GOOGL:Fundamental Analysis + Possible Next Target Warren Buffett is an expert at capturing the attention of Wall Street analysts and investors. This could be attributed to the more than 3,800,000% cumulative return he has generated to his company's Class A stock (BRK.A) since taking over as CEO in the 1960s.
His stellar investment track record has enabled new and repeat investors to follow him for decades and achieve substantial returns. This is ultimately what makes Berkshire Hathaway's Form 13F filing such a highly anticipated event.
Many people who follow Berkshire Hathaway's buying and selling are presumably aware that Apple is the company's largest holding. Apple accounted for 41% of Berkshire's $342 billion in invested assets a week earlier. Apple was also one of three stocks added by Buffett and his investing team during the fourth quarter.
Similarly, Amazon has been a Berkshire Hathaway holding for the past four years (since Q1 of 2019). Oracle's prior remarks from Omaha imply that he was not the architect behind the takeover of the world's largest e-commerce company. Rather, one of his investment lieutenants, Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, was responsible for the $1.06 billion holding in Amazon.
Buffett was only indirectly familiar with the other three FAANGs - Meta, Netflix, and Alphabet - before Berkshire Hathaway and New England Asset Management released its current 13F reports. The situation has now altered.
In the fourth quarter, New England Asset Management purchased 17,100 Alphabet shares, primarily Class A shares (GOOGL).
The straightforward answer to the question "Why Alphabet?" is based on three factors: market share, cash flow, and valuation.
Let us begin with the reality that Alphabet has a complete monopoly on Internet search. Since December 2018, Google has accounted for at least 91% of global search share, according to GlobalStats. Although ad spending cycles, Google's almost 90 percentage point dominance over its nearest competitor provides it unparalleled pricing power when working with advertisers. Given how the US and worldwide economies have developed over time, Alphabet, fuelled by advertising, is the clear winner.
Second, Alphabet is a money generator, allowing it to actively reinvest in a wide range of high-growth activities. The corporation generated $91.5 billion in operating cash flow in 2022. This massive cash flow allows the corporation to expand the scope of its Google Cloud infrastructure service, which has taken almost 10% of the world's cloud infrastructure market, according to a recent Canalys analysis.
Furthermore, Google's extraordinary cash flow, along with $99 billion in net cash, cash equivalents, and marketable Alphabet securities, allows the corporation to reinvest in the streaming channel YouTube, which is the world's second most visited social site. Alphabet is currently experimenting with new ways to monetize short videos known as YouTube Shorts. Every day, more than 50 billion "shorts" are viewed!
Third, Alphabet has historically been cheap in terms of both future revenue potential and cash flow. Despite a five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 25.4, the company is now valued at 15.5 times Wall Street's predicted earnings for next year.
Furthermore, Alphabet has averaged 18.6 times year-end cash flow over the last five years. Investors may buy Google shares right now for just 6.5 times the company's estimated cash flow in 2026, according to Wall Street's most forward-looking projection.
In other words, Alphabet satisfies all of Buffett's investment criteria.
