Alphabet IncGOOGTOP PICKJul 03, 2023Stock 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.
DeepMind's many activities bode well for Alphabet's future. So, what about its current numbers? Alphabet trades at a low multiple, 27.5x, compared to its peers: Meta at 37x, Apple 32.73x and Amazon 303x. Their Android operating system is the most popular on the planet with a 71.63% market share, though trails Apple's iOS in the U.S. Meanwhile, Google Cloud is growing at 30%, but with 10% market share, still lagging AWS (32%) and Microsoft's Azure (23%). GOOG shares ran up this year, along with big tech, but have plateaued since mid-May. A definite buy on the next pullback.