Just about every major Wall Street analyst says this Alphabet dip is a buying opportunity
When a stock drops after an earnings report, analysts typically follow the directional move the next day with a negative commentary in their notes to clients. This was not the case with the reports on Alphabet (GOOGL) Tuesday morning.Almost every major Wall Street analyst defended their bullish calls on the company even as its shares fell. Alphabet's stock dropped more than 2.5 percent in early trading Tuesday.The internet giant reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings Monday, but its shares declined due to concerns over its profit margin and web traffic acquisitions costs. However, Wall Street's optimism on Alphabet still reigned."We continue to view Alphabet as exposed to some of the best secular trends within tech, including mobile search, YouTube, and enterprise cloud computing, which we expect to become a bigger part of the thesis over time," Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini wrote in a note to clients Tuesday.Alphabet has been one of the best-performing large-cap stocks in the market. Its shares rallied 26 percent year to date through Monday versus the S&P 500's 10 percent return.Bellini maintained her buy rating and $1,100 price target for Alphabet, representing 10 percent upside from Monday's close.In similar fashion, other Wall Street firms generally reiterated their bullish calls. Raymond James reaffirmed its outperform rating for Alphabet and raised its price target to $1,030 from $1,020. KeyBanc Capital also maintained its overweight rating and $1,100 price forecast on the company's stock. Other analysts emphasized Alphabet's continued likely leadership in new technology trends. "We still hold firm in our constructive LT view of Alphabet — strengths/advantages with respect to AI/machine learning and mobile app ecosystem usage will likely result in Alphabet playing a key role in the next league of personal/enterprise computing trends over the foreseeable future," UBS analyst Eric Sheridan wrote Monday after the report.Sheridan also reiterated his buy rating on the internet company and raised his price target to $1,080 from $1,050. To be sure, analysts did focus on the big risk over Alphabet's falling profit margins. The company reported a core business second-quarter operating profit margin of 30.3 percent ex-one-time items versus 32.8 percent the previous year. "The mix shift to faster-growing low-margin businesses, and the likely decelerating growth in desktop search (the primary profit pool) is challenging for Google to manage, hence we expect margins to continue to contract," Barclays analyst Ross Sandler wrote Tuesday.For the time being however, analysts are willing to overlook the margin decline due to the company's strong sales growth of more than 20 percent.
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