Bank Pictet & Cie Europe AG Sells 226,701 Shares of Alphabet Inc. $GOOGL

Key Points

• Bank Pictet & Cie Europe AG sold 226,701 shares of Alphabet, cutting its position by 15% to 1,284,383 shares valued at $402,012,000, which represents roughly 8.0% of the fund’s portfolio and is its fourth-largest holding.
• Significant insider selling occurred this quarter: insiders unloaded 2,069,344 shares worth $104.7 million (insider ownership is 11.64%), including disclosed sales by Director John L. Hennessy and CAO Amie Thuener O'Toole.
• Market and analyst sentiment is broadly positive—Google Cloud momentum and AI infrastructure deals (Intel, Broadcom) are cited as growth drivers, and several analysts have raised price targets, leaving a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" with a $367.33 target.

Bank Pictet & Cie Europe AG lowered its position in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL - Free Report) by 15.0% during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 1,284,383 shares of the information services provider's stock after selling 226,701 shares during the period. Alphabet makes up approximately 8.0% of Bank Pictet & Cie Europe AG's investment portfolio, making the stock its 4th largest holding. Bank Pictet & Cie Europe AG's holdings in Alphabet were worth $402,012,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other large investors have also recently bought and sold shares of GOOGL. Brighton Jones LLC boosted its position in Alphabet by 3.9% in the fourth quarter. Brighton Jones LLC now owns 110,330 shares of the information services provider's stock valued at $20,886,000 after buying an additional 4,110 shares during the last quarter. Revolve Wealth Partners LLC boosted its position in Alphabet by 3.5% in the fourth quarter. Revolve Wealth Partners LLC now owns 14,930 shares of the information services provider's stock valued at $2,826,000 after buying an additional 506 shares during the last quarter. Matrix Asset Advisors Inc. NY boosted its position in Alphabet by 17.6% in the second quarter. Matrix Asset Advisors Inc. NY now owns 3,888 shares of the information services provider's stock valued at $685,000 after buying an additional 581 shares during the last quarter. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC boosted its position in Alphabet by 11.2% in the second quarter. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC now owns 485,486 shares of the information services provider's stock valued at $85,557,000 after buying an additional 48,805 shares during the last quarter. Finally, United Bank boosted its position in Alphabet by 6.9% in the second quarter. United Bank now owns 48,204 shares of the information services provider's stock valued at $8,495,000 after buying an additional 3,120 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 40.03% of the company's stock.

Key Headlines Impacting Alphabet

Here are the key news stories impacting Alphabet this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Expanded Google–Intel AI infrastructure partnership boosts visibility for Google Cloud capacity and lowers execution risk for AI workloads hosted on Google’s platform. Investors view deeper Intel ties as supportive of sustained cloud/AI demand. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Broadcom–Google/Anthropic TPU and networking deals lock in multi‑year supply for Google’s custom AI racks, strengthening Alphabet’s hardware stack and third‑party TPU offerings — a structural positive for Google Cloud inference/train economics. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Google Cloud momentum: recent writeups highlight ~50% Q4 cloud growth, a large cloud backlog and heavy capex to expand TPU/data center capacity — the operating story supporting higher revenue visibility and margin improvement. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Project Glasswing and broader industry cybersecurity initiatives (including banks and big tech) reduce AI‑related operational risk for cloud providers and reinforce Google’s role in enterprise AI security cooperation. That should reassure enterprise customers. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Analyst support is increasing: Needham and Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated bullish ratings with elevated price targets, and William O'Neil reinstated a Buy — near‑term sentiment tailwind for the shares. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Waymo geographic expansion (Nashville) and Wing/ DoorDash drone rollout (Atlanta) provide concrete commercialization updates for Alphabet’s non‑Search growth engines, supporting optionality beyond ads. Read More. / Read More.
• Neutral Sentiment: Coverage pieces and investor guides (Fool, MarketBeat) reiterate Alphabet’s long‑term AI/cloud story — helpful for sentiment but not new operational data. Read More.
• Neutral Sentiment: Mentions of Alphabet’s stake in SpaceX and “hidden assets” offer valuation debate fodder; potential upside if monetized but uncertain timing. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Operational headwinds flagged for hyperscalers (community pushback, water/land/energy constraints) as some data‑center projects face delays or cancellations — a potential capex/expansion risk for cloud capacity plans. Read More.

Insider Buying and Selling at Alphabet

In other news, Director John L. Hennessy sold 1,050 shares of the company's stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, March 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $303.41, for a total transaction of $318,580.50. Following the completion of the transaction, the director directly owned 4,631 shares of the company's stock, valued at $1,405,091.71. This represents a 18.48% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, CAO Amie Thuener O'toole sold 955 shares of the company's stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, March 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $298.00, for a total value of $284,590.00. Following the transaction, the chief accounting officer directly owned 9,918 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $2,955,564. The trade was a 8.78% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 2,069,344 shares of company stock worth $104,708,426. 11.64% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Alphabet Trading Up 0.4%

Shares of GOOGL stock opened at $318.49 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.11, a current ratio of 2.01 and a quick ratio of 2.01. The company has a market cap of $3.85 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 29.46, a PEG ratio of 1.96 and a beta of 1.12. The stock has a 50 day simple moving average of $307.27 and a 200-day simple moving average of $297.90. Alphabet Inc. has a 1-year low of $146.10 and a 1-year high of $349.00.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL - Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, February 4th. The information services provider reported $2.82 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.57 by $0.25. The business had revenue of $113.83 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $111.24 billion. Alphabet had a return on equity of 35.01% and a net margin of 32.81%. On average, equities research analysts expect that Alphabet Inc. will post 8.9 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Alphabet Announces Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, March 16th. Stockholders of record on Monday, March 9th were paid a dividend of $0.21 per share. This represents a $0.84 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.3%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, March 9th. Alphabet's dividend payout ratio is presently 7.77%.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of equities research analysts recently commented on the company. Royal Bank Of Canada upped their target price on Alphabet from $375.00 to $400.00 and gave the company an "outperform" rating in a research report on Thursday, February 5th. Tigress Financial set a $415.00 target price on Alphabet and gave the company a "strong-buy" rating in a research report on Thursday, February 19th. Citizens Jmp reiterated a "market outperform" rating and issued a $385.00 target price on shares of Alphabet in a research report on Thursday, February 5th. Weiss Ratings reiterated a "buy (b)" rating on shares of Alphabet in a research report on Wednesday, January 21st. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group upped their target price on Alphabet from $365.00 to $400.00 and gave the company a "buy" rating in a research report on Monday, February 2nd. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, forty-four have assigned a Buy rating and four have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" and a consensus target price of $367.33.

About Alphabet

Alphabet Inc is the holding company created in 2015 to organize Google and a portfolio of businesses developing technologies beyond Google's core internet services. Its principal operations are led by Google, which builds and operates consumer-facing products such as Google Search, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Maps and Google Workspace, as well as advertising platforms (Google Ads and AdSense) that historically generate the majority of its revenue. Google also develops consumer hardware (Pixel phones, Nest smart-home devices, Chromecast) and developer and distribution platforms such as Google Play.

Beyond Google's consumer and advertising businesses, Alphabet invests in enterprise and infrastructure offerings through Google Cloud, which provides cloud computing, data analytics and productivity services to businesses and institutions.

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