Alphabet IncGOOGPARTIAL BUYJun 19, 2018Stock 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.
Entry point now? The way to think about it is that it’s like a utility. One of their favourite technology investments. When the name is synonymous with the task, that’s a dominant position. Stock has had a great run, but it’s not expensive at 16-17x PE. They’re innovating, investing in all kinds of businesses, they have YouTube which isn’t fully monetized yet. Market pullback is a good time to look at it, but it’s also a difficult market. A great company. You could start a position now and take a very long-term view. Comfortable it’ll be higher in 5-10 years.