Alphabet IncGOOGPAST TOP PICKJan 12, 2016Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Jul 10, 2026. Market Open.
Fears that AI would eat its lunch. Harder for Anthropic to monetize a new tool than for GOOG to take AI and apply it to a business model that it already monetizes. Muscle memory of the populace gravitates to GOOG to find information. Probably thrives in the new AI world, until something more disruptive comes along.
AI monetization is happening, and AI Mode has been a game changer. Stronger cloud growth (revenue grew 63% YOY last quarter, tremendous), broader monetization across platforms. Search and advertising remain strong, lots of cashflow. Also a great ecosystem.
Good growth, but relatively decent valuation. Yield is 0.25%.
A year ago, consensus was that Search was going to die. Seems ridiculous now. Gemini is overtaking ChatGPT. Data centre business is growing faster than before. Still not that expensive. He hasn't sold any shares yet, but may take some off the table from the long-term holding and put toward one of the Mag 7 laggards.
(A Top Pick Jan 13/15. Up 47.45%.) Bought this when the stock had not been doing anything. Now they have a new CFO who is a bit more investor friendly. Have started to post good earnings, and she is expecting high double digit earnings. Also, the multiple has expanded. She is waiting for more of a pullback before adding more for new clients. This is the leading search engine which means they are going to attract advertising dollars. Online advertising as a percentage of advertising budgets is still only about 25%-30% of the overall budget, so that can continue to increase shares.