Stock price when the opinion was issued
The cloud services business started generating positive operating income, but the other ones are negative. There is so much underlying value in GOOG. The big risk is regulation, but if forced to break up, then parts of the business will sell off. GOOG generates tons of free cash flow, and are great in allocating capital. Offers big value.
(Analysts’ price target is $220.46)You need to focus on the types of queries that go in. If he wants to learn about uranium and nuclear powering data centres, he'll do a deep dive on ChatGPT. But if he needs new shin pads or a hockey stick, he'll go on Google to find a vendor.
So the search volume is changing in intent, and Search queries in Google are becoming much more commercial. YouTube is an absolute beast.
Dumping a high-growth tech stock then planning to buy back at a lower price is a lot harder than you think. He sold GOOG after the Justice Dept. called GOOG a monopolist. Then, GOOG went up and the Justice Dept. did not break up GOOG. He didn't get back into the stock. In fact, GOOG is worth more if it is broken up into separate companies. He has tremendous remorse over selling it. Lesson: trading is the enemy of many investors.
Thinks it's going higher, but perhaps don't buy now. Wait for pullback. There's always a reason for a stock to pull back at some point, but he can't predict the magnitude.
At this level, risk/reward is not as good as entering at a lower price. Trades ~20-21x forward PE, whereas NVDA is trading at 40x forward PE or more. Lots of upside potential in things we're not even talking about yet, such as quantum computing -- freebies that may not be baked into the valuation today.
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.
If you really want to buy this name because you believe in its approach to AI, or that concerns are overblown on advertisers not being as robust, or that Mag 7 concerns are over done, then he'd suggest (not recommend) you buy some today. Though you may be early.
Tomorrow may be a tremendous up day, or another down day. He doesn't know. Start with 10%. You don't have to be 100% right. If it's worth buying here, it'll be worth buying 20% higher or lower, assuming the Western world continues. And despite the best efforts of the US administration, it will.