Rating
Hold
Price target
$357
Previous
$279
Implied upside
+7%

Rosenblatt analyst Barton Crockett raised the price target on Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) to $357.00 (from $279.00) while maintaining a Neutral rating.

“Google Cloud stole the show in Alphabet’s 4Q25, with backlog spiking 55% Q/Q to $240B, topping AWS’ $200B backlog in 3Q25, putting Google Cloud now toe-to-toe with the Amazon unit in the race to be largest cloud service provider.

But this comes with a spike in new spending. Alphabet is guiding for a doubling Y/Y of capex in 2026E to $175B-$185B. This capex is ~ 60% servers, 40% data centers/networking.

In addition, Google Cloud said to be commanding a majority of machine learning compute, suggesting that the Google Cloud segment will command a majority of capex and be free cash flow negative in 2026E, while free cash flow across all of Alphabet will substantially dwindle in 2026E.

Our approach is to treat these AI capex spikes at Google, Meta and others generally as a bulge that normalizes over time, so we use a growth-adjusted EBITDA multiple for price target.

Largely because of the cloud acceleration, we’re raising 2026E Adj. EBITDA 6% to $213B (20% growth Y/Y).

Our price target moves up $78 (or 28%) to $357, with the assumed multiple moving up 400 bps to 20x 2026E, consistent with an estimated 20% Adj.

EBITDA growth CAGR 2025A-2027E now, versus a 16x multiple and 15% EBITDA growth assumption formerly. With our PT within 10% of the recent close, we maintain our NEUTRAL rating.”

This research note is reproduced verbatim from the issuing firm. Price Target never edits, paraphrases or alters analysts’ words — we only republish them in one place.

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