[ad_1]
Google parent Alphabet has become a key winner in the artificial intelligence race. Its upcoming quarterly results could determine how far the stock can go from here. Shares of Alphabet have gained more than 8% year to date and 64% over the past 12 months, making a huge comeback from its initial slump as the company has wowed the market with its Gemini AI chatbot and image generation models, Tensor Processing Units (TPU) business, Google Cloud growth and overall strong profitability. The company’s self-driving car business, Waymo, has also gained increasing attention given its recent funding round that values the company at $126 billion. For its fourth quarter, analysts polled by LSEG expect Alphabet to report about 20% earnings growth. The company is coming off of a third-quarter earnings and revenue beat , fueled by strong AI-driven momentum in its cloud business. Customer demand for enterprise AI infrastructure, including chips and Gemini 2.5 demand, fueled growth, the company said. GOOGL 5Y mountain Alphabet stock performance over the past five years. The Street remains bullish heading into its quarterly print due after Wednesday’s close. Of the 61 analysts covering the stock, 16 rate it a strong buy and 36 give it a buy rating, according to LSEG. Nine analysts maintain a hold rating. However, some analysts believe the stock could be overvalued at current levels, as the consensus LSEG price target predicts about 2% potential downside ahead. Bank of America’s Justin Post, for one, recently reiterated his buy rating on Alphabet and kept his $370 price target on shares, which suggest a possible uptick of 8% from its latest close. He remains constructive on Alphabet’s 2026 setup as he expects Google search and cloud businesses will see higher engagement and conversion rates due to its Gemini and TPU strength. “Sentiment is positive, plus Meta has set a high bar for 1Q, and we think strong Gemini traffic data points, optimism on 1Q ad growth, commentary suggesting AI is aiding search monetization, enthusiasm on new products (Agentic), and strong Cloud results & backlog is needed (and likely) on the call to support stock,” Post wrote in a Jan. 30 note to clients. In December, Google’s global mobile daily active users rose 12% year-over-year and Gemini’s was up 351% year-over-year to 62 million, according to Bank of America. That’s significant growth for the platform — but for context, OpenAI’s ChatGPT global mobile daily active users in December jumped 262% year-over-year to 392 million, per the note. Post and other analysts were encouraged by Meta’s strong results, which indicated a stable advertising market. Deutsche Bank analyst Benjamin Black said in a Monday note that even though Alphabet does not guide revenue, he anticipates a bullish outlook for the first quarter alongside results given Meta’s strong revenue forecast. Additionally, analysts are looking for details on Google’s partnership with Apple this time around, as a Gemini-powered Siri could give Google access to more user data. The deal is also a win for Google’s infrastructure business, and potentially, for its TPUs if it chooses to scale its chips business. Take a look at what else is top-of-mind for Wall Street below ahead of Alphabet’s results: Bank of America: Buy rating, $370 price target “With a growing percentage of Google searches served in AI-native formats, we think Street could be underestimating Search upside in 2026 driven by higher engagement, improved conversion rates, and incremental monetization opportunities. For Cloud, we believe Gemini 3.0 and TPUs are increasingly differentiating Google offerings, which could support new mega-deal wins. Risk is elevated valuation (P/E now above MSFT) and new competitive product launches (LLMs, OpenAI ad ramp) could weigh on relative AI sentiment,” analyst Justin Post wrote in a Jan. 30 note to clients. Jefferies: Buy rating, $400 price target Jefferies analyst Brent Thill is among the most bullish analysts on the Street when it comes to Alphabet. In a Sunday note to clients, he lifted his price target by $35 to $400, suggesting the stock could gain 16.4%. “We see Q4 & FY26 biased to the upside based on strong momentum in both ads and Cloud. Our proprietary survey and checks noted robust Q4 ads (80% at/ above plan), especially at YouTube, with tighter integration of analytics drawing more spend. Partner spend intentions for ’26 are highest for GOOGL,” Thill said. Truist: Buy rating, $350 price target “We remain constructive on GOOGL going into the 4Q25 print on 2/4 as we expect 15%+ top line growth (in line with Street ests), showing that Search spend remains strong, fueled by both query volume and CPCs despite the rise of Gen AI-powered peers,” Youssef Squali wrote in a Jan. 13 note. “We believe GOOGL’s 4Q25 results will be fueled by strong user engagement and ad demand driving mid-teens growth across Search & YT, and a solid backlog for Cloud driving 34% revenue growth.” Deutsche Bank: Buy rating, $370 price target “We expect the strength in GOOG’s core advertising business continued into 4Q25 … In addition to faster growth at GCP, we believe there is potential for significant value creation from selling TPUs and expanding Waymo’s rollout,” analyst Benjamin Black said in a Monday note. Goldman Sachs: Buy rating, $375 price target “Across multiple themes, we view Alphabet as having exposure, and in many cases outright industry leadership, across multiple AI themes including query volumes and monetization, shifting media habits, cloud computing, foundational model scaling and the rise of physical AI,” analyst Eric Sheridan said in a Jan. 12 note. “We still see solid upside potential on the back of solid industry checks in Q4 2025 that will likely sustain trends into 1H 2026.” Citi: Buy rating, $350 price target Citi reiterated Alphabet shares as a top pick in late January. “With Gemini’s product strategy ramping following the launch of Gemini 3, Personal Intelligence, and its newly announced Apple partnership, Agentic Commerce approach emerging with UCP & Direct Offers ad units, amid continued query growth acceleration, we believe Google Properties is well positioned to gain share. This as Google’s vertically integrated approach across Gemini, TPUs, and its infra/compute capacity should lead to accelerating Cloud revenue growth,” analyst Ronald Josey said in a Jan. 22 note.
You might also like
[ad_2]
Source link
