Fundamentals snapshot
GOOGL · NMS · Communication Services · Internet Content & Information
Current price
$368.53
52-week range
$162.00 - $408.61
Market cap
$4.49T
One-glance verdict
Fair-value range $266.13 – $598.01 (cautious → optimistic — tap the ? for the math)
Wall Street consensus: $431.19 (10.5% higher than our fair-value estimate)
Buy below $312.24 for a 20% safety cushion
Balance sheet
Net cash $30.96B. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
Quick scan of the biggest positives and negatives from the detailed checklist below.
What this company does
Alphabet is the parent company of Google, which makes the vast majority of its money selling ads on its core products like Search and YouTube. The company also runs a large cloud computing business and invests in future technology, but its dominance in advertising makes it a central pillar of the modern internet.
What started as a university research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996 became the search engine Google in 1998. The company grew rapidly by offering a simple, effective way to find information online and made money by selling advertising. Over the years, it launched or acquired hugely popular services like Gmail, Android, and YouTube. In 2015, the company restructured, creating Alphabet as the parent company to oversee Google and its other ventures, allowing each to operate with more independence.
Most people know Alphabet through its Google products, which are a part of daily life for billions of people. These include Google Search for finding information, YouTube for watching videos, Gmail for email, and Google Maps for navigation. The company also makes the Android operating system that powers most of the world's smartphones, the Chrome web browser, and hardware like Pixel phones. While most of these services are free to use, Alphabet primarily makes money by selling highly targeted advertising to businesses that want to reach all those users.
This is the largest and most profitable part of Alphabet, containing the familiar products like Search, YouTube, Android, and Chrome. It generates the vast majority of the company's revenue (the money it brings in from sales). The main way this segment makes money is through advertising on Google Search and YouTube. It also earns revenue from sales of apps and movies on the Google Play store, subscriptions to services like YouTube Premium, and sales of its own devices like Pixel phones.
This is a smaller but rapidly growing part of the company that provides services to other businesses. It offers cloud computing services, which means it rents out its powerful computer infrastructure and software to other companies so they don't have to build their own. Businesses pay to use Google's tools for data storage, data analysis, and artificial intelligence. This segment also includes Google Workspace, a collection of productivity tools like Gmail and Google Docs for business customers.
This segment is a collection of Alphabet's more experimental and long-term projects. These are ventures in various industries that are not yet profitable but could become major businesses in the future. Examples include Waymo, which is developing self-driving car technology, and Verily, which focuses on life sciences and healthcare. This part of the company represents a very small fraction of Alphabet's total revenue and currently operates at a loss.
Alphabet's leadership is heavily focused on artificial intelligence (AI), aiming to integrate it into all of its products, from Search to Cloud services. The company is making significant investments in AI infrastructure (the basic physical and organizational structures needed for it to operate) to compete with other major tech companies. They are also focused on growing the Google Cloud business to further diversify revenue beyond advertising. Another key priority is the commercialization of its 'Other Bets' like Waymo's autonomous ride-hailing services.
Price history
Earnings history
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
Is it cheap or expensive?
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $431.19 (10.5% higher than our fair-value estimate).
Buy below $312.24 for a 20% safety cushion. That means buying at least 20% below our fair value, as a buffer in case our estimate turns out too rosy.
Our most-likely fair value is $390.30 a share — about 5.9% away from today's price of $368.53, so the stock currently looks fairly priced.
Is it drowning in debt?
Net cash $31.0B - more cash than debt. Interest coverage 175.3x.
Alphabet Inc.'s profit covers its interest bill about 175.3 times over. which is stronger than most peers shown here.
Total debt $95.88B Interest coverage 175.32x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $125.43B Interest coverage 53.89x -69% vs GOOGL Carries about 3.3x less debt cushion than GOOGL.
Total debt $86.77B Interest coverage 71.48x -59% vs GOOGL Carries about 2.5x less debt cushion than GOOGL.
Total debt $235.54B Interest coverage 35.17x -80% vs GOOGL Carries about 5.0x less debt cushion than GOOGL.
Total debt $84.71B Interest coverage 33.83x -81% vs GOOGL Carries about 5.2x less debt cushion than GOOGL.
Total debt $12.81B Interest coverage 503.42x +187% vs GOOGL Carries about 2.9x more debt cushion than GOOGL.
What you should know
The numbers
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
Profitability
Health
Growth
Cash flow
Dividend
Metric explainer
Debt comparison
What you should know