Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) stock is sliding this morning after a slight YouTube miss and aggressive capex guidance overshadowed the company\u2019s overall better-than-expected financials for its fiscal Q4.<\/p>\n
The post-earnings dip made GOOGL slip below its 50-day moving average (MA) today, signaling that downward momentum may sustain in the near term.<\/p>\n
Despite the recent decline, however,\u00a0Google shares remain up more than 100% versus their 52-week low.<\/p>\n In its earnings release, Alphabet said its capital expenditures could soar to nearly $185 billion this year \u2014 more than double what it spent in 2025.\u00a0At first glance, this headline number sure looks concerning, but a closer look reveals the company is actually spending into strength, which warrants sticking with GOOGL stock.<\/p>\n Google Cloud brought in $17.7 billion in the fourth quarter, up a remarkable 48%, reinforcing that Alphabet isn\u2019t just building data centers blindly, it\u2019s responding to a massive $240 billion backlog.<\/p>\n As Sundar Pichai, the company\u2019s chief executive, has noted previously, \u201cThe risk of under-investing is far greater than the risk of over-investing in AI infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n In a post-earnings interview with\u00a0CNBC, Ron Josey, a senior Citi analyst, urged long-term investors to look past the knee-jerk reaction, reiterating Google shares as one of his top picks for 2026.<\/p>\n According to him, Alphabet is the only tech titan with a vertically integrated artificial intelligence (AI) stack \u2014 from in-house TPU chips to the world\u2019s most dominant consumer platforms.<\/p>\n While the market fears the cost of artificial intelligence, Google is already seeing a 78% reduction in Gemini serving costs, Josey revealed.<\/p>\n A 0.26% dividend yield and billions authorized for share repurchase make the\u00a0AI stock even more attractive as a long-term holding.<\/p>\n Other Wall Street analysts also agree with Citi\u2019s bullish view on Alphabet, especially since it remains decisively above its 100-day MA, indicating the broader uptrend is still intact.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>