5 Best 52-Week Low Stocks To Buy Now

3. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)

Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 191 (GOOGL), 153 (GOOG)

1-Year Share Price Decline: 35.3%

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares hit a 52-week low on November 3 after tumbling by 20.4% between October 25 and the aforementioned date. Alphabet’s Q3 results released in late October were relatively weak across the board, with advertising, search, and YouTube all showing softer-than-expected results. The one positive during the quarter was cloud, which continued to grow at a strong pace (37%) and beat top-line expectations.

Given its unassailable leadership position in search and its long-term growth opportunity with cloud computing and YouTube, getting Alphabet shares at a discount like this is a rare opportunity that shouldn’t be passed up.

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s two classes of shares rank as the third (GOOGL) and sixth (GOOG)-most popular among hedge funds as of June 30, but there was a slight drop in ownership of both during Q2. Alphabet has been one of the most consistent stocks in terms of hedge fund ownership over the years, with between 308 and 375 funds long both classes of shares every quarter since late 2017. Several funds made massive investments in Alphabet during Q3, including Boykin Curry’s Eagle Capital Management, and Robert Rodriguez and Steven Romick’s First Pacific Advisors LLC.

Baron Funds remains bullish on Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) thanks to its leading market positions search and video, as the fund laid out in its Q3 2022 investor letter:

“Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is the parent company of Google, the world’s largest search and online advertising company. After benefiting from the pandemic shift to e-commerce as well as data privacy changes negatively impacting major competitors, Google’s core search and YouTube businesses are facing broad macroeconomic headwinds impacting digital advertising demand, as well as difficult comparisons against the reopening backdrop of last year. During the second quarter, Google reported 16% overall revenue growth, with search growing 15% and YouTube 10%. Despite the short-term headwinds, we remain investors as Alphabet is still the strongest player in its market and continues to benefit from long-term secular growth in mobile and online video advertising, accruing to its core assets of Search, YouTube, and the Google ad network. We are further encouraged by Alphabet’s investments in cloud (which grew 40% last quarter), AI, and other initiatives, which can help the company capture share in large, growing markets and take advantage of Google’s technical competencies.”