Opinions
Jenny Harrington, CEO, Gilman Hill Asset Management
Alphabet Inc
GOOG-Q
DON'T BUY
Jul 23, 2025
Stock price when the opinion was issued
You might be interested:
When you buy GOOG, you get Waymo for free. Waymo is actually ahead of where TSLA is on robotaxis. 17-18x forward PE. The only Mag 7 he owns. By far the cheapest. Concerns about AI engines taking away its core Search business, but no evidence of that yet. Investing heavily in R&D to protect its assets. One of the world's great business models.
He sold it and that was a big mistake. Sold because the Justice Department deemed GOOG a monopolist, which would lead to a break up of the company. But if you believe that the parts hold value, then it's fine. He has seller's remorse. Waymo is way ahead of Tesla in self-driving cars, and Waymo could have a huge impact on GOOG. He wants to re-buy GOOG.
The fear about them was that AI will eat into GOOG's search market share. Yes, AI will, but the overall search market will likely grow. So, GOOG's market share could shrink, but it's search business could still grow. He's bullish. Also, GOOG has a partnership with Uber in self-driving cars, an exciting, growing business. Third, GOOG owns YouTube which dominates the streaming market by far, bigger than Netflix.
The street expects 11% and 16% revenue and earnings growth. Long-term, GOOG is the most vertically integrated to win. Think of Gmail, Google calendar, YouTube and Google search. Google has all our data and can make a powerful AI assistant. The key thing is how GOOG will monetize their AI (whereas Meta has made that clear).
The numbers reported this week were really good. YouTube pulled in $10B in ad revenue. Holds assets it hasn't even monetized yet. Search is at risk, and the multiple reflects that. He's watching all the AI plays to see how they monetize.
He'd pick this one, for at least a trade. Only one of the Mag 7 below the market multiple.
In his momentum mandate. Reported 2 days ago and beat on sales, earnings, and other key performance metrics. Earnings up ~22%, sales up 15%. Acceleration of cloud computing, now ~$50B a year and probably the fastest-growing part of the business. Stepping up capital spending on the AI arms race, yet also authorized to buy back $70B in stock. Very cash-generative.
Trying to get its head around monetizing AI in Search, and he thinks they will.
Doesn't own it, because there's a forecast of a 25% drop in 2026 in single search engine queries. In contrasts, Meta has 90% margins in their single search engine queries. Even if GOOG does well in AI and cloud, those are not as profitable as the main search business. Decent earnings growth ahead, but their earnings are more at risk. Instead of Google, she uses chatGPT and other methods to search.