In this article, we discuss the 5 best autonomous trucking and vehicle stocks to buy now. If you want to read a detailed analysis of the autonomous vehicle industry, you can go directly to the 12 Best Autonomous Trucking and Vehicle Stocks To Buy Now.
5. Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 86
Value of Hedge Fund Holdings: $3,968,815,700
Market Capitalization: $75.44 billion
Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) is a major memory and storage manufacturer providing key components for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles. Autonomous driving generates huge amounts of sensor data that must be processed in real-time. Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) specializes in the development of fast, high-capacity memory and storage to enable this data crunching. For instance, Micron Technology, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:MU) automotive-grade DRAM provides the necessary memory capacity for automated collision avoidance and self-driving systems to make rapid decisions.
4. Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 144
Value of Hedge Fund Holdings: $7,660,665,800
Market Capitalization: $90.75 billion
Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) has joined forces with Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL), to provide driverless car services on its food delivery and ride-hailing platform in late 2023. Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) will be able to provide its customers with driverless car services for deliveries and rides through a limited number of Waymo vehicles within a 180-square-mile radius of Phoenix, Arizona.
Here’s what RiverPark Advisors said about Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) in its Q2 2023 investor letter:
“Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER): UBER was a top contributor for the quarter following better than expected 1Q23 earnings and 2Q23 guidance. Gross bookings of $31.4 billion were up 22% year over year. Mobility gross bookings of $15 billion grew 44% over the last year driven by a combination of product innovation and driver availability. Delivery gross bookings, also $15 billion, were up 12% from last year and accelerated through the quarter. 1Q Adjusted EBITDA of $761 million, up $593 million year over year, significantly beat management’s $660-$700 million guidance and the company generated $549 million of free cash flow versus a loss last year. Management guided to continuing growth in 2Q Gross Bookings (13%-17% growth) and Adjusted EBITDA (of $800- $850 million).
UBER remains the undisputed global leader in ride sharing, with a greater than 50% share in every major region in which it operates. The company is also a leader in food delivery, where it is number one or two in the more than 25 countries in which it operates. Moreover, after a history of losses, the company is now profitable, delivering expanding margins and substantial free cash flow. We view UBER as more than just ride sharing and food delivery, but also as a global mobility platform with the ability to sell to its 130 million users (by comparison, Amazon Prime has 200 million members) and penetrate new markets of on-demand services, such as package and grocery delivery, travel, truck brokerage (the company had $1.4 billion in Freight revenue for 1Q23), and worker staffing for shift work. Given its $4.2 billion of unrestricted cash and $5 billion of investments, the company today has an enterprise value of $84 billion, indicating that UBER trades at 20x next year’s estimated free cash flow.”
3. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 175
Value of Hedge Fund Holdings: $25,965,720,000
Market Capitalization: $1.03 trillion
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) made a strategic move in late August by appointing Wu Xinzhou, the former Vice President and head of autonomous driving operations at XPeng Inc. (NYSE:XPEV), as a leader of their automotive products division. Wu Xinzhou has been at the forefront of autonomous driving, overseeing a team of more than 1,000 engineers in both China and the United States since 2018.
Here’s what Harding Loevner said about NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its Q2 2023 investor letter:
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) has been the biggest beneficiary this year in terms of its stock run and projected revenue gains. More companies- including, perhaps, some not yet in existence-will certainly join the ranks over time.
In the meantime, NVIDIA has emerged as the unrivaled global leader in providing the technologies at the center of the Al arms race. NVIDIA’s competitive advantage is the result of investments that began two decades ago, when it recognized an early opportunity to repurpose its video-game graphics chips for the heavy-load computing done in scientific research. This led management to expand the GPU business. It also spent years and significant resources developing a free software platform that’s exclusive to its chips called CUDA that allows developers to easily program its GPUs for a variety of computationally intensive applications. Researchers then began using both NVIDIA’s chips and CUDA to train the human-brain-inspired neural networks that power Al models.
Now, due to an explosion of demand related to generative Al and LLMs from across its customer base, NVIDIA projects that data-center revenue for its fiscal second quarter ending in July will surge to US$11 billion. Not only is that more than double last quarter’s total, but the forecast also shattered the average analyst estimate that called for about US$7 billion. Taking advantage of the stock’s meteoric rise, we reduced our holding (it has risen tenfold since we first purchased in 2018)…” (Click here to read the full text)
2. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 204
Value of Hedge Fund Holdings: $17,286,889,000
Market Capitalization: $1.65 trillion
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) made its entry into the autonomous driving sector back in 2009 with the launch of the Google self-driving car project, presently known as Waymo. It was spun out as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) during the corporate restructuring in 2016. Waymo is widely considered a leader in autonomous driving technology, having logged over 20 million miles of public road testing and 20 billion miles of simulation across dozens of cities in the US.
Here’s what Artisan Partners said about Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in its Q2 2023 investor letter:
“Our best performing stocks this quarter were Meta, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Heidelberg Materials. The rise in Alphabet’s share performance was primarily driven by the AI frenzy. Earlier this year, there were some doubts about Alphabet’s ability to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT product. This was a bit ironic since Alphabet has been using AI technology to improve its Google search results and advertising business for years. Indeed, the technology that underpins OpenAI’s ChatGPT actually came from Alphabet more than five years ago. But sometimes the market needs a reminder, and Alphabet provided tangible evidence of its capabilities. At a recent developer conference, it launched Bard, a consumer-oriented generative AI version of its search engine, as well as several other concrete examples of how AI could improve its current business. As with Meta, the long-term implications of AI on Alphabet’s business model are still far from certain. But we do believe that it is a technology leader in this field and will participate in whatever direction the technology develops.”
1. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 278
Value of Hedge Fund Holdings: $34,900,888,000
Market Capitalization: $1.33 trillion
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has a 17% and 5.2% stake in Rivian Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ:RIVN) and Aurora Innovation, Inc. (NASDAQ:AUR), respectively. The Seattle, Washington-based technology giant intends to leverage these partnerships to develop autonomous driving technology tailored to its logistics business. The company also acquired Zoox in 2020, which is developing autonomous passenger vehicles to bolster the company’s self-driving expertise. Through its partnership with Aurora, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has launched an autonomous long-haul freight network called AWS Connected Vehicle Solution for trucks.
Here’s what Diamond Hill Capital said about Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in its Q2 2023 investor letter:
“Among our top contributors were insurance company American International Group (AIG), auto retailer CarMax and global online retailer Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN).
Amazon’s management team has been working to improve retail profitability, and Q1 results showed progress. In the case of Amazon’s web services (AWS), the market has shifted its focus from where growth will bottom in the near term to how AI can help accelerate the adoption of public cloud services in the future. We believe Amazon’s competitive advantages will continue to grow and that the business has the potential to grow faster than the overall economy in the coming years.”
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