Alphabet Analyst Says "Complete Breakup" Needed for Stock Gains

Bloomberg
05-14

One of the largest tech companies would be more valuable if it was smaller, according to a Wall Street analyst.

D.A. Davidson’s Gil Luria is calling for a “complete breakup” of Alphabet Inc., saying such a move is the best way to unleash shareholder value.

“The only way forward for Alphabet is a complete breakup that would allow investors to own the business they actually want,” he wrote, adding that valuing the company on a sum-of-the-parts basis “only works if the company is willing to take action.” Luria holds a neutral rating on the stock but said it would be his top megacap pick if Alphabet pursued a breakup.

The stock is down 7.5% over the past year, compared with a gain of over 15% for the Nasdaq 100 Index.

Alphabet, best known as Google’s parent, has faced ongoing debates over its ability to fend off rivals in artificial intelligence-powered search. The stock recently dropped after court testimony from an Apple Inc. executive revealed the iPhone maker is exploring AI services for its web browser — and that searches on Apple’s Safari declined for the first time last month, raising questions about Google’s market share.

Luria sees AI competition as a persistent headwind facing the company, limiting the market’s ability to fully value Alphabet’s other notable businesses, including YouTube, Waymo, and its Tensor Processing Units (TPU) chips. Alphabet’s myriad businesses include “the top competitors” to such varied Wall Street favorites as Netflix Inc. and advertising-technology company Trade Desk Inc., he wrote, along with both Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in cloud computing, and both Uber Technologies Inc. and Tesla Inc. in autonomous driving.

“By keeping the conglomerate structure, management is dooming all of its businesses to the 16x Search multiple,” he wrote. “Until management acts in the interest of shareholders, the entire business will trade at 16x earnings, which assigns zero value to Waymo and TPU, and severely undervalues YouTube, Cloud and Network.”

Luria previously estimated that a company comprised of Alphabet’s TPU business and its DeepMind AI research lab could be worth as much as $700 billion if traded separately. Waymo, the self-driving unit, was valued at more than $45 billion in October.

Alphabet last closed at $159.53. Luria argued that “the current pieces would trade at $243/share in aggregate upon breakup, and closer to $300/share if an independent TPU business started selling outside of the Alphabet family.” Those targets represent upside of about 52% and 88%, respectively.

Davidson is not the only firm advocating for a breakup. Needham analyst Laura Martin has written that the company “is worth more in pieces than together,” and has welcomed regulators attempting to break up the company. Specifically, she calculated that YouTube would be valued at more than $600 billion if separately traded, which would make it bigger than Netflix, which has a market capitalization around $470 billion.

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