We recently published a list of Top 10 AI Stocks to Watch After Latest Earnings and Analyst Ratings. Since Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) ranks 4th on the list, it deserves a deeper look.
Tom Lee, Fundstrat Global Advisors co-founder, said while talking to CNBC in a latest program that the next few weeks until the US election would be “confusing” for many since no one could say anything with conviction about who is going to be in the White House.
Lee said that the market is going to trade “well” into the upcoming Fed meeting where he expects “some” rate cuts amid the labor market needing support and positive inflation data. Asked whether he expects a 25bps rate cut or a 50bps cut, Lee said:
“ A 25 or 50 can have both hawkish or dovish implications so I think it’s ultimately whether Fed Chair Powell comes across as this is the start of a cycle they are confident that we are moving back towards neutral and whatever number they make is quite dovish and positive but if it seems like that it’s dragging along the FOMC members and then there is even concerns about hard landing then I think the market can view anything they do as negative,” Lee said.
However, Lee said he believes the outcome would be positive.
For this article, we chose the top 10 buzzing AI stocks on the back of the latest earnings and analyst ratings. With each company, we have mentioned the 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
Commenting on the latest antitrust trial against Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google dominance, Cramer said that the US government allegations would have made sense in the past but with companies like Trade Desk, the case against Google is weak.
“Before Trade Desk, I would have said, meaningful, Now I don’t even know if it’s germane to the issue.”
Cramer said that with a lot of competition on different platforms, he is not sure whether Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) qualifies to be a monopolist.
Despite constant alarms going off about its search business, Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) search revenue jumped about 13.7% in the second quarter year over year. As of the end of June, Google has about 91.06% share of the search engine market, just 1.65% lower than the December 2019 levels. With AI overviews and other search initiatives, Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) will be able to stave off any competitors given its dominance in the market.
Cloud and YouTube are two key strong catalysts for Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares. During the second quarter, Alphabet’s Cloud revenue rose 28.8% to $10.35 billion, crushing past analysts’ forecasts of $10.16 billion. Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) is on the path to reach a $100 billion revenue run-rate from YouTube Ads and Google Cloud by the end of 2024.
Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“We also added to Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG). The company reported solid financial results with first quarter revenue growth of 15% year-over-year, driven by 14% growth in search, 21% growth in YouTube, and 28% growth in cloud (which accelerated from 26% growth in the fourth quarter). The company has also increased its cost discipline efforts, which drove operating margins to 31.6% (compared to 25% in the first quarter of 2023). With regards to GenAI, while we are cognizant of the potential risks to the dominance of search, we believe that on the range of outcomes, Alphabet remains well positioned through its massive user distribution (9 products with over 1 billion users each), long-standing AI research labs (DeepMind and Google Brain), top AI talent, a solid cloud computing division in Google Cloud, and deep pockets for investing in AI. During the quarter, Alphabet also held its annual I/O conference, where it provided an update on its efforts in AI including: Gemini is now used by 1.5 million developers; model quality is expanding rapidly (e.g., context window is now 2 million tokens of length); the new genomics model, Alphafold 3 can predict structures of molecules and potentially accelerate drug discovery; new TPU6 AI chips has shown a 4.7 times improvement in compute performance compared to the prior generation; and Gemini for workspace is showing early data on a 30% increase in user productivity. Alphabet also has real value in assets such as Waymo, which are not factored into valuation today (and are potentially included at a negative valuation as they currently generate losses, hurting EPS). We continue to believe that the current valuation of Alphabet presents an attractive risk/reward for long-term owners of the business and have therefore increased our position.”
Overall, Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) ranks 4th on Insider Monkey’s list titled Top 10 AI Stocks to Watch After Latest Earnings and Analyst Ratings. While we acknowledge the potential of Alphabet Inc Class C (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 GOOG but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: Analyst Sees a New $25 Billion “Opportunity” for NVIDIA and Jim Cramer is Recommending These Stocks.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
