What Google and Alphabet Mean for Investors

No one likes to say good-bye, so some people just don’t. One week ago today, for example, Jon Stewart told viewers the world over that he was “going to get a drink,” then ended his more than 16-year run of the show. Then, this Monday, Larry Page said that he was “really excited to be running Alphabet as CEO” with help from his capable partner and Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, as president, and ended his 17-year run as head of Google.

That’s the way some industry watchers, includingMark Mahaney是，旧金山的RBC资本市场的互联网分析师，看看谷歌的重组消息，尽管页面从经典谷歌迁移尚未在金融出版社中讨论过多。当然，如Page’s blog postannouncing the change made clear, the new “slimmed down” version of Google will be wholly owned by new company Alphabet — but so will a lot of other businesses, each with their own CEO. Page is going to dedicate much of his energy to those interests instead.

“I could have rewritten that letter a little differently and had it say, ‘I’m Larry, and I’ve really enjoyed working at Google, and I love the people there, but I really want to focus on other parts of the business.’ I think people would have had a different reaction,” Mahaney tells亚博赞助欧冠. (Brin had already moved away from Google’s main search business.)

Mahaney responded positively to the restructuring, calling it on CNBC a “modest catalyst” because it indicated better transparency — one of four things he says investors have wanted from Google. The other three are revenue growth, consistency and margin stabilization. “Now the market will be able to see how much more profitable the core Google business is when you strip out all these moonshots,” he says. (“Moonshots” are what Google calls research projects for technological advancements carried out at its lab Google X, such asdriverless cars。）Mahaney认为，如果谷歌让投资者在搜索业务中发生的事情上，他们会惊喜地发现增长在低至中间，并且仍然可持续。

The analyst isn’t suggesting that Page’s departure should be read as a warning sign to investors, however. If the chief is disengaging, his interests have shifted, so his leaving may be best for the business. What matters is who follows him. In this case, Sundar Pichai, named CEO of Google, has already been in Google’s upper echelons for a while, so the transition should be rather seamless. RBC reiterated its outperform rating on Google and $750 price target.

At Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where research by San Francisco–based Internet analystJustin Postestimates that Google loses about $4.4 billion per year on moonshots, the company’s bombshell announcement also elicited a bullish $750 price target.

Only a few major research firms and investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, remained neutral. Why Google decided to make this change now is not something that investing experts fully agree on.

Google will now encompass a cluster of related companies, including search, Chrome, Android and YouTube — the businesses responsible for nearly all of Google’s $66 billion in revenue for 2014. Almost 90 percent of that revenue came from advertising, mostly attached to search results and YouTube videos. Other brands under Google’s umbrella, such as biotech research division Calico, broadband and cable television provider Fiber and programmable home automation devices from巢实验室，将落在字母表的purview下。

Many attribute the shift to the arrival of CFORuth Porat.五个月前从摩根士丹利。Cls在内布拉斯加州奥马哈投资的首席战略官员斯科特·库比斯认为，Porat的存在和更好的最新收益报告中的成本控制的迹象与投资者的观点来说是“非常强大”。“这是一家拥有极其有利可图的部门但没有真正清晰的资本控制的公司，并致力于提供透明度，”他说。“人们有机会评估工作和不工作的内容。”

科技投资者希望看到事情发展,Kubie说, but eventually they want companies to produce returns: “Investors want to make sure that if it has not paid out in a dividend, the capital must be reinvested well in other ventures.” But signaling that Google will be responsible to investors while still pursuing big ideas like driverless cars benefits management, too, he says, freeing up Brin and Page to follow their innovative growth agendas and “change the world” without the pressure of quarterly reporting.

Kubie is comforted by the idea that Google, like Amazon — which began breaking out its numbers for its Amazon Web Services this year — is seeking to emulateBerkshire Hathaway. Berkshire is extremely careful with its shareholders’ money, he says, and now Amazon and Google want to send the message that they’ll be cautious too.

这一变化时间的真正原因 - 甚至谷歌对其新集团的愿景 - 可能不是投资者在近期完全理解的投资者。“也许这只是创始人在个人旅程中的地方，”马赫尼说。无论哪种方式，似乎有肯定的是，字母和谷歌从现在开始看起来非常不同。Mahaney看到YouTube和Google Play成为核心公司的较大部分，以及一些Moonshots成熟到坚强的独立企业。他说他会把钱放在巢实验室，家庭小工具的制造商为世界互联网上的家庭小工具制造商。

Until then, what Google needs to do to keep investors happy is maintain revenue growth and consistent margins, he suggests. “A real surprise in the last quarter was that margins were more stable than people thought, after deteriorating for a couple of years,” Mahaney says. “If you have one quarter where margins are again deteriorating severely, the stock would trade down.”

Surely, the good-byes would then be more conspicuous.

更多地获得更多公司和trading and technology.