Analysts liked what Alphabet's third-quarter earnings report showed. The company earned an adjusted $3.10 per share on revenue of $102.35 billion. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had forecast earnings of $2.33 and $99.89 billion in revenue. Alphabet cited strong demand for artificial intelligence as helping drive momentum in its cloud business. Cloud revenue came in at $15.15 billion, marking a 35% year-over-year increase. And while the company increased its capital expenditures outlook, investors and analysts cheered the Alphabet's AI path while its other businesses remain strong. Analysts across Wall Street reiterated their bullishness on the name, with the ones highlighted below raising their price targets. On the other hand, some cautioned that the company may face upcoming headwinds as AI search competition ramps up. Shares were up more than 8% in the premarket following the report. Goldman Sachs: buy, $330 Goldman Sachs raised its price target to $330 from $288, indicating upside of 20% from Alphabet's Wednesday close. "We continue to see multiple fronts where Alphabet has climbed a steep wall of worry in the past 12 months around the AI theme and don't see any reasons to suspect a pause or step back in terms of its operating proof points to change investor perception. In our view, Alphabet mgmt continued to emphasize a very positive tone with respect to the scale for consumer and enterprise computing adoption of their AI solutions (citing several examples around search/query formats that are building in scale across traditional search, AI Overviews, Gemini and AI Mode). We continue to expect Alphabet can successfully navigate the current multi-year evolution of its core Search product by leveraging its current strengths (existing user base; leading product innovation, which is accelerating in pace; technical infrastructure footprint and cost leverage vs. competitors; etc.)." Barclays: overweight, $315 Barclays' forecast, raised from $250, corresponds to upside of around 15%. "GOOGL saw each key revenue line accelerate in 3Q on the back of AI tailwinds across the entire business, and a solid digital advertising industry backdrop. If the company can shrug off AI competitive threats to Search in '26, we think shares can continue to work higher." Morgan Stanley: overweight, $330 "Expect GOOGL to outperform tactically. Gemini 3/Llama next key narrative/multiple catalysts." Bank of America: buy, $335 Analyst Justin Post's price target, lifted from $280, was approximately 22% higher than Alphabet's closing price on Wednesday. "We believe results will reinforce the view that: 1) Google is well positioned for AI with a leading LLM, proprietary TPU technology and massive user base, and 2) there can be multiple beneficiaries from growing AI capabilities. Also, early-stage bets like Waymo and quantum computing offer meaningful long-term optionality, not reflected in valuation. At AH price of ~$294 stock is valued at 24x our '27 EPS, (vs S & P 22x), in line with historical premium despite a big AI growth cycle ahead. Next catalyst: Gemini 3.0 launch in 4Q. Risk: OpenAI's ads launch in 2026 could intensify competition." JPMorgan: overweight, $340 JPMorgan's new target, lifted from $300, equates to 24% upside. "Importantly, we believe GOOG/L's 3Q results and positive commentary on AI search formats could change investor perception around the transition to AI search in a couple of ways. …Overall, the AI search transition has been viewed as the greatest risk to Google, but additional signs that AI search is more opportunity than threat will continue to flip the narrative. …GOOG/L remains a top 2 idea—behind only AMZN." UBS: neutral rating, $306 price target Analyst Stephen Ju's new target, up from $255, implies about 11% upside from Wednesday's close. "For starters, Google beat across all its major franchises — Search, YouTube and Cloud. The big learning for today was on Cloud, where a disclosed backlog of $155B (50-55% likely to be turned into revenue in the next 2 years) sets Google up to be a substantially larger company than investors had expected. …Google is driving consequential expansion to both its ad business and cloud business due to GenAI and therefore this company starts to become a frontrunner in our space in terms of proving out ROIC on this new investment area. …We maintain our Neutral rating as we continue to believe that risk from ChatGPT and GenAI competitors will remain an ongoing area of concern over the next 12 months, especially as ChatGPT begins to roll out its new browser and its updated merchant integrations." Deutsche Bank: buy, $340 "The set-up for Alphabet was not easy, with the stock rallying 43% since 2Q's results. Against that backdrop, the company reported virtually no hair on the print, with strong growth across all major segments — consolidated revenues grew to $102.3bn, +16% y/y (15% FXN), outperforming the street by ~2.5%."
