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Tech Check
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Have you seen Google's [GOOG
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]stock price today? Teetering right at $300 a share, setting a new 3-year low, trading at a level not seen since October of 2005. And for all the crud that Yahoo [YHOO
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]shareholders have had to deal with this past year, their shares are still trading at a pricey 24 times next year's earnings. Google is cheap! It's trading at about 13 times next year's earnings and growing exponentially faster than Yahoo, even though its growth is slowing down.
This is getting ugly with a capital "U." As in "underwater." Think about it: Google's been hiring better than 1,000 workers a quarter since that October 2005 low, hiring the vast majority of its new employees between January 2007 and the beginning of this year. Shares hit $500, $600, even $700 toward the end of last year. Now, headed under $300, that loud gurgling you hear are thousands of Google workers and their portfolios trying to crack the water's surface once again.
And now Wall Street is piling on. Just this morning Goldman Sachs cut its fourth quarter revenue outlook for Google, which turbo-charged the company's recent descent. Today's downgrade follows Barclays move on Monday, taking Google's target down to $490 from $542. Goldman also lowered its 52-week target on Google to $475 from $520. The brokerage is now looking for Google's revenue growth to hit only 1 percent, compared to the 4 percent the company enjoyed sequentially.
Couple all of this with the apparent surprise by Google CEO Eric Schmidt that the economy is fairing far worse than he anticipated. He told my colleague Jim Cramer last Friday that, "The situation economically is a pretty big concern, you've got retail spending down, you've got increases in jobless and there is a sense that we need to act." He added that he's sensing a new urgency for the new Obama administration to act. Those comments did nothing to reassure investors that Google could somehow skirt the economic crisis that seems to be affecting everyone else. He told the New York Times that Google is also slowing its hiring and reviewing expenses to cut costs.
But is this the time for investors to run for the exits when it comes to Google? Hardly. Especially when its nearest competitor's P/E is almost double that of Google. It makes no sense whatsoever that Yahoo should still be trading at a premium. A deal with Microsoft [MSFT
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]is virtually off the table entirely (never say never); it can't seem to get a deal together with Time Warner's [TWX
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]AOL. But few analysts, experts and even many Yahoo insiders I talk to hold very little hope that a partnership like that would yield any meaningful upside; its ad-sharing partnership with Google has evaporated because of anti-trust concerns; and its own growth prospects are scoffed at by analysts crunching the same numbers, but arriving at very different conclusions.
And yet Yahoo trades so much more expensively. Is it simply because investors are still hoping for a buy-out or a deal for Yahoo's Search business? There might be a short-term pop to be had, somewhere down the road, maybe. Weigh that against a company like Google that will indeed feel the affects of the recession, and suffer along with the rest of the economy. But when it comes time to staging a financial comeback, there might be no company better positioned than Google to take advantage of it. You might disagree with that, but take a look at the new price targets from Wall Street. Yes, they're coming down, but they're still hovering around $500. Hardly an insignificant increase from the $300 range of today's share price.
Google might be out of favor today. But this company's ability to recover is the stuff of legend. And if it sneaks up on you, you'll be too late to take advantage of it. Not a question of "if," but "when." In the meantime, if you know someone at Google, head to Starbucks and buy them a treat. They could use the smile and Starbucks can use the business.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes