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If You Invested $1000 in Alphabet a Decade Ago, This is How Much It'd Be Worth Now

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For most investors, how much a stock's price changes over time is important. Not only can it impact your investment portfolio, but it can also help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.

Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.

What if you'd invested in Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to GOOGL for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?

Alphabet's Business In-Depth

With that in mind, let's take a look at Alphabet's main business drivers.

Alphabet is one of the most innovative companies in the modern technological age. Over the last few years, the company has evolved from primarily being a search-engine provider to cloud computing, ad-based video and music streaming, autonomous vehicles, healthcare providers and others. In the online search arena, Google has a monopoly with more than 94% of the online search volume and market. Over the years, the company has witnessed increase in search queries, resulting from ongoing growth in user adoption and usage, primarily on mobile devices, continued growth in advertiser activity, and improvements in ad formats.

The company is gaining market share in the cloud-computing, driven by continued strength in Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace.

Alphabet also enjoys a dominant position in the autonomous vehicles market, thanks to Waymo’s relentless efforts. In addition, it has bolstered its footprint in the healthcare industry with its life science division, Verily. The company has also become a renowned name in the world of entertainment on the back of YouTube.

Alphabet is also known as the maker of smartwatches (Pixel Watch), laptops and tablets (Chromebooks), and smart home products (Google Nest).

Alphabet, headquartered in Mountain View, CA, runs several businesses, most of which come under Google, which reports under two segments — Google Services and Google Cloud. The non-Google businesses fall under the Other Bets segment.

Total revenues were $307.4 billion in 2023, up 9% from 2022. Google Services, Google Cloud and Other Bets generated 88.7%, 10.8% and 0.5% of total revenues, respectively.

The Google Services includes products and services such as ads, Android, Chrome, devices, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Play, Search, and YouTube. The segment generates revenues primarily from performance and brand advertising, which remains crucial for the overall business. Ad revenues accounted for 77.4% of the total revenues in 2023.

Google Cloud is comprised of Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace. Its key capabilities include AI infrastructure, database and analytics, collaboration tools, cybersecurity and generative AI.

Other Bets is a combination of multiple businesses, generating revenues primarily from the sale of healthcare-related and internet services.

Bottom Line

Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of a few things: research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in Alphabet a decade ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in April 2014 would be worth $6,195.70, or a gain of 519.57%, as of April 30, 2024, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.

In comparison, the S&P 500 gained 172.38% and the price of gold went up 73.14% over the same time frame.

Analysts are anticipating more upside for GOOGL.

Alphabet’s first quarter results were driven by solid momentum in the cloud business. Further, improving Search performance on the back of major Search updates, was a positive. Also, strength in YouTube contributed well. Notably, robust cloud division remains the key catalyst. Expanding data centers will continue to bolster its presence in the cloud space. Strengthening generative AI capabilities should aid business growth in the long term. Alphabet’s deepening focus on wearables category remains a tailwind. Expanding presence in the autonomous driving space is a plus. The stock has outperformed the industry it belongs to year to date. However, sluggish Network advertisement business is a negative. Increasing litigation issues and expenses remain concerns. Rising cloud competition from Microsoft and Amazon is a concern.

The stock has jumped 6.86% over the past four weeks. Additionally, no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 15 higher, for fiscal 2024; the consensus estimate has moved up as well.

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