Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) ranks as the fourth-largest company in the world, with a market cap over $1.6 trillion. It is in an elite club with the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, all with market caps over $1 trillion. However, its short interest hardly compares to most of these big names.
For the most recent settlement date, Apple’s short interest came in at 94.75 million, and 40.53 million Microsoft shares were short. The number of shares short on Amazon was much lower at 4.81 million. Again, Alphabet’s short interest fell below this whole group.
Alphabet’s short interest for the May 14 settlement was 2.97 million shares, down from 3.02 million on the prior settlement date. Note that this also compares with the 3.97 million shares short reported in the same period of last year.
In the past 52 weeks, the stock has outperformed the broad markets, with shares up about 66%. Year to date, the stock is up only 35%.
Alphabet has a daily average volume of 1.49 million shares traded, so it would take short sellers about two days to cover their positions.
24/7 Wall St. recently reported on Alphabet:
The search giant continues to expand and absolutely crushed analyst expectations. Alphabet … is a global technology company focused on key areas such as search, advertising, operating systems and platforms, and enterprise and hardware products. The company generates revenue primarily by delivering online advertising and by selling apps and content on Google Play, as well as hardware products. Alphabet provides its products and services in more than 100 languages and in 190 countries, regions and territories.
Alphabet offers performance and brand advertising services. It operates through Google and Other Bets segments. The Google segment includes principal internet products, such as search, ads, commerce, Maps, YouTube, Apps, Cloud, Android, Chrome and Google Play, as well as technical infrastructure and newer efforts, such as virtual reality.
Analysts point to Google Cloud, which is the largest cloud infrastructure play and engages in more technology, infrastructure research and development in headcount and dollars than any other company does. That gives it the strength and wherewithal to compete with and differentiate itself from Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure.
Alphabet stock traded near $2,378 Wednesday morning, in a 52-week range of $1,351.65 to $2,431.38. The consensus price target is $2,739.05.
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