Alphabet (GOOG +1.09%) (GOOGL +1.31%) stock hasn’t been as hard hit as some of its big tech peers over the past few months. At its lowest point, it was down around 20% from its all-time high, but recently was around 10% off. That’s still a decent discount for one of the world’s most important companies, and there could be a catalyst coming in the near future that sends it higher.
On April 29, Alphabet will report its first-quarter earnings, and depending on the information contained in that report, the stock could shoot higher (or plummet).
Is Alphabet stock a buy before earnings? Or should investors be patient?
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Alphabet needs to maintain its Q4 momentum
Few artificial intelligence (AI) stocks had as big of a year in 2025 as Alphabet. At the start, Alphabet was the laughingstock of the AI investing world, and its models were clearly behind its peers. That gap has basically disappeared, and Alphabet is now discussed among the generative AI leaders.
Alphabet has also transformed its legacy Google search business into an AI-powered one and offers a generative AI-created search summary in many results, which is giving every person exposure to AI.
Today’s Change
(1.09%) $3.44
Current Price
$319.16
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$3.8T
Day’s Range
$313.75 – $319.43
52wk Range
$148.40 – $350.15
Volume
1K
Avg Vol
22M
Gross Margin
59.68%
Dividend Yield
0.26%
All of this adds up to a company that’s seeing strong growth. In Q4, its revenue rose 18% year over year, with its legacy Google Search business seeing 17% year over year growth. If Alphabet can keep that momentum going in Q1, then I think the stock has a great chance at surging following earnings.
However, there’s one other division that’s more important: Google Cloud. Google Cloud is Alphabet’s cloud computing wing and is the primary place investors will see the impact of increased AI spending.
Google Cloud is a go-to place to train and run AI models, primarily because of its custom Tensor Processing Units, which deliver impressive performance at a lower cost than GPUs. Last quarter, Google Cloud delivered jaw-dropping revenue growth of 48%. If this growth rate meaningfully accelerates, the stock could easily rocket higher as a result.
There are several catalysts to send Alphabet’s stock higher, but there may be one cap: its valuation. Alphabet isn’t the cheapest AI hyperscaler stock around, at more than 27 times forward earnings. Several of its peers trade for far lower price tags, and this could be what caps its upside.
GOOG PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts
However, with all of the momentum in the business, I think it will be a strong quarter and Alphabet stock will see a nice, one-time boost. This makes it a strong buy now, and I think Alphabet should be near the top of every investor’s shopping list.
