Alphabet IncGOOGWATCHAug 16, 2024Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Sep 18, 2026. Market Open.
If you look at the 3 biggest hyperscalers today, the best position is probably in GOOG. Doing lots of internal development and investment in its AI models. Gemini is lagging Anthropic and OpenAI, but it's a close third. GOOG is really at the forefront of innovation, especially compared to the other 2 hyperscalers.
She owns no hyperscalers right now.
This one, but don't put all your eggs in the one basket. It just has so many horses in the race. About 75% of revenue comes from advertising. Cloud business generates a whole lot of money. Very strong with Gemini, and now agentic AI has come out. Robust short-term liquidity. Current and quick ratios are well above 1. Low debt-to-equity. ROE of 38.1%. PE is ~17x.
The #1 holding in his fund. His 12-month price target is $428. Buy some here, more around support at $320. Shouldn't go under $300.
Revenue's grown 26% on average, per year, for the last decade. That's quite transformative. Subscriptions plus cloud are growing quickly. Valuation's quite attractive compared to historical comparisons. Attractive entry level at 16.7x forward PE. Small yield of 0.26%.
(Analysts’ price target is $428.18)That was an eye-opener. The Mag 7 has peaked, and it could be a multi-year peak due to the negative free cash flow. GOOG is one of the winners in AI. Once the PE declines or AI spending slows, the stock could react better. The street would be very disappointed if only the core businesses of the Mag 7 were generating free cash flow growth and AI was not. It's tough to look through AI spend and invest the Mag 7 which remain great companies, but now face the biggest risk in years.
He trimmed a little early this year, but likes it. Their relationship with the customer is strong across its platform. Secondly, growth is remarkable. Also, the valuation is reasonable. Their AI model is not the best, but it's competitive. Can you keep your eyeballs on a Google product? Yes. Gemini is integrated in their search, so that removes the threat to their search.
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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