Alphabet price target lowered to $200 from $225 at Evercore ISI

Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney lowered the firm’s price target on Alphabet (GOOGL) to $200 from $225 and keeps an Outperform rating on the shares. The analyst believes “probable medium-term uncertainty” over the Department of Justice anti-trust trials and their likely remedies will limit the potential for any near-or-medium-term material re-rating of the shares. Following a call with a legal expert, the firm believes a “worst case” scenario is a more likely scenario than the market assumes. A worst case scenario would be where Google is no longer allowed to bid for exclusive search distribution deals in the U.S., and another company like Microsoft (MSFT) buys out its exclusive search distribution deals, leading to a material share loss by Google on the search access points covered by those distribution deals, which amounts to approximately half of the U.S. search market, the analyst tells investors in a research note.