Barrow Hanley Mewhinney & Strauss LLC Buys 428,412 Shares of Alphabet Inc. $GOOG

Barrow Hanley Mewhinney & Strauss LLC boosted its stake in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) by 46.7% during the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 1,345,397 shares of the information services provider’s stock after buying an additional 428,412 shares during the quarter. Barrow Hanley Mewhinney & Strauss LLC’s holdings in Alphabet were worth $327,671,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in GOOG. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in Alphabet by 1.3% during the 2nd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 416,753,033 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $73,927,821,000 after purchasing an additional 5,182,111 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 1.3% during the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 188,914,125 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $33,511,477,000 after purchasing an additional 2,428,266 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Alphabet by 0.4% in the second quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 107,760,033 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $19,022,926,000 after buying an additional 441,177 shares in the last quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 8.6% in the third quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 99,529,742 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $24,240,469,000 after buying an additional 7,904,434 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Sanders Capital LLC lifted its position in Alphabet by 6.4% during the 2nd quarter. Sanders Capital LLC now owns 35,357,943 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $6,272,146,000 after buying an additional 2,117,990 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 27.26% of the company’s stock.

Alphabet Stock Performance

GOOG stock opened at $306.93 on Wednesday. Alphabet Inc. has a 1-year low of $142.66 and a 1-year high of $350.15. The company has a current ratio of 2.01, a quick ratio of 2.01 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.11. The firm has a market cap of $3.71 trillion, a PE ratio of 28.39, a P/E/G ratio of 1.79 and a beta of 1.10. The business’s 50-day moving average price is $319.96 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $288.87.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) last released its earnings results on Thursday, February 5th. The information services provider reported $2.82 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.59 by $0.23. Alphabet had a return on equity of 35.01% and a net margin of 32.81%.The firm had revenue of $113.83 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $111.24 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $2.15 EPS. The company’s revenue was up 18.0% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, research analysts forecast that Alphabet Inc. will post 8.89 earnings per share for the current year.

Alphabet Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, March 16th. Investors of record on Monday, March 9th will be issued a dividend of $0.21 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, March 9th. This represents a $0.84 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.3%. Alphabet’s payout ratio is presently 7.77%.

Insider Activity at Alphabet

In other Alphabet news, major shareholder 2017 Gp L.L.C. Gv sold 1,845,308 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, January 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $19.00, for a total value of $35,060,852.00. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CEO Sundar Pichai sold 32,500 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, January 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $321.21, for a total value of $10,439,325.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 2,244,372 shares in the company, valued at $720,914,730.12. This trade represents a 1.43% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders sold 2,112,493 shares of company stock valued at $118,605,094 over the last three months. Company insiders own 12.99% of the company’s stock.

Key Stories Impacting Alphabet

Here are the key news stories impacting Alphabet this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Google is rolling out Gemini AI “Agent Designer” on the Pentagon’s GenAI.mil portal, making custom AI agents available to the Pentagon’s ~3 million personnel — a meaningful enterprise reference customer and validation of Google’s government AI strategy. Google deepens Pentagon AI push after Anthropic sues Trump administration
• Positive Sentiment: Alphabet introduced Gemini Embedding 2, a new AI embedding model; market coverage noted an immediate positive reaction to the product release, supporting near-term demand and AI positioning. Google (GOOGL) Stock Rises after Introducing New Gemini Embedding 2 AI Model
• Positive Sentiment: Cloud-commercial momentum: expanded Waystar–Google Cloud partnership and continued deals (e.g., CVS Health AI-enabled platform) point to recurring cloud revenue and cross‑sell opportunities for Google Cloud. Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) Announced Expanded Partnership Between Waystar and Google Cloud
• Positive Sentiment: Short interest fell meaningfully in late February (down ~29% to ~31.9M shares), reducing immediate downside pressure from short sellers and lowering days-to-cover — a modest technical positive for the stock.
• Neutral Sentiment: Some short-interest reporting for early March shows anomalous zero/NaN values — treat those data points with caution; the underlying trend through late Feb was lower short interest.
• Neutral Sentiment: Meta will add advertiser location fees to cover digital taxes, following Google/Amazon precedent — an industry-level change that may normalize advertiser pass-throughs but doesn’t uniquely move Alphabet’s core fundamentals. Meta to charge advertisers a fee to offset Europe’s digital taxes
• Negative Sentiment: Nvidia’s high-bandwidth memory (HBM) shortage and rising HBM costs could raise infrastructure expenses for AI deployments and cloud providers, potentially increasing Google’s AI compute costs and capex. Nvidia’s (NVDA) Memory Shortage Could Cause Google (GOOGL) Billions
• Negative Sentiment: Regulatory risk: Indonesia’s plan to restrict high‑risk digital platforms for under‑16s could reduce engagement/monetization in that market if implemented broadly. Update: Indonesia Plans to Ban High-Risk Digital Platforms for Children Under 16
• Negative Sentiment: Insider activity: a recent CEO stock sale (~$9.86M) is a small negative signal investors sometimes watch; note this is routine for executives and not necessarily indicative of company health. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) CEO Sells $9,859,850.00 in Stock

Analysts Set New Price Targets

GOOG has been the topic of a number of research analyst reports. Royal Bank Of Canada reissued an “outperform” rating and set a $375.00 price objective on shares of Alphabet in a report on Thursday, January 15th. Guggenheim reissued a “buy” rating and set a $375.00 price target on shares of Alphabet in a research note on Monday, December 1st. Wells Fargo & Company upgraded shares of Alphabet from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Monday, February 23rd. TD Cowen reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $365.00 price objective (up from $355.00) on shares of Alphabet in a report on Thursday, February 5th. Finally, Raymond James Financial raised Alphabet from an “outperform” rating to a “strong-buy” rating and lifted their target price for the company from $315.00 to $400.00 in a research note on Thursday, January 22nd. Nine equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-eight have assigned a Buy rating, three have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has an average rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $343.90.

About Alphabet

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) is a multinational technology holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. Formed in 2015 through a corporate restructuring of Google, Alphabet serves as the parent to Google LLC and a portfolio of businesses collectively known as “Other Bets.” Google was originally founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Alphabet is led by CEO Sundar Pichai, who oversees Google and the broader company while the founders remain prominent shareholders and influential figures in the company’s history.

Alphabet’s core business centers on internet search and advertising, with Google Search and the company’s ad platforms (including Google Ads and AdSense) generating the majority of revenue by connecting advertisers with consumers worldwide.