Opinions
Christine Poole
Alphabet Inc
GOOG-Q
PAST TOP PICK
Feb 17, 2017
Stock price when the opinion was issued
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Dumping a high-growth tech stock then planning to buy back at a lower price is a lot harder than you think. He sold GOOG after the Justice Dept. called GOOG a monopolist. Then, GOOG went up and the Justice Dept. did not break up GOOG. He didn't get back into the stock. In fact, GOOG is worth more if it is broken up into separate companies. He has tremendous remorse over selling it. Lesson: trading is the enemy of many investors.
Thinks it's going higher, but perhaps don't buy now. Wait for pullback. There's always a reason for a stock to pull back at some point, but he can't predict the magnitude.
At this level, risk/reward is not as good as entering at a lower price. Trades ~20-21x forward PE, whereas NVDA is trading at 40x forward PE or more. Lots of upside potential in things we're not even talking about yet, such as quantum computing -- freebies that may not be baked into the valuation today.
Premium contentGoogle's revenue for the last quarter was $96.4 billion. This represents a 6.86% increase compared to the previous quarter, which demonstrates a positive short-term growth. Year-over-year, this is a hike of 13.79%, suggesting solid long-term growth. Social media mentions are up 87.2% in the past 24h.
Some regulatory risks have now lifted. Still a decent valuation of 23x forward PE, discount to mega-cap peers. Continues to dominate digital ad space. Applying generative AI across the board. Cloud's a bit behind MSFT and AWS, but the entire space is growing so revenues are too. $100B in cash reserves gives lots of options.
It has been allowed to keep Chrome so that decision is good for the company. The legal system in the U.S. can't keep up with the fast pace in the market place, especially tech. The anti-trust laws were created over 100 years ago. Google hasn't raised or lowered prices and lots of it is free.
A 2 to 3 year timeline is the sweet spot for a long term investor. It is generally easier to form a thesis over three years. Acceleration is remarkable and no case has been made for a monopoly. Google can compete on the AI front and there is not as much focus on the search component. The value of the sum of its parts is greater than people realize.
(Top Pick Feb 9/16, Up 20.76%) She still likes it. It has lagged the rally, only up at 4% vs. the market being up 10%. It is the 28th consecutive quarter of organic growth over 20% year over year. That trend of digital advertising is going to continue to grow as only about 35% of advertising budgets are allocated to it. They got a new CFO a couple of years ago who has brought a lot of financial discipline to the company so more growth is dropping to the bottom line. They have been buying back stock even though they don’t yet pay a dividend. They have a lot of cash off shore so policy changes in repatriation of cash will benefit them.