Alphabet anticipates strong Q1 results, with analysts projecting a 41% increase in adjusted EPS to $1.65 and a revenue surge to $66.069 billion, up 13.78% year-over-year. Expectations focus on Cloud segment growth, AI integration, and sustained ad revenue despite potential margin pressures. Bullish forecasts hint at a $2 trillion valuation.
Alphabet is set to release its first quarter financial results after market closes on Thursday, April 25. Wall Street expects a year-over-year increase in earnings on higher revenues.
The searching giant is expected to post adjusted EPS of $1.65 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +41%. Revenues are expected to be $66.069 billion, up 13.78% from the year-ago quarter. Adjusted net profit is estimated to be $19.336 billion, up 41.9% year-over-year.
Previous Quarter Review
Alphabet reported revenues of $72.324 in 4Q23. Adjusted EPS was $1.65 per share while adjusted net profit was $20.687 billion.
Google Cloud revenue in the fourth quarter was $9.2 billion, while analysts were expecting $8.9 billion. That marked a re-acceleration of cloud revenue growth from the previous quarter to 25.7%.
What to Watch for In Alphabet’s Q1 Earnings
Cloud segment growth could see sequential improvement
Alphabet's Cloud segment growth could see sequential improvement in 1Q24, lifted by gen AI workloads and the company's addition of third-party models and databases to its Vertex AI offering. AI workloads and copilots could provide a tailwind of 400-600 bps to the segment's growth. YouTube may once again shine given the company's traction with converting its free users to paid subscribers. Despite concerns that core search can't match consensus of 11% growth.
Is demand for digital advertising continuing to accelerate?
Sentiment has improved recently as Google emerges as one of the top players in generative AI, and reports suggest the company is mulling charging for AI-powered search.
After its share price fell nearly 40% in 2022, Alphabet’s business recovered nicely as advertising spending proved stable as the U.S. seemingly avoided a full-blown recession long feared. Ads revenue to remain over 70% of Alphabet’s total revenue, driven by continuing growth in digital ad spending, albeit at a much slower rate than historically.
Updates including generative AI in the search product
What is Google doing, and where is it at in ensuring there’s no repeat of the publicity fiasco around the Gemini launch in February? We’ll also look for any updates to the firm’s thinking around including generative AI in the search product and how it will sell ads against that service.
Its generative AI model, Gemini, may have struggled initially when it launched. However, Gemini 1.5 has multiple advantages over competitors like ChatGPT. Gemini 1.5 outperforms it in benchmark tests, such as the massive multitask language understanding test, the first model to outperform human experts.
Alphabet is also increasing the performance of its AI models in its cloud computing offering, Google Cloud. Although it's still purchasing many Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) for its data centers, Alphabet is also rolling out its new tensor processing unit (TPU) made by Arm. While TPUs won't outright replace GPUs, they are faster and more efficient than GPUs when processing workloads specifically designed for the hardware, like training AI models.
An ongoing recovery in pricing
Healthy user engagement continues to drive more ad spending across Search and Social with growth in the first quarter helped by an ongoing recovery in pricing. Increased capital-spending growth expectations may limit free-cash-flow margin estimates, though the company could see significant improvement in its Cloud segment margin.
However, Google may face slight margin pressure in 2024, given the firm’s continued investments in growth initiatives (mainly AI) which require higher research and development. The company could end up reporting some more downbeat updates. After last year’s efficiency efforts, Alphabet may be tapped out of cost-reduction opportunities.
$2 trillion valuation in sight
Alphabet stock hit a new all-time closing high when it ended the day on April 11 at $159.41 per share. The search engine titan rides the artificial intelligence wave to a historic valuation.
Wall Street largely expects the Google parent to indeed surpass the $2 trillion mark, as the average analyst price target of $168 implies a $2.1 trillion market cap for Alphabet, according to Bloomberg.
Alphabet’s most recent flirtation with a $2 trillion valuation follows a 13% runup in its share price year-to-date and a 77% jump dating back to the end of 2022, a rally spurred by record profits due to resilient advertising spending and on the back of investor optimism partially inspired by the company’s potential to further profit off of AI, as Alphabet’s price to future earnings ratio sits at its highest level in two years, indicating the market is betting on unrealized future profit potential.
Analysts’ Opinions
Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein is among the Alphabet bulls, setting a $185 price target ($2.3 trillion implied market cap) for Alphabet shares in a Sunday note which helped propel the stock up 1.5% in Monday trading, citing optimism about Google’s ability to thrive as its generative AI applications take hold in search.
Morningstar analyst Michael Hodel argued on April 15, the market will be focused on updates about Alphabet’s gen AI endeavors, its cost-cutting efforts, as well as on digital ad demand trends.
However, while Alphabet could in theory wow the market in all three of these areas, don’t assume it’s a lock. For instance, updates could show that the digital ad market rebound is slowing down.
Baird said Google's cloud unit is still seeing some "modest headwinds" as customers continue to optimize spending, but excitement around artificial intelligence could provide it a competitive boost, .
"Based on product announcements and our conversations with contacts at the event, we continue to see Google accelerating the pace of innovation in GCP, and in the long-run, believe the company’s long-standing core AI/ML capabilities will provide competitive advantages into the Gen-AI era," analyst Colin Sebastian wrote, referring to the tech giant's cloud conference held last week. Sebastian has an Outperform rating and $160 price target on the stock.
Truist Securities maintained its Buy rating on Alphabet's shares expecting a solid first quarter, ahead of the company's earnings results next week.
The firm also raised its estimates for the Google parent's first quarter and full year 2024, and upped the price target to $170 from $158. Truist noted that healthy user engagement continues to drive more ad spending across Search and Social with growth in the first quarter helped by an ongoing recovery in pricing.
"We expect 1Q24 results to come in slightly ahead of consensus, with cost containment driving higher Y/Y margins," said a team of analysts led by Youssef Squali in a research note.
