Yahoo Finance Alphabet (GOOGL) Boosts Waymo Efforts With San Francisco Move
Alphabet’s GOOGL Waymo is leaving no stone unturned to expand its autonomous ride-hailing service — Waymo One — across the United States.
This is evident from the latest move of finally making Waymo One available to everyone in San Francisco, CA.
Waymo has been testing autonomous vehicles in the city since 2021.
Its latest move marks the very first such expansion outside Phoenix, AZ.
Alphabet Inc. Price and Consensus
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Waymo Expansion Efforts Boost Prospects
Per a Precedence Research report, the global autonomous vehicle market is expected to reach $2.35 trillion by 2032, witnessing a CAGR of 35% between 2023 and 2032.
Alphabet is well-poised to penetrate the booming autonomous driving space rapidly on the back of its strong efforts toward reaching out to more customers on the back of its robust driverless technology and expansion efforts.
The company’s multi-year partnership with Uber Technologies UBER to offer an autonomous driving experience to the latter’s customers in Phoenix, AZ, is a positive. This deal is in sync with the company’s deepening focus in Phoenix.
GOOGL’s expansion of the operating area of Waymo One in Phoenix, which now includes rides to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, is a plus.
Waymo’s effort to expand its operations to downtown Phoenix is noteworthy. It also rolled out a rider-only service in downtown Phoenix.
Apart from Phoenix, Waymo received regulatory approval to expand in Los Angeles.
The company is testing self-driving vehicles on the streets of Austin, TX, which was declared the fourth city for Waymo One last year. Waymo’s electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles, which are equipped with advanced Waymo Driver technology, are being tested across 43 square miles in Austin, which includes the heart of downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin and Hyde Park.
Waymo is also testing its self-driving vehicles on the streets of Bellevue, WA.
Waymo’s Expansion Gives Competitive Edge
Growing Waymo’s efforts are boosting Alphabet’s competitive position against its peers like Amazon AMZN and Baidu BIDU, which are making every effort to capitalize on the growth prospects in the autonomous driving space.
Alphabet’s shares have also outperformed that of Amazon and Baidu on a year-to-date basis. GOOGL has gained 31.9% compared with AMZN’s return of 22.7%. BIDU has lost 25.6% in the same time frame.
Amazon’s buyout of Zoox, a developer of autonomous ride-hailing vehicles, remains a major positive. The company’s launch of its first self-driving robotaxi strengthened its position in the autonomous driving space.
Zoox has been testing its autonomous vehicles in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Foster City. It intends to open an engineering office and operations facility, which will act as a base for its autonomous vehicle testing.
It also plans to establish a large-scale manufacturing facility for its autonomous vehicles. The facility will be located at Hayward Exchange @ 92, 25810 Clawiter Rd, which will expand Zoox’s presence in the East Bay.
Meanwhile, Baidu is gaining from the strong momentum of the Apollo Go Robotaxi service across China on the back of its increasing availability in several cities and a growing number of rides.
Apollo Go is available in 10 cities, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Changsha, Cangzhou, Yangquan, Wuzhen Water Town and Wuhan.
Conclusion
Alphabet’s growing autonomous driving initiatives, coupled with its dominant position in the search engine market, strong cloud momentum and robust generative AI capabilities, are expected to drive top-line growth in the days ahead.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2024 revenues is pegged at $291.3 billion, indicating a year-over-year improvement of 13.6%.
However, this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company continues to face significant litigation across various regions. Regulatory scrutiny continues to worsen, with the competition commission issuing several statements of objections. Moreover, rising competitive pressure in the cloud computing and generative AI space are headwinds for Alphabet. These factors are turning investors bearish about the stock.
The consensus mark for earnings stands at $7.60 per share, which has moved 0.1% south over the past 30 days.
You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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