The Ratings Game: Google parent Alphabet’s worth to Wall Street soars after blowout results, with UBS lifting share-price target to $3,600 a share

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Apple who? Microsoft who? Wednesday clearly belonged to Alphabet after the Google parent reported strong advertising sales that drove solid beats on revenue and earnings, and Wall Street responded with higher price targets.

Shares of Alphabet
GOOGL,
-1.59%

climbed nearly 4% in premarket trading, outperforming big tech rivals that also reported late Tuesday. Apple’s shares
AAPL,
-1.49%

were dropping, and Microsoft’s stock
MSFT,
-0.87%

was up just over 1%.

Read: Microsoft tops $60 billion in annual earnings for the first time

And: Apple profit nearly doubles, but company projects growth slowdown

The Mountain View, Calif.–based diversified tech goliath reported net income of $27.26 a share for its second fiscal quarter, versus $10.13 a share the same period a year ago. Stripping out traffic-acquisition costs, revenue surged to $50.95 billion from $31.6 billion in the year-ago period. Overall revenue jumped 62% to $61.9 billion — the first time quarterly sales have cracked $60 billion.

Analysts cheered the big quarter for search-engine and YouTube ad growth, resulting in at least one hefty price-target boost — to $3,600 from $3,100 — from SIG Susquehanna.

“[The second quarter] was another beat across the board, with Search and YouTube putting up massive performances. Although the comps will be more difficult in the [second half of the year], we don’t see any reason why the strong execution shouldn’t continue,” said a team led by Shyam Patil.

SIG Susquehanna is upbeat about Alphabet for several reasons: a secular ad-growth story driven by YouTube and mobile search, the cloud-technology ramp, better expense management, and capital allocation that’s more shareholder-friendly. Alphabet is rated positive by the research house.

Based on price targets collated by FactSet, SIG Susquehanna’s price target appears to be the highest on Wall Street, trailed by Wedbush, which lifted its own target to $3,424 from $3,127 on Tuesday, following the results.

Another “stellar quarter” has shown “the ad market is accelerating beyond a rebound, and Cloud is continuing to accelerate,” said a Wedbush team led by Ygal Arounian, who rates the company outperform.

Elsewhere, UBS analysts lifted their 12-month price target on Alphabet to $3,190 from $2,600, maintaining a buy rating on the company. Strong ad performance and room for advertisers to spend across Google properties as digital ad spending catches up to the pandemic were cited as reasons by John C. Hodulik and his team.

They lifted third-quarter, full-year and 2022 revenue and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization estimates, and highlighted positive comments from management. Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai spoke of a “rising tide” of demand from consumers and enterprises during an earnings call with analysts late Tuesday.

And KeyBanc Capital markets raised their Alphabet target to $3,071 from $2,681. “[Second-quarter] results reinforced our thesis around major ad platforms [and a move toward] a global economic recovery [that] would drive robust demand for digital ads,” said analysts Justin Patterson and Sergio Segura.

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