Google’s parent joins Amazon in $1,000 club

Company’s share price passes threshold as investors see TV ad money moving online

Shares of Google parent Alphabet Inc. passed $1,000 (U.S.) six days after Amazon.com Inc. crossed the same threshold, showing the sustained investor confidence that tech giants can outmatch older companies.

Amazon’s rise reflected bullishness in e-commerce, coming despite bigger sales in brick-and-mortar retail. Likewise, Alphabet shareholders see that TV ad budgets will continue to gravitate online, where Google dominates.

Alphabet’s transition just under two years ago to a portfolio structure has also buoyed investor confidence in the stock. Alphabet’s shares hit $1,003.76 at 12:18 p.m. in New York Monday, about a 38-per-cent increase since August 2015 when Google became Alphabet, splitting off its audacious, earlier stage ventures from the core Internet business.

Google’s primary ads business has kept expanding too, dodging any threat from the spread of mobile devices. Ad revenue reached $21.4 billion in the first quarter, a 19-per-cent annual leap. Cloud-computing is also growing.

Along with cloud-computing, Google has heaved considerable investment into artificial intelligence, such as voice-computing. Many investors believe that investment positions Google well to hedge against any threats to its web search business.

Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car unit, is in position to lead the competitive autonomous transit market, according to a note last month from Morgan Stanley. The analysts wrote that the unit could be worth about $70 billion by 2030 — a value not yet baked into the share price.