ATML Earnings Action

Google Inc.’s (GOOG) recent underperformance has been particularly uncanny and frustrating. The major U.S. stock indices posted their largest two-day gain since 1987 with the tech-heavy NASDAQ rising 12.7% over that short time period whereas Google actually continued to lose value – down to a multi-year low of $257.44 at yesterday’s close from Thursday’s close of $259.56, acting as a rare counterweight to the Powershares QQQ exchange traded fund of NASDAQ 100 stocks. But finally someone in the analyst community has taken notice of the discounted, beleaguered nature of the search behemoth’s share price. Barclays Capital Internet analyst Doug Anmuth came out defending the stock this morning, about two weeks after trimming his fourth-quarter earnings estimate to $4.81 per share from $4.93 a share. Down 62.8% ytd and off 64.5% from its 52-week peak of $724.08, Barron’s quotes Anmuth as saying “the bad news is being taken into account” with Google now trading at a teenager PE of 12x 2009 earnings – surely an undeserved valuation. With concerns about ad spending taken to an extreme lately, today’s upswing on the analyst’s commentary should set Google up for some solid outperformance of the market in the near term.