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GOOG In The Black
Stocks are on the rise after data showed an improvement in the labor market ahead of tomorrow's key U.S. government monthly payrolls report. Shares of
GOOG are up, although less than the rest of the tech tape. Upcoming catalysts include second calendar quarter results released
Thursday, July 14 at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time; continued
Android momentum in the smartphone and tablet markets; regaining ground in China; updated software, adoption and media partners for
Google TV; the roll-out of
Google Music; and progress in other newer initiatives (Google+, location-based services, mapping, gaming, Chromebooks, etc.). The stock trades at approximately
12x Enterprise Value / EBIT, inexpensive relative to peers and historical trading levels.
Facebook Isn't Google's Only Foe, The Company Is At War With Many (TechCrunch)
Google isn’t just in a war with
Facebook, it’s at war with multiple companies across multiple industries. The company must battle on at least six fronts simultaneously:
- Browser
- Mobile
- Search
- Local
- Social
- Enterprise
No other company could compete legitimately take on so many different battlefronts against so many different competitors. And there’s no way Google can win each battle, and they don't have to. They can easily be in the top 3 on all fronts and be just fine.
Facebook Suddenly Looks Vulnerable (The Wall Street Journal)
Mark Zuckerberg recently unveiled Facebook's new video-chatting feature. Too bad Google made the same feature available in 2008.
Facebook suddenly looks vulnerable and should take note that Google used the strategy before to kneecap
Yahoo in all-important email, a key driver of Yahoo's traffic. Google then rolled out
Gmail. The biggest hurdle for Google+ is getting users. But it is integrating the service with Gmail, which already has 240 million unique users worldwide.
And Google+ Hangouts will be hard for the social network to top.
Google Needs To Accelerate Display Business (Investor's Business Daily)
Google's search for future revenue growth is contingent on challenging
Yahoo and Facebook for a bigger piece of the online display ad market. While the company is far ahead of the rest in search ad sales, Google will increasingly depend more on display ads as that market slows, making display a much larger opportunity. Google and Facebook are ramping up their nascent display ad services, so the big growth that Google needs will come from a small base.
Google Stock Likely To Sell Off After Earnings As Analysts Worry About Facebook (Seeking Alpha)
Some are convinced that while Google’s next earnings release may meet analyst expectations, the headline numbers won’t matter and the stock will still sell off after earnings. Why? Because while Google’s core search business may be okay, analysts will be focusing on plenty of other issues like addressing the growing use of social media as a replacement for traditional search. In fact, Facebook is now competing more fiercely for the same advertising dollars that represent much of Google’s revenues.
Hulu Owner Says Owners Are Committed To Selling (Bloomberg)
Disney CEO
Robert Iger said that the owners of
Hulu are “committed to selling.” He would know. Hulu’s owners include Disney,
News Corp. and Comcast's
NBC Universal. Bankers for the video streaming site have met with Google, Yahoo and
Microsoft as the company explores a sale. A sale would eliminate a conflict by setting up Hulu as an independent buyer of movies and TV shows for online viewing. The company could fetch more than $2 billion.
Android Crushing Everyone In Smartphone Platform Market Share (comScore)
According to comScore, Google's
Android continues to crush the competition, grabbing 5 percentage points to 38.1% market share for March.
Android's share is still blowing away all competitors. The only company that's hanging on is
Apple which passed
Research In Motion in terms of smartphone platform share.
Apple claimed 26.6% of the market while RIM had 24.7%, a 4.2% drop from February.
Daily Trader: Why Google Is A Must Own Stock (MarketWatch)
As the saying goes, "buy the rumor and sell the news." Google is no different. In this case because it's a negative catalyst (the rumor being bad news), it's just the opposite. The FTC-to-open-anti-trust-case-against-Google rumor started heating up a few months ago when the stock was near annual-highs. What has it done since then? Sell off. When the FTC finally turned the rumors into outright confirmed news, the stock has been nearly straight up and will likely continue to do so. Trim back around the $550 level.
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See Also:
THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: It Isn't Just Facebook, Google Is At War With Everyone (GOOG)
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