We recently published a list of the Big Tech Funds are Buying These 10 AI Stocks. Since Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) ranks 5th on the list, it deserves a deeper look.
As mega-cap technology stocks continue to soar to new highs, the number of Wall Street analysts highlighting the “concentration of gains” problem are increasing. It’s more than evident now that just a handful of technology companies account for most of the gains in the market, thanks to the AI-fueled rally that is favoring only those companies that are leading in the AI arms race. Barclays analyst Venu Krishna recently said in a report that “Big Tech” has “largely carried the broader U.S. equity market through 1Q24 earnings results.” Krishna said that Q1 results showed the “ongoing dominance” of Big Tech over earnings revisions and margin upside.
“This makes it difficult to argue for a broadening of overweight allocations,” Krishna added. The analyst said this dominance comes at the expense of other sectors as funds cut their exposure to cyclical sectors like industrials, financials and discretionary to go overweight on tech.
Billionaire Steve Cohen’s New AI Fund
Billionaires and VCs are now planning to create their own AI-focused funds to attract money from investors and tap into the unprecedented opportunities unlocked by AI. Bloomberg recently reported that Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management is planning to raise about $1 billion to make a new AI-focused hedge fund. The fund will bet “on and against” companies in AI hardware and semiconductor industries. The report said that billionaire Cohen will be overseeing the fund along with Eric Sanchez. The fund’s expected launch date is later this year or early 2025.
Billionaire Cohen is already ramping up his bets on AI. To see his AI investments this year, click 10 Best AI Stock Picks of Billionaire Steve Cohen.
Since Krishna of Barclays talked about the rise of big tech funds and their concentration into AI, in this article we will take a look at the major AI stocks that form the portfolios of these funds and discuss their growth catalysts and long-term outlook. For that we first listed down all holdings of major tech funds like Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund and iShares Global Tech ETF and picked 10 AI stocks with the highest number of hedge fund investors.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
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Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 165
The latest Barclays report suggests (unsurprisingly) that Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is one of the stocks Big Tech funds have been piling into. The stock has gained about 45% over the past one year. Morgan Stanley in a latest note said that Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) new AI features do not pose a threat to Alphabet’s “broad-based search.”
Billionaire Ackman owns a $1.4 billion stake in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG). In his 2023 letter to investors, Ackman addressed the concerns around Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) amid the rise of AI language models:
The cumulative impact of AI and machine learning enhancements is perhaps most evident in Google’s core Search franchise. Google Search has evolved from its starting point as a simple results page with “10 blue links” and now provides summary answer snippets for informational and educational queries similar to AI chatbots without any of their latency. For more involved queries, for example, in travel, the company has developed specialized Google Flights and Hotels modules that offer consumers substantial utility and freedom to direct their discovery process. Innovation in Google Search has maintained its leading market position through multiple perceived “disruption” risks over time, including the platform transition from desktop-tomobile and competitive threats from social media and verticalized search. Likewise, we view the company’s integration of generative AI into a wider range of queries, not as a disruptive shift, but as a natural evolution of its Search product which will enhance the user experience and improve conversion for advertisers. We continue to believe Google is one of the most advantaged and scaled players in AI with an unmatched business model. The company’s stock currently trades at approximately 19 times forward earnings, a deep discount to its peers despite its similar rate of projected earnings growth.
Read Ackman’s letter here.
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) bulls believe the company is just getting started with AI product launches. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is indeed in a strong position to develop an AI ecosystem around its products. For example, demos have shown that Gemini app will help people perform daily personal tasks like note taking, appointments, writing, etc. These features could easily be integrate with other Google apps. Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) app is to urge users to sign up for ‘Google One AI Premium’ plan, which has a $19.99 price tag. Google saw advertising revenue accelerate in Q1 2024, boosted by YouTube in particular growing by almost 21% last quarter. Analysts also believe Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is in a strong position to offset any headwinds or lost market share in Google search with YouTube, which saw its ads revenue reach $8.1 billion in the first quarter, a 21% growth. Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) net income in the period came in at $23.66 billion, up 57%, or $1.89 per share.
Lakehouse Global Growth Fund stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its April 2024 investor letter:
“Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) delivered a strong quarterly result that came in well ahead of analysts’ expectations. Revenue grew 15.4% (16.0% constant currency) to $80.5 billion and operating income grew 46.0% to $25.5 billion. Revenue growth accelerated across Search, YouTube Ads, and Google Cloud, all whilst the company delivered its highest operating margin since 2021 – showing meaningful progress in the company’s efforts to durably re-work their cost structure. On the Generative AI front, management emphasised the company’s infrastructure advantages including 5th generation TPUs(chips developed by Google specifically for AI training and inference), high performance data centre architecture, and AI models that are 100x more efficient versus 18 months ago. Overall, we believe that Alphabet is well placed for the AI opportunity ahead and still has significant latent earnings power. When combined with a relatively undemanding valuation of 21x forward net profit and over $100 billion of cash on the balance sheet, it’s not hard to see why we remain positive on the range of outcomes in the years ahead.”
Overall, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) ranks 5th on Insider Monkey’s list titled Big Tech Funds are Buying These 10 AI Stocks. While we acknowledge the potential of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.