Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is set to report its most recent quarterly results after the markets close on Thursday. Consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters are calling for $8.33 in earnings per share (EPS) and $27.2 billion in revenue. In the same period of last year, it posted EPS of $9.06 and $22.45 billion in revenue.
So far in 2017, Alphabet shares have done exceedingly well, outpacing all the U.S. broad markets with the stock up over 25%. Also the tech giant has added nearly $150 billion to its market cap this year alone. It’s no wonder analysts have chased this stock higher.
In a recent report, Credit Suisse reiterated an Outperform rating for Alphabet and raised the price target to $1,350 from $1,100. The firm points out that its own checks indicate that Google’s search results are trending well and that YouTube is doing better.
Credit Suisse’s new estimates are rolling out to 2018, and the firm said of the company:
Our conversations with advertisers suggest minimal search budget growth deceleration coupled with potentially accelerating spend on YouTube due to multiple factors. For Search we believe the driving factors are: 1) continued increase in mobile search traffic, 2) higher CPCs due to greater usage of location-based targeting for brick and mortar retail operators, 3) ongoing benefits from Expanded Text Ads – particularly for overseas advertisers.
For YouTube, the firm thinks that advertisers that pulled back during the first half of 2017 are back and accelerating budget deployment to the video side of the business. Additional divers for Google are ongoing monetization improvements in search (expanded text ads and individual bid adjustments), a larger contribution from Google’s larger non-search businesses (YouTube, Play and Cloud) and value being created by initiatives such as Maps, Waymo, Life Sciences and more.
A few other analysts were very bullish on Alphabet as well:
- Deutsche Bank has a Buy rating.
- Goldman Sachs has a Buy rating.
- Piper Jaffray has a Buy rating with a $1,150 price target.
- Pivotal Research has a Hold rating with a $970 price target.
- Macquarie has an Outperform rating and a $995 price target.
- Wells Fargo has a Buy rating.
Shares of Alphabet were last seen at $978.77, with a consensus analyst price target of $1,053.50 and a 52-week range of $727.54 to $997.21.
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