Google Zooms 13% to a Record High; Market Cap Tops $335 Billion

By Matt Egan

Google (GOOG) raced 13% higher to an all-time record beyond $1,000 on Friday as investors scrambled to add $39 billion to the tech titan's market cap after being thoroughly impressed with its third-quarter earnings.

The impressive earnings beat late Thursday prompted already-bullish Wall Street analysts to ratchet their price targets even higher.

"It was a solid quarter with standalone Google firing on all cylinders," Jefferies analyst Brian Pitz wrote in a note to clients on Friday while upgrading his price target to $1,150 from $1,000.

Deutsche Bank (DB) went a step further, hiking its target by a whopping 26% to $1,220 on Friday morning. The new target implies a surge of 37% from Google's Thursday close of $888.79.

According to Nasdaq data, Google's market cap surged to $336.13 billion on Friday morning, compared with about $297 billion on Thursday. The $39 billion daily increase in market valuation exceeds the entire market cap of Yahoo (YHOO) by more than $3 billion.

Google recorded a 36% jump in third-quarter profits as a 26% increase in paid clicks helped offset an 8% decline in the average cost-per-click.

The tech company's revenue rose 11.9% to $14.89 billion, exceeding forecasts for $14.79 billion. Non-GAAP EPS hit $10.74, easily besting the Street's view of $10.34.

%VIRTUAL-article-sponsoredlinks%Ross Sandler, analyst at Deutsche Bank, cited a number of catalysts that should continue to drive Google in 2014, including: revenue from enhanced campaigns, local, mobile, display and YouTube; easy networks comparisons with the year-earlier period and improving margins.

Sandler also raised his 2014 earnings projections by 14% and advised investors to continue to add to their positions.

Jefferies said Google remains "best positioned" on a number of large secular trends, including online video, commerce and search.

Shares of Mountain View, Calif.-based Google surged 12.97% to $1,003.80 Friday morning, leaving them up 41.9% year-to-date. By comparison, Apple (AAPL) is off 4.7% this year and Facebook (FB) has soared 105%.

Google's intraday high of $1,007.40 represents an all-time high for the company, which went public in 2004.