Brown Advisory Inc. Reduces Position in Alphabet Inc. $GOOGL

Brown Advisory Inc. decreased its holdings in shares of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) by 0.9% in the fourth quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 2,101,637 shares of the information services provider’s stock after selling 19,553 shares during the quarter. Alphabet comprises about 0.9% of Brown Advisory Inc.’s portfolio, making the stock its 24th biggest holding. Brown Advisory Inc.’s holdings in Alphabet were worth $657,813,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other large investors have also modified their holdings of the business. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 2.4% during the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 528,969,322 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $165,567,398,000 after buying an additional 12,531,695 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 1.8% during the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 229,954,269 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $40,524,841,000 after buying an additional 4,008,374 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 1.9% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 146,193,037 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $45,625,595,000 after buying an additional 2,666,676 shares in the last quarter. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in shares of Alphabet during the fourth quarter worth $30,534,239,000. Finally, Capital World Investors grew its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 1.5% during the fourth quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 53,881,908 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $16,865,158,000 after buying an additional 774,336 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 40.03% of the company’s stock.

Key Stories Impacting Alphabet

Here are the key news stories impacting Alphabet this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Alphabet’s drone unit Wing expanded its Walmart partnership into seven more U.S. cities, pushing the service toward nearly 20 markets and signaling that drone delivery is moving from experiment to scalable business. Alphabet’s Most Overlooked Division Just Had a Big Week
• Positive Sentiment: Waymo launched a new $29.99 monthly membership program with perks for frequent riders, a move that suggests the robotaxi business is building recurring revenue on top of rapid ride-growth. Waymo launches premier subscription tier for $29.99 a month, starting in select cities
• Positive Sentiment: TD Cowen raised its price target on Alphabet, adding to the bullish analyst backdrop and supporting the view that the stock still has room to run. Alphabet (GOOGL) Among Our Good Stocks to Buy Now
• Positive Sentiment: Bank of America and other commentary highlighted Alphabet as a long-term AI beneficiary, especially as rising model costs could strengthen demand for Google Cloud and infrastructure. Anthropic’s Priciest AI Model Yet Is Here. Why Alphabet and Amazon Will Benefit.
• Neutral Sentiment: Alphabet sued an alleged Chinese cybercrime group accused of using Google’s AI tools to run scam operations, which shows the company is actively defending its platform but is not likely to move the stock much on its own. Google sues alleged Chinese cybercrime operation that used AI to send scam texts
• Neutral Sentiment: Some investors noted that Altimeter Capital fully exited its Alphabet stake in Q1, but this appears more like portfolio repositioning than a company-specific warning. Billionaire Brad Gerstner Dumped All of His Alphabet Then Bought 2 Stocks Nobody Expected

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

GOOGL has been the subject of a number of research reports. Jefferies Financial Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating on shares of Alphabet in a report on Wednesday, May 20th. Freedom Capital lowered shares of Alphabet from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, May 4th. Phillip Securities upped their price objective on shares of Alphabet from $340.00 to $395.00 and gave the company a “moderate buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, April 15th. China Renaissance upped their price objective on shares of Alphabet from $400.00 to $485.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Monday, May 4th. Finally, CICC Research upped their price objective on shares of Alphabet from $388.00 to $407.91 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Friday, May 1st. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, forty-seven have issued a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $413.13.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, Director Frances Arnold sold 102 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, May 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $381.00, for a total value of $38,862.00. Following the sale, the director directly owned 18,721 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,132,701. The trade was a 0.54% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, major shareholder 2019 Gp L.L.C. Gv sold 87,475 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, May 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $23.75, for a total transaction of $2,077,531.25. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 193,016 shares of company stock worth $17,282,549. Insiders own 11.61% of the company’s stock.

Alphabet Trading Up 0.5%

Shares of GOOGL stock opened at $359.68 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.16, a current ratio of 1.92 and a quick ratio of 1.92. The firm has a market cap of $4.36 trillion, a PE ratio of 27.44, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.54 and a beta of 1.23. The company has a 50-day moving average of $360.45 and a two-hundred day moving average of $330.26. Alphabet Inc. has a 1-year low of $162.00 and a 1-year high of $408.61.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, April 29th. The information services provider reported $5.11 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.64 by $2.47. The business had revenue of $109.90 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $106.98 billion. Alphabet had a net margin of 37.92% and a return on equity of 38.99%. On average, analysts predict that Alphabet Inc. will post 14.3 EPS for the current year.

Alphabet Increases Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, June 15th. Stockholders of record on Monday, June 8th will be paid a $0.22 dividend. This is a positive change from Alphabet’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.21. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, June 8th. This represents a $0.88 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.2%. Alphabet’s payout ratio is presently 6.71%.

Alphabet Company Profile

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.