Sax Wealth Advisors LLC Increases Stock Holdings in Alphabet Inc. $GOOG

Sax Wealth Advisors LLC grew its position in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) by 38.5% in the second quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The institutional investor owned 24,007 shares of the information services provider’s stock after purchasing an additional 6,668 shares during the period. Sax Wealth Advisors LLC’s holdings in Alphabet were worth $4,259,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the company. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC increased its position in Alphabet by 580,897.4% during the 2nd quarter. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC now owns 135,087,705 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $23,963,208,000 after purchasing an additional 135,064,454 shares in the last quarter. Nuveen LLC purchased a new stake in Alphabet during the 1st quarter worth about $2,622,943,000. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its position in Alphabet by 2.4% during the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 411,570,922 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $64,299,725,000 after purchasing an additional 9,687,855 shares in the last quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased its position in Alphabet by 9.9% during the 1st quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 102,232,997 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $15,971,861,000 after purchasing an additional 9,243,959 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Strs Ohio purchased a new stake in Alphabet during the 1st quarter worth about $369,713,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 27.26% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of analysts recently commented on the company. UBS Group set a $255.00 price objective on Alphabet and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday. Mizuho raised Alphabet to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Monday, September 29th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price target on Alphabet from $232.00 to $260.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, September 3rd. TD Cowen raised their price target on Alphabet from $270.00 to $280.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday. Finally, Weiss Ratings reissued a “buy (b)” rating on shares of Alphabet in a research note on Wednesday. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-one have given a Buy rating, five have assigned a Hold rating and three have assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $241.00.

Alphabet Stock Performance

NASDAQ GOOG opened at $237.49 on Friday. The firm has a market capitalization of $2.87 trillion, a P/E ratio of 25.29, a P/E/G ratio of 1.63 and a beta of 1.00. Alphabet Inc. has a 1-year low of $142.66 and a 1-year high of $256.70. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a current ratio of 1.90 and a quick ratio of 1.90. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $226.97 and its 200-day simple moving average is $189.66.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 23rd. The information services provider reported $2.31 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.12 by $0.19. The business had revenue of $96.43 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $93.67 billion. Alphabet had a return on equity of 34.31% and a net margin of 31.12%.The company’s revenue was up 13.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $1.89 EPS. Equities analysts predict that Alphabet Inc. will post 8.89 EPS for the current year.

Alphabet Dividend Announcement

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, September 15th. Stockholders of record on Monday, September 8th were paid a $0.21 dividend. This represents a $0.84 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.4%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, September 8th. Alphabet’s payout ratio is currently 8.95%.

Insider Activity

In other news, insider John Kent Walker sold 23,820 shares of Alphabet stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $194.70, for a total value of $4,637,754.00. Following the transaction, the insider directly owned 42,999 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $8,371,905.30. The trade was a 35.65% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, CEO Sundar Pichai sold 32,500 shares of Alphabet stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, July 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $184.38, for a total value of $5,992,350.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 2,527,392 shares in the company, valued at $466,000,536.96. This represents a 1.27% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 276,738 shares of company stock valued at $59,135,475 in the last three months. Corporate insiders own 12.99% of the company’s stock.

Alphabet Profile

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.