Alphabet (GOOG.US, GOOGL.US) performance greatly exceeds expectations, stock price reaching all-time high. Analysts unanimously bullish on its AI and cloud business.

Alphabet Inc. Class C's parent company Alphabet (GOOG.US, GOOGL.US) stock price reached a new high of $291.93 on Thursday. The company's third-quarter performance far exceeded market expectations, with profits surpassing analysts' forecasts by over 20%. Alphabet's stock price has climbed steadily from the range of $140 to $150 at the beginning of the year, with a year-to-date increase of over 44%. Seeking Alpha analyst Jonathan Weber pointed out that Alphabet's third-quarter profit exceeded expectations by about 27%, making it one of the largest profit beats in recent years. The company's revenue grew by 16% year-on-year, and operating profit increased by 10%, demonstrating good cost control and margin improvement. He stated that Alphabet's valuation is still lower relative to Tesla, Inc. (TSLA.US), Apple Inc. (AAPL.US), Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US), NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US), and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US), making it one of the most cost-effective targets among the "Seven Giants". Weber reiterated his bullish view, believing that Alphabet has strong growth potential, a wide "moat" business model, and relatively attractive valuation. The independent research firm The Asian Investor emphasized that cloud computing and digital advertising are the twin engines of Alphabet's growth. They pointed out that the company's free cash flow increased by 38.7% year-on-year in the third quarter, benefiting from capital spending on AI and cloud computing. "Alphabet's cloud revenue continues to grow at a double-digit rate, advertising business performs well, and AI deployment is significant," they stated. The Asian Investor believes that Alphabet's expected P/E ratio is only around 25.7 times, lower than the average level of large tech stocks, still having the potential for revaluation; the only risk is if corporate AI capital spending slows down or cash flow weakens, but overall fundamentals support a "strong buy" view. The Techie also sees a bright future for Alphabet in the long term. They noted that Alphabet achieved record revenue of $102.4 billion this quarter, with Google Cloud revenue growing by 34% year-on-year, and YouTube advertising also performing well. "Alphabet is accelerating its AI strategy deployment, integrating the Gemini model, large-scale cloud collaboration, and continuous capital investment, to strengthen its leadership in the search and cloud fields," they added. The Techie also stated that the company's layout in cloud computing, video streaming, AI, search advertising, and autonomous driving (Waymo) businesses is "unprecedented," laying a solid foundation for long-term growth. Institutional analysts have generally raised their target price for the company, believing that Alphabet is showing a pattern of "accelerating growth with multiple engines". Evercore ISI maintains an "Outperform" rating and raises the target price from $300 to $325, stating that the company has achieved accelerated growth in its main revenue streams such as advertising, search, YouTube, and cloud computing, "almost across the board exceeding expectations". Truist Securities maintains a "Buy" rating, raising the target price from $285 to $320, emphasizing that search advertising revenue is still accelerating quarter-on-quarter in the context of AI competition, showing strong competitiveness. Barclays gives an "Overweight" rating, raising the target price from $250 to $315, bullish on the revenue growth potential under AI empowerment, and believes that there is still upside potential for the stock price if it can effectively address the threat of AI competition before 2026. Stifel maintains a "Buy" rating, pointing out that Google Cloud's backlog reached $155 billion, showing significant growth year-on-year and demonstrating strong demand. Stifel stated that Alphabet is maintaining scale growth through mature businesses such as mobile search, YouTube, and programmatic advertising while continuing to invest in cloud, hardware, and AI to build growth engines for the future.