October 5th, 2007
A real bidding war: Google's price target
Six hundred and fifty dollars! Can I get $650? How about $700? Here comes $700. Who’s next? An auction? Nope, just Wall Street analysts tripping over themselves to raise the price target for Google shares.
Since the odds of $700 a Google a share are probable that means we’re only $1,300 away from Henry Blodget’s Google at $2,000 a share call, which was tongue in cheek…I think. What’s a few hundred when Google could get $100 billion in revenue?
First up on Friday Todd Greenwald, an analyst at Nollenberger Capital Partners raised Google’s earnings estimates and raised the search giant’s price target to $650. What else can you do when Google is flirting with $600?
Greenwald said Google has a strong third quarter under its belt with strength in Europe. As for mortgage advertising worries, Greenwald–along with every other analyst–says the concerns are overblown. Text advertising will be the last budget to be cut. Greenwald also said there’s a lot of untapped opportunity in Google, which dominates a growing online advertising market.
Not to be outdone by Greenwald, Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck slapped a $700 price target on Google. After all it’s really a pain to have to revise a price target every month. The $700 mark should spare Peck some ink until December or so.
Peck writes in a research note:
We have updated our model to reflect a more thorough fundamental look at Google’s online search drivers, YouTube’s potential revenue contribution, and Google’s efforts in radio and print advertising.
The argument: Google is gaining search share and “Google’s efforts in online video, radio, and print, have added a layer of value that is absent from its competitor’s portfolio of offerings and which has the potential to yield significant financial rewards.”
We’ll overlook that those aforementioned businesses have yielded nada so far. Why? We have bigger questions to ask.
Can I get a $750 in the house?
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 10/05/07
