Needham: Strategic position and corporate culture boost valuation, target price for Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US) raised to $210.

Needham has raised its profit expectations and target stock price for Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US) and expects its strategic position and corporate culture to drive valuation higher. Analysts led by Laura Martin stated that the corporate culture of this tech giant is a key driver of value growth, and the company has the largest general artificial intelligence team, with only two members possibly moving to Meta (META.US). The firm has raised its target price for Alphabet Inc. Class C from $178 to $210. Needham stated, "We believe this is because Alphabet Inc. Class C has the corporate culture, resources, data flow, global scale, and financial capital to retain and incentivize the best tech talent. This strong tech culture saves money for public shareholders." According to Needham, Alphabet Inc. Class C currently has a strong strategic position, benefiting from its dominance in digital advertising, YouTube as the leading U.S. streaming service, and Generative AI (GenAI). They anticipate that their proprietary Large Language Models (LLM) will drive their valuation growth over the next 3 to 5 years. The research firm stated that Alphabet Inc. Class C has top talent and assets in place for the "next big thing" before it arrives. They noted that Alphabet Inc. Class C has benefited from the internet wave with its search engine, the mobile technology wave with the Android system, and the cloud era with Alphabet Inc. Class C Cloud. Now, they are leading in the artificial intelligence competition with Gemini. Needham also believes that the value of Alphabet Inc. Class C post-split would be higher than as a whole, and if the government were to force a split, the stock price in the hands of public shareholders would increase. For the full year 2025, they expect Alphabet Inc. Class C's total revenue to reach $387.2 billion (a year-on-year increase of 11%, 0.2% higher than their previous forecast); OIBDA to be $173 billion (a year-on-year increase of 15%, 1.5% higher than their previous forecast); and earnings per share (EPS) to be $9.64 (a year-on-year increase of 20%, 1.6% higher than their previous forecast). For the full year 2026, Needham expects total revenue to be $429.1 billion (a year-on-year increase of 11%, 0.1% higher than their previous forecast); OIBDA to be $195.4 billion (a year-on-year increase of 13%, 1% higher than their previous forecast); and EPS to be $10.28 (a year-on-year increase of 7%, 0.4% higher than their previous forecast).