Opinions
Reza Samahin, P. Eng, CFA
Alphabet Inc
GOOG-Q
HOLD
Mar 20, 2025
Stock price when the opinion was issued
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Premium contentGoogle's revenue for the last quarter was $96.4 billion. This represents a 6.86% increase compared to the previous quarter, which demonstrates a positive short-term growth. Year-over-year, this is a hike of 13.79%, suggesting solid long-term growth. Social media mentions are up 87.2% in the past 24h.
Some regulatory risks have now lifted. Still a decent valuation of 23x forward PE, discount to mega-cap peers. Continues to dominate digital ad space. Applying generative AI across the board. Cloud's a bit behind MSFT and AWS, but the entire space is growing so revenues are too. $100B in cash reserves gives lots of options.
It has been allowed to keep Chrome so that decision is good for the company. The legal system in the U.S. can't keep up with the fast pace in the market place, especially tech. The anti-trust laws were created over 100 years ago. Google hasn't raised or lowered prices and lots of it is free.
A 2 to 3 year timeline is the sweet spot for a long term investor. It is generally easier to form a thesis over three years. Acceleration is remarkable and no case has been made for a monopoly. Google can compete on the AI front and there is not as much focus on the search component. The value of the sum of its parts is greater than people realize.
Likes the acquisition of Wiz, the leader in cloud security. There are synergies between the two. Not clear whether Wiz now favours GOOG, or is still cloud-agnostic. Overall, more benefits than negatives.
Well positioned for the long term. GOOG invented a lot of the fundamental building blocks of AI, yet they get no credit for all that technology. The reason is that they're not good at creating commercial products. Outside of Search, all of their successful products are through acquisition -- YouTube, Android, Google Maps. So the market's wondering if it can make the transition to a generative AI future.
This helps explain why the multiple's where it's at. They could turn all this around and it would be an opportunity, but it'll probably take a change in leadership. Take a look at the history of MSFT since 2012.