Ahead of Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) first-quarter earnings, this analyst expects Google's parent to deliver on the advertising revenue and expects an "earnings surprise."
What Happened: The Chairman and Founder of Navellier & Associates, Louis Navellier, spoke about Alphabet's first quarter forecast in his podcast ‘Market Buzz'.
“Well, their sales are forecasted to go up 10.7%, and earnings are forecast to grow 7%. Google does not provide any guidance whatsoever, but it has a very good earnings surprise history. I think what everybody’s going to be looking at is their advertising revenue very carefully," he said.
According to him, March's strong retail sales will help push Google's advertising revenue in the said quarter. “Based on the strong retail sales we had in March, the strongest in two years, I would think Google’s advertising revenue would pick up.”
Last week, a U.S. District Judge ruled that the Department of Justice won its antitrust case against Alphabet’s Google, finding the company illegally monopolized advertising technology.
The ruling concluded that Google engaged in anticompetitive practices for over a decade by bundling its publisher ad server and ad exchange to maintain its monopoly in those open-web display ad markets.
Navellier added, “The only glitch is, of course, the Department of Justice has won a suit against them to break them up. You know, breaking up Google is kind of like a dog catching a car. I mean, what does the dog do now? They’re trying to appease the government, and I’m sure with Trump in it’s going to be a little different, but I think they’re trying to spin off Chrome, so we’ll see what happens, but Google normally beats.”
Why It Matters: The company will be reporting its first-quarter earnings on April 24. Alphabet's technical charts indicated that its premarket price of $157.66 per share at the time of the publication was above its short-term simple daily moving averages but below its long-term averages.
The relative strength index of 43.78 was neutral, whereas its MACD line was at negative 4.04. However, its 12-day exponential moving average was above the 26-day EMA, with a positive histogram of 0.47, indicating a bullish trend.
The stock was up 2.44% in premarket, but it has fallen by 19.27% on a year-to-date basis. It was 3.76% lower over the year.
Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings shows that GOOG had a weaker price trend over the short, medium, and long term. Its momentum ranking was moderate at the 48.43 percentile, whereas its value ranking was also moderate; the details of other metrics are available here.
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (NASDAQ:QQQ), which track the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq 100 index, respectively, rose in premarket on Wednesday. The SPY was up 2.50% to $540.42, while the QQQ advanced 3.20% to $457.91, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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