What Wall Street is saying about Alphabet ahead of earnings

Alphabet (GOOGL), the parent company of Google, is scheduled to report second quarter 2025 results after the market close on Wednesday, July 23, with a conference call scheduled for 4:30 pm Eastern Time. What to watch for:

EXPECTATIONS: Current consensus EPS and revenue forecasts for Alphabet’s June-end quarter stand at $2.19 and $94.02B, respectively, according to data provided by LSEG Data and Analytics. That $2.19 EPS estimate for the second quarter is up 8c over the past 90 days ago, according to LSEG Data.

Since the last report, analysts been raising their Alphabet price targets and one upgraded the shares.

On June 27, Citizens JMP analyst upgraded Alphabet to Outperform from Market Perform with a $220 price target. The firm says artificial intelligence is a “net tailwind” for the company, with ChatGPT’s impact too small today to move enough queries away from Google to materially impact results. AI is expanding the search opportunity by answering a broader array of queries and extending monetization as AI better infers user intent, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Citizens sees the “AI Overview tailwind overwhelming ChatGPT share loss headwinds” for Alphabet. Assuming Google’s 10% query growth holds as AI answers a broader set of questions and offers better answers, Google may see a mid-single-digit query growth tailwind in Q3, contends the firm. AI is helping the company to further monetize search as it better understands intent, widening the monetization funnel of search, says Citizens JMP.

On July 8, Roth Capital raised the firm’s price target on Alphabet to $205 from $180 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. The stock is a “show me” story with two “monkeys on its back” – AI Search and Monopoly lawsuits, though the firm has a positive bias toward Alphabet’s AI search progress and believes that AI Cloud growth supports potential upside at the current “reasonable” valuation, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Alphabet’s fundamentals will likely remain unchanged, making the stock a “sentiment recovery play” for the second half of the year, Roth added, also calling the stock its #1 Mega Cap pick for the balance of 2025.

More recently, BofA raised the firm’s price target on Alphabet to $210 from $200 and kept a Buy rating on the shares ahead of the company’s Q2 report. Citing search checks that showed spending growth in Q2 improved as quarter progressed, the firm is slightly raising its “above-Street estimates” and now expects Q3 revenue and EPS of $81B and $2.21, respectively, versus the Street at $79.5B and $2.15, the analyst tells investors.

On July 21, Morgan Stanley raised the firm’s price target on Alphabet to $205 from $185 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. The firm increased estimates across the internet space to reflect a more favorable macro backdrop and lower China tariffs. Morgan Stanley also rolled its valuation methodologies to mid-year 2026. The firm sees GenAI driven revenue acceleration at both Alphabet and Meta (META), but prefers the parent of Google in the near-term due to valuation.

Among analysts tracked by Bloomberg that have updated their views on Alphabet within the last twelve months, xxx have Buy or equivalent ratings, xx have Hold or equivalent ratings and the average twelve month price target of xxx of those analysts is $xxx.

CUE-FUELED PULLBACK: On May 8, Evercore ISI noted that Alphabet shares traded off 8% the prior day following reports that Apple (AAPL) Senior VP of Services Eddy Cue testified that Search volumes in Apple’s Safari browser fell for the first time in April and that Apple was actively exploring adding AI Search capabilities to its browser, potentially adding partners like Perplexity and Anthropic. The selloff put shares of Google’s parent down a total of 26% since an early February peak, noted the analyst at that time. Later in the day, Google issued a statement saying: “We continue to see overall query growth in Search. That includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple’s devices and platforms,” notes Evercore. It is “plausible” that Cue’s statement reflects both a very mature low-single digit percentage Search query growth rate and Apple Safari browser share losses, as tracked by statcounter, according to the analyst, who reiterated an Outperform rating and $205 price target on Alphabet shares.

I/O CONFERENCE: Later in May, Google held its annual I/O developer conference, after which JPMorgan analysts said they came away “incrementally positive.” Google is leading in many areas of artificial intelligence with Gemini “at the top of foundational model leaderboards,” the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm says is AI Mode bringing Gemini into search and incorporating agentic capabilities from Astra, Mariner, and Deep Research, with Gemini becoming widely available across numerous platforms and device types. Importantly, Google’s product innovation is accelerating and AI Mode in search is rolling out to U.S. users just one year after AI Overviews were introduced, JPMorgan pointed out. The firm, which said at the time that it was more confident that Google can successfully navigate the shift to AI search, has an Overweight rating on Google parent Alphabet.

ANTITRUST: In August of last year, a federal judge ruled Google’s payments to make its search engine the default on smartphone web browsers violates U.S. antitrust law.

On social media platform X, Google wrote on June 1: “Yesterday, we made closing arguments in the DOJ search remedies trial. The DOJ’s proposed remedies go miles beyond the Court’s decision & would harm consumers, businesses and America’s tech leadership… We will wait for the Court’s opinion. And we still strongly believe the Court’s original decision was wrong, and look forward to our eventual appeal.”

On June 12, in a note assessing remedy outcomes for the Google Search antitrust trial, Wells Fargo said the firm sees low probability of a forced divestiture of Chrome or prohibition of search distribution payments in the remedy trial. Wells expects a ban of exclusive default distribution and mandated data sharing/syndication as likely pro-competition remedies, added the firm, which has an Equal Weight rating on the shares.

SENTIMENT: Check out recent Media Buzz Sentiment on Alphabet as measured by TipRanks.