Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Director Sells $145,752.00 in Stock

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Director John Hennessy sold 600 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $242.92, for a total transaction of $145,752.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director directly owned 5,116 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,242,778.72. This represents a 10.50% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this link.

Alphabet Trading Up 0.7%

NASDAQ:GOOGL opened at $253.30 on Friday. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $231.55 and a 200-day moving average price of $191.61. Alphabet Inc. has a 12 month low of $140.53 and a 12 month high of $256.96. The company has a current ratio of 1.90, a quick ratio of 1.90 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07. The stock has a market cap of $3.06 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.98, a P/E/G ratio of 1.70 and a beta of 1.00.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 23rd. The information services provider reported $2.31 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.15 by $0.16. Alphabet had a net margin of 31.12% and a return on equity of 34.31%. The company had revenue of $96.43 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $93.60 billion. Equities analysts predict that Alphabet Inc. will post 8.9 EPS for the current year.

Alphabet Announces Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, September 15th. Investors of record on Monday, September 8th were given a dividend of $0.21 per share. This represents a $0.84 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.3%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, September 8th. Alphabet’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 8.95%.

Institutional Trading of Alphabet

A number of large investors have recently made changes to their positions in GOOGL. Norges Bank bought a new stake in shares of Alphabet in the second quarter worth approximately $21,944,208,000. Nuveen LLC bought a new stake in shares of Alphabet in the first quarter worth approximately $4,317,606,000. Laurel Wealth Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Alphabet by 17,667.7% in the second quarter. Laurel Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 15,245,075 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $2,686,640,000 after acquiring an additional 15,159,273 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in shares of Alphabet by 2.9% in the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 509,826,331 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $78,839,544,000 after acquiring an additional 14,307,345 shares during the period. Finally, Franklin Resources Inc. grew its stake in shares of Alphabet by 51.7% in the second quarter. Franklin Resources Inc. now owns 31,817,684 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $5,607,232,000 after acquiring an additional 10,843,853 shares during the period. 40.03% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research analysts recently issued reports on the stock. Wells Fargo & Company set a $236.00 price target on shares of Alphabet and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 7th. Sanford C. Bernstein lifted their price target on shares of Alphabet from $185.00 to $195.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 22nd. Wedbush lifted their price target on shares of Alphabet from $225.00 to $245.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, September 3rd. Royal Bank Of Canada lifted their price target on shares of Alphabet from $220.00 to $260.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, September 3rd. Finally, Rosenblatt Securities lifted their target price on shares of Alphabet from $191.00 to $224.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Wednesday, September 3rd. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have given a Buy rating and ten have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $252.24.

Alphabet Company Profile

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.