
NASDAQ:GOOG
Has strong growth and is monetizing it through ad spending, and is obviously going more digital. They also have their other bets, such as curing aging through Calico. They are getting into the public cloud as well. Also, has 70% market share of Core Search. Growing at 20%. He has a $1000 target on this.
A very difficult stock to get your hands around, because like any high growth stock, it has a 70 P/E ratio. They could come out with profits that are 20%, and yet the stock could go down, because the market was expecting greater growth than that. For him, it is just too dangerous. It is really difficult to beat the market over time, but you can match the market with less risk, by focusing on companies that are more value priced, and this one is definitely not value priced. There are better ideas out there.
The core of their business grew 20%, but it was a miss and disappointed. $.85 of every advertising dollar is going into Google or Facebook (FB-Q). Google is really not competing on any of the enterprise levels. They are really starting to monetize YouTube, which they acquired 10 years ago. The new CFO is very well respected on the financial side. P/E ratio is around 19. They are growing 19%-20% a year right now.
The leading search engine company, and is really about online advertising. This garners a huge share of the search traffic. On online advertising, on a global basis, only about 35% is allocated within the overall budget, so she thinks there is good growth opportunity going forward and Google will garner a high share of that.
Amazon (AMZN-Q) or Google (GOOGL-Q)? A tough one. It is the battle of the Titans. He would own both. He likes to buy companies that are disruptors and the change industries, and both of these have clearly done that. You could also buy the ETF (PNQI-Q) which is an Internet-based ETF giving you a basket, or FDN-N, the retail ETF.
Technology comes into a period of seasonal strength from April all the way through to July. These companies all tend to have a run up higher into their developer conferences. This one’s conference is May 18-May 20. The seasonal strength is between March and July, and the average gain is about 17%, and has been positive in 9 out of the 11 periods. The technicals are still quite positive on this.
They own Search and are monetizing exceptionally well. Margins are starting to come higher. They are getting the earnings growth that they have wanted for a long time. Generating free cash flow and redeploying it into very strong acquisitions. On top of that, they own the best and one of the largest operating systems in the world, the Android Operating system. They are giving this away for free right now, but at some time they will monetize this.
GOOGL-Q is a core holding. It is doing better than it had been because they are not spending as much money as they had. They have three things going. They are closing the gap between ads they can sell on desktops vs. mobile. Their expense growth is continuing to moderate and they are seeing increasing business from Googleplay and YouTube. 21 times earnings and bottom line growth of 17%.
(Top Pick Jul 7/15, Up 36.24%) They continue to grow. It finally had a couple of good quarters. He is comfortable buying it here.