Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) 02 (Aug 17 - Dec 25)

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Alphabet

YouTube video streaming platform by itself is the fourth largest.

Google generally only serves ads on about 20% of its queries, so ads in AI overviews would be an untapped realm to expand into.

The company also has a stand-alone Gemini app that competes with the likes of ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude.

The company recently made a big breakthrough in quantum computing with its Willow chip, where it was able to reduce errors while scaling up.

Meanwhile, its Waymo robotaxi business has taken the lead in the space, with it being the only company to offer paid rides in the U.S.

Source: TMF

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Alphabet

Inclusive of Google, YouTube, and Google Network, 75% of its $96.5 billion in fourth quarter sales trace back to advertising.

If businesses become skittish about the U.S. or global economy, it could directly affect Alphabet’s core revenue driver.

There’s also concern about how the Trump administration will approach regulating big tech companies. The U.S. Department of Justice is calling for a breakup of Alphabet, which would see the company divest its leading search engine, Google.

Once again, while these headwinds are headline-grabbing for the moment, they aren’t altering the company’s aggregate long-term growth projections.

Alphabet’s foundation continues to be its advertising platforms. Even with plenty of competition, Google has maintained an 89% to 93% monthly share of global internet search over the trailing decade.

Lengthy periods of economic expansion suggest Google’s ad-pricing power will be strong, more often than not.

But what’s most exciting about Alphabet is its cloud service infrastructure platform, Google Cloud.

Tech firm Canalys estimates Google Cloud has secured an 11% share of worldwide cloud-service spend, as of the fourth quarter. This is excellent news considering businesses are still in the very early stages of ramping up their cloud spending and incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into the mix.

Google Cloud is a significantly higher-margin segment that’ll be a key cash-flow driver in the latter-half of the decade.

While the stock market is historically pricey, the recent dip in Alphabet’s stock has lowered its forward P/E ratio to just 16. This represents a 28% discount to its average forward-year earnings multiple over the trailing half-decade.

Source: TMF

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Google-parent Alphabet is in advanced talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for around US$30 billion, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday (Mar 17), potentially marking the tech giant’s largest deal to date.

Source: Phillips

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Alphabet's biggest deal: spending 1 trillion to acquire Israeli startup Wiz to catch up with Microsoft and Amazon.
Google's big acquisition strengthens its cybersecurity capabilities!

Alphabet最大手筆 花1兆併購以色列新創Wiz 追趕微軟.亞馬遜 谷歌大併購強化資安戰力!｜非凡財經新聞｜20250319

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FCNpURjYRPQ

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$GOOGL's largest acquisitions
https://x.com/Mayhem4Markets/status/1903220464702591096

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JPMorgan Cuts Alphabet Price Target Amid Trump Tariffs. Is Google Stock A Buy?
FacebookXLinkedInShare Licensing

by REINHARDT KRAUSE

"We now project 2025 reported revenue Search growth of 3% (currency and hedging neutral), down from 9% prior and YouTube ads growth of 2%, down from 11%.

We expect Google cloud to prove more resilient on stronger secular growth. We now model 24% cloud growth, down from 26%."

Source: IBD

https://www.investors.com/news/technolo ... src=A00220

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'Betrayed, That's The Word': Small Business Owners Reel as Google AI Destroys Google Search
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/be ... gle-search

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Google’s Money-Printing Machine Can Be Easily Dismantled

A judge’s finding that the Alphabet unit has a monopoly over digital advertising has an obvious and effective remedy.

By Dave Lee

The majority of Google’s ad revenue comes from ads that appear alongside its own properties, like Search, Gmail and YouTube.

In 2024, revenue from its ad network segment, the part at issue in the case, was $30.4 billion — 11% of Google’s total ad revenue.

Source: Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... aretheview

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Google's bad year just got worse

by Hamza Shaban

For the second time in a year, a federal court has found that Google (GOOG, GOOGL) broke the law by abusing its market power.

But a forced restructuring and legal troubles are only part of Google’s challenges.

The company is also coming off a rough quarter when it fell short on cloud computing revenue, fanning lingering worries about its AI business.

Its stock is down 20% in 2025 and has lost about 2% over the last year.

CEO Sundar Pichai is aiming for his company’s Gemini chatbot to be used by 500 million people by the end of the year. As of Thursday, ChatGPT was the most downloaded free app on iPhones and on Google Play, while Gemini was No. 26 and 14 on those platforms, respectively.

Alphabet has dramatically expanded its capital expenditures for the year ahead, upping a previous estimate of roughly $58 billion to a planned $75 billion.

Businesses often pare back ad spending during lean times to protect core operations.

The company's March announcement to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for $32 billion highlighted Google's ambitions to become a more formidable cloud business, chasing Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft.

‌Source: Yahoo Finance

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Google says will buy back US$70 billion in shares, posts earnings beat

Alphabet beat quarterly revenue estimates, benefiting from steady growth in its digital advertising business, which helped offset muted growth at its cloud computing unit.

Search saw continued strong growth, boosted by the engagement we are seeing with features such as AI (artificial intelligence) Overviews, which now has 1.5 billion users per month.

Revenue from Google’s mainstay ad business, which makes up about 75 per cent of its overall revenue, rose 8.5 per cent to US$66.89 billion in the quarter.

Google Cloud reported a 28 per cent rise in revenue to US$12.26 billion, slowing from the 30.1 per cent growth reported in the previous quarter.

Source: Reuters

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/compan ... nings-beat