Alphabet stocks up on strong earnings, first-ever dividend, buyback

Alphabet shares jumped 10% on Friday morning after the company posted better-than-expected first-quarter results and greenlit its first dividend and a $70 billion buyback.

On Thursday, the company reported revenue of $80.54 billion, a 15 percent increase from a year earlier and the fastest growth rate since the start of 2022, beating the $78.59 billion in sales expected by analysts polled by LSEG . Earnings of $1.89 per share eclipsed the $1.51 per share earnings expected by Wall Street.

Alphabet announced that its board authorized a dividend of 20 cents per share to be paid on June 17 to all shareholders of record as of June 10 and said it intended to pay future quarterly cash dividends. The company said the board also approved repurchasing an additional $70 billion in shares.

The company beat analysts’ expectations for ad revenue on YouTube and Google Cloud.

Analysts at Barclays maintained an overweight rating on Alphabet shares and raised their price target to $200 from $173, praising the company’s balancing of investments with efficiency and capital returns.

“Google is in the sweet spot of accelerating growth, expanding margins while delivering products faster and returning capital — overall proving the naysayers wrong,” they wrote in a Thursday note. “Momentum should stay strong for a while here.”

Analysts at Oppenheimer weighed in on Alphabet’s accelerating ad business despite significant AI spending, raising their price target to $205 from $185 and reaffirming an outperform rating.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley, maintaining their overweight rating on Alphabet, raised their price target to $195 from $165, citing the company’s robust underlying growth and “early success, sustained cost base reengineering.”

Among other price target increases on the stock following Alphabet’s earnings, JPMorgan raised its price target to $200 from $165, while Evercore ISI raised its target to $200 from $160.

— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.