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• Evercore ISI's Mark Mahaney is cautious on Google stock.
• The analyst explained why today on CNBC's "Squawk Box".
• $GOOGL is currently up about 60% versus its 52-week low.

Alphabet Inc (GOOGL) is the riskiest stock among its large-cap internet peers, says Mark Mahaney. He’s a senior analyst at Evercore ISI.

Investors want cost discipline out of Google

Mahaney is “cautious” on Google stock primarily because of the “cost issue”.

Note that the tech behemoth has already warned of more layoffs this year as Invezz reported here. That’s on top of well over 10,000 employees that it let go in 2023.

Still, the Evercore analyst is convinced that investors won’t “see enough out of Google” in terms of “cost discipline” in 2024.

Alphabet Inc is scheduled to report its financial results for the fourth quarter in the first week of February. Consensus is for it to earn $1.62 a share versus $1.05 per share a year ago.

Why else is Mahaney cautious on Google stock?

Google typically sees a sequential decline in its operating margin in the fourth quarter.

Mahaney attributed that trend partially to the NFL Sunday Ticket that he said tends to be materially dilutive to search. On CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, the Evercore analyst added on Friday:

Alphabet could address all this on its earnings call and talk about how they’re going to manage expenses better going forward. But they have never really done that.

Nonetheless, Mahaney has an outperform rating on Google stock with a $160 price target that suggests about a 10% upside from here. But other mega-cap names in the internet space like Meta Platforms Inc (META) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN) are better buys than $GOOGL, Mahaney concluded.

Meta Platforms' $META Zuckerberg hints company is spending billions on NVIDIA $NVDA #AI chipshttps://t.co/XpRZGSc0pF pic.twitter.com/mJ48CD98Wn

— Streetinsider.com (@Street_Insider) January 19, 2024

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