OneAscent Financial Services LLC Sells 13,207 Shares of Alphabet Inc. $GOOGL

OneAscent Financial Services LLC reduced its holdings in shares of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) by 54.5% during the third quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 11,030 shares of the information services provider’s stock after selling 13,207 shares during the quarter. OneAscent Financial Services LLC’s holdings in Alphabet were worth $2,681,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of GOOGL. Breakwater Investment Management boosted its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 1.0% in the 3rd quarter. Breakwater Investment Management now owns 4,228 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $1,028,000 after buying an additional 41 shares during the last quarter. Wealth Alliance Advisory Group LLC raised its position in Alphabet by 1.0% in the third quarter. Wealth Alliance Advisory Group LLC now owns 4,045 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $983,000 after acquiring an additional 41 shares during the period. Kooman & Associates boosted its stake in Alphabet by 3.3% in the third quarter. Kooman & Associates now owns 1,343 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $326,000 after acquiring an additional 43 shares during the last quarter. Contravisory Investment Management Inc. grew its position in shares of Alphabet by 2.9% during the 3rd quarter. Contravisory Investment Management Inc. now owns 1,572 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $382,000 after acquiring an additional 44 shares during the period. Finally, Wallington Asset Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Alphabet by 1.4% during the 3rd quarter. Wallington Asset Management LLC now owns 3,324 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $808,000 after purchasing an additional 45 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 40.03% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts have weighed in on GOOGL shares. DZ Bank reissued a “buy” rating on shares of Alphabet in a report on Thursday, November 20th. Truist Financial set a $350.00 price objective on Alphabet and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, December 5th. Citigroup reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Alphabet in a report on Wednesday, December 31st. CICC Research boosted their price target on shares of Alphabet from $240.00 to $303.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Friday, October 31st. Finally, DA Davidson restated a “neutral” rating and set a $300.00 price target on shares of Alphabet in a research note on Tuesday, November 25th. Three investment 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 company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Alphabet currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $326.31.

Alphabet News Roundup

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 Trading Down 0.8%

Alphabet stock opened at $330.00 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.06, a quick ratio of 1.75 and a current ratio of 1.75. Alphabet Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $140.53 and a fifty-two week high of $340.49. The stock has a market cap of $3.98 trillion, a P/E ratio of 32.54, a PEG ratio of 1.84 and a beta of 1.08. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $311.33 and its 200-day moving average price is $254.30.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, October 29th. The information services provider reported $2.87 EPS 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. Equities research analysts forecast that Alphabet Inc. will post 8.9 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Alphabet Announces Dividend

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

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, insider John Kent Walker sold 17,829 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, December 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $314.89, for a total value of $5,614,173.81. Following the transaction, the insider owned 42,972 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $13,531,453.08. This represents a 29.32% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, CEO Sundar Pichai sold 32,500 shares of Alphabet stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $283.48, for a total transaction of $9,213,100.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 2,337,119 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $662,526,494.12. This represents a 1.37% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders sold a total of 189,909 shares of company stock valued at $57,927,282 in the last quarter. Corporate insiders own 11.64% of the company’s stock.

About Alphabet

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.