Alphabet Q4 Makes It Biggest Stock Of All; Yahoo Reports Next
Loading the player… That’s Alphabet ( GOOGL ) with a capital A — a lot of capital. Going into Tuesday trading, the owner of Google ranked as the biggest stock of all, a title wrested from Apple ( AAPL ) Monday. Will it hang onto the crown or hand it back? In afternoon trading Tuesday, Alphabet was in the lead with a market cap around $540 billion and its stock up nearly 2%, near 785. Apple was down about 2%, near 94.50, with a market cap around $524 billion. Alphabet climbed to a $555 billion market cap in extended trading after the close of the stock market Monday, as investors cheered its estimate-trouncing fourth-quarter earnings report, out Monday afternoon. That was vs. Apple at a $533 billion market value, the Associated Press reported Monday night. (During the trading day Monday Alphabet had passed Apple, but by Monday’s closing bell Apple was in the lead.) Alphabet’s was the first big tech earnings report of the week. Tuesday after the closing bell, embattled Yahoo ( YHOO ) is set to deliver its fourth-quarter results amid a big strategy shift that could see 15% of the workforce cut , and LinkedIn ( LNKD ) its own quarterly results on Thursday afternoon. Yahoo stock was down more than 4.5% Tuesday afternoon, near 28, while LinkedIn was down more than 2%, near 201. Alphabet: First Look Beyond Google YouTube video, mobile search and programmatic ads helped drive Alphabet revenue up 18% from a year earlier to $21.32 billion in its Q4 report, whereas analysts expected $20.76 billion. Earnings ex items lifted 26% to $8.67 a share, rocketing past the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters for $8.09. Alphabet stock lifted more than 4% after hours Monday on the news to above 803. This was the first time that Alphabet — which Google created last year to be its parent company — has laid out details of its Other Bets businesses , beyond the core Google search business. It includes everything from Google Fiber and the Nest smart-thermostat division to GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Google Capital X, the garage for Google’s self-driving car initiative. Revenue for Other Bets rose 42% to $151 million while an operating loss of $1.24 billion came in deeper than the $634 million loss of a year earlier. Alphabet gets a best-possible Composite Rating of 99 from IBD. In a Monday-night research note, Pacific Crest analyst Evan Wilson raised his Alphabet price target to 910 from 850. “At the beginning of 2015, Alphabet began to provide commentary on more rational spending and increased disclosure. In Q3 we got the announcement of a share repurchase, and in Q4 we received increased disclosure around core-Google and Other Bets,” he wrote in a research note. “Many GOOGL investors came for these things, but they should stick around for the improvement in fundamentals, which should re-rate the company in the minds of investors.” Yahoo Q4 Report Ahead As for the next big tech earnings report of the week, Tuesday after the close, investors will be watching for any strategy news out of Yahoo. The Web portal operator has proposed spinning off its Internet business but keeping a 15% stake in China online shopping giant Alibaba ( BABA ). Yahoo gets only a 42 Composite Rating by IBD.