What To Expect From Alphabet’s Q4 Results

When Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) reports its Q4 earnings on February 4, one of the top investor questions is likely to be the progress on Google Cloud after Thomas Kurian joined the search giant. In addition to the search business, we expect the company to talk a bit more about its cloud strategy in wake of the changing world order with the IBM acquisition of Red Hat.

We currently have a price estimate of $1,143 per share for Google, which is around 10% higher than the current market price. Our interactive dashboard on Google’s Price Estimate outlines our forecasts and estimates for the company. You can modify any of the key drivers to visualize the impact of changes on its valuation.

On The Edge

The increasing use cases for edge computing fit in well with Google’s DNA of distributed computing (Google File System or GFS is an example of distributed computing architecture aimed at facilitating Google’s search algorithms). Google’s tighter associated with Salesforce and the hiring of an Oracle Cloud veteran also give sufficient indication about the company’s cloud plans. Furthermore, Mr. Kurian is also likely to reap the benefits from Google Cloud’s previous CEO Diana Greene’s efforts towards productizing Google’s existing IoT, AI and ML capabilities under cloud.

Not only can edge computing thread together the company’s vision across consumer (search) and enterprise (cloud) but also can make Google a preferred partner of blockchain implementations on account of the company’s reach, distributed architecture and data science capabilities. Going in the Q4 results, we will be looking out for commentary on how the cloud strategy will shape up, and how it impacts the company’s other projects (including autonomous cars).

Do not agree with our forecast? Create your own price forecast for Google by changing the base inputs (blue dots) on our interactive dashboard.