Tech giant Alphabet (GOOGL), or rather its Waymo self-driving vehicle unit, managed to take home a pretty impressive win recently as numbers came out around how many people it is ferrying around. It actually managed to crack the quarter-million mark, and that was welcome for investors. Investors sent shares on their own ride, upward, and added nearly 2% in Friday afternoon’s trading.
Things are going surprisingly well for Waymo right now, and underscoring a future in which there is “…future optionality around personal ownership…” of vehicles, reports note. In fact, back in February, there were 200,000 riders per week. The latest data saw that swell to 250,000 paid rides per week. Though the increased ridership may be accounted for by the recent opening of Waymo operations in Austin as well as an expansion effort in the San Francisco Bay Area.
A quarter-million riders a week is still an impressive number, especially given that Waymo basically only operates in four different areas: Austin and San Francisco, as noted, but also Phoenix and Los Angeles. A further expansion to Atlanta will not happen until this summer. Right now, Waymo mostly has the field to itself, as several competitors have withdrawn from the market altogether. Tesla (TSLA) is set to step in this summer with a line of Model Y vehicles converted to autotaxis.
Use That Waymo to Go Back to Work
Meanwhile, Waymo may have some new riders coming up, as several portions of Google are putting workers on notice: return to the office, at least three days a week, or face potential firing. The Return To Office (RTO) mandate is still going strong, and Google is no different here, reports note.
Interestingly, this comes at the same time that Google has been downsizing several of its teams in a bid to “streamline operations” and refocus its resources and efforts toward new priorities like infrastructure development as well as artificial intelligence. As is commonly the case, though, Google insists that the RTO demand is not to attempt to find easy budget cuts, but rather, that in-person collaboration is “…an important part of how we innovate and solve complex problems.” Because, apparently, just talking over Google Voice somehow lacks the necessary spark.
Is Alphabet a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on GOOGL stock based on 27 Buys and 10 Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 5.55% loss in its share price over the past year, the average GOOGL price target of $195.09 per share implies 19.94% upside potential.
