Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) Posts Quarterly Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.03 EPS

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday. The information services provider reported $2.15 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.12 by $0.03, Zacks reports. Alphabet had a net margin of 27.74% and a return on equity of 31.66%.

Alphabet Stock Performance

Alphabet stock traded up $5.07 during mid-day trading on Tuesday, reaching $207.71. 25,276,421 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 16,631,400. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $191.14 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $175.71. Alphabet has a twelve month low of $131.55 and a twelve month high of $208.70. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.04, a quick ratio of 1.95 and a current ratio of 1.95. The firm has a market cap of $2.54 trillion, a PE ratio of 27.55, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.32 and a beta of 1.00.

Insider Buying and Selling at Alphabet

In other Alphabet news, CEO Sundar Pichai sold 22,500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $177.36, for a total transaction of $3,990,600.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 2,084,306 shares in the company, valued at approximately $369,672,512.16. The trade was a 1.07 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, CAO Amie Thuener O’toole sold 1,367 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $170.41, for a total transaction of $232,950.47. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 23,515 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,007,191.15. This represents a 5.49 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders have sold 122,529 shares of company stock valued at $22,453,483. 12.99% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

GOOG has been the topic of a number of analyst reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted their price objective on Alphabet from $208.00 to $212.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. UBS Group raised their target price on shares of Alphabet from $187.00 to $192.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Citigroup boosted their price target on shares of Alphabet from $212.00 to $216.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Phillip Securities upgraded shares of Alphabet to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Friday, November 1st. Finally, Scotiabank lifted their price objective on shares of Alphabet from $212.00 to $240.00 and gave the stock a “sector outperform” rating in a research report on Friday, January 24th. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twelve have issued a buy rating and three have given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $209.13.

About Alphabet

Alphabet Inc offers various products and platforms in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific, Canada, and Latin America. It operates through Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets segments. The Google Services segment provides products and services, including ads, Android, Chrome, devices, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Play, Search, and YouTube.