Alphabet Worth $930, Says B. Riley's Sinha And Stifel's Devitt

• Alphabet Inc GOOGL shares have been heading north over the past six months, and are trading close to the high end of their 52-week range of $521.72 - $798.69.
• B. Riley's Sameet Sinha and Stifel's Scott W. Devitt both maintained Buy ratings for the company, while raising their price targets to $930.
• While Sinha noted that the company delivered robust revenue growth in core advertising, Devitt stated that its mobile monetization initiatives seemed to have a longer runway.

B. Riley

Analyst Sameet Sinha raised the price target for the company from $853 to $930. Despite reporting a PF EPS miss, Alphabet generated robust revenue growth in core advertising. The company’s net revenues came in at $17.3B, ahead of the consensus expectation of $16.9B. While PF EPS was reported at $8.67, it stood at $7.80 ex‐1x items, missing the consensus expectation of $8.10.

The PF EPS estimates for 2016 and 2017 have been raised from $34.51 to $35.14 and from $37.99 to $38.51, respectively.

Sinha wrote, “Strength was seen across Search (mobile), programmatic and YouTube (YT). Management highlighted Mobile Search as the key driver due to the holiday season uptake, aided by a format change in 3Q. Desktop was also strong, YT engagement increased and Programmatic was strong again.”

Stifel

Analyst Scott Devitt raised the price target for the company from $900 to $930. He commented that Alphabet had once again reported its results ahead of expectations, while exhibiting “surprisingly steady growth given the company’s immense scale.”

The company’s growth in all regions was impressive, although non-US results continued to be weighed down by FX headwinds, Devitt noted. Provided its after-market gains hold, Alphabet could surpass Apple Inc. AAPL as the world’s largest publicly traded company by market capitalization at the opening bell on February 2.

The analyst further wrote, “Heading into 2016, we think mobile usage may be on a more linear path of growth, but it seems that mobile monetization initiatives have a longer runway and Alphabet’s video / cloud initiatives may be in the midst of climbing an S-curve of growth.”