This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Alphabet (GOOGL), Google’s search, cloud and artificial-intelligence empire, jumped approximately 1.1% to $344.42 Friday morning. The latest spark came from Waymo, which joined Tesla and Uber in securing permits linked to robotaxi operations in Las Vegas. Sin City is another proving groundand another step toward turning Waymo’s technology into a scalable transportation business.
Waymo gets stronger every time it enters a new market. More cities bring more rides, more operating data and more experience navigating local regulators. Alphabet has the cash to play this long game because Google’s advertising machine keeps printing money, while Cloud is hitting the accelerator. Second-quarter revenue surged 24% to $119.8 billion. Cloud revenue rocketed 82% to $24.8 billion, with backlog swelling to a staggering $514 billion.
But the stock is no longer hiding in bargain territory. Alphabet trades near 17 times trailing earningsroughly half Apple’s multipleyet its $344.42 share price stands 36.2% above the $252.87 GF Value estimate. That gap shows investors are already pricing in a powerful AI, Cloud and Waymo future. Waymo is the exciting wildcard, but advertising and Cloud still need to carry the financial load as Alphabet battles heavy capital spending, regulatory pressure and AI disruption in search.
