last quarter. Capital World Investors boosted its holdings in Alphabet by 28.0% in the 3rd quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 53,107,572 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $12,910,542,000 after buying an additional 11,605,785 shares during the period. Finally, Franklin Resources Inc. grew its position in shares of Alphabet by 51.7% during the second quarter. Franklin Resources Inc. now owns 31,817,684 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $5,607,232,000 after purchasing an additional 10,843,853 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 40.03% of the company’s stock.

Trending Headlines about Alphabet

Here are the key news stories impacting Alphabet this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Big AI monetization wins — Apple’s decision to build next‑gen Siri on Google’s Gemini (a central catalyst behind Alphabet topping a ~$4 trillion valuation) implies licensing revenue and much broader Gemini distribution, which supports revenue and margins. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Analyst backing — recent upgrades and a higher price target (e.g., Bank of America raised its GOOGL target) are propping sentiment and provide near‑term buy‑side support. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: New commercial partnerships — Google announced a Woolworths pilot to add agentic AI to its Olive chatbot in Australia, expanding potential retail use cases and distribution for Google’s AI services. Read More.
• Neutral Sentiment: Competitive positioning — DeepMind leadership and comments that Chinese models are “months” behind support Alphabet’s technical edge, but competition remains intense and will keep investment cycles high. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Antitrust fallout — Google asked a judge to defer an order forcing it to share search data while it appeals a ruling that found an illegal monopoly in search; ongoing remedies or eventual enforcement could materially affect the core search business and ad economics. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Copyright litigation risk — major publishers are seeking to join a class action alleging Google used copyrighted material to train its AI, creating potential licensing costs, damages or restrictions on training data. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Infrastructure headwinds — Google warns U.S. transmission system constraints are slowing data‑center hookups and could raise capex and delay cloud/AI capacity expansion, pressuring near‑term margins. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Insider selling — a disclosed director sale (600 shares) is small but adds to mixed sentiment amid other headwinds. Read More.

Alphabet Company Profile

Alphabet Inc is the holding company created in 2015 to organize Google and a portfolio of businesses developing technologies beyond Google’s core internet services. Its principal operations are led by Google, which builds and operates consumer-facing products such as Google Search, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Maps and Google Workspace, as well as advertising platforms (Google Ads and AdSense) that historically generate the majority of its revenue. Google also develops consumer hardware (Pixel phones, Nest smart-home devices, Chromecast) and developer and distribution platforms such as Google Play.

Beyond Google’s consumer and advertising businesses, Alphabet invests in enterprise and infrastructure offerings through Google Cloud, which provides cloud computing, data analytics and productivity services to businesses and institutions.