Larry Page, Wall Street On The New Alphabet

Google Inc GOOG has vanished; the world’s largest search engine has changed its highly trendy name from Google to Alphabet. Alphabet will serve as the holding company that will manage all of Google’s products and its game-changing search engine. So, the real question is: why would such a monumental company who has received recognition world-wide change its name?; a simple five-letter word that has become essential to the web searching.

Co-Founder and CEO, Larry Page specified that the new name, Alphabet, represents “a collection of letters that represent a language, one of humanity’s most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search.” The domain of the new company is unique as it incorporates the first three letters and the last three letters of the “alphabet:” abc.xyz, not to be confused with alphabet.com, which is owned by luxury car maker, BMW.

Larry and Sergey Brin, the two founders of one of the most innovative companies in the world, wrote “Google is not a conventional company, we do not intend to become one,” 11 years back. Larry recently commented about why having a holding company will be beneficial, he noted “Fundamentally, we [Google as a whole] believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related.” He added “In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed.” Larry concluded with “For Sergey and me this is a very exciting new chapter in the life of Google -- the birth of Alphabet.”

Alphabet will replace Google Inc, the publicly traded entity; all shares will be converted to the same number of shares in Alphabet. Both classes of shares, GOOG and GOOGL, will continue to trade under the same tickers.

Wall Street analysts expeditiously jumped on this breaking news and upgraded the new company:
Stifel Nicolaus: Upgraded Google from Hold to a Buy rating with a price target of $850.
Mizuho Securities: Upgraded the stock from Neutral to a Buy rating; price target of $715.
Monness Crespi Hardt: Upgraded the stock from Neutral to a Buy rating; price target of a whopping $900.
BMO Capital: Reiterated shares with Positive rating.

SUMMARY: 3 Upgrades, 1 Reiterate: 3 Buy, 1 Positive rating; price target range of $715-$900.

Shares of Alphabet have spiked nearly 6 percent in Tuesday’s pre-market session as Google heats up the market with this news.