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Alphabet IncGOOGWATCHAug 16, 2024Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Jun 12, 2026. Market Open.
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.
Doing great. Worries about Search becoming obsolete were baseless, though its share of searching will fall. However, the pie will expand and so total revenue will grow. Gemini has a leadership position in AI.
Plus there's YouTube -- about 23% global streaming share and caters to shorter attention spans. Waymo also adds to this very powerful compounder.
Moat is pretty phenomenal. Strongest pillar are the networks. Largest index of "intent" data -- what people want right now. That data allows them to target ads. 70% of the world's operating systems are Android.
Sheer scale of its infrastructure lets them run massive AI models at a much lower unit cost. His 12-month price target is $378. Yield is 0.25%.
We think this could be a sarcastic way of saying GOOG is showing complacency in innovation relative to other AI companies. Also, GOOG has been criticized recently for over-hiring, which the company has corrected in recent quarters. It is true that large organizations are not as nimble as start-ups, but at the same time, large, well-established companies also possess a more sustainable business model for investors to compound capital more safely.
There is something the venture capital community refers to as the “Innovators Dilemma”, where large organizations (such as IBM, ORCL, etc.) are usually being disrupted by new technologies as the new solutions do not look attractive (usually new technology has lower margins) and does not fit their main business models which have also been their cash cow for many years. MSFT has been the exception where the company reinvented itself to the new technological trend. Therefore, we think technological disruption is what investors need to monitor over time with companies like GOOG, that being said, we think in the near term, it would be really hard to replace GOOG, but the risk should be kept in mind for long-term shareholders. We would note that GOOG spent $47B on research in the last year, and perhaps the CEO is trying to light a fire under employees to ensure this spending results in future growth.
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