Alphabet IncGOOGBUYJul 24, 2024Stock 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.
Total revenue rose 13.5% year-over-year to $84.74B beating analyst estimates of $84.29B. EPS also beat expectations of $1.85 coming in at $1.89. Search revenue and cloud revenue beat estimates, however Youtube ad revenue missed estimates for the quarter ($8.66B reported vs. $8.93B expected). Additionally, capital spending rose to $13.2B primarily supporting AI programs which exceeded analysts’ estimates of $12.2B. The market did not like the Youtube ad miss and the continued spending in AI with not much profitability to show for it yet. The quarter displayed solid growth from GOOG as a whole, but ROI on AI has been a painpoint for investors over recent weeks.
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