Wedbush Reaffirms “Outperform” Rating for Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)‘s stock had its “outperform” rating reaffirmed by investment analysts at Wedbush in a note issued to investors on Thursday,Benzinga reports.

Several other equities analysts have also recently weighed in on the stock. Canaccord Genuity Group raised their price target on shares of Alphabet from $415.00 to $450.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, April 30th. Sanford C. Bernstein reissued a “market perform” rating and issued a $390.00 price objective (up from $345.00) on shares of Alphabet in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. Royal Bank Of Canada set a $425.00 target price on shares of Alphabet and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, April 30th. Daiwa Securities Group increased their target price on shares of Alphabet from $380.00 to $445.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, May 5th. Finally, Evercore raised their target price on shares of Alphabet from $400.00 to $420.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, forty-seven have given a Buy rating and five have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $414.11.

Alphabet Stock Down 2.2%

NASDAQ:GOOGL opened at $346.77 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.16, a quick ratio of 1.92 and a current ratio of 1.92. The company has a market cap of $4.20 trillion, a PE ratio of 26.45, a PEG ratio of 1.49 and a beta of 1.24. Alphabet has a 52-week low of $183.71 and a 52-week high of $408.61. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $368.89 and a 200 day simple moving average of $337.97.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, April 29th. The information services provider reported $5.11 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.64 by $2.47. The business had revenue of $109.90 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $106.98 billion. Alphabet had a return on equity of 38.99% and a net margin of 37.92%. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Alphabet will post 14.32 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, insider John Kent Walker sold 8,998 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, June 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $349.29, for a total transaction of $3,142,911.42. Following the transaction, the insider directly owned 75,290 shares in the company, valued at approximately $26,298,044.10. The trade was a 10.68% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, major shareholder 2019 Gp L.L.C. Gv sold 87,475 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Friday, May 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $23.75, for a total transaction of $2,077,531.25. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders have sold a total of 159,415 shares of company stock worth $7,672,279 in the last quarter. 11.61% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Norges Bank bought a new position in Alphabet during the fourth quarter worth about $30,534,239,000. Cardano Risk Management B.V. boosted its holdings in Alphabet by 855.3% in the 4th quarter. Cardano Risk Management B.V. now owns 14,525,280 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $4,546,413,000 after purchasing an additional 13,004,828 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its position in shares of Alphabet by 2.4% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 528,969,322 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $165,567,398,000 after purchasing an additional 12,531,695 shares in the last quarter. Capital World Investors grew its position in shares of Alphabet by 28.0% during 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 purchasing an additional 11,605,785 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Diamant Asset Management Inc. grew its position in shares of Alphabet by 28,950.0% during the 1st quarter. Diamant Asset Management Inc. now owns 9,291,926 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $2,671,986,000 after purchasing an additional 9,259,940 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 40.03% of the company’s stock.

Key Stories Impacting Alphabet

Here are the key news stories impacting Alphabet this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Wall Street remains broadly bullish on Alphabet, with multiple reports citing strong cloud growth, AI-driven momentum in Search and YouTube, and price targets still above current trading levels. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: Analysts say Alphabet could post a strong Q2, helped by Google Cloud strength and the value of its Anthropic stake, which may support upside if earnings beat expectations. Article Title
• Neutral Sentiment: Investors are also positioning for Alphabet’s upcoming earnings report, with options traders expecting a sizable move, indicating that the stock may stay volatile into the release. Article Title
• Negative Sentiment: Bloomberg-reported delays to Gemini 3.5 Pro have sparked fears that Google is lagging in AI, with concerns that the model’s coding performance fell short of internal goals. Article Title
• Negative Sentiment: Alphabet is facing added regulatory pressure after the EU ordered it to open Android and search data to rival AI companies, and a San Francisco order to remove “nudify” apps from app stores adds to the broader legal overhang. Article Title
• Negative Sentiment: Securities-fraud investigation headlines are creating an additional near-term overhang, even though these are still allegations and not a proven finding of wrongdoing. Article Title

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.