Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Receives $326.31 Consensus PT from Analysts

Shares of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) have received an average rating of “Moderate Buy” from the fifty-two ratings firms that are currently covering the company, MarketBeat reports. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation, forty-five have given a buy recommendation and three have assigned a strong buy recommendation to the company. The average 12-month price objective among analysts that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $326.3077.

GOOGL has been the subject of several analyst reports. Truist Financial set a $350.00 target price on shares of Alphabet and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, December 5th. Wall Street Zen raised shares of Alphabet from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Saturday, November 1st. Morgan Stanley raised their target price on shares of Alphabet from $270.00 to $330.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, October 30th. Wolfe Research set a $380.00 target price on shares of Alphabet and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Monday, January 5th. Finally, Robert W. Baird increased their price target on Alphabet from $215.00 to $275.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Monday, September 22nd.

Key Headlines Impacting 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.

Insider Transactions at Alphabet

In other Alphabet news, insider John Kent Walker sold 17,829 shares of Alphabet 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 in the company, valued at $13,531,453.08. This trade represents a 29.32% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, CEO Sundar Pichai sold 32,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $283.48, for a total value of $9,213,100.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer owned 2,337,119 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $662,526,494.12. The trade was a 1.37% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders have sold a total of 189,909 shares of company stock worth $57,927,282 in the last three months. Company insiders own 11.64% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Alphabet

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in shares of Alphabet by 1.3% in the second quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 516,559,609 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $91,033,300,000 after buying an additional 6,733,278 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its position in Alphabet by 1.8% during the 2nd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 229,954,269 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $40,524,841,000 after acquiring an additional 4,008,374 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in Alphabet by 3.1% in the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 141,615,284 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $24,857,017,000 after acquiring an additional 4,224,497 shares during the period. Norges Bank acquired a new stake in Alphabet in the second quarter valued at approximately $21,944,208,000. Finally, Capital World Investors raised its stake in shares of Alphabet by 28.0% during the third quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 53,107,572 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $12,910,542,000 after purchasing an additional 11,605,785 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 40.03% of the company’s stock.

Alphabet Price Performance

GOOGL stock opened at $330.00 on Thursday. The stock’s 50 day moving average price is $311.33 and its 200 day moving average price is $254.85. The firm has a market cap of $3.98 trillion, a P/E ratio of 32.54, a PEG ratio of 1.82 and a beta of 1.08. 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 has a 1 year low of $140.53 and a 1 year high of $340.49.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) last released its quarterly earnings results 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 company had revenue of $102.35 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $99.90 billion. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Alphabet will post 8.9 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Alphabet Announces Dividend

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

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.