Piper Jaffray research analyst Safa Rashtchy maintained an “outperform” rating on Google and raised his price target to $600 from $445, expecting the company to continue to gain market share, strengthen its brand and generate revenue with new initiatives in 2006.
“2006 should be another banner year for Google,” wrote the analyst. “It is singularly well positioned to benefit from the growth of online advertisement and search.”
Google is Piper Jaffray’s “Top Pick 2006″ in the large-cap category. Rashtchy expects the global search market to grow by 41% in 2006, with Google continuing to gain market share. The company gained an additional 5% market share in 2005 and strengthened its brand over the past year with the release of new and innovative products such as Google Maps and Gmail.
Rashtchy believes two of Google’s newer products in particular, Google Ad Network (Adsense) and Google Base, show significant promise to fuel Google’s string of earnings upside surprises into 2006 and beyond.
Google, mailing millions for millions. Who would have though 2 college kids, could be billionaires! Who thought free stuff could make this much!
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