Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Director John L. Hennessy Sells 800 Shares of Stock

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Director John L. Hennessy sold 800 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, September 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $153.75, for a total value of $123,000.00. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 28,524 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,385,565. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this link.

Alphabet Stock Up 0.4 %

Shares of NASDAQ:GOOG opened at $158.99 on Tuesday. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $168.43 and a 200 day simple moving average of $166.48. Alphabet Inc. has a 52 week low of $121.46 and a 52 week high of $193.31. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.04, a quick ratio of 2.08 and a current ratio of 2.08. The company has a market cap of $1.96 trillion, a PE ratio of 24.39, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.13 and a beta of 1.04.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, July 23rd. The information services provider reported $1.89 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.85 by $0.04. The company had revenue of $84.74 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $84.22 billion. Alphabet had a return on equity of 30.49% and a net margin of 26.70%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 13.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $1.44 earnings per share. As a group, research analysts expect that Alphabet Inc. will post 7.63 earnings per share for the current year.

Alphabet Dividend Announcement

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, September 16th. Investors of record on Monday, September 9th were issued a dividend of $0.20 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, September 9th. This represents a $0.80 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.50%. Alphabet’s dividend payout ratio is 12.27%.

Institutional Trading of Alphabet

Institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Capital International Investors raised its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 9.3% during the 1st quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 87,716,562 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $13,355,724,000 after purchasing an additional 7,470,042 shares in the last quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased its position in Alphabet by 19.7% during the first quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 84,171,721 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $12,815,986,000 after buying an additional 13,876,534 shares during the last quarter. Capital World Investors grew its holdings in Alphabet by 2.2% during the first quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 45,731,826 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $6,963,128,000 after purchasing an additional 979,083 shares during the last quarter. Capital Research Global Investors raised its position in shares of Alphabet by 2.0% in the first quarter. Capital Research Global Investors now owns 35,558,778 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $5,414,179,000 after purchasing an additional 684,968 shares during the period. Finally, Sanders Capital LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 2.9% during the 4th quarter. Sanders Capital LLC now owns 28,558,000 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $4,024,679,000 after buying an additional 813,428 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 27.26% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several brokerages recently weighed in on GOOG. Wolfe Research raised Alphabet to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 16th. Oppenheimer raised their price objective on shares of Alphabet from $205.00 to $210.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 24th. TD Cowen boosted their target price on shares of Alphabet from $200.00 to $220.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, July 10th. Rosenblatt Securities cut shares of Alphabet from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $181.00 target price for the company. in a report on Friday, June 28th. Finally, DA Davidson raised Alphabet to a “hold” rating in a report on Tuesday, September 10th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, six have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $182.86.

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.