Alphabet Inc. $GOOGL Shares Bought by Centaurus Financial Inc.

Centaurus Financial Inc. grew its position in shares of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) by 12.0% during the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The fund owned 70,312 shares of the information services provider’s stock after purchasing an additional 7,539 shares during the quarter. Alphabet makes up about 0.8% of Centaurus Financial Inc.’s holdings, making the stock its 22nd largest position. Centaurus Financial Inc.’s holdings in Alphabet were worth $17,093,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in GOOGL. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in Alphabet by 1.3% during the 2nd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 516,559,609 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $91,033,300,000 after buying an additional 6,733,278 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its stake in Alphabet by 1.8% in the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 229,954,269 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $40,524,841,000 after buying an additional 4,008,374 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 3.1% in the second quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 141,615,284 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $24,857,017,000 after acquiring an additional 4,224,497 shares during the period. Norges Bank acquired a new stake in shares of Alphabet in the second quarter valued at approximately $21,944,208,000. Finally, Capital World Investors grew its position in shares of Alphabet by 28.0% during the third quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 53,107,572 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $12,910,542,000 after acquiring an additional 11,605,785 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 40.03% of the company’s stock.

Key Stories Impacting Alphabet

Here are the key news stories impacting Alphabet this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Top AI and strategy hires strengthen DeepMind execution — Jasjeet Sekhon, Bridgewater’s chief scientist, is joining Google’s DeepMind as chief strategy officer, boosting AI talent and strategy depth that supports product leadership and monetization opportunities. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: Cloud/security M&A expands enterprise angle — Alphabet’s acquisition of Wiz strengthens Google Cloud’s security stack, a key competitive lever vs. AWS/Azure and a driver of higher-margin, enterprise revenue. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: Defense relationships could open government revenue paths — reporting says Google has rebuilt ties with the Pentagon, which could translate to lucrative contracts if political headwinds remain manageable. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: AI product momentum pressures rivals — Google’s Stitch redesign (AI → UI generation) is already rattling competitors like Adobe, signaling product strength that could help user growth and ad/cloud adoption. Article Title
• Neutral Sentiment: Regulatory concession may reduce UK friction — Google said it will build search controls allowing sites to opt out of generative-AI features, a move that could blunt UK CMA concerns but may limit feature reach. Article Title
• Neutral Sentiment: Supply-chain / infrastructure sourcing discussions — Google is in talks with Chinese firms for data-center liquid-cooling equipment; could reduce capex cost or invite scrutiny depending on geopolitics. Article Title
• Negative Sentiment: Large planned capex raises near-term margin and valuation questions — Alphabet’s plan to invest up to ~$185B by 2026 and higher AI-driven capex fuels concerns about margin pressure and whether current P/E already prices in that spending. Article Title
• Negative Sentiment: Valuation debate persists despite upbeat fundamentals — analysts remain optimistic, but some write-ups flag Alphabet’s ~25–29x P/E and rising capex as limiting near-term upside vs. expectations. Article Title

Analysts Set New Price Targets

GOOGL has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. Roth Mkm lifted their target price on shares of Alphabet from $365.00 to $395.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, February 5th. Piper Sandler reiterated an “overweight” rating and set a $395.00 price target (up from $365.00) on shares of Alphabet in a research note on Thursday, February 5th. Bank of America raised their price objective on shares of Alphabet from $335.00 to $370.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 13th. Tigress Financial set a $415.00 price objective on shares of Alphabet and gave the company a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, February 19th. Finally, Canaccord Genuity Group set a $415.00 target price on shares of Alphabet in a report on Thursday, February 5th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, forty-three have issued a Buy rating and five have given a Hold rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Alphabet presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $367.18.

Alphabet Stock Performance

NASDAQ:GOOGL opened at $307.69 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.11, a current ratio of 2.01 and a quick ratio of 2.01. The firm has a market cap of $3.72 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.46, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.82 and a beta of 1.10. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $318.54 and its 200 day moving average price is $291.85. Alphabet Inc. has a 1-year low of $140.53 and a 1-year high of $349.00.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, February 4th. The information services provider reported $2.82 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.57 by $0.25. Alphabet had a net margin of 32.81% and a return on equity of 35.01%. The company had revenue of $113.83 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $111.24 billion. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Alphabet Inc. will post 8.9 EPS for the current year.

Alphabet Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, March 16th. Investors of record on Monday, March 9th were issued a dividend of $0.21 per share. This represents a $0.84 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.3%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, March 9th. Alphabet’s dividend payout ratio is currently 7.77%.

Insider Activity

In related news, major shareholder 2017 Gp L.L.C. Gv sold 1,845,308 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, January 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $19.00, for a total value of $35,060,852.00. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, Director John L. Hennessy sold 1,050 shares of Alphabet stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, March 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $303.41, for a total value of $318,580.50. Following the completion of the sale, the director directly owned 4,631 shares in the company, valued at $1,405,091.71. This represents a 18.48% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 2,110,165 shares of company stock valued at $118,134,117. Company insiders own 11.64% of the company’s stock.

About Alphabet

Alphabet Inc is the holding company created in 2015 to organize Google and a portfolio of businesses developing technologies beyond Google’s core internet services. Its principal operations are led by Google, which builds and operates consumer-facing products such as Google Search, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Maps and Google Workspace, as well as advertising platforms (Google Ads and AdSense) that historically generate the majority of its revenue. Google also develops consumer hardware (Pixel phones, Nest smart-home devices, Chromecast) and developer and distribution platforms such as Google Play.

Beyond Google’s consumer and advertising businesses, Alphabet invests in enterprise and infrastructure offerings through Google Cloud, which provides cloud computing, data analytics and productivity services to businesses and institutions.