Alphabet IncGOOGPAST TOP PICKFeb 17, 2017Stock 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.
(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.