Cowen Boosts Alphabet Price Target To $1,050

Cowen’s John Blackledge said in a note that the Ad Buyer Survey revealed that Google remains the dominant franchise in core search.

Blackledge maintained an Outperform rating on Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL, while raising the price target from $1,000 to $1,050.

Search Remains Strong

“Overall, results point to search being an enduring franchise and YouTube's ascension in video as a primary platform for new branding initiatives,” the analyst stated.

Although the survey was skewed “brand heavy,” Blackledge stated that within digital, search continued to be the single largest category of spend.

“We’d point out that our brand focused respondents still acknowledged that GOOG Search offers the highest ROI (both straight average and spend weighted), which we think aptly demonstrates the moat around GOOG’s core business,” the analyst explained.

YouTube Well Positioned

In addition, the survey revealed that Alphabet was well positioned in video, with YouTube usage continuing to be robust, with daily viewership in the “hundreds of millions of hours.”

Given that 19 percent respondents said YouTube was the primary platform for new brand campaigns, Blackledge stated this indicated that “YouTube is positioned well for the secular shift to Digital Video advertising.”

The analyst expects Alphabet to report gross revenues of $7.8 billion for 2016, rising to $25.6 billion by 2021, at a five-year CAGR of 28 percent.

Alphabet (GOOG) shares were recently seen slightly down by 0.24 percent at $804.42.