Alphabet (GOOGL) the parent company of Google, is grappling with a luxurious dilemma: determining the best utilization of its burgeoning cash reserves, which have swelled to approximately $118 billion. This immense growth was the result of the firm raking in nearly $29 billion in the recent second quarter, outstripped in the Nasdaq 100 Stock Index only by Apple Inc., which boasts a reserve of around $167 billion. Unlike Apple, which primarily returns its capital to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends, Alphabet has not made its capital return strategy explicit, leaving shareholders in anticipation.
The lion's share of cash inflow in the Nasdaq 100 originates from three tech behemoths: Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft Corp. Their combined earnings in the last quarter were a staggering $84 billion, an unprecedented amount for any non-holiday quarter. While Alphabet authorized a repurchase of up to $70 billion in shares last April, its recent buyback was just $15 billion, a mere fraction of its quarterly earnings. Apple, by comparison, in the past five fiscal years, disbursed nearly $5 billion more than the staggering $454 billion cash it amassed.
July saw Alphabet's CFO since 2015, Ruth Porat, transition to a novel dual role of president and chief investment officer. Unlike its peers Apple and Microsoft, Alphabet hasn't adopted dividend payouts, nor has it ventured into significant acquisitions. For instance, while Microsoft (MSFT) took a bold step with a $69 billion acquisition of game manufacturer Activision Blizzard (ATVI), Alphabet remains more circumspect, likely due to tighter regulatory oversight. Such large-scale acquisitions, in the current climate, pose considerable challenges, evidenced by the hurdles faced by Microsoft's Activision deal and Amazon's (AMZN) purchase of the Roomba creator, iRobot, which is under regulatory examination.
Given the present regulatory constraints, experts suggest Alphabet might benefit more from strategic investments in sectors it hasn't traditionally dominated, akin to Microsoft's investment in ChatGPT's parent, OpenAI. However, with substantial earnings each quarter, major tech companies like Alphabet appear to lean more towards share buybacks as their preferred method of returning value to shareholders. As speculated by Angelo Zino of CFRA Research, while dividends are an option for Alphabet, buybacks might remain its dominant approach to maintain the perception of robust growth opportunities.
