Mr. Guggenheim believes Alphabet has room for further growth. The investment firm raised its 12-month price target for Google’s parent company to $375 a share from $330, implying a 17% upside from Friday’s closing price. It maintained its buy rating on the stock. Analyst Michael Morris reiterated his belief that the largest companies he covers are best positioned to drive returns for investors and significant growth next year. GOOGL YTD Mountain GOOGL YTD Chart “Alphabet outperformed consensus expectations and is poised for further relative expansion as investors gain further confidence that artificial intelligence-driven changes in business, advertising, and consumer markets represent an opportunity for expansion,” he wrote. The analyst points to three key drivers going forward for Alphabet, the first of which is due to “an unusual cloud backlog growth fueled by a surge in enterprise AI demand.” In fact, analysts cited upward revisions to Google Cloud unit sales as the main reason for raising Alphabet’s 2026 and 2027 revenue and profit forecasts. “While we believe the company’s recent share price appreciation reflects positive sentiment on these themes, we see a plausible bullish case for Cloud, indicating that consensus underestimates run-rate revenue potential by up to $40 billion based on backlog growth,” Morris added. The analyst also pointed to YouTube’s continued dominance in streaming viewership, along with “structural viewership growth.” More importantly, he said, YouTube’s monetization of this viewership is accelerating through means such as YouTube Shorts, which now generate higher revenue per watch hour than traditional in-stream pricing. Morris also believes that Google Gemini can continue to maintain its position as the top AI platform. Since its release last month, Gemini 3.0 has received “overwhelmingly positive reviews,” with Gemini’s total monthly active users increasing to 650 million from 350 million in March. “Management reported that over 85,000 businesses are building with Gemini, and as of Q2, Gemini usage was up 35x year-over-year, with more than 230mm of video being produced using Veo 3,” he wrote. “We believe this combination of consumer momentum and enterprise adoption will enable Gemini to drive significant revenue contributions through Google Cloud, Workspace integration, and search enhancements in 2026-2027.” Alphabet stock rose 74% in 2025.
