We recently published a list of Top 10 Favorite AI Stocks of Brad Gerstner. Since Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) ranks 1st on the list, it deserves a deeper look.
Brad Gerstner, the founder of Altimeter Capital, has been a major believer in AI and tech stocks in general. Recently, the 53-year-old hedge fund manager shared some interesting data points highlighting the importance of tech stocks during an interview with Scott Galloway’s YouTube channel.
“Since 2014 technology earnings have compounded at 16% and technology stocks have compounded at 18%. Non-tech earnings have compounded at about 4% and stocks at about 6%. So if you look at the long run of technology since 2005 it’s gone from 5% of global GDP to 15% of global GDP,” Gerstner said.
Gerstner, whose firm manages about $10 billion in assets, emphasized during the interview that the risk of not investing in AI is higher than the risk of investing. He was addressing the market concerns about ROI on AI spending.
“As a professional investor, we’re just trying to determine what level of asymmetry what level of enthusiasm or exuberance is baked into these stocks and what are we seeing day to day in terms of usage and revenues out of the consumer,” he said.
For this article we scanned Altimeter Capital’s Q2 portfolio and discussed its biggest AI stock picks. 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).
Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Capital
Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW)
Brad Gerstner’s Stake: $1,290,210,277
Snowflake is the biggest holding of Altimeter as of the end of the second quarter.
Jefferies analyst Brent Thill named Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW) as his top AI pick for the back half of 2024 as he expects the stock to benefit from the rising demand in infrastructure and software. Thill believes companies like Snowflake will benefit as companies begin to install and deploy AI software in the POC (proof of concept) stage of the AI cycle.
Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW) is a Cloud-based data warehouse offering data storage and analytics services. The company’s moat lies in its data technologies that let companies analyze and make sense of unstructured data. Amid the generative AI boom, companies are ready to spend a fortune to use huge datasets to their advantage. This would bode well for Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW). The company’s usage-based pricing model also gives it an edge in the market. The company expects the total addressable market for its Cloud data platform to rise to $342 billion by 2028, which is double the market size of 2023.
Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund stated the following regarding Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) is a leading cloud data platform that is predominantly used for data analytics. The stock declined 16.4% as investors evaluated the impact of a recently announced CEO transition, an investment cycle driven by spend on AI, a cybersecurity incident, and a rapidly changing competitive environment. With GenAI capturing a larger portion of the public discourse, Snowflake’s positioning in the future data stack is under scrutiny by both investors and customers. We believe Sridhar Ramaswamy, the newly appointed CEO, can help the business more efficiently transition toward an AI-first world. While Databricks and other key competitors are presenting strong results, we believe Snowflake’s brand, existing customer base, and accelerating product innovation should allow it to continue to capture share in a relatively large and strategic market. Management continues to describe strong demand trends for its core data analytics, which is also demonstrated by the relatively healthy expansion rates among existing customers while new go-to-market initiatives can help grow the customer base further. Longer term, we remain excited about the Snowflake’s strategic opportunity as the data platform for its customers.”
Overall, Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) ranks 1st on Insider Monkey’s list titled Top 10 Favorite AI Stocks of Brad Gerstner. While we acknowledge the potential of Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW), 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 SNOW 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.
