Alphabet IncGOOGTOP PICKNov 15, 2016Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Jul 13, 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.
This is a shift to secular online advertising. Having the largest search engine, they usually garner a large percentage of any company’s advertising. In terms of actual online advertising, it only represents about 35% of their overall budget, so there is still a lot more room to grow as companies shift out of some of the more traditional forms of media on to online. Trading at about 22X forward earnings, and feels they can grow their earnings in the double-digit range. (Analysts’ price target is $967.70.)