Beacon Investment Advisory Services Inc. Buys 345 Shares of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)

Beacon Investment Advisory Services Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) by 0.6% in the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The fund owned 56,409 shares of the information services provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 345 shares during the quarter. Beacon Investment Advisory Services Inc.’s holdings in Alphabet were worth $10,743,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other large investors also recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Endeavor Private Wealth Inc. acquired a new position in Alphabet in the 4th quarter worth $663,000. Bill Few Associates Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 0.8% in the fourth quarter. Bill Few Associates Inc. now owns 39,810 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $7,581,000 after purchasing an additional 308 shares in the last quarter. MinichMacGregor Wealth Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Alphabet during the fourth quarter worth about $308,000. Wendell David Associates Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Alphabet by 14.4% during the fourth quarter. Wendell David Associates Inc. now owns 3,124 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $595,000 after buying an additional 393 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Independent Wealth Network Inc. raised its position in Alphabet by 10.3% in the 4th quarter. Independent Wealth Network Inc. now owns 4,544 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $865,000 after buying an additional 426 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 27.26% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several brokerages have recently weighed in on GOOG. Oppenheimer raised their price target on shares of Alphabet from $185.00 to $215.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Phillip Securities upgraded shares of Alphabet to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Friday, November 1st. Citigroup boosted their price target on shares of Alphabet from $212.00 to $216.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. UBS Group raised their price objective on Alphabet from $187.00 to $192.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, Pivotal Research upped their target price on Alphabet from $215.00 to $225.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Six analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twelve have assigned a buy rating and three have given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $205.13.

Alphabet Stock Performance

Shares of GOOG stock opened at $201.90 on Friday. Alphabet Inc. has a 52 week low of $131.55 and a 52 week high of $203.84. The company has a market capitalization of $2.47 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.78, a PEG ratio of 1.27 and a beta of 0.99. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $187.95 and a 200 day simple moving average of $175.31. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.04, a quick ratio of 1.95 and a current ratio of 1.95.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The information services provider reported $2.12 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.83 by $0.29. The company had revenue of $88.27 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $86.39 billion. Alphabet had a return on equity of 31.66% and a net margin of 27.74%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 15.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $1.55 earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Alphabet Inc. will post 8.02 earnings per share for the current year.

Alphabet Dividend Announcement

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, December 16th. Shareholders of record on Monday, December 9th were given a dividend of $0.20 per share. This represents a $0.80 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.40%. The ex-dividend date was Monday, December 9th. Alphabet’s payout ratio is 10.61%.

Insider Transactions at Alphabet

In other news, Director Kavitark Ram Shriram sold 37,134 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, December 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $185.02, for a total transaction of $6,870,532.68. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 282,832 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $52,329,576.64. This trade represents a 11.61 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, CAO Amie Thuener O’toole sold 2,834 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, January 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $194.32, for a total value of $550,702.88. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 17,847 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,468,029.04. This trade represents a 13.70 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last 90 days, insiders sold 133,387 shares of company stock valued at $24,368,654. 12.99% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

About Alphabet

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.