Monday, August 3, 2009

UBS Initiates Coverage Of Google With "Buy" Rating

Financial services firm UBS apparently doesn't feel that the new Microsoft-Yahoo deal poses too much of a threat to the other big search contender. Today, UBS initiated its coverage of Google with a "buy" rating and some rather aggressive targets.

Brian PitzBrian Pitz, an executive director and senior research analyst at UBS, believes Google's stock will be trading at about $525 in one year's time. Google, which is currently trading at $449.89, hasn't been that high since July of 2008, so this would equate to an almost perfect reversal of its recessionary decline.

Then there are the revenue estimates to consider. This year and next, Pitz expects Google to report $17.1 billion and $19.3 billion in revenue, respectively, while Tiernan Ray reports that the consensus forecast names the sums of $16.9 billion and $19.2 billion.

According to Ray, Pitz explained, "We believe there is a secular trend in the industry away from higher priced CPM-based display toward cheaper, measurable, performance-based display advertising. This trend bodes well for Google due to its focus on measurable advertising solutions to marketers. In addition, GOOG is more aggressively monetizing YouTube and Mobile, which should provide upside potential to 2010 estimates."

So there you have it. And in case you're wondering, Google's up 3.13 percent today, while Microsoft's up 0.56 percent and Yahoo's down 3.37 percent.

source: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/07/30/ubs-initiates-coverage-of-google-with-buy-rating

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