Markets Insider
The stock price of Google's parent company, Alphabet, is up almost 5% after reporting better than expected earnings following Thursday's closing bell.
Alphabet reported earnings per share of $7.73, beating expectations of $7.39. Revenue grew 22% over last year to $24.75 billion, topping $24.22 billion expected by the Bloomberg consensus.
In a note sent out to clients on Friday, Credit Suisse analyst Stephen Ju applauded Alphabet's results and raised his price target on the stock from $1,100 to $1,150. Ju maintained his "Outperform" rating.
"GOOGL shares in our view continue to exhibit the best risk/reward among the large cap Internet stocks and we maintain our Outperform rating," Ju wrote.
Ju said that there are three reasons to buy Alphabet's stock:
- "Monetization improvements in Search through product updates such as Expanded Text Ads and Individual Bid Adjustments."
- "Larger-than-expected contribution from Google's larger nonSearch businesses, namely YouTube, Play and Cloud."
- "Optionality for value creation from new monetization initiatives such as Maps as well as the eventual commercialization of Google's Other Bets (Waymo)."
Google now hosts an astonishing seven platforms with more than 1 billion users.
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Get the latest Google stock price here.