Opinions
Josh Brown, CEO, Ritholtz Wealth Management
Alphabet Inc
GOOG-Q
BUY
Mar 14, 2025
Stock price when the opinion was issued
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At current share price, incredible value. Grows at over 10% per year. Search, Chrome, Maps, YouTube. Growth monster. R&D spend is almost $50B per year. Trades at 18x PE. Easily a double over next 5 years. Advertising is ~80% of the story, not going away anytime soon. Yield is 0.56%.
(Analysts’ price target is $215.93)He just sold the rest of his shares, and he feels good about that. Owned it since 2014. His main concern is that gen AI will post an existential threat to their search business. Also, if the tariffs cause a recession, their ad revenues will be crushed. But there are many things to like about Alphabet. YouTube is the most important force in media. Their cloud platform is in the top 3 or 4 and growing nicely. And it trades at only 16x PE, much lower than historically.
It will recover. Whether that's in 2025 depends largely on what the rest of the market does. Its business plan is changing. AI is really taking over from the Search model, and the market sees its market dominance in that area declining. They'll have a share, but we don't know how much.
Has other initiatives, like YouTube, that are real money makers. 47% of people who use the internet go to YouTube once a month or more. A very good hold at current valuation of ~mid-high teens PE.
A name in tech that continues to make sense because of strength and scale. Trading close to its 200-week MA, a very important long-term support level. If it bounces off that, will do very well. Paying 17x PE for 12% earnings growth, not really expensive for a name like this.
Giant in Search; AI is in early stages and can only improve their products. Cloud business growing quickly. Hardware space is growing too.
His largest holding. Customer does all the work and the company gets all the money. Ads have taken a hit. Regulatory scrutiny is a target on the successful; first it was IBM when he started out, then MSFT. It's rather like getting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval ;)
Could be hurt by lawsuits, but it'll be minor. AI will drive growth for the next 10 years.
Always a concern when you're being sued by the US government. Have to see what evolves, GOOG has already said it will appeal, will play out over a number of years. Headline risk is an overhang. Capex for data centres will increase by 40-50%, a surprise to the street.
Cloud grew 30% YOY, healthy, but expectations were for 32% or so. Stock came off. And now the market selloff, which is focused on large-cap tech. Trading at 17x forward PE. Consensus that EPS can grow in the 14-15% range. If earnings can hold, the multiple is very attractive (actually less than the S&P). Reports this week. She'd buy here with new money.
The Mag 7 name he likes going into the second half of the year. Search is still extremely popular even though everyone was worried about AI. At the front of the line when it come to innovation in AI. So many other horses in the race. 75-80% of revenues come from ads; so a recession would definitely hurt, but that seems to be off the table for now as the S&P 500 "death cross" has recovered for now.
You're buying this at a lower multiple as recently as January. If you think earnings will hold up as well as AI and data centre spending, this makes sense.